Patch When? Discovery 5.2 Edition: Blog #1

[Haste]

Does the positron discharge affect all ships, only ones that dealt damage? only hostiles? Can we choose when to fire the discharge, or does it happen automatically?

The Positron discharge occurs at the end of any shield boost, no matter the length, and irrespective of actually having taken any damage. There are base damage values that are triggered no matter what. The only control the user has is how many batteries they used and, thus, how long the boost was.

A friendly cap suddenly popping off a positron discharge and mercing all friendly snubs in the blast radius would be hilarious but probably not desirable.

There's a maximum hull damage value and, as you go up the shield class ladder, this value gets proportionally lower compared to shield damage. Right now it's honestly still pretty harsh and I can see us reducing it further. One of the considerations for an adjustment is to turn the Positron boost explosion into an "Ion" one with a massively reduced shield multiplier and much more energy damage, so it has some powercore suppression abilities, and then making the hull damage values substantially lower.

Here's a Heavy Battleship Positron Shield's stats:


Given how absolutely enormous the radius is, substantial hull damage would make it nearly impossible to play a snub in a fleet fight setting with more than one of these running around.

Edit: quick note that's probably important: the damage multipliers work off of the reduced damage taken during a shield boost. 10% of 50% is, in practice, 5% of damage fired at the shield being reflected.

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