What are Impulse Reaction Emitters good for?

[Reality]

So one of the ARS stations in my current 60 planet epic game against a shield ninny and a fortress baron were Impulse Reaction Emitters. Now I know they're supposed to do more damage to higher energy ships, but they seem to be exceedingly weak, even when performing the task they're designed for. An entire cap of mark I and II Emitters seems to take forever to kill a light starship (2000 energy) or most guardians (1000-1500 energy) - both of which are considerably higher in energy use than your average ship. Even against still higher energy using ships these seem to be weaker than simple triangle ships in any engagement. Does anyone have more experience with these than me and know if they have a strong point? Or are these just underpowered?

[BobTheJanitor]

I can only guess that maybe they'd be good against golems or the big spire ships, but I don't think I've ever used them in a game yet (or if I did I don't recall). So my opinion is mostly worthless, as usual.

[Entrenched Homperson]

I think the ARS are an awesome way of advancing tech in games, gameplay wise. It forces you to work with shiptypes you might not otherwise use, and which you might even find you like alot! However, there are some ships, very few, which fail to perform in alot of situations I've found. This is one of em, I got em myself and against a single raid starship, which I was hoping would be there preferred type of target, they failed to stop it getting to my CC and destroying it. Luckily this wasn't a critical planet.

[orzelek]

They were borderline OP at some point when there was a linear scaling of their damage with enemy energy usage (they literally murdered high power ships). After that they were modified to use less linear formula (sqrt?) and maybe they were left a bit under the line now. I'm not sure if they received balancing pass with all other ships recently.

[Reality]

I'm going to have a look at the things that use lots of energy in-game, but I think I might post a mantis issue suggesting a rebalance, as a lot of the bonus ships have received balancing lately.

[BobTheJanitor]

From a quick runthrough of the ship data list, it looks like mostly that's going to be big things like the core starships, superfortresses, golems, and the big spire ships from fallen spire. And the zenith trader, who for some reason has a ridiculously huge energy usage of 800,000. I guess if you ever got into a fight with him they'd be good. I guess that explains why they need those Zenith Power Generators.

[Reality]

Yeah I just ran through the reference list - the  most obvious thing is golems - however, I don't play with AI golems on, and this is a bit niche to count for much IMO. They're supposedly cap for cap slightly faster at taking out higher energy fortresses than bombers, but I'm pretty sure they're also a lot easier to kill, so not sure how the math works on that.

Thing is, they don't really come into their own until the 8-10k mark. I had a look at the recent(ish) change in the formula from Sqrt(energy) / 10 to 1 + (energy/1024). Basically they do a fair amount less damage under the new formula to anything with less than 7000 energy, which is almost all guardians and starships. At the moment, they're a real niche case, only useful against the odd high energy starship (zenith starship, warbird, core?). I don't think that justifies them - I'd like to see a buff against the 1500-5000 energy range, to make them at least moderately useful against more common guardians and starships, otherwise they just aren't worth my time.

[BobTheJanitor]

Without polycrystal hulls a fortress would just chew through them in seconds. And they don't come close to being able to out-range one. So yeah, I guess very niche usefulness against starships. Another fabricator to only grab if it's already on your way to something else or you're just desperate for more ship cap, I guess.

[Reality]

They're from an ARS, which means you can't really choose to skip them :/ a little dissapointing after going out of your way in the hope of getting something decent.

[Reality]

Submitted a tweak request, can't hurt: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=2590

[Red Spot]

Seeing how many find groups of raiders to be very painfull and hard to stop, perhaps they can be made to use a big chunk of energy and so become the preffered target for these Emitters. Special-purpose OP-ness?

[Reality]

That could be pretty cool - it'd have to be pretty high energy though. I had a bunch of emitters try to take a light starship (10k energy) and while they sloooowly got it down to half health, my other ships came in and pulverised it in seconds lol.