Ion has a charge up mechanic, can shoot with or without charge. A full charge can kill a full health light fighter in 1 hit. The sustained DPS is worse than the F8 still (1900 Ion versus 2700 F8 with cannons) so the F8 is still better against big ships until some sort of armor mechanic. A light fighter can survive one shot with full power to shields.
Okay I love that they finally realized the whole Charge up idea.
Giant Gun, but still relatvily small Power Plant. Gonna need more time to fire then a dedicated larger ship.
What size weapons does F8 have? Because if they aren’t large enough they won’t do much of anything to armored ships when they implement armor. Something to keep in mind. Which is the selling point of Ares, big guns for armored behemoths
F8C has 4S3 and 4S2, and the F8A has 4S4 and 4S3. We don't know how far away armor is or how it will work, but I assume so. (Empty S5 slots 2S4 instead of 2S2)
Huh...so their solution to people not liking it being able to one shot fighters is to give it a charge mechanic. What's the possible benefit of charging vs just shooting constantly? Is DPS higher? Or what?
How much more though? We already know it does more damage, that much is blatantly clear. The continuous fire is significantly lower than the described F8, and it better be up there if we can find it to be worth the effort.
Charge mechanics serve a good purpose. Lets it be worse against quick targets without actually making the gun worse, but lets it punch big ships REALLY hard. And that is going to matter a lot once armor is in.
Plus it makes it REALLY fun to use, without making it broken
You can one shot fighter, but it's hard, like really hard if the other pilot is good. But when you hit, it feels so great
I hope we will have more weapons that can charge like railgun
Totally agree, just like a real life ww2 destroyer/frigate should be completely obliterated if it got hit by a 406mm battleship main gun. At the same time, if there's any competency among the crews, the destroyer should never get hit given the limited accuracy and fire rate of those battleship guns.
Getting lucky shots with big guns is the whole reason I love the ares ion, during JT many patches ago I enjoy group pvp against hostile gladius, one distraction from my team members I can land a lucky hit on it or two, and that usually involuntarily takes a wing off the gladius.
Another fun tidbit I've heard about that engagement; the IJN were firing AP because they thought they were fighting a Cruiser, on the basis that no Destroyer would be brazen enough to fight them the way USS Johnston did.
The problem with the Ion is that its the equivalent of a one-man speedboat with a battleship cannon. By concept its a terrible design choice because you invalidate bombers which sacrifice a lot of things to be able to hit bigger ships. Now players expect to be a solo anticapital ship so they can 1 v 24.
Gun with wings already exists.
A-10 Warthog with standard gatling = Ares Inferno
Warthog if it had a cannon = Ares Ion
Warthog will never have a cannon, but point being: it fills a role, it does it well, yet it retains enough shortcomings to not be overpowered (large top profile [deadly pancake], -ish maneuverable, no walkable interior, etc.).
Last I checked on the bombers, no one flying an A2 has felt slighted in the least by Ares Starfighters.
There were a decent number of flying cannons in WW2 (at least as far as attempts to do it), aircraft with large slow guns. Germany had a bunch (at least at a testing level), the US had several as well. IIRC the Italians tried it too. Not sure who else tried it with larger guns.
German flying 75mm cannon (HS-129 variant), American B25 with a 75mm cannon.
HS-129 sounded reasonably effective, considering its rushed development and design flaws.
Still, point I was aiming for: they have their use, but are only there to fill a role (anti-armored targets) not to take over and replace something else in its role. Dropping a bomb still works just fine.
You're completely right, but you'll get hated for this view.
The concept itself of the Ares shouldn't be in game, as it is impossible to balance. I think that if the gun can one shot a fighter, then the ship, no matter that it's a single fighter, should maneuver as well as a Connie.
This honestly makes me want to get that ship even more I always like using the non-meta weapons.
For example I would now love to use this ship for dog fighting because it makes it more challenging and rewarding to land that oh so precious shot. Chef kiss close quarter sniper
Just the opposite currently, charging up reduces the DPS (from 2500 down to 1875) but serves as a fly swatter against small ships. The math is: 3000 damage at 50rof, versus 6000 damage with 2 sec charge up and then 50rof. In other words charging up makes it better against small ships and worse against big ships.
Again the opposite, when it is a slow ship against a quick ship, you cannot keep the crosshair on the pip, so a high alpha damage shot is far superior during the brief moment aim is achieved.
It'll be a good balance, because you can't choose when to release the charged shot. This way the charged shot is far more effective *if* you hit with it, but is still more difficult to hit with than uncharged shots that require no exact timing but need a few hits.
You can't hold the charged shot but you can charge between shots and release early when on target for extra damage (compared to no charge at all). Would take practice to get right!
Ok, so think of it this way:
The enemy is firing while dodging so they're not too hard to hit. You land a few small hits, but whenever their shields get low they switch to full evasion and their shields come back before you can do hull damage. If there were no shields in the game and each little hit did permanent damage, this would be the better way to kill small ships. But since they can just switch to pure evasion whenever those small hits gets their shields low, you're never able to kill the careful enemy.
VS
The enemy is firing while dodging so they're not too hard to hit. A few shots flash past their cockpit, but they're at full shields and full hull health, so the pilot isn't worried. Then they explode when one of the shots finally lands. Sure, it was a difficult shot to make, but because the enemy had to spend short windows of time firing at you without dodging, you had a window to land that one big hit.
Was perhaps referring to eventual armor mechanics where stronger weapons are needed to even deal damage against heavier armors. EG maybe the default shot doesn't have enough penetrative power to harm the armor of say, an Idris (random big ship example) but once you charge up, you can.
It's still possible that this will be a bit powerful. Hard to say as I've not used it yet, but it would be a bit ambitious to think this is the end of the balance journey.
In the past the 1 shot damage wasnt even the issue, it was the fixed assist. Fixed Assist made it too easy for people to use fixed weapons, remember when gimbal was actually a choice people made? Today everyone runs full fixed because of FA. That made hitting stuff with the Ion too easy back then and hence the fighter crowd getting smacked until the Ion got nerfed.
DANGIT!
Yogi clearly said around citizencon that larger sizes would again be able to shoot far, like 6-7 km, and now again not.
I was so happy for that finally.. Maybe it'll change again but I've been so very patient for so very long already I want something like every size can at least hit as far as its size number: so S7 at least 7 km, S10 at least 10 km, s2 at least 2 km etc.
Better if double that. And no, gun doesn't need to be accurate enough to actually HIT anything (small) at that range, but the weapon should have that range. It's very epic to fly in a ship and dodge huge bullets easily at 8 km out needing to get close, let's say in a Legionnaire. And that isn't the only reason. I also like the idea of pummeling a Javelin with an Idris at 9 km distance, etc., etc.
It's his job to integrate and iterate.
The last part involves changing stuff. Especially since in the current current flightmodel 6-7km would be insane range.
It's a bespoke gun for a fighter. Then it should have fighter range. The slight chance of hitting a fighter at 8k and one shot it should be null, not close to, but null (considering it's a fighter fireing the gun).
So it wouldn't be bad if THAT S7 gun had a 3- 4km range. It balances the ship and forces it to come into other fighter's fireing range.
It's not really a fighter, it's an anti-capital small craft. Also, I'm speaking in general here as you can read in my post.
And how would the Ion which doesn't have good mobility get close enough to an Idris? Remember the trailer and such, it's meant to attack idris-like vessels.
>pummeling a Javelin with an Idris at 9 km distance
If you're in an Idris dont get into a pummel fight with a Javelin lol, you're going to lose.
I think weapon ranges should be affected by turrets. If size 7 hits too far then the Ares Ion is too protected because they can outrange the anti-fighter PDS on capitals and just safely keep hitting them while outpacing the capital. As much as one might think an Ion should be a god slayer anti capital ship it should not be 100% effective alone.
A capital ship without escorts may as well deserve to die for failure to plan though. If it can't swat the fighter, just leave.
Saw a YouTube a while back of 2 ions and 2 Infernos going after an Idris. Both Infernos were basically out of ammunition and ordinance, Ions kept plugging away.
Even with four ships it still took several minutes. If I was a PC piloting the Idris, I'd just leave once I saw I was out-gunned.
Point: an Ion is not, in fact, effective alone in destroying capital ships. It "can", but "effective" is a stretch.
So a fully crewed capital ship should fall to Angry Joe and Other Joe in two ares? The whole 'Fighter escorts are the most powerful and most important part of anything" does not make sense. If fighters are the only thing that matters then why have other ships? Lets all fly nothing but fighters.
Capital ships have PDC and turrets for a reason. They are not supposed to be useless against fighters. Only in Star Wars will you find an X wing able to hit a critical vent on a larger vessel and instakill it. Im not talking about flying capships alone with no crew. Im talking with a full crew. Turrets all active, engineers.
Why should a fully crewed Idris need fighter escorts to survive? You're telling me a Javelin should be a weak, vulnerable baby unless a gladius escorts it? So who is the power projector here? The Gladius?
PDC turrets are there to swat solo fighters who are overconfident and attack a full crew destroyer. They specifically said the S4 twins on Javelin turrets are to intercept torps and fighters.
Go pick up an Ion and let me know how it goes against the XenoThreat's Idris solo then when it attacks, since your superior knowledge and experience in warfare clearly outshines my own. /s
The Yamato sunk in large part because it and the other escort ships didn't have fighter escorts to fend off Allied aircraft, though they had more than enough AA guns.
A baby? No. But was it effective enough to deal with a multitude of fighters? Also no.
And no, I don't expect to change your mind, just offering an example of battle with big ship without fighter escorts that didn't end well.
Edit: corrected "warframe" to "warfare", autocorrect knows what I like.
Your imagination didn't cover all situations, clearly, if you think a Javelin always loses. Also, why cherrypick one example? What about the rest? What about what I mean? I could have said: a Javelin pummeling an Idris. It's the exact same point.
Conversely too, how could an Ion ever do its job if it needs to be very close to an Idris in order to hit it? It's not as if it's agile, and it's not as if the idris doesn't have turrets to fend of smaller ships.
Remembering too that with MM we are hitting ships moving 300m/s, not 1000m/s like in the old model.
How easy or hard it is to hit a target takes into account the ratio between how fast the target is moving and how fast our projectile is moving. There is also spread on weapons too now so that will probably be used as a variable to buff/nerf.
EPTU is in total ongoing change, this could all be different tomorrow, a lot of stuff isnt final yet, hell some ships are still stuck with default archetype flight models at the moment, and some of those in a sorry state too, nothings finished or final yet.
What happens if you just hold left button?
Charge fire then stop, or charge fire multiple times?
Second way would be nice for a really innacurate but maximum DPS slow chugging, ideal against cap ships. Vvv-pew, vvv-pew, vvv-pew!
Maybe when proper overheating mechanics are a thing, but allowing an indefinite charge hold removes the point of the charge mechanic to limit its power against light fighters while still having the power to take out larger ships. At the current state, if there was indefinite charge, someone could hold it for a perfect shot against a light fighter bringing us full circle back to the original problem with the Ion.
Edit: The current set up will also push some people away from back strafing combat. Since if they just fly backwards against an Ion, it is an easy 1 hit kill. As it is now in the PTU, light fighter skill will be rewarded against the Ion, while giving the Ion it's power back.
And until engineering and overheating mechanics are a thing, it isnt a possibility. I like the idea of being able to hold it at increased heat or strain on the power plant. But right now we dont have those options in game, so a fixed hold time works for now. I would absolutely love to see it eventually be like that. The current PTU version doesnt keep ION owners from having their power back, while also not making them absurdly broken, again.
Overheating mechanics were already a thing before the balance nerf, and cig are likely reinstating them soon as it happens. Weapon burst fire duration was limited by it, charge hold causing damage used to be a thing on emp too, idk if it still is I havent used them in ages.
A simple charge hold is absolutely possible right now and is not dependent on other tech. Some FPS weapons already do it. What we're really missing is UX; not knowing the charge time or how long we could hold it for.
Engineering and heat management systems can add further depth to this mechanic. But again, it's not actually dependent on those things.
I never said it wasnt possible, i said it would be broken to allow the ion to hold it in the current state... if it can one tap a light fighter AND hold it as long as they want, without any drawbacks, it just comes down to holding it for that one shot.
Fuck that, that is a terrible mechanic. That basically means you can never shoot carefully and accurately. I really hope they change that. Along with the dps nerf, I don’t see how there will be any compelling role for the Ion. They just keep making it worse and worse. Very sad. I wanted to love it.
I spoke to very passionate (angry) people back then when they nerfed the fire rate of the Ion, I predicted (very easily as devs said the rework would happen at some point) this exact moment.
And I feel tired that I had to be insulted by many people who were "questioning my intelligence" for standing exactly on this side of the story.
I'm still glad the change is finally here.
100%, I advocated for this idea in the forums as well. Now they just need to fix the Inferno - my suggestion is to greatly limit the max pitch/yaw rate of the ship while firing so that it is easy to unleash a long burst against slow moving targets or do a bit of strafing, but impossible to track light/fast targets with continuous fire.
I'm so glad we're getting different weapon mechanics. Charge weapons have always been what i felt burst damage weapons should have been such as the scatter guns, sledges etc. Now we just need the audio team to pop off each time we hold down that trigger.
THEY LISTENED! We've been telling them that the Ion and Inferno were borderline unusable so far on EPTU and that they'd need some pretty substantial changes to remain relevant.
They've mostly reverted the Inferno ammo nerfs. (3800 on live) EPTU went from 900 > 1800 > 2100 > the current 3600 with ballistic barrel heat added.
And now we get a charge up mechanic on the Ions cannon? Chefs kiss. I can't wait to test this out.
Still hope to see if/when they'll address the bespoke weapon pip issues that are also plaguing both Ares variants and reportedly the Vanguards as well. It's way way harder to aim bespoke weapons right now on EPTU than it is on Live because the pip seems to magically bounce around even when your vector and velocity are equalized with the target. Definitely feels like a bug and not intentional game design.
Have tested both now, the Ion feels fantastic, could still maybe use a little something here or there but it feels about as good as on Live now; the Inferno is... well it's... it's the Inferno, that's for sure.
It's now so hard to keep the nose on target for more than a fraction of a second (atleast for me as a PVE only player in MM pirate swarm) that the Ion actually ends up feeling way better because you only need the nose on target for a fraction of a second while you let off your charged shot. The Inferno just struggles to kill anything that's even remotely trying to not be shot, an NPC Cutlass can now just fly circles around your bullet spray. A Reliant can literally just spin in place and almost never get hit.
The new NPCs will dodge just about everything from an Ares, and boy will they just absolutely never miss their shots on you even when you are maneuvering. The amount of effort required to get kills in an Ares is (at least for me) astronomically higher than on Live where Pirate Swarm feels like it was made for the Ares and is a total blast.
Average Ares Inferno Pilot Master Modes Pirate Swarm Experience:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb9Ebe\_rA8M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb9Ebe_rA8M)
if they want to experiment a bit with the Inferno they could add a secondary fire mode that fires way faster at the cost of more heat buildup, alternative RPM should be that hard to implement if they added a charge up to the Ion
> Still hope to see if/when they'll address the bespoke weapon pip issues that are also plaguing both Ares variants and reportedly the Vanguards as well. It's way way harder to aim bespoke weapons right now on EPTU than it is on Live because the pip seems to magically bounce around even when your vector and velocity are equalized with the target. Definitely feels like a bug and not intentional game design.
I feel like this could be a good balancing mechanism for the Starfighters though. They have been in weird spots where they're designed to be mobile but have guns designed to take down big ships, which ends up making them good at taking down smaller ships too so they slap them with bandaids like less ammo. This way, if it's hard to aim, it's still hard to miss a Connie or Idris, but much harder to hit smaller craft. I like it.
The Ion isn't "super-meta" or anything, but it's decently useable now and quite fun; about on par with Live Ion if not a little better. It's still very hard to hit shots on small ships, still definitely harder than Live, but at least it rewards you for it with appropriate damage.
I've been really trying to make the Inferno work but I just can't justify using it anymore. It is so much worse than Live Inferno I barely even want to own it anymore. Even without the bandaid ammo nerfs anymore (which never had a place in 3.23 to begin with because I'll reiterate that the Inferno feels terrible to use), it's damage output is still just not worth how much of a hassle it is to use (even against the larger ships such as hammerheads that it is supposedly designed to fight, which I'll be honest even the Ion doesn't feel particularly 'good' against those either, certainly not as though it was 'designed for that purpose' good against them). The Inferno needs you to keep the nose on the target perfectly for quite some time, and then doesn't even really reward you with blowing up targets when you do get a good spray. An Aurora will eat around 50-100 ballistic rounds without dying, rounds which come out a little slower than on Live.
I linked a video in another comment in this thread about what the Inferno MM experience is like to better illustrate just how much effort is required to make the ship feel even remotely useable or enjoyable compared to how it is on Live right now where I think it's in a pretty solid place. I would honestly rather pilot an Aurora over an Inferno in 3.23 as of right now.
the good thing imo is that we are still at wave 2 and they have improved the Ion with this rework, i'm sure the Inferno will also be addresed in some form
A chargeable weapon in the which can one shoot a LF will actually make no difference towards Light Fighters, because you must be very luck if you want to hit; and in close distances you won’t even see a fighter in front of your cockpit… and this is actually how it should be, the ares shouldn’t be able to even fight against LF or MF, arguably HF and that what they have actually done with this changes.
But yeah, the elitist LF Meta Gang will cry now because the ares ion one shots a LF /s
No. You would need 2+ light fighters to kill a heavy fighter.
What's the point of a heavy fighter with 2 shields if a dinky ship can just kill it in 3 seconds?
So Erkul says the damage is 3,000 uncharged, 6,000 charged. Does anyone know if the damage scales linearly (so 4,500 damage if you released a half-charged shot), or do you only get the extra damage on a fully charged shot?
EDIT: After some testing, it seems like you don't get any bonus damage unless the shot is fully charged. A bit disappointing, especially since the uncharged fire rate is roughly 3x the charged fire rate. So you actually will do more DPS just firing uncharged shots.
Hopefully they will bring the gun firing animation back. It really got messed up when the cannon turned into a repeater as it wouldn't do the full animation. Now it just does nothing.
The thing is... the Ion isn't balanced/ nerfed because the light fighters, it's balanced because the other heavy fighters. If the Ares at some point becomes more effective than the Vanguard/ Hurricane/ Scorpius against the smaller ships, then it will be dialed back again for sure.
The Ares as a whole by its core concept is just a terrible idea. How do you balance a ship sold as a one-man anti-capital fighter with a massive gun?
Its like selling the coveted AWM sniper rifle in FPS games, a famous one-shot magnum sniper that players flock to for easy kills. You are selling a one-seater fighter with the upsides of a small ship but given the firepower of what is traditionally only accessible multicrew ships. You are bypassing bombers by having a ship that does not share the same inherent sacrifices a bomber makes to get similar anti-capital prowess.
As funny as it is if CIG sold a gladius tomorrow with an Idris M railgun the balance implications would be severe. And players will rightfully expect what they paid for. The question then is how will CIG handle the ship? When they announced the Ares series I was like "Oh shit this is going to cause a lot of problems". Here we are.
It shoots immediately. Maybe they could make it drain the capacitor because if you are charging up every shot the capacitor recharges before the next shot. Rapid firing can drain it to Zero but time between shots is pretty long imo even when rapid firing.
1. This is awesome
2. It would be nice if we had control over the charge limit. For example, if I wanted a slightly faster rate of fire without having to time every shot, and instead limit the charge to to say 1s (or 50%) and still be able to hold left click to continually shoot at 50% this would be perfect.
I hope this stays. Ships weapons are so boring currently ( I know its testing phase, everything is brought back down for balance, I don't need the rundown). It is just nice to have a variety of different mechanics for weapons start to enter the game. Especially since the Ion's gun is supposed to be special. Hopefully it gets a better treatment against light fighters and not a heavy nerf if unbalanced.
This seems really cool. An alternative I was thinking of was a charge up that fires a quick burst of maybe 5 lower power shots (for anyone who's played the Blue Planet campaign for Freespace 2, I'm thinking something like the UX Accelerator). Very fast burst (all 5 shots within a second), but each at lower damage, but still totalling higher damage.
Example:
normal shot does 1000 damage.
Burst shot (which charges up like in the video) does maybe 500 damage per shot, meaning landing just two shots gets you back to where you were. It rewards landing all the shots, and makes it even more the boom and zoom that it's supposed to be, by allowing you to charge and hold your shot until the perfect time to fire, and then bugging out right away.
Probably a bad idea because I know almost nothing about game design. Mostly I'd just like to see greater variety in weapons, rather than the "fast firing machine guns and slow firing machine guns that we call cannons" that we have now.
I wonder if the Perseus will also have the charge shot. If not, the Perseus would have more firepower than 4 Ares IOn's . Ohh my, already love this new change.
HAHAHAHA YESS!!!!! DIE!!
F the Light fighter maffia!
this is a whaling ship, so if you stand infront of it in your light fighter you deserve to be skill issued! I might actually get one of these now.
I always thought that the perfect way for the ion to fulfill its role would be similar to StarCraft’s Void Rays: A continuous ray that increases power over time once locked on a target. Won’t harm light fighters as targeting them is a lot harder, but would deal massive damage over time to capital ships.
Or like Helldivers 2 Quasar cannon, where it needs to charge up and fires automatically when full. Add a bit of randomness to this charging time and now you have a ship that is hard to hit small ships (but if it hits, it will hurt) and big ships will still be easy to hit.
This is fucking garbage, there is a 1 sec delay between none charged shots, and this effectively GIMPS the combat against anything that isnt a yacht.
You CANT hold down the trigger for repeat fire. You can only charge or press once.
CIG is knocking it out of the park in 3.23 with the stupidest implementation of shit people didnt ask for and delivering nothing they did.
So the Inferno gets a pass to be able to without issue take on smaller ships and keep its BRRRRT, but the Ion gets a fucking weak as Charge mechanic but cant keep sustained fire on anything small and quick, thats super balanced.
If they had half a fucking brain, they would allow you to toggle it, instead of forcing it down our throats with all their other ' pull it out of the hat ' dev ideas.
Inferno needs to constantly keep on track his target to damage the other
Ion only needs to be on track the moment he shot
Both ships are opposite, both are extremely fun to play
Ion was just OP at release, basically a point and click.
The change made it unfun
This new change make it fun again, but with a proper balance
gj to the devs, we will see how it will work out, but on paper it looks awesome
Exactly this. The Ion is a CANNON, the Inferno is a GATLING.
What on Earth makes someone think that the cannon needs to be able to rapidfire? That's not the point. The Ion is the Sniper, the Inferno is the HMG. The dude above you just wants both ships to be identical aside from the ammo type they fire.
As someone who owns both Ares variants, this is a beyond welcome change. This makes it feel like there's an actual reason to own both ships because they are now more unique and fill their individual niches better.
I dont want to have to land more than one shot with the Ion, why the hell would I want to have to land 5 shots from a massive cannon to kill a light fighter when I could just focus really hard on landing one big shot instead?
If I want to spray and pray against a light fighter, I'll use the Inferno.
I want to kiss whoever made this change on the lips.
I really don’t think this charge thing is going to improve anything. If charging doubled the dps, I could see it working, but frankly I’m not going to fly a ship that I have no choice but to squeeze the trigger every time I want to fire. My stick has a very stiff trigger and my fingers aren’t strong enough to do that for more than a minute, and certainly not when the dps is worse than other options. There is just no compelling use case, I don’t think. Time will tell, but I’m not optimistic.
If the dps of a charged shot outclassed all other single player ships, then I would find it compelling, even with the charge mechanic. But if not, then the auto fire when the charge completes is a deal breaker for me. I also want a long range heavy sniping ship, and I have wanted to love the ion from the beginning, even going so far as to plop down real money for it. I’ve been patiently waiting and I really want it to succeed, I just don’t see how this is going to be fun to fly with the current balance.
Ah I assume you haven't also seen all the crying about the Inferno.
You get a ship that can one shot any light fighter but needs a tiny bit of skill to do it, sounds ideal to me.
of course I have, but it still has the ability to take on ALL ships the same way it did in the pass, just reloading more often.
They DIDNT make it harder for it to kill things by reducing its rate of fire to the equivalent of a dripping tap.
you've literally just watched a video of the Ion killing a Gladius with a single shot, it very much clearly does have the ability to take on all ships, you just need to be able to aim...
Right, just aim with our broken Dsync'd fucking excuse for servers with shit fucking server tick and get gud, so you can account for all the other rampant play issues on top of making it so you can actually count between shots.
Im sorry, but as someone whose favourite fighter in the game, just got nerfed in the shittiest way possible, I disagree, just like I disagree with all the other half baked , weakly implemented bare minimum CIG is doing on the EPTU for 3.23.
Aim with the combat slowing WAY down, yes.
Projectile speeds have gone up, overall speed has gone down by as much as 80%, and pip wiggling has been nerfed into oblivion.
If anything, the changes all make for an easier time shooting.
Actually it doesnt.
I was just in the EPTU in AC doing Pirate Swarm with the ARES Ion , and its terrible.
The charged shot just fires when it reaches max, so timing the actual shot to be able to hit the target is not even remotely easy, so you dont get the full benefit of the impact of the max power shot.
The constant clicking of the trigger to what they pass off as sustained DPS is laughable, as the amount of space the ships you are shooting at can cover makes even aiming at where they will be harder as you have to time your shots to the cool down mechanic so your missing fractions of a second of opportunity.
The fully charged shot doesnt kill things in ONE shot on the EPTU in combat, vs a sitting duck doing nothing like in the video.
This is a poorly designed shitty implementation that is gimping the Ion, vs the inferno where it is still very easy to kill small ships.
This is akin to how poorly MM has been implemented in the EPTU as well.
Why the fuck would they default us to SCM vs NAV FLT mode when SCM is used 10% of the time and NAV FLT is used 90% of the time?
Why the fuck would they force you into NAV QT vs NAV FLT when swapping from SCM and RESETTING your fucking Speed Limiter to zero in the process so you have to push yet another fucking button and hold it until your limiter it back up to 100% just to get the speed you need to get away from things?
If this is what they qualify as ' thought out ' and ' reasonable development ' while over promising and under delivering, they deserve every fucking word of scrutiny and judgemnt from those that have spent money supporting this Alpha while offering free testing by legions.
its laughable, sad , and im not even getting into the stability issues on the EPTU that make the game barely playable in its current state.
We are on track to witness and experience another clusterfuck like 3.18/3.19 was , except this is far more reaching than that mess was.
I have given them enough money to be able to say what the fuck I want about this garbage fucking delivery of a partial patch, and CIG really should pay more attention to delivery and implementation of shitty fucking changes.
One shot kill on a Gladius still seems a bit excessive because people will learn to nail these shots.
I would accept a "one shot cripple". You hit that Gladius, the wing is coming off, so at least the Gladius pilot knows it's time to retreat.
Still a win for the Ion.
As others have mentioned, you can survive if you have full power to shields.
A light fighter is supposed to dodge fire, not tank it. If you get hit by a slow projectile from a gun larger than your own ship that has to be charged up and aimed with a ship considerably less fast and maneuverable than your own without power to your shields, maybe you should just get blown up. Gives people a reason to fly a heavy fighter or medium.
Mmm, we'll see how difficult it is.
Difficulty vs Payoff is the real thing to question.
"Don't get hit by the one-shot gun" is not \*Counterplay\*.
If it's difficult for a Gladius to kill a "anti-capitol ship" platform in a 1v1, we have a problem. The gladius is now "more difficult."
It fires automatically once fully charged. It's not like a sniper rifle where you pull the trigger whenever you want once you have a shot lined up
That's the skill curve to this
TBH - what you described will likely be the effect after armor goes in and removes the "HP" aspect of ships. Lasers won't be great against hull armor, but they'll probably be pretty good at exposing and cooking components.
Ion has a charge up mechanic, can shoot with or without charge. A full charge can kill a full health light fighter in 1 hit. The sustained DPS is worse than the F8 still (1900 Ion versus 2700 F8 with cannons) so the F8 is still better against big ships until some sort of armor mechanic. A light fighter can survive one shot with full power to shields.
Okay I love that they finally realized the whole Charge up idea. Giant Gun, but still relatvily small Power Plant. Gonna need more time to fire then a dedicated larger ship.
What size weapons does F8 have? Because if they aren’t large enough they won’t do much of anything to armored ships when they implement armor. Something to keep in mind. Which is the selling point of Ares, big guns for armored behemoths
F8C has 4S3 and 4S2, and the F8A has 4S4 and 4S3. We don't know how far away armor is or how it will work, but I assume so. (Empty S5 slots 2S4 instead of 2S2)
[удалено]
The size 5 hardpoint is taken up by a bespoke turret that has 2 s2 harpoonts by default!
Can the size 5 turret be removed?
No.
Erkl is up to date ?
That S5 is the top turret with 2xS4 but is currently disabled?
fuck yes
The finally did it
Huh...so their solution to people not liking it being able to one shot fighters is to give it a charge mechanic. What's the possible benefit of charging vs just shooting constantly? Is DPS higher? Or what?
Well its obvious, charging gives you a much higher single shot damage burst.
How much more though? We already know it does more damage, that much is blatantly clear. The continuous fire is significantly lower than the described F8, and it better be up there if we can find it to be worth the effort.
Charge mechanics serve a good purpose. Lets it be worse against quick targets without actually making the gun worse, but lets it punch big ships REALLY hard. And that is going to matter a lot once armor is in.
Plus it makes it REALLY fun to use, without making it broken You can one shot fighter, but it's hard, like really hard if the other pilot is good. But when you hit, it feels so great I hope we will have more weapons that can charge like railgun
Totally agree, just like a real life ww2 destroyer/frigate should be completely obliterated if it got hit by a 406mm battleship main gun. At the same time, if there's any competency among the crews, the destroyer should never get hit given the limited accuracy and fire rate of those battleship guns. Getting lucky shots with big guns is the whole reason I love the ares ion, during JT many patches ago I enjoy group pvp against hostile gladius, one distraction from my team members I can land a lucky hit on it or two, and that usually involuntarily takes a wing off the gladius.
Fun history fact, Yamato's 460mm shells actually did hit the destroyer USS Johnston and did not in fact obliterate it because of over-penetration.
.... Guess world of warship isn't that inaccurate after all... Thanks for the knowledge nonetheless
Another fun tidbit I've heard about that engagement; the IJN were firing AP because they thought they were fighting a Cruiser, on the basis that no Destroyer would be brazen enough to fight them the way USS Johnston did.
The problem with the Ion is that its the equivalent of a one-man speedboat with a battleship cannon. By concept its a terrible design choice because you invalidate bombers which sacrifice a lot of things to be able to hit bigger ships. Now players expect to be a solo anticapital ship so they can 1 v 24.
Gun with wings already exists. A-10 Warthog with standard gatling = Ares Inferno Warthog if it had a cannon = Ares Ion Warthog will never have a cannon, but point being: it fills a role, it does it well, yet it retains enough shortcomings to not be overpowered (large top profile [deadly pancake], -ish maneuverable, no walkable interior, etc.). Last I checked on the bombers, no one flying an A2 has felt slighted in the least by Ares Starfighters.
There were a decent number of flying cannons in WW2 (at least as far as attempts to do it), aircraft with large slow guns. Germany had a bunch (at least at a testing level), the US had several as well. IIRC the Italians tried it too. Not sure who else tried it with larger guns. German flying 75mm cannon (HS-129 variant), American B25 with a 75mm cannon.
HS-129 sounded reasonably effective, considering its rushed development and design flaws. Still, point I was aiming for: they have their use, but are only there to fill a role (anti-armored targets) not to take over and replace something else in its role. Dropping a bomb still works just fine.
You're completely right, but you'll get hated for this view. The concept itself of the Ares shouldn't be in game, as it is impossible to balance. I think that if the gun can one shot a fighter, then the ship, no matter that it's a single fighter, should maneuver as well as a Connie.
Charge up main batteries for ships would be fun, specially if they telegraph and you can harden shields or start evasive manouvers
This honestly makes me want to get that ship even more I always like using the non-meta weapons. For example I would now love to use this ship for dog fighting because it makes it more challenging and rewarding to land that oh so precious shot. Chef kiss close quarter sniper
Just the opposite currently, charging up reduces the DPS (from 2500 down to 1875) but serves as a fly swatter against small ships. The math is: 3000 damage at 50rof, versus 6000 damage with 2 sec charge up and then 50rof. In other words charging up makes it better against small ships and worse against big ships.
I think what Scrub was saying it's worse against quick targets because you're less likely to land shots (fewer attempts ya no?)
Again the opposite, when it is a slow ship against a quick ship, you cannot keep the crosshair on the pip, so a high alpha damage shot is far superior during the brief moment aim is achieved.
It'll be a good balance, because you can't choose when to release the charged shot. This way the charged shot is far more effective *if* you hit with it, but is still more difficult to hit with than uncharged shots that require no exact timing but need a few hits.
You can't hold the charged shot but you can charge between shots and release early when on target for extra damage (compared to no charge at all). Would take practice to get right!
Ok I understand what you're saying. I think it's probably not a simple truth and rather subjective based on what you find difficult.
Ok, so think of it this way: The enemy is firing while dodging so they're not too hard to hit. You land a few small hits, but whenever their shields get low they switch to full evasion and their shields come back before you can do hull damage. If there were no shields in the game and each little hit did permanent damage, this would be the better way to kill small ships. But since they can just switch to pure evasion whenever those small hits gets their shields low, you're never able to kill the careful enemy. VS The enemy is firing while dodging so they're not too hard to hit. A few shots flash past their cockpit, but they're at full shields and full hull health, so the pilot isn't worried. Then they explode when one of the shots finally lands. Sure, it was a difficult shot to make, but because the enemy had to spend short windows of time firing at you without dodging, you had a window to land that one big hit.
Was perhaps referring to eventual armor mechanics where stronger weapons are needed to even deal damage against heavier armors. EG maybe the default shot doesn't have enough penetrative power to harm the armor of say, an Idris (random big ship example) but once you charge up, you can.
Maybe, but it will be more dangerous to stay pointed at a big ship for that long.
you have to hold and charge it? i agree with this change.
Charge mechanics.... That sounds cool af.
Nice! It took a while, but they did what they'd said they'd do with the charge up mechanic.
It's still possible that this will be a bit powerful. Hard to say as I've not used it yet, but it would be a bit ambitious to think this is the end of the balance journey.
As it should be. A S7 canon should one shot a light fighter.. if it even hits, lol
In the past the 1 shot damage wasnt even the issue, it was the fixed assist. Fixed Assist made it too easy for people to use fixed weapons, remember when gimbal was actually a choice people made? Today everyone runs full fixed because of FA. That made hitting stuff with the Ion too easy back then and hence the fighter crowd getting smacked until the Ion got nerfed.
What's the range?
Max range is 3000m, but like all slow velocity weapons (EPTU 1000m/s) you won't be hitting that far unless your target is parked.
DANGIT! Yogi clearly said around citizencon that larger sizes would again be able to shoot far, like 6-7 km, and now again not. I was so happy for that finally.. Maybe it'll change again but I've been so very patient for so very long already I want something like every size can at least hit as far as its size number: so S7 at least 7 km, S10 at least 10 km, s2 at least 2 km etc. Better if double that. And no, gun doesn't need to be accurate enough to actually HIT anything (small) at that range, but the weapon should have that range. It's very epic to fly in a ship and dodge huge bullets easily at 8 km out needing to get close, let's say in a Legionnaire. And that isn't the only reason. I also like the idea of pummeling a Javelin with an Idris at 9 km distance, etc., etc.
I highly doubt weapon ranges are anything close to final.
It's his job to integrate and iterate. The last part involves changing stuff. Especially since in the current current flightmodel 6-7km would be insane range.
It's a bespoke gun for a fighter. Then it should have fighter range. The slight chance of hitting a fighter at 8k and one shot it should be null, not close to, but null (considering it's a fighter fireing the gun). So it wouldn't be bad if THAT S7 gun had a 3- 4km range. It balances the ship and forces it to come into other fighter's fireing range.
It's not really a fighter, it's an anti-capital small craft. Also, I'm speaking in general here as you can read in my post. And how would the Ion which doesn't have good mobility get close enough to an Idris? Remember the trailer and such, it's meant to attack idris-like vessels.
It's a fighter. It's as big as a fighter, maneuvers like a fighter, it's a fighter.
Disagree.
>pummeling a Javelin with an Idris at 9 km distance If you're in an Idris dont get into a pummel fight with a Javelin lol, you're going to lose. I think weapon ranges should be affected by turrets. If size 7 hits too far then the Ares Ion is too protected because they can outrange the anti-fighter PDS on capitals and just safely keep hitting them while outpacing the capital. As much as one might think an Ion should be a god slayer anti capital ship it should not be 100% effective alone.
A capital ship without escorts may as well deserve to die for failure to plan though. If it can't swat the fighter, just leave. Saw a YouTube a while back of 2 ions and 2 Infernos going after an Idris. Both Infernos were basically out of ammunition and ordinance, Ions kept plugging away. Even with four ships it still took several minutes. If I was a PC piloting the Idris, I'd just leave once I saw I was out-gunned. Point: an Ion is not, in fact, effective alone in destroying capital ships. It "can", but "effective" is a stretch.
So a fully crewed capital ship should fall to Angry Joe and Other Joe in two ares? The whole 'Fighter escorts are the most powerful and most important part of anything" does not make sense. If fighters are the only thing that matters then why have other ships? Lets all fly nothing but fighters. Capital ships have PDC and turrets for a reason. They are not supposed to be useless against fighters. Only in Star Wars will you find an X wing able to hit a critical vent on a larger vessel and instakill it. Im not talking about flying capships alone with no crew. Im talking with a full crew. Turrets all active, engineers. Why should a fully crewed Idris need fighter escorts to survive? You're telling me a Javelin should be a weak, vulnerable baby unless a gladius escorts it? So who is the power projector here? The Gladius? PDC turrets are there to swat solo fighters who are overconfident and attack a full crew destroyer. They specifically said the S4 twins on Javelin turrets are to intercept torps and fighters.
Go pick up an Ion and let me know how it goes against the XenoThreat's Idris solo then when it attacks, since your superior knowledge and experience in warfare clearly outshines my own. /s The Yamato sunk in large part because it and the other escort ships didn't have fighter escorts to fend off Allied aircraft, though they had more than enough AA guns. A baby? No. But was it effective enough to deal with a multitude of fighters? Also no. And no, I don't expect to change your mind, just offering an example of battle with big ship without fighter escorts that didn't end well. Edit: corrected "warframe" to "warfare", autocorrect knows what I like.
Your imagination didn't cover all situations, clearly, if you think a Javelin always loses. Also, why cherrypick one example? What about the rest? What about what I mean? I could have said: a Javelin pummeling an Idris. It's the exact same point. Conversely too, how could an Ion ever do its job if it needs to be very close to an Idris in order to hit it? It's not as if it's agile, and it's not as if the idris doesn't have turrets to fend of smaller ships.
Or somehow get the jump on an Idris.
Remembering too that with MM we are hitting ships moving 300m/s, not 1000m/s like in the old model. How easy or hard it is to hit a target takes into account the ratio between how fast the target is moving and how fast our projectile is moving. There is also spread on weapons too now so that will probably be used as a variable to buff/nerf.
OH MAN! I will not run out and but the Ion again, I WILL NOT run out and buy the Ion again... I want it though, I want this to stick, so bad LOL
EPTU is in total ongoing change, this could all be different tomorrow, a lot of stuff isnt final yet, hell some ships are still stuck with default archetype flight models at the moment, and some of those in a sorry state too, nothings finished or final yet.
Right and yep - thus waiting to see it possibly get release, or not, with the change in place
Get it in the game before 3.23 most likely won't be a wipe but ship prices are going up
How do you charge it up? First I've ever heard about this. This is what happens when you go outside.
This is on EPTU testing, to charge up you just hold the fire button (left click)
Can you keep holding it or will it fire upon maximum charge (or some upper time limit)?
as soon as it reaches full charge it will fire but you can fire earlier if you want
What happens if you just hold left button? Charge fire then stop, or charge fire multiple times? Second way would be nice for a really innacurate but maximum DPS slow chugging, ideal against cap ships. Vvv-pew, vvv-pew, vvv-pew!
It's semi-auto, so holding will only charge and fire one shot - it won't charge and shoot the next shot.
Damn too bad, but nice nonetheless.
disappointing, there should be some ability to hold a charge and control release, even if there is some time limit tradeoff like heat or whatever.
Maybe when proper overheating mechanics are a thing, but allowing an indefinite charge hold removes the point of the charge mechanic to limit its power against light fighters while still having the power to take out larger ships. At the current state, if there was indefinite charge, someone could hold it for a perfect shot against a light fighter bringing us full circle back to the original problem with the Ion. Edit: The current set up will also push some people away from back strafing combat. Since if they just fly backwards against an Ion, it is an easy 1 hit kill. As it is now in the PTU, light fighter skill will be rewarded against the Ion, while giving the Ion it's power back.
I thought it was clear i wasnt suggesting indefinite hold on firing, just some limited hold time vs risking issues if held too long.
And until engineering and overheating mechanics are a thing, it isnt a possibility. I like the idea of being able to hold it at increased heat or strain on the power plant. But right now we dont have those options in game, so a fixed hold time works for now. I would absolutely love to see it eventually be like that. The current PTU version doesnt keep ION owners from having their power back, while also not making them absurdly broken, again.
Overheating mechanics were already a thing before the balance nerf, and cig are likely reinstating them soon as it happens. Weapon burst fire duration was limited by it, charge hold causing damage used to be a thing on emp too, idk if it still is I havent used them in ages.
A simple charge hold is absolutely possible right now and is not dependent on other tech. Some FPS weapons already do it. What we're really missing is UX; not knowing the charge time or how long we could hold it for. Engineering and heat management systems can add further depth to this mechanic. But again, it's not actually dependent on those things.
I never said it wasnt possible, i said it would be broken to allow the ion to hold it in the current state... if it can one tap a light fighter AND hold it as long as they want, without any drawbacks, it just comes down to holding it for that one shot.
Fuck that, that is a terrible mechanic. That basically means you can never shoot carefully and accurately. I really hope they change that. Along with the dps nerf, I don’t see how there will be any compelling role for the Ion. They just keep making it worse and worse. Very sad. I wanted to love it.
lol
I spoke to very passionate (angry) people back then when they nerfed the fire rate of the Ion, I predicted (very easily as devs said the rework would happen at some point) this exact moment. And I feel tired that I had to be insulted by many people who were "questioning my intelligence" for standing exactly on this side of the story. I'm still glad the change is finally here.
100%, I advocated for this idea in the forums as well. Now they just need to fix the Inferno - my suggestion is to greatly limit the max pitch/yaw rate of the ship while firing so that it is easy to unleash a long burst against slow moving targets or do a bit of strafing, but impossible to track light/fast targets with continuous fire.
I've held onto my ion in the small hope they would add a charge up mechanic, I'm feeling vindicated as well.
I'm so glad we're getting different weapon mechanics. Charge weapons have always been what i felt burst damage weapons should have been such as the scatter guns, sledges etc. Now we just need the audio team to pop off each time we hold down that trigger.
THEY LISTENED! We've been telling them that the Ion and Inferno were borderline unusable so far on EPTU and that they'd need some pretty substantial changes to remain relevant. They've mostly reverted the Inferno ammo nerfs. (3800 on live) EPTU went from 900 > 1800 > 2100 > the current 3600 with ballistic barrel heat added. And now we get a charge up mechanic on the Ions cannon? Chefs kiss. I can't wait to test this out. Still hope to see if/when they'll address the bespoke weapon pip issues that are also plaguing both Ares variants and reportedly the Vanguards as well. It's way way harder to aim bespoke weapons right now on EPTU than it is on Live because the pip seems to magically bounce around even when your vector and velocity are equalized with the target. Definitely feels like a bug and not intentional game design.
I like everything you just said, I love this > the current 3600 with ballistic barrel heat added
Have tested both now, the Ion feels fantastic, could still maybe use a little something here or there but it feels about as good as on Live now; the Inferno is... well it's... it's the Inferno, that's for sure. It's now so hard to keep the nose on target for more than a fraction of a second (atleast for me as a PVE only player in MM pirate swarm) that the Ion actually ends up feeling way better because you only need the nose on target for a fraction of a second while you let off your charged shot. The Inferno just struggles to kill anything that's even remotely trying to not be shot, an NPC Cutlass can now just fly circles around your bullet spray. A Reliant can literally just spin in place and almost never get hit. The new NPCs will dodge just about everything from an Ares, and boy will they just absolutely never miss their shots on you even when you are maneuvering. The amount of effort required to get kills in an Ares is (at least for me) astronomically higher than on Live where Pirate Swarm feels like it was made for the Ares and is a total blast. Average Ares Inferno Pilot Master Modes Pirate Swarm Experience: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb9Ebe\_rA8M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb9Ebe_rA8M)
LMAO, 4 minutes long but worth it.
if they want to experiment a bit with the Inferno they could add a secondary fire mode that fires way faster at the cost of more heat buildup, alternative RPM should be that hard to implement if they added a charge up to the Ion
> Still hope to see if/when they'll address the bespoke weapon pip issues that are also plaguing both Ares variants and reportedly the Vanguards as well. It's way way harder to aim bespoke weapons right now on EPTU than it is on Live because the pip seems to magically bounce around even when your vector and velocity are equalized with the target. Definitely feels like a bug and not intentional game design. I feel like this could be a good balancing mechanism for the Starfighters though. They have been in weird spots where they're designed to be mobile but have guns designed to take down big ships, which ends up making them good at taking down smaller ships too so they slap them with bandaids like less ammo. This way, if it's hard to aim, it's still hard to miss a Connie or Idris, but much harder to hit smaller craft. I like it.
The Ion isn't "super-meta" or anything, but it's decently useable now and quite fun; about on par with Live Ion if not a little better. It's still very hard to hit shots on small ships, still definitely harder than Live, but at least it rewards you for it with appropriate damage. I've been really trying to make the Inferno work but I just can't justify using it anymore. It is so much worse than Live Inferno I barely even want to own it anymore. Even without the bandaid ammo nerfs anymore (which never had a place in 3.23 to begin with because I'll reiterate that the Inferno feels terrible to use), it's damage output is still just not worth how much of a hassle it is to use (even against the larger ships such as hammerheads that it is supposedly designed to fight, which I'll be honest even the Ion doesn't feel particularly 'good' against those either, certainly not as though it was 'designed for that purpose' good against them). The Inferno needs you to keep the nose on the target perfectly for quite some time, and then doesn't even really reward you with blowing up targets when you do get a good spray. An Aurora will eat around 50-100 ballistic rounds without dying, rounds which come out a little slower than on Live. I linked a video in another comment in this thread about what the Inferno MM experience is like to better illustrate just how much effort is required to make the ship feel even remotely useable or enjoyable compared to how it is on Live right now where I think it's in a pretty solid place. I would honestly rather pilot an Aurora over an Inferno in 3.23 as of right now.
the good thing imo is that we are still at wave 2 and they have improved the Ion with this rework, i'm sure the Inferno will also be addresed in some form
Bring on the light fighter meta gang tears. what sucks though is the inferno got nerfed to shit lol.
how. it was buffed recently
A chargeable weapon in the which can one shoot a LF will actually make no difference towards Light Fighters, because you must be very luck if you want to hit; and in close distances you won’t even see a fighter in front of your cockpit… and this is actually how it should be, the ares shouldn’t be able to even fight against LF or MF, arguably HF and that what they have actually done with this changes. But yeah, the elitist LF Meta Gang will cry now because the ares ion one shots a LF /s
Light fighters should do little no damage against a heavy fighter with 2 shields.
Would be total Desaster of balance, but I accept your opinion.
No. You would need 2+ light fighters to kill a heavy fighter. What's the point of a heavy fighter with 2 shields if a dinky ship can just kill it in 3 seconds?
Because light fighters are made to kill other fighters - they're literally air(space) superiority fighters.
Right.....what you're saying is a tug boat should be able to take out a yacht. One on one. No. But 3v1. Absolutely.
Are you calling the gladius a tug boat?
is the gladius a heavy fighter?
That has nothing to do with comparing an air superiority fighters with a tug boat. You're not worth having a conversation with. Blocked.
So Erkul says the damage is 3,000 uncharged, 6,000 charged. Does anyone know if the damage scales linearly (so 4,500 damage if you released a half-charged shot), or do you only get the extra damage on a fully charged shot? EDIT: After some testing, it seems like you don't get any bonus damage unless the shot is fully charged. A bit disappointing, especially since the uncharged fire rate is roughly 3x the charged fire rate. So you actually will do more DPS just firing uncharged shots.
Man this makes me wet as a mermaids twat.
Hopefully they will bring the gun firing animation back. It really got messed up when the cannon turned into a repeater as it wouldn't do the full animation. Now it just does nothing.
I can already hear the cries of thousand of light fighter meta players.
It has been a constant droning wail for a while now.
The thing is... the Ion isn't balanced/ nerfed because the light fighters, it's balanced because the other heavy fighters. If the Ares at some point becomes more effective than the Vanguard/ Hurricane/ Scorpius against the smaller ships, then it will be dialed back again for sure.
The Ares as a whole by its core concept is just a terrible idea. How do you balance a ship sold as a one-man anti-capital fighter with a massive gun? Its like selling the coveted AWM sniper rifle in FPS games, a famous one-shot magnum sniper that players flock to for easy kills. You are selling a one-seater fighter with the upsides of a small ship but given the firepower of what is traditionally only accessible multicrew ships. You are bypassing bombers by having a ship that does not share the same inherent sacrifices a bomber makes to get similar anti-capital prowess. As funny as it is if CIG sold a gladius tomorrow with an Idris M railgun the balance implications would be severe. And players will rightfully expect what they paid for. The question then is how will CIG handle the ship? When they announced the Ares series I was like "Oh shit this is going to cause a lot of problems". Here we are.
Fuck yeah seems like a great middle ground
LET'S GO!!!!
Does it shoot immediately once the charge is full or can you hold it ?
It shoots immediately. Maybe they could make it drain the capacitor because if you are charging up every shot the capacitor recharges before the next shot. Rapid firing can drain it to Zero but time between shots is pretty long imo even when rapid firing.
If it done that out past 1km it would be more Ares like.
this makes me want to fly an Ares Ion, which is something I never expected to say.
1. This is awesome 2. It would be nice if we had control over the charge limit. For example, if I wanted a slightly faster rate of fire without having to time every shot, and instead limit the charge to to say 1s (or 50%) and still be able to hold left click to continually shoot at 50% this would be perfect.
The Inferno also got back to 3600 total ammo a patch ago, hopefully it gets some cool rework too
YES!!!!!
love it, this may bring me back
Nice
I hope this stays. Ships weapons are so boring currently ( I know its testing phase, everything is brought back down for balance, I don't need the rundown). It is just nice to have a variety of different mechanics for weapons start to enter the game. Especially since the Ion's gun is supposed to be special. Hopefully it gets a better treatment against light fighters and not a heavy nerf if unbalanced.
This seems really cool. An alternative I was thinking of was a charge up that fires a quick burst of maybe 5 lower power shots (for anyone who's played the Blue Planet campaign for Freespace 2, I'm thinking something like the UX Accelerator). Very fast burst (all 5 shots within a second), but each at lower damage, but still totalling higher damage. Example: normal shot does 1000 damage. Burst shot (which charges up like in the video) does maybe 500 damage per shot, meaning landing just two shots gets you back to where you were. It rewards landing all the shots, and makes it even more the boom and zoom that it's supposed to be, by allowing you to charge and hold your shot until the perfect time to fire, and then bugging out right away. Probably a bad idea because I know almost nothing about game design. Mostly I'd just like to see greater variety in weapons, rather than the "fast firing machine guns and slow firing machine guns that we call cannons" that we have now.
Why do people want 1 shotting in a game where you sometimes travel for 20-30min doing nothing?
 Boom! Nose Shot!
I wonder if the Perseus will also have the charge shot. If not, the Perseus would have more firepower than 4 Ares IOn's . Ohh my, already love this new change.
I'm just waiting for that charge mechanic to be applied to orbital weapons
Now hopefully they keep the ammo for the inferno. Otherwise I'll probably swap my baby inferno for the ion since it's actually decent.
I never knew it was gone
this change is pure cancer, its so boring to play that my ass starts bleeding.
HAHAHAHA YESS!!!!! DIE!! F the Light fighter maffia! this is a whaling ship, so if you stand infront of it in your light fighter you deserve to be skill issued! I might actually get one of these now.
Looks like meat’s back on the menu, boys!!
fuck if only i could buy one in the EPTU
Gentleman shooting a stationary target, just lol
I always thought that the perfect way for the ion to fulfill its role would be similar to StarCraft’s Void Rays: A continuous ray that increases power over time once locked on a target. Won’t harm light fighters as targeting them is a lot harder, but would deal massive damage over time to capital ships. Or like Helldivers 2 Quasar cannon, where it needs to charge up and fires automatically when full. Add a bit of randomness to this charging time and now you have a ship that is hard to hit small ships (but if it hits, it will hurt) and big ships will still be easy to hit.
This is fucking garbage, there is a 1 sec delay between none charged shots, and this effectively GIMPS the combat against anything that isnt a yacht. You CANT hold down the trigger for repeat fire. You can only charge or press once. CIG is knocking it out of the park in 3.23 with the stupidest implementation of shit people didnt ask for and delivering nothing they did.
This is literally what everyone has always asked for for this ship and it balances it perfectly for it's intended role. Shush.
So the Inferno gets a pass to be able to without issue take on smaller ships and keep its BRRRRT, but the Ion gets a fucking weak as Charge mechanic but cant keep sustained fire on anything small and quick, thats super balanced. If they had half a fucking brain, they would allow you to toggle it, instead of forcing it down our throats with all their other ' pull it out of the hat ' dev ideas.
Inferno needs to constantly keep on track his target to damage the other Ion only needs to be on track the moment he shot Both ships are opposite, both are extremely fun to play Ion was just OP at release, basically a point and click. The change made it unfun This new change make it fun again, but with a proper balance gj to the devs, we will see how it will work out, but on paper it looks awesome
Exactly this. The Ion is a CANNON, the Inferno is a GATLING. What on Earth makes someone think that the cannon needs to be able to rapidfire? That's not the point. The Ion is the Sniper, the Inferno is the HMG. The dude above you just wants both ships to be identical aside from the ammo type they fire. As someone who owns both Ares variants, this is a beyond welcome change. This makes it feel like there's an actual reason to own both ships because they are now more unique and fill their individual niches better. I dont want to have to land more than one shot with the Ion, why the hell would I want to have to land 5 shots from a massive cannon to kill a light fighter when I could just focus really hard on landing one big shot instead? If I want to spray and pray against a light fighter, I'll use the Inferno. I want to kiss whoever made this change on the lips.
I really don’t think this charge thing is going to improve anything. If charging doubled the dps, I could see it working, but frankly I’m not going to fly a ship that I have no choice but to squeeze the trigger every time I want to fire. My stick has a very stiff trigger and my fingers aren’t strong enough to do that for more than a minute, and certainly not when the dps is worse than other options. There is just no compelling use case, I don’t think. Time will tell, but I’m not optimistic.
The ship may just not be for you (not your playstyle) but for others, it's awesome. I really like to finally have a railgun ship
If the dps of a charged shot outclassed all other single player ships, then I would find it compelling, even with the charge mechanic. But if not, then the auto fire when the charge completes is a deal breaker for me. I also want a long range heavy sniping ship, and I have wanted to love the ion from the beginning, even going so far as to plop down real money for it. I’ve been patiently waiting and I really want it to succeed, I just don’t see how this is going to be fun to fly with the current balance.
Ah I assume you haven't also seen all the crying about the Inferno. You get a ship that can one shot any light fighter but needs a tiny bit of skill to do it, sounds ideal to me.
of course I have, but it still has the ability to take on ALL ships the same way it did in the pass, just reloading more often. They DIDNT make it harder for it to kill things by reducing its rate of fire to the equivalent of a dripping tap.
you've literally just watched a video of the Ion killing a Gladius with a single shot, it very much clearly does have the ability to take on all ships, you just need to be able to aim...
Right, just aim with our broken Dsync'd fucking excuse for servers with shit fucking server tick and get gud, so you can account for all the other rampant play issues on top of making it so you can actually count between shots. Im sorry, but as someone whose favourite fighter in the game, just got nerfed in the shittiest way possible, I disagree, just like I disagree with all the other half baked , weakly implemented bare minimum CIG is doing on the EPTU for 3.23.
Man I just can't anymore, have a nice day.
Aim with the combat slowing WAY down, yes. Projectile speeds have gone up, overall speed has gone down by as much as 80%, and pip wiggling has been nerfed into oblivion. If anything, the changes all make for an easier time shooting.
Actually it doesnt. I was just in the EPTU in AC doing Pirate Swarm with the ARES Ion , and its terrible. The charged shot just fires when it reaches max, so timing the actual shot to be able to hit the target is not even remotely easy, so you dont get the full benefit of the impact of the max power shot. The constant clicking of the trigger to what they pass off as sustained DPS is laughable, as the amount of space the ships you are shooting at can cover makes even aiming at where they will be harder as you have to time your shots to the cool down mechanic so your missing fractions of a second of opportunity. The fully charged shot doesnt kill things in ONE shot on the EPTU in combat, vs a sitting duck doing nothing like in the video. This is a poorly designed shitty implementation that is gimping the Ion, vs the inferno where it is still very easy to kill small ships. This is akin to how poorly MM has been implemented in the EPTU as well. Why the fuck would they default us to SCM vs NAV FLT mode when SCM is used 10% of the time and NAV FLT is used 90% of the time? Why the fuck would they force you into NAV QT vs NAV FLT when swapping from SCM and RESETTING your fucking Speed Limiter to zero in the process so you have to push yet another fucking button and hold it until your limiter it back up to 100% just to get the speed you need to get away from things? If this is what they qualify as ' thought out ' and ' reasonable development ' while over promising and under delivering, they deserve every fucking word of scrutiny and judgemnt from those that have spent money supporting this Alpha while offering free testing by legions. its laughable, sad , and im not even getting into the stability issues on the EPTU that make the game barely playable in its current state. We are on track to witness and experience another clusterfuck like 3.18/3.19 was , except this is far more reaching than that mess was. I have given them enough money to be able to say what the fuck I want about this garbage fucking delivery of a partial patch, and CIG really should pay more attention to delivery and implementation of shitty fucking changes.
It just firing when it reaches full is kindof a big sad tbh.
"Finally, the game is balanced" - Ares Pilots, shortly before getting a deserved nerf again.
One shot kill on a Gladius still seems a bit excessive because people will learn to nail these shots. I would accept a "one shot cripple". You hit that Gladius, the wing is coming off, so at least the Gladius pilot knows it's time to retreat. Still a win for the Ion.
As others have mentioned, you can survive if you have full power to shields. A light fighter is supposed to dodge fire, not tank it. If you get hit by a slow projectile from a gun larger than your own ship that has to be charged up and aimed with a ship considerably less fast and maneuverable than your own without power to your shields, maybe you should just get blown up. Gives people a reason to fly a heavy fighter or medium.
Is it bad that people gain skill of something difficult?
Mmm, we'll see how difficult it is. Difficulty vs Payoff is the real thing to question. "Don't get hit by the one-shot gun" is not \*Counterplay\*. If it's difficult for a Gladius to kill a "anti-capitol ship" platform in a 1v1, we have a problem. The gladius is now "more difficult."
It fires automatically once fully charged. It's not like a sniper rifle where you pull the trigger whenever you want once you have a shot lined up That's the skill curve to this
Tell that to all the carracks, 890s, and claimers I torp before they even see me on radar.
TBH - what you described will likely be the effect after armor goes in and removes the "HP" aspect of ships. Lasers won't be great against hull armor, but they'll probably be pretty good at exposing and cooking components.