Out of curiosity, has anyone done or seen an analysis of the efficiency benefits of the Pulse Laser accuracy compared to say, those Arbalests and Heavy Mortars? Even Heavy Needlers and Heavy Autocannons? Similar to what is being done in the Conquest simulation thread?
I just opened the Random Battle mission, equipped a HAC and Heavy Mortar on an Enforcer and took it against the sim Lasher, just by eye, it looks like a 50% hit rate for both, if not worse. Take 2 Pulse Lasers and put them on a Medusa, and it was literally 100% hit rate. Not a single pulse missed (although some where intercepted by harpoons).
Against small and agile targets, accuracy and turn rate matters far more than 10 or 20% flux/damage efficiency. Even against something like a Hammerhead, you're going to be getting misses at longer ranges with a HAC or Heavy Mortar.
So for me, a Pulse Laser is an anti-small ship weapon as opposed to an anti-cruiser/capital weapon since it reliably hits fighters, frigates, and some fast destroyers within its range and has sufficient armor penetration to reasonably handle that tier of armor. And it does it right out of the box, without skills, without hullmods, in missions as well as within the first encounter of the campaign. The same cannot be said of Heavy Mortar. Imagine putting a Heavy Mortar on a Shrike and trying to hit Pather Hounds early in the game. Or HACs. Against large targets, this is less of a problem, although in player hands Pulse Lasers can drill the exact same spot on the armor, less so with most ballistics.
To bring the kinetics accuracy up, you often need to include armored weapon mounts and turret gyros, along with Gunnery Implants. Elite Ballistics Mastery also helps with the projectile speed.
Pulse lasers, because of their innate accuracy, turn rate, projectile speed, and placement on faster ships means some of those support skills and hullmods don't provide nearly as much help as they do to the kinetics since they are already hitting. On the other hand, that also means they don't need as much of that help.
So here is a question. What skills or hullmod are suppose to help the medium energy projectile weapons in the same way the ballistics get helped out with their poor turn rates, their poor recoil accuracy, and poor shot speed?
Another way to look at it is to ask, what skills and hullmods could I have taken instead of elite point defense or elite ballistics mastery and turrget gyros and armored weapon mounts, to help Pulse lasers? Doesn't help in the medium energy comparisons admittedly, but Pulse Lasers does fall into the hard flux energy mount that you can actually put on a Wolf or non-SO Shrike niche.
If you swap Elite Energy Weapon Mastery for Elite Point defense, and IPDAI for some vents/caps, then you're comparing range 700, 0.8 flux/damage efficiency, 19 DPS/OP for 4 IR Pulse Lasers on a Fury against range 600, perhaps 0.81 flux/damage efficiency, 30 DPS/OP (assuming +10% average damage bonus, -10% flux cost) on the same Fury. 50% more DPS per OP spent at a cost of 100 range and less anti-missile cover (which can either be good or bad depending on what the target is firing).
So I don't think it's a fair comparison to apply elite Point Defense + IPDAI to IR Pulse Lasers and give nothing to the Pulse Lasers. Sure, you can get longer range, but on the other hand, adding elite Energy Weapon Mastery does make Pulse lasers much more flux/damage efficient. At which point ePD + IPDAI still has the 100 range advantage (which is significant to be fair), but at an extra OP cost and a tendency to take a lot of pot shots at missiles instead of the primary ship target.
I would setup some tests of ePD + IR pulse Furies against eEWM + Pulse Laser Furies if I could figure out how to add campaign skills. Although, I suppose I could just mod the range, flux cost, and average damage for that test.
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