Any power drain whatsoever is going to futz with a current form Trident and that's merely because they don't have shields. The things are unfinished stop bringing them into a conversation about a plasma annihilator side-grade. Nobody in their right mind is going to use a 70 energy per shot weapon on a trident and tomorrows tridents will most likely be immune to power drain upfront.

You are still singing nursery rhymes to me Roda, why is speed the balancing factor for energy drain? A more sensical balancing factor is energy/shot used to deliver it; because then you have a trade off between the energy expended, the risk in missing the shot, and the reward if you land the shot. Pilots that are accurate are rewarded for their accuracy and punished for their inaccuracy: balance. The gat turret has the best autoaim, this weapon requires effective ship positioning, like any gauss.

All that speed does is make it a close range weapon, so.. you can spam the PCB blaster as much as you like, but you have to be close to do it otherwise its overpowered? The speed doesn't make a difference against tridents, essentially all it does it makes it harder to shoot the damn thing at fighters which is fine if that's your intention.

The intention here in contrast is to make an effective flankers weapon against fighters. It expends so much power per shot that you'd be mad to think you can chase someone effectively with it (this weapon has four shots on a UC, then they're gone), as was the case with the previous plasma annihilator. So what does speed have to do with the fact that it drains power? Nothing.

I can propose many forms of future weapons that combine high velocity and power drain. I would like to see a variant that combines these elements. The rate of power used to fire the weapon vs how much power it drains could be adjusted. For example, a beam weapon that looks like a mining beam, always hits at less than 500m, and drains 100 energy per second from the target, but also drains 110 energy per second from the player using it, could be a fun weapon. Is it balanced? I have no idea. The PDB has very poor velocity, but very high rate of fire, and very high drain per energy expended. The plasma HX has the highest damage per energy expended, but very low velocity, with mediocre damage per second. I compare one to the other, just as a point of reference. What would the power drain equivalent of a mega positron be? I do not know.

I do not agree with your proposal, and I doubt there is anything I, or anyone else, can say, that will appeal to your sense of logic. You are determined that you are right, to the point you do not even consider the point's of others.

If the weapon you propose is put in the game, I will not cry about it. I will use it. I will make you cry about it.

I find it hilarious when people threaten to make other people cry, in the game that neither of them play. :P

Anyway, you complain that it's too fast and has good auto-aim, then you propose one that is instant with no need to aim at all. Maybe if you stopped contradicting yourself and chose an actual concrete viewpoint you could have a meaningful discussion.

too fast and has good auto-aim

I would like to see an energy drain weapon that is fast with good autoaim. I just think that the trade for being fast with good autoaim should be some significant compromise to some other characteristic. The compromise could be a very low energy drain for the energy invested, low fire rate, etc... but something that keeps it from being a no brainer. I suggested my beam weapon as an example of what I am trying to say, but at the same time, it is just an example, an it may not be balanced either.

I would like to see a high velocity weapon with energy drain. Please propose one I can endorse.

Here is my best shot:

MegaPowerDrainBlaster:
Large port
Mass: 500
Energy per shot: 10
Energy drained: 50
velocity: 200
delay: 0.5
damage: 0

High velocity, excellent drain per energy, low mass, low fire rate = low drain per second. This is on one hand a significant compromise. You need time to drain an opponent. But it is also a blessing in disguise: It will only use 20 energy per second, leaving power left over for a weapon. The PDB will saturate your energy while it saturates the opponents energy. The only way to full fire the PDB and fire a weapon is to use a weapon that requires less than 10 energy per shot, and uses less than 50 energy per second. There are only a handful of weapons that fit this configuration. The MPDB, on the other hand, will allow a large selection of PD/damage configurations.

Oh look at that Roda you're already making me cry....

You've just managed to design a large port PCB that's phenomenally worse off than its small port counterpart.

...I can't ... Breathe... It's just.. Too.. Funny

Roda, the Aeolus Plasma Desolator already has a low rate of fire. Only the initial several shots get the nominal 0.4 delay (which is already unimpressive). After that it becomes energy-limited, and can only be fired once every 1.4 seconds. It also has poor damage-per-energy as well as poor drain-per-energy.

Maybe you should spend some time using a Plasma Annihilator so you'll have a better feel for the weapon's performance.

MATH! I LOVE/HATE MATH!

I have not logged into game to see the real stats of an Annihilator. so i stole the stats from the Annihilator Rebalance thread.

Annihilator: New DPE: 27.69
PDB: 5 drain per energy
Desolator: 2.1 drain AND 23 damage per energy

So how do we calculate combined drain and damage per energy? I'll hit it from a couple of directions. If I calculate the damage at the Annihilator rate of one damage point per 1/27.69 energy, times 23 damage = ~0.83 energy, leaving 0.17 energy to produce 2.1 drain = 12.4 drain per energy. wow! nice. about 2.5 times the conversion ratio of a PDB. From the other direction 1 drain per 1/5 energy times 2.1 = 0.42 energy, leaving 0.58 energy to do 23 damage, at a rate of ~40 damage per energy. way better than an annihilator. I did not expect the math to add up. and it doesn't. that is not even accounting for velocity.

and sure, you can not fire at full rate after you discharge your cell. you can only fire about once every 1.3 seconds, doing 150 drain, more than enough to drain all the power from your target, and then some, while doing damage at a rate of 1600/1.3, whatever that is. i am tired of math.

Er yeah.. okay Roda buddy, i'm going to assume you've never heard of the phrase "Jack of all trades, master of none".

A weapon that does 40 drain per energy may indeed be far superior to the Annihilator that does 27.69 damage per energy, but this weapon doesn't do that, it doesn't specialize in high damage per energy.

Whichever way you spin it you end up having to qualify how useful power drain is on a low shots-per-battery weapon.

You've actually attempted to refute the whole idea by dividing up the weapon into multiple little weapons to compare them with other little weapons completely ignoring a number of the intended drawbacks.

Well then, how would you would create a flanking large gauss weapon with power drain? You simply say "you can't" and design a weapon arguably worse off than the original PCB which leaves you right back with ARF at "damage shouldn't be combined with drain because I believe it so (and have no meaningful justification whatsoever)!"

The fact is this weapon is not better than a Plasma Annihilator, there is a chance that it will be more useful at flanking the enemy and perhaps denying them an escape that the plasma annihilator would allow them.

The PCB, a small port prototype, first tier weapon that requires bugger all licenses to acquire is no more relevant to this top tier weapon suggestion than a plasma HX, yet you have attempted to bring both weapons into the discussion.

The PDB is currently the only power drain weapon in the game. As such, it is the only standard of comparison available for future power drain weapons. Because of it's low velocity, I have treated it as the power drain equivalent of the plasma HX, in terms of energy efficiency. This is perhaps not fair, considering the PDB's high fire rate, and resulting high drain rate per second. The PDS fire rate and energy consumption is more in line with that of a neutron class weapon. In that light, I could design a neutron class weapon, combining power drain and damage, with a rough ratio of 5 power drain is approximately equal to 50 damage, with the resulting velocity being the average velocity of the PDB multiplied by the percentage of energy directed to drain and the velocity of a neutron blaster multiplied by the percentage of energy directed to damage. I will thus attempt to rebalanced you weapon with these considerations.

I will use the Annihilator DPE of 27.69 as the standard of comparison. I will then divert %10 of it's damage to drain, resulting in .277 drain and 24.92 damage per energy. Multiplying these numbers by 65 energy per shot leads to 18 drain and 1620 damage per shot. Basically an almost insignificant amount of drain. so let us continue to trade in damage for drain at the 10 to 1 rate. to get up to 50 drain per shot, we are down 500 damage, or 1100 damage per shot left over. and we have not adjust velocity yet. the velocity of the annihilator is 205, minus the PDB (140?) = 65 with about a third of that ripped off by converting around a third of our damage to drain leaving 42 + 140 = a velocity of 182.

And there you go:
Damage: 1100
Energy: 65/blast
Velocity: 182m/s
Power Drain: 50
Delay: 0.33 < edit: bumped fire rate due to PDB higher rate of fire

But go ahead and play with those numbers. You will not like any of the results you get, because you are not looking for results that fit with existing numbers. but let me know in case I am wrong.

That is for all intents and purposes to quote lecter a "useless pieces of shit nobody [would use]" which is why the more intelligent people are asking what power drain stats should be, rather than feebly trying to "math in" the existing prototype PCB weapon stats as if they are a sacred law of the universe and weapon stats never change by forum request or anything (I mean that totally didn't happen last week or anything).

I'm going to let others comment on that and stand by what Rin and myself have already said about the capabilities of this weapon.