There is a mark V ion cannon on nearly every planet.

[vigilo confido]

Holy cow, I have never seen so many ion cannons before. The AI made sure to spam 3-4 ion cannons on some planets. I think I am looking at an all starship game.

Edit: The AI has amazed me again. Not 5 but 6 ion cannons on the same planet.

[Winge]

There's a certain AI type that gets more of those...I think it's the Peacekeeper AI.  If I remember right, that one also gets more OMDs, so be careful with those starships...

[Coppermantis]

Last time I played with Peacemaker, he only got OMDs and Warhead Interceptors. That was many versions ago (it was kind of annoying to play against, so I stopped), so it might have changed though.

Even if it does get Ions, 5-6 seems extremely excessive.

Addendum: I checked, and Peacemaker's AI description does not mention Ions, only that it gets the other two specialized defensive structures.

[Bognor]

The number of ion cannons per planet is strongly influenced by difficulty.  I'm pretty sure I've never seen more than four in a 10/10 game, though, so it's probably a feature of the AI you're playing.  Are the planets with that many ion cannons all the same color in the galaxy map?

[Toranth]

As Bognor said, it mostly depends on difficulty.  Did a quick check, using Diff 9 Vanilla/Vanilla.
100 stars.
4 systems adjacent to homeworld, hence no Ion cannons.
14 - Zero Ion cannons.
24 - 1 Ion cannon.
34 - 2 Ion cannons.
15 - 3 Ion cannons.
06 - 4 Ion cannons (inc. both AI HW).
02 - 5 Ion cannons.

On Diff 10, only 5 systems had no Ion cannons, and 2 systems had 7 Ion cannons.
On Diff 7, 61 systems had no Ion cannons, and only the AI Homeworlds/Core Worlds had 3.

Although, I do agree - For something that is supposed to be rare and unusually dangerous, they sure are everywhere.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, what I'd like to do with Ion cannons is:
- make them insta-hit shots (so kind of like a mil station's thing, except instead of translocating the target to "far away" it translocates the target to "dead")
- make them much rarer
- adjust rate of fire to make them the right amount of scary

[Winge]

Yea, what I'd like to do with Ion cannons is:
- make them insta-hit shots (so kind of like a mil station's thing, except instead of translocating the target to "far away" it translocates the target to "dead")
- make them much rarer
- adjust rate of fire to make them the right amount of scary

I like.  I always hated how Ion Cannons were EVERYWHERE.  And a buff would make them more worthwhile to try and capture--these are very weak in the player's hands.

[Aklyon]

Very weak yes, but an excellent metal sink at the high marks

(Then again, if something is being a metal sink thats taking away from the superfort and mercdock's jobs of omnomming all of your excess metal ever when its not paused during construction)

[Histidine]

Considering Ion Cannons are the single most useless trader toy at present, I think a buff is in order, yes.

[Draco18s]

Considering Ion Cannons are the single most useless trader toy at present, I think a buff is in order, yes.

This.
I don't even bother capturing them unless they're Mk3 or higher.  Mk1s and 2s?  Pop them, they're dangerous and valueless.

[keith.lamothe]

Another thing that might help, though might also be a bit extreme, is to remove the mark-level restriction on what can be insta-killed by a Mk-whatever cannon, and instead have the higher-mark ones have a higher rate of fire.  So a MkI cannon would be a danger even to MkV stuff (that wasn't inherently immune to insta kill), it just wouldn't kill very many of them in a given period of time.

[Draco18s]

While a significant buff, that does favor the AI more than the humans.  Mainly because it's going to target the highest mark possible first.  So in the AI's hands it's going to be extremely expensive to deal with.  But in human hands it's not going to fire fast enough to make a difference.

And I would still probably not bother capturing a Mk1 or Mk2.

[Coppermantis]

I'm really not very fond of that option. As Draco said, it basically means that, when you go into a system, you are going to take losses of your highest-level ships, unless you attack only with starships, and God help you if they have an OMD too. There are other ways around taking expensive losses, (e.g. cloaking starships to close in on an OMD, flooding the system with Mk. Is to take out the Ion Cannon, etc.) but each can be countered by the enemy planet simply having the right structure or enough forces. Plus, it'd still be pretty useless in player hands since the AI sends a lot more ships, and doesn't care about what mark it loses so much.

[keith.lamothe]

Ok, fair enough, no removing the mark restrictions

[Coppermantis]

Looking at it, it seems like Ions are stopped by FFs? If that's the case, then removing the mark restrictions might be okay, since you could protect your expensive stuff from the Ion blasts. The problem being that the only ship that can reliably make a shield big enough to cover a lot of ships is a Champion, which some people might not be playing with. Riots would be okay, but they can't cover a lot. In any case, removing the level restrictions still strikes me as inelegant.


One idea that popped into my head and of which I have not really considered the implications is to make the Ions do AOE damage in addition to insta-killing ships lower than their level. So, if a blob takes on a Mk. II Ion cannon, it would target the Mk. II ships. They'd insta-die, but the impact would also create an explosion capable of damaging nearby higher-mark ships, similar to how Area mines still damage mine-immune ships if a regular one triggers them. It makes an Ion cannon a decent threat to a mixed fleet without guaranteeing expensive losses, as well as being useful for the players.