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[SCC]

Perhaps weapons that aren't point defence or specified as anti-fighter should fire only if there are no ships in range and if ship isn't gaining flux otherwise. This would result in periodic bursts of fire from all weapons or a constant fire from point defence and anti-fighter weapons.
An interesting idea would be to tie fighters range to fighter replacement rate, though perhaps not linearly. If fighters lost 25% range whenever fighter replacement rate isn't maxed out, it would make even relatively small losses have an impact, by either slowing fighter waves or forcing carriers to drive closer and hit you with their swords.

[Alex]

Re: Weapons being billed as "will not shoot at fighters:

I'm sure you'll come up with more nuanced version but for me, if one rule was followed, I'd be very happy with such a tag.

*Any weapon that costs >300 flux/shot won't shoot at fighters.*

To be explicit: Mjolnir, Guass Cannon, Heavy Blaster, Plasma Cannon, Hypervelocity Driver, Hellbore, AM Blaster, Mining Blaster. (Heavy Mauler is about there, too, along with the Mk. IX. I'm not sure how you would look at high-flux beams like Ion Beam, HI Laser or, Tachyon Lance, but the Phase Lance is fine.) Outside of the Mjolnir, every other weapon is a high-damage, relatively slow-firing projectile that has little probability of hitting a particular fighter and would almost always be a Pyhrric victory even if it did.

I really don't think firing at fighters with high flux weapons that are unlikely to hit is more understandable than not firing. Firing a weapon and missing is actively worse than not firing so weapons with slow projectile speed/ low rate of fire/wind ups /slow turn rate are really not suited too shooting fighters down the majority of the time. If they're likely to miss, then you're just wasting flux.

I just don't think that's right - building up soft flux from firing weapons and building up hard flux from getting hit on shields are qualitatively different. (As Grievous was saying earlier.)

The AI manages which groups autofire based on flux levels and their flux use (there are considerable improvements regarding this in the dev build, btw), so weapon fire like this is a spectrum - it's not "always fire at fighters", but rather "the more flux it costs, the better the flux situation needs to be to fire at fighters (edit: or anything else)". That's a way better place to be than a hard "don't do this" flag, in the general case (with exceptions, for, well, anything exceptional).

Consider also that not all fighters are equal, and that having a lot of weapons flat out not fire at fighters really limits the design space for fighters. Any fighter that's more powerful becomes, well, even more powerful. I think it's even likely that this would be an overall *buff* for fighters.

For a quick example: using a Medusa with 2x Heavy Blasters, 2x Railguns, 2x IR Pulse, and 2x PD Laser (some changes in-dev, such as IR Pulse being better) vs a Condor with 2x Talon. And then the same test, just removing the Heavy Blasters, to simulate them not firing at fighters (it never gets to fire at the Condor, in any case, without an Eliminate being ordered). It's actually quite a drastic difference - the loadout with Heavy Blasters survives over an extra minute compared to the one without.

And this is a loadout that's *extremely* overfluxed - 2k+ flux buildup vs 600 dissipation. And, it's facing a constant stream of fast fighters - just about the worst-case scenario in terms of driving up flux use, not getting much of a break to vent/dissipate, and having a higher chance to miss. And yet, the AI manages to keep its flux below half for almost the entire fight.

Basically, using high-flux weapons on autofire vs fighters is a benefit, since the AI will use it when there's flux, and it'll stop when there are problems. I'm not sure how much of this is due to in-dev improvements to autofire management...

If you *don't* fire high-flux weapons vs fighters at all, you're wasting your flux dissipation, unless the lower-flux weapons build enough flux to fully consume the dissipation rate. And if that's the case, then the high-flux stuff will get turned off.

Another thought: what if the player could set weapon groups to have behaviors like 'strike', 'PD', 'anti fighters' etc.? That might let people have the control they want, and as long as there was a 'general purpose' setting that was default, I don't think it would be too much of a complication for beginners.

I think this is a dynamic, tactical decision, and not one that can really be made at ship loadout creation time. Managing autofire status based on flux levels and weapon flux use seems better.

Right, a IGNORE_FIGHTER is limited, but it will already help immensely with cruiser/cap-mounted spinal weapons, weapons with long chargeup, strike weapons with clips etc.

Yep, makes sense.

Now another thing that makes a lot of weapons vastly underperform against fighters is the turret rotation dampening while firing and cooling down. It was designed when the game was much slower overall: There were a lot less mobility systems, ships were slightly slower and fighters were a LOT slower. Maybe it should be toned down or removed entirely given the current balance of the game? Or at least there could be another weapon hint like NO_ROTATION_DAMPENING?

It's actually a turret rotation *bonus* when the weapon is not firing, btw. The value in the CSV is the rotatio rate, in degrees/second, for when the weapon is firing. IIRC the point of this bonus was to keep the while-firing turn rate relevant as a balancing factor for a weapon's effectiveness vs fighters and missiles, while not having the weapons be slow as molasses and take upwards of 10 seconds to just switch targets. If something turns slowly and underperforms vs fighters as a result, that's literally the goal, so if that's not desired, the solution is to up the turn rate.

Antimatter Blasters

The AB's delay makes it really hard to hit fighters.

Hmm - pretty sure it's not going to fire vs fighters due to being STRIKE.

Perhaps weapons that aren't point defence or specified as anti-fighter should fire only if there are no ships in range and if ship isn't gaining flux otherwise. This would result in periodic bursts of fire from all weapons or a constant fire from point defence and anti-fighter weapons.

Right, yeah - I think with the autofire flux management, that's more or less how it works!

An interesting idea would be to tie fighters range to fighter replacement rate, though perhaps not linearly. If fighters lost 25% range whenever fighter replacement rate isn't maxed out, it would make even relatively small losses have an impact, by either slowing fighter waves or forcing carriers to drive closer and hit you with their swords.

Interesting mechanically, yeah. I think it'd be a pain to convey the range to the player, for both their and enemy ships. When it's fixed, at least you can get a feel for it...

[SCC]

Interesting mechanically, yeah. I think it'd be a pain to convey the range to the player, for both their and enemy ships. When it's fixed, at least you can get a feel for it...

If we had a visual cue showing us the range of fighters from the flagship, we could use this indicator to see if the range changes. Actually, it would be a neat thing to get regardless of if my idea goes anywhere.

[Hiruma Kai]

Edit: Alex beat me to this point I think.

That's what I meant by Pyhrric Victory: by firing these flux-intensive weapons at fighters, you lose even if you hit. If there is nothing else to fire at and you're at 0-flux, I get it, but the fighters are absolutely winning if the ship in question generates more flux trying to kill them than the fighters' weapons themselves.  At best, firing these big guns are grossly inefficient when they hit. At worst, you're dumping huge flux/shot and hitting nothing

It's a very complicated question actually.  It doesn't need to be a 0-flux game to be worth it.  It depends on the fighter, the weapon in question, and how much flux you're generating right now versus flux dissipation.  If the fighters are all on one side of your ship, then only half your guns are firing.  A broadside ships exploit this fact.  Also, if only PD weapons are firing, generally you are nowhere near hitting your dissipation rate.

Take a 4400 flux Hammerhead, turn off all weapons fire, raise shields and sit there.  Send 2 wings of broadswords at it from a Condor.  It'll overload in about 3 seconds from when the Broadswords start firing.  Just tested in sim.  On paper a single broadsword deals 156 kinetic damage per second, or 312 shield damage per second.  I vaguely remember fighter machine guns firing half as often than ship ones or the like.  Anyways, 4400 flux/0.8 efficiency/6 fighters/3 seconds = 305 shield damage per second per fighter.  Seems to check out roughly.  So we have a rough estimate of the DPS of a single Broadsword (which I suppose means dual Broadsword Condors with Harpoons should be kinda scary - 936 kinetic damage per second at long range, flux free followed up by HE missiles).

Unskilled heavy blasters require 2 projectiles to connect to completely kill a broadsword.  It is worth it to kill a broadsword if they hit both hit, and it would have lived for 4.6 seconds longer otherwise (1440/312) assuming your shield is 1.0 efficient and you're already using up all your flux dissipation.  On the other hand, most ships do not reach their flux dissipation only firing their PD weapons, so 1440/312 isn't the right thing to compare.  Its flux above dissipation.  If your spare dissipation is, hypothetically, 800 (after shields and all other weapons), then the comparison is  640/312 = 2.05 seconds.

Take a shrike.  Lets say it has a Heavy Blaster, 4 PD Lasers, Sabot Pod, and 610 flux dissipation (a player design), weapons adds up to 880, and shield is another 105, so 985 max builldup versus 610 dissipation.

A wing of broadswords come in.  4 PD lasers deal 300 energy damage per second, at a cost of 160 flux per second.  Shield costs 105 flux per second.  So without firing the Heavy Blaster, you're sitting at -345 flux per second.  The broadswords are dealing 936 klinetic damage, or 1310 shield damage (including the 0.7 modifier) per second.  With 8200 flux capacity, it'll last 6.2 seconds or so with shields up.

Now, the Broadsword flares basically mean the PD lasers are useless for about 6 seconds.  The heavy blaster on the other hand, isn't distracted and will shoot at fighters.  Lets say half the heavy blaster shots hit.  So you're spending 1,500 extra flux (720*4-345*4) to kill a broadsword in 4 seconds.  If that broadsword would have lived for another 6.9 seconds, it was worth it.  Or the other way to put it, if it buys you a 6.9 second reprieve from a fighter (i.e. rebuild time and fly back out to you is 6.9 seconds or longer), and you've got 50% accuracy, you should be firing that Heavy blaster.  Given Broadswords take 10 seconds to replace, the answer is always yes (assuming that 50% hit rate).  For this particular ship against Broadswords.  Which is not a 0-flux balanced ship. 

[Goumindong]

Strike tag only applies to the AI. If you have an AMB on auto it fires immediately against whatever it can hit.

Either way the point was more that there definitely are weapons that you don’t want to fire vs fighters much at all not that they all necessarily did so. Autopulse without an accuracy clutch is probably the most pertinent. Its likely to be turreted and so when it sees a fighter it just dumps its charges into the ether. 

[Hiruma Kai]

Strike tag only applies to the AI. If you have an AMB on auto it fires immediately against whatever it can hit.

Either way the point was more that there definitely are weapons that you don’t want to fire vs fighters much at all not that they all necessarily did so. Autopulse without an accuracy clutch is probably the most pertinent. Its likely to be turreted and so when it sees a fighter it just dumps its charges into the ether.

Just tested that in the sim.  Put some AMB on a Shrike, set them to auto fire.  Didn't fire at broadswords.  Selected a broadsword as target. Still didn't fire.  I think Strike tag prevents firing against fighters.

[SCC]

I vaguely remember fighter machine guns firing half as often than ship ones or the like.

This isn't actually true, it's just that Broadsword doesn't have enough flux to fire even just two light machine guns.

[Hiruma Kai]

This isn't actually true, it's just that Broadsword doesn't have enough flux to fire even just two light machine guns.

Huh, I never noticed that.  In that case, my estimate was off.  Using an Eagle, 16000 flux, and timing that, took roughly 20 seconds.  16000/0.8/6/20 = 167.  So actually about half my original estimate in the long term.

Which bumps that Shrike example from 6.9 seconds to 13.8 seconds.  Which is still probably a yes in most cases given the 10 second rebuild time + travel time unless you're literally sitting next to the carrier - at which point you'll be shooting the carrier.

[RustyCabbage]

For a quick example: using a Medusa with 2x Heavy Blasters, 2x Railguns, 2x IR Pulse, and 2x PD Laser (some changes in-dev, such as IR Pulse being better) vs a Condor with 2x Talon. And then the same test, just removing the Heavy Blasters, to simulate them not firing at fighters (it never gets to fire at the Condor, in any case, without an Eliminate being ordered). It's actually quite a drastic difference - the loadout with Heavy Blasters survives over an extra minute compared to the one without.

And this is a loadout that's *extremely* overfluxed - 2k+ flux buildup vs 600 dissipation. And, it's facing a constant stream of fast fighters - just about the worst-case scenario in terms of driving up flux use, not getting much of a break to vent/dissipate, and having a higher chance to miss. And yet, the AI manages to keep its flux below half for almost the entire fight.

Basically, using high-flux weapons on autofire vs fighters is a benefit, since the AI will use it when there's flux, and it'll stop when there are problems. I'm not sure how much of this is due to in-dev improvements to autofire management...

If you *don't* fire high-flux weapons vs fighters at all, you're wasting your flux dissipation, unless the lower-flux weapons build enough flux to fully consume the dissipation rate. And if that's the case, then the high-flux stuff will get turned off.

Not sure if your dev build, or the mission I'm using to test, or some mod I have enabled is messing things up, but I can't reproduce this at all. Removing the Heavy Blasters (leaving the excess OP unused) from the Attack variant Medusa (the one you're using as an example) made the Medusa significantly more aggressive, to the point where it actually would reliably attack the Condor.

The effect is even more drastic if you compare the results against the 2x Broadsword Condor, where removing the HBs allows the Medusa to win almost unscathed versus losing over half its hull with them still equipped (or in unlucky cases, even dying).

edit: I have the same result with Broadsword Condor on vanilla using the Coral Nebula mission. Heavy blasters shooting at fighters is a major minus, at least in this example.

[Morrokain]

Ok, so I've done some testing using an Onslaught with Helbores and dual flak vs the stock Astral Strike carrier and a couple things immediately stand out:

1) Flares distracting PD artificially increases the value of large weapons against fighters to a large degree because they still actually fire at fighters - generating more losses than would happen otherwise. Putting on Integrated Point Defense AI makes a world of difference there, and when that is equipped my theory holds true a little more than without it.

2) The AI, even in this version, is very good at doing its best to keep low flux - and picks it targets pretty carefully. Even still, the majority of helbore shots miss even bombers - which are ridiculously slow and do not try and dodge anything. In this regard, the TPCs of the Onslaught actually do better against incoming waves than any other weapon. This breaks down completely if the wave is coming from anywhere but the front obviously.

3) Despite 2, the flux raised in a 1v1 scenario only slows the battle down. It is not detrimental and the Onslaught actually wins 2/3 times even with the Astral's OP ship system. It takes about 30 minutes, but it still wins.

4) Despite 3, fighter losses more or less occur at the same rate if the Helbores don't fire at them. Maybe one or two additional bombers are lost while retreating simply due to the long range, but up close PD is far, far more effective. If the Onslaught gets its zero flux boost sooner by not firing them, the battle would likely be shorter.

5) Longbow/Dagger/Astral system is extremely potent even not considering flares/kinetic damage from the Broadswords. Even a fully PD oriented Onslaught (except Helbores) cannot stop everything and shield tanking is absolutely necessary. That wouldn't be so bad if the system didn't prevent PD from doing pretty much anything to fighters even with IPDA installed. By the time the missiles are stopped and the strike craft are close enough, they are teleported away without any damage except the long range damage from TPCs/Lucky Helbore hits. I would imagine this alone kind of skews the perspective of large non-pd weapons being necessary against fighters.

6) When testing against 2 stock Herons, again the positioning matters, Daggers are very hard to stop, and Helbore shots hurt the Onslaughts ability to both chase and get the zero flux boost so that it can turn fast enough to actually use its shields to tank the Daggers. This is very subtle because on the surface it would seem that the Helbores' lucky hits are good, but it isn't enough to reduce the replacement rate fast enough to matter and the zero flux boost is the more important part in that particular matchup. The thing that kills the Onslaught 100% of the time is Daggers striking where its shields can't cover.

7) When testing against 2 stock Moras, Helbore shots are completely wasted, but it really doesn't matter much. This is both because the Mora's fighters aren't nearly as much of a threat compared to Daggers and PD can handle them, and because the Mora actually engages the Onslaught itself, so chasing/keeping low flux isn't as necessary.

Conclusions so far:

I maintain my stance that the Helbore could stand to have the "DO_NOT_FIRE_AT_FIGHTERS" tag. It hurts more than it helps. That being said, I was surprised at the difference Hypervelocity Drivers, Heavy Maulers, and even the flux hungry Gauss Cannon can make due to their faster projectiles and the sluggishness of bombers.

These tests were all in a 1v1 or 1v2 (equal DP) setting, so I think the next thing to do is test these same things (and energy weapons) in a large fleet scenario and see how that changes things.

[intrinsic_parity]

Another thought: what if the player could set weapon groups to have behaviors like 'strike', 'PD', 'anti fighters' etc.? That might let people have the control they want, and as long as there was a 'general purpose' setting that was default, I don't think it would be too much of a complication for beginners.

I think this is a dynamic, tactical decision, and not one that can really be made at ship loadout creation time. Managing autofire status based on flux levels and weapon flux use seems better.

Isn't this decision currently being made at the weapon design stage when weapons are given AI tags? I don't see how that decision is being made tactically in combat, but maybe I don't understand something about the AI, or we are not talking about the same thing.

[Tartiflette]

It's actually a turret rotation *bonus* when the weapon is not firing, btw. The value in the CSV is the rotatio rate, in degrees/second, for when the weapon is firing. IIRC the point of this bonus was to keep the while-firing turn rate relevant as a balancing factor for a weapon's effectiveness vs fighters and missiles, while not having the weapons be slow as molasses and take upwards of 10 seconds to just switch targets. If something turns slowly and underperforms vs fighters as a result, that's literally the goal, so if that's not desired, the solution is to up the turn rate.

Then the issue is that it isn't possible to make a large weapon able to track fighters that won't turn cartoonishly fast when not firing, and we could still use a NO_ROTATION_BOOST tag.

I just don't think that's right - building up soft flux from firing weapons and building up hard flux from getting hit on shields are qualitatively different. (As Grievous was saying earlier.)

Counterpoint: riding the flux high means that even a single wing fighter can force a capital ship shield down, at least in the currently released version of the game.

[TaLaR]

I maintain my stance that the Helbore could stand to have the "DO_NOT_FIRE_AT_FIGHTERS" tag. It hurts more than it helps. That being said, I was surprised at the difference Hypervelocity Drivers, Heavy Maulers, and even the flux hungry Gauss Cannon can make due to their faster projectiles and the sluggishness of bombers.

Passthrough weapons (Hellbore, Gauss, Plasma) on high level character are all awesome against fighters. Enemy fleet concentrates multiple carriers on you -> backpedal while firing -> most fighters die before they reach you (rest is handled by PD and allied interceptor screen) -> enemy carriers are at low replenishment and open for attack.

HVD, Mauler, etc also become a lot more accurate with character skills (faster projectiles, less recoil, better target leading...).

[Morrokain]

I maintain my stance that the Helbore could stand to have the "DO_NOT_FIRE_AT_FIGHTERS" tag. It hurts more than it helps. That being said, I was surprised at the difference Hypervelocity Drivers, Heavy Maulers, and even the flux hungry Gauss Cannon can make due to their faster projectiles and the sluggishness of bombers.

Passthrough weapons (Hellbore, Gauss, Plasma) on high level character are all awesome against fighters. Enemy fleet concentrates multiple carriers on you -> backpedal while firing -> most fighters die before they reach you (rest is handled by PD and allied interceptor screen) -> enemy carriers are at low replenishment and open for attack.

HVD, Mauler, etc also become a lot more accurate with character skills (faster projectiles, less recoil, better target leading...).

Edit: Alex beat me to this point I think.

Spoiler

That's what I meant by Pyhrric Victory: by firing these flux-intensive weapons at fighters, you lose even if you hit. If there is nothing else to fire at and you're at 0-flux, I get it, but the fighters are absolutely winning if the ship in question generates more flux trying to kill them than the fighters' weapons themselves.  At best, firing these big guns are grossly inefficient when they hit. At worst, you're dumping huge flux/shot and hitting nothing

It's a very complicated question actually.  It doesn't need to be a 0-flux game to be worth it.  It depends on the fighter, the weapon in question, and how much flux you're generating right now versus flux dissipation.  If the fighters are all on one side of your ship, then only half your guns are firing.  A broadside ships exploit this fact.  Also, if only PD weapons are firing, generally you are nowhere near hitting your dissipation rate.

Take a 4400 flux Hammerhead, turn off all weapons fire, raise shields and sit there.  Send 2 wings of broadswords at it from a Condor.  It'll overload in about 3 seconds from when the Broadswords start firing.  Just tested in sim.  On paper a single broadsword deals 156 kinetic damage per second, or 312 shield damage per second.  I vaguely remember fighter machine guns firing half as often than ship ones or the like.  Anyways, 4400 flux/0.8 efficiency/6 fighters/3 seconds = 305 shield damage per second per fighter.  Seems to check out roughly.  So we have a rough estimate of the DPS of a single Broadsword (which I suppose means dual Broadsword Condors with Harpoons should be kinda scary - 936 kinetic damage per second at long range, flux free followed up by HE missiles).

Unskilled heavy blasters require 2 projectiles to connect to completely kill a broadsword.  It is worth it to kill a broadsword if they hit both hit, and it would have lived for 4.6 seconds longer otherwise (1440/312) assuming your shield is 1.0 efficient and you're already using up all your flux dissipation.  On the other hand, most ships do not reach their flux dissipation only firing their PD weapons, so 1440/312 isn't the right thing to compare.  Its flux above dissipation.  If your spare dissipation is, hypothetically, 800 (after shields and all other weapons), then the comparison is  640/312 = 2.05 seconds.

Take a shrike.  Lets say it has a Heavy Blaster, 4 PD Lasers, Sabot Pod, and 610 flux dissipation (a player design), weapons adds up to 880, and shield is another 105, so 985 max builldup versus 610 dissipation.

A wing of broadswords come in.  4 PD lasers deal 300 energy damage per second, at a cost of 160 flux per second.  Shield costs 105 flux per second.  So without firing the Heavy Blaster, you're sitting at -345 flux per second.  The broadswords are dealing 936 klinetic damage, or 1310 shield damage (including the 0.7 modifier) per second.  With 8200 flux capacity, it'll last 6.2 seconds or so with shields up.

Now, the Broadsword flares basically mean the PD lasers are useless for about 6 seconds.  The heavy blaster on the other hand, isn't distracted and will shoot at fighters.  Lets say half the heavy blaster shots hit.  So you're spending 1,500 extra flux (720*4-345*4) to kill a broadsword in 4 seconds.  If that broadsword would have lived for another 6.9 seconds, it was worth it.  Or the other way to put it, if it buys you a 6.9 second reprieve from a fighter (i.e. rebuild time and fly back out to you is 6.9 seconds or longer), and you've got 50% accuracy, you should be firing that Heavy blaster.  Given Broadswords take 10 seconds to replace, the answer is always yes (assuming that 50% hit rate).  For this particular ship against Broadswords.  Which is not a 0-flux balanced ship.

[close]

First of all, thank you for providing math! It's beyond what I am willing to do haha.

I would be curious to see a retest of that scenario - only with IPDA installed on the Shrike. As I mentioned in my above post, flares heavily skew the benefit of things like the Heavy Blaster exactly for the reasons you state. If it's the only weapon that actually can fire at the fighters, then it makes a lot more sense for it to do so. In fact, I'd even go so far to say that flares are too strong. Anyway, the point is that it's sort of an isolated situation. You could argue the same thing in regards to the Spark having shields vs beams, actually. Heavy Blaster would probably look useful there too assuming it can hit the Spark. But it's more a limitation of the PD weapon than the effectiveness of the Heavy Blaster. Maybe try IPDA with a couple IR pulse lasers and it might be different in the Spark scenario.

Now, compared to Autopulse Laser wasting charges, I think the Heavy Blaster is a much better candidate to shoot at fighters.

Passthrough weapons (Hellbore, Gauss, Plasma) on high level character are all awesome against fighters. Enemy fleet concentrates multiple carriers on you -> backpedal while firing -> most fighters die before they reach you (rest is handled by PD and allied interceptor screen) -> enemy carriers are at low replenishment and open for attack.

HVD, Mauler, etc also become a lot more accurate with character skills (faster projectiles, less recoil, better target leading...).

I haven't tested Plasma yet but that is what I've heard. I already said Gauss was pretty good... though I didn't see any passthrough there against Daggers. Helbore?? That is not my experience at all after several hours of testing.

Yes, it is without character skills but that is the point! Not all of your AI ships can have officers so they should be left out of the equation completely. I don't want behavior that is only good for 1/3 of my allied ships! 

*EDIT* Another counterpoint to that - it would make those skills more mandatory than they really need to be.

[Alex]

Not sure if your dev build, or the mission I'm using to test, or some mod I have enabled is messing things up, but I can't reproduce this at all. Removing the Heavy Blasters (leaving the excess OP empty) from the Attack variant Medusa (the one you're using as an example) made the Medusa significantly more aggressive, to the point where it actually would reliably attack the Condor.

The effect is even more drastic if you compare the results against the 2x Broadsword Condor, where removing the HBs allows the Medusa to win almost unscathed versus losing over half its hull with them still equipped (or in unlucky cases, even dying).

edit: I have the same result with Broadsword Condor on vanilla using the Coral Nebula mission. Heavy blasters shooting at fighters is a major minus, at least in this example.

Hmm - you didn't spend the OP freed up by removing the blasters, did you? I suspect in-dev changes to flux management and autofire factor in here, too.

It does do better without blasters vs the 2xBroadsword Condor, though - for me, it takes damage in both cases, and the fight seems like it could go either way (in my quick test, it barely beat the Condor with the HBs, and had about half hull left without HBs). A variant with Pulse Lasers instead of Heavy Blasters does better than either of these, winning consistently and easily while only taking a sliver of hull damage. And it's still a very over-fluxed variant, 2x flux generation vs dissipation - around 1200 vs 600.

Isn't this decision currently being made at the weapon design stage when weapons are given AI tags? I don't see how that decision is being made tactically in combat, but maybe I don't understand something about the AI, or we are not talking about the same thing.

Which tags? My point is that the decision to fire or not is right now being made by the AI. Tags can factor in, but they either are part of defining what the weapon IS (such as a PD tag) or some hints about how it works (such as DO_NOT_AIM vs GUIDED_POOR). The closest thing to what you're talking about is the STRIKE tag, which basically says not to waste shots, but that is reserved for weapons that are qualitatively different, not applied to like half the "normal" weapons. Those "normal" weapons don't generally have any tags guiding AI use.

Edit #2: bringing it back around to the suggestion, I think configuring target priorities isn't great because it's unlikely to be what you want even for an entire battle. Say, I don't know, the enemy deploys a second wave of carriers or frigates or whatever, and now a different set of priorities would be optimal. It's also really, really hard to test that out and get a good feel for it in the simulator; that can be hard enough with just the stock weapons, without having targeting priorities be tunable, too.

Basically I think it gets too complicated and doesn't bring enough to the table to justify that. It's tempting to "solve" an AI problem with "just make this configurable!" but it's really just making the player do extra work - which, in this case, also includes an ungodly amount of playtesting.

Then the issue is that it isn't possible to make a large weapon able to track fighters that won't turn cartoonishly fast when not firing, and we could still use a NO_ROTATION_BOOST tag.

Fair enough, yeah.

Edit: added "NO_TURN_RATE_BOOST_WHEN_IDLE" weapon hint.

Counterpoint: riding the flux high means that even a single wing fighter can force a capital ship shield down, at least in the currently released version of the game.

In theory (and in the dev build ), the AI shouldn't be autofiring high-flux weapons to that degree. If it is, it's a problem, but solving it by making drastic changes to how the AI uses a large fraction of weapons ... doesn't seem like the right move.