How much does damage to Hull matter in the HAC/Mauler vs Pulse Laser match up? Pulse Laser is 606 DPS to hull, at 0.9 efficiency. Heavy Autocannon is 214 DPS to hull at 1.0 efficiency and Mauler is 133 DPS at 0.89 efficiency - for a combined 347 DPS at 0.95 efficiency....
You picked the heavy mauler which is an (intentionally) low DPS 1000 range sniper. It's not surprising that you find the DPS to be lacking... The range is the reason to use that gun, not the DPS, and I think that it's a bit weak at the moment. You should really compare to the heavy mortar which is the common unspecialized ballistic HE option.
I picked the Heavy Mauler because it lands it shots on target and in the same place without too much loss of true DPS. I've tried firing a heavy mortar non-stop (i.e. 220 DPS) and its cone of uncertainty gets huge fast. I used a capital since its slow and allows you to hit the same spot with a medium class ship. Although, for a better comparison, I probably should have used a hypervelocity driver instead of a HAC. I guess I was thinking the shields didn't matter as much in terms of spread shots and so the spread was acceptable against a capital, but that is not true for the hull damage/armor portions I guess.
I'm quite willing to run the numbers against other ships - if you're willing to give me a hit % for each weapon against said target.
From my quick testing using a Heron (medium omni-slot) under AI control against an AI Omen I get the following approximate hit %.
Heavy Mortar: 42 projectiles fired, 2 impacted missiles from the omen, 22 hit. If we assume the missile hits would have hit the omen, that is a 57% hit rate.
Heavy Mauler: 41 projectiles fires, 2 impacted missiles, 35 hit. 37/41 = 90% hit rate
Heavy Autocannon: 45 projectiles, 20 hits = 44% hit rate. Although, the omen backed off a lot more and dodged more because those hits hurt its shield much more.
Pulse Laser: 40 projectiles, 2 missiles, 36 hits = 95% hit rate.
Now against a Medusa:
Heavy Mortar: 40 projectiles fired, 31 hits = 77.5%
Heavy Mauler: 40 projectiles, 37 hits =92.5%
Heavy Autocannon: 42 projectiles, 33 hits = 78.5%
Pulse Laser: 40 projectiles, 38 hits = 95% (only missed on medusa jumps)
Accuracy matters given a miss is a bunch of flux for no benefit.
I'm open to other reasonable hit chances against a given target.
Also, raw amror/hull dps isn't really relevant, performance against actual armor values you will likely encounter is. I demonstrated in my last post that pulse laser has worse armor performance against average destroyer tier armor (500) which is the probably the most common and thus most important scenario. Pulse laser does 484 dps to hull against 500 armor, 404 dps to hull against 1000 armor. It still definitely has an advantage, but it's quite a bit smaller. Only ~40% hull dps advantage compared to HAC+Mortar across the 500-1000 armor range, as far as I can tell, so not a particularly efficient use of that extra 70% flux generation.
Also if you're trying to kill an onslaught with two medium slots, something has gone horribly wrong. You should consider performance against destroyers and maybe light cruisers.
Or something has gone horribly right. A lightly escorted Onslaught when I'm still relying on destroyers (say a Medusa)? Depending on escorts on both sides, that is doable and might be how it goes down.
Well, given the superiority of HAC over pulse in terms of shields, lets take that Medusa example.
Unmodded Medusa is 10,000 effective shield points, 300 armor and 3000 hull, so pretty much worst case for the pulse laser (high shields, low hull).
HAC+Heavy Mortar is 214*0.785*2 + 220*0.5*0.775 = 421 effective shield DPS. 23.7 seconds and 9337 flux.
2x Pulse laser is 606*0.95 = 575 effective shield DPS. 17.4 seconds and 11,568 flux.
HAC+Heavy Mortar takes 2 shots of each to get through armor, roughly 1 second of fire and 380 flux.
2x Pulse laser takes 8 total shots to get through armor, 1.32 seconds and 879 flux.
HAC+Heavy Mortar with 15 residual armor has 214*0.785*0.769 + 220*0.775*0.88 = 279 DPS against hull. 10.7 second and 4233 flux.
2x Pulse laser is 526 DPS against hull. 5.7 seconds and 3791 flux.
HAC+Heavy Mortar vs Medusa: 35.4 seconds and 13,950 flux
2x Pulse Laser vs Medusa: 24.4 seconds and 16,238 flux
16% more flux while only taking 2/3 the time. Of course, this is making the big assumption that all hits land in the same armor cell, and that you only need to overload the target once. The pulse laser is more likely to cause an overload (more damage in a shorter period of time against shields), and more likely to finish it within an overload period (7 seconds to kill against armor/hull versus 12).
I expect against a cruiser or capital, the accuracy of the HAC+Heavy Mortar would improve significantly, probably close to that of a Pulse laser, improving damage by ~25% and reducing final flux costs by a similar proportion.