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[Politura]

How did you get that impression? Even just aiming your weapon arcs at ships is enough to make them raise shields. AI only tries to flicker after it gains some flux. I've run a lot of full midline fleets with bare minimum HE, and enemy AI never fails to lose a flux war almost immediately. Low tech bricks do last the longest and can even come up on top if you don't have a lot of HE potential, but that's what EMP is for, indeed.

Yes, low-tech bricks raise shields with zero flux, but after getting about 2/3 or maybe 3/4 flux, they use it just for flicking, and AI does it very effectively, much better than I tried to do manually. It might have enough flux for caching even a reaper without overflux. I suppose, I just didn't have enough EMP to force them to use the shield more.

[Vanshilar]

I'm talking general use, not just [REDACTED], who only have armor worth using Hellbore on on the Radiant. Mjolnir *is* better than most guns against them specifically, yes.

And for general use (even though [REDACTED] is already pretty general -- if it works well against [REDACTED], it'll work well against most other enemies in the game), Mjolnir and HAG are even better, since enemies are less of a threat and are slower, letting the player lean more into high DPS, plus giving the player's ships more time to vent their flux in between ships. Also, enemy ships can retreat, making it even more important to kill them before they back off.

That is a problem. I remember Alex saying AI knows about random projectile variance, but it doesn't. Devastator isn't a waste of a slot on AI ships, though, unless we're talking ships with only hardpoints - it's still a very strong PD gun that can generally be trusted to delete everything smaller than a cruiser. With capital class range increases, that's a lot of space that Deva just gives you for a small price of having to use another ship to go through capital armor (and that's if you don't want to use missiles) instead of raw capital on capital action.

And you're giving up a prime weapon slot to get PD, which the ship can get from other slots. Large ballistic is the only ballistic that offers high DPS at long range, whereas medium has Flak and Dual Flak, small has Vulcan, etc.

Yes, because Hellbore isn't a DPS down gun. It's a hole puncher. Hull damage is better left to anti-hull weapons, and any weapon with 50 or more effective armor damage can go through Hellbore's holes. This includes every anti-shield ballistic that isn't a machinegun or a needler. Yes, including these funny railguns i like to put on my ships for no reason.

That's exactly the mental gymnastics that I said was incorrect. You just gave up a long-range high-DPS weapon, which is rare, for an armor-breaker, which there are multiple sources for and which is unneeded most of the time (and that in testing, its flux efficiency isn't even any better since it misses so much). Ships spend much more time going through hull than they do on armor -- hull is more important to focus on.

Also, you're simultaneously arguing that enemy armor is so high that Hellbore is better, then arguing that enemy armor is so low that Railguns are effective against residual armor. Yes, you can use anti-shield weapons against hull, but you take a heavy penalty for it due to the (residual) armor mechanics -- it's not something you should rely on for anti-hull.

Mjolnir is a generalist, and a good one, if you can afford it; and HAG is a specialized anti-hull gun with enough DPS to just overwhelm medium armor, and both of these are easy to use, with good projectile speeds and turret speeds. Which makes them very good in the specific circumstance of hunting high-tech fleets with great mobility.

And pretty much everywhere else in the game. Yet somehow you listed them as "bad" when they surpass most of the other large ballistics in actual use.

My favorite part is that you didn't understand "Hypervelocity Driver is a very big Railgun".
I'd give it a special acronym for "shield pressure tool" (also to railgun and small machineguns), but you seem to be allergic to these.

But that's exactly my point, you're making the reader hunt around for what the acronyms stand for, and then you're assuming the reader will also automatically know that weapons are also acronymized unannounced. That makes it bad for readability.

[Princess_of_Evil]

And for general use (even though [REDACTED] is already pretty general -- if it works well against [REDACTED], it'll work well against most other enemies in the game), Mjolnir and HAG are even better, since enemies are less of a threat and are slower...

And have more armor, which HAG really struggles against. Which is the point: if outturning the foe isn't needed anymore, maybe you could use the resources somewhere else?
If you have a ship that can support a Mjolnir, sure, use it. I find it to be a pretty big if in vanilla.

And you're giving up a prime weapon slot to get PD, which the ship can get from other slots. Large ballistic is the only ballistic that offers high DPS at long range...

High alpha damage is the only thing Large ballistics do that smaller weapons can't. There's BRF for the rest, which not-so-subtly gives both RG and HAC 900 base range.

That's exactly the mental gymnastics that I said was incorrect. You just gave up a long-range high-DPS weapon, which is rare...

Citation needed. See above and below.

...for an armor-breaker, which there are multiple sources for and which is unneeded most of the time (and that in testing, its flux efficiency isn't even any better since it misses so much). Ships spend much more time going through hull than they do on armor -- hull is more important to focus on.

If you can aim it, Hellbore is the most reliable armor cracker. Big if, i know. The +33% speed skill helps.

Also, you're simultaneously arguing that enemy armor is so high that Hellbore is better, then arguing that enemy armor is so low that Railguns are effective against residual armor. Yes, you can use anti-shield weapons against hull, but you take a heavy penalty for it due to the (residual) armor mechanics -- it's not something you should rely on for anti-hull.

Yes, i am in fact arguing that, and i have the math to prove it; 50 damage is about the cutoff where weapons deal good DPS against any residual you'd meet, while intact armor doesn't really have one - you'll always lose a big chunk of damage on armor.

And pretty much everywhere else in the game.

See first answer.

But that's exactly my point, you're making the reader hunt around for what the acronyms stand for, and then you're assuming the reader will also automatically know that weapons are also acronymized unannounced. That makes it bad for readability.

I just find it really funny that no one had anything to say against acronyms last two times.

[Goumindong]

Yes, i am in fact arguing that, and i have the math to prove it; 50 damage is about the cutoff where weapons deal good DPS against any residual you'd meet, while intact armor doesn't really have one - you'll always lose a big chunk of damage on armor.

But… it’s not? 

A radiant has 1500 armor. It might have heavy armor and it might have polarized armor.

An onslaught has 1750 armor and probably has heavy armor. 2250. It may or may not have polarized armor.

A dominator has 1500 to 1900 armor

An Eagle has 1000 armor.

An enforcer has 900 armor, possibly 1200.

A venture has 1250 armor, possibly 1550.

A railgun does 100 dmg kinetic. And so will do 50% dmg to an eagles hull. 44% dmg to a venture. 40% dmg to a dominator or radiant. These are unskilled without heavy armor. by the way. This can go up to 32% for the eagle (heavy armor, 50% flux levels and polarized armor skill)! A HAG will still be doing 69.5% here(1.31 dmg/flux). The railgun will be doing 2.8 dmg/flux!

This makes is DPS Vs the eagle 83 for 150 flux. This is 1.8 flux/dmg. A Hephaestus will do 82% dmg Vs the eagle, 393 DPS for 440 flux. This is 1.12 flux/dmg.

The HAG. Which isn’t even that great at killing hull is wildly better than the railgun. Against an eagle!  A Hellbore and 2 railguns does 407 dps to an eagles hull for 550 flux.  1.35 flux/damage for 30 OP.  The single HAG is as good for 10 less OP.

This isn’t to say the Hellbore is bad. But killing hull is really important. An Eagle has 8,000 hull. But a single Harpoon will almost entirely strip its armor. If you did minimum damage against armor the entire time (which you do not) this eagle has a maximum of 6666 armor HP!  The two railguns and the Hellbore takes 10800 flux to kill the hull. The HAG takes 8900. This is a 1900 flux difference which accounts for 4145 damage from a HAG. Which to be fair isn’t quite the 6666 min armor damage. But also the HAG doesn’t do min damage to an eagle even at max armor. And the Hellbore and railguns still need to shoot the armor at least once to clear it. So let’s say that they do and expend 430 flux. (This doesn’t actually clear the armor but let’s just say it does.) which means the HAG will do about 5000 dmg to armor before modifications… which is about the damage it would do if it had to hit 1000 armor each time it dealt damage until armor was gone.

So the Hellbore and 2 railguns, for 30 OP. Take more flux to kill an eagle from full armor and hull than a single HAG for 20 OP.

Hull damage is incredibly important.

Edit: and to be clear here I am not saying hellbores or railguns are bad. Just that hull damage is still incredibly important and that kinetic damage against hull is really not good. Even if you spot the railguns the single highest hit strength weapon in the game they’re less efficient against combined hull and armor than a weapon that is merely competent at killing hull and armor

[Grievous69]

I'm just going to copy paste my response from the "Buff Hellbore" thread:

People keep repeating the same flawed argument over and over again for some reason: "If I swap Hellbores to HAG, the ttk is lower". Well no *** Sherlock a build with more DPS takes less time to kill a target, you don't have to be a nuclear scientist for that. The problem is people get tunnel vision hard and only compare the two guns directly, on a same build, in a 1v1.

Railguns not doing enough damage to hull is irrelevant since guess what, there are other ships in the fleet, not every fight somehow transforms into an honourable duel. And in a 1v2 scenario where allies are slowly coming, the ship with HAGs will do nothing, just get stunlocked and die. The other one might at least score a Hellbore shot to scare the enemy away or open it up for later.

The only place you can truly debate which is universally better is on a Manticore, and even then something else will be shooting at a target. Hellbore also leaves more OP and flux for missiles if you need them. But can we please knock it off with imaginary ideal scenarios where the only factor is a DPS race in a vacuum.

NOTE: The tone of the post doesn't fit here as much, but I really want to express how silly some arguments sound. You can't compare two weapons equally when one is really not meant to be standalone firepower and an all arounded.

[Vanshilar]

People keep repeating the same flawed argument over and over again for some reason: "If I swap Hellbores to HAG, the ttk is lower". Well no *** Sherlock a build with more DPS takes less time to kill a target, you don't have to be a nuclear scientist for that. The problem is people get tunnel vision hard and only compare the two guns directly, on a same build, in a 1v1.

I'll get to the other stuff later but actually that's the crux of the problem.

It's pretty intuitive and straightforward to show that if weapon set A results in a faster time-to-kill than weapon set B, all else being equal, then weapon set A is better than weapon set B. (And obviously, you can extend this to fleet A vs fleet B.)

Thus far the arguments for Hellbore are 1) it has better armor-breaking capability, thus using it means you can get through the enemy ship's armor more quickly, resulting in a faster time-to-kill, and 2) it is more flux efficient, enabling you to use it longer without fluxing out (and/or use other more flux-hungry weapons). Once you flux out then your rate of fire becomes limited, decreasing your damage output and thus increasing your time-to-kill, i.e. bad.

If for every weapon set where Hellbore is used, putting in HAG instead means the ship can kill enemies faster, then it means that neither #1 nor #2 are relevant enough. In other words, neither argument holds up in practice.

If Hellbore is indeed better than HAG, then there should be some situation where putting Hellbore in the large ballistic slot instead of HAG would result in faster time-to kill, i.e. faster battles. Thus far, no one has shown an actual example where this is the case. You can even say "see, using Hellbore instead of HAG in the large ballistic means you can put some other weapons in the other weapon slots which will make the overall build better" if you want. But nobody has shown an actual example where it's better to do this, instead it's just been handwaved "putting OP elsewhere will magically make the ship better!". But there are plenty of examples where HAG performs better than Hellbore, just by straight substitution if nothing else.

If Hellbore is better than HAG only in some niche situations, then a tier list (which is for general advice regarding the weapons) should be ranking HAG higher, since it is "generally" better.

The problem with Hellbore's low DPS is that while it's trying to hit the other ship, the other ship is busy recovering flux, and/or firing at you and driving up your own flux. Thus you can't look at just one-sided DPS (i.e. from your ship to the enemy ship), you have to look at both sides (your flux gain resulting from both your weapons and enemy weapons). So you need to have both flux efficiency and DPS. Time-to-kill, and battle completion times as a generalization, is what balances them out.

The only place you can truly debate which is universally better is on a Manticore, and even then something else will be shooting at a target.

Funny enough, in testing the Manticore with Escort Package, right now the best weapon to put in the large ballistic slot I've tested is...Mjolnir. On paper it's the least flux efficient and should totally flux out (Mjolnir + 2 Harpoon Pods (while they last) + 3 Light Autocannons, 609 vent supporting 906 weapon flux and 100 shield flux), but in practice the Manticore (with capitals nearby) is nimble enough to retreat if its flux gets high, and realistically, stuff dies so fast that it has time to vent in between targets. It also does energy instead of HE damage, so it drive up enemy flux more readily. So right now Manticores with Mjolnir results in the highest overall battle DPS that I've found. Manticores with Hellbores simply die to [REDACTED], there's simply not enough pressure put on them.

[Siffrin]

But nobody has shown an actual example where it's better to do this, instead it's just been handwaved "putting OP elsewhere will magically make the ship better!". But there are plenty of examples where HAG performs better than Hellbore, just by straight substitution if nothing else.

I do have an example but it requires a Cryoblaster and bringing Omega weapons into balance discussion is taboo I assume? It's one of my favourite ways to build an AI Onslaught though since getting it to angle itself so 2 HephAGs and multiple small kinetics to fire on the same target is really inconsistent and relies more on the enemy ship drifting to the left or right. You also get have your TPCs always on target which is a nice bonus.

[Draba]

Funny enough, in testing the Manticore with Escort Package, right now the best weapon to put in the large ballistic slot I've tested is...Mjolnir. On paper it's the least flux efficient and should totally flux out (Mjolnir + 2 Harpoon Pods (while they last) + 3 Light Autocannons, 609 vent supporting 906 weapon flux and 100 shield flux), but in practice the Manticore (with capitals nearby) is nimble enough to retreat if its flux gets high, and realistically, stuff dies so fast that it has time to vent in between targets. It also does energy instead of HE damage, so it drive up enemy flux more readily. So right now Manticores with Mjolnir results in the highest overall battle DPS that I've found. Manticores with Hellbores simply die to [REDACTED], there's simply not enough pressure put on them.

On Manticore Mjolnir+3 light autocannons is going against Heph+3 railguns. Heph version needs 5 more OP but uses 20 less flux/s.
Heph+rail is much better against shields: 1000 projectile speed 0 inaccuracy rails vs 800 and 8 base inaccuracy on LAC, 1240 vs 1133 total DPS.
Heph+rail is always better against armor.
Heph+rail is better against hull up to ~2600 armor, much better up to weak capital level (1500-2000-ish), 980 combined DPS vs 833.
Downsides are Heph only having 800 projectile speed vs Mjolnir's 900, Heph reaching max inacucracy faster and no EMP.

In every fleet I've ran Heph was universally better, more raw power across the board with a huge advantage against fast/weak enemies (that's with elite TA that also boosts EMP a lot).
Railgun-LAC difference against shields is obvious, both armor and hull DPS difference is higher at lower armor values.
Yeah, Hellbore on Manticore when you can just get either Heph or Mjolnir seems weak to me.
The extra flux and OP gets you 2 reapers, but you really have to watch the Hellbore in battle to see just how bad it is at hitting things. Slow turret traverse means tons of idle time, slow projectile means tons of misses.
Hellbore good and Heph/Mjolnir/Arbalest bad are certainly interesting choices.

[Demetrious]

Kind of stopped reading at "HAG tickles capital armor"

Same.

[Vanshilar]

And have more armor, which HAG really struggles against.

Not really. Keep in mind that [REDACTED] have elite Impact Mitigation as a guaranteed skill if there's any core onboard -- and 80% of the ships will have cores, as of 0.96a-RC9 when I last did stats on [REDACTED] fleets (and they're prioritized toward the bigger ships). That reduces incoming damage to armor by 25% (including hit strength), which is effectively the same as increasing armor by 33%. So a 1500-armor Radiant effectively has 2000 armor. An Apex effectively has 1467 armor, just a bit shy of a Dominator. That affects the residual armor as well -- so a Radiant's residual armor is effectively 100 when you're hitting its hull. That Railgun that you keep talking about is doing around 56 DPS against a Radiant's hull, for 150 flux per second. Good luck. If it has an alpha core (about 40% of the fleet), it will also have Damage Control as a guaranteed skill. And alpha cores on capital ships have Polarized Armor. And as far as I can tell, [REDACTED] capital ships are guaranteed to have alpha cores onboard (or at least...I haven't found one with anything but an alpha core). So [REDACTED] ships do pretty well on armor/hull.

Now, a human faction fleet's ship could have Impact Mitigation too, but you're looking at what, maybe half of the fleet will have officers, if even that much? And the chance of the officer rolling Impact Mitigation might be around 50-50 or so? So yes, a faction fleet's ship might be tough to kill too, but for [REDACTED] the vast majority of ships will be buffed, and virtually guaranteed for the bigger ones. So no I don't really think faction ships have more armor than [REDACTED].

High alpha damage is the only thing Large ballistics do that smaller weapons can't. There's BRF for the rest, which not-so-subtly gives both RG and HAC 900 base range.

It should be pretty obvious from context that I'm talking about high anti-armor/hull DPS. I even discussed why in my first post in this thread. I usually advocate anti-shield for small and medium ballistics and anti-armor/hull for large ballistics because small/medium kinetics can match large kinetics and hit strength doesn't matter against shields, whereas there's nothing good in small/medium for anti-armor/hull. A ship with large ballistic will generally have lots of small/medium ballistics as well, so thus it makes sense for each size to specialize in their relative strengths. That's why I eliminated Gauss, Mark9, and Storm Needler from consideration in the first place. (I haven't really tested the new Storm Needler yet though.)

You're going to suffer terrible efficiency losses if you're relying on kinetics for anti-hull. Even the Railgun loses over half its DPS against [REDACTED] hull, and if you're arguing that [REDACTED] have little armor, well, then Railguns do even worse elsewhere.

Citation needed. See above and below.

Kinetics won't work well for anti-hull. Medium ballistic you're basically going to use Heavy Mortar or Heavy Mauler or Thumper for anti-hull? Small ballistics are a waste against hull. Missiles, you have maybe Locust (but that competes with Squall) or Swarmer (but that competes with Harpoons), where else can you get high anti-armor/hull DPS weapons? Whereas there are plenty of armor-breakers. PCL, Harpoons, Reapers, Daggers, etc., and just that generally speaking, armor doesn't take that long to go through compared with hull (or shields depending on the enemy). It's far easier to equip an anti-armor weapon than a good anti-hull weapon, hence why putting Hellbore on the large ballistic is such a waste.

It's pretty cheeky of you to ask for a citation when my comments are based on having tried out and conducted standardized testing on different weapon loadouts against multiple types of enemies, specifically looking for the weapon loadouts (and hullmods, skills, etc.) which maximizes the ship's overall damage output and thus minimizes the overall battle completion time, and posting about them. That's mainly for double Ordos but I've also tested against deserter bounties, pirates, stations, etc., just didn't bother posting the results since it takes time and since I don't think they're as generally useful. This includes:

(0.95.1a) Dominator (XIV) - Mjolnir + Mark9
(0.96a) Conquest - 2x Mjolnir
(0.96a) Onslaught XIV - 3x HAG
(0.96a) Onslaught XIV (player) - Center Mjolnir, sides HAG
(0.96a) Atlas2 - Mjolnir + HAG
(0.97a) Manticore - Mjolnir

Some of them were a bit close between Mjolnir and HAG (i.e. it could probably have gone either way). But it's always between those two. I have yet to find a ship with a large ballistic where, after trying out all sorts of different weapon loadouts, the conclusion is "the best weapon loadout is if I put a Hellbore in the large ballistic slot". And you have yet to give a single example where the Hellbore is the best thing to put in the large ballistic slot, i.e. "this ship, with a Hellbore in the large ballistic slot, will perform better than if any other weapon were put in that slot". Yet you're asking for citations from other posters.

Granted, there are some ships that I haven't formally examined yet (such as the Retribution and the Invictus, and I tested the Legion and Prometheus2 but didn't finish them, other than knowing that both Mjolnir and HAG perform well), so it's possible that there's one out there where using a Hellbore really is the best choice. But I haven't seen one yet and in terms of general advice, Mjolnir and HAG have performed the best.

If you can aim it, Hellbore is the most reliable armor cracker. Big if, i know. The +33% speed skill helps.

Hellbore's accuracy is terrible. Testing the HAG and Hellbore side-by-side on Atlas2's, against a Hegemony deserter bounty (288k reward), running it 5 times, the stats were:

Code

Weapon   	Hits	Fired	HitRate
Hephaestus	3421	6494	52.7%
Hellbore	284	681	41.7%

This is with the officers having elite Ballistic Mastery, Gunnery Implants, Combat Endurance (100% CR), and the ships having Advanced Turret Gyros and Armored Weapon Mounts. Even with that, the Hellbore misses nearly 3 out of every 5 shots. More importantly, the HAG hits 26% more often than the Hellbore. So when you take hit rates into account, in this case, it basically amounts to comparing HAG at 253 DPS versus Hellbore at 104 DPS. If you're waiting on the large ballistic to open up a hole in the armor for the rest of your weapons, HAG will actually be faster for a large number of armor values.

Yes, i am in fact arguing that, and i have the math to prove it; 50 damage is about the cutoff where weapons deal good DPS against any residual you'd meet, while intact armor doesn't really have one - you'll always lose a big chunk of damage on armor.

Linking to an unannotated Google spreadsheet filled with a bunch of numbers proves hardly anything. Again, you're forcing the reader to decipher what you mean instead of making it clear. 50 damage as a cutoff looks entirely arbitrary when the numbers gradually change. But let's just use it as an example. 50 damage means:

* Against a Radiant (equiv 2000 armor with IM), it will do 33% of its DPS
* Against a Nova (equiv 1333 armor with IM), it will do 43% of its DPS
* Against an Apex (equiv 1467 armor with IM), it will do 41% of its DPS
* Against a Brilliant (equiv 1200 armor with IM), it will do 45% of its DPS

These ships collectively make up almost 2/3 of the hull of a [REDACTED] fleet, and are the most dangerous. It's doing less than half the damage to hull, and you say it'll work for anti-hull, while HAG -- which does over 75% of its DPS against hull in the same case -- is supposed to struggle. Uh huh.

I do have an example but it requires a Cryoblaster and bringing Omega weapons into balance discussion is taboo I assume? It's one of my favourite ways to build an AI Onslaught though since getting it to angle itself so 2 HephAGs and multiple small kinetics to fire on the same target is really inconsistent and relies more on the enemy ship drifting to the left or right. You also get have your TPCs always on target which is a nice bonus.

While you can certainly discuss Omega weapons, it's hard to make general statements and builds around them since it's random as to which ones and how many you get on a given playthrough. Thus it's very playthrough-specific and not general advice. Having said that, I do testing with Omega weapons too (to plan out for which ones I should aim for); generally speaking, I find the Resonator, Cryoblaster, and Rift Torpedo to be the most powerful ones, but it really depends on the particular fleet ships that you're using.

On Manticore Mjolnir+3 light autocannons is going against Heph+3 railguns. Heph version needs 5 more OP but uses 20 less flux/s.

Yeah it's possible that HAG + 3 Railguns will work better. It comes down more to testing actual hit rates and AI behavior instead of on-paper calculations. I won't know until I do more runs but they're pretty close. (Realistically, if even repeated tests can't determine a clear winner, then it really just boils down to, both work well, it doesn't matter.)

I find that generally speaking, ships with lots of small/mediums (such as Onslaught) will favor HAG, while ships with fewer small/mediums (like Conquest) will favor Mjolnir, most likely because the small/mediums can take all of the anti-shield needs thus letting the large ballistic specialize to HE instead of Mjolnir's general damage. Mjolnir is less flux-efficient but it also hits shields well which seems to be better at pushing back the AI. The Manticore seems to be "in between" so it's hard to tell. Whereas testing Manticores with Hellbores, they just die as soon as anything comes near them -- they simply don't have enough offensive power. Which I was surprised by because I thought the Manticore would've been the poster boy for Hellbore due to its low flux. But it turns out that severely overfluxing the Manticore, whether due to Mjolnir or HAG, makes it perform better.

[Grievous69]

Just a minor thought of mine about Omega weapons in balance discussions.

I find that they're not that crazy strong unlike the Ziggurat is, so you could talk about them and how they affect some ship builds. But as noted, it's completely random which ones you get, and you might not even see a specific weapon in your whole campaign.

Although I feel you get enough smalls and mediums that they're borderline fine for discussions. For example I think I got a Cryoblaster in every single run I've done, but I don't have proof for it. It's the large ones that are super sparse and there's a high chance you won't see one of them in a run, so when I see a build posted that has 2 Rift Torpedoes, I just ignore it as that might as well fall under modded content.

[Goumindong]

[But it turns out that severely overfluxing the Manticore, whether due to Mjolnir or HAG, makes it perform better.

As I noted in the Hellbore thread but overfluxing is just supremely more efficient on all ships. (Except mayyybe battleships if an enemy can retreat)

Imagine fixed incoming DPS (incoming DPS is not fixed, but goes DOWN as your DPS goes up since an enemy has less flux, so we can make an “at least” comparison knowing that actual dynamics will be better.) and imagine incoming DPS is less than our soft flux dissipation.

Under fixed DPS optimal damage output is achieved by shooting 100% of your flux immediately and then throttling usage to an amount equal to your flux usage minus the incoming DPS. This produces “capacity + (dissipation - DPS) * (capacity / dps) ”. = (dissipation * capacity)/DPS (Capacity/DPS is the duration you can keep firing).

If instead you shoot 100% of your dissipation so that your soft flux is neutral and simply take damage on shields then you deal 0 + dissipation * capacity/DPS. This is the exact same amount of damage except that by dumping we got to do all our damage immediately. And since enemy DMG is a function of how much DPS they take… we are at the very least equal.

Now imagine that DPS is > dissipation.

Same math applies but this time because DPS> dissipation we overload immediately! Oh no. We did capacity flux worth of damage. But our non flux dumper still does dissipation * capacity / DPS! It could be ahead… but DPS is bigger than dissipation so dissipation/DPS < 1 and (dissipation/DPS )*capacity is less than capacity.

[Draba]

I find that they're not that crazy strong unlike the Ziggurat is, so you could talk about them and how they affect some ship builds. But as noted, it's completely random which ones you get, and you might not even see a specific weapon in your whole campaign.
...
Although I feel you get enough smalls and mediums that they're borderline fine for discussions. For example I think I got a Cryoblaster in every single run I've done, but I don't have proof for it. It's the large ones that are super sparse and there's a high chance you won't see one of them in a run, so when I see a build posted that has 2 Rift Torpedoes, I just ignore it as that might as well fall under modded content.

Atimatter SRM, Resonator, Rift Torpedo, Reality Disruptor and Volative Particle Driver are are all basically cheat weapons (those are the ones I've tried recently).
IIRC Rift cascade emitter is also pretty out there, and cryoblaster at least under player control (dunno about AI).
I think they are generally overpowered enough and rare enough to not be worth taking into account when talking about the relative power of ships/weapons.

Not really. Keep in mind that [REDACTED] have elite Impact Mitigation as a guaranteed skill if there's any core onboard -- and 80% of the ships will have cores, as of 0.96a-RC9 when I last did stats on [REDACTED] fleets (and they're prioritized toward the bigger ships). That reduces incoming damage to armor by 25% (including hit strength), which is effectively the same as increasing armor by 33%. So a 1500-armor Radiant effectively has 2000 armor. An Apex effectively has 1467 armor, just a bit shy of a Dominator. That affects the residual armor as well -- so a Radiant's residual armor is effectively 100 when you're hitting its hull. That Railgun that you keep talking about is doing around 56 DPS against a Radiant's hull, for 150 flux per second. Good luck. If it has an alpha core (about 40% of the fleet), it will also have Damage Control as a guaranteed skill. And alpha cores on capital ships have Polarized Armor. And as far as I can tell, [REDACTED] capital ships are guaranteed to have alpha cores onboard (or at least...I haven't found one with anything but an alpha core). So [REDACTED] ships do pretty well on armor/hull.

To be fair anything where Hellbore+railguns are options should have target analysis, elite ballistics and 100% CR, plus maybe some change from various other skills
Alpha core capitals only have 70% CR, so relativehit strength is quite a bit higher than in your example.
To be fair fair alpha core capitals also get polarized armor that wasn't included, that hurts a lot at high hard flux.

Yeah it's possible that HAG + 3 Railguns will work better. It comes down more to testing actual hit rates and AI behavior instead of on-paper calculations. I won't know until I do more runs but they're pretty close. (Realistically, if even repeated tests can't determine a clear winner, then it really just boils down to, both work well, it doesn't matter.)

I generally value EMP a lot so tried Mjolnir first, but the more effective kinetic makes rail+Heph very noticeably better against remnants on Manticore.
When flux gets high rails still keep going for 1000 kinetic DPS at 450 flux/s and very high hitrate.
Frigate clearing is very fast and focus improves against the bigger ships, having a stat advantage against those too is still a nice bonus ofc but not the main selling point IMO.
Yeah, Mjolnir is better on ships where mounts are the main limit.

[Siffrin]

so when I see a build posted that has 2 Rift Torpedoes, I just ignore it as that might as well fall under modded content.

Alex plays modded (confirmed).
His Omega weapons luck is insane if you look at his fleets from his test campaigns he posts on social media.

[Vanshilar]

But as noted, it's completely random which ones you get, and you might not even see a specific weapon in your whole campaign.

Some of them do significantly change how the ship is played, for example Resonators. If a ship's medium missiles are providing the long-range anti-shield, then Squalls become less important, and maybe Hurricane or Locust becomes better in the large missile slot. So it changes the weapon mix somewhat.

In the past, you could still "choose" the smalls and mediums, via changing the salvage bonus, although the larges were fixed and essentially determined at the game start (except the one contact bounty). That's supposed to be fixed now. If it really is static now, then might as well as console commands to the hypershunts at the beginning of the game and see which ones you'll get, to plan your fleet around them or to reroll a new game the way people do with planets to colonize.

As I noted in the Hellbore thread but overfluxing is just supremely more efficient on all ships. (Except mayyybe battleships if an enemy can retreat)

Yeah I think the thing to keep in mind is that you're not only firing your weapons at the enemy, but the enemy is also firing their weapons at you and driving up your own flux. So you want to make sure they run out of their flux before you run out of yours. Mathematically, you'd want something like:

(your flux capacity) / (your weapon flux + shield flux - your vents + enemy DPS) > (enemy flux capacity) / (enemy weapon flux + shield flux - enemy vents + your DPS)

That's essentially the "flux war" in a nutshell. So especially for ships under AI control, I find flux capacity very useful so that they'll keep firing; forcing autofire on for kinetic weapons (by grouping them with a PD) is also very useful. So you have to consider the DPS that a weapon provides as well as its flux efficiency, and look at the overall weapon mix of the ship. Also, it's okay to overflux since you're regaining flux in between enemy ships. When I look at the combat results and count up how long each weapon is actually firing, it only ends up being around 1-1.5 minutes over a 4-minute fight; there's plenty of time where they're idle.

To be fair anything where Hellbore+railguns are options should have target analysis, elite ballistics and 100% CR, plus maybe some change from various other skills
Alpha core capitals only have 70% CR, so relativehit strength is quite a bit higher than in your example.
To be fair fair alpha core capitals also get polarized armor that wasn't included, that hurts a lot at high hard flux.

Yeah point is that I'm testing with all of the bonuses already included and the Hellbore hit rate is still really low. Also, my point with the [REDACTED] stuff is that they're not all that bad in the armor department. The weighted average for [REDACTED] residual hull, including officer skills and hullmods, is around 65 residual armor (i.e. 1300 base armor), while it's around 75 residual armor (i.e. 1500 base armor) for Hegemony (level 10+ intel deserter bounty). And Hegemony is the highest out of all the factions. So [REDACTED] armor and hull is going to be fairly representative of human factions.

Yeah the question of which kinetic to use is actually quite interesting. The most obvious choice, by stat card, would be the Railgun since it does 100/.6 = 167 DPS for 150 flux and 7 OP, while the Light Needler does 150 DPS for 120 flux and 8 OP, and the Railgun has higher hit strength for anti-hull. However, the Railgun has a chargeup of 0.6 seconds, meaning it basically loses its first shot, while the Light Needler bursts its fire, so it does its damage right away. So if you plot their total damage dealt over time (assuming no travel time and no misses), the Light Needler actually does more damage generally if the average duration of an encounter is about 20 seconds or less. Above about 36 seconds, the Railgun always does more total damage. So it depends on if you're fighting lots of weaker enemies (in which case, Light Needler is better) or fewer stronger enemies (in which case, Railgun is better). The graph for this is attached.

Testing the Manticore with the Light Needler, Railgun, and Light Autocannon all stacked on top of the large ballistic slot (so that they're all firing with the same weapon arc), all hidden (so that they can't be disabled which would affect their measured uptime), flagship Onslaught XIV in the center + 2 Gryphons on the flanks + 10 Manticores between them (adjusting officer max to 12), against double Ordos, the total over 2 runs was:

Code

Weapon	Total	Shield	Armor	Hull	Hits	Fired	Hitrate	flux	dam/flu	uptime
HarpPod	293268	65058	63743	164468	476	1272	0.3742
HAG	274141	70788	87026	116328	3138	5016	0.6256	551760	0.4968	1.045
Lneed	194957	168268	5489	21199	4161	7176	0.5798	287040	0.6792	1.993
Railgun	128642	111168	4132	13340	1376	2127	0.6469	191430	0.6720	1.064
LAC	78619	66037	2387	10198	1700	2607	0.6521	104280	0.7539	1.086

Basically, the Light Needler fires a lot more often (because it bursts its fire), though it also misses more. So there are a lot of shorter engagements. But the overall damage/flux ratio between it and the Railgun are pretty much the same, and it also has pretty much the same percentage of damage to armor (around 3%) and damage to hull (around 10%) of its overall damage. So the higher hit strength didn't result in noticeably higher hull damage, probably because HAG and Harpoons do most of the hull damage.

But the Light Needler does do a lot more overall damage than the Railgun, because it's active so much more. So in this particular usage case, it seems like Light Needler should be better over the Railgun.

This kind of needs to be tested depending on the usage case (it depends on the firing ship as well as its enemies) but I think Light Needler looks more promising here.