Listen up, you primitive screw heads!

So just for giggles, I did a series of bobby fights between my old clunky Constitution, and my newer more elegant Constitution with the focused high-tech weaponry.   The result was that the Older ship won 75% of the fights.... decisively despite the newer weapons design and 25(!!!) turrets on the newer ship.

I totally underestimated the effectiveness of raw, brute-force.  Ever seen the final fight in Rob-roy?  Rapier vs Claymore?  Yeah that.  That's what the fight was like.  So let's deconstruct both systems and see if we can't learn something.  I think what I need is a good bastard sword.

The Raw Data, straight from the structure menu:

Version 1: God Snarking Uber-Guns (the Claymore)

A GSUG is just a big contiguous block of AMC cannons.  Nothing fancy, just massive.

• Blocks: 3568
• Arrays: 4
• DPS: 35006.8
• Power draw: 49952
• Values: 656.3(x2) , 843.2(x2)

Version 3: Core-Lance Precision Weapons (the Rapier)

A Core-Lance is a meta-array of AMC Arrays.  Each Array has 16 blocks, each with a single "emitter " block, forward of the others, where the AMC pulse emerges.  The emitter blocks are lined up on the longitudinal axis of the ship, so that firing straight forward, all the pulses follow each-other along the same path, so the earlier pulses clear the way for the later ones to penetrate more deeply.

• Blocks:544
• Arrays: 34
• DPS: 13399.7
• Power Draw: 23936
• Values: 101.2(x34)

Well there's the first obvious problem.  The GSUGs are dealing damage at 161% over that of the CLPWs

Shield Drop:

So lets see what that difference does for us.  Both ships have about 30,000 shields, and recharge about 9700

The GSUGs will drop her enemies shields in just under a second.

The CLPWs take more than 2 seconds of continuous fire before they even begin to do damage.

Burn Rate

So the GSUGs are obviously superior.  Why did I mess with a good thing?  What's the point of the CLPWs?

Hardened hull vaporizes at 200 points damage.  Everything else vaporizes at 100 points.  Any excess energy in the AMC pulse that deals the final damage is just lost.  It neither damages surrounding material nor passes through to the next block. Burn rate is just the number of unshielded unhardened blocks removed per second by the weapons-system.

To calculate your Pulse rate:  DPS/(average group damage per pulse)  This renders the number of AMC pulses per second, and if each weapons array is doing more than 100 points damage, then  it is the same as your burn rate.

The GSUGs have a total collective burn rate of 46 blocks per second.

The CLPWs? they vaporize 132 blocks per second, a 187% increase

Effectiveness rating

(DPS/100)+Burn

GSUG: 396

CLPW: 267

Mass Efficiency: Effect/Mass

GSUG: 396/357 = 1.1

CLPW: 267/54 = 4.94

Energy Efficiency: Effect/(Energy/100)

GSUG: 396/499 = .73

CLPW: 267/239 = 1.12

So... the CPLWs are more volume, mass and energy efficient.

The GSUGs are more fluid.  You just pour them into an area with a 5x5x10 or even 7x7x10 Advanced mode marquee, then trim off the edges where they poked through the hull.  They fill all the nooks and crannies.

GSUGs DO make a cool "BoombaddaDoom!" noise.

The GSUGs also have a longer range and higher speed of shot.

EDIT!

I have abandoned more testing on the AMCs because I have seem the new weapons system and it invalidates all this work.  So take it as it stands.