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[Arcagnello]

I don't think I need to write much more than basic data to showcase just how horrible both Burst PD Laser and Heavy Burst Laser are at doing their ONE JOB and how these two PD variants along with the rest of the small energy PD weapons have singlehandedly, inherently made all High Tech ships (aside from, ironically, phase ships) in the entire game extremely vulnerable to missile, fighter and bomber spam as a result.

The hard data of
Burst PD Laser

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Heavy Burst Laser

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As you can see, both PD weapons are incredibly expensive, provide decent burst damage in the first 4 to 8 seconds (10 to 18 seconds if you also have expanded magazines) but fully expose their horrible, HORRIBLE 40 and 73 sustained damage per second when the shots run out.

The only ship types I've actually used such a god awful excuse of a point defence on are Phase Ships, wich greatly benefit from the burst values of said point defence to clear out the area of enemy ordnance to then vent, but that is it.

There is no incentive to even try and invest into these weapons, a Midline/high tech ship wanting to focus on point defence is much, much better off opting for plain old PD and LR PD Lasers or, for the non-plus ultra of energy based pojt defence, Tactical Lasers + Integrated Point Defence AI (+ Advanced Turret Gyros if you really feel like it)

My suggestion is twofold. Reasonably buff both small and medium version of the Burst Laser to allow for higher sustained fire rate to actually make them worth it. Also modify the way the Heavy Burst Laser works to both work better for standard midline/high tech ships and not make the life even easier for the Doom, wich hardly requires to basically also have Point Defence AI the moment it chooses to install two Heavy Burst Lasers in the medium mounts.

Proposed Burst PD Laser buffs:
-Increase the recharge speed of the weapon from 2 seconds/charge to 1.4 seconds/charge
-Decrease the fire delay of the stored up charges from 0.6 seconds to 0.35 seconds

Proposed Heavy Burst Laser rebalance:
-Remove the ability of the Heavy Burst Laser to ignore flares
-Increase the recharge speed of the weapon from 2 seconds/charge to 1 second/charge
-Decrease the fire delay of the stored up charges from 0.6 seconds to 0.25 seconds

New medium energy point defence weapon suggestion: the Heavy Point Defence Laser
-basically an upsized PD laser
-9 Ordinance Points to install
-better flux /damage efficiency at 0.3 flux/damage efficiency translating into 60 flux/second to fire
-improved range at 450 meters
-200 damage per second
-Perfect Accuracy and Excellent Turn Rate

Thoughts?

Post Scriptum: I am aware that hangar bays just might have been overnerfed especially if they use fighters and not bombers and that buffing energy PD weapons may just drive them into the ground even further, but I do not think that is adequate enough reason to keep an entire Point Defence type into utter irrelevancy. A slight, universal buff to fighter replacement rate recovery along with a slight nerf to bomber base replacement time (along with this energy PD rebalance) would go a long way to both make fighters a bit more useful and keep bomber effectiveness the way it is now while punishing bomber losses more.

[Anvel]

Yeh even with that buff, both burst lasers are meh. There is a very expensive alternative to medium energy pd, but that's more like plasma cannon that deal x3 damage to the hull.

[oooh_senpai]

I use only small burst pd lasers as pd since they are the best for their price i think, and they do hit it's target in most cases. Pretty enough to destroy about a half of some missile swarms (4 pd points on hammerhead or doom) and always enough to destroy 2-4 heavy rockets incoming. They also work pretty well against fighters, due to not so bad armour penetration and ability to overload little shields. But i use only officered ships with elite pd skills.

[TaLaR]

BurstPD are good at protecting the ship from low-volume of missiles/fighters... But shields can handle that just as well, so only case kind of worth bothering with is engine protection from Salamanders. Or on Doom and maybe Harbinger (but it has bad coverage anyway). Afflictor is fast enough to not need to bother, Shade has EMP on top of that.

Another issue worth noting is that if you try to use many BurstPD, they will over-kill first few incoming missiles and leave no charges for later ones.

A ship that wants high-volume energy PD that really works has to invest into IPDAI + many IR pulse lasers (+ tracking hullmods/skills + projectile speed from Ranged Spec). Which is mostly viable for Conquest and Odyssey slot-wise (Paragon doesn't need heavy PD due to Fortress Shield).

[Anvel]

As is burst PD laser worth 5 op, heavy 7-8 op not more, simply look at ballistic alternatives.

[Serenitis]

That medium beam...
I can give you a p. solid guarantee than hardly anyone would use that for PD. Because it would make for a far better SO/Assault weapon.
200 Energy DPS for 0.3 flux. Imagine a Sunder with 3 of those on it.

Part of the problem with balancing PD weapons is that there's a very fine line between them and said assault weapons.
Sometimes there's barely a line at all (eg; machine guns).
This is one of the reasons there are no HE PD weapons despite how good they'd be defensively - they'd also be too good at shooting ships.

Personally I think burst lasers are okay as they are, but overpriced OP-wise for what you get.
Burst lasers are for when you want a missile dead right now and don't care too much about sustained output.
Beam lasers are for when you want to fire your PD continuously.

[Anvel]

That medium beam...
I can give you a p. solid guarantee than hardly anyone would use that for PD. Because it would make for a far better SO/Assault weapon.
200 Energy DPS for 0.3 flux. Imagine a Sunder with 3 of those on it.

Part of the problem with balancing PD weapons is that there's a very fine line between them and said assault weapons.
Sometimes there's barely a line at all (eg; machine guns).
This is one of the reasons there are no HE PD weapons despite how good they'd be defensively - they'd also be too good at shooting ships.

Personally I think burst lasers are okay as they are, but overpriced OP-wise for what you get.
Burst lasers are for when you want a missile dead right now and don't care too much about sustained output.
Beam lasers are for when you want to fire your PD continuously.

Yes, they are mostly balanced but way too overpriced, did anyone ever used heavy burst PD's?

[SCC]

Small Burst PD Laser is fine. It protects from incidental missiles well enough and that's all I ask of it. Shields are for taking missile barrages. Though if I wanted to create a point defence network, I'd use many LRPDs on many ships.
I don't consider performance against fighters important, because there's a grand total of one case where a PD weapon is also a good anti-fighter weapon, and that's dual flak.

Also modify the way the Heavy Burst Laser works to both work better for standard midline/high tech ships and not make the life even easier for the Doom, wich hardly requires to basically also have Point Defence AI the moment it chooses to install two Heavy Burst Lasers in the medium mounts.

Why would you waste mediums on Doom for PD, though? Or, in fact, any other high-tech ship...

[Yendorc]

Missile HP is roughly categorized in three sections.

~150 HP (salamanders, harpoons etc)
~300 HP (Atropos)
~350+ (hammer, reaper etc)

hence I would rather see their damage per shot be increased by a total of 22 damage points.
from 128 to 150

that way a sally is no longer a two shot, and an atropos won't take your whole (small slot) magazine to shoot down.

[Retry]

This is one of the reasons there are no HE PD weapons despite how good they'd be defensively - they'd also be too good at shooting ships.

Devastator Cannon: "Am I a joke to you?"

On the OP's suggestions themselves, the "delay" stat is actually a combination of parameters like charge-up time, burst length, charge-down time, etc.  Decreasing the delay and doing nothing else is actually a nerf, since the beam will be online for less time and thus deal less damage.  If you instead increase the peak damage to compensate for the same damage per burst, they'll be too strong since they'll also pen a lot more.

Beam PD overall is probably over-valued by at least 1 OP across the board IMO.

[Thaago]

...and how these two PD variants along with the rest of the small energy PD weapons have singlehandedly, inherently made all High Tech ships (aside from, ironically, phase ships) in the entire game extremely vulnerable to missile, fighter and bomber spam as a result...

I am pretty sure this is by design, as all high tech ships either have high mobility or strong shields (or both). Meanwhile low tech ships have excellent PD... but if that PD is ever overwhelmed or offline, they are just turbo-dead vs a heavy strike.

[Rauschkind]

maybe thats intended. having only energy small mounts is the greatest weakness of the otherwhise extremely powerfull paragon after all. i would argue its  the same with the champion. thats even a midline hull.  i bet it has these small energy only mounts for balance reasons.

anyway. tac lasers with pd ai do a decent job.

[intrinsic_parity]

I think falcons and eagle have a pretty serious need for anti-salamander energy PD in the rear as well. I agree that a small damage buff so that they 1-shot missiles would be huge.

[Rauschkind]

tnaago is a mean ninjaposter so i shall do the double post defense to say: sunder is a high tech ship and it has about the worst shields in game. aside of that, yeah we pretty much said the same XD


edit NINJAPOSTER EVERYWHERE YEEE

falcon op even with that weak pd.

[Thaago]

Ninjas everywhere! Sunders may have bad shields and be midline.... but it has small ballistic mounts! Same with the Hammerhead, they can put in vulcans.