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[zakastra]

It seems that the forum opinion on this weapon is that its somewhat underwhelming, yes it lacks the Awesome pressure of the autopulse, and the map-spanning range of  the (pre-nerf) tach lance But it is supposed to be a mid-long range support weapon. Its cheap OP wise for its size class, and very flux efficient, being a gav beam on steroids, it fills the role nicely... except... It turns so slowly....

Too slowly, in my opinion, for a weapon that is designed to keep constant pressure on enemy craft to reduce their venting capabilities, force them to keep shields up, and thereby speed up the overload from assault/strike craft or reduce the volume of incoming fire from an enemy craft. However, this is difficult to achieve on anything more maneuverable than a capital ship due to the terrible turning rate of the weapon, Its nearly impossible to keep a frigate under sustained fire and god help you if you want to hit fighters with it... (Yes I know, its a large slot weapon, but beams are supposed to be the jack of all trades weapon, right?)

TL;DR, The HIL could use an upgrade to its turning rate to make it a much more useful and viable support weapon, increasing its effective DPS without changing its actual DPS stats.

What do the rest of you think?

[sdmike1]

ya i aggree on all but one point, in this game there is nothing that is a jack of all trades

[zakastra]

ya i aggree on all but one point, in this game there is nothing that is a jack of all trades

I was referring mostly to the 100% damage to shields/armour/hull, in that lasers/beams are despecialised to damage all targets equally, whilst excelling at nothing.

[minno]

ya i aggree on all but one point, in this game there is nothing that is a jack of all trades

I was referring mostly to the 100% damage to shields/armour/hull, in that lasers/beams are despecialised to damage all targets equally, whilst excelling at nothing.

All weapons that do "energy" damage type do that.  That's every weapon that goes in an energy slot except for the grav. beam, along with the Mjolnir cannon.

[neonesis]

ya i aggree on all but one point, in this game there is nothing that is a jack of all trades

I was referring mostly to the 100% damage to shields/armour/hull, in that lasers/beams are despecialised to damage all targets equally, whilst excelling at nothing.

Well, that means that it's a good weapon against all kinds of defense, not against all kinds of ships using these defenses.

What I think is that people ofter fail to realise what is a support weapon - HIL is not supposed to be your shoot-win weapon, by any stretch of the imagination. Low turn speed? It's a large weapon. If you want to shoot smaller ships, use smaller weapons, there are plenty - Phase Beam, Gravitation Beam, Tactical Laser. If you wanted to shoot down some flies, would you use a tank cannon?

Anyway, it has low OP and flux cost, so in the end, the more of HILs you use, the better for you (look up beam-paragon, this thing is unstoppable). And it applies to all true beams (which TL is not, same as burst lasers).

Unless you mount them en masse, like you can on a Paragon, don't expect them to be KABOOM. Expect them to tire your enemy, to make his flux raise faster than yours. And then launch your bloody missiles.

[Alrenous]

Come to think, the low turning rate is precisely to encourage its support role.

At high range, a low turning rate doesn't matter - the angular velocity of the target is also low. The counter to the HIL is to get in a knife fight with the ship mounting it.

[zakastra]

ya i aggree on all but one point, in this game there is nothing that is a jack of all trades

I was referring mostly to the 100% damage to shields/armour/hull, in that lasers/beams are despecialised to damage all targets equally, whilst excelling at nothing.

Well, that means that it's a good weapon against all kinds of defense, not against all kinds of ships using these defenses.

What I think is that people ofter fail to realise what is a support weapon - HIL is not supposed to be your shoot-win weapon, by any stretch of the imagination. Low turn speed? It's a large weapon. If you want to shoot smaller ships, use smaller weapons, there are plenty - Phase Beam, Gravitation Beam, Tactical Laser. If you wanted to shoot down some flies, would you use a tank cannon?

Anyway, it has low OP and flux cost, so in the end, the more of HILs you use, the better for you (look up beam-paragon, this thing is unstoppable). And it applies to all true beams (which TL is not, same as burst lasers).

Unless you mount them en masse, like you can on a Paragon, don't expect them to be KABOOM. Expect them to tire your enemy, to make his flux raise faster than yours. And then launch your bloody missiles.

The problem is that even for a large weapon the turn rate is abysmal, They tie for 2nd slowest weapon with the hellbore (slowest is gauss cannon) the tachyon lance is 50% faster, the plasma Cannon is twice as fast. Shooting down flies with tank cannon is bad, but extending your analogy using Artillery Shells and artillery and ICBMS is OK. The tach lance is designed for ultra long range support sniping, the HIL role should be for a much closer, more sustained support role, if its dealing with 1/4 (1/2 post nerf) the usual engagement range of the tach lance, shouldn't it have a rotation speed appropriate to the engagement range, and adjustment to its angular momentum?, I'm not say it needs the 20 turn speed that the auto-pulse laser has (a close engagement brawling weapon) But Buffing the HIL from 5 to 10 turn speed Would make it much more useful in its close/mid support role (Do bear in mind that given the nature of ships with large energy turret slots, keeping AT the ranges where its range generates low angular momentum is very difficult, and even with low maneuverability ships a slight adjustment of ship orientation makes the turret completely unable to keep up) If it were designed on the burst laser principle, it would not be a problem as its DPS could be maintained through short contact periods, however it need to stay perfectly on target to fulfill its support function, due to its low damage output, and on most frigates this is nigh impossible

Another problem is that HILS are not designed to be used en mass, you are also forgetting they are support weapons, not main line armaments, of course thy are not shoot to win weapons, but at the moment, they fail strongly to fulfill their role, of support adequately as they cannot properly maintain contact when fitted to a turret.

[neonesis]

Well, it seems to be very subjective as whether it has enough turn speed. I for one, have never experienced problems with it, because I didn't need to move them most of the time. I was targeting slow ships, it was natural.

You on the other hand, seem to have problems with it - I can't really tell if it's just a personal experience or if you're trying to shoot Tempests with it.

I will test HIL thorougly today to get better view on this.

PS: As for deploying beams en masse - it was simply an example of where you can make these weapons work in assault role. You're not supposed to, because you generaly don't have the slots needed, but sometimes you can (Paragon).