Ship Builds & Load Outs Request For Engineer Boffins To Check Efficient Weapon Workings & Experimentals

[Titler]

Hey all; I recently went to upgrade my Pulse Lasers from Grade 4 Efficient weapons with Experimentals to Grade 5 Efficient... I was using Grade 1 to improve the rank of the Dweller back to G5 when I noticed that the Grade 1 applied a pure Damage/DPS/RoF boost to all of my weapons, which was strange.

Thinking this must be an error, and maybe the engineer was listing some other upgrade compared to Efficient, I went through the list very carefully and confirmed that Grade 1 should be applying a pure DPS etc downgrade compared to Grade 4, no matter what.

http://inara.cz/galaxy-blueprint/72

After much thinking, the only conclusion I could come too was that Experimental weapons were applying a hidden debuff to damage. Here are my four Pulse lasers.

Pulse 1, Thermal Shock: DPS -25.4, Damage -19.9, Rate of Fire -6.8
Pulse 2, Scramble Spectrum: DPS -9.3, Damage +7.7, Rate of Fire -15.3
Pulse 3, Thermal Shock: DPS -2.3, Damage +18.5, Rate of Fire -17.5
Pulse 4, Scramble Spectrum: DPS -25.9, Damage -20, Rate of Fire -7.4

As you can see, all 4 are rolling at least 2 downgrades on top of the potential maximum penalties for Grade 4.

I then decided to sacrifice for now the Experimental effects and see what I could do with just pure Grade 5 rolls;

Pulse 1: DPS +5.3, Damage +10.5, Rate of Fire -4.7
Pulse 2: DPS +8.1, Damage +2.3, Rate of Fire -4.2
Pulse 3: DPS +8.5, Damage +13.7, Rate of Fire -4.5
Pulse 4: DPS +13.6, Damage +17.7, Rate of Fire -3.4

As you can see, the results are much closer to what would be expected from Grade 5... this makes me think it really is that Experimental effects apply damage downgrades that aren't listed. What do you all think though?

 

[Ceekay]

I've noticed the same trend you get a useful experimental effect (like thermal shock) and the core weapon stats below par, TBH I'd like to be able to turn off the experimental effect and just have a solid performance boost.

Another "hidden" issue is with rapid fire pulse the L5 have a little jitter but not enough to be unusable but the high rate of fire significantly boosts the weapons heat generation, the efficiency is good enough that you can fire continuously with 2 - 3 pips to weapons but you'll very quickly overheat the ship, so don't fit 5 to a Python like I did

 

[Titler]

I've noticed the same trend you get a useful experimental effect (like thermal shock) and the core weapon stats below par, TBH I'd like to be able to turn off the experimental effect and just have a solid performance boost.

Another "hidden" issue is with rapid fire pulse the L5 have a little jitter but not enough to be unusable but the high rate of fire significantly boosts the weapons heat generation, the efficiency is good enough that you can fire continuously with 2 - 3 pips to weapons but you'll very quickly overheat the ship, so don't fit 5 to a Python like I did

Yes, my thinking was avoid the jitter, take minor improvements to the damage and just use the Pulse to knock shields off, and then bring kinetic weapons (Overcharged Multicannon) to bear. They recharge fast enough even with 4 pips Shield, 2 Weapons for me to merrily tank away without being unable to fire in Hazardous RES / High Conflict until I run out of ammunition...

However the special powers were really ruining me it seems. The Scramble Spectrum never made much difference that I could see, and I don't see NPCs really overheating much at Dangerous / Elite where I now fight. Very frustrating! So I've gone just for DPS increase, as you can see. But it's frustrating there appears to be a hidden penalty on top of the Experimentals! Why try and be unique if you seem directly punished for it?

 

[Ceekay]

The L5 jitter is an aim off of about 10 metres at 1500 m range so for Cobra sized ships it's fine, fitted to a Python (or FDS perhaps) two L5 rapid fire pulse turrets would make great shield killers with possibly L5 class 3 efficient weapons for sustained fire and cool running.

L4 overcharged turrets were very effective but the high PD draw meant at least 3 pips to weapons most of the time.