Stackable Engine Room Buffs and allowing Ion Beam to buff Ion Beam

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It seems that there is currently no way for multiple buffs to stack on a single part. So a design below had no additional buff. (Only 75%, Not 75% x 5 = 375%)

image https://i.imgur.com/x5HMcVK.jpg
I think it will be more interesting if the buffs can be stack to create some extreme performance designs.

The following is about the Ion Beam.
To my knowledge, there are currently two types of Ion Beam placement: First is the Ion Beam and Armor combs (Left), the second is the DeathStar-style Ion Beam array (Right).

image https://i.imgur.com/L8jjMDg.jpg
Most of the ship designs use the first option because it provides the best protection, while only a few ships can work properly using the second strategy. Does anyone feel the same way as I did that it would be more fair to buff the second design, for balance reasons?
My thought is that the DeathStar-style looks cooler and is harder to defend, so it should be more stronger. Anyway, here is my suggestion to it.
The Ion Beams should have a 10% buff to the adjacent Ion Beams on both the DPS and the Power consumption. This buff is stackable. So an Ion Beam can be buffed up to 20% if it is flanked by two Ion Beams. This will give the DeathStar-style design a slighty advantage on DPS over the Ion Beam & Armor combs, encouraging people to build more DeathStar-style ships.
Here is a simple calculation of the damage of the Ion Beams if they had this buff effect.

image https://i.imgur.com/YsY90Qs.jpg

One more thing, does anyone know if it is possible for a DeathStar style Ion Beam array to synchronized their firing, so all of the Ion Beams can fire at same time?

Mc2

samepage I use succefullly ship with 6 Ion beams next to each other, and honestly, as some other players wrote me, 6 ion beams is insane, and with buff effect, it will be super insane.

Mc2

samepage And reply number two.
https://forum.cosmoteer.net/d/1232-check-this-before-suggesting-features-the-cosmoteer-roadmap

Bufable buffs will come as Walt mentioned with incoming railgun and death star lesers can be find under Ion prizm solution.

Sombreroman

samepage Pretty Sick Idea!

Lafiel

Buffs can be stacked. You just have to use Add instead of Max. I already talked to Walt about buffing buffs weeks ago and they will be available in 0.14.1. Combining Beams has been discussed last year in relation with the Death Star Laser I've created back then and is already somewhere on Trello.

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Lafiel So it will be possible to stack Enigine Room buffs on thruster in the upcoming vallina game? Glad to known that information. Surely it will make designing ship more interesting.

GodoftheGrove

It's a cool idea to have the beams "stack." Ofcourse, you can put in ion beams that cannot fire inside the ship purely for the bonus. Not that that's a bad thing.

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Mc2 I did aware that there is a DeathStar Beam on the Roadmap. Also looking forward to the 0.14.6 update. However, I expect it to be different rather than just a stronger version of Ion Beam. A small buff to the Ion Beam could make it more useful. So it won't completely be replaced when the DeathStar Beam come out.

I believe the ship's design you mentioned involves putting the Ion Beams way back inside the ship and tons of shields. This is probably the only way for that kinds of design to work. I knew it because I have a similar ship with 6 Ion Beams on it. The ship has excellent defense due to the sheer amount of shields. But in terms of offense, its main weapon has problem to penetrate even a 4-shields overlaying wall (Powered by 4 reactor cores). The resource required to build 6 Ion Beams is enough to build 9 Large Cannons. Each of them deals way more damage than an Ion Beam once the shields was down. Large Cannon can also focus fire to deal insane amount of burst damage.

Anyway, I really think that the Ion Beam is too weak and deserve some types of buffing.

Lafiel

samepage Depends on the buff's design but yes.

Catelyn

samepage Actually, no! That would make ship designing SO cheap, no more good design

Mc2

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But in terms of offense, its main weapon has problem to penetrate even a 4-shields overlaying wall (Powered by 4 reactor cores).

Ah, I managed to design ship with 6 ion beams which is really successful against walls 100 block wide including best possible shield protection.

But as I wrote, I´m not against some small buff for 6 ions next to each other, that will be more insane 😃

I did aware that there is a DeathStar Beam on the Roadmap - not death star, check what is Ion prism idea.

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Mc2 That must be some ingenious designs.

Check it. The introduce of the Ion Prism would definitely have some impact on the ships building. I just hope it won't be too overpower and make the currently working Ion Beam ship designs completely obsolete.

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Catelyn Why not? It's unlikely that such ship designs would be overpower, you still have to supply enough energy for these designs to work. Adding more depth to the ships building is never a bad thing. It opens up new strategy for players to exploit on. It will be fun.

Mc2

samepage That im worying as well, i can imagine that you combine so many IONs together, that you penetrate something like 4 shields and behind that 3 layers of armor in 0,1 sec, than you just have to slowly spin your beam ship and vaporize everything what will come nearby.

GodoftheGrove

Yeah, it's not THAT abusable. The reason people use ion forks is for the best protection. Chaining beams together for a max bonus of 20% means you shoot some powerful ion beams, but not too powerful, and you have a glaring weakpoint in your ship. I also noticed that for larger ships, you need a lot of optimalisation in the maneuvrability of your ship, because the ions only fire forwards, so if your ship turns too slow, ions aren't that good anyway. So, yeah, having ion-cannons synergize with each other is a really cool idea.

Mc2

GodoftheGrove Espacialy with 0.14.0 way of moving and way how engines work is targeting Ions by big ships not so easy task. Agree with you completelly.