Power and Shields management

[Guest]

Hi,

 

I've had Star Citizen since March but I haven't played with it much. After one patch back in March/April, the frames were really low so I decided to stop playing for a while. I think it was related to a CPU usage being really high. Anyway, now that patch 1.2 went live few days ago, I decided to give Star Citizen another go. I have experience with Space Sims (Elite Dangerous, Freespace, X Wing series...) so Star Citizen isn't a new mechanic for me. I do however have few questions that raised this week after exploring the features and setting up everything.

 

Yesterday I was playing around with Power Management and Shields Management. I was setting up macros on my G13 as well as in VoiceAttack and I was expecting the Power Management to be as efficient as other Space Sims games such as Elite Dangerous or Freespace. I don't know if it is my ship that is weak (Aurora LN), but changing the power of each Group (Weapons, Shields, Engines) doesn't do anything to the ship. Weapons do not fire faster or overheat less while the power is maximum to Weapons. Shields do not recharge faster nor seems more robust when power is set to maximum for Shields. And I don't feel that the ships is faster and more maneuverable when power is all to the engines (Avionics I believe they call it). Is Power Management working, broken or yet to be implemented ? The last manual I read is Arena Commander v1.1 and does not mention anything about Power Management not being fully functional yet. So I assumed it should be functional in game.

 

Same goes for Shields Management. The Aurora LN only has front and back shields. Pushing all the power to the front or back does not seem to do much good. To be clear however, I didn't test the shields in combat. I only used dummy asteroïds So, is the Shields Management working properly ?

 

I was also wondering if it is possible to repair a module. Let's say my front left cannon gets out of usage or is turning yellow because of damage. It is possible to somehow repair it by pushing more power to weapons or other kind of voodo trick ?

 

Thanks

 

Neo.

[Napper198]

@spookyneo

 

Asteroids pretty much kill you no matter what ship you have.

AFAIK the power management isn't implemented properly yet and only makes a slight difference on energy based  weapons being recharged.

The shield management however is fully implemented and functional but only really protects you from energy based weapons or missiles, as projectile weapons have a high shield penetration right now.

[Guest]

@spookyneo

 

Asteroids pretty much kill you no matter what ship you have.

AFAIK the power management isn't implemented properly yet and only makes a slight difference on energy based  weapons being recharged.

The shield management however is fully implemented and functional but only really protects you from energy based weapons or missiles, as projectile weapons have a high shield penetration right now.

 

Thank you sir !

 

I was testing shields in Elite using asteroïds, so this is why I tried the same thing in Star Citizen

 

I'll leave the Power Management for now and wait for an update.

 

Do you know if the projectile weapons having a high shield penetration is by design or will be fixed later on ? All the weapons on my Aurora LN are energy based (except missiles), so I might replace an energy weapon by a projectile weapon to increase the damage. BTW, is the only way to get new weapons so far is by using REC ?

[rentaspoon]

Thank you sir !

I was testing shields in Elite using asteroïds, so this is why I tried the same thing in Star Citizen

I'll leave the Power Management for now and wait for an update.

Do you know if the projectile weapons having a high shield penetration is by design or will be fixed later on ? All the weapons on my Aurora LN are energy based (except missiles), so I might replace an energy weapon by a projectile weapon to increase the damage. BTW, is the only way to get new weapons so far is by using REC ?

Energy weapons will take down shields first, Ballistic weapons will always hit but at a reduced amount.

Personally I like running with longswords as they are cheap. You won't take down a ship with them but they are good at immobilising ships (as @Napper198 knows).

If your flying the LN, use bulldogs and badgers as it has one of the best cooling systems and power supplies.

Keep the top and bottom of your ship away from your enemies, showing that presents a bigger target.

Different ballistic ammo does different types of damage BTW

[drewjn]

To add to @rentaspoon 's comment

 

Ballistic weapons can bypass energy shields to hit armor/hull. Going through shields decrease damage, but they take little to no energy with a trade-off of ammo requirements. Because of this, in situations with ewar and reactor issues, you can still fire.

 

Energy weapons can not shoot through shields, but when hitting armor/hull, the damage is heavy. They take a lot more energy and have no ammo. Their major tradeoff is that they can overheat quite a bit (depending on weapon) and that when you have power issues, your actions and choices might be limited.

 

Distortion weapons (suckerpunch) are specialized energy weapons that take down shields, power and ship systems. They still have no ammo, but they do practically no damage vs armor/hull. They also don't have the best range.

 

 

 

Usually, it may be sensible to carry different types of weapons, especially on medium and larger ships.

[rentaspoon]

the sucker punch and neutron guns are high risk to reward, for the SPs your losing a mount for a weapon that can't kill an enemy as for the neutron guns you have to repeatedly fire these to get high damage but can only get 3 shots off before overheating on top of this the range is really short.

[Guest]

Thank you guys for all these details. Just to make sure I understand how this works right now...the only way to change weapons is to use the REC system right ? I can't buy them; I have to rent it. Right ?

[Grrizz]

Thank you guys for all these details. Just to make sure I understand how this works right now...the only way to change weapons is to use the REC system right ? I can't buy them; I have to rent it. Right ?

You can also buy them outright in the 'Voyager direct' store on the website using UEC, which you can get in the pledge store under 'central core bank' however if you can live with renting for now I'd recommend that as how things play now will probably be quite different to how they play in the future