The Ion9 seems rather decent now

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Song
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So for my latest high-score run I decided to double-up and try out a test of the revamped Dvalin Ion9 cannon. I think the latest set of changes have profoundly changed how this weapon fares, to the point where the fetch-quest for it is actually a fairly good idea. The design of this gun also gives it some unique advantages and disadvantages which I think should be examined by those who can run the numbers to see if my thoughts are correct. Keep in mind that I enhanced my gun up to +70% to start off with, and later on to +90%. With care, it could be enhanced up to +150%, at which point it would be truly astonishingly insane.

1. The ion9 goes through shields like absolutely nothing.

For the last deliberate buff, the Ion9 was given the shield-buster ability. This makes an enhanced ion9 one of the single fastest ways to kill endgame shields in existence. I think it's faster than the Ares Lightning Turret, but I'm not sure about the positron archcannon or the iocrym short-range weapons. It also has what is possibly a unique ability: the ability to crack a luminous shield tuned to its damage type. This is intended behaviour, and it's working very well, I must say that this change has massively improved this gun.

2. An enhanced Ion9 is inferior to an enhanced fusionfire at dealing damage to compartments

Simple enough, given the Ion9 has no WMD (but stay tuned, there's more later on this). My secondard weapon was a fusionfire+fast, with a speedloader giving a second boost. This was far slower at cracking shields (obviously), but the fusionfire cracks armor better. This is also because the ion9 uses a particle effect, which spreads out damage as opposed to the single, concentrated strike of a heavy howitzer round.

4. The Ion9 is exceptional for targeting swarms, and can fire from cover

Because of the way "particles" work, an ion9 burst can travel through or around small enemies. This means you can hit several targets at once. When baiting gunships from a station, this prevents them from abandoning the pursuit, by allowing all your baited ships to be hit early on and keeping them angry. The buggy placement of particles also means you can sometimes shoot from under a planet, taking down turrets or weak enemies before leaving cover to run or fight harder targets.

4. The ion9 does far more device damage than pretty much any other vanilla weapon except the disruptor.

This needs testing under controlled conditions, but I noticed it during the point-grinding, so it's fairly close to it. The ion9 does not have the much-loathed device-destruct attribute. But it has something else: the "particles" effect. This causes the shot to be a spray, rather than a single shot. While this makes it slower than a howitzer, it triggers a brilliant but probably unintended effect. When attacking a large ship, compartments can be damaged. If devices are in these compartments, they can be damaged. Now here's where the speculation starts (credit to Atarlost for helping to come up with this after I noticed it). The check for device damage is, we believe, made every time a shot hits a compartment. A few ion9 blasts contain several tens of "shots" in the form of the spray of particles. Thus for every shot that connects, a lot more checks are run, and thus a lot more devices are damaged over time. This is both exceptionaly useful, and very annoying. If you are trying to farm for an APA, lightning turret or other specific device that is within a compartment....do not use an Ion9 to blast through the armor (shield is fine). If you end up hitting the compartments you need, you will probably kill it. However for farming for points, fuel, missiles or cargo....the ion9 is very good. A higher chance of device damage means that you can shoot out the weapons on capital ships and make the rest of the fight easier. On a deimos, this will almost always destroy both of its weapons. On a phobos, the APA and one of the turrets can be taken out, reducing the firepower massively. This happens far more often than when using a weapon like the Fusionfire....but some more testing needs to be done to confirm this effect. If it is the case, I would suggest that it is kept, and that Dvalin's lab text is changed to let the player get a hint of it.

5. The Ion9 MAY do unusually high station damage

I have not tested this, but it seems that the WMD check may also be done on a per-fragment/particle basis. If this is the case, the absolute minimum damage against a hardened target would be the number of particles fired in a burst. This would make the Ion9 slightly more effective against stations than an identical non-WMD weapon that only fires a single shot, or a more rapid-fire non)WMD weapon that can't match the equivelant true-ROF on a per-particle basis. Thus the Ion9 is in effect a semi-howitzer, despite lacking "true" WMD (thanks to Atarlost for working out this might be the case).


So has anyone else tried this thing out? I'm loving that this weapon has very distinct traits that make it more useful in some circumstances than others...even if the task to be completed is exactly the same. The higher chance of device damage in particular is rather interesting.
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Shrike wrote:5. The Ion9 MAY do unusually high station damage

I have not tested this, but it seems that the WMD check may also be done on a per-fragment/particle basis. If this is the case, the absolute minimum damage against a hardened target would be the number of particles fired in a burst. This would make the Ion9 slightly more effective against stations than an identical non-WMD weapon that only fires a single shot, or a more rapid-fire non)WMD weapon that can't match the equivelant true-ROF on a per-particle basis. Thus the Ion9 is in effect a semi-howitzer, despite lacking "true" WMD (thanks to Atarlost for working out this might be the case).
 I’m not going to speak to the rest of your observations (having not tested them, or even gotten an Ion9 since it was buffed), but I’m pretty sure the howitzer-scale damage comparison is behavior as intended, given the following:
Dvalin (in Rassiermesser.xml) wrote:"It is my new project, ya? An ion weapon as powerful as a howitzer!"
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AssumedPseudonym wrote:
Shrike wrote:5. The Ion9 MAY do unusually high station damage

I have not tested this, but it seems that the WMD check may also be done on a per-fragment/particle basis. If this is the case, the absolute minimum damage against a hardened target would be the number of particles fired in a burst. This would make the Ion9 slightly more effective against stations than an identical non-WMD weapon that only fires a single shot, or a more rapid-fire non)WMD weapon that can't match the equivelant true-ROF on a per-particle basis. Thus the Ion9 is in effect a semi-howitzer, despite lacking "true" WMD (thanks to Atarlost for working out this might be the case).
 I’m not going to speak to the rest of your observations (having not tested them, or even gotten an Ion9 since it was buffed), but I’m pretty sure the howitzer-scale damage comparison is behavior as intended, given the following:
Dvalin (in Rassiermesser.xml) wrote:"It is my new project, ya? An ion weapon as powerful as a howitzer!"
Yes, I think that it's intended as well. I'm just also fairly confident that it actually works as well.
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Sorry for resurrecting this old thread, but it seems most appropriate:
What items does Dvalin actually accept for his research now? I remember that he used to eat up anything that wasn't buyable through the usual channels, so you could deliver Ares arms and armor. Now though, he doesn't want my Ares lightning cannon, nor orichalc armor. He took all the Dwarg stuff, but I can't test further this game, as I accidentally killed a ronin gunship from the Rasiermesser manufacturing plant while we were fighting a Ventari frigate and he's hostile now...
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Generally, Dvalin wants any weapons, armors, and shields rare enough. This excludes anything made by the CH, even those things you never really see used anywhere. Typically, any defensive equipment manufactured by enemy factions works, but weapons need to be fairly powerful to make it. Common Ares things are rejected, perhaps because the Ares is constantly getting destroyed in the war and their techs aren't that hard to come upon. Luminous Blaster is also, for some reason, rejected. But every kind of Luminous shields are gladly taken, and they all counts as separate things. Luminous armature is also accepted. Anything from Ares capital ships (and Chasms' positron cannons) are also accepted.
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Specifically, they have to have the NotForSale attribute and a rarity of rare or veryrare. I, uh, just happen to have the complete list:

Code: Select all

CLAW cannon
heavy CLAW cannon

heavy Sung armor
Nandao bolt cannon

Cydonian shield generator
Cydonian heavy shield generator
Kaidun shield generator
heavy Tharsis plate
massive Tharsis plate
Ares launcher
Ares lightning turret
Hecates cannon
Ares plasma archcannon

Dwarg chiton armor
Dwarg xiphon cannon
Dwarg catoptric armor
Dwarg cnidocyst cannon
Dwarg behemoth cannon
Dwarg holochroal armor

worldship armor
xenophobe ion lancer

Gaian demolition cannon

sunflare cannon
blinder cannon

Penitent cannon

depleted uranium armor

Iocrym fracture cannon
Iocrym repeller
Iocrym veil

Luminous armature
Luminous blast shield
Luminous ion shield
Luminous particle shield
Luminous thermo shield

light recoilless cannon

Urak mass driver
light Urak armor
heavy Urak armor
advanced Urak mass driver
Urak howitzer
You can donate each item type 6 times before Dvalin loses interest. Undamaged items and the first damaged item of each type are worth 2 * the item's level in xp. Damaged items after the first are worth 1 * item level. Also, the first item (damaged or not) of each type gets a bonus of 3 * item level and the first undamaged item gets an additional 5 * item level. So you can get up to 20 * item level xp per item type if you donate 6, at most 1 of which is damaged. The order you donate them in doesn't matter.

You get rewards at 100, 200, 400, and 800 xp. The Ion9 is at 800. Edit: I think you get a second Ion9 at 1600, but nothing more.

Edit:
I did try out the Ion9 fairly recently. I found it to be excellent against shields, decent against armor, but fairly weak against compartments. It was less effective against compartments than a lancer cannon +fast, which fires 25 shots per second. The Ion9 averages 50 * 3.75 = 187.5 particles per second, so I suspect that about 10% of those particles cause compartment damage. This doesn't seem to improve as you enhance its damage.
Last edited by NMS on Mon Sep 14, 2015 8:56 am, edited 3 times in total.
Brzelius
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Great, exactly what I was looking for!
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Can any of you helpful people provide an Ion9 firing and hitting gif? I dont have access to a pc and will not have for time to come. But i really wanna see this new Ion9 in action!
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Calvin wrote:Can any of you helpful people provide an Ion9 firing and hitting gif? I dont have access to a pc and will not have for time to come. But i really wanna see this new Ion9 in action!
Visually, it's exactly the same as it's always been. It just got buffed with shield-buster stats (and I think a little extra damage. That brought it from "Bad for level 8" to "Strong for level 8, weak for level 9". Given it's level 9 that's not very good....but it comes by default with a really serious enhancement, this puts it into "Unremarkable but not bad at all level 9 gun". The thread about this is rather old...back from when it got its last big buff. It needs another one, but it's certainly a reasonable gun.


I'd make a GIF, but I'm running on the SM&M++ version, which is a heck of a lot better (as it's balanced as a level 9 quest weapon to correct the power-creep).
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Hey Shrike! Have used your mod and have loved it so far. But i didnt knew that it had a ++ version. So what tweaks are present to the Ion9 in your mod?
And one of the most fun scene you you can witness is firing an Ion9 or Slicer cannon +fast into a real huge dwarg hoard!
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Before the last buff, Dvalin required more gifts to get the Ion9, and the only reliable way to do so was to give him several undamaged Ferian cannons or level 9 or 10 Ares hardware. At that point, why doesn't the player keep and use one of them instead of give them to Dvalin for a worse weapon? Even today, the Ion9 is still not good enough to trade a Ferian Cannon or Ares weapons (which also got buffs like the Ion9) to Dvalin, but it is not as bad as before, and you do not need as many.

I still think Ferian Cannon may be superior to Ion9, unless your ship is the Freyr, then the free swivel might make the Ion9 worthwhile. I would not trade multiple Ares weapons for the Ion9 in any case. Much rather sell the NotForSale weapons to Teratons and buy something useful, either better items than Dvalin can give or dock services from the Ringers.
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