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[Rauschkind]

you are right indeed. sunders fast speed made me think its a high tech hull.
hammerhead might be slightly on the op side because of this i think. maybe its me not being experienced enough in this game, but i think it stands out in its size even more then the falcon.
either nerf its shield or give it energy small mounts i think.

[Maethendias]

1, what was the nerf to fighters?

2, ALL energy pd sucks, especially against fighters

[Arcagnello]

1, what was the nerf to fighters?

2, ALL energy pd sucks, especially against fighters

Fighter recovery nerfed across the board, Expanded Deck Crew hit aswell. Most carrier ships tend to actually run out of replenishment rate in long battles if there's a lot of enemy PD and fighters.

[Maethendias]

1, what was the nerf to fighters?

2, ALL energy pd sucks, especially against fighters

Fighter recovery nerfed across the board, Expanded Deck Crew hit aswell. Most carrier ships tend to actually run out of replenishment rate in long battles if there's a lot of enemy PD and fighters.

only fighters? that seems... to be an odd choice considering those especially are one of the few counters to things like capitals

[Rauschkind]

many of the hulls that only have energy small mounts also  have small missile mounts, like the paragon. what about swarmer missiles? small mounts on a paragon wont contribute much to the firepower anyhow, most builds leave them empty....
wont help the champion of course, but then i dont think the champion needs much help in anything.
sry. dont know all the hulls by heart yet. i noticed that most of the ships i prefer only have the small energy mounts, but i prefer them anyway despite the leakluster pd performance.

[RustyCabbage]

Burst PD Lasers are good enough at what they do, but fully effective use of them is difficult without IPDAI, which in combination with its high OP costs usually just relegates it to Paragons and some very niche anti-frigate builds.

Heavy Burst lasers have a more pronounced problem where they aren't hitting any breakpoints except by chance due to damage calculation between frames, but they cost substantially more. As a result, you're still not going to use them without IPDAI, which kind of renders the "doesn't target flares by default" rather moot. I haven't done a deep dive of builds for high tech ships yet, but I didn't use HBLs in my campaign despite the improvement. Maybe they have very narrow use on an Escort Package Venture? Regardless, it's probably the most underwhelming weapon in vanilla at the moment.

I could maybe see -1 OP on the two weapons, if they aren't given a slight damage buff (the HBL needs it much more than the BPDL).

[Pushover]

I think this is more an issue of 'small energy weapons are extremely mediocre' rather than 'Burst PD is terrible'

What are the similar weapons in the Small Energy slot? PD Laser, LR PD Laser, Tactical Laser, Mining Laser (I'd argue that IR Pulse, Antimatter, and Ion Cannons are all quite different, and I'm not going to talk about them until the end).

Mining Laser is practically useless. 600 range, which is more than the PD laser, but only 30 DPS makes it ineffective at stopping all but the worst missiles, and completely ineffective at anything with armor.
PD Laser (4 OP) offers 75 DPS, but short (400) range usually means that it will not be able to intercept many missiles without a lot of overlapping fire. Salamanders can be quite problematic if you are relying on a PD laser to shoot it down.
LR PD Laser (5 OP) only has 50 DPS, but a slightly lower flux cost and twice the range (800).
Tactical Laser (4 OP) has 75 DPS and long (1000) range, but has a 1:1 flux cost and requires the IPDAI to function as anti-missile PD. It also doesn't have the fastest turret traversal, meaning it can struggle to hit a salamander or fighter with a high radial velocity.
Burst PD Laser (7 OP) has 64 DPS under sustained fire, so more than a LR PD Laser, but also suffers from short (500) range like the PD laser. However, the higher burst damage can help pierce any armor on a fighter, and it has high initial DPS with the 3 charges to potentially delete a fighter wing.

Basically, my thoughts are as follows:
Mining lasers aren't worth it.
PD Lasers are good at dealing with harassing fighters, but aren't great at shooting down missiles before they impact your ship.
LR PD Lasers are good at dealing with missiles, but lack the DPS to kill fighters particularly quickly.
Tactical Lasers require a specific setup (and therefore extra OP) to deal with missiles, but are quite effective vs fighters if they aren't swarming you.
Burst PD Lasers offer a mix of ability to defend vs missiles and fighters, but only offers solid protection for a very limited time. Therefore, it struggles against a lot of pressure systems like Annihilators or Squalls, or heavy fighter strikes such as strikes involving a Khopesh Wing, or even a Piranha Wing. That said, they struggle against Broadswords due to the flares

For me, I go with Burst PD on most larger ships, as if you need better screening, you have escorts.

The other small weapons are all somewhat specialized (IR Pulse laser for hard flux DPS, AM Blaster for burst, Ion for EMP)

I do use HBLs on Astrals as they are not good as a frontline carrier, despite the Advanced Optics, and the alternative is to put Burst PDs. HBLs are quite underwhelming in most cases, especially compared to the ballistic counterpart of Dual Flak (or even Flak).