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Author Topic: Give the pulse laser a bonus vs shields  (Read 4172 times)

tomatopaste

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Give the pulse laser a bonus vs shields
« on: December 19, 2022, 10:39:20 PM »

The pulse laser is easily the least useful medium energy weapon in my experience because it lacks any specialised role and just isn't worth the slot when weapons like the ion pulser exist. Giving the pulse laser a ~25% bonus vs shields would go a long way to making it have any effective use in high tech loadouts.
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Lortus

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Re: Give the pulse laser a bonus vs shields
« Reply #1 on: December 20, 2022, 02:26:58 AM »

Literally the new kinetic medium blaster.

I do agree that the Pulse Laser kinda sucks though. Especially the medium. It does terrible armor damage and only 1:1 shield damage. It also has pretty crappy value in general. You would probably be better off running a single Ion Pulser or 1 Heavy Blaster than two Pulse Lasers. I would've expected it to have better flux efficiency like its smaller cousin.
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Grievous69

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Re: Give the pulse laser a bonus vs shields
« Reply #2 on: December 20, 2022, 02:47:18 AM »

The problem with Pulse Laser is the nature of high tech ships, not the weapon itself (although it could be a bit more interesting). You pretty much always go with either burst, or some support builds with beams and missiles. There's currently 2 slow high tech ships which go against the tech doctrine and both have no place for Pulse Lasers. It takes too long to do anything so it puts close range ships in a bad situation. Midline ships just don't need a 1.0 energy weapon with a weak punch when they have ballistics.

So what if we double down on that playstyle and make it do increased damage (or faster attack speed), the longer it fires. Much like the teased Graviton change, but the inverse formula. Meaning the damage/speed slowly ramps up, but the max effect has the biggest leap and it caps out at say 10 seconds for example. Not sure what else can be done since it was already buffed twice I think, and both times it received better efficiency.
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BCS

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Re: Give the pulse laser a bonus vs shields
« Reply #3 on: December 20, 2022, 03:57:54 AM »

Not sure what else can be done since it was already buffed twice I think, and both times it received better efficiency.

Even MORE efficiency of course.

Actually, checking the Pulse Laser's description on wiki it has an entire section about its supposed special properties: "Greater energy delivered in shorter time means the target is ablated, a process that causes the vaporization of small surfaces sections. The resulting shock waves do additional structural damage." Sounds to me like it originally had some secondary effect, like extra damage vs. hull? That never really materialized because of the residual 5% armor.
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FooF

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Re: Give the pulse laser a bonus vs shields
« Reply #4 on: December 20, 2022, 07:07:33 AM »

I don’t think every Energy weapon needs a secondary effect. The Pulse Laser is the king of mediocre doing equal damage to shields and armor. It just has short range and poor armor penetration. It’s meant to be a middle ground between Ballistics and Kinetics but not as specialized. But…

…let’s say it ignored residual armor. Against lighter targets, the damage boost would be like 10-15% but against super heavy armor (2,000+) with 100+ residual armor, it’s now doing 2x more damage. Basically, it’s always 300 DPS against hull. To be honest, since it has awful armor penetration, that might not be a terrible trade-off. If you can get past the armor, the Pulse Laser eats through hull about as well (and far more efficiently) than a Heavy Blaster.

That would make it more interesting but that also means Low Tech advantages could get eaten by Redacted fleets with a bunch of Pulse Lasers. Getting through hull is the most time-consuming task in time-to-kill so a Pulse Laser being good at that would be a huge buff.
« Last Edit: December 20, 2022, 07:10:36 AM by FooF »
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Hiruma Kai

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Re: Give the pulse laser a bonus vs shields
« Reply #5 on: December 20, 2022, 07:35:55 AM »

If you can get past the armor, the Pulse Laser eats through hull about as well (and far more efficiently) than a Heavy Blaster.

Cruiser residual armor is like 50 (0.05 * 1000), and low tech capitals with heavy armor is like 100 (0.05 * 2000)

Pulse laser is 100 hit strength, so 200 DPS (0.66 damage per flux) to cruiser hull and 150 DPS (0.5 damage per flux) to low tech capital hull.
Heavy blaster is 500 hit strength, so 454 DPS (0.63 damage per flux) to cruiser hull and 416 DPS (0.57 damage per flux) to low tech capital hull.

At the large end of ships (which is where you need the help crushing hull to be honest), the Heavy Blaster is in some cases more flux efficient than the Pulse Laser at destroying hull, and very comparable at the Cruiser tier, while doing over twice the DPS in the same mount (or in other words, saving OP for other things).

So I wouldn't call over a factor of 2 difference in DPS comparable, nor is it significantly more efficient against targets for which hull damage efficiency matters.
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RustyCabbage

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Re: Give the pulse laser a bonus vs shields
« Reply #6 on: December 20, 2022, 08:29:42 AM »

If you can get past the armor, the Pulse Laser eats through hull about as well (and far more efficiently) than a Heavy Blaster.

Cruiser residual armor is like 50 (0.05 * 1000), and low tech capitals with heavy armor is like 100 (0.05 * 2000)

Pulse laser is 100 hit strength, so 200 DPS (0.66 damage per flux) to cruiser hull and 150 DPS (0.5 damage per flux) to low tech capital hull.
Heavy blaster is 500 hit strength, so 454 DPS (0.63 damage per flux) to cruiser hull and 416 DPS (0.57 damage per flux) to low tech capital hull.

At the large end of ships (which is where you need the help crushing hull to be honest), the Heavy Blaster is in some cases more flux efficient than the Pulse Laser at destroying hull, and very comparable at the Cruiser tier, while doing over twice the DPS in the same mount (or in other words, saving OP for other things).

So I wouldn't call over a factor of 2 difference in DPS comparable, nor is it significantly more efficient against targets for which hull damage efficiency matters.
(To give exact numbers, Heavy Blasters have higher efficiency against hull/armor whenever armor > 61.8, or the residual for any ship with at least 1235.96 armor)

Thaago

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Re: Give the pulse laser a bonus vs shields
« Reply #7 on: December 20, 2022, 08:31:34 AM »

To me the pulse laser is a weapon whose niche is in attacking smaller ships, and in that role it is effective because it has high accuracy, shot speed, high enough damage to deal with frigate/light destroyer armor, high dps, and is good enough vs shields. For targets with light armor, its a "no finesse" weapon to go up against: you can't win by taking shots on either armor or shields, so there's no way to mitigate the incoming damage - kind of like the plasma cannon for larger ships (the pulse laser has better efficiency and better dps/OP than the plasma cannon... it just can't deal with heavy armor!).

I like to use the pulse laser on tempest/wolves (least bad option)/glimmer/pirate mules (in the early game), on the back mediums of a paragon (to deal with flanking frigates and fighters), and on medusas. Depending somewhat on what I'm going up against. I have in a pinch used them on Falcons and Eagles as anti-small ship/assault weapons, and they worked well enough there, but the synergy between phase lances and kinetics is too high and pushes the pulse laser out (not to mention that Falcons/Eagles I'm expecting to fight larger ships in the mid to late game).

In terms of anti shield DPS, its not bad at 300. Thats more than an HVD, and more than many HAC's because of missing so many shots. The flux efficiency of 1.0 is worse than both of those weapons which matters a lot for symmetric contests - Wolves struggle 1v1 vs anything with shields, even kites, because they just don't have enough flux to run a pulse laser, but I'd argue that more a Wolf problem than a pulse laser problem (Grievous mentioned this in that the nature of high tech ships doesn't always work well with the pulse laser, and I'd say this is true for wolves that are trying to 1v1 things).

Its terrible vs high armor which makes it a bad choice for ships that need to deal with that! Otoh, there are 2 other weapons of the same size class that are good at heavy armor: the heavy blaster and the phase lance. And also missiles if the ship has access to those.
« Last Edit: December 20, 2022, 08:33:53 AM by Thaago »
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FooF

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Re: Give the pulse laser a bonus vs shields
« Reply #8 on: December 20, 2022, 08:52:18 AM »

If you can get past the armor, the Pulse Laser eats through hull about as well (and far more efficiently) than a Heavy Blaster.

Cruiser residual armor is like 50 (0.05 * 1000), and low tech capitals with heavy armor is like 100 (0.05 * 2000)

Pulse laser is 100 hit strength, so 200 DPS (0.66 damage per flux) to cruiser hull and 150 DPS (0.5 damage per flux) to low tech capital hull.
Heavy blaster is 500 hit strength, so 454 DPS (0.63 damage per flux) to cruiser hull and 416 DPS (0.57 damage per flux) to low tech capital hull.

At the large end of ships (which is where you need the help crushing hull to be honest), the Heavy Blaster is in some cases more flux efficient than the Pulse Laser at destroying hull, and very comparable at the Cruiser tier, while doing over twice the DPS in the same mount (or in other words, saving OP for other things).

So I wouldn't call over a factor of 2 difference in DPS comparable, nor is it significantly more efficient against targets for which hull damage efficiency matters.

I was alluding to the idea of Pulse Lasers doing 2x damage to high armor because it ignored residual (the full 300 DPS against 100+ residual armor, instead of <150) vs. the Heavy Blaster’s 415ish. Yes, the DPS is still higher for the HB but its flux efficiency is .58 compared to the (proposed) Pulse Laser’s 1.0. I’m saying the change would actually favor the Pulse Laser from an efficiency standpoint. Currently, if you have 100+ residual armor, the Pulse Laser’s efficiency is <.50 and yes, worse than the HB. 

If the Pulse Laser ignored residual armor, I’m saying it suddenly becomes a decent-to-great weapon against super-heavy targets (once the armor is stripped)…which feels kind of weird.
« Last Edit: December 20, 2022, 08:57:09 AM by FooF »
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Hiruma Kai

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Re: Give the pulse laser a bonus vs shields
« Reply #9 on: December 20, 2022, 09:05:19 AM »

If you can get past the armor, the Pulse Laser eats through hull about as well (and far more efficiently) than a Heavy Blaster.

Cruiser residual armor is like 50 (0.05 * 1000), and low tech capitals with heavy armor is like 100 (0.05 * 2000)

Pulse laser is 100 hit strength, so 200 DPS (0.66 damage per flux) to cruiser hull and 150 DPS (0.5 damage per flux) to low tech capital hull.
Heavy blaster is 500 hit strength, so 454 DPS (0.63 damage per flux) to cruiser hull and 416 DPS (0.57 damage per flux) to low tech capital hull.

At the large end of ships (which is where you need the help crushing hull to be honest), the Heavy Blaster is in some cases more flux efficient than the Pulse Laser at destroying hull, and very comparable at the Cruiser tier, while doing over twice the DPS in the same mount (or in other words, saving OP for other things).

So I wouldn't call over a factor of 2 difference in DPS comparable, nor is it significantly more efficient against targets for which hull damage efficiency matters.

I was alluding to the idea of Pulse Lasers doing 2x damage to high armor because it ignored residual (the full 300 DPS against 100+ residual armor, instead of <150) vs. the Heavy Blaster’s 415ish.

Oh, that's a failed reading check on my part.  Re-reading that with your clarification, and the surrounding discussion, that argument does makes sense to me.  In which case 50% better efficiency is significant.   Sorry for the confusion.
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prav

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Re: Give the pulse laser a bonus vs shields
« Reply #10 on: December 20, 2022, 12:54:19 PM »

Just nerf the Heavy Blaster instead.
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Megas

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Re: Give the pulse laser a bonus vs shields
« Reply #11 on: December 21, 2022, 06:33:16 AM »

Just nerf the Heavy Blaster instead.
Heavy Blaster has enough going against it already.  It is too inefficient to use on everything with a medium mount.

The problem with Pulse Laser is the nature of high tech ships, not the weapon itself (although it could be a bit more interesting). You pretty much always go with either burst, or some support builds with beams and missiles. There's currently 2 slow high tech ships which go against the tech doctrine and both have no place for Pulse Lasers. It takes too long to do anything so it puts close range ships in a bad situation. Midline ships just don't need a 1.0 energy weapon with a weak punch when they have ballistics.
Assuming one of the slow ones is Apogee, Pulse Laser is nice in the back for anti-small ship.  Of course, if I desperate for more OP, I may downgrade to IR PLs.
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Grievous69

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Re: Give the pulse laser a bonus vs shields
« Reply #12 on: December 21, 2022, 08:09:20 AM »

Just nerf the Heavy Blaster instead.
Yea let's nerf the only good medium weapons so the rest looks less bad in comparison /s

Ion Pulser nerf was justified, I don't see how Heavy Blaster could be nerfed without killing it.

Assuming one of the slow ones is Apogee, Pulse Laser is nice in the back for anti-small ship.  Of course, if I desperate for more OP, I may downgrade to IR PLs.
Yea I can't justify spending 20 OP on high flux fly swatters, small Burst PD works fine.
« Last Edit: December 21, 2022, 08:10:51 AM by Grievous69 »
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Megas

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Re: Give the pulse laser a bonus vs shields
« Reply #13 on: December 21, 2022, 08:47:55 AM »

Assuming one of the slow ones is Apogee, Pulse Laser is nice in the back for anti-small ship.  Of course, if I desperate for more OP, I may downgrade to IR PLs.
Yea I can't justify spending 20 OP on high flux fly swatters, small Burst PD works fine.
Fighters, maybe; but frigates and destroyers could use some more oomph to take them out, especially if my ship does not a heavy (homing) missile yet.  Now if Apogee did not have flares, I would probably use burst lasers.  But with flares taking care of missiles, pulse lasers (small or medium) seem more useful against non-missile threats.
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Oni

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Re: Give the pulse laser a bonus vs shields
« Reply #14 on: December 22, 2022, 10:17:36 AM »

.... Yea I can't justify spending 20 OP on high flux fly swatters, small Burst PD works fine.
What if the Pulse Laser had its OP cost lowered, making it a budget option?
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