I’m curious if anyone here actually goes into battle armed with the curved reflector. Back in the pre 0.9 patch days I would occasionally equip it on a ship because I could swap between long and short range fighting modes. But now that you are stuck with using a single ammunition type in the whole battle, I find it largely worthless. It cuts the range so much (for a barely noticeable damage buff) that it leaves the player severely handicapped in terms of weapon usage. Why would I want to do 1500 damage at 1400m range when I can do 1300 damage at 4400m range?
It’s a neat idea for those who want to increase their dps at any cost, but ultimately I think it’s a voluntary handicap.
Supposedly the ion emitter is a shorter range laser with beastly damage, but at least on paper I can get the long range laser to look quite nice, and at epic ranges too.
And then this attached thumbnail shows the best damage I can get with a curved reflector. Not even close to comparable weapons. How did the long range laser get to be better?
I shall provide you with an informed answer as soon as I learn to actually hit anything with lasers.
It appears that I am “laser-impaired”.
Ah no problem, I hear ya there. In my experience lasers are hard to zero in on a moving target despite their zero-spread shooting range. They are quite effective against big or nearly stationary targets, but fast moving interceptors usually only get clipped with partial damage.
Truth be told I use lasers only for Empires contracts that require their usage. However when Im required to use them, I never equip the Curved Reflector and thus fully agree with Florbagast. Range handicap is definitely too high for the lazors the be effective.
Reducing the maximal range, reduce the optimal too, making this ammunition hard to use correctly
This.
This right here, is why I stopped using Curved Reflector even before 0.9.0 hit. The range reduction affects laser damage way too much, and makes the modifier not worth it.
