Ah, there it is: the beam penetration coefficient is 0.5, as I'd remembered; it's in settings.json as "dpsToHitStrengthMult".
For vanilla burst beam weapons, we can find their armor penetration by looking up their dps in weapon_data.csv. Remember, this isn't the same DPS you'd see in the Codex - this is the damage done per second that the beam is active.
Burst PD Laser: 350 DPS -> 175 armor penetration
Phase Lance: 1000 DPS -> 500 armor penetration
Heavy Burst Laser: 400 DPS -> 200 armor penetration
Guardian PD System: 1000 DPS -> 500 armor penetration
Tachyon Lance: 1500 DPS -> 750 armor penetration
To calculate the values you'd see in the Codex, the relevant numbers are damage/second, chargeup, chargedown, burst size, and burst delay.
For example, the Tachyon Lance has 1500 DPS, 0.5s chargeup, 1s chargedown, 1s burst size, 4s burst delay.
A burst beam weapon does approximately 1/3 damage (0.333*DPS - at least, that's what the Codex's calculations use) during both chargeup and chargedown, and deals its full damage during the burst size interval. This gives us a burst damage of 1500*(0.333*(0.5+1)+1) = 2249.25 damage.
And the full firing cycle takes 6.5 seconds (just add up all the times involved; chargeup + chargedown + burst size + burst delay), which does in fact work out to ~9.231 shots per minute, which the codex rounds to 9.2. We can also divide burst damage by firing cycle to get the listed DPS - in this case, ~346.038.
There's one more thing that's important for mods: beam weapons do their damage in ~1/10th of a second ticks, so if a (modded) weapon has, say, 0 chargeup, 0 chargedown, and a burst size of .25, it'll only tick for damage twice during its duration - and the codex will end up listing a notably higher burst damage than you'll actually get in game.
And, last but not least, I don't actually know how that 1/3 damage during chargeup/chargedown interacts with armor penetration. The beam may or may not have reduced armor penetration during chargeup/chargedown; someone would have to test (or Alex would have to tell us).
Right. I could get the Tachyon Lance and Phase Lance numbers to work within the rounding error of the codex without the .333 modifier but the Burst PD and Heavy Burst PD were always a bit off. Interesting mechanic there.
As far as beams go, let me make sure I understand you. They're doing 1/2 their DPS against armor over 10 "ticks" per second during the "burst size" phase of the beam. If they have a chargeup/chargedown, they're doing 1/3 DPS. Most beams (save for PD) have charge-up times but then no burst size (indefinite), which means that if a beam fires longer than a few seconds, that .333 modifier gets averaged over time down to an insignificant value. That's good to know from a technical aspect but from a "how much effect does it have?" it's not that much if the beam is on for very long.
@ SCC
You may be right but all my numbers were pulled directly from weapons.csv. Not sure what to make of that.
Re: Assault Chaingun vs. Mauler debate
I used those two because a new player may look at an Assault Chaingun and see raw DPS and nothing else. As Techhead pointed out, there's a window (a rather significant one) where the Mauler outperforms the Assault Chaingun in almost every respect due to damage/shot but you wouldn't know that looking at the numbers in isolation. Yes, the raw DPS of the Assault Chaingun will almost always have better TTK values but you're also paying heavily for it. I'm simply bringing to light the flux dynamic which often goes unnoticed.
@ Xenoargh
Thanks for the thoughts. You're right, the guide is looking at weapons in the vacuum of armor damage only. I erred on the side of a new player not understanding armor mechanics so I had to be a little heavy-handed in my approach. You're right of course: taking down shields is extremely important, as is pressuring shields/flux, winning flux wars with high-efficiency weapons or making opponents waste flux on missiles, etc. The flux profile of a weapon is just as important as its damage, if not more so, in most cases. However, the guide isn't exhaustive and though I'll go back and re-word some things to emphasize these points, it's beyond the guide's scope to talk about defeating armor in relation to everything else. I think that would be appropriate for a tactics guide or something to that effect.
And as you say, once you get into entire fleets slugging it out, the efficiency of one weapon is probably not nearly as important as positioning, tactics, etc. However, that doesn't mean you can't be
more informed how one particular weapon affects the battle. The difference-making potential of some of the Large weapons (no matter the damage type) can be pretty significant. Again, if a new player only sees DPS numbers without understanding how armor works, they look at a Hellbore and shrug because it doesn't seem all that powerful from a DPS standpoint. Yes, it's terrible in many respects but if you know when its appropriate, its a great tool for armor busting.
Overall, I'm just glad that we're having the discussion! I'm learning a lot.