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[Thaago]

I think AM blasters are just about right - they are devastating weapons that are NOT primary hard flux dealers. They are overloaders/killers. The only defense against an AM blaster thats on a kiting phase frigate is to keep shields up, flux levels low, and don't vent... which is impossible if another ship is bombarding with kinetic rounds. In SS+, where the venting AI is custom and quite different, the AMB is still a quite potent weapon.

I wish the flux cost of ions were a bit lower, but they will always be specialized weapons. Against unshielded ships, or ships you can get to an unshielded part of, they win the fight. Against everything else they are crap.

On my hypothetical lots of small universals ship, I would go with two light needlers, two tactical lasers to kill fighters and frigates (needlers lower shields), a pair of vulcans to cover PD, and a single AM blaster for stripping armor and overloading.

To me that says small energy are on the right track - they have some areas they are best in and some areas they are poor in.

[Schwartz]

Since AM blaster fires so slowly, recharging ammo would really be pointless as the ship would run into flux issues much sooner and more frequently anyway. I'm also for just removing the ammo limitation because of this. IRPLs aren't bad at all, they do okay dealing with anything down to the size of fighters. Faster missiles might be difficult.

Anyway, what the AI could really use is some sort of awareness of the enemy's loadout and the danger points it is facing. Does the enemy have a lot of burst damage? Do they have range? Are their weapons expensive on flux? Can I make a good trade keeping shields up and letting them fire? All these things would contribute to making many cheese tactics like kiting and burst damage less effective. Fairly easy too math-wise, but I don't know the AI.