Energy weapons should be different, not be outright inferior.
Exactly my point. Look, the HB's not awful for the ships it's put on. But the ships have to make it work. I honestly think the game would've been better from the start without the concept of Energy Slots; it's caused no end of balancing headaches.
In my opinion this is exactly how it should be! There is skill in making a loadout, not just plopping on the best weapons regardless of ships.
And while we vets all think we've figured it out, I note that we all keep coming up with different loadouts...
I disagree most strongly about the Heavy Blaster, and consider it a powerful weapon. Just not all powerful.
Hey, in all fairness, it's not the worst gun in the game. I just think it fails the, "if I had a Universal, I'd still use it" test.
Versus Armor, it's 500 damage for 720 Flux; Heavy Mortar delivers 440 for 180, with 100 more range, which is pretty much the sole use case where it outshines the Pulse Laser's nice steady 300 for 333.
I think that we can all agree that the Heavy Mortar's not exactly OP?
I agree the Heavy Mortar is not OP, but it is actually a good weapon due to its good firepower and low OP, as long as you don't try to fight frigates with it. Not Heavy Mauler good, but it has its place. But lets do a breakdown:
DPS: 500 220
DPS vs armor: 500 440
Penetration: 500 220
DPS vs 500 armor: 250 134
DPS vs 1000 armor: 167 79
DPS vs shields: 500 110
DPS vs hull (500 armor starting, stripped): 476 198
Accuracy: Perfect, fast Wide, slow, going to miss shots
Flux/s: 720 180
Range: 600 700
First note: every number on the left column (other than range) is bigger
. Stupid, I know, but raw power is extremely important: the more you hit the enemy, the less they hit back. This is one of the reasons the HB is good in that universal medium: you have the flux, want to use other slots for other things, but still want to crush face. Example: it used to be an ideal thing on the Venture before the venture sucked: medium ballistics for that awesome flak at low flux cost, heavy blaster to punish.
Against shields: Heavy blaster does much more damage, and is even better in flux efficiency. Kinetic + heavy blaster is better than kinetic + heavy mortar.
Next: against armor, despite theoretically being 500 vs 440 DPS, in reality the Heavy Blaster drops armor twice as fast except all but the lightest targets. And those light targets don't have enough armor for it to matter as it will be gone in 1 or 2 hits, at which point hull dps starts. But yes, because the Heavy Mortar is 4 times as flux efficient, it does twice the armor damage per flux point. Does that matter? Sometimes yes, but often no.
Flux efficiency doesn't matter if you still have flux left. Hard flux is harder to get rid of than soft flux. Obvious I know, but we get so caught up in comparing numbers that we forget that the combat in SS is all about seizing local advantage, before a target's allies get close enough to help. Focus fire and either maul or kill. The heavy blaster, with its huge damage output, allows for a fresh ship to rapidly punish a ship with high flux. Or, if using it on a ship with better flux reserves, you can quickly overwhelm and kill an opponent before they have a chance to damage you.