I dont agree with people who say that beams should be limited to capships. Instead i would suggest somthing like this.

Blue Beam - Range 1000m, Damage 50000, Speed 1 sec delay, XL port, Energy Usage 1000.

Capships have this in spots that are in places that are more than likely to be attacked by other capships .

Red Beam - Range 750m, Damage 2500, Speed .75 sec delay, L port Energy Usage 500.

Can be used in a capship and Any Heavy Fighter capable enough to carry it. Mainly used on a capship for destroying pesky Bombers.

Yellow Beam - Range 500m, Damage 1250, Speed .5 sec delay, M port Energy Usage 250.

Used in Medium Fighters and also traders.

Green Beam - Range 250m, Damage 625, Speed .25 sec delay, S port Energy Usage 125.

The Weakest Beam of them all. Mainly used by n00bs to learn how to duel and fight. Is also great for disabling NPCs.

What this would do is give many people reason to hate beams and love em. Love em for the damage and hate them for the delay. I would also like to see a beam that is capable of shooting down Missiles. It can do like 1 damage but it can destroy missiles. Just give it 1-2 seconds to cool off after every shot and it probably wont be Uber. Also when are we slated to rearange the weapons ports?

slated to change the ports? There has been NO talk of actually changing that, just people wishing it would.

I have no problem with smaller ships getting beam weapons but they will definitely need some testing to make sure they are not too overpowering.

>>Green Beam - Range 250m, Damage 625, Speed .25 sec delay, S port Energy Usage 125.

I believe rail users will now either (a) rejoice that their weapon has been hyperuberized or (b) despair now that they no longer need any skill to score a hit.

I personally think that if we're going to mount beams on a fighter, they should be *very* short range, like 100m or so, and do a fair bit of damage, but also have a slight delay, and some innacturacy. This would be useful for dive-bombing, etc. However, it would be limited to L ports, and would weigh quite a bunch (1500kg). We certainly don't want it to become too uber, so this sort of thing would have to be very tightly controlled.

There was one ship named the Thunderhead from Escape Velocity Nova that used Beams as it's main weapons. I think that Ambrosia's depiction of what this sort of thing would look like is fairly accurate.
http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/evn/desktoppics/R_Thunderhead(800x600).jpg

My point being that mounting one or more would have to be a *large* amount of space and energy.

...if this were made possible at all.

I don't think they need to be large port only, but perhaps to limit there use give them a high faction & level requirement.

I think rails should be beam-like weapons... A railgun is after all, a weapon that uses magnetically driven depleted uranium bullets that travel at speeds nearing the speed of light... As far as what the human eye would see, would be a beam-like trail at the most. If a rail was like this, they'd be nice weapons to consider. I think they would just need to be very heavy or have reduced damage so they don't become too uber.

Speaking of Rails....

A Gauss Gun is a type of Railgun. It has always bothered me that it is named so blatantly innacurately.

That is all.

But i want a Laser on my Centarion!!!! WAH!

But seriously, didnt you see that i added a delay time?

Green Beam - Range 250m, Damage 625, Speed .25 sec delay, S port Energy Usage 125.

leave the beams for new ships we cant buy yet. they would make our current ships all unbalanced like.

I don't think they would necessarily make the current ships unbalanced.

The big weakness I think beam weapons on fighter ships should have is range, around 100m. Mass should be moderatly high, but not extremely so, around 800kg. Damage should be very high. Little or no autoaim, maybe even some randomness in the aiming, so you can't be positive where it'll go.