A way to use beams in a manner identical to weapons you already have. It seems redundant to me.
No, it's to provide another option that has different properties, since beams have some nice properties that projectiles don't have. They have (nearly) instant shot speed and tracking (depending on the turret turn rate), so they don't miss as much as projectiles and their damage is instantaneous. Hard flux also means that they can take care of fighters and missiles much more effectively.
The issue here is how to give beams hard flux ability but without making it too strong, since beam ships are typically high tech with greater mobility -- you don't want to let them be able to snipe with hard flux from afar, which is usually the province of low tech. Low tech lacks mobility but makes it for it with long range, and along with it the ability to soften up targets from afar by using hard flux weapons. That's part of the speed vs weapon range game design.
Right now HSA is a hull mod with a strong benefit and a drawback to balance it out, and the game is to find the right level of drawback. What if it instead got a less strong buff, but with no drawback (or at least a much less game-changing one)? Something like, deals x% hard flux damage based on distance to target, from 0% at max range to 100% at point blank, and reduces range by 10%.
I think this is an interesting idea! There are also other ways that this could be done; for example, beam does pure soft flux at 2/3 of range or higher, then at 2/3 range or lower that percentage gradually increases from 0% hard flux at 2/3 range to 100% hard flux at 1/3 range, and then 100% hard flux at 1/3 range or lower. This removes the ability of beams to snipe with hard flux at long range, thus preserving the game balance in that respect; but allows beams to still do hard flux at shorter ranges, which is the intent of the HSA range nerfs.
I think the biggest difficulty would be modifying the AI to account for this, since a given beam would actually be "dual use", so the AI would have to decide if it's better to do soft flux from afar, or hard flux from close in. Definitely not hotfix material but may be interesting to see later on.
At the same time, IPDAI + Elite Point Defense gives +200 range to all small ballistics, which is a bigger bonus than BRF on ships without Large mounts. Now that BRF is more expensive than IPDAI, and given how important PD is for Low Tech IMO, I can see myself preferring IPDAI + Elite Point Defense over Ballistic Rangefinder in like 90% of cases.
Whoa the range bonus from IPDAI + Elite Point Defense can be a really potent combo, giving small ballistics and small energies a chance to shine! That may be useful for ships like Scarabs with a bunch of IR Pulse Lasers or something, or...Doom with Antimatter Blasters for a really great alpha strike ability. It's also appropriately really expensive too (costs an elite skill plus IPDAI OP) to get that range increase.
I haven't been playing the game for that long, so I can't claim any great insight or expertise, but might something like inflicting the Paladin PD's multi-beam effect work as an alternative? If I understand how that impacts armor penetration correctly, it would make beams much less effective versus armor in exchange for being much better versus shields.
That might be an interesting penalty for HSA -- reduce the hit strength of the beam. Right now it looks like one of the concerns of HSA is that it makes burst beams like Phase Lance too strong. Usually weapons are good vs shields and bad vs armor (i.e. kinetics), or bad vs shields and good vs armor (i.e. HE). HSA gives burst beams like Phase Lance a relatively flux-efficient way to deal hard flux, yet do a lot of damage to armor if the target decides to drop shields instead. If HSA reduced beam hit strength by say 1/2 (keeping in mind that the hit strength is already 1/2 of the DPS), then that would make beams more like a kinetic weapon, so it removes this conundrum for the target.
It didn't work? You couldn't kill the Fulgent? That's a bit disingenuous. The HSA strategy is more dangerous, yes. I realized *and* recognized that a full loadout of ASM would be safer in my post, there's no need to make such a sweeping generalization. At least you were willing to try it, I guess.
It's not that I couldn't kill the Fulgent, it's that I had to stick around for a second burst (whether or not I bothered to phase the cooldown in between), instead of unloading one burst and then skedaddling.
Though I think this is simply the wrong use case for showing that HSA is overpowered. This is basically a single, sudden, massive flux burst on the target, preferably when the target's shields could be redirected via mines or because it was already engaging another target or because its flux was already high. In which case the hard flux ability of HSA didn't really come into play in the first place (it was really about bypassing the shields to kill the target's armor and hull). And the purpose of a big alpha strike, to dump a bunch of flux on the target suddenly to force it to drop shields (to prevent overloading) and take a bunch of damage to armor/hull, inherently means it doesn't really matter if that flux were hard or soft (they don't have enough capacity to absorb it is the whole point). So it's simply a bad use case for demonstrating HSA's power, obscured by the fact that the beams under discussion like the Phase Lance are burst beams, more suited to these kinds of alpha strikes.
As an aside, since IPDAI works with Elite Point Defense to boost the range of small energy weapons, this means that there's another potential high-burst Doom loadout: 6 antimatter blasters. This is
almost enough to one-shot Brilliants, and it doesn't need Omega weapons to do so (although I back it up with 2 Cryoblasters). But it is
really expensive, which is appropriate; it costs an elite skill (Point Defense), as well as IPDAI (12 OP), on a Doom that is already very OP-starved due to Phase Anchor. You can do this without IPDAI and Elite Point Defense but then you're risking getting caught in the explosion since it's so short-ranged, but IPDAI and Elite Point Defense make it so that you can do this from a safer range now. It's really expensive and without the niceties that AMSRM provides (such as more range, shooting from behind friendly ships, etc.), but it's a potential way to get even more alpha strike ability.