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[Schwartz]

I don't disagree, but your standard comparison assumes a perfect ballistic loadout of 2 different guns vs. 2 of the same energy type. It's an easy comparison to make, but if we have taken that liberty, why not have entire loadouts compete? Put a Lasher with these two ballistics on one side and a Wolf with IR Pulses and an Antimatter Blaster on the other.

If you're making a single weapon type do all the work, neither Dual AC, nor LAG, nor IR Pulse can hack it. The problem is that IR Pulse has no twin, while ballistic weapons have several twins available. Like I suggested in another thread, turning Antimatter Blaster into a less costly weapon in style of a knife-fight burst beam or a faster firing, less damaging version of itself could work.

But we're always going to brush up against the damage type oddness. The way damage calculations work make kinetics 'just' good but HE hugely important. And more kinetic / HE weapons for energy mounts would just take flavor away from the mount types. So that means we're left with burst.

[Thaago]

I agree with you - for the ballistics I was free to pair up an anti-shield with an anti-armor, and they were strong for the synergy. I think SWP has a light phase lance for the small slot? That would pair well as an anti-armor: high enough burst damage to be reasonable anti-armor, while its soft flux makes it less effective anti-shield.

[Morgan Rue]

PD Lasers, which are 4 OP like Vulcans and not exactly cheap on the level as Light Mortar, lack the range without Advanced Optics.  With Advanced Optics, their range may be long enough, but by then, their effective OP cost jumps to something closer to LR PD or even Burst PD.  This is why Mining Laser is not cheap, despite OP cost of 2.  By the time you give it IPDAI, Turret Gyros, and maybe Advanced Optics, it gets expensive just to match more expensive beam PD that is better out-of-the-box.

PD Lasers do 75 DPS for 35 FPS. This makes them good to fire at enemy shields.

Perhaps the Wolf just doesn't have enough dissipation to properly use energy weapons, but I kind of like it's current state. If it was buffed to reasonably be able to use it's medium energy mount, it would need to be more expensive and might compete too much with the Tempest.

[Megas]

PD Lasers do 75 DPS for 35 FPS. This makes them good to fire at enemy shields.

Perhaps the Wolf just doesn't have enough dissipation to properly use energy weapons, but I kind of like it's current state. If it was buffed to reasonably be able to use it's medium energy mount, it would need to be more expensive and might compete too much with the Tempest.

Not good enough when that damage is soft flux and the enemy is firing back with two 100+ DPS weapons, maybe kinetics at 600 range.  Against a similar frigate with ballistics, Wolf will lose the flux war unless maybe the player has all of the flux buff skills (or they are using shorter-ranged LMGs).  Against other high-tech, their shields will probably tank it unless they fire back with similarly mediocre weapons.

Wolf should be able to use its mounts effectively.  It should not require a skilled character with flux bonuses just to use a simple pulse laser plus occasional PD on a Wolf.  I would expect personal skills to enable Wolf to use Heavy Blaster comfortably, not barely use Pulse Laser.  Lasher has ammo feeder to act like mini-Hammerhead.  Centurion has a ton of mounts to use lots of cheap and efficient low cost weapons instead of 5 OP flux hogs to help win the flux war.  (Centurion has too many mounts to support more than two among light dual autocannon and light assault gun.)  If Wolf cannot use pulse laser with its medium mount plus efficient PD, what good is it if you need it to act like an attack frigate like a high-tech lasher or centurion, especially with a Wolf start?

Wolf is a bit underpowered today.  It is good as a beam boat escort while you pilot a bigger ship, but not much else.  Then again, frigates in general have become obsolete after early game, given size inflation plus fleet cap in 0.9.1a.

[Morgan Rue]

PD Lasers do 75 DPS for 35 FPS. This makes them good to fire at enemy shields.

Perhaps the Wolf just doesn't have enough dissipation to properly use energy weapons, but I kind of like it's current state. If it was buffed to reasonably be able to use it's medium energy mount, it would need to be more expensive and might compete too much with the Tempest.

Not good enough when that damage is soft flux and the enemy is firing back with two 100+ DPS weapons, maybe kinetics at 600 range.  Against a similar frigate with ballistics, Wolf will lose the flux war unless maybe the player has all of the flux buff skills (or they are using shorter-ranged LMGs).  Against other high-tech, their shields will probably tank it unless they fire back with similarly mediocre weapons.

Soft flux at least limits the enemy's ability to shoot at you. Each PD Laser they are being hit by is 75 less flux they can spend on shooting you. Each PD Laser only costs you 35 flux to fire.

I beat one of the default Lashers using 3 Ion Cannons and an LRPD laser. I won the flux war(by armor tanking ). If I had a pair of PD lasers or a single Graviton instead of the LRPD I think the AI could win a similar battle.

Wolf should be able to use its mounts effectively.  It should not require a skilled character with flux bonuses just to use a simple pulse laser plus occasional PD on a Wolf.  I would expect personal skills to enable Wolf to use Heavy Blaster comfortably, not barely use Pulse Laser.  Lasher has ammo feeder to act like mini-Hammerhead.  Centurion has a ton of mounts to use lots of cheap and efficient low cost weapons instead of 5 OP flux hogs to help win the flux war.  (Centurion has too many mounts to support more than two among light dual autocannon and light assault gun.)  If Wolf cannot use pulse laser with its medium mount plus efficient PD, what good is it if you need it to act like an attack frigate like a high-tech lasher or centurion, especially with a Wolf start?

Wolf is a bit underpowered today.  It is good as a beam boat escort while you pilot a bigger ship, but not much else.  Then again, frigates in general have become obsolete after early game, given size inflation plus fleet cap in 0.9.1a.

Yes, Wolf should probably be able to use it's mounts effectively. For now it's stuck with extremely low flux things. Perhaps it should by default come equipped with a Graviton beam.

[TaLaR]

Wolf with simple Graviton + 3xTac + UI + maxed out flux rate is fairly dangerous to other frigates. Enough speed, range and soft flux output to kite most typical AI-piloted frigates to death (except Tempest and Remnants. Potentially SO too, but AI is too incompetent at piloting these, so they simply die to CR).
Beams loadout can't do anything to larger ships and is too slow at actually killing things to be useful for player-piloting.

Hard-flux Wolf can't gain significant flux advantage without performing maneuvers too advanced to for current AI - near-perfectly dodging flux expensive volleys with skimmer/ micro-venting/ point-blank shield bypass with skimmer/ sticking to rearside of less maneuverable DEs.

Wolf is a decent starter frigate, but later on player piloting is too precious resource to waste on it, while AI can only use beams loadout semi-competently, and it's simply not impactful enough to be worth one of 10 officer slots (while unofficered ships are hopeless fodder).
Then again, no AI-piloted frigate performs really well in late-game. Best one would probably be Omen, used as distraction/PD escort.

[intrinsic_parity]

Ion beam wolf can do something against larger ships in conjunction with the rest of the fleet, but it's still not enough to justify a fleet slot imo