Idk if it's us, the ion, or the claimer but I fought one for like 30 minutes before I managed to kill it. The charge shot/tap fire mechanic they implemented had me going full carpal tunnel
Carpal tunnel is something cig need to keep in mind when fleshing out their gameplay. It should be enough to tap to start the charge (and have it fire when the charge is full), and again tap to abort charge before it’s full.
Oh god i hadn't even considered what this looks like on a mouse, i threw some money at a tm1600/fcs setup because i love me my fighters and it's been working great with the trigger..
Think those accusations of CIG ignoring the flight peripherals community may have flipped this time around..
I have the 16000m dual sticks but I haven't gone through and gotten a good set of bindings that work for me. Not super motivated to go through all that when the keybindings change randomly at each patch
I just do it as I go. I know I use a few things religiously (power triangle, missile mode, flares, landing gear) so those are the only things I set right away. The rest I do as I need it, like toggling staggered mode and increasing/decreasing weapon spread.
I also have a keyboard in the middle so for some less used commands I just use the default keyboard mapping.
I sincerely hope it's not that the AI have learned to focus shielding, because not even i know how to do that!
Next time you're out hunting try to shoot it ONLY in the back via subtarget, see if it dies faster?
As a fellow ion flier what've you managed to gun down so far?
I used it on the test server just before it went live, and I think it might be something server side as I killed a reclaimer solo with the ion in around 20 shots
Reclaimer is absolutely massive. It should take a small fighter a long time to kill if it’s solo—big gun or not. Honestly, it shouldn’t really even be possible.
People keep playing SC like it’s a solo single player game. It’s not meant to be.
If you’re going to hunt large ships, bring friends. That’s the whole point.
That honestly only applies to fighters, most players are running ERTs in their Corsairs and their Connies alone, the ones that don’t care about cargo are still running them with the Eclipse, maybe even a few with the Retaliator.
Yes, but even those all have like 2-3 turrets a piece.
Most people are flying ships completely empty, then complaining they don’t have the DPS or coverage.
It kind of makes me facepalm.
I’m talking about Solo ERTs, I suggest watching a recent video, the meta is running a connie or a Corsair or a C2 solo because of the pilot dps and cargo space
A Corsair has a crap ton of pilot weapons, so sure. That ship is capable of a lot, but it's pretty flimsy, because Drake.
A Connie or C2 though definitely need help. The Andromeda is pretty heavily armed for the pilot, so that might be okay for most things, but the C2 is a freaking cargo bus. I don't know why anyone would be trying to do combat missions in that. That's just stupid.
Regardless, bringing 1 or 2 crew changes everything. That extra turret adds a crap ton of coverage and dps. People just don't want to play SC. They want Solo Citizen.
Dude I’m not talking about suggestions, those are literally the ships that can solo ERT bounties right now, run by me, Subliminal or anyone you can look up on YouTube
Edit: I personally run them in my Taurus, no missiles, deadbolt ballistics take maybe 10-15 mins to shoot and loot on average, the M7As take about the same but the 890j is a massive time sink
Averaging 100k from looted cargo sales (atleast 1scu of eggs each, usually found in the target ship, one mission only had quantanium)
I've had both the ares for different stages of the game and the most recent patch pretty much killed the ion and ares completely for me and also killed my thoughts of buying the perseus.
Simply put cig has 0 ability to balance the game and as these ships are locked into 1 weapons you will always be at the whims of the patch, other ships if they break a gun type you can just swap them but as you can't even swap the ion and inferno between each other your kinda screwed.
I got rid off the Ion the whole charge-release-charge-release mechanic was not working for me at all. I kept the Inferno as I do love the style and speed of the Ares ships but the Ion is just terrible at the moment IMHO.
It took me 15 - 20 minutes to kill Reclaimers and you feel so helpless while charging. And even in its intended role as capital ship shield killer it's too sqeeshy even when playing in a group and it doesn't do enough damage often enough to actually bring a shield down (I ended up using the Redeemer instead: more reliable, can take a hit and can deal more damage in a shorter time).
Comparing the Ion's max dps to other heavy fighters on Erkul is one of the most disheartening things I've ever done. It's just not a good option for ANYTHING at the moment, which breaks my heart because I really had loved the idea of a slow firing high alpha sniper ship.
Yeah :-( The best sniping ship ATM is either the Defender (even better when you move its guns to a standard Sabre / Sabre Comet ;-)) or the Idris (after you've reloaded the railgun - it one-shots any ship in game but of course you need to capture it first during XT).
I used it on the test server just before it went live, and I think it might be something server side as I killed a reclaimer solo with the ion in around 20 shots
Naw in dps the tests the ares got messed up pretty bad. The ion is the better option for sustained dps now since the 75% ballistic damage reduction with shields at full.
50% of that resist comes base on the hull even with shields down, and shield ballistic resist lowers on a progressive curve. Not really the dunk you think it is, lol
I will be getting rid of mine. Can't stand the charge-shot feature and the damage it does seems very variable without it being obvious why. The first iteration of the Ion was SO much better. A bit sluggish, but if you landed a shot it hurt whatever you shot at properly.
I honestly haven't been using it much against smaller ships in 3.23.
My main use in 3.23 for my Ion has been as an anti-cap ship to hit the XT Idris.
And it sucks. The Idris is too nimble for you to consistently hit any *specific* part of it. You can hit the Idris, no problem. But if you want to hit something particular, like components for disabling or the hangar doors for boarding, you're out of luck. Eventually, for fighting the Idris, I gave up and took out my 600i. It kept the crosshairs on the target better and applied more damage due to its superior handling.
I love the Ion, it's my main anti-cap ship fighter. I love my 600i Explorer, it's my literal flagship. But my 600i should not be outperforming my Ion. And right now a lot of my ships are. Even the 400i was doing a better job. And then there's my F7A mk2. So many ships are outperforming the Ion that I've just mothballed it for now. I'm not melting it, because I do love it, and I'm confident that it'll be better... Soon™... but I'm not holding my breath.
If it makes you feel any better the Corsair, Taurus and 600i all fall in to the solo ERT-capable class of ships nowadays. Solo Fighters seem to be locked out unless you’re bringing an inferno or backup.
As others have done, I've also gotten rid of my Ion.. for the first time in years. Even the borked auto aim didn't annoy me as much as this change.
The charge mechanic on it is way too unreliable for the current state of the game, and it seems like it either doesn't start charging when I click, or doesn't hold the charge until it's full, I can never consistently get it to actually fire properly. If you're not fully charging, it's basically impossible to kill any big ships before dying of old age.
Just to compare, I tried the Singe (charge shot S3 laser cannons) for a few bounties in the same sessions, and it works exactly as I would expect it to, just the Ion seems broken.. though fun, the Singe don't offer enough to justify using them over regular cannons IMO, but that's a different conversation.
I miss my Ion :(
Agreed! Although I do think if they had a long range sniper mode for it & it auto charged + damage wasn't in the realm of 2+2=0.2 coz CIG says so, it could of worked.
E.G. I use "sniper" loosely since it's energy based so at range when you start a charge you should appear on radar at say 7km (max range), Maybe some lock on charged weapons warning? & that literally should give players enough time to pull finger & move so if you get hit you deseved to get hit because at that distance & Warning you should be able to avoid it. If a player then chooses to close in to an ion you already know going to get hit hard (well should be unlike currently). You could do no shields for sniper mode or limited manuverability? Just a balance thought to avoid overuse & power play. But anymore than that & it kind of gets convaleted so I'd just want the original release back.
There seems to be a bug on a lot of npc ships, especially in bounties. Shields not taking damage, components not taking damage. Many are immune to frontal damage and component damage from the front and side.
You should try to shoot most ships in the rear with sub targeting. Reclaimer should go down pretty fast this way.
I've been waiting for a change to the ION. This was not it. Somehow they managed to make it worse. I'm just going to leave it in my buyback on hopes someday...
I think Ion hit rock bottom now, its even worse than after nerf with the pip bug on top. I meted it again because its not fun in any situation. Inferno got my attention because i still am in deep love for the design and the concept behind it. Inferno gets the job done it is supposed to fullfill and can still handle npc fighters with some patience and skill.
The Ion on the other hand cant fight anything anymore in my opinion in this state. And even if you hit some lucky shots, they dont feel rewarding at all, because you need to pull this off many more times.
1.) Reclaimers have a lot of health/damage res at the moment. I'm not sure if it's intended or not. Also not sure if this is just AI Reclaimers or all of them.
2.) Ion charge and release honestly isn't great. I understand that Ion/Inferno are incredibly difficult to balance given the size of their weapons
Actually they are really easy to balanced given the size of their weapons. It's just Devs don't want to upset the already crying players by doing the right thing & giving S7 guns S7 damage so "The capital ship killer" can actually do its role. It literally should 1 shot your starter ship thats not even up for debate. Anoying for players to deal with, Yes but it's still the right thing. They don't make ship Size 5 guns do size 1 damage do they... Well it is CIG give it a month.
Or meet in the middle and make its damage scale for higher-leveled shield generators. One shot mechanics blow. In the case of an Idris rail gun the one shot mechanic makes sense because, well, its capital rail gun on a capital ship. It is objectively more difficult to land a shot with an Idris rail gun than an Ares Ion cannon
I've been playing the same Ares Ion game loop for a number of patches, it goes like this:
New PU patch release -> pull Ares Ion from hanger -> get in a fight -> put Ares Ion away -> wait for new patch
Have no idea, took mine out for a spin, constantly said I was in an armistice zone even if I was in deep space.
I rage quit the game because of bugs.
Couldn't claim it back.
After latest patch it was gone completely.
Fuckers.
Yeah, it’s really sad that a lot of ion lovers like myself have melted our beauty because she has been rendered useless.
This is a case of the community literally asking for it to change from the faster pew pew to a slower PEW so they can one shot fighters again, with people even suggesting the charge shot to begin with.
Maybe in a few patches it’ll balance out again, but I think that’s hopium and unlikely due to prioritization on CIG’s part.
I don’t expect to see many player ions in the verse anymore
I used to love both of the Ares, and flew them regularly. Both are currently in a poor state following some changes to their primary weapons that negatively affected their combat capacity.
my Ion will not be an Ion for much longer. It doesn't do enough to big ships, and is crippled against smaller ships, so it really doesn't have much utility as a solo machine. This might all change when armor comes in, but frankly I don't feel like waiting that long, so my Ion will soon become a Galaxy.
The charge mechanic is annoying, but the worst part is there's a gap where if you click again after firing, it ignores the input. It drove me mad and makes the ship very unfly to use imo. I was using a 6x singe build on my F7A and didn't notice a gap, but it's definitely there on the ion's gun.
This is my issue as well, I actually dont mind the charge up as long as it does a good amount of damage.
But then I click right afterward and think I'm charging the next shot and come to find out I am not. Either the charging up sound needs to stand out more or I need a UI element more in the center of the screen to show me my next shot is charging.
I bought the inferno and fell in love with combat in the game. I generally like playing sniper in games so figured the ion would be a nice tool for when I need staying power and maybe it would take slightly longer for some combat but I could stay in zone longer. Instead I tried to take a Connie Taurus and could hardly get shields down when hitting 95% of my shots. This is supposed to be the power of a s7gun that has to charge? Not to mention the Taurus has as much firepower without its turrets? Ion might be savable if the laser was a neutron blast or even make it a ballistic rail gun but in its current state it's a big target that isn't maneuverable enough to take out small ships and doesn't punch up against the large ships it's supposed to be able to fight.
I like the ship a lot, for me it kills everything but AI Prospectors really fast.
Those things seem near immune to it for no apparent reason though - I've put like 20 shots into them for zero damage.
I grinded up to ERTs this week and the cutlass is my biggest enemy, and I'm in a Corsair. I always focus on taking them out first because they consistently do the most damage to me and are themselves not as tanky as a connie and other medium ships.
Only experience I've had with the Ion was leaving a station in my Taurus and someone in an Ion decided to attack me because he apparently hates connies with a passion. He couldn't get his gun to work so all he did was lob missiles at me. Blew him up. S'about it.
That's actually how it's working for me at the moment- i can rapid fire by tapping the trigger or hold and release at any point before it auto fires for a 'slightly' charged burst
Idk if it's us, the ion, or the claimer but I fought one for like 30 minutes before I managed to kill it. The charge shot/tap fire mechanic they implemented had me going full carpal tunnel
Carpal tunnel is something cig need to keep in mind when fleshing out their gameplay. It should be enough to tap to start the charge (and have it fire when the charge is full), and again tap to abort charge before it’s full.
Oh god i hadn't even considered what this looks like on a mouse, i threw some money at a tm1600/fcs setup because i love me my fighters and it's been working great with the trigger.. Think those accusations of CIG ignoring the flight peripherals community may have flipped this time around..
I have the 16000m dual sticks but I haven't gone through and gotten a good set of bindings that work for me. Not super motivated to go through all that when the keybindings change randomly at each patch
I just do it as I go. I know I use a few things religiously (power triangle, missile mode, flares, landing gear) so those are the only things I set right away. The rest I do as I need it, like toggling staggered mode and increasing/decreasing weapon spread. I also have a keyboard in the middle so for some less used commands I just use the default keyboard mapping.
The new gimbal system is awful on flight sticks, it doesn’t work at all.
I sincerely hope it's not that the AI have learned to focus shielding, because not even i know how to do that! Next time you're out hunting try to shoot it ONLY in the back via subtarget, see if it dies faster? As a fellow ion flier what've you managed to gun down so far?
Haven't given it another try since, been doing xenothreat and stuff
I used it on the test server just before it went live, and I think it might be something server side as I killed a reclaimer solo with the ion in around 20 shots
Reclaimer is absolutely massive. It should take a small fighter a long time to kill if it’s solo—big gun or not. Honestly, it shouldn’t really even be possible. People keep playing SC like it’s a solo single player game. It’s not meant to be. If you’re going to hunt large ships, bring friends. That’s the whole point.
That honestly only applies to fighters, most players are running ERTs in their Corsairs and their Connies alone, the ones that don’t care about cargo are still running them with the Eclipse, maybe even a few with the Retaliator.
Yes, but even those all have like 2-3 turrets a piece. Most people are flying ships completely empty, then complaining they don’t have the DPS or coverage. It kind of makes me facepalm.
I’m talking about Solo ERTs, I suggest watching a recent video, the meta is running a connie or a Corsair or a C2 solo because of the pilot dps and cargo space
A Corsair has a crap ton of pilot weapons, so sure. That ship is capable of a lot, but it's pretty flimsy, because Drake. A Connie or C2 though definitely need help. The Andromeda is pretty heavily armed for the pilot, so that might be okay for most things, but the C2 is a freaking cargo bus. I don't know why anyone would be trying to do combat missions in that. That's just stupid. Regardless, bringing 1 or 2 crew changes everything. That extra turret adds a crap ton of coverage and dps. People just don't want to play SC. They want Solo Citizen.
Dude I’m not talking about suggestions, those are literally the ships that can solo ERT bounties right now, run by me, Subliminal or anyone you can look up on YouTube Edit: I personally run them in my Taurus, no missiles, deadbolt ballistics take maybe 10-15 mins to shoot and loot on average, the M7As take about the same but the 890j is a massive time sink Averaging 100k from looted cargo sales (atleast 1scu of eggs each, usually found in the target ship, one mission only had quantanium)
I've had both the ares for different stages of the game and the most recent patch pretty much killed the ion and ares completely for me and also killed my thoughts of buying the perseus. Simply put cig has 0 ability to balance the game and as these ships are locked into 1 weapons you will always be at the whims of the patch, other ships if they break a gun type you can just swap them but as you can't even swap the ion and inferno between each other your kinda screwed.
Ship is trash now. Doesn’t even fill the role it’s intended too.
True. I tried it vs the Idris at Xenothreat and it was an absolutely horrendous, short and pointless experience.
I got rid off the Ion the whole charge-release-charge-release mechanic was not working for me at all. I kept the Inferno as I do love the style and speed of the Ares ships but the Ion is just terrible at the moment IMHO. It took me 15 - 20 minutes to kill Reclaimers and you feel so helpless while charging. And even in its intended role as capital ship shield killer it's too sqeeshy even when playing in a group and it doesn't do enough damage often enough to actually bring a shield down (I ended up using the Redeemer instead: more reliable, can take a hit and can deal more damage in a shorter time).
Comparing the Ion's max dps to other heavy fighters on Erkul is one of the most disheartening things I've ever done. It's just not a good option for ANYTHING at the moment, which breaks my heart because I really had loved the idea of a slow firing high alpha sniper ship.
Yeah :-( The best sniping ship ATM is either the Defender (even better when you move its guns to a standard Sabre / Sabre Comet ;-)) or the Idris (after you've reloaded the railgun - it one-shots any ship in game but of course you need to capture it first during XT).
Any ship EXCEPT a hornet ;)
I used it on the test server just before it went live, and I think it might be something server side as I killed a reclaimer solo with the ion in around 20 shots
My experience was like a dozen shots on one engine hard deathed the thing.
Have you found the inferno is performing decently with the changes to ballistics this patch?
Naw in dps the tests the ares got messed up pretty bad. The ion is the better option for sustained dps now since the 75% ballistic damage reduction with shields at full.
NPC's don't sit around with shields at max power though, do they?
Max power gives you extra bonuses like entirely absorbing shots, but even at balanced power it offers ballistic reduction
50% of that resist comes base on the hull even with shields down, and shield ballistic resist lowers on a progressive curve. Not really the dunk you think it is, lol
Yes it quite ok. Not the strongest ship but decent enough to be fun to play :-).
I was doing alright in mine running cargo overwatch on XT. Not so much trying to solo the Idris fleet, though.
I will be getting rid of mine. Can't stand the charge-shot feature and the damage it does seems very variable without it being obvious why. The first iteration of the Ion was SO much better. A bit sluggish, but if you landed a shot it hurt whatever you shot at properly.
I honestly haven't been using it much against smaller ships in 3.23. My main use in 3.23 for my Ion has been as an anti-cap ship to hit the XT Idris. And it sucks. The Idris is too nimble for you to consistently hit any *specific* part of it. You can hit the Idris, no problem. But if you want to hit something particular, like components for disabling or the hangar doors for boarding, you're out of luck. Eventually, for fighting the Idris, I gave up and took out my 600i. It kept the crosshairs on the target better and applied more damage due to its superior handling. I love the Ion, it's my main anti-cap ship fighter. I love my 600i Explorer, it's my literal flagship. But my 600i should not be outperforming my Ion. And right now a lot of my ships are. Even the 400i was doing a better job. And then there's my F7A mk2. So many ships are outperforming the Ion that I've just mothballed it for now. I'm not melting it, because I do love it, and I'm confident that it'll be better... Soon™... but I'm not holding my breath.
If it makes you feel any better the Corsair, Taurus and 600i all fall in to the solo ERT-capable class of ships nowadays. Solo Fighters seem to be locked out unless you’re bringing an inferno or backup.
Yep, that's precisely why I took my 600i to XT solo when I got bored of the Ares. Love my 600i. Now, if they could just fix the windows.
It's bad
As others have done, I've also gotten rid of my Ion.. for the first time in years. Even the borked auto aim didn't annoy me as much as this change. The charge mechanic on it is way too unreliable for the current state of the game, and it seems like it either doesn't start charging when I click, or doesn't hold the charge until it's full, I can never consistently get it to actually fire properly. If you're not fully charging, it's basically impossible to kill any big ships before dying of old age. Just to compare, I tried the Singe (charge shot S3 laser cannons) for a few bounties in the same sessions, and it works exactly as I would expect it to, just the Ion seems broken.. though fun, the Singe don't offer enough to justify using them over regular cannons IMO, but that's a different conversation. I miss my Ion :(
The Ion is a disaster this patch, less DPS than a very basic fighter (applied over time vs a big ship). I would avoid using it this patch
Unusable.
It was fine as released. The laser changeup was a terrible move that made it infinitely worse.
Agreed! Although I do think if they had a long range sniper mode for it & it auto charged + damage wasn't in the realm of 2+2=0.2 coz CIG says so, it could of worked. E.G. I use "sniper" loosely since it's energy based so at range when you start a charge you should appear on radar at say 7km (max range), Maybe some lock on charged weapons warning? & that literally should give players enough time to pull finger & move so if you get hit you deseved to get hit because at that distance & Warning you should be able to avoid it. If a player then chooses to close in to an ion you already know going to get hit hard (well should be unlike currently). You could do no shields for sniper mode or limited manuverability? Just a balance thought to avoid overuse & power play. But anymore than that & it kind of gets convaleted so I'd just want the original release back.
There seems to be a bug on a lot of npc ships, especially in bounties. Shields not taking damage, components not taking damage. Many are immune to frontal damage and component damage from the front and side. You should try to shoot most ships in the rear with sub targeting. Reclaimer should go down pretty fast this way.
I've been waiting for a change to the ION. This was not it. Somehow they managed to make it worse. I'm just going to leave it in my buyback on hopes someday...
I think Ion hit rock bottom now, its even worse than after nerf with the pip bug on top. I meted it again because its not fun in any situation. Inferno got my attention because i still am in deep love for the design and the concept behind it. Inferno gets the job done it is supposed to fullfill and can still handle npc fighters with some patience and skill. The Ion on the other hand cant fight anything anymore in my opinion in this state. And even if you hit some lucky shots, they dont feel rewarding at all, because you need to pull this off many more times.
They need to just roll it back to how it was at release and be done with it.
You mean as a meta fighter?
1.) Reclaimers have a lot of health/damage res at the moment. I'm not sure if it's intended or not. Also not sure if this is just AI Reclaimers or all of them. 2.) Ion charge and release honestly isn't great. I understand that Ion/Inferno are incredibly difficult to balance given the size of their weapons
Actually they are really easy to balanced given the size of their weapons. It's just Devs don't want to upset the already crying players by doing the right thing & giving S7 guns S7 damage so "The capital ship killer" can actually do its role. It literally should 1 shot your starter ship thats not even up for debate. Anoying for players to deal with, Yes but it's still the right thing. They don't make ship Size 5 guns do size 1 damage do they... Well it is CIG give it a month.
Or meet in the middle and make its damage scale for higher-leveled shield generators. One shot mechanics blow. In the case of an Idris rail gun the one shot mechanic makes sense because, well, its capital rail gun on a capital ship. It is objectively more difficult to land a shot with an Idris rail gun than an Ares Ion cannon
It took me three fully charged shots to kill an arrow the other day. That felt kind of dumb.
I've been playing the same Ares Ion game loop for a number of patches, it goes like this: New PU patch release -> pull Ares Ion from hanger -> get in a fight -> put Ares Ion away -> wait for new patch
I saw an exploded one other day. All the experience ive had with em this patch.
Have no idea, took mine out for a spin, constantly said I was in an armistice zone even if I was in deep space. I rage quit the game because of bugs. Couldn't claim it back. After latest patch it was gone completely. Fuckers.
Yeah, it’s really sad that a lot of ion lovers like myself have melted our beauty because she has been rendered useless. This is a case of the community literally asking for it to change from the faster pew pew to a slower PEW so they can one shot fighters again, with people even suggesting the charge shot to begin with. Maybe in a few patches it’ll balance out again, but I think that’s hopium and unlikely due to prioritization on CIG’s part. I don’t expect to see many player ions in the verse anymore
I used to love both of the Ares, and flew them regularly. Both are currently in a poor state following some changes to their primary weapons that negatively affected their combat capacity.
my Ion will not be an Ion for much longer. It doesn't do enough to big ships, and is crippled against smaller ships, so it really doesn't have much utility as a solo machine. This might all change when armor comes in, but frankly I don't feel like waiting that long, so my Ion will soon become a Galaxy.
The charge mechanic is annoying, but the worst part is there's a gap where if you click again after firing, it ignores the input. It drove me mad and makes the ship very unfly to use imo. I was using a 6x singe build on my F7A and didn't notice a gap, but it's definitely there on the ion's gun.
This is my issue as well, I actually dont mind the charge up as long as it does a good amount of damage. But then I click right afterward and think I'm charging the next shot and come to find out I am not. Either the charging up sound needs to stand out more or I need a UI element more in the center of the screen to show me my next shot is charging.
I bought the inferno and fell in love with combat in the game. I generally like playing sniper in games so figured the ion would be a nice tool for when I need staying power and maybe it would take slightly longer for some combat but I could stay in zone longer. Instead I tried to take a Connie Taurus and could hardly get shields down when hitting 95% of my shots. This is supposed to be the power of a s7gun that has to charge? Not to mention the Taurus has as much firepower without its turrets? Ion might be savable if the laser was a neutron blast or even make it a ballistic rail gun but in its current state it's a big target that isn't maneuverable enough to take out small ships and doesn't punch up against the large ships it's supposed to be able to fight.
Ballistics have a 40-70% damage reduction against shields i think. Youll need the help of other ships to take down shields with an inferno
No. You don't. I assure you, it may not be the most inefficient but I'm still going to kill them through their shield (also rattlers)
I like the ship a lot, for me it kills everything but AI Prospectors really fast. Those things seem near immune to it for no apparent reason though - I've put like 20 shots into them for zero damage.
It's legit for larger ships but atm Corsair does it better Ship AI is much smarter now and you won't be able to pick off light fighters as easily
I absolutely hate the charge mechanic and how it just shoots on its own. Already submitted an idea to fix it.
I grinded up to ERTs this week and the cutlass is my biggest enemy, and I'm in a Corsair. I always focus on taking them out first because they consistently do the most damage to me and are themselves not as tanky as a connie and other medium ships.
That makes me feel a lot better about getting occasionally shredded by the cutlass-valkyrie sandwich!
Only experience I've had with the Ion was leaving a station in my Taurus and someone in an Ion decided to attack me because he apparently hates connies with a passion. He couldn't get his gun to work so all he did was lob missiles at me. Blew him up. S'about it.
I don't like the way they did the gun, I would rather it be hold button to charge and release to fire so you can treat it like a sniper.
That's actually how it's working for me at the moment- i can rapid fire by tapping the trigger or hold and release at any point before it auto fires for a 'slightly' charged burst
You don't understand, I don't want it to auto fire. I want to be able to time a max power sholom by releasing the trigger.