DPS is kinda not that useful of a metric for armor, because every time you deal damage, you change the armor value and thus change the DPS.
Better to think about 'time to strip armor', and 'flux to strip armor'.
Granted, in this case DPS isn't constant but continually changes as armor is depleted, so the graphs are more accurately instantaneous DPS (i.e. DPS at that moment in time when the armor happened to be that amount). However DPS is more commonly used in the gaming community as a measure of offensive "goodness" than total time or energy (i.e. flux) needed.
In this case, I don't know if the time or flux needed is even well-defined yet; you'd have to specify if you mean when the armor is first breached, or when the armor is completely gone, because there will some time when the inner armor cells are already depleted (and thus the weapon is doing hull damage), but the outer armor cells still have some armor present. You'd also have to define other parameters like how often the weapon hits.
If you'd like to calculate time or flux needed to strip armor yourself though, be my guest. These graphs here simply calculate a value based on the damage reduction formula (W * H / (H + A), where W is the weapon damage, H is the weapon hit strength, and A is the armor value), and each cell already looks like this:
=SUM(B$4:B$9*C$4:C$9*IF(E$4:E$9="Kinetic",0.5,IF(E$4:E$9="HE",2,IF(E$4:E$9="Frag",0.25,1)))*IF(F$4:F$9*IF(E$4:E$9="Kinetic",0.5,IF(E$4:E$9="HE",2,IF(E$4:E$9="Frag",0.25,1)))/(F$4:F$9*IF(E$4:E$9="Kinetic",0.5,IF(E$4:E$9="HE",2,IF(E$4:E$9="Frag",0.25,1)))+$A23)<0.15,0.15,F$4:F$9*IF(E$4:E$9="Kinetic",0.5,IF(E$4:E$9="HE",2,IF(E$4:E$9="Frag",0.25,1)))/(F$4:F$9*IF(E$4:E$9="Kinetic",0.5,IF(E$4:E$9="HE",2,IF(E$4:E$9="Frag",0.25,1)))+$A23))*IF(G$4:G$9="Always",1,IF(G$4:G$9="vs Armor/Hull",1,0)))
(It accounts for using up to 6 different weapons together, different weapon amounts, damages, and types for each of those weapons, and a couple of other things, so it does have more capabilities than what's utilized here.)
The important point is all that can be put into a single Excel cell. If you want to calculate the total time or flux needed, you're basically integrating across these cells and figuring out when the armor value crosses 0. Doable, especially since I've already coded in an armor simulation spreadsheet before, but not something I want to tackle right now. Much easier to look at the graph to get an idea of how much damage the weapon will do.
Thanks - interesting stuff! Rift Cascade Emitter is obviously going to be a ton better once you factor in rift damage - in fact, most of its damage will be coming from rifts, not the beam itself. HIL is good for chewing through heavy armor, while Paladin PD does really well vs residual armor (thanks to frag damage). I think it shows that burst beams fare pretty decently vs armor without the specialization penalty from HIL, definitely more so compared to non-HIL continuous beams. Nice to see that all the different large beams have their specific use cases, with HIL/Paladin PD being more specialists (vs strong/weak armor respectively) and Tach/RCE being more generalists.
Yeah I think when I have some time in January to look at how Rift Cascade Emitter works more, I may be better able to account for the rifts. The graph doesn't account for it nor for the frag damage from Paladin PD (only the beam itself, which is energy damage).
Rift's weapon card says it does 1500 damage per burst. Doing a couple of quick tests in the simulator, it looks like at max range it does around 2100 damage per burst (i.e. the regular 1500, then a 600-damage rift), going up to about 4500 total damage at point-blank range, against shields, due to the additional rifts. (Yes the weapon card says the rifts are 750 to 1250 damage, but it seems like they're centered a bit away so they don't do their max damage.) So at max range the actual DPS (assuming rifts match the weapon's hit strength, even though we know they'll be somewhat different) will be roughly 140% of what's shown here, while at point-blank range the actual DPS will be roughly 300% of what's shown here. At point blank range they may even have better DPS than the Paladin PD, though you'd have to be ramming the enemy ship to get there heh.
Funny thing about the Paladin PD, it gets affected by the +200 range from Elite Point Defense, so its range is actually not too shabby compared with the 1000-range beams, especially with HSA which nerfs the 1000-range beams more. It also has the best raw damage/flux ratio between those beams, so among the beams it's the best vs shields. It's still worse than its closest projectile analogue the Autopulse Laser though in both DPS and damage/flux efficiency. Not sure if there's a way to take advantage of the Paladin PD being able to fire through friendly ships; I'm still struggling to find a case where beams with HSA are better than the equivalent projectile weapons.
Yes it looks like HIL is HE (obviously), Paladin PD is anti-shield and anti-hull (but bad vs armor), while Tachyon and Rift are more generalists. The big question mark is how much Rift will do once the rifts are accounted for; it has a significantly higher flux cost than the others, so it "should" do significantly more damage than the others. Rift damage also varies by range so you'd have to figure what range do you think the weapon will generally be used at.