The Gauss gun got a much needed boost with the latest update... but now I get the feeling that it's a little too good. For example, buy a Hornet and outfit it with four Gauss cannons. Fire at a 250 bot once or twice. Instant kill right there. Sell your Gauss cannons and buy four Gravitons. Fire at a 250 bot once or twice. Sometimes you'll get an instant kill, but most often it takes three or four shots.

What benefits do you get with the Gravitons over the Gauss? One extra grouped shot due to reduced energy consumption. That's it. Other than that it's significantly weaker than the grouped Gauss cannons. The Gauss cannon also has better aimbot tracking than Tachyons and Gravitons. They all have the same exact speed too. I do however like to use grouped Gauss cannons on a Valkyrie or Marauder ship.

So maybe what could be changed is the speed of Tachyons and Gravitons. Tachyons and Gravitons should fire just a little faster than the Gauss cannon. Maybe at 190 or 200m/s instead of 180m/s, like the Gauss. There just needs to be more variation between these weapons besides energy consumption and damage. The firing rate is usually moot for burst shots. Sprayers may argue otherwise though.

Note that the Tachyons repeat at 0.15 sec, the Gravitons at 0.25 sec and the Gauss at 0.5 sec...I think that makes up for the difference.
You can fire more often with Tachyons and Gravitons, so they decreased the chance of an instant kill. Leave them as-is.

Well, like I said the fire rate doesn't matter if you're firing in bursts. Most often the energy consumption is what really determines what your firing rate is, if you want to fire those weapons grouped that is. I can tell you right now, though, that most people will prefer using stronger but slower firing shots over spray and pray weapons. If firing rate is so valued, why don't we see everyone using the cheapest blasters?

At the very least I think the Tachyons and Gravitons could use a slight speed boost. Try out my little experiment with the Hornet and you'll see why I'm asking these to be tweaked. Squeezing off every single shot of quad Gravitons isn't nearly as powerful as squeezing off every single shot of quad Gauss cannons. Do the calculations. Both take up a lot of energy, so timing your shots is absolutely necessary... thus making the rate of fire totally irrelevant to the argument.

Gravitons are in fact better then gauss, 2 shots in the same time (graviton), 1600 dmg, 1 shot in the same time (gauss), 1000

Figure the rest out yourself.

Thats not taking into account the significantly better auto-targeting.

Lemming: Like Arolte said, there will be disagreement between people who like to fire bursts and people who like to "spray".

Dave: Good point.

But SL, I'm talking about groupings here. Three or four shots of Gravitons fired at a single burst versus three or four shots of Gauss fired at a single burst. The Gauss will always have the advantage. If you fire in bursts regularly, by the time you aim the Gravitons again you'll already have a full load of Gauss to go at that same time. Spraying is a completely different story, but even then (as UncleDave pointed out) the Gauss has much better aimbot and they both still travel at the same speed. The only advantage is a 0.25 ROF increase. Not good.

Well, look at it this way. The gauss does 2400 (1200*2) damage per second. The Gravitron does 3200 (800*4) damage per second. If you group 3 gauss vs 3 grav, you will do 7200 DPS with the gauss (2400*3) or 8600 DPS with the gravitrons (3200*3). Your choice. The difference is even great with the Hornet (9600 vs 12800).

Correct me if I'm wrong but better aim just means that the auto aim kicks in sooner (i.e. the target turns yellow at a larger radius). If that is the case then the auto targeting isn't that big of a deal, it's good but not amazingly good. It's not too hard to auto aim at a target for multiple seconds with any of the guns

"spray and pray" ok first if you're fighting a prom you can easily get 5-6 consecutive hits with tachs. I wouldn't call that praying. With triple tachs that's 9000-10800 damage, where as triple guas would do 7200 and gravs would do 7200-9600 in the same length of time.

The grav and gauss are better against fighters because you can only get 1-2, or on occasion 3 consecutive hits with a tach.

So in short if you can only hit a slow target once, or your target's are mostly fast, then the gauss is the best small energy weapon. If all your targets are slower than you then the tach is the best. The grav is somewhere in between. I think that this is an excelent balance because each of the guns has its own niche. Though I wouldn't be upset to see the tachs move faster I do not beleive it would make the game more balanced.


EDIT: I was wrong the gauss is much better than the tach/grav because the auto aim makes it possible to hit much more often, and at longer distances.

The better autoaim means that the weapon is targeted better and has a better chance of hitting something, not just that it kicks in sooner.

better autoaim allows you to shoot sideways. I love the guass.

Yeah i have to say the gauss is pretty deadly right now. During that joint blue/gold raid on s2 the other day my valk got destroyed so i had to buy a normal ship. I picked the hornet with a heavy batt and quad gauss. I killed a prommie in about 6 seconds without any help. Thats scary.