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[ChristophHRO]

I ran out of weapons so I put a paladin on a sunder.

It's...... not totally aweful so long as it has ammo. 

The Remnant Paladin is pretty fun together with the 200 increased range for PD weapons elite skill.

[Ahueh]

I tried Paladin.  (I usually use Paladin on Radiant.  Two on non-missile loadout, one on double missile loadout.)  It is underpowered for assault.  (I kind of wonder if the direct damage is ignored and the only damage done is from the frag explosion.)  It is okay if it is the only PD on the ship.  I had Paladin drain multiple charges to take out some of the hardened targets.

If I have PD boosts, I prefer multiple small/medium burst PDs.  At least they have some anti-armor.  Paladin is for no-boost, out-of-the-box use.  Flak (or HMGs on those with IPDAI) on ballistic ships are better.

I want to like the Paladin but "support ships" aren't really a thing in this game. Maybe with AI tweaks you could have a dedicated Champion or Sunder or something act as a support/line ship, but giving up the range and power of the other options in a large energy mount just can't happen 99% of the time.

[Igncom1]

I'd personally not use a mostly forward firing ship as a 'support' unless that is fire support. Which they certainly excel at.

But if you mean a ship like a PD dedicated ship then I agree, there is no real reason to have a dedicated PD ship as half the time their target will be on the opposite side of a friendly who might as well shoot it down themselves.

[Amoebka]

Well Paladin can actually shoot over friendly ships, so blocking isn't the issue. If there was a destroyer with a large energy turret and stats that discourage assault builds (let's say garbage flux pool and dissipation, but premium shield efficiency and arc), I would gladly use it with Paladin.

[BigBrainEnergy]

I've used a champion build with squall + paladin and it's okay. It provides both shield pressure and pd that can shoot over allies so it pairs nicely with frigate swarms or SO ships. It still feels like a big waste of HEF though, which makes it hard to justify spending 25 dp on it. Now if it's 20 dp with support doctrine, then it's maybe worth it. It doesn't need the extra power of an officer when it's not directly engaging the enemy.

[Grievous69]

I've used Paladin successfully on 2 ships: Odyssey and Radiant. Everywhere else you'd be sacrificing too much imo. And of all the new ships that will come next patch, 2 of them have large energy mounts, and both are only hardpoints...

[BigBrainEnergy]

I think paladins work on some paragon builds. If you go Double plasma and heavy needler you've already got great dps, but you're overfluxing yourself. Slapping paladins in the turrets covers your pd needs so you can ignore the small energies and focus on hullmods. If you still want more offensive pressure then you've still got 2 medium energies to work with, so double ion beam, double ion pulser, or if you're good at flux management: double cryoblaster.

[Thaago]

Because I use missiles so much, Paladins are my most feared weapon to run up against on Radiants. Going for my usual "missile burst down the escorts" plan suddenly hit a hard wall against one with 2 of them. I had to change my build strategy and avoid ordos for a while the first time I ran into them.

[Vanshilar]

Skills bring this number down to about 600(and reduce recoil and increase shot speed)… you cannot just look at unskilled

No, that's if you assume ideal conditions for the Hellbore (ballistic mastery but not energy weapon mastery, target has high flux, etc.) which will never happen in practice. You cannot say that as a general statement. For example, you handwave away energy weapon mastery by assuming over 1000 range, but then you ignore the Hellbore's low projectile speed, recoil (spread), etc., which happen at longer ranges for projectile weapons, not to mention the AI's ability to flicker shields against high-damage shots. Basically, it's not going to happen in practice, and the vast majority of ships aren't going to be stationary high-armor targets at max hard flux anyway.

A better way to compare these weapons in combat would be to...well, compare these weapons in combat. Such as by modifying a Legion to be able to carry them together and have them fire side by side. And then, since I didn't want to do a bunch of A vs B comparisons (too many tests) for the different larges, just put them all together. That's right, a Legion that carries the Gauss, Mjolnir, Mark IX, Hephaestus, Devastator, Storm Needler, and Hellbore side by side. With Ballistic Mastery (elite) as well as Gunnery Implants (elite), along with the usual other skills like Combat Endurance. Threw in the Tachyon and the HIL too. Upped the flux to 4000 so it could handle it all, put it in a fleet with 10 Gryphons (Squall/Harpoon/Breach), and then set the whole fleet against triple Ordos. On autopilot except for occasional burn drives to keep the Legion front and center whenever it started being blocked by Gryphons, to ensure that it kept attacking. So the environment these weapons are in is that the enemy ships are generally somewhat weakened (have higher hard flux) due to Squall spam, so they're ripe to be killed. So the weapons are basically competing against each other to see who can finish off each ship first.

I ran it 3 times. Screenshot of the 3rd time to give an idea of what the results looked like is attached. The overall data was:

Raw Data

Code

Weapon	Total	Shield	Armor	Hull	Hits
Mjolnir	77717	40946	7012	29759	257
Tachyon	65275	39503	7747	18025	32
Mark IX	58642	46526	1456	10661	299
Gauss	56925	39869	2915	14142	83
HIL	54094	18002	13252	22839	33
Hephaestus	48775	15301	11993	21481	696
Hellbore	22646	8069	4503	10075	51
Storm Needler	22484	17773	563	4149	634
Devastator	12244	4399	3261	4583	167
Vulcan	2178	1608	456	114	882

Weapon	Total	Shield	Armor	Hull	Hits
Tachyon	70887	36191	7814	26881	24
Gauss	64424	50541	1955	11928	85
HIL	63508	17097	18734	27677	27
Mjolnir	59241	28936	8099	22206	215
Mark IX	45362	37606	1109	6646	245
Hephaestus	37818	11582	11949	14286	573
Hellbore	16562	5689	6268	4605	41
Storm Needler	15812	13882	422	1508	453
Devastator	13485	5176	4626	3683	208
Vulcan	1944	1537	297	110	727

Weapon	Total	Shield	Armor	Hull	Hits
Tachyon	65635	38109	8259	19268	30
Mjolnir	65157	32745	6257	26154	229
Gauss	59831	44092	3904	11835	91
HIL	49627	17200	14070	18356	38
Mark IX	42187	34477	1266	6443	247
Hephaestus	36726	12686	10968	13072	585
Hellbore	19667	5231	7336	7100	41
Storm Needler	17638	14857	400	2382	521
Devastator	11974	3830	3335	4809	180
Vulcan	2802	1686	308	87	771

[close]

Basically, the percentage of the total damage that each weapon contributed was:

Code

Percent of Total Damage for Each Weapon
Weapon		Test 1	Test 2	Test 3	Average
Tachyon		15.59%	18.31%	17.81%	17.24%
Mjolnir		18.56%	15.30%	17.68%	17.18%
Gauss		13.59%	16.64%	16.24%	15.49%
HIL		12.92%	16.41%	13.47%	14.26%
Mark IX		14.00%	11.72%	11.45%	12.39%
Hephaestus	11.65%	9.77%	9.97%	10.46%
Hellbore	5.41%	4.28%	5.34%	5.01%
Storm Needler	5.37%	4.08%	4.79%	4.75%
Devastator	2.92%	3.48%	3.25%	3.22%

Basically, the Hellbore did about half the damage as the Hephaestus. And that pretty much matched my experience when putting them side by side: the Hellbore, despite being specialized anti-armor, actually ends up doing less armor damage over the course of combat than the Hephaestus, even though the Hephaestus (with its lower hit strength) is actually more anti-hull than anti-armor. It simply misses too much and the window where it's the most useful (where the target just dropped shields due to high flux, but before its armor gets worn away by other weapons) is too short. The HIL ended up doing about as much armor damage as the Hellbore's armor and hull damage put together -- and the HIL does more hull damage than its armor damage on top of that. Devastators did poorly, whether due to its shots expiring before reaching the target, or because it was too busy killing fighters and missiles, or both. Storm Needler also did poorly, but that's more because of its short range; in this test the chance of a target getting past all the Squalls, the Gauss, the beams, and the 900-range weapons to get to the 700-range weapon was just too small. It would probably do better in a different environment where there are fewer other weapons. The results only varied by several percent across the three runs, so they were pretty consistent.

But there's something else here. I grouped all the 900-range weapons (Mjolnir, Mark IX, Hephaestus, Hellbore, and Devastator) together, along with a specially-modified Vulcan. The Vulcan was set to 900 range (to match the others), turn rate of 360 (so it could near-instantly point to the desired target), projectile speed of 3000 (so it would near-instantly hit the target, i.e. without the target being able to dodge it), do 7 energy damage (so that it would always do at least 1 damage to get counted, but contribute as little to the fight as possible), with 5000 projectile HP (to ensure that it doesn't get destroyed before hitting something), no recoil (i.e. no spread due to firing), and a couple of other changes. Basically made it to be a weapon that would nearly always hit. I set it with a refire delay of 0.25 second so that it fires 4 times per second.

All these weapons being in the same weapon group might seem like they would throw each other off, but in practice the AI almost always selected the Gauss, leaving this weapon group on autofire, so they were free to fire at anything within range. The Vulcan would nearly always hit so I assumed it to be the magical standard (i.e. always hit), while all the other projectile weapons had to absorb the effect of projectile speed, recoil, etc., on their hit rate. I knew each weapon's rate of fire (Mjolnir = 80 shots per minute, Mark IX = 60/2.3*4 = 104.35 shots per minute, Hephaestus = 240 shots per minute, Hellbore = 20 shots per minute, and Devastator = 60/3.1*12 = 232.26 shots per minute), along with the custom Vulcan's (240 shots per minute). Since they all had the same range and were placed near each other, if they perfectly hit then they should match the Vulcan in how often they hit (accounting for the differing shots per minute); the extent that they fell short is thus the extent that they ended up missing due to the various projectile factors above. From the above data, how often they hit, relative to the Vulcan, was:

Code

Chance of Weapon Hitting Target (Relative to Vulcan which is assumed to always hit)
Weapon		Test 1	Test 2	Test 3	Average
Mjolnir		87.41%	88.72%	89.11%	88.41%
Mark IX		77.97%	77.51%	73.68%	76.39%
Hephaestus	78.91%	78.82%	75.88%	77.87%
Hellbore	69.39%	67.68%	63.81%	66.96%
Devastator	19.57%	29.56%	24.12%	24.42%

The Mjolnir hit nearly 90% of the time. The Mark IX and the Hephaestus hit a bit more than 3/4 of the time. For the Hellbore, though, it misses about 1/3 of its shots. Note that here, we're not even talking about trying to hit the same armor cell or adjacent cells or whatever. About 1/3 of the shots will miss the target ship completely, including the shield bubble (which is wider than the ship) if the shields were up. And this is with Ballistic Mastery (elite) for the +33% projectile speed and Gunnery Implants for the +100% target leading accuracy and -25% weapon recoil. Basically, any analysis which ignores its lower hit rate compared with other weapons is going to be wildly off.

The Devastator only hit about 1/4 of the time, but some of its shots expire early, plus it also spends more time targeting fighters and missiles, so it wasn't always focused on enemy ships. All the weapons were pretty consistent in their hit rate except for the Devastator, likely due to how much it was dealing with missiles (particularly, on whether or not the Legion had to absorb Flash waves) on each given run, so these results should be fairly reliable.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[BigBrainEnergy]

Just briefly looking it over, the mjolnir being the most accurate matches up with my experience. It seems to be the perfect "all-rounder" of large ballistics where it's useful against not only shields and armour due to its energy typing, but also frigates and capitals due to its high dps and accuracy. It's just expensive to mount and high on flux drain.

I was badmouthing the hellbore earlier but it is light on both flux and OP which makes it easy to fit into builds with tight budgets. So it has it's place, but yeah, that accuracy is painful to look at. The numbers put up by the mjolnir and HIL just go to show how important it is, and why you should always grab elite ballistic mastery when you have the chance.

Thanks for running the numbers Vanshilar. I'll have a closer look at them later.

[Grievous69]

Basically, any analysis which ignores its lower hit rate compared with other weapons is going to be wildly off.

And any analysis that completely ignores flux mechanics is also pretty pointless. I swear there's a running theme with these "detailed" math analysis show offs: The longer the post is, the more likely is that the poster left out something very important. From what I've seen on the forum, Thaago for example makes shorter mathematical breakdown but they serve some point. Vanshilar and Goumindong seem to like walls of information that take 10 minutes to read, but when you get to the end you realize it was meaningless. I'm not attacking anyone, this is more of a PSA. Don't bother making a huge post if you're going to leave out something crucial, people won't take you seriously.

Like here, everyone knows Mjolnir and HAG put out more damage than Hellbore in a vacuum, but good luck having an overfluxed ship. I'm not even sure what to take from the post. What, are Mjolnir and HAG better if I have a ship with unlimited flux? Cool, guess I'll use that if I ever play with some broken mod.

Also HAG being only 10% more accurate than Hellbore is still pathetic. For a weapon that's all about having a different role than Hellbore it sure keeps on sucking.

[Igncom1]

I do find accuracy a pretty funny thing too seeing as everyone is moving around in combat to spread out armour damage.

In practical terms I basically never bother with the Mjolnir, it's to expensive for most of the ships that can equip it, and a do-all weapon isn't always that great when 90% of a fight might just be the shields.

I always differ to cost-effectives myself like the Autocannon and Hellbore which I'm bringing to shoot down battleships anyway, rather then worrying that my massive space gun can't hit a wolf frigate.

[BigBrainEnergy]

I do find accuracy a pretty funny thing too seeing as everyone is moving around in combat to spread out armour damage.

In practical terms I basically never bother with the Mjolnir, it's to expensive for most of the ships that can equip it, and a do-all weapon isn't always that great when 90% of a fight might just be the shields.

I always differ to cost-effectives myself like the Autocannon and Hellbore which I'm bringing to shoot down battleships anyway, rather then worrying that my massive space gun can't hit a wolf frigate.

If you're shooting at an onslaught than pretty much everything's gonna have 100% accuracy which definitely shifts things towards hellbores and autocannons, but for a ship designed to punch down (like the conquest) I've had a lot of good results from mjolnirs. The lower efficiency doesn't matter because an honorable 1v1 with the enemy capital was never in the game plan, you want to hit its escorts asap and then pounce when you have the numbers advantage.

All the large ballistics match up to each other pretty fairly (although the heph could use slightly better efficiency), but wasn't the original question about large ballistics vs large energy? As a high-tech simp myself I'd love to continue the narrative that large energies are better than large ballistics but idk if the data confirms that (accounting for op and flux costs, of course). Can someone just tell me what the answer is so I can argue for the opposite of whatever you say?

[Igncom1]

Well large energy has no kinetic weapons and horrific flux stats that if you could put ballistics on hightech ships they'd be totally outmoded.

There you go, match lit! 

[BigBrainEnergy]

Well large energy has no kinetic weapons and horrific flux stats that if you could put ballistics on hightech ships they'd be totally outmoded.

There you go, match lit! 

I was half-joking, but I'll bite.

All the large ballistics are at 1.0 efficiency or worse, but if you look at large energy you've got the HIL at 1.0 HE damage which makes it comparable to ballistic HE before you consider accuracy, at which point the HIL is more efficient. Then the autopulse below 1. Sure, it's energy and not kinetic, but it's also got all the burst damage you need to get through the shields of just about anything short of a radiant, and again, it has batter accuracy than the kinetic options. Even looking at the plasma our closest comparison is the mjolnir where again it favors the energy weapon. The only thing you could say bad about them is the range of the non-beam options is subpar but that doesn't seem to make up for the raw power difference in practice.

What about the tach lance? Considering it's the only weapon in the game that does noticeable non-emp damage through shields on top of being one of the best alpha-strike weapons in the game and also it has emp and also also strikes nearly instantly I don't think there's really any doubt how good it is despite its clear weaknesses.

That being said, giving high-tech large hybrids over large energies would make them overpowered just due to the increase in options and weapon combinations that suddenly become available. Switching them out for large ballistics though... very few ships would prefer from that, if any.

I'm sure people could test it though, and that would be pretty nifty.