The Incapacitation skill needs to be upped by a factor of 10 if the game really wants us to shoot to stun, which it doesn't despite several companions getting pissy if we kill one more enemy per encounter than their arbitrary tolerance level, and the fact that they were happy enough to blast away with us up to that point. Pacifist companions should be armed with... EM weapons! Well fuck me, I'm a master level game designer today.
Proper Incapacitation
Level 1 +50% EM damage Level 2 +100% EM damage Level 3 +150% EM damage Level 4 +300% EM damage fixed, not random
I get the sneaking suspicion that this was what Team A originally intended, but then someone on Team B got cold feet when they saw how quickly a player could take down a terrormorph, so they implemented the whole "enemies stand the fuck back up after a few minutes" as a compromise, before finally Team C came along and nerfed EM damage across the board because they thought it was standard damage. The result is that the EM dedicated Novablast Rifle is functionally useless, despite looking gorgeous and foldy, like the laptop gun in Perfect Dark.
As things are, only fast firing riot shotguns are EM viable:
Hip firing* this cunt clears out most rooms with a single knee slide.
We need a Brig Hab for the starship that doubles the bounty of the regular seek and destroy missions if we take them in alive to make up for the EM diminished looting. Click on EM stunned enemy, Send To Brig, no more standing up unexpectedly for you Boris, you piss taking bastard. Then the Brig empties itself like the Passenger Missions upon landing at specified ports.
*for non-players of Starfield: aiming down a sight - or Heaven forbid a scope - in this game is to your own detriment. So long as the little crosshair circle turns red you can hip fire, and your chance to hit is determined with dice. In practical terms this Ghost Of VATS mechanic favors quick firing, quick acquiring weapons over more traditional builds, and
shooting on the move. The best weapon for the first 15 levels or so is the rinky-dink Kraken, a shoddy sub-machine gun that in other games would be vendor trash. The best "sniper rifle" option is firing from the hip while running with a Razorback six shooter pistol. It has a massive range, ultra-fast target acquisition, Penetrator rounds, and with a binary trigger it turns into an ultra-steady
machine gun sniper rifle that you fire with the certainty of John Wick putting points into the right skill upgrades.
