[Nemesis6]

Just a little something I noticed - When I started playing FS2, I got the sweet idea to hit the capital ships where it hurts - the Weapons subsystem. I had taken out engines before, which would stop the ship totally, but I soon found out that the weapons subsystem being destroyed would do nothing on capital ships - They'd still keep blasting away at me. I can understand stuff like Navigation being destroyed not affecting anything because that could screw up a mission. Sensors, when destroyed, doesn't seem to have any impact, either? Is there a method to this apparent madness?

[ChronoReverse]

Destroying the weapons subsystem just makes the ship shoot more inaccurately.

[General Battuta]

Destroying the weapons subsystem causes accuracy degradation.

Destroying nav will prevent jumpout in certain campaigns with that flag enabled in the AI profile.

Destroying engines will disable the ship.

Destroying comms prevents the ship from sending low-priority messages and can do other things depending on the way the mission is scripted.

Sensors is totally up to mission scripting.

[Commander Zane]

Only thing is flak and beams don't suffer said accuracy penalty.

[General Battuta]

They don't? I'm not saying you're wrong, but cite?

EDIT: Found it, nvm.

[Commander Zane]

It's actually stated somewhere that there's little to no effect on flak and beam accuracy?
I want to see this, I'm only saying what I've noticed since Day One of playing FS2.

[Droid803]

Well, for capital ships, the weapons subsystem should be thought of as the weapon targeting system (that helps the gunners). With it gone, the turrets are less accurate.

Killing weapons does stop fighters from shooting anything though.

[karajorma]

And causes them to blow up after 30s - 1 minute unless they are friendlies.

[Commander Zane]

Not once have I seen that happen.

[Qent]

Destroying the weapons susbsystem of capital ships also stops them from targeting bombs.

[Commander Zane]

They'll still try to shoot at them but they won't hit.

[Nuclear1]

Not once have I seen that happen.

Saw it happen all the time in FS1.

[TopAce]

Are you guys sure that destroying Weapons does not affect flaks?

[Commander Zane]

Still tears the hell out of me whenever I fly past it.

[Droid803]

Flak is inherently inaccurate anyway (and is probably most effective like that).
Even if it did affect flak accuracy, it wouldn't matter as much due to the splash damage.

[QuantumDelta]

Weapon subsystem loss effects anti-cap beam accuracy though right? (AAA/f etc I have no trouble believing but ...)
I'm also fairly sure it does effect flak but as mentioned just above it doesn't matter too much.

[General Battuta]

I actually think it only affects Type 4 beam accuracy. These are rather rare creatures.

[Commander Zane]

It does say that destroying the Weapons Subsystem alters its accuracy.

[General Battuta]

Could you specify a referent for either of those 'its'?

[Commander Zane]

Type 4 beams are direct-fire beams that fire only along the firing turret's normal. If mounted on a single-part turret, they will only fire where that turret's normal is pointing in similar manner as the unguided swarm weapons - that is, they won't hit anything unless using extremely strict mission design - but with multi-part turrets, they function quite nicely. They do not use +Miss Factor: values for determining weapon accuracy and this can make these beams exceedingly deadly. However, unlike other beam weapons, these will become inaccurate if the firing ship's weapons subsystem is damaged.

And the second it was the referring to the beam.