First off, taking the time to write a guide is a commendable effort. Don't let negative comments discourage you
Loadout design is a hotly debated topic. It's normal that people make a fuzz.
You want your flux dissipation to be equal to or greater than something in the ballpark of the combination of your weapon flux and shield flux. However, extra dissipation can also be wasted when some guns aren't firing, and that you can't dissipate hard flux. For this reason you want to be a bit under the combined amount.
This is highly dependent on the type of ship you are outfitting.
High Tech ships (except the slow ones) depend on burst firepower, which aside from using bursty weapons can be achieved by using an overfluxed weapon loadout to deal more damage
right now at the cost of less damage later. Perfect example is loadouts using Heavy Blasters. These ships have enough speed and shield efficiency that they can afford to build up soft flux and still get out of dodge to vent, and the AI is generally capable of doing so.
For most Low Tech and Midline ships a better rule of thumb is letting your flux dissipation equal the flux cost of all forward-firing non-PD guns. That way in a 1v1 brawl the ship is mostly flux-neutral, which is optimal for brawling. But that doesn't mean you should skip side- or rear-facing guns. Those are needed to deal with flanking enemies. Onslaught in particular should have many more guns than it can fire simultaneously. And for a Broadside ship like the Conquest you should only consider one Broadside, which does NOT mean you should leave the other broadside empty.
[Capacitors] also let you shoot for longer if you are overfluxed, although you should avoid resorting to this if possible.
Like I said, that is exactly what fast High Tech ships
do want to resort to. And Phase Ships as well, particularly with Phase Anchor. In fact some High Tech ship builds would rather have max caps than max vents.
It should be noted that the 600 range weapons like Heavy Blaster and Ion Pulser count as "SO Weapons", as they are not high range enough to be used with ITU, and have extremely high flux costs which makes them only usable with SO.
High Tech ships (and Sunder!) definitely can use Heavy Blaster and Ion Pulser even without SO. What you're saying here applies mostly to Midline ships. But note that the Phase Lance is a viable weapon on falcon/eagle with Advanced Optics.
A range mismatch of 100 range is acceptable, such as a heavy mortar combined with a heavy autocannon. However, range mismatches of 200 are not, such as that same heavy autocannon with a heavy mauler.
Careful - you're saying an Onslaught can't combine Heavy Needlers (700 range) with a Hellbore Cannon (900) range or indeed its TPCs (1000 range). Also, Heavy Autocannon + heavy Mauler is a very good weapon combination that you should not overlook. It is often better than HAC + Heavy Mortar because of the range advantage.
A weapon like the light autocannon, which normally has 700 range, would be best used in conjunction with 700 or 800 range weapons. (not 600 range weapons as these don't really exist for the most part.) However, with Ballistic Rangefinder, the range jumps up to 900, meaning it is only 100 off from weapons like hypervelocity driver, which has 1000 range, meaning you can use it with them.
HVD/Maulers and Ballistic Rangefinder are both OP-expensive gun solutions, and for that reason not ideal for use on the same loadout. Better to specialize in either. I can see using both working for the Eradicator, but not for any other ship.
Ballistic weapons which are under 450 range and are not vulcans should be used on SO builds. These can be devastating if used right, despite their low range. Light machineguns, light dual machine guns, and heavy machine guns count as non PD despite being tagged as PD due to their exceptional use as offensive weapons.
Heavy Machine Gun is notably viable on non-SO Low Tech Capitals as a close-range defensive weapon for deterring Frigates, Destroyers and Remnants. Particularly with range boosted by Elite Point Defense Skill. And while it isn't as good PD as Dual Flak (mainly due to lack of area damage) it is still decent.
Conversely, the Tachyon Lance does high damage/hit but low DPS. This makes it ideal vs armor but bad vs shields.
You think 462 DPS is bad? The reason Tachyon Lance struggles with shields is it deals soft-flux damage.
Let me take this opportunity to mention that Tachyon Lance is often more effective overall than a High Intensity Laser despite not having HE damage, precisely because the Tachyon Lance can pressure shields much better than the HIL.
[Regarding SO Hammerhead with 2x Assault Chaingun vs 2x Heavy Machine Gun]
Have you tried 1x Assault Chaingun + 1x Heavy Machine Gun, with machine guns in the small turrets?
Generally speaking, you are right to say that your HE weapons should be the largest-size weapons the ship can fit. But that does
not mean that
all weapon slots of that size should be HE weapons.
You should put missiles in most slots that can hold a missile. This includes missile slots but also composite, synergy, and universal slots. The reason for this is that missiles are generally higher value than other weapon type. However, there are some ships where this rule should not be followed.
Missiles are a controversial topic. Some people swear by them, others avoid them like the plague. The reason is that missiles are indeed awesome while the ammo lasts, but useless once ammo runs out. And ammo
will run out. Small-mount missiles in particular run out of ammo very quickly, so you want to be careful with spamming them, and consider low-OP alternatives (e.g. Dual Sabots vs Sabot Rack).
Don't use both sizes of breaches. Some people like them, but I'm gonna go out and say it. They are bad.
Breach gets a bad rap because the AI is too conservative with their use, despite the good ammo capacity. For player-piloted ships however, they are often better than Harpoons because they (1) have more ammo and (2) have better hitpoints making them more resilient to PD.
PD was not mentioned in the above section because it is not as nuanced as the other types.
Yeah?
LRPD and PD Lasers are alright and can be used instead of burst pd if you can mass them.
Burst PD vs PD Laser is not a black-and-white comparison. Burst PD has better burst, which is good for reliably stopping large HE missiles such as Reapers or Hammers, which PD Lasers often fail to stop. But large volleys of (small) missiles will overwhelm Burst PD much more quickly than an array of PD lasers. Also, PD Lasers have better sustained DPS which makes them superior against Fighters.
Heavy Burst PD and Paladin PD are bad. Burst PD because it's just terrible, Paladin PD because it takes up a large energy slot. Paladin PD can be used on one special redacted ship though.
Paladin is the best PD weapon in the game. It just suffers from the unfortunate circumstance that nearly all ships with Large Energy slots are highly dependent on those slots for their main damaging weapons, and so cannot afford to run a Paladin.
To a large extent, the same is true for Heavy Burst Laser. Most High Tech ships don't have a spare medium slot for them. But as Megas is fond of saying, Heavy Burst Laser is a viable option on Falcons and Eagles, not only for PD but also for busting the armor on Frigates, Destroyers and High Tech Cruisers.
Daggers are better than tridents because they move faster, meaning they can have faster bombing runs, meaning they do higher dps. Their OP cost also aligns better with the OP breakpoints that most vanilla carriers want. They are better than the other HE bombers because they have guided missiles.
That's not completely fair to the Trident. The Trident is a specialized anti-capital bomber built for resilience against PD, and it has arguably the best payload of any bomber in the game. Single-run damage matters. The real downfall of the Trident is the absence of an anti-shield bomber with similar specialization.
Are Daggers better than all other bombers? Most of the time, yes.
Xyphos is great on battlecarriers (carriers that engage enemies directly)
People keep saying that but I disagree for two reasons. First, mixing Xyphos with other Fighters is bad because the AI will sent those other fighters out to enemy ships, and because Fighter performance scales heavily with numbers, the reduced number of fighters is a liability. Second, and maybe most important: Xyphos Ion Beams have a range of only 1200, which is less than standard ballistic weapons with capital-grade ITU. The result is that the Xyphos will be out of range a lot of the time, thus not contributing anything to the fight at all.
Don't get me wrong. Other fighters are still usable. But there generally is no real reason to use them over these five fighters, which do everything you could want.
Thunders are generalists and they are very good generalists, which makes them a good general pick. However, other Interceptor fighters tend to be better in their respective specialist roles. Also, do not discount the difference in OP cost. Talons are cheap, but still infinitely better than leaving your bays empty.
[regarding hullmods
Your section on hullmods is a little oversimplified.
Also, one particular thing that stands out is the lack of love for Efficiency Overhaul. While it does slightly reduce the power of your ships, it does make them repair much faster, which is critical for doing multiple consective battles. Doubly so for Low-Tech ships reliant on armor/hull tanking.
