Death ray cannot hit anything

[Orion03]

Anyone else notice that the death ray cannot hit anything?

[Aeson]

It can hit things, it's just inaccurate. The images that you thanked me for providing? The station missing from the final image was destroyed by the Death Ray blast in the preceding image.

Actually, come to think of it, Death Rays might not be any more inaccurate than standard blasters, it's just that you notice it more when it misses because you don't get nearly as many shots with it as with normal blasters. After all, in the space required for a Death Ray, you can fit ~20 Titan Beams and an extra reactor to (help) cover the additional power requirements, and each Titan Beam fires ~6 times as often as the Death Ray does; that's about 120 shots with standard blasters for every 1 shot taken by a Death Ray. Even if the Death Ray was more accurate than standard blasters, you'd probably notice when it misses more than you'd notice when the standard blasters miss. Plus, there's a lot of expectation placed on the Death Ray - 1800 damage per shot makes you expect it to cripple or kill things each time it fires, or at least take a big chunk out of a target's shields. You're expecting great things of it by comparison to what you expect out of standard weapons; that makes it all the more disappointing when it misses.

[RemoteLeg]

So, the Death Ray ... piece of junk? [&:]

[12doze12]

ORIGINAL: RemoteLeg

So, the Death Ray ... piece of junk? [&:]

NO! ... it can't be, such name! Can't be for something useless! NO!

[Aeson]

So, the Death Ray ... piece of junk?

I wouldn't say exactly useless, but it, and the other superweapons, are basically the one-shot wonders of Distant Worlds. When they connect, the results can be impressive, but they don't have the rate of fire and you can't mount enough of them to really start removing luck from the equation even on really big ships, and their size and power requirements make using only Death Rays (or other superweapons) somewhat awkward, design-wise. They're very heavily weighted towards the alpha strike; if the alpha strike doesn't pay off, your ships will suffer for it because Death Rays are only really competitive against standard blasters in the mid-game or earlier. Against phasers, the other short-range (or arguably mid-range) alpha strike weapon, they'll continue to be competitive in theoretical DPS throughout the game while offering a bigger but riskier alpha strike.

[Orion03]

Death Ray = Fire !!!! miss? Miss? Miss? MISS ?

arrgghhhhh

lots of expectations.... bit of a let down.

[Shark7]

Also keep in mind that the Death Ray is a planet destroying weapon. To balance its one hit = one kill power, the accuracy and recycle has to suffer. Needless to say, I feel much better with a large battery of smaller weapons that don't depend as much on a good die roll to hit anything.

Basically, I get the feeling that the death ray is not supposed to be the main weapon you use in game, it should be reserved for your biggest ships (IE the world destroyers).

Just imagine if every star destroyer had a Death Star superlaser on it? Scary... [;)]

[Aeson]

Also keep in mind that the Death Ray is a planet destroying weapon.

No, the Super Laser is the planet killer; Death Rays merely have very high damage per shot.

[Blabsawaw22]

My World Destroyers hit on target when I used them.. sure there was some misses.. but it wasn't enough to get mad about it or anything.. I still got exactly what I wanted out of them.. like blowing up planets!