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Author Topic: The Problem of Energy Weapons  (Read 28870 times)

intrinsic_parity

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Re: The Problem of Energy Weapons
« Reply #105 on: September 07, 2019, 01:29:25 PM »

If you're firing above your own flux you're losing the flux war against someone who isn't unless the shield damage efficiency of the weapon is better than the inverse of their shield efficiency. 

This is the quote I was taking issue with. Obviously less efficient weapons are worse, but the relation ship is not direct as stated by this quote.

Yeah I brought it up because weapon efficiency doesn't directly contribute to the inequality,

Hence 'doesn't directly contribute to the inequallity'. Nothing in the relationship cares about the ratio directly, it cares about the flux generation relative to the dissipation and the dps, which are related to the efficiency but not determined by the efficiency. Im not trying to say that efficient doesn't matter, just that it doesn't determine if you will win the flux war as implied in the original quote.
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Goumindong

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Re: The Problem of Energy Weapons
« Reply #106 on: September 07, 2019, 02:14:27 PM »

If you're firing above your own flux you're losing the flux war against someone who isn't unless the shield damage efficiency of the weapon is better than the inverse of their shield efficiency. 

This is the quote I was taking issue with. Obviously less efficient weapons are worse, but the relation ship is not direct as stated by this quote.

Yeah I brought it up because weapon efficiency doesn't directly contribute to the inequality,

Hence 'doesn't directly contribute to the inequallity'. Nothing in the relationship cares about the ratio directly, it cares about the flux generation relative to the dissipation and the dps, which are related to the efficiency but not determined by the efficiency. Im not trying to say that efficient doesn't matter, just that it doesn't determine if you will win the flux war as implied in the original quote.

No. If the flux efficiency of the weapon is worse than the inverse of the flux efficiency of the shield and you are over your standard dissipation then you pay 1 flux for >1 flux damage.

If your flux efficiency vs shields is 1.4 and their shield is .7(the inverse of which is 1.43) then you use 1 flux to do .98 damage. You only "win the flux war" here if you have more flux than what you're shooting at(and sometimes the sum of the things you're shooting at. This contributes to you losing the flux war.

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intrinsic_parity

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Re: The Problem of Energy Weapons
« Reply #107 on: September 07, 2019, 02:43:26 PM »


No. If the flux efficiency of the weapon is worse than the inverse of the flux efficiency of the shield and you are over your standard dissipation then you pay 1 flux for >1 flux damage.

If your flux efficiency vs shields is 1.4 and their shield is .7(the inverse of which is 1.43) then you use 1 flux to do .98 damage. You only "win the flux war" here if you have more flux than what you're shooting at(and sometimes the sum of the things you're shooting at. This contributes to you losing the flux war.

Your flux increases at a rate of (flux generation - dissipation) which is less than flux generation. If you had no dissipation, then what you said would be true. But if you have dissipation, you're not generating the full flux amount in your own ship because some is being dissipated. So you're not paying 'full price' unless you have no spare dissipation.
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Goumindong

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Re: The Problem of Energy Weapons
« Reply #108 on: September 07, 2019, 03:08:16 PM »


No. If the flux efficiency of the weapon is worse than the inverse of the flux efficiency of the shield and you are over your standard dissipation then you pay 1 flux for >1 flux damage.

If your flux efficiency vs shields is 1.4 and their shield is .7(the inverse of which is 1.43) then you use 1 flux to do .98 damage. You only "win the flux war" here if you have more flux than what you're shooting at(and sometimes the sum of the things you're shooting at. This contributes to you losing the flux war.

Your flux increases at a rate of (flux generation - dissipation) which is less than flux generation. If you had no dissipation, then what you said would be true. But if you have dissipation, you're not generating the full flux amount in your own ship because some is being dissipated. So you're not paying 'full price' unless you have no spare dissipation.

Yes but what does dissipation have to do with firing over dissipation?

OK lets say you have 1000 flux dissipation. You can fill this in two ways, with heavy blasters or with pulse lasers.

Pulse lasers eat 999 flux dissipation for 909 DPS. Heavy Basters eat 1440 dissipation for 1000 DPS or 2160 dissipation for 1500 DPS.

Who wins the flux war? A: The pulse lasers. Not only are the heavy blasters shooting 440 OVER dissipation for 278 extra DPS(or 1160 over)  -> .694 efficiency which makes this a loser against anything but 1.44 shields or higher but if they fired in time such that they did not fire over dissipation they would do 694 DPS. Which we might note is less than 909. So they lose the flux war either way.

Now you might be saying "DUH" but apparently not because this is the kind of thing that you have to ignore in order to come to the conclusion that you had. This is because these considerations happen when youre fit. And every ship can fill out its flux dissipation with weapons. There are no ships that have excess dissipation to fire all of their weapons and they just don't have enough slots. This means that you can always move to more efficient weapons in more slots in order to keep your flux rate tied to your dissipation rate.

And it means that the purpose of "flux inefficient" weapons like the heavy blaster is not because they're going to win you the flux war, they're not, they're going to make it harder to win. Its because they're going to kill armor faster, when the flux war is already won.
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TaLaR

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Re: The Problem of Energy Weapons
« Reply #109 on: September 07, 2019, 03:36:51 PM »

PL may win straight AI vs AI, but player has many tricks up his sleeve to make HB come out on top.

You take a few potshots, retreat just out of enemy firing range, quick vent, repeat... Since HBs use up flux so fast, half or more of your combat cycle is spent venting with double efficiency(or even more considering RFC mod and PGM skill).

This works because:
- AI is overly cautious with keeping shields up.
- AI ships and characters are usually not optimized for dissipation, venting and shield efficiency. So even if AI opponent tried to do simultaneous vent, it would likely result in getting shot by HBs before it's able to raise shield.
- Even if AI was somehow optimized and willing to vent, I could launch annihilators/pilums right before starting my vent thus forcing opponent to deal with slowly approaching missiles before they can safely start their vent.

Last point actually gives me an idea - shotgun-like energy weapon with large burst, long cooldown and slowly moving projectiles, yet decent range. To fire before going into vent while simultaneously denying counter-vent. Medium slot.
« Last Edit: September 07, 2019, 03:42:38 PM by TaLaR »
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Harmful Mechanic

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Re: The Problem of Energy Weapons
« Reply #110 on: September 07, 2019, 04:29:48 PM »

Some variation in soft qualities like bolt speed would also help distinguish energy weapons from each other while not erasing the lack of inaccuracy that differentiates projectile energy weapons from ballistics.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: The Problem of Energy Weapons
« Reply #111 on: September 07, 2019, 04:38:29 PM »


No. If the flux efficiency of the weapon is worse than the inverse of the flux efficiency of the shield and you are over your standard dissipation then you pay 1 flux for >1 flux damage.

If your flux efficiency vs shields is 1.4 and their shield is .7(the inverse of which is 1.43) then you use 1 flux to do .98 damage. You only "win the flux war" here if you have more flux than what you're shooting at(and sometimes the sum of the things you're shooting at. This contributes to you losing the flux war.

Your flux increases at a rate of (flux generation - dissipation) which is less than flux generation. If you had no dissipation, then what you said would be true. But if you have dissipation, you're not generating the full flux amount in your own ship because some is being dissipated. So you're not paying 'full price' unless you have no spare dissipation.

Yes but what does dissipation have to do with firing over dissipation?

OK lets say you have 1000 flux dissipation. You can fill this in two ways, with heavy blasters or with pulse lasers.

Pulse lasers eat 999 flux dissipation for 909 DPS. Heavy Basters eat 1440 dissipation for 1000 DPS or 2160 dissipation for 1500 DPS.

Who wins the flux war? A: The pulse lasers. Not only are the heavy blasters shooting 440 OVER dissipation for 278 extra DPS(or 1160 over)  -> .694 efficiency which makes this a loser against anything but 1.44 shields or higher but if they fired in time such that they did not fire over dissipation they would do 694 DPS. Which we might note is less than 909. So they lose the flux war either way.

Now you might be saying "DUH" but apparently not because this is the kind of thing that you have to ignore in order to come to the conclusion that you had. This is because these considerations happen when youre fit. And every ship can fill out its flux dissipation with weapons. There are no ships that have excess dissipation to fire all of their weapons and they just don't have enough slots. This means that you can always move to more efficient weapons in more slots in order to keep your flux rate tied to your dissipation rate.

And it means that the purpose of "flux inefficient" weapons like the heavy blaster is not because they're going to win you the flux war, they're not, they're going to make it harder to win. Its because they're going to kill armor faster, when the flux war is already won.

Yes, you've constructed a scenario where the ship with bad weapon efficiency loses, but it didn't lose because 1.44>1,  it loses because of a combination of factors including the two ships dissipations, dps, flux generation etc. (all the things that go into the inequality). Comparing a weapon efficiency to a shield efficiency doesn't tell you if the weapon is contributing to winning the flux war by itself. I can construct scenarios easily where a ship with worse shield efficiency than 1.44 wins against a ship with a heavy blaster. All I'm saying is that comparing weapon efficiency to the enemies shield efficiency doesn't tell you if its helping to beat that ship, you have to consider all the other factors that go into the flux war as well.

Firing a heavy blaster will always make it harder to win than if you were firing a more efficient weapon with the same dps instead, but firing a heavy blaster will help more than not firing a lot of the time, and it also may help more than a lower dps weapon in some situations as well. Just looking at weapon efficiency and shield efficiency is not sufficient to figure out if its helping or not.



example 1:
ship 1: 10000 capacity, 100 dps, 150 wpn flux/sec (.66 weapon efficiency), 150 dissipation, 1 shields
ship 2: 10000 capacity, 175 dps, 100 wpn flux/sec, 100 dissipation, 1.6 shields (1.6 > 1/.66)

result: ship 2 overloads in 62.5 seconds, ship 1 overloads in 57.1 seconds so ship 2 wins. The weapon .66 efficiency weapon is not winning the flux war even though its efficiency is better than the inverse of shield efficiency.

Also notice that if I replace the 100dps/150fps weapon with a 500/750 weapon (that has the same efficiency), ship 1 overloads in 12.9 seconds and ship 2 overloads in 12.5 seconds meaning ship 1 wins by increasing dps without increasing efficiency.


example 2:
ship 1: 1400 capacity, wpn1: 100 dps 100 fps, wpn2: 100 dps 140 fps, dissipation 200, shields 1
ship 2: 1000 capacity, 200 dps, 200 fps, dissipation 200, shields 1
results:
case 1: ship 1 only fires weapon 1 --> ship 1 overloads in 7 seconds, ship 2 overloads in 10 seconds so ship 2 wins
case 2: ship 1 fires both weapons --> ship 1 overloads in 5.83 seconds, ship 2 overloads in 5 seconds so ship 1 wins

in this case, firing a 1.4 efficiency weapon into 1 efficiency shields results in a win when the ship would have otherwise lost, so firing the weapon wins the flux war compared to not firing the weapon


example 3:
ship 1: 2000 capacity, wpn1: 200 dps 220 fps, wpn 2&3: 100 dps 100 fps,  dissipation 300, shields 1
ship 2: 1000 capacity, 500 dps, 500 fps, dissipation 500, shields 1

case 1: ship 1 fires wpn 1&2 --> ship 1 overloads in 3.85 seconds, ship 2 overloads in 3.33 seconds so ship 1 wins
case 2: ship 1 fires wpn 2&3 --> ship 1 overloads in 4 seconds, ship 2 overloads in 5 seconds so ship 2 wins

this demonstrates that firing a more inefficient weapon with higher dps in place a of higher efficiency weapon with lower dps alows the ship to win when it otherwise would have lost, so firing the 1.1 efficiency weapon into 1 efficiency shields is better than a 1 efficiency weapon in this case
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TaLaR

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Re: The Problem of Energy Weapons
« Reply #112 on: September 07, 2019, 04:54:35 PM »

@intrinsic_parity

Easier way to describe the situation is 'wasted dissipation'. If you have any, you are doing it wrong. Most builds should have primary weapons flux + shield maintenance >= dissipation. Examples 2&3 break this rule in their lose scenario.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: The Problem of Energy Weapons
« Reply #113 on: September 07, 2019, 05:06:15 PM »

@intrinsic_parity

Easier way to describe the situation is 'wasted dissipation'. If you have any, you are doing it wrong. Most builds should have primary weapons flux + shield maintenance >= dissipation. Examples 2&3 break this rule in their lose scenario.
Yes, inefficient weapons that fully utilize dissipation are better than efficient weapons that fail too. I could also concoct a scenario where inefficient weapons leverage a major capacity advantage when an efficient weapon would not, even if the inefficient weapon exceeds the dissipation limit. Basically, inefficient weapons with high dps can allow you to leverage advantages in flux stats to win the flux war (particularly when weapon mounts are limited). None of this accounts for range either. Basically the whole point I was trying to make is that it's more complicated than just comparing weapon efficiency to enemy shield efficiency.
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Goumindong

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Re: The Problem of Energy Weapons
« Reply #114 on: September 07, 2019, 05:14:39 PM »

Yes, you've constructed a scenario where the ship with bad weapon efficiency loses, but it didn't lose because 1.44>1,  it loses because of a combination of factors including the two ships dissipations, dps, flux generation etc.

No. The ship has a 1 to 1 weapon. You don't even know whether or not it wins the flux war properly piloted as you have no clue what kind of weapons the other ship has. It could be a 2 to 1 weapon it would not matter.

What I did was construct a situation where the ship with the inefficient weapon against shields does itself a disservice to fire that weapon against an opponents shields. Its very easy to construct such a scenario and it is very hard to construct such a scenario where it is not the case. In fact, if you're at the fitting screen its almost impossible to construct such a scenario such that the ship with the heavy blaster(less efficient) would be better off in a flux war than if that ship had fit a pulse laser(more efficient). This is because there are very very few ships that are not able to fit more weapon flux per second than their dissipation can handle.(and the only ones that realistically can do so by fitting PD weapons with absurd flux efficiency)

Quote
example 1:
ship 1: 10000 capacity, 100 dps, 150 wpn flux/sec (.66 weapon efficiency), 150 dissipation, 1 shields
ship 2: 10000 capacity, 175 dps, 100 wpn flux/sec, 100 dissipation, 1.6 shields (1.6 > 1/.66)

result: ship 2 overloads in 62.5 seconds, ship 1 overloads in 57.1 seconds so ship 2 wins. The weapon .66 efficiency weapon is not winning the flux war even though its efficiency is better than the inverse of shield efficiency.

Also notice that if I replace the 100dps/150fps weapon with a 500/750 weapon (that has the same efficiency), ship 1 overloads in 12.9 seconds and ship 2 overloads in 12.5 seconds meaning ship 1 wins by increasing dps without increasing efficiency.

The weapon efficiency of .666 is greater than the inverse of the shield efficiency (.602) and such you will do better by spending flux over your dissipation level rather than not spending flux over your dissipation level. This is because you're adding more flux to the enemy 1.6 than it costs you to fire the weapon 1.5. You're losing this fight when you're NOT doing this because the weapon is inefficient. If it was a 1 to 1 weapon that did 150 dps for 150 fps then you would be better off with that weapon.

That's the point... Its what i was telling you. Thank you for showing it?

If the shield was 1.4 then 500/750 weapon fired 100% of the time would do WORSE than the 100/150 weapon fired 100% of the time. Ship 1 would lose faster by firing its weapon more because you would deal 1.4 damage and spend 1.5 flux. If you're under your dissipation you always fire. Always fire your dissipation.

Quote
example 2:
ship 1: 1400 capacity, wpn1: 100 dps 100 fps, wpn2: 100 dps 140 fps, dissipation 200, shields 1
ship 2: 1000 capacity, 200 dps, 200 fps, dissipation 200, shields 1
results:
case 1: ship 1 only fires weapon 1 --> ship 1 overloads in 7 seconds, ship 2 overloads in 10 seconds so ship 2 wins
case 2: ship 1 fires both weapons --> ship 1 overloads in 5.83 seconds, ship 2 overloads in 5 seconds so ship 1 wins

in this case, firing a 1.4 efficiency weapon into 1 efficiency shields results in a win when the ship would have otherwise lost, so firing the weapon wins the flux war compared to not firing the weapon

In this situation ship 1 is better off firing weapon 2 less often than maximum. They would want to fire weapon 1 all the time and weapon 2 only 71% of the time. It is obvious that not firing a weapon with spare dissipation is bad.

Quote
this demonstrates that firing a more inefficient weapon with higher dps in place a of higher efficiency weapon with lower dps alows the ship to win when it otherwise would have lost, so firing the 1.1 efficiency weapon into 1 efficiency shields is better than a 1 efficiency weapon in this case

What it demonstrates is that you do not understand the constraints and freedoms of the dilemma. The constraints and freedoms are related to fitting choices and non-binary firing choices. Which is to say in example 3 the ship could have fit 3 of weapon 2 and done 300 dps for 300 dissipation and been better off. Or it could have fired weapon 1 91% of the time instead of 100% of the time and been better off*. They did not gain in the fitting

*Actually in this case they would be better off firing the high flux weapon. They spend 20/2000 = 1% flux in order to deal 18/1000 flux = 1.8% flux to the target. So firing ALL of the weapons is ideal here. Ship 2 overloads in 2.5 seconds and ship 1 overloads in 3.2 seconds. After 2.5 seconds ship 1 has 450 cap left. In scenario 1 ship 1 has 268 cap left by not firing weapon 1. If they had fired so that they generated no hard flux ship 2 overloads in 3.43 seconds and ship 1 has 281 cap left.

But you should be able to look at your examples see how thin the margins are here. This is why, in the second post i explained it more fully. That rather than simply looking at the weapon efficiency and shield efficiency you had to look at the ratio of percentages of flux cost versus the percentage of flux damage. But the "dumb algorithm" is otherwise pretty good. This is because its harder to judge relative capacity when you're fitting and because player ships should tend to have more capacity than AI ships and the even dumber algorithm (don't fire <1.0 shield efficiency weapons into an enemies shield unless you have spare dissipation) is still pretty good for understanding what is going on since 1.0 is a pretty decent baseline for shields.
« Last Edit: September 07, 2019, 05:17:07 PM by Goumindong »
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: The Problem of Energy Weapons
« Reply #115 on: September 07, 2019, 06:32:43 PM »

But you should be able to look at your examples see how thin the margins are here. This is why, in the second post i explained it more fully. That rather than simply looking at the weapon efficiency and shield efficiency you had to look at the ratio of percentages of flux cost versus the percentage of flux damage. But the "dumb algorithm" is otherwise pretty good. This is because its harder to judge relative capacity when you're fitting and because player ships should tend to have more capacity than AI ships and the even dumber algorithm (don't fire <1.0 shield efficiency weapons into an enemies shield unless you have spare dissipation) is still pretty good for understanding what is going on since 1.0 is a pretty decent baseline for shields.

I have agreed with all of your general rules of thumb but you were not presenting them as rules of thumb initially which is what I was disagreeing with. All I was trying to point out was that it's a bit more complicated in some cases. I don't disagree with your assessments of general trends. The heavy blaster is super inefficient so I would agree that it rarely benefits the flux war except to leverage capacity advantages (which is what you account for by using percentage of total capacity instead of straight flux values). But less egregiously inefficient weapons like the plasma cannon are still filling the same role which is to leverage flux stat advantages with somewhat inefficient damage.
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Goumindong

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Re: The Problem of Energy Weapons
« Reply #116 on: September 07, 2019, 09:19:41 PM »

Plasma cannons have the same efficiency of pulse lasers and are quite efficient at shooting all types of defenses. Plasma cannons leverage higher flux dissipation stats and the inability to lower shields against them not higher capacity.

The % of capacity is not a rule of thumb and you did not agree with them you specifically said they were wrong. You wrote two big effort posts about how wrong it was without understanding what you were arguing against.

Its OK to be wrong. So long as when you are you can correct it
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Wyvern

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Re: The Problem of Energy Weapons
« Reply #117 on: September 07, 2019, 10:18:53 PM »

For me, one of the biggest examples for the "Heavy Blaster vs Pulse Laser" argument is the Tempest: I can fit two pulse lasers, or I can fit one heavy blaster; the latter option has a higher flux cost and a lower DPS, but also saves 8 ordnance points, which is a -lot- on a frigate - enough to, say, fit hardened shields -and- an extra two capacitors.  Which of those variants will "win the flux war"?  Well, it's actually pretty close, but here's the thing: it doesn't actually -matter- who "wins the flux war", because the HB variant can afford to lower its shields, while the pulse laser variant will die in about three hits if it's stupid enough to try that.

And if we put these two variants into an actual larger scale battle instead of a theory-crafted cage match?  The HB variant is even more clearly superior here - the combination of larger flux pool and more efficient shield means it's much more survivable, while the superior armor penetration of the HB means it's going to be a lot more able to either take advantage of vulnerable opponents, or force ships to shield against its shots and leave vulnerabilities open elsewhere.
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Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

MesoTroniK

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Re: The Problem of Energy Weapons
« Reply #118 on: September 07, 2019, 10:29:32 PM »

As for double tac laser overpowered?  Are you kidding me?!  Even the test results shown by your videos seem a bit on the slow side, but acceptable for the job they do, which is a long-range finisher after shields are defeated.  Tactical laser spam is not overpowered against the enemy (beams are slow at killing PD threats like those fighters and frigates, or stripping armor of big ships), and I seriously doubt one that is roughly double (somewhat less DPS, but better anti-armor) is too, if on a medium mount.  If it was, I would not be clamoring for a long-range simple damage medium beam effective against non-shield defenses.  (Could be new weapon, or could be phase lance or burst heavy laser getting at least 800 range.)  I guess a double beam would be overpowered if it was in a small mount, but this is a valuable medium mount.  Tactical laser in medium mount is underpowered, but it is the best option for long-range non-shield damage.
I am not kidding you, I am deadly serious. I know Megas as I been there, the Heavy Mining Laser didn't always sweep and some other mods add what is basically a double power Tactical Laser with no special mechanics. You are not looking at the whole picture, a weapons effectiveness is more than just time to kill it also involves Player Agency on both sides of a fight.

Think of it this way, you are high on flux or overloaded and within range of a beam? It paints you, and damages you and there isn't a single thing you can do about it besides attempt to get out of the turret arc or out of range. Tactical Lasers deal low enough damage that it is mostly fine, Graviton Beams and Ion Beams are not "general DPS beams", and the High Intensity Laser is a large mount and thus fairly rare in the grand scheme of things. And no Tactical Laser spam kill frigates once their shield is gone quite quickly, not sure why you think that isn't the case.

Anyways the Heavy Mining Laser is *slightly better* than its OP cost in Tactical Lasers against armor when up close but *slightly worse* when far away and about equal at mid range while being much more fair to frigates and fighters in general than a non-sweeping version. And it solves the player agency problem, since it is a beam weapon where range, evasive maneuvers, and the size and shape of the target actually matters! Overloaded or high on flux? You can do something besides eat DPS, and attempt to get out of range / the turret arc. You (and the AI) can simply get farther away, taking less damage! This vaguely resembles an accuracy mechanic for non-beam weapons. And on ships with generous numbers of med energy slots or ones lack the flux stats to use Pulse Lasers comfortably? It is a very viable alternative to using Tactical Lasers allowing you to use said small energy slots for more PD or whatever while offering *roughly* similar performance to two tactical lasers though with caveats and interesting balance mechanics to go with.

You are only looking at the weapons and their uses against the ships most players want to use/fight IE cruisers and capitals... If a weapon is not effective against them it is garbage, but often when it is effective enough against those it simply melts away frigates, fighters, and to a lesser extent destroyers with ease and this is doubly so for beams which the Heavy Mining Laser solves. That is the sort of balance the game is facing right now, because the current meta favors fleets composed of huge strong ships (or fighter spam heh, though this is a different subject), not nimble frigates... And the last thing it needs is weapons that further punish them.


Honestly, I am done discussing this subject. You can theory craft all you want Megas, but I actually have made these things and tested them before and after the sweeping mechanic and know all too well the issue of a "basic DPS beam" on a med slot if it doesn't have below average range, burst fire, or special mechanics or whatever other things etc etc to nerf them vs small targets.

sotanaht

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Re: The Problem of Energy Weapons
« Reply #119 on: September 08, 2019, 02:31:28 AM »


No. If the flux efficiency of the weapon is worse than the inverse of the flux efficiency of the shield and you are over your standard dissipation then you pay 1 flux for >1 flux damage.

If your flux efficiency vs shields is 1.4 and their shield is .7(the inverse of which is 1.43) then you use 1 flux to do .98 damage. You only "win the flux war" here if you have more flux than what you're shooting at(and sometimes the sum of the things you're shooting at. This contributes to you losing the flux war.

Your flux increases at a rate of (flux generation - dissipation) which is less than flux generation. If you had no dissipation, then what you said would be true. But if you have dissipation, you're not generating the full flux amount in your own ship because some is being dissipated. So you're not paying 'full price' unless you have no spare dissipation.

Yes but what does dissipation have to do with firing over dissipation?

OK lets say you have 1000 flux dissipation. You can fill this in two ways, with heavy blasters or with pulse lasers.

Pulse lasers eat 999 flux dissipation for 909 DPS. Heavy Basters eat 1440 dissipation for 1000 DPS or 2160 dissipation for 1500 DPS.

Who wins the flux war? A: The pulse lasers. Not only are the heavy blasters shooting 440 OVER dissipation for 278 extra DPS(or 1160 over)  -> .694 efficiency which makes this a loser against anything but 1.44 shields or higher but if they fired in time such that they did not fire over dissipation they would do 694 DPS. Which we might note is less than 909. So they lose the flux war either way.

Now you might be saying "DUH" but apparently not because this is the kind of thing that you have to ignore in order to come to the conclusion that you had. This is because these considerations happen when youre fit. And every ship can fill out its flux dissipation with weapons. There are no ships that have excess dissipation to fire all of their weapons and they just don't have enough slots. This means that you can always move to more efficient weapons in more slots in order to keep your flux rate tied to your dissipation rate.

And it means that the purpose of "flux inefficient" weapons like the heavy blaster is not because they're going to win you the flux war, they're not, they're going to make it harder to win. Its because they're going to kill armor faster, when the flux war is already won.
When you factor in the enemies damage to your shield, faster DPS weapons put you at a higher advantage when facing enemies with more efficient weapons themselves.  If you are up against heavy/storm needlers for instance, you aren't going to beat those in terms of efficiency, but if you can do enough damage fast enough they stop firing sooner.

Imagine you are playing with 1 capital vs multiple destroyers.  Combined, those destroyers probably have way more total max flux and dissipation.  They may or may not have efficient weapons, but even inefficent weapons they probably win.  But individually they are pretty fragile.  A quick burst to take one or two out before they do significant damage leaves you taking less damage from the others, and you can probably out-flux 2 or 3 destroyers where you couldn't out-flux 5 of them at once.

Want to guess what the best burst DPS (non-missile) weapon is?  I'll give you a hint, it's not ballistic.
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