The Hammerhead is still a better ship by a clear and noteworthy margin. The power systems relative to weapons is a glaring issue alone assuming the control of when engagements happen is resolved, which still wouldn't put them at par. It's only actual advantage is the number of missiles slots. Because those extra medium Ballistic slots will run out of flux fast in a head to head.
An enforcer's advantages are having 110 OP instead of 95OP, 900 instead of 500 armor, 6000 instead of 5000 hull, double the missiles (4 instead of 2), better PD coverage (360 flaks or vulcans depending on investment), and better gun mounts (5 turreted medium ballistics which can be downgraded if needed, vs 2 fixed medium ballistics and 4 small which can't install larger guns). And being 9 DP instead of 10.
Its disadvantages are less flux to use (200 vs 250 = 50 less, or with T4L 240 vs 300 = 60 less), lower flux capacity (4000 vs 4200, IE 1 OP worth), a worse shield (1.0 vs .8 ), lower speed (we'll see how cancellable burn drive changes this, but it will certainly be interesting), and not having an offensive ship system (this is the real big one: AAF is powerful). The shield difference is real: Hammerheads have 25% more shield HP for a given capacitance, a significant advantage.
Examining the flux in more detail (with T4L effect in parenthesis), a Hammerhead with 20 vents (standard build) is going to have 450 (500) flux or 45 (50) per DP. An Enforcer is going to have 400 (440) flux, or 44.4 (48.9) per DP. Capacity depends on build because caps are usually not maxed, but Enforcers have 15 more base OP and are only 200 (1 OP) behind in capacity: it all depends on build, but the Hammerhead barely has any advantage here. So, Enforcers have less flux, but really not that much less flux. And if thinking of the amount of flux the fleet has to use (a DP based analysis) they are even closer.
A brawling fit for an Enforcer might have a Heavy Needler and 2 Heavy Mortars, for a total of 560 fps. A brawling fit for a Hammerhead of 2 Heavy Mortars and 2 Railguns has a fps of 660. But the Hammerhead has only 50 (60) more dissipation. At the same time, its shield is 100 vs an Enforcer's 80. Both of these fits are running above the flux limits by a reasonable amount, but this common Hamemrhead fit is actually more 'overgunned' than the enforcer fit. The Hammerhead has a significant DPS advantage: 2 railguns is 334 dps vs a heavy needlers 250, and the Hammerhead has a ship system to give it a big firepower boost!
For a 'sniper' fit, a common Hammerhead has either 2 HVDs or HVD + Mauler. The other 2 small guns might be LAGs or Railguns, but they won't be range matched unless its tac lasers. Either way, the point of this build is to be at range, so its going to be running either 325 or 350 flux in that band, then another ~300-320 at the 700 range band: about the same flux as the other build, with split engagement ranges.
A 'sniper fit' Enforcer with 2 HVDs and a Mauler uses 500 fps. With 400 (440) dissipation, thats a completely reasonable flux budget. This is an interesting case because the Enforcer with 3 guns has about the same firepower at max range as a Hammerhead with 2 and its system: the Hammerhead needs to close in to the 700 range band to get a firepower advantage (or use tac lasers). But at those closer range bands, the extra 2 small ballistics + AAF are a significant boost to offense.
T5L is interesting, because an additional 100 flux benefits the Enforcer more than the Hammerhead. Hammerheads are already at their max gun load - they just don't have more slots.
Theoretically I could see an Enforcer with T5L and 30 Vents using 4 medium weapons, but I wasn't using this skill in my low tech game so I don't know for sure if the fit would work. With T4L: 200*1.2 + 30*10 = 540 dissipation. 3 HVDs and a Mauler would be 675 flux... thats actually the same 1.25 ratio as before, quite reasonable. I should try this build with T5L, I think Enforcers in a skilled fleet might actually have a firepower advantage over Hammerheads in sniping which would be wild (I did not expect a 4 gun flux budget to work, but with skills it does!). The HH can use their extra OP for other good things like boosting their defense, so they do get benefit from T5L, just not really an offensive benefit.
This kind of rambled on a bit, but one point other than examining the stats is that the "Enforcers can't fire their guns!" theme is actually a myth: they aren't more overfluxed than Hammerheads. They
do have less firepower when using 'brawling' weapons thanks to not having an offensive ship system, worse shields, and are slower. But at the same time they have double the missiles, more OP to afford missile boosting hullmods, and a very significant toughness advantage.
The missile advantage fades in longer fights which should be when Low tech ship shine in theory by doctrine at which you are left with a Low tech ship without power systems to support it's guns or inefficient shields.
It's competitive because of missiles, not because of the rest of the ships design or performance. The missile slots are a crutch for the enforcer, the hammerhead continues to remain a real fighting force the entire fight because of it's performance, system and flux generation.
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I think this is a misunderstanding of low tech ships. The things they have more of are limited resources: armor, hull, and missiles. They are
not endurance ships: they are ships that use limited resources to get kills (which unfortunately the AI is not great at, though aggressive/reckless officers and full assault helps). The long PPT is "nice" (and it lets them win in some edge cases) but not nearly as defining as armor and missiles.
Its bizarre to call the weapon slots available to a ship a "crutch" though. Like if I call a Hammerhead competitive only because of its 'crutch' of a ship system, not because of the rest of its design or performance... ok, yeah, the ship would underperform without the system but that doesn't matter because it has the system. If the ship is competitive, its competitive, we can't just ignore parts of it.
Missiles are the most powerful weapon type, so just dismissing them because they are limited isn't really realistic. There are situations where missiles run out, but by the time they do they've done lots of damage to the enemy. When I did a low tech themed playthrough, they lasted long enough for my ships to still have missiles at the point where multi-Radiant/multi-capital enemy fleets were broken and reduced to an incoming stream thats easily mopped up.
... I find the downplaying of the problems specifically engineered for low tech extremely frustrating in this thread in general...
I empathize with this: There are real ways in which low tech is less competitive than high tech, and burn drive is one of them: its not right to downplay problems and all it does is hurt attempts to make low tech ships fun to play. But its also not right to ignore their strengths and not accept that others make the tech level work. I'm not going to claim low tech is overpowered or more powerful: its not, its a bit weaker! But really only a bit. It can still be used from early game to endgame and win all fights.
In that other thread where there were people who didn't use high tech frigates in a good way and claimed that they weren't extremely powerful: you use them in a much better way and know that they really are. The same kind of thing applies here: you aren't getting success with low tech, but that doesn't necessarily mean that low tech is awful and completely broken, just that you haven't gotten success with them yet.
