Great feedback everyone. The point that disrupted shields still regenerate is a good one, and its absolutely true that feedback on enemy shield disruption status is poor and needs fixing. In facts at a minimum I think I should add a damage indicator (floating text) for when shield disruption or , for that matter, radiation damage takes effect.
The disruption damage works exactly like shield damage. A shield has the same stability points as it has shield strength. I really need to make this a lot clearer, with pop-ups and better explaining. I should write a gameplay guide for this sort of stuff too…
Although in theory I do like the idea of weapons having multiple effects, and already I believe we have some plasma that does conventional and radiation damage, I’m not a huge fan because I get the impression this is very confusing, as most weapons have an identifiable WARHEAD value, and multiple damage types might confuse that… maybe if I added text that said MULTIPLE for the warhead…
Hmmmm lots of superb ideas here…
I’m tempted to make those stats changes, bump up the damage feedback, include those limpets, and then see what people think of the effect after the next patch, which will probably be Wednesday this coming week. I’ve added one more mission and will probably get another one added too…
Well one thing could be done that won’t be confusing for warhead type, while also making shield disruption less of an all or nothing proposition:
Add your own proposition 4 effect to the disruption warhead. They should temporarily, slightly, lower the shield resistance with each hit (stacking), and as long as it keeps getting hit periodically that stacking stays on. This means that other weapons wont just sit idly if the shield is not brought down totally.
If done that way, when you have plenty of disruption hitting a shield it will be taken down entirely, laying the ship bare. If you don’t do enough disruption per time unit you would still be slowly lowering the target’s shield resistance, allowing more and more of your weapons to damage the shield until they bring it down.
Disruption weapons would therefore require less precise application to be a worthwhile insurance, as it will always function as a viable way of bridging the gap for lower-pen weapons. (Under using them will still be bad since its a slow solution but it will stop the annoying situation where the disruption concentration is too low for anything useful to happen, slowly killing off your ships against a shielded foe even though you did bring shield disruption.)
Also the idea of doing a non-missile-based disruption weapon for frigates would work with this, and also usher in more combined arms goodness.