I've never had much success on hard with this strategy before because it's slow, easy to interrupt and the drone fires at random instead of prioritizing important systems. Usually when I play the Engi A I try to switch over to using a defense drone and dealing damage with weapons.
This time around though I was unable to find any decent weapons in drops or in stores, what I found instead was an ion blast... So I decided to double down, buy a beam drone II and an ion bomb and I have to say, it was quite fun to try a non-meta strategy for once. I only barely beat the flagship because the drone spent most of the time flying from one corner of the flagship to another instead of shooting, but it felt really good to make this work for once.
Say you pick up a halberd, hull or maybe pike or glaive beam. Would you then focus on Ion for your other slots and sell any non BL2/Flak1's in favor of them? Or would you still prefer hull/heavy/chain/charge lasers to ion?
Simple question.
Here's the thing with Beam Weapons: I personally think they're entirely outclassed by Torpedoes. A torpedo asks you to fly straight for 2 seconds while at mid range to your target. Beam demands you fly straight for 3 seconds while getting closer.
If you start a torpedo run, and decide it's not a good call, you don't have to launch it, you can break off while getting the lock. If you do launch the torpedo, and your enemies figure it out, they (should) focus the torpedo down before heading for you, buying you a little escape time.
If you finish the wind up for the beam, you're trapped for 3 seconds. You can't cancel the beam, you can't break off, the big beacon of "COME SHOOT ME" calls hither.
They have similar cooldowns, 10 seconds. Torpedoes do higher damage.
The only thing Beams seem to have going for them is the infinite ammo capacity. The notion of "Well you can't shoot down a beam" doesn't seem to be relevant if the situation is either
A: Your opponents are there to stop you. I'd rather fire a torpedo that gets shot down and have a chance to survive, rather than be locked in space and die
or
B: Your opponents aren't there to stop you. I'd rather fire a torpedo that does more damage.
Infinite ammo supply means they can be flexed from attack to defense or have sustainability without needing to hit the hangar or resupply. But if your team is running support? Torps just seem to be superior in every fashion.
But lets just say you do find yourself a boost god and unhittable and somehow you're able to get more than 3 uses of the beam cannon off without the need to repair so no one on your team needs to run support.
In what world do you want sustained Ion Damage? After cruiser shields are down its pointless until a raider spawns in. Maybe on flagship attack you can try and take out the shields quickly if the enemy team is defending shield gens well? Wouldn't Ion Torps still be better for that? You could make them nearly unhittable with the shield being outside the hull of the ship and boosting towards it.
Given how important morale is and survival, I'm finding it harder to justify the beam weapons, and by extension the Ion Beam weapon seems so situational that I don't know if the situation actually exists.
Star Wars Squadrons - New content in-depth overview (Skipped to 4:34)
Still got my hopes up for that tractor beam...
