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[PsychoThruster]

I'd love to see this mod made useful outside of extremely convoluted builds by either making it so that the effect applies at close range without nerfing overall range, or if that doesn't sit right then make it a toggle ability with a flux cost/cool down or something. Right now it just exists to turn beam weapons into subpar melee weapons or novelty pd builds.

[BaBosa]

While it is pretty useless now. The worry is if it doesn't have a big enough range penalty then they become amazing kiting weapons due to the range and difficult to dodge nature.

[Wyvern]

Personally, I think the solution to the High Scatter Amplifier is to give it the Bolt Coherer treatment: make it a built-in on certain hulls, rather than a modular thing the player can apply to any ship. Then if it makes it so that a phase lance is just a direct upgrade over a pulse laser, that's not a crippling flaw of the hullmod, but instead just an interesting special case for the specific ships that have it.

Which hulls is more of a question, though.

[Grievous69]

Personally, I think the solution to the High Scatter Amplifier is to give it the Bolt Coherer treatment: make it a built-in on certain hulls, rather than a modular thing the player can apply to any ship. Then if it makes it so that a phase lance is just a direct upgrade over a pulse laser, that's not a crippling flaw of the hullmod, but instead just an interesting special case for the specific ships that have it.

Which hulls is more of a question, though.

I really really like this idea. Saves us the trouble of needing to worry about 50 different scenarios where it could potentially be broken. It's just problematic in nature similar to SO. You make it balanced, but few ships will be too good. You make it balanced for few good ships, it's useless on everything else.

[Doctorhealsgood]

Personally, I think the solution to the High Scatter Amplifier is to give it the Bolt Coherer treatment: make it a built-in on certain hulls, rather than a modular thing the player can apply to any ship. Then if it makes it so that a phase lance is just a direct upgrade over a pulse laser, that's not a crippling flaw of the hullmod, but instead just an interesting special case for the specific ships that have it.

Which hulls is more of a question, though.

Lion Guard Eagle might be a nice candidate.

[CapnHector]

What is it good on?

On a medium mount the best use case is probably using it on a Phase Lance. Let's say you S-Mod in the HSA. Then you get a 1.15 * 217 = 249.55 DPS beam gun for 261 flux per second. And it has 400 base range which is even shorter than a HMG so it is only ever going to work on a SO ship or a frigate or possibly a Medusa. You could just put in a Pulse Laser and get 300 DPS at 240 flux per second at 600 base range and with no need to install a hullmod for it. That's not even getting to the actually good weapons like Ion Pulser.

The only use case I am aware of for the HSA where it is actually good is Tachyon Lance. 5x Tachyon Lance HSA Radiant is fierce since it will cripple the enemy ship even through shields. Maybe HSA Phase Lance could be good on a frigate hunting frigate sometimes due to the burst, but even then you might prefer the normal version for more range.

Edit to add: note even HSA Tachyon Lance is specifically only good on the Radiant, it is also bad on other ships which do not have the mobility or brawling ability and would just rather have the range.

This hullmod could probably also be rebalanced by improving the Phase Lance so that it is actually good if it gets hard flux.

[Princess of Evil]

Takyon is the best armor busting gun for energy. Plasma Cannon is better as general DPS, APL is better against shields, and HIL is slightly weaker but cheaper to run, but nothing wrecks armor quite as well as TL. Sure, X Tach builds aren't good against shields, which is like the whole point of beams, so.

HSA is a weird hullmod. All beams are balanced around the fact they bounce off shields. A hullmod that removes the one downside of otherwise pinpoint accurate weapon type better give it a different weakness, which for HSA is making all of them melee range (making pinpoint accuracy basically irrelevant).
Of course, this doesn't change the fact that most beams bounce off armor as well, which is a separate issue. Disco builds without large slots do ridiculously poorly against shunted ships.

[Grievous69]

I'm pretty sure HIL is faster at killing armour, provided you don't one shot something with a Tachyon Lance burst.

[PsychoThruster]

While it is pretty useless now. The worry is if it doesn't have a big enough range penalty then they become amazing kiting weapons due to the range and difficult to dodge nature.

You misunderstood what I suggested. The HSA effect only applies to the portion of the beam equivalent to the range of current HSA beams, but does not reduce the overall weapon range. So at 1k-500 or so range it's typical soft flux beamage, inside 500 however HSA comes into play.

[Megas]

I use High Scatter Amplifier somewhat frequently on smaller high-tech ships.  All of which involve Graviton Beam and sometimes Tactical Laser and LR PD.  When Pulse Laser is still not efficient enough for anti-shield, HSA Graviton Beam is the only alternative for shield-cracking.  Rarely, I use it on bigger ships when I recover them and need to make do with whatever weapons I have in cargo until I return home and outfit them properly.

I view High Scatter Amplifier as alt. Graviton Beam mode.  I use Graviton Beam more with HSA than without it.

What is it good on?

Assuming no Safety Overrides on NPC ships...

Wolf:  One Graviton beam, one tac laser, and two LR PDs.  Maybe better without it and just beam the target from long range, but HSA beams kill faster.  It is the only way Wolf could brawl head-to-head and trade shots with SIM Lasher and win, especially now that Lasher has 0.6 efficiency double LACs.

Tempest:  Two HSA Graviton Beams and your choice of small missile (I picked Breach, linked with main guns) with Missile Autoloader.

Brawler (TT):  Two Gravitons and missiles like Tempest above.

Glimmer:  Graviton Beam, two Tactical Lasers, two LR PDs (with ePD).  Not as safe as without HSA but will kill faster than without.  More range than IR PLs.

[IonDragonX]

Personally, I think the solution to the High Scatter Amplifier is to give it the Bolt Coherer treatment: make it a built-in on certain hulls, rather than a modular thing the player can apply to any ship. ...

I really really like this idea. Saves us the trouble of needing to worry about 50 different scenarios where it could potentially be broken.

I will go ahead and vote for Wyvern's idea as well.
 High Scatter Amplifier is currently on the "nothing" side of "all or nothing"

[Princess of Evil]

I'm pretty sure HIL is faster at killing armour, provided you don't one shot something with a Tachyon Lance burst.

Tach Lance has higher armor damage (50% more), and it erases armor in a burst, so you can follow up with DPS weapons right after.
HIL has the upside of being its own DPS follow-up, but you generally have some other high DPS anti-shield weapon with tach.

[CapnHector]

I use High Scatter Amplifier somewhat frequently on smaller high-tech ships.  All of which involve Graviton Beam and sometimes Tactical Laser and LR PD.  When Pulse Laser is still not efficient enough for anti-shield, HSA Graviton Beam is the only alternative for shield-cracking.  Rarely, I use it on bigger ships when I recover them and need to make do with whatever weapons I have in cargo until I return home and outfit them properly.

I view High Scatter Amplifier as alt. Graviton Beam mode.  I use Graviton Beam more with HSA than without it.

What is it good on?

Assuming no Safety Overrides on NPC ships...

Wolf:  One Graviton beam, one tac laser, and two LR PDs.  Maybe better without it and just beam the target from long range, but HSA beams kill faster.  It is the only way Wolf could brawl head-to-head and trade shots with SIM Lasher and win, especially now that Lasher has 0.6 efficiency double LACs.

Tempest:  Two HSA Graviton Beams and your choice of small missile (I picked Breach, linked with main guns) with Missile Autoloader.

Brawler (TT):  Two Gravitons and missiles like Tempest above.

Glimmer:  Graviton Beam, two Tactical Lasers, two LR PDs (with ePD).  Not as safe as without HSA but will kill faster than without.  More range than IR PLs.

Is HSA Graviton really good? You are getting a 600 range 115 dps hard flux kinetic gun with 75 flux / second so 0.65 efficiency. It still deals less damage to shields than a Pulse Laser, although admittedly at a much lower flux cost, but then, you could S-mod a Flux Distributor rather than HSA so that would give the Pulse laser on a frigate an efficiency of 300 DPS at 240 - 40 = 200 flux / sec so 0.67 flux efficiency if we are factoring in the hullmod. Only the Flux Distributor also helps when you are not firing the gun and the Pulse Laser works against armor and hull too. Compare it to the Light Dual Autocannon which has 600 range, deals 143 kinetic hard flux at 86 flux / second (0.6 efficiency). However the Graviton costs 9 OP and a hullmod and a medium energy slot and the LDAC costs 5 OP and a small ballistic slot.

I mean, I suppose you can say it makes the Wolf able to do a thing, but is that actually a good frigate loadout?

[Princess of Evil]

Beams being worse than smaller kinetics is another question entirely. Which, yeah, they are. Ships with energy slots generally have better reactors to support energy slots - play around with EHM and you will quickly realize just how overpowered mass ballistic retrofit is.

[CapnHector]

Okay, but the question as intended is, is 1.5 light dual autocannons good firepower for a(n expensive, if talking high tech) frigate. Which is what you get using your 2 medium energy slots and a hullmod on HSA Graviton. As you said they even have better flux stats so the efficiency is not so important either.