Thats Not Right!
Railguns suck. You know it. We know it.
But I didn’t expect to find something quite to smack in the face apparent until I was doing some EFT warrioring. I have an alt who is now Paladin capable. After a discussion with a corpie or two, one of them pointed out that there isn’t too much between it and a Nightmare as far as DPS and tank goes… but the Nightmare gets a tracking bonus. His opinion was that a tracking bonus makes a real difference especially where big guns are involved.
So there’s me, having a play in EFT, and thinking, well since I have a couple of alts that are logi capable, how about an Oneiros with tracking links? I could test it out on the Mega (H flies a reasonable mean one) first to see what sort of difference it makes.
To EFT, Batman! And lo and behold, the tracking with all level V for Tachyon IIs is 0.0174 (faction Multifreq) on a Paladin. 3x factions heatsinks gives 915 DPS with 33 optimal and 25 falloff. Same criteria for a Megathron gives tracking 0.0165, 889 DPS, 36 optimal and 30 fall off.
But here’s the thing: thats with five max damage Ogre IIs still active. If we remove them, DPS drops to 572. Even worse, the Megathron gives a 7.5% bonus per level to tracking, so in other words a ship that has the bonus to the weapon even at max level STILL has worse tracking than an equivalent weapon for another race that has NO bonus at all!!!!
I know we’re doing the apple/orange thing right now, but… THATS NOT RIGHT!
FS
H
P.S Damn. The galaxy quest gif was too big. Grrrrrr!
Aggressive Logistics 
Not sure your comparison proves much.
T2 Tachyon start with base tracking of 0.014 rad/s compared to the slower T2 425mm rails at 0.010. If you want a same for same comparison, maybe use the T2 Dual Heavy Beam Laser as compared to the T2 Dual 250mm Rail, both which have a base tracking of 0.018 rad/s.
Next the Paladin has a major DPS boost – 5% damage per Marauder skill rank, and a 100% damage role bonus. The Mega matches the 5% damage per skill rank, but does not have that massive role bonus. For a comparison of EFT damage, you would probably have to use the Abaddon vs the Mega.
7 T2 Dual Heavy Beams on an All V Abaddon with 3 T2 heat sinks does 508dps with tracking of 0.021. 7 T2 Dual 250mm Rails on an All V Mega with 3 T2 Field Stabs does 460dps with tracking of 0.30. (Both using T1 short range ammo.) I assume the ~10% less DPS might be made up for the almost 50% better tracking.
Of course even that comparison isn’t all that clear, given the Abaddon can fit an extra large turret, and the Mega a launcher. Plus the Mega can also use 5 Heavy Drones / Sentries compared to the 3 the Abaddon could use.
While I think beams are overall better than rails, and the damage of small rail turrets is rather meh, overall I don’t mind them. The Hybrid Blasters however are basically useless in the style of PVP seen in EVE.
Probably a better comparison would have been a Kronos and a Paladin. Tracking remains the same at 0.0165, turret DPS is up slightly to 653 but you lose out with the bandwidth for your drones dropping to 75… and I like my Ogre IIs way too much. To be honest, apart from the bonus to armour repair, my Navy Mega is the better of the two boats for PvE imho, especially since you have have a flight of sentries or heavies AND a flight of T2 lights. Will post once I have a play with the Oneiros and see how that pans out. I did find a post somewhere that suggested two tracking links were required to really make a difference. We shall see if there are more perfect or wrecking shots and if it speeds things up a little.
One word re the PvP: Vindicator. Not that I have that kind of isk to toss around, but if you get caught by that beastie in blaster/web range…. (I know, very dependant on the situation).
H
P.S Yes the Noctis DID have an extended range on the salvagers… found out when I triggered one accidentally at about 16km out.
Having checked the details, tachyon beams rock. I had wondered why the suggested nightmare fits favour the tachyon over pulse lasers with scorch.
The answer turns out to be pretty obvious. Pulses must use scorch to get any range, tachyons can use faction multifreq, and when they do the range and damage is pretty comparable, but with the option of changing crystals for even longer range and the ability to use T1 or faction guns as you are not reliant on T2 ammo. Better all around. Plus with the nightmare’s good tracking bonus and the beams inherent good tracking, you are not too disadvantaged there either.
I checked the tracking for T2 tachyon, 425 rails, 1400 proj, the raw values are .014, .01, .009. Amarr very good, the other two not so. I suppose that and the ship bonuses are why minnie mission boats go autocannon. Unfortunately you can’t really do a good BS PvE blaster fit 😦
Falloff for the pulses is pretty damn short, so to stay effective you’ve really got to maintain mobility as well. DPS is not that much different between Tachyon and Mega Pulse as you’ve pointed out, so if grid is not an issue, sticking to the Tachs is probably not a bad idea. Gleam drops optimal to 17 + 25 falloff…. which is just about the range of some faction webs… 🙂
Awww, I dunno… with blasters you have sufficient grid to fit an MWD, and since they’ve allowed them a lot more in missions….. I must have a play some time 🙂