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[SCC]

I don't understand the dislike for large ballistic.

The quality jump from energy medium to large is significant. Everything's just better. With large ballistics, you get some and you lose some. Kinda like with large and medium missiles, except you need flux to fire ballistics. Or kinda like medium and small ballistics.

From 2 IR Pulse to1 Pulse Laser, you have very similar DPS, but you gain 100 range, 50 hit strength and lose 0,1 efficiency. From 2 Pulse Lasers to 1 Plasma Cannon, you lose lose 0,2 efficiency and 10 OP and gain 25% DPS, 100 range, 400 hit strength. The trend is less efficiency, more range, more damage.
From 2 Heavy Blaster to 1 Plasma Cannon, you lose 25% DPS and 6 DP, but you gain 100 range and 0,34 efficiency.
From 2 Ion Pulsers to 1 Autopulse Laser, you lose 300 burst DPS, 60 sustained DPS and EMP, but you gain 200 range, 0,28 efficiency, 60 hit strength and 2 OP.
From 2 Pulse Lasers to 1 Autopulse Laser, you lose 50% sustained DPS, but you gain the burst, 100 range, 50 hit strength and 0,17 efficiency.

From 2 Railguns to 1 HVD, you lose 59% DPS, 0,37 efficiency, but you gain 300 range, 87,5 hit strength, EMP and 1 OP. From 2 HVDs to 1 Gauss Cannon, you lose 0,44 efficiency and EMP, but you gain 26% DPS, 200 range, 212,5 hit strength and 1 OP. The trend is way less efficiency, way more range, more hit strength.
From 2 Light Needlers to 1 Heavy Needler, you lose 17% of DPS, but you gain 1 OP. From 2 Heavy Needlers to 1 Storm Needler, you lose no stats and gain 2 OP and 0,1 efficiency. The trend is cheaper OP price.
From 2 Light Autocannons to 1 Heavy Autocannon, you lose 0,2 efficiency and 2 OP, but you gain 7% damage, 100 range and 50 hit strength. From 2 Heavy Autocannons to 1 Mk IX, you lose 19% DPS, but you gain 100 range, 100 hit strength and 2 OP. The trend is more range, more hit strength, less OP.
From 2 Light Mortars to 1 Heavy Mortar, you lose 0,15 efficiency and 3 OP, but you gain 46% DPS, 100 range and 35 hit strength. From 2 Heavy Mortars to 1 Hellbore, you lose 43% DPS, 0,18 efficiency and 2 OP, but you gain 200 range and 640 hit strength. The trend is less efficiency, more hit strength, increased OP price.

On paper, this doesn't look so bad. It does feel kinda bad in practice, though.

Hellbores are simply the most efficient HE, hands down.

High Intensity Laser is, actually. Thanks, 10 Hz damage.

You can go to Mjolnir but then you’re at large flux expenditure for 1.6 flux/dmg…

Don't you mean 1,25?

There is also an issue of recoil. I feel the recoil on large ballistic may be a tad high.

Mjolnir doesn't have this issue :^)

Anyway. Yea. Even with AWM and GI the recoil on HAG is not enough to hit a cruiser at 75% to max range let alone hit a similar armor section (lets define a similar armor section to say that the splash armor damage from consecutive hits would not always overlap*). I think some of this would be fixed by like me

Without skills, Mjolnir is better at getting through the armour, simply because it can hit the same spot consistently, unlike HAG.

[Goumindong]

Don't you mean 1,25?

Yes.

High Intensity Laser is, actually. Thanks, 10 Hz damage.

Beams have half efficiency* and HE has efficiency that is relative to its hit strength. So while the HIL is hitting 2 to 1 with a beam (very good) at 500 hit strength the Hellbore is hitting 2 to 1 at 1500 hit strength. Its weakness is that it only fires 250 flux/second. But i guarantee you that letting 2 hellbores into your armor is going to sink you faster than letting 1 HIL into your armor.

The Hellbore is by far the most efficient armor killer. The hit strength effect is relevant until armor is so low as to effectively not be armor.

*well kind of. The continuous nature of it makes it a bit stronger. But not that much stronger. Its hit strength is 500 for 500. 1 to 1 armor pen, even if its doing 1000 damage/second to armor.

[SCC]

High Intensity Laser is, actually. Thanks, 10 Hz damage.

Beams have half efficiency* and HE has efficiency that is relative to its hit strength. So while the HIL is hitting 2 to 1 with a beam (very good) at 500 hit strength the Hellbore is hitting 2 to 1 at 1500 hit strength. Its weakness is that it only fires 250 flux/second. But i guarantee you that letting 2 hellbores into your armor is going to sink you faster than letting 1 HIL into your armor.

The Hellbore is by far the most efficient armor killer. The hit strength effect is relevant until armor is so low as to effectively not be armor.

Against an Onslaught with no buffs, they would be - by 0,3 seconds. Assuming they hit. And they hit the same place. And I count the time from the moment that hellbores hit the target - if they take more than 0,3 seconds to hit the target, HIL will strip the armour faster. And it's just 1 gun, instead of 2. It would be less efficient, even if you would use 3 shots instead of 4, since Hellbore needs 3 shots to strip the Onslaught's armour - for 750 x 3 = 2250 flux - whereas HIL has to fire for 3,3 seconds, 1650 flux.
Against a 3000 armour target, Hellbore has to fire 5 times over 12 seconds (counting from the moment the first shot landed), spending 3750 flux. HIL has to fire for 7,5 seconds, also for 3750. I'm not sure if there are in-game enemies that would be stripped faster with a Hellbore than a HIL, but there might be some that would be stripped more efficiently with a hellbore, assuming pinpoint accuracy.

Edit: well, I forgot that Hellbore's big damage periodically comes out on top, depending on whether the armour value conveniently is stripped with minimal overkill, or if it's an Onslaught and you're wasting 2/3rds of your last shot to finally strip that last 178 armour.

[Sandor057]

My most favourite slot is small ballistic. Great for SO builds, or Rangefinder builds, has an answer to everything and most importantly has lots of dakka.

Large ballistic is a close second. Its guns can deal the greatest amount of damage in a single shot (helbore and gauss), and have a good variety to use against different kinds of targets. Yet they need support from other ships to excel.

Third would be large energy for having the IMO only objectively good beam weapons: tach lance & paladin. HIL is good... in a vacuum. It, like all "constant" beam weapons has one component that makes it sub par compared to large ballistics: time. You need to continuously hit roughly the same spot for a prolonged amount of time to deal some good damage, while with, say, a helbore you make the hit and all the damage is there, you don't need to focus on the same spot.

[Goumindong]

High Intensity Laser is, actually. Thanks, 10 Hz damage.

Beams have half efficiency* and HE has efficiency that is relative to its hit strength. So while the HIL is hitting 2 to 1 with a beam (very good) at 500 hit strength the Hellbore is hitting 2 to 1 at 1500 hit strength. Its weakness is that it only fires 250 flux/second. But i guarantee you that letting 2 hellbores into your armor is going to sink you faster than letting 1 HIL into your armor.

The Hellbore is by far the most efficient armor killer. The hit strength effect is relevant until armor is so low as to effectively not be armor.

Against an Onslaught with no buffs, they would be - by 0,3 seconds. Assuming they hit. And they hit the same place. And I count the time from the moment that hellbores hit the target - if they take more than 0,3 seconds to hit the target, HIL will strip the armour faster. And it's just 1 gun, instead of 2. It would be less efficient, even if you would use 3 shots instead of 4, since Hellbore needs 3 shots to strip the Onslaught's armour - for 750 x 3 = 2250 flux - whereas HIL has to fire for 3,3 seconds, 1650 flux.
Against a 3000 armour target, Hellbore has to fire 5 times over 12 seconds (counting from the moment the first shot landed), spending 3750 flux. HIL has to fire for 7,5 seconds, also for 3750. I'm not sure if there are in-game enemies that would be stripped faster with a Hellbore than a HIL, but there might be some that would be stripped more efficiently with a hellbore, assuming pinpoint accuracy.

My experiences say this is wrong. A Hellbore hits for 1500 damage per hit. Against a base onslaught with no skills but heavy armor (and an extra 100 armor for funzies because i accidentally calculated at 2275 base armor) you should do ~596 for the first hit, 714 for the second hit and 923 for the third hit. This strips the entire amount of the armor. For an HIL to clear 2175 armor in 3.3 seconds it would have to 659 real DPS to armor. The breakpoint for when the HIL is doing an average of 681 real DPS to armor is when the target ship has 258.2 armor (dmg/[armor+dmg]  = .659 -> 500/758.2 = .659)

So the HIL will only be doing more than 681 real DPS to armor when the onslaught has less than 258.2 armor. And it will be doing less than 681 dps to armor when the onslaught has between 2175 and 234 armor. Which... at best, is 8/10th of the armor that the onslaught has and we also know that higher armor values take longer to go through than lower armor values.

So something is clearly going wrong in your calculation. I suspect that you gave the HIL 1,000 armor pen. It does not have 1,000 armor pen, it has 500 armor pen.

Edit: As an example. Suppose for a second that your HIL does the same DPS for the damage between 1750 and 1000 on an onslaught. Well at 1000 armor for an onslaught the HIL deals 500/500+1000 = .333 * DPS damage to the onslaughts armor. So 333 DPS.  So it takes at least 2.25 seconds for the HIL to clear the first 750 armor on the onslaught.

And then it deals the next 1000 damage in 1 second? On a 1k DPS weapon?

edit: without heavy armor the HIL would need to be doing 530 real dps to armor, the breakpoint of which is at 442 armor of 1750 for the onslaught. Which is again, below half of the onslaughts armor value and so it should be functionally impossible to achieve 530 real DPS on a 1000 DPS weapon if the sweep does not at least hit the average damage you need around the half armor point.

[Amoebka]

It's unreasonably generous to assume Hellbore will ever hit the same armor cell three times in a row. HIL has a much better chance at doing that.

[Goumindong]

It's unreasonably generous to assume Hellbore will ever hit the same armor cell three times in a row. HIL has a much better chance at doing that.

The Hellbore is so much better killing armor this does not matter. Plus we were talking about efficiency. The only more efficient weapon at killing armor are missiles, because they cost zero flux.

Each Hellbore is like taking a Harpoon. They are absurdly good at killing armor even with their terribly DPS values.

[BigBrainEnergy]

The Hellbore is so much better killing armor this does not matter.

This is not even remotely true, because hellbores never hit their target. Flux efficiency tanks when you consider hit-rate compared to HIL.

What about capitals? They can flick their shields on to block hellbore shots because of how predictable they are while against the HIL they get punished as soon as they drop their shields. Even setting all that aside, the hellbore's higher hit strength is much less impressive when you consider it has half the DPS of the HIL. I'd like to see someone do the calculation but it's probably faster at stripping armour of all types due to this fact alone. There's a good reason hellbores cost even less than locusts and paladins.

[Igncom1]

Can't really shoot a hellbore at a frigate, but then again I can't put a HIL on my Onslaughts either.

That Prometheus Mk.II however  classy.

Of course if I can fit an anti-armour beam, then the T.Lance seems to cut em down slightly faster anyway.

Annoying the AI with a constant beam is nice however.

[BigBrainEnergy]

Spoiler

I think it depends on what "best" means... in terms of game power: large missiles -> medium missile -> small missile -> everything else because flux free damage wins. For the other mount types (in most situations): Large energy -> Large Ballistic -> Medium Ballistic -> Small Ballistic -> Medium Energy -> Small Energy.

I don't understand the dislike for large ballistic. It doesn't cover every role that medium ballistic does which is a good thing: flaks are superior anti-missiles PD to Devastators (especially at 2 flaks per devastator) but lack the mass area/HE for fighter bursting and point blank work, and HVD's are lower range but higher efficiency (sort of) than Gauss while being accurate. But for everything else large ballistics are just plain better. At the very least, their "standard" guns have range 900 instead of 800.

Hellbores are simply the most efficient HE, hands down. Recoil is an issue, but armored weapon mounts and gunnery implants mitigate that.

Mk IX also has recoil issues but is otherwise a solid upgrade over mediums: it offers either massively superior DPS, efficiency, and OP/DPS cost compared to HVDs at the cost of 100 range, or they gain 100 range and doubled armor/hull penetration compared to HACs at the cost of 92% DPS/OP (which is a pretty minor thing but I felt like I had to mention it for fairness).

Storm Needler loses the alpha burst of the heavy needler in exchange for better flux efficiency and slightly better damage/OP - the main downside is ballistic rangefinder not applying to larges making the lesser sizes able to get a range boost for a high OP cost.

Heph is perhaps somewhat undertuned, but as shown in extensive math in a thread from a month or so ago it has a solid niche vs hull and medium armor, and is certainly better than 2 of the hypothetical "accurate 10DP HE ballistic" would bring (though of course a comparison is impossible because that weapon doesn't exist). It works in its niche, but its niche is not one that large ballistic armed ships often need to dedicate so much flux to.

Gauss has the best range in the game and enough penetration to be nasty vs hull and light armor even as a kinetic gun - efficiency is bad, but it brings capabilities nothing else matches.

Devastators are niche anti-fighter/SO brawler/splash around omni shields of frigates weapons. I would like their flux cost significantly reduced, but I still use them on some ships. This is basically the only large mount ballistic where I would rather have 2 of the medium mount versions (flaks! woo!).

And finally the Mjolnir... flux expensive again, but it works well for some builds and has a combination of DPS, shot size, and accuracy that makes it attractive for ships that can support it and are slot limited rather than flux limited. As shown in the same thread as the Heph is has superior anti-hull dps/efficiency for more heavily armored ships (but worse anti-armor) while doing much better vs shields. For many opponents it offers "good enough" anti-armor while being great vs hull and ok vs shields. For mod ships that can mount either large ballistic or large energy, the 900 range even gives it a use case over the plasma cannon if 700 range would be an issue.

...
regarding Torpedoes - all unguided are only player's weapon. That is a design flaw.
...

This is not the case in my experience. All torpedoes work well in AI hands, with small slot reapers being almost broken levels of good vs capital ships and cruisers. But the ship they are mounted on needs to be in a position to be in torpedo firing range! SO ships, medium range brawlers (like railgun/mortar hammerhead), fast frigates with short ranged guns (kite, wolf, tempest, omen, SO centurion, etc), and reckless line ships (Legion XIV, SO Champion, all Remnant ships) all do great with torpedoes. Ships that are not going to be in firing range (which for torpedoes is pretty close) should get medium ranged missiles instead of short ranged missiles.

[close]

In terms of raw power, obviously large ballistics beat mediums in a 1 to 1 comparison. The way I took the question was more along the lines of "how useful is this weapon class relative to how much of a ship's power budget it eats up." Looking at it that way I would basically always take 2 medium ballistics over 1 large while the reverse is true for energy weapons. I'd also like to add that while small missiles are powerhouses in the early game they often bring much less value in the late game when it's harder to get a clean shot and the tiny ammo count becomes much more of a limiting factor.

[Goumindong]

The Hellbore is so much better killing armor this does not matter.

This is not even remotely true, because hellbores never hit their target. Flux efficiency tanks when you consider hit-rate compared to HIL.

What about capitals? They can flick their shields on to block hellbore shots because of how predictable they are while against the HIL they get punished as soon as they drop their shields. Even setting all that aside, the hellbore's higher hit strength is much less impressive when you consider it has half the DPS of the HIL. I'd like to see someone do the calculation but it's probably faster at stripping armour of all types due to this fact alone. There's a good reason hellbores cost even less than locusts and paladins.

This is what was being discussed.

Hellbores are simply the most efficient HE, hands down.

The breakpoint for a single hellbore to do less armor DPS than a HIL is pretty high. 500*1500/(1500+x) = 1000*500/(500+x) -> X= 1500. At double the minimum armor value for the hellbore is about 3500 (I.E. since the HIL does 2x the DPS if the hellbore does less than 30% damage then its doing less to unskilled armor)

But pilot skills can change this on the high end up to about 6000 (because the HIL is is now at the .1 cap and so we're going to where the hellbore hits .2) and on the low end to down to 1000 or 750 (depending on how the -25% armor damage interacts with hit strength [does it reduce damage after or before hit strength? If before then 750 is the minimum point and if after its 1000]) and whether or not the target has high flux armor reduction.

Without high flux armor effect then its 1500 minimum if -25% armor damage doesn't interact with hit strength and 1125 if -25% armor damage does interact with hit strength.

The effect of ballistic mastery is pretty impressive. With no other skills moving the damage breakpoint down to 911 and down to 1125 when shooting a capital ship with target analysis. (i think its reasonable to assume our HIL is hitting at over 1000 range so not including the energy weapon flux bonus)

So the absolute dead minimum armor breakpoint at which the Hellbore is doing more DPS is anything above 587.67 armor. And the point at which minimum damage starts to make the HIL do more damage would be at 3900 for the set of circumstances that produce that range. At below 1000 range with the HIL getting energy damage boosts for having high flux then this will swap pretty radically

So against an Onslaught, piloted by a skilled pilot. It may be reasonable to say that a single Hellbore also with a skilled pilot would more armor DPS than a HIL over the course of the armors lifespan.

And this frankly tracks with my experiences playing the game on ships with high armor. Letting a HIL hit you for a bit is a pain but letting a hellbore through roughly ends the ability of that section of armor to armor tank anymore.

edit is formula clarity. You can modify the formula by adding the multiples in to it pretty easily if you want to crank out some options into wolfram alpha or some other math software to make it easy to solve.

edit: minimum armor advantage assumes 1.5xarmor value for DR due to flux, impact mitigation applying to hit strength, but does NOT assume 100% CR on either ship. 100% CR on the attacking ship will increase this value and so make the HIL relatively stronger. 100% CR on the defending ship will decrease this value and so make the HIL relatively weaker. The combination of them will decrease this value and make the HIL relatively weaker but not by a significant amount.

Values are 646 for 100% CR attacking ship, 528 for 100% CR defending ship, and 581.79 for both

[Thaago]

...
In terms of raw power, obviously large ballistics beat mediums in a 1 to 1 comparison. The way I took the question was more along the lines of "how useful is this weapon class relative to how much of a ship's power budget it eats up." Looking at it that way I would basically always take 2 medium ballistics over 1 large while the reverse is true for energy weapons. I'd also like to add that while small missiles are powerhouses in the early game they often bring much less value in the late game when it's harder to get a clean shot and the tiny ammo count becomes much more of a limiting factor.

I wasn't saying 1 large for 1 medium, I was saying 1 large for 2 mediums. The larges are just plain better, with a couple of tradeoffs here and there.

Re: Hellbore vs HIL:

HIL in my experience will cut through armor faster, but not as efficiently for flux. 500 DPS vs 250 DPS matters, but so does 500 hit stregth vs 1500 hit strength. The continual recalculation of armor level is not nearly enough to make up for it. Don't get me wrong, I think HILs are the best anti armor weapon and comboing them with kinetics is fantastic, but Hellbores are the most efficient anti armor weapon. It helps that everything with armor that its actually worth bringing such a specialized tool against is slow and huge.

[Brainwright]

I don't understand the dislike for large ballistic.

The flux cost is so severe a hullmod to make them worth mounting was made.

[Goumindong]

I don't understand the dislike for large ballistic.

The flux cost is so severe a hullmod to make them worth mounting was made.

No. The hullmod to make them worth mounting was added to ships that have split weapons because half of the weapons would tend to not be utilized at any one time. This was to prevent the ship from needing the 40 more OP in order to fit large weapons on both sides. Because if you had 40 more OP you could ignore the heavy slots on one side and utilize the extra 40 OP for things like capacity or hull mods.

This way, the advantage to not fitting the back side weapons is only between 12 and 20 OP. Barely enough to fit another hull mod. And that requires those mounts to be dead empty.

[prav]

HBI is better understood as a 10 OP penalty for undersizing weapons in the large mounts. Ship OP counts already presume you're taking full advantage.