State of balancing grandfathered Plasma Accelerators?

[Morbad]

Engagement ranges, even with focused PAs are generally under 2km (~1 second of travel time). Still, a 40m/s velocity differential is near the maximum edge of what I'd consider viable for them.

Anyway, the velocities generally weren't that random...they tended to cluster (I have a pile of them that fell between 1630-1650m/s then several more that were all in the 1740s) and it took me less than a dozen rolls total, to get both of these, which I made the day before 3.0 dropped with garbage I found on the way to Alioth:

I have another pair that are also within 5m/s of each other (though about 100m/s lower final velocity) that have slightly lower thermal load reduction, but better damage and distributor draw.

There are certainly better legacy PAs out there, but these are better in practice than anything you can make today, and by a fairly wide margin.

 

[Stigbob]

Ahahaha your ignorance on the matter is at dangerous levels. You should name your combat ship: "MODULE MALFUNCTION" lol.
Moar pls.

Lol, alt account conspiracies.

And if you
a) owned any
b) knew how to use them

you'd know, like I do, that you're being ridiculous.

So no, tiny variations mean jack squat, especially for PAs...

Rubbish one of the main advantages of long range weapons is to grab the shot speed increase as it makes hitting with fixed weps easier. I'm starting to think you haven't played since engineers V1.

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

Engagement ranges, even with focused PAs are generally under 2km. Still, a 40m/s velocity differential is near the maximum edge of what I'd consider viable for them.

Agreed, the reticles will jump around a bit on mine but they are close enough in situations where I'd actually want to pull the trigger.

Anyway, the velocities generally weren't that random...they tended to cluster (I have a pile of them that fell between 1630-1650m/s then several more that were all in the 1740s) and it took me less than a dozen rolls total, to get both of these, which I made the day before 3.0 dropped with garbage I found on the way to Alioth:





I have another pair that are also within 5m/s of each other (though about 100m/s lower final velocity) that have slightly lower thermal load reduction, but better damage and distributor draw.

There are certainly better legacy PAs out there, but these are better in practice than anything you can make today, and by a fairly wide margin.

Agreed on the clustering, you'd see that in other aspects of the old system too.

That bold part is the main point here.

Rubbish one of the main advantages of long range weapons is to grab the shot speed increase as it makes hitting with fixed weps easier. I'm starting to think you haven't played since engineers V1.

I am not denying that at all.
There is nothing in the post you quoted that suggests otherwise.

 

[Maro-Val]

Lol, alt account conspiracies.

I see you switched to your favorite sport of changing subject. Where is the other guy?

 

[Stigbob]

Where is the other guy?

 

[XanderVekk]

To hit at orbiting battle range with enough damage to remove PA heat, you'd need a long range beam, and while you were aiming the beam you wouldn't be able to shoot the PAs (can't use gimbals, chaff), and a long range beam powerful enough to cool off focused PAs wouldn't leave enough capacitor to fire the same PAs. If it were that simple, we'd be doing it and the thread wouldn't exist.

OMG hahaha!

I'm laughing because I just tried this last night for fun, I had the money and mats so I spun up a pair of focused PA, with a pair of efficient vent beams.

Shooting huge and large plasma once is great, a pair of heat vent beams drops the heat.

Second shot and your cap drains and the heat damage starts...

I've concluded that focused huge /large PA aren't going to work on a large ship with other demanding hard points. The system needs an experimental to affect PA heat or distributor draw (either will work!)

I know some forum dad's that joust fight all day are going to say that it's fine, but it isn't. I'm flying FA off, doing long boost strafing and reverse orbits, my time on target is not two seconds out of every ten. These PAs aren't working.

 

[Morbad]

Three of my legacy focused PAs on this setup here made things significantly less toasty than it would otherwise have been:

[video=youtube;aeo4TLubk_8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeo4TLubk_8[/video]

 

[Ted Striker]

Three of my legacy focused PAs on this setup here made things significantly less toasty than it would otherwise have been:

I'd say "significantly" is an understatement.

 

[PeLucheuh]

I believe Stigbob means that PvPers in general probably need to learn what is possible and work with it rather than complain about what is not possible.

The complaints about certain builds no longer being feasible is probably because they were never intended to be feasible in the first place.

 

[CMDR Plexus Ironrot]

I can say my short stint with my all short range blaster pas on a dbx is a bit spicy but holly molly it hits like a freight train! I pip checked a biweave FDL once got him down I swore almost 3 rings. (I don’t know how low he already was) it’s glorious on the DBX however you get pretty spicy pretty quickly!! Also pip management is super key.