Radar can't be LOS because Missles do not require LOS to fire. The changes to radar distances is suffcient to allow room for advanced tactics.

An interesting side effect, when sitting in my Artemis, I have a WHOLE bunch of RP... go figure, enough for long range lasers and accumulator injector.

I wonder if corps and/or players would allow 'combat reporters' to fraps battles; like a News Corp that was set to blue by all sides. Could be a good strategy, if you are losing, to blow up the Arhke MKII fraps bot!

Why do all weapons have to do similar amounts of damage to all targets?

In some games your allowed to change your set up depending on the situation you find yourself in, Perpetuum makes you choose everything but your ammo before you undock. They purposely make you think about what your going to be doing and fit accordingly. There are more generic things you can do that will be OK for any encounter, but you can also fit against a certain scenrio and get a big advantage.

I'm doing an experiment fitting Medium lasers on an assualt bot. One complaint I had was there are no mechs on alpha, but I was wrong, I ran into a rookie mech last night, and that Med weapon kicked butt on it. Now, in assault vs assaust/light PVE the Med laser just eats up accumulator and does about the same DPS (damage averaged over time) as one of the small lasers.

If you want to use your mech, that's cool, maybe you could experiment too with fitting small guns, or a mix of small and med. It takes a lot of bonus damage to make up for a 50% to 67% miss rate due to precision, so even unbonused small weapons on a mech that acutally hit are usefull.

Someone else suggested to me about fitting med guns on the assualt, which from an EP stand point would be much quicker, but I saw those dispersion rates and dismissed it. One of the reasons is that most of my other EP is in laser skills, but if I was gun specialized, it would have been a better fit for the assualt vs. mech scenerio.

TL;DR

Don't get too obsessed with certain fits, there are lots of choices, some are just better than others; and the success of the fits depends on the scenrio you apply them too.

Happy hunting. And I'd like to see someone do the experiment in reverse, Mech with small to counter my Assault with Med.

"The game is balanced when I decided when and where to fight, not the other guy."

or the same thing said another way

"The game is balanced when Mechs decide when and where to fight, not EW"

or the impossible statement;

"The game is balanced when no bot controls when or where to fight"

They are also different to generate some variance in how robots are fit.

Also -

Autocannon - 215% Dmg per 8 seconds

Machinegun - 160% Dmg per 4 seconds

If the Dispersion was the same, no one would ever fit auto cannon because the MG would always do more damage. If you drop the Disp down on all of them, they become too powerful against smaller targets, and the dmg would need to be reduced to rebalance.

There is a long running thread about Mech vs. Light bot balance in PVP. If your farming in PVE, its simpler, use an assault to farm assaults/lights and a mech to farm mechs/assualts, and heavy mech to farm Heavy Mech/Mechs. Keep in mind, some of the PVE groups are created intentionally so that you have to have more than 1 player to farm them effciently. For instance, there is a group outside of HHO on beta with Mechs and EW; the EW pwn any solo Mech player trying to farm, ECC and demob while the NPC mechs blow the crap out of them. Add in even 1 assault to take out the EW and its doable. Everything is easier with more players, but somethings are not meant to be doable solo.

If you like the HP and acc of the Heavy mech for farming assaults, mount a mix of small and med weapons.

Update: Current fit

Std Sensor Amp and std Laser tuner
(2) Std small hcl laser and (2) T2 small lasers with (1) Std Med laser on Baph
LWF, Small Repper, Std Coreactor

Some numbers (weapons as fitted):

AP: 627
RP: 329 (325 used)
Speed: 66.42 KPH
Crit: 10%
Lock Range: 273 m ( Amp off : 203m)

Small Lasers (T1/2 same):
Cycle: 2.94 Sec
Dmg: 154%
Hit D: 2.37
Rng: 173m / 100m Falloff

Med Laser(T1):
Cycle: 3.68 Sec
Dmg: 162%
Hit D: 6.32
Rng: 201m / 110m Falloff

RP numbers (Fitted/Base)

Std Med: 164/200
Std Light: 33/40
T2 Light:  30/36

Went out rating some Assault/Light bots with chemo ammo. Functionally the Med laser chews up Acuumulator way to fast for sustained fighting. Found it more useful to only use the med laser on the Assualts and let acc recharge while fighting the light bots in the pack; because of dispersion of the Med laser and slightly longer cycle time it only hit 1-2 times before the bot was dead anyway.

I will change out the repper for an T2 aux acc as it will be required if I ever fit a second Med on this thing. (T2 Aux acc uses 6 less RP than the repper also).

I also noticed that there were a couple shots where the small laser hit but the med was 'Blocked by obstacle". I'll need to watch more closely next time, I do move around alot, so it may not be something where med is more sensitve to slope.

My over all impression so far  - the small dps increase over time is negated by the larger acc useage on assaults.

Where to next - Range.

I have a good chunk of EP in sniping skills but the smalls are still at 173 M optimal, while the Med is 201 M. Locking at 273 M all the lasers are still within the falloff and if I can lock I can fire; the advantage I can see with the med laser here is to put a little more DPS on the target before the smalls become effective. The HCL model has a base range of 300M, but uses 30 more RP per fit. However, 2 of those with dual sensor amps would give this bot some punch out fairly far; this would be if i was expecting to go against mechs. (It could scare Ewar to see laser fire that far out from an assualt, but the dispersion on light bots is so bad that it would be more pink floyd then pew pew).

more to come...

In game, its a learn to play issue as well as a mindset change that Light to heavy bot is the designated progression path, when it is not, its a role based progression game.

Here on the forums, the heavy vs. any bot is too generalized to actually have a discussion. Its like saying cheese is better than puppies, the context is just to disparate.

Edit: No puppies were harmed in the creation of this post.

Well, it takes about 46,000 EP to just to undock a heavy mech. If a new account doesn't do anything else, they can basically undock a heavy mech in about 12 days.

This person is totally worthless because they have no other skills.

Its not the bot you are sitting in that should control your effectiveness, its your skill level; both EP skill and your tactical skill.

When talking about who's going to kill who, you must take into account the Fittings, skills, and PVP skill of all pilots; just generically saying This bot or that bot should beat this bot trivializes the impact those traits have on the outcome of the battle. And Fit,EP, and Skill are not trivial.

Field commander, squad leader, ect.

Ann/Alex

Yes, I'm able to fit out my asault box from most drops quite easily, if the sensor amps dropped it would help alot with fitting.

Medium items still don't drop on alpha, because of the lack of mechs to shoot.

Lack of mech gear isn't really a hindernce to pvp, but it does make it difficult for alpha corps to build up any kind of 'army' to make a real attempt at any beta target.

If we look at taking a Beta Island like a 'King of the Hill' type scenerio, there is typically some negative associated with holding it while the aggressors have some bonus, so eventually the king will fall. As it is now, once you have the 'hill', you get stronger while your non-hill owning oppenents get weaker; basically there is no chance once you established on the hill that you can get overthrown.

Not that the game itself is out of balance, because the other beta island alliances can still unseat the hills, there just isn't much opportunity for corps or alliances that are not already on beta to break in.

Again, that will change when more land appears, so its more observational then a call for any change.

Back to the modules, it would go a long way to make PVP more affordable if it was possible to farm all the standard modules on alpha; with some review and rarity checks for electronics based modules also for EW fits, even if it was just standard items.