Effectiveness of cannon weapons analysis

Greetings.

Dunno if anyone still reads those forums, but still thought i'd share. I have taken the formula of particle beam canons and other canon like weapons damage and made a spreadsheet in Calc. I wanted to calculate which weapon is best at dealing damage per second (DPS). I compared every weapon (unmodded) in the game. (When i use term "outdps" it means that weapon A deals more damage than weapon B per second)

I compared damage against standart armor (from inis) of the main opponents in the game (tugs, interceptors, patcoms, corvettes, they all have either 55 or 65 armor)

I didnt even consider Light PBC, Cyro PBC, Wide arc PBC, Tracker PBC since they are either useless or identical to another weapon. So, i compared QuadLight,Neutron PBC,PBC,Rapid Fire PBC,Gatling,Pulse PBC,Heavy PBC.

Here is what i found out:

Only three guns stand out to be considered usable:

* Gatling/Assault is the best gun ever. Its damage exceeds everything by far (mostly it does 2X or 3X more damage than those other options), except that at 12000-13000 range it cannot deal damage anymore while Neutron PBC still can, but it is ridiculously low anyway (~8 at 12000 and going down)

* Rapid Fire PBC is the second best gun. Its damage on range from ~1800 till ~8500 is better than any other weapon (except G/A).

* Quad Light PBC is better than Rapid Fire PBC on ranges from 0 to 1800.

Pulse PBC and PBC are the worst. They can only outdps Quad Light PBC at range ~5700 and up, but there are other better guns that do the same, and pulse's increased range doesnt help it either as it does pathetic damage at that range.

Heavy PBC is slightly better but it still is worthless. It can outdps Quad Light and Neutron at ~4300 and Rapid at ~8500 but fighting at ~8500 is kinda useless as you can rarely hit and damage is too low, and at ~4300 there are much better options anyway.

Neutron PBC is just a weaker version of Quad Light PBC since it can only outdps Quad Light at ~4200, and it is still weaker than Rapid Fire PBC at every aspect except at ranges from 9000 and up.

Therefore, conclusion is:

Use Rapid Fire PBC when you dont wanna spend ammo, use Gatling otherwise.

Problem is, you are stuck with one light hardpoint for the whole game. That means, you must somehow use it. It cannot be equipped with rocket launcher, and so the best thing you can fit there is a quad light pbc.

Now, Quad light, as it is, is only good at ambushing enemies close range (less than 1400). At this range it can kill a TUG or heavy corvette in a second and a half, a bit more if shields are working.

So, it seems that only valid choice is to have 2x quad pbc on a tug, because otherwise, your options are 1xquad 1xrapid, which sucks because you cannot dispose off enemies fast, which means they will start firing back, which means you are screwed as this game's ship hitpoints are ridiculously low.

Anyway, hope it somehow helped.