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[Johnny Cocas]

In regards to the original topic, the idea of a medium mounted long range energy weapon must be handled with care as not to be overpowered. Medium weapon mounts are arguably the most commonly used weapon mounts for most ships in order to deal damage, as many don't even have large mounts, so a medium weapon will be something that will be used very frequently.
That being said, ballistic weapons have a lead in terms of range in the medium slots area, with many coming close to the 1k mark, but that doesnt make them overpowered.... The energy mounted weapons that exist in vanilla are quite powerful, dealing a lot of damage and many of them dealing EMP damage at the same time, that makes them extremely dangerous, and so having a shorter range on them means you won't be able to siege enemy ships easily. This is even worse for Beam weapons.... You can dodge a projectile, usually the stronger more damaging projectiles are slow, just so you have a chance to dodge them; beams on the other hand are instant hits, they will stick with you for as long as the ship firing them has enough flux or remains alive. This sort of constant pressure made by beams turns them into annoyance machines that deal pressure but are not quite damaging, otherwise beam spam would be a valid (and top tier) meta, so good nobody would even play mid or low tech ships because beams would be king. The way to deal with beam weapons is to either make them weak (since they are a constant/permanent way of dealing damage, no matter how low it is), or give them something special that makes them unable to fill that role.
The way I see it you have three options when it comes to making a beam weapon:
- Damage
- Range
- Usability
These three make a triangle and you must pick an area of that triangle, you can't have all 3 maxed out. If you want damage you must reduce its range and/or change its usability, by either making the damage specialised (ie. Graviton Beam (Kinetic), HIL (HE), Ion Beam (EMP)), making the weapon fire in bursts (like a lance), or if you want to be creative, make its accuracy unreliable at long ranges.
What this means is that a damage dealing long range energy weapon must have a drawback, a very big one or a number of them, because energy weapons deal equal damage to both shields and hull, this is why most energy mounted mediums have lower range except (once again) the specialised ones.

And I'm not even taking into account the fact that beam weapons are frigate killers... A beam that sticks with the frigate until it explodes? Surely we need one of those as they do not sound overpowered... *laughs in sarcasm*
Overfluxing the enemy with constant beam damage is a big no, sustained fire weapons are not supposed to be able to start firing and maul down the enemy to pieces, sustained fire weapons are supposed to maintain a constant pressure on the enemy and force it to keep some range or vent, and those are the ones that usually deal less damage even though they have higher ranges (ie. graviton beam). No, a couple of graviton beams won't be able to force the enemy to vent or overflux, and if they did, they would be overpowered no matter how you see it.

But what about the tac lasers?
Well, tbh I can't decide where to put them in the range of under-to-overpowered, but I use them frequently on most of my ships and they always perform as expected: Long range annoyances that deal constant damage. Are they OP? Maybe a little bit, but there are so many other reliable ways to deal damage to an enemy ship that I often remove them completely and only install them on support ships to maintain the pressure on the enemy and will rather equip PD weapons on the small mounts for all other ships. The tac laser is an energy mounted energy damage weapon, it is not a specialised weapon and yet it has 1k range, as a small weapon... A medium mounted tac laser with medium mount stats would be a nightmare, nothing would ever come close to a ship equipped with 4 of those and a fleet of ships with that sort of weapon would be hand down unbeatable, beam weapons can not have long range and energy damage on the same sentence, the tac laser is the exception because the damage is so low it may be somewhat neglectable, but from medium mounts and up you simply can't do it, just as you can't make a small mounted beam with twice the power of the tac laser... If the tac laser is on the edge of being OP anything over it is well, over that line heh.

And like some people have mentioned before, people may not even be considering the fact that a weapon that is good agaisnt capitals and cruisers will murder frigates and destroyers, but if it can't reliably overflux or damage large ships it is considered to be a bad weapon. This is wrong on so many levels, and this happens due to the current game's meta, favouring large hulking ships in a fleet that can take hits while murdering everything else. If a weapon can damage a capital ship, it will easily kill a frigate, so making more medium mounted energy weapons that can easily outrange the low range burst weapons that frigates and destroyers may be equipping in order to deal with the capitals is not the ideal way to go, and will further push the game into the capital ship meta we currently have...

Games like Battlestar Galactica Online have a feature that has always triggered me to some extent... Basically, ships have a "dodge" stat, meaning a ship has a chance of completely dodging an incoming projectile given the stat is high enough and/or the enemy has no weapon accuracy stat. But the games are different, in BSGO you simply click the target and fire, all projectiles follow the enemy regardless the direction, but here's the thing.... In Starsector you can't simply click and fire, you have to aim, shoot, and hope the enemy doesn't dodge the projectile... That is, unless you are using a beam weapon... And that is my point, you can't have high damage beam weapons with high range as well, they will be OP and it doesn't matter what people may say. The fact is that is you create a long range energy beam weapon EVERYBODY will start using them because all other weapons will start to be overwhelmed by it, fighters, frigates and to some extend, destroyers as well, will all disappear from the battles because they won't be able to deal enough damage to the enemy before they all die, that is if they can even reach the enemy... The game would become dull and boring, it would turn into a simple DPS/flux battle to see which fleet has the most beams and can fire them more effectively...

TL:DR: Long range medium beams with energy damage get a massive no if they are simply a resized tac laser...

[Grievous69]

@Johnny Cocas
Those are some pretty good arguments and you're right, that would be kinda crazy vs frigates. But you completely ignored that beam weapons have stats such as turn rate and flux cost. Just becuase people say "bigger tac laser basically" it doesn't mean it should be fast and low flux cost. Also your big part of the post assumed that every single ship would have those beams and that they would crush anything. That's simply not true. Beam spam works if you have overwhelming numbers, but in campaign it's the opposite. It's easy to counter beam spam, unless the opposing fleet is full of weak frigates and fighters.

[Johnny Cocas]

@Johnny Cocas
Those are some pretty good arguments and you're right, that would be kinda crazy vs frigates. But you completely ignored that beam weapons have stats such as turn rate and flux cost. Just becuase people say "bigger tac laser basically" it doesn't mean it should be fast and low flux cost. Also your big part of the post assumed that every single ship would have those beams and that they would crush anything. That's simply not true. Beam spam works if you have overwhelming numbers, but in campaign it's the opposite. It's easy to counter beam spam, unless the opposing fleet is full of weak frigates and fighters.

Allow me to disagree, and here's why...
- A beam with 1k range or more has a large enough range for it to be able to still turn and manage to hit the enemy ship, even if it has a low turning rate.
- There's always the ship turning speed to compensate for low weapon turning rate.
- You don't need an entire fleet to beam spam a long range beam because you wouldn't even need that many of them to be effective.
- How do you counter a beam spam of long range Energy damage beams? Mind you I'm talking about the hypothetical medium sized beam.
- Having this hypothetical beam weapon with a high enough flux cost for it to be "balanced" would render it unusable and useless, thus not even justifying the need for one or its existance.
- a single ship with a HIL can kill you if you down your shields if you are on a destroyer or anything smaller than that, because that is a large HE damage beam, now imagine a single ship with two or three beams that deal energy damage... It won't care if you have your shields up or not, it will simply fire away and kill both your shields and then the hull. Sure, it generates soft flux, but it generates flux, and it wouldn't be a low amount of it!
- I assume many ships will use the beam because people use whatever weapon is good, whatever weapon performs as the player wants. Will you use a flak cannon to murder capitals? I bet you won't, and the reason is the weapon is not effective doing that job. Beams, on the other hand, unless they are lances and/or fire in bursts, are effective against everything, the only thing stopping people from using anything but beams on all high-tech ships is that beams are situational right now, they either deal kinetic, HE or EMP damage (not considering the small beams) and thus are not effective to destroy an enemy ship on their own, they need something else to strip the shields and/or armor first, and that is why there are burst energy weapons or energy projectile weapons, and of course, they have lower range because of the fact that they are effective against everything. You create an energy damage medium beam that acts as an enlargened tac laser and I can bet whatever you want that it WILL be used, abused, stacked, spammed, and it will melt everything in their path 100% of the times, it may very well even kill low tech ships and factinos completely, as they will either be murdered by them or not used because there are better things to use...

[Megas]

@ MesoTroniK:  It is not all theory-crafting.  I try some of this stuff in battles.  For beams, not exactly a medium double tactical laser, but I tried the six tactical lasers with Eagle.  (Basically the three medium beams without supplimental PD.)  Not terribly impressed.  Decent anti-armor, but not powerful enough to steamroll fights, and the flux load was not insignificant.  I would not expect a new 200 damage/flux, and even 150 is pushing it, due to better anti-armor than 2x75 (and tougher flux load), assuming continuous beam.  Meanwhile, something like phase lance has too much flux load (and very likely too effective if it had 1000 range out-of-the-box).  Does not help that some other things you consider overpowered, I consider perfectly fine or at least not unbalanced enough to be a problem.  Simply put, we will disagree on some of this stuff.


I tried some of the other medium energy weapons, namely heavy burst laser, phase lance, and pulse laser.

Heavy burst laser is no good for assault unless I control them manually.  It prioritizes missile-defense as expected.  My only problem with it is horrible efficiency compared to the smaller burst PD.  It also barely has more damage than burst PD, so the only good reason to take this is more range, but that is real corner-case.  Usually, it is better to put normal burst PD and save OP, unless the ship cannot, like Aurora with that rear synergy.

Tried Phase Lance and Pulse Laser as non-missile PD (anti-fighter/anti-frigate) on Eagle.  Both are similar enough in effectiveness.  Phase Lance is a bit better only because its flux load is not as high.  Still, flux load is a bit high on Phase Lance.  (Efficiency is not good at 1.2.)  If Phase Lance had better efficiency and no other changes, it could have a real niche as alternative PD.  Phase Lance needs something more to set it further apart from Pulse Laser.

Also your big part of the post assumed that every single ship would have those beams and that they would crush anything. That's simply not true. Beam spam works if you have overwhelming numbers, but in campaign it's the opposite. It's easy to counter beam spam, unless the opposing fleet is full of weak frigates and fighters.

Agreed.

As for Johnny's points...

In regards to the original topic, the idea of a medium mounted long range energy weapon must be handled with care as not to be overpowered. Medium weapon mounts are arguably the most commonly used weapon mounts for most ships in order to deal damage, as many don't even have large mounts, so a medium weapon will be something that will be used very frequently.

In that case, that will go mostly to the short-ranged hard-flux, high damage, or EMP weapons for the high-tech ships.  Some are fine due to mounts that can use kinetics or special systems that can bypass shields, but others need Sabot spam, except Wolf who is screwed.

On midline ships, if my ship is short on OP, missiles are the first thing to go, closely followed by energy mounts not needed for PD.  On Conquest, the medium energy mount is either empty or has more burst PD.  On Sunder, if I use tachyon lance or plasma cannon, the energy mounts are empty because none of the weapons are good enough, and I need the OP to support the heavy weapon plus possible railguns.

Beams are perfectly accurate, but those continuous beams smaller than heavy are slow frigate killers.  Painfully slow if the frigate is shielded, and none of the beams are Graviton (but then Graviton will not crack armor fast enough).  An Eagle with six tac lasers against a group of frigates?  Eagle may kill one frigate, then needs to shake off the other four before they swarm and kill it.  Easier said than done.  I even tried them against fighters.  They do not kill as fast as shorter-ranged pulse lasers or phase lance.

- A beam with 1k range or more has a large enough range for it to be able to still turn and manage to hit the enemy ship, even if it has a low turning rate.
- There's always the ship turning speed to compensate for low weapon turning rate.

Ship turning speed can interfere with beam use.  If the weapon turns slowly enough, it cannot offset the ship's speed.  Tactical laser is fast, but not so fast as to always keep up with a fast turning ship.  I would expect a medium beam having Medium speed, unless it is a PD beam.  For a tactical laser to do its work, the ship should be as steady as possible (i.e., no sudden turns).

- You don't need an entire fleet to beam spam a long range beam because you wouldn't even need that many of them to be effective.

That is the point.  Instead of needing six or more tactical lasers just to burn a hole through armor and do more than tickle hull of one ship, you only need about three.  Six tactical lasers may be enough for anti-shield against frigates, but if I was interested in that, I would either get Graviton Beams instead or shoot them with hard-flux ballistics (or spam Sabots in case of high-tech ships).

- a single ship with a HIL can kill you if you down your shields if you are on a destroyer or anything smaller than that, because that is a large HE damage beam, now imagine a single ship with two or three beams that deal energy damage... It won't care if you have your shields up or not, it will simply fire away and kill both your shields and then the hull. Sure, it generates soft flux, but it generates flux, and it wouldn't be a low amount of it!
Low enough to impractical.

Energy damage is not all that it is cracked up to be.  Not as long as the most difficult and rewarding fights are against Ordos with Radiants in them.  (Nearly anything else is weaker than full Ordos.)  It can be useful as anti-armor in a pinch, but unless it is overwhelming like plasma cannon, ships are better off with mostly kinetics plus enough anti-armor of some kind.  For some high-tech ships like Shrike and Aurora, that probably means Sabots and Expanded Missile Racks.  Wolf is out of luck.

Beams, on the other hand, unless they are lances and/or fire in bursts, are effective against everything, the only thing stopping people from using anything but beams on all high-tech ships is that beams are situational right now...

The reason why I do not use beams on high-tech ships for non-PD purposes is they have low DPS and deal only soft flux, and most ships cannot fire enough to overcome dissipation.  The ships I am mostly likely to use beams as assault weapons are midline, and usually to compliment ballistics.

[Johnny Cocas]

@ MesoTroniK:  It is not all theory-crafting.  I try some of this stuff in battles.  For beams, not exactly a medium double tactical laser, but I tried the six tactical lasers with Eagle.  (Basically the three medium beams without supplimental PD.)  Not terribly impressed.  Decent anti-armor, but not powerful enough to steamroll fights, and the flux load was not insignificant.  I would not expect a new 200 damage/flux, and even 150 is pushing it, due to better anti-armor than 2x75 (and tougher flux load), assuming continuous beam.  Meanwhile, something like phase lance has too much flux load (and very likely too effective if it had 1000 range out-of-the-box).  Does not help that some other things you consider overpowered, I consider perfectly fine or at least not unbalanced enough to be a problem.  Simply put, we will disagree on some of this stuff.

I'm sorry to tell you this, but MesoTroniK is right, and I agree with many (if not all) of the things he said in regards to balancing and game mechanics. I'd even reach as far as to tell you that you are yet another one of those players who would like to see a niche weapon boosted or simply wants weapons to be more powerful, but that is not how things work.... The game has a certain weapon balance and (most) modders try to add new content that is on-par with vanilla SS in terms of balance, otherwise faction mods would be an arms race to see who can make the most powerful gun (as in, the one with the highest stats). It is by no accident that the Heavy Mining Laser has been tweaked the way it was, always remember that.

Also your big part of the post assumed that every single ship would have those beams and that they would crush anything. That's simply not true. Beam spam works if you have overwhelming numbers, but in campaign it's the opposite. It's easy to counter beam spam, unless the opposing fleet is full of weak frigates and fighters.

Agreed.

Alright, then answer me this as well:

- How do you counter a beam spam of long range Energy damage beams? Mind you I'm talking about the hypothetical medium sized beam.

As for Johnny's points...

Ohhh boy I feel like this is going to be good from that sentence alone heh

In that case, that will go mostly to the short-ranged hard-flux, high damage, or EMP weapons for the high-tech ships.  Some are fine due to mounts that can use kinetics or special systems that can bypass shields, but others need Sabot spam, except Wolf who is screwed.

On midline ships, if my ship is short on OP, missiles are the first thing to go, closely followed by energy mounts not needed for PD.  On Conquest, the medium energy mount is either empty or has more burst PD.  On Sunder, if I use tachyon lance or plasma cannon, the energy mounts are empty because none of the weapons are good enough, and I need the OP to support the heavy weapon plus possible railguns.

You can equip whatever you want on your ships, I don't know what it has to do with what I said but ok...

Beams are perfectly accurate, but those continuous beams smaller than heavy are slow frigate killers.  Painfully slow if the frigate is shielded, and none of the beams are Graviton (but then Graviton will not crack armor fast enough).  An Eagle with six tac lasers against a group of frigates?  Eagle may kill one frigate, then needs to shake off the other four before they swarm and kill it.  Easier said than done.  I even tried them against fighters.  They do not kill as fast as shorter-ranged pulse lasers or phase lance.

First, Graviton Beams were never made to crack armor;
Second, tac lasers were never made to be used as main weapons meant to destroy enemy ships, they are meant to put some constant pressure on the enemy, just like a medium energy damage beam weapon could be used for, but if you want a single (or a pair of) continuous damage beam to be used as a main damage dealing tool capable of destroying an enemy ship you are entering the "overpowered" area of weapon balancing. The fact you can destroy a frigate with 6 tac lasers is enough to support my theory, because those can be massed quite easily as "support" weapons on all of the fleet's cruisers and capitals and use them to keep all frigates at bay.

Ship turning speed can interfere with beam use.  If the weapon turns slowly enough, it cannot offset the ship's speed.  Tactical laser is fast, but not so fast as to always keep up with a fast turning ship.  I would expect a medium beam having Medium speed, unless it is a PD beam.  For a tactical laser to do its work, the ship should be as steady as possible (i.e., no sudden turns).

Yes, that is quite obvious, but you do know the beam will slow its turning when firing, right? If it didn't, the hypothetical medium beam I was discussing would be even more overpowered as it would be able to keep track of the enemy ships.
And again, if a weapon turns so slowly it is basically a stationary weapon, why even have it? It won't be fun to use, it won't be functional, and will only really have a use as a hardpoint for frigates or something similar... It is not even worth having such a weapon...

That is the point.  Instead of needing six or more tactical lasers just to burn a hole through armor and do more than tickle hull of one ship, you only need about three.  Six tactical lasers may be enough for anti-shield against frigates, but if I was interested in that, I would either get Graviton Beams instead or shoot them with hard-flux ballistics (or spam Sabots in case of high-tech ships).

I don't think you are understanding my point... I don't want a strong long range beam, the fact that I wouldn't even need that many of them in a fleet for them to wreak havoc is the main reason they are already strong enough. Personally, I favor specialised weaponry over all-purpose weapons, stuff that either deals Kinetic or HE damage will always be better regarded by me than a weapon that deals Energy damage because the specialised ones are fun, a lot more fun in fact, but the important thing to take note here is that tac lasers should not be used as a main damage dealing weapon, nor expected to be, and yet you use them as defense to justify the existance of a medium sized version of them...

Low enough to impractical.
Energy damage is not all that it is cracked up to be.  Not as long as the most difficult and rewarding fights are against Ordos with Radiants in them.  (Nearly anything else is weaker than full Ordos.)  It can be useful as anti-armor in a pinch, but unless it is overwhelming like plasma cannon, ships are better off with mostly kinetics plus enough anti-armor of some kind.  For some high-tech ships like Shrike and Aurora, that probably means Sabots and Expanded Missile Racks.  Wolf is out of luck.

Of course, I don't want a beam weapon that generates enough soft flux fast enough for it to render all weapons useless, and to make non-beam weapons useless all you had to do would be to make beams as strong as ballistic weapons. Why? Point and shoot, no brain needed, guarenteed results. If you want anti-armor as a high-tech faction you use burst weapons or weapons that fire projectiles, they have the damage to strip both the armor and the shields because they deal Energy damage, and again, that is why they have lower range.

The reason why I do not use beams on high-tech ships for non-PD purposes is they have low DPS and deal only soft flux, and most ships cannot fire enough to overcome dissipation.  The ships I am mostly likely to use beams as assault weapons are midline, and usually to compliment ballistics.

Precisely, it forces you to use a multitude of weapons to fulfill all roles, and that is exactly what you should want for this game. The moment you have a single beam weapon that can perform all roles equally you have a beam that rises above all other weapons, beam or not, in terms of usability and desirability, and no other weapon will ever be used. I don't want that, and most of the SS community doesn't want that either. Your opinion appears to be the opposite though, and that makes it much harder to speak about weapon balancing with you

[Goumindong]

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.

Not if their flux efficiency is worse than the targets shield efficiency. You will flux out faster if you fire inefficiently over your capacity compared to if you had not.

Destroyers v capitals is one situation that can reverse this but even then this generally falls for the destroyers. If you flux up to push one away youre now high on flux with two shooters closing in.

[Limitless]

I mentioned in my post that I think the primary purpose of a beam weapon is shield pressure, with the next priority being poke damage. Phase lance is a strike weapon, causing overloads or stipping armour. Ion beam is special and disables ships.

While a medium beam that does 150 dps might be nice, I'd much rather have a 600 range IR Blaster or a more efficient version of a pulse laser that does a touch less damage.

The way things are, Ballistic weapons will always be superior in that they are way more efficient (doubly so when firing on their intended target) AND they can outrange energy weapons, so all energy weapons have is damage, and they don't have enough to feel powerful imo

[Megas]

It is by no accident that the Heavy Mining Laser has been tweaked the way it was, always remember that.

Yes, and it makes sense from a lore perspective, but as a gold standard or paragon of balance for all other beams to remember, I disagree with that.

I don't think you are understanding my point... I don't want a strong long range beam, the fact that I wouldn't even need that many of them in a fleet for them to wreak havoc is the main reason they are already strong enough. Personally, I favor specialised weaponry over all-purpose weapons, stuff that either deals Kinetic or HE damage will always be better regarded by me than a weapon that deals Energy damage because the specialised ones are fun, a lot more fun in fact, but the important thing to take note here is that tac lasers should not be used as a main damage dealing weapon, nor expected to be, and yet you use them as defense to justify the existance of a medium sized version of them...

I do not think an upgraded tac laser or whatever form it takes is all-purpose, just anti-armor/anti-hull.  If I want shield pressure, there is graviton.  If I want... weird stuff, ion beam.  If I want a simple damage beam to attack the enemy from afar while he is vulnerable, there is nothing... except tactical laser, which is too weak on a medium.  (Few ships with many mounts can make it work, but it is sub-optimal compared to other options.)  A medium damage-only beam is not all-purpose, unless damage is too high.  An all-purpose beam would be something that deal 200+ damage per second.  Even then, the flux load would probably be as high as ion beam or phase lance, which will probably make it kind of specialized because the flux load is too high to comfortably support more than few.

Some think having a halfway between Tactical Laser and HIL in a medium is overpowered.  I am not convinced that it is too powerful.  It is overpowered if compared to tactical laser, which is to be expected.  Is it too powerful to be a game-breaker, I do not think so (provided damage is not too high) even if others do.

[TaLaR]

We already had Phase Beam in past (Which became Phase Lance later). It had same range as Tac laser at the time, I think 800, and was exactly the upscaled Tac.

It was decent with Needlers, but not really overpowered (then again, fighters were minor annoyance at most at that time, so being good against them was not important).

Problem with this kind of weapons setup is that it is very prone to wasting flux. In kinetic ballistic + energy beams combo you do NOT produce enough soft flux to overpower enemy dissipation most of the time.
- If enemy can fire back distance-wise and has better than 1.0 shield firing them only loses you the flux war (unless you are just leveraging overall pool/dissipation advantage).
- If enemy doesn't have long range weapons and has only hard flux, their dissipation is already countered by just keeping shield up, firing insufficient beams is just wasting your flux.

So you need to sync your fire with kinetic projectile impacts, to exploit shield drop windows. AI wasn't good at this, so this kind of builds didn't work for it. And for player it was quite micro-intensive, yet not particularly fast way to kill things.

[ANGRYABOUTELVES]

You cannot balance anything in a vacuum. Energy weapons are not balanced against ballistic weapons; complete ships are balanced against complete ships. Weapons must be balanced with consideration to the ships that they are mounted on. High tech ships are highly mobile and have very good flux stats; if they had weapons with the same range and efficiency as ballistics, they could simply disengage from any fight they can't win. Imagine an Aurora with the same range as a Dominator. The Aurora could trade fire with the Dominator at maximum range, back off slightly to dissipate more flux than the Dominator due to its better flux stats, then re-engage and repeat until the Dominator dies with no risk or chance of losing. This is why hard-flux energy weapons have short range and poor efficiency.

However, having shorter range means that the amount of time you have to fire on your target is also shorter. The Aurora has to dive into longer ranged weaponry, get shots on target, then back off while potentially still taking fire. This is why hard-flux energy weapons have high DPS and/or high burst damage; they need it to make the most of the short engagement times inherent to the ships they're mounted on, as well as to help compensate for the poor efficiency. If hard-flux energy weapons need to be buffed (they don't), they should be given higher DPS or higher burst damage, not longer range or better efficiency.

Not all energy mounts are on high-tech ships. Mid-tech ships can also mount energy weaponry, and this is where the beams you dismiss as useless find their niche. Mid-tech gun platforms absolutely love the Ion Beam, because they can combine it with similarly ranged kinetic ballistics and cripple their opponents from incredibly long distances. The High Intensity Laser combines well on a fleet level with previously mentioned mid-tech gun platforms, as it forces shields up to take heavy kinetic bursts in a way that cannot be shield-flickered. A Hellbore shot can be caught with a quick shield flicker, while the kinetic burst is taken on armor. Not so with the HIL; it's a constant stream of armor-chewing death. There are multiple reasons why the Paragon is the only vanilla ship that can combine large energies and medium ballistics, and the HIL is one of them. A HIL Sunder or two mixed into a group of heavy-kinetic Hammerheads or Falcons is extremely hard to deal with when they're all moving together. A Conquest with a large energy would be terrifying and overpowered, just because it could provide both HIL and kinetic burst on its own.

You are correct that small energy weapons are not good outside of specialized roles, but I think that's mostly fine. The only ship that is really hurt by this is the Scarab; every other ship that can mount small energies can also mount either similarly sized ballistics, or larger energy weapons. This is mostly a problem with the Scarab not having high enough numbers, not with small energy weapons.

[Megas]

@ TaLaR:  Phase Beam had 700 range, just 100 above Pulse Laser's 600.  (Pulse Laser was only about 225 DPS before flux supercharge.)  It also had EMP damage (low and worthless), costs 12 OP, and efficiency may have been worse than Tactical Laser.  It was continuous instead of burst.  Old Phase Beam was worthless for pressuring shields.  Graviton Beam did that better.  Tactical Laser either somewhere between 600 and 800 range at the time too.  (Do not remember exact range.)  Also back then, Ion Cannon had 600 range (and IR pulse laser only had 100 DPS and 500 range).

Back then, there was no CR, and kiting until beams slowly grind down weaker ships was an option.  Also, ballistics had ammo like missiles.

However, having shorter range means that the amount of time you have to fire on your target is also shorter. The Aurora has to dive into longer ranged weaponry, get shots on target, then back off while potentially still taking fire. This is why hard-flux energy weapons have high DPS and/or high burst damage; they need it to make the most of the short engagement times inherent to the ships they're mounted on, as well as to help compensate for the poor efficiency. If hard-flux energy weapons need to be buffed (they don't), they should be given higher DPS or higher burst damage, not longer range or better efficiency.

Unfortunately, high-tech ships' flux stats are not that much better than other ships, and weapons smaller than heavy are so inefficient that high-tech ships without ballistics need to either spam sabots to make up for inefficient weapons or spend a lot of OP getting all of the flux and shield hullmods to make energy weapons usable enough, and doing the latter will probably means gutting the ship's weapon loadout because all of that OP has to come from somewhere.  Doing the former probably means getting Expanded Missile Racks to have enough Sabots to paralyze then kill few ships.  It also does not help that the ships seem to be priced as if used by a skilled player instead of AI.  AI does dumb things and probably needs an Aggressive officer (or Eliminate) to behave properly.

A Conquest with a large energy would be terrifying and overpowered, just because it could provide both HIL and kinetic burst on its own.

Nevermind that!  How about Tachyon Lance instead?  That would be partially unblockable with the kinetics Conquest can pump out.  This is one of the tricks Prometheus 2 can do, with Heavy Autocannons and lances, and it is quite effective for a sub-par capital.  I do not think four lance Paragon would be so great without HVDs or Heavy Needler putting hard flux on shields from long range (to enable lances to shield pierce) in a pinch.

You are correct that small energy weapons are not good outside of specialized roles, but I think that's mostly fine. The only ship that is really hurt by this is the Scarab; every other ship that can mount small energies can also mount either similarly sized ballistics, or larger energy weapons. This is mostly a problem with the Scarab not having high enough numbers, not with small energy weapons.

The biggest problem with Scarab is dissipation.  Once Temporal Shell is on, it has enough flux left to support one or two IR Pulse Lasers (or one IR and one Ion Cannon).  Scarab may be able to use short-range weapons well with its system, just not enough of them.  Does dissipation slow down when time shift is active?  If so, maybe dissipation can be sped up to offset the time shift, or flux cost reduced like for Accelerated Ammo Feeder.

Wolf is also kind of hurt because its dissipation means it can only use beams comfortably in its medium mount unless it spends nearly everything in vents and hullmods.  Wolf with Pulse Laser, two PD beams, and the rest in vents and hullmods is kind of stupid.

[TaLaR]

@Megas

Phase beam:
Nah, as I said, I was using it in sync with Needler salvos. That way it was competitive enough loadout for Medusa/Falcon/Eagle. Though annoying to set up since you needed to:
- start firing alternating needlers manually
- switch to auto to maintain firing pattern (repeat 1&2 every time you engage anything, since autofire ignores alternating mode)
- manually time phase beam attacks to sync with Needler-induced shield drops.

Trying to actually overpressure shields with Phase beams was always a bad idea.

Scarab:
I think Tempo Shell does nothing to flux dissipation (but since you are in faster time, you effectively get advantage).

For a 8 DP ship Scarab is a huge disappointment, squeezing enough use out it's system is tricky and doable only for player. Even then Scarab's system drains CR at alarming rate without bringing nearly as many advantages as phase cloak.

[Goumindong]

Unfortunately, high-tech ships' flux stats are not that much better than other ships, and weapons smaller than heavy are so inefficient that high-tech ships without ballistics need to either spam sabots to make up for inefficient weapons or spend a lot of OP getting all of the flux and shield hullmods to make energy weapons usable enough, and doing the latter will probably means gutting the ship's weapon loadout because all of that OP has to come from somewhere.  Doing the former probably means getting Expanded Missile Racks to have enough Sabots to paralyze then kill few ships.  It also does not help that the ships seem to be priced as if used by a skilled player instead of AI.  AI does dumb things and probably needs an Aggressive officer (or Eliminate) to behave properly

Let me get this straight. High tech ships dont have enough flux to be competitive unless they spend a bunch of OP on flux enhancing skills, but high tech weapons use too much flux in order to fire a full compliment....

The Medusa has 400 base flux and 120 cost shield. This gives it a post shield flux of 280. 480 with max vents. 540 with front shield emitter or stabalized shields.  And 580 with loadout 2.... 2 pulse lasers for 20 OP use 666 flux/second.

A Hammerhead has 250 flux dissipation and 100 shield. So it has 150 flux dissipation. 350 with max vents 390 with loadout design 2 and 440 with stabilized shields.  2 railguns and 2 heavy mortars cost 24 OP and use 660 flux/second. Better weapons cost even more OP and you still need 2 of each to use up your flux budget. Want needlers? Gotta have 4 more OP. Now youre at 28. Arbalests and LAG? 26 OP (and then you lose your range advantage) 

This means the medusa has 80% more base flux, 87% more post shield base flux, 37% more post shield max vent flux and 31% more flux in the worst case scenario. It also has a 6,000 capacity .6 shield compared to a 5000 capacity .8 shield for a total of 60% more shield capacity.

The only way you get out of this with more OP is if you dont fit stabalized shields and use the cheapest combo of reasonable weapons... 2x rail, 2x heavy mortar put you ahead by 2 OP. But now the Medusa is ahead by 49% dissipation.

Now the hammerhead still does better idealized shield DPS than the Medusa (especially when its active is on) but not by a lot and i am not sure that real world damage doesnt favor the more accurate and faster projectile pulse lasers.

Edit: Only the wolf is really left out in terms of flux versus its low/mid line equivalents. Its got less post shield flux than the lasher. The aurora has 800/400 compared to the eagles 525/315. The Apogee is kinda left in the cold but it also kinda should be given its strength last patch. The shrike is a tad bit under fluxed but it still has more than a hammerhead before and after shields and that medium missile mount is a gamechanger.

Basically the royal you needs to stop seeing the high flux usage on energy weapons and the high shield costs on high tech ships as a curse and start seeing them as a blessing.

[Megas]

Let me get this straight. High tech ships dont have enough flux to be competitive unless they spend a bunch of OP on flux enhancing skills, but high tech weapons use too much flux in order to fire a full compliment....

That's right, at least the typical one with high mobility, inability to use ballistics, and sometimes overpriced.  Whenever I try less optimized loadouts, I cannot win the flux war, or I win by a slim margin and cannot finish off the enemy (or inflict enough damage to break a stalemate condition).  This is not always one-on-one combat, but one against group.  Given their inflated costs (for some), they need to punch above their weight, but they do not if not built right.  Then there is the matter of AI, if player wants to pass it off AI while he grabs another ship.  For AI to use the ships, it should be close to flux neutral, if it has no dirty tricks to stack the deck.

Medusa can get away with less due to being able to use kinetic ballistics.  It is one of those ships where I do not need to get sabots (not that it can get enough to last long enough, much like Wolf) or ultra specialize in flux.

Apogee is definitely atypical.  It can use a heavy weapon (and a heavy missile), and it has other goodies.  At its best, it punches like a 20 or 22 DP cruiser for the low cost of 18 DP.

Normal Shrike needs that medium missile mount.  That is a textbook example of Sabot (Pod) and Expanded Missile Racks because it does not have any other good option for assault.  For its cheap cost and frigate-like design, it works.  Shrike (P) can work like a half Medusa with its hybrid, and less OP makes Expanded Missile Racks a tough pill to swallow.

Basically the royal you needs to stop seeing the high flux usage on energy weapons and the high shield costs on high tech ships as a curse and start seeing them as a blessing.

Why?  Why should bad things be a blessing?  High flux use hurts all ships, not just high-tech, although high-tech often lacks ballistic mounts for better weapons.  Some high-tech can take the costs, but not all, and definitely not most midline (although midline can use ballistics instead).  Why should I need to pump up flux on energy users while I do not need to for most ballistic users?

[Goumindong]

Wolf, +1
Tempest, +4
Omen, +2
Shrike, -2
Medusa,+2
Apogee, -4
Aurora,+8
Odyssey, +5
Paragon,+20

So youre talking about only the aurora and wolf then? Because you excepted every other ship as working just fine... except the odyssey which is the strongest players ship in the game and the paragon... which I dont think anyone has an issue with.

Well you didn’t except the shrike but its cheaper than the hammerhead