What type of attack does the Exodian Blade use?

[z99-_]

What the subject says. I was going through the original AIWII design doc to see what type of weapon the Exodian Blade uses, and none of the descriptions seemed right (wiki doesn't seem to help either). I am curious what the official name of it is (I'm not sure if Death Ray is the actual in-game description, or something I just came up with) and whether any other ship uses it, with what I would assume to be far less damage.

Also, could the 'AIWC Compendium' (as I have come to call it) - the document where people listed (almost) every unit and mechanic of AIWC to help make the original AIWII design doc - be stickied here? It's obviously not as in depth as the wiki, but it's still useful to me as a quick glance sort of thing.

[keith.lamothe]

It uses a Photon Lance, like other Spire stuff, but with some significant code modifications to let it retarget every frame instead of every shot. That makes it astronomically more "efficient" than normal lances at applying damage-potential to actual targets. Combined with its ridiculous points-of-damage number, that efficiency gives it the ability to incinerate huge fleets in seconds.

I'm very fond of it

[Aklyon]

Its a very nice lance, yes.

Although from that description it sounds terrible for fps, keith.

[keith.lamothe]

Although from that description it sounds terrible for fps, keith.

Oh, it absolutely is. But there's only the one so it doesn't have much real-world impact. Well, no more than, say, 20 normal lances. Which are pretty bad for the cpu.

Did I mention that multithreading would be good?

[z99-_]

It uses a Photon Lance, like other Spire stuff, but with some significant code modifications to let it retarget every frame instead of every shot. That makes it astronomically more "efficient" than normal lances at applying damage-potential to actual targets. Combined with its ridiculous points-of-damage number, that efficiency gives it the ability to incinerate huge fleets in seconds.

I'm very fond of it

I am very fond of it as well; even without the instakill damage levels, there's something oddly satisfying about seeing it target something, drain it's health at a constant speed, and then move onto something else . . . maybe down the road we could see about adding it (with varying levels of nerf) as a weapon for a couple new ship types in AIWII? It could be really fun and interesting to have some completely new ship types to go along with the old ones getting a redesign.

Oh my. I just had an awful, terrible, wonderful idea: if the Devourer Golem ends up being brought back, it should use this as its weapon XD

[Aklyon]

But Golems are zenith craft!

Photon lances are spiretech

[z99-_]

But Golems are zenith craft!

Photon lances are spiretech

But Death Rays are universal!

If the Devourer Golem has been going around for however many years since AIWC, who's to say it didn't evolve the ability? Especially given that the Zenith are supposed to be a race of 3D printers. It could even make sense lore-wise. The Devourer Golem had been in our galaxy away from the spire for however many millennia, so it just used an attack that it was programmed with/was used by races it already encountered (eated ). Which makes sense, since its attack uses the minor electric ammo sprite. During AIWC, it had lots of Spire fleets to munch on, either as it was just passing through, or maybe the Spire organized an ill-fated monster hunt afterward. And it realized, 'Hey! These photon lances are pretty nifty! Maybe I should start using them!'

And thus the Spire became responsible for the three greatest scourges to the galaxy. (AI core, Dark Spire, and Cookie Monster)