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[Thaago]

That really doesn't sound right. Beams aren't any much more efficient than normal weapons (or at all in some cases), and the range with HSA is truly terrible. If going low vents with lowish efficiency, that just sounds like low damage output combined with low range, which is not good.

Instead of an HSA ion beam, why not just an ion cannon? Way less flux (100), same damage, almost as much range (500 vs 600), way fewer OP (6+ HSA marginal cost), small slot instead of medium. And the phase lance is only going to have 400(!!!) base range. At that point and AM Blaster is competitive in the slot, though I suppose an HSA phase lance is better than an AM Blaster except for range, unlike with the ion beam. HSA + AO for 500 range? But that's a lot of OP for replacement AM Blasters!

Gravitons are efficient, but without their range they are just worse than something like a single light autocannon.

[BigBrainEnergy]

Double tachyon on the odyssey with HSA sounds doable, even though I haven't tried it. The 600 base range is a little lower than its normal options, but in exchange you get tachyon lances that enable themselves to pierce shields.

HSA + AO for 500 range?

Can't even do that because they're incompatible!

[Goumindong]

There are a couple of things that work but most are pretty bad. And the reason that most are pretty bad is that, because most ships want to be doing as much DPS as possible anyway. That is. If the enemy ship is shooting over their dissipation... then the fact that you are doing soft flux doesn't matter.

The only time that hard flux on your beams is really good is when the enemy cannot shoot back. And the only time the enemy cannot shoot back is... if they're outside of the range of HSA...

There are some theoretical spots you could maybe make it work. But the pressure beams aren't strong enough for the number of slots that the ships would require them to be. 600 range kinetic beams would be good on a medusa if you were looking to follow up with AMB hits... but 2 Graviton is only ~400 shield DPS. And that isn't enough. Like.. You could just run two pulse lasers.

HSA would need to roughly double the flux usage and damage of beams for this kind of strategy to work.

But at the same time double damage Tachyons and Phase lances would be... kind of absurd i think.

It also works on ships like the Tempest... but probably not as good as advanced optics does. There may also be uses with REDACTED weapons and ITU. But i am going to guess that advanced optics is better again.

Double tachyon on the odyssey with HSA sounds doable, even though I haven't tried it. The 600 base range is a little lower than its normal options, but in exchange you get tachyon lances that enable themselves to pierce shields.

It absolutely does not. Tachyon has 346 DPS and you only get two of them. So you're rocking 700 DPS out of your large slots at 600 range. Equivalent to a single plasma cannon.  Beam Odyssey can work but its better with Advanced Optics. This way you can kite and you can shield snipe.

[Brainwright]

That really doesn't sound right. Beams aren't any much more efficient than normal weapons (or at all in some cases), and the range with HSA is truly terrible. If going low vents with lowish efficiency, that just sounds like low damage output combined with low range, which is not good.

Instead of an HSA ion beam, why not just an ion cannon? Way less flux (100), same damage, almost as much range (500 vs 600), way fewer OP (6+ HSA marginal cost), small slot instead of medium. And the phase lance is only going to have 400(!!!) base range. At that point and AM Blaster is competitive in the slot, though I suppose an HSA phase lance is better than an AM Blaster except for range, unlike with the ion beam. HSA + AO for 500 range? But that's a lot of OP for replacement AM Blasters!

Gravitons are efficient, but without their range they are just worse than something like a single light autocannon.

Yeah, you're not really factoring in the shield arcs.  Those will not only reduce return fire, but they have a fantastic tendency of killing engines once you've got the target at higher flux.  Rooky mistake.

I never said the phase lance and ion beam were for building flux, I said they were relatively efficient.  You really would need other weapons for building flux.  The two I recommended were for locking in a kill.

The increased flux cost doesn't quite matter if your base dissipation eats it entirely, and as I said, the build as a whole will be underpowered, likely exceeding weapon flux by a fair margin.  The shield efficiency is the build.

I'd recommend it on a Fury, actually.  HSA phase lance wolves are an option, since they're never going to really overpower anything because of their weak dissipation.  So you build them for as much cap as you can to make sure they survive poking.  Also, free tip : none of the frigates with hard mounts are fast enough to track other frigates in a fight!  Auxilliary Thrusters are a must!

I've had success with something like it on an Odyssey, but the primary force was [ultra redacted] weapons.  So not very applicable.  Nothing could pin it down, and it had fairly strong shields with such a low weapon cost, it just bled off flux at any convenient moment.  Very nice.

That said, I wouldn't use HSA on the Odyssey.  That shield arc is too wide and the armor is too fragile.  Cruisers are the size limit.

[Goumindong]

Still makes no sense. The primary value of an Ion beam is that it forces the enemy to keep their shields up or get absolutely arc’d to ***. So HSA just reduces the range at which the ion beam keeps shields up.

[Brainwright]

High Scatter Amplifier is a tradeoff.  It is by definition not optimal.  It's a waste not to use something that energizes with HSA, especially on something like the Fury which has limited slots to begin with.

I did run around in the sim a bit, and the Fury build I made does a good job of keeping some ships at maximum flux while shutting them down to the point it can drop shields to bleed off flux.  I don't think the build is as good as it could be yet, but it's interesting.  Worth noting that the sim Aurora is just this kind of flux balance without HSA, so it wins pretty handily just being a bigger and better version.

[Sinigr]

I like the fact that it makes beams deal hard flux, especially for high intensity lasers and tachyon lances. The range decrease doesn't seem to be that noticeable, plus it increases damage by a little bit. How is it in your experiences? Any more Niche uses you like for it? Is it a good hullmod for your beamer ships?

I find it very good for vanila paragons:


Also, fighting mods I found some another good way to use amplifier. In this case, this is not just PD, but the main protection in close combat, it is almost impossible to get close to such a ship, someone will write that their DPS is lower than that of other weapons, but many do not pay attention to the fact that in this type the ship’s system is protected has 100% accuracy, while other weapons will miss. Simple ships cannot get close and disturb such a ship, only moded op ones. Video is vith moded ships, but my setup is clear vanilla, it is fantastic how good it is, same againts vanila.

[Sinigr]

And last one, final version. Just forget about misses from your AI ship, about that it can do useless soft flux damage, about that it can be hited up a bit by garbade misseles, that it can be bisturbed by small garbade ships those are going just wiped out, other bigger ships which are too impudent to engage so close same are wiped out. Pathers SO shunted ships, you have rage to engage close with your behavior? Okey, go on, you'll just got wiped out real quick.
It is not mem loadout, some dawgs from discord speak when they saw that there are some mems about PD paragons, it is amasing. Saving long range battery as autopulses and autocannons.

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[Goumindong]

I hadn’t thought about guardian paragon but yea that might work. Especially with elite PD. Range is…920 (before bonus range skills but after elite PD). Which isn’t too great but isn’t that bad. Guardian PD has good DPS and efficiency

I am not sure I would run quite so many burst PD. Yea you get a lot out of it with extended mags but it’s still 90 DPS for 6 OP when you could have 30 DPS for 1 OP. And then you could afford heavy needlers.

Similarly heavy burst is 120 DPS for 9 OP but you could run ion beam or graviton there for 200 Vs shields for less flux to longer range with dmg multiplication.

[Serenitis]

Nay. The whole point of beams is the range.
Losing that range to make them deal hard flux isn't worth anything because you have other ships in your fleet that can do that.
And if you're intent on setting your base range to ~600, then you may as well swap over to using more efficient or impactful weapons that don't require time-on-target to work.

High Scatter Amplifier is a tradeoff. But I'm not entirely sure what benefit you get from making that trade.
You're spending extra OP to turn your long-range beams into a mediocre facsimile of bolt/pulse guns.

[Amoebka]

High Scatter Amplifier is a tradeoff. But I'm not entirely sure what benefit you get from making that trade.
You're spending extra OP to turn your long-range beams into a mediocre facsimile of bolt/pulse guns.

HSA tac lasers have more base range than IR pulses (600 vs 500) and better flux efficiency ( 0.7 vs 0.8 ). If a ship has a huge amount of small energy slots, doesn't need PD, and wants to shoot at multiple small targets, they are better than IR pulses. The only vanilla ship that matches that description is Odyssey.

HSA burst beams are an absolute meme, though. Hard flux barely matters when you already overload the target with raw damage, and the range loss is crippling.

[Grievous69]

I used HSA once when it was first introduced, and then never again. If someone is having fun with it then cool, for me it's the Mudskipper MkII of hullmods.

[Cryovolcanic]

The latter can survive but can only kill frigates and destroyers. The reason it works it time acceleration increases both the DPS and hit strength of beam weaponry.

I have never understood how the timeflow mechanic works. Can you explain?

[Phenir]

The latter can survive but can only kill frigates and destroyers. The reason it works it time acceleration increases both the DPS and hit strength of beam weaponry.

I have never understood how the timeflow mechanic works. Can you explain?

Everything the ship does is faster from the observer's point of view. Acceleration, movement, shooting, turning, dissipation, reloading, ppt and cr degradation. Projectile speed not affected. From the timeflow ship's perspective, everything else acts slower. It's very obvious if you watch another ship do it rather pilot a timeflow ship yourself but even then, you can just watch as your projectiles end up closer together because you are shooting faster and enemy projectiles appear to move much slower. Also pretty apparent when piloting a phase ship as phase gives 3x timeflow.
Beams' hit strength is half their dps so increasing their dps (for burst beams, it is half of their dps while active) via timeflow increases their hit strength. Well, I'm not sure if timeflow specifically actually increases their hit strength but I understand the reasoning behind why it could.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

I believe people used to put Tactical Lasers on Scarabs for this very reason - 3x time multiplier from the ship system means 3x higher hit high strength vs. armor.