Starfield has a wide array of weapon types, and they all inflict different kinds of damage. When you want to incapacitate someone, you should use electromagnetic weapons—but not in Starfield.
In a Reddit thread from Oct. 17, players complained about how useless EM weapons are when subduing targets.
In this player’s case, they took on a side quest on Paradiso that requires you to get rid of an unruly hotel guest without killing him. So, you would think that weapons modeled after Tasers should be the right tool for the job. However, when you try to use them, specifically the EM Novablast Disruptor, you find out that this character is completely immune to EM damage.
This is not the only case where you are supposed to render the target harmless, but they are immune to this damage. In the Freestar Rangers questline, when you are supposed to interrogate enemy officers, they, too, prove to be immune.
The issue seems to lie in that NPCs that are supposed to have dialogue after a fight or event are protected from this type of damage. The only way you can subdue them and get them to surrender is by using lethal weapons and bringing their health to zero. That is when they give up, which doesn’t make sense: They should be dead.
This is what baffles players completely. You need to bring someone’s health to zero to interrogate them, but you cannot use the conventional methods to do so. This makes this type of weapon pretty much useless
We hope this issue is quickly resolved in upcoming updates of Starfield, as it doesn’t make sense. Using electromagnetic weapons, you should be able to bring down targets in a non-lethal way.
