Regarding Weapons Officer Engagement
You’re correct that there will not be an abundance of activity on weapons, but there is a degree of challenge involved as each of those passing shots matter. Being able to maintain a visual lock on a specific ship system as it performs a Delta-1 at warp, arguably warp 2 at least and even assuming the helm officer moving in a straight line, requires some degree of skill. And, when engaging an ship whose shields have been exhausted, the beams may best be fired in a way to spread the damage over the target’s visible systems.
It’s spikes of fine-details activity rather than consistent activity… though, for experienced weapons officers, it may not prove interesting enough. You do bring up an excellent point in that regard. Perhaps an increase in light ordnance to lighten those restrictions is due, and while I hesitate to be adding a PD beam I’m not entirely opposed to it.
Regarding Beam Arcs
The arcs are intentionally narrow and short to encourage having to expose the ship to some danger in order to be effective. As it operates to avoid direct engagement between cycles, it has some time recover in between those strikes. I wanted to avoid creating a ship that had low-to-no operational risk, but if it proves to be too fragile as a result it can be tweaked accordingly. It’s a shared point of concern, and you’re right to point it out.
Regarding Durability & Defenses
It’s not intended to engage fighters or drones – it will invariably be pursued by them at times, but its agility allows it to dance around those problems rather than facing them directly. I would also note that it will disable fighters it fires upon in the first volley, possibly even one per arc (part of the reason for the staggers, though admittedly that’s taking a risk with a high skill ceiling attached to the execution).
When it dives through the lion’s maw, those shield should be pumped to 300% to mitigate some of that damage – and even then, I do fully expect it to take low-to-moderate system damage as no ship engaging in its weakest field should come out unscathed. It’s not a line ship, as you correctly identified, but a specialist to support a contingent.
Thank you very much for the feedback – and as stated, I do share many of your concerns on its current design iteration. I’m glad you find the ship concept to be fun.
Notes for thread:
Aft Shields are initially listed at 8, not 5; I cannot edit the topic to fix that typo.
Thinking out its Delta-1 passes, I do have some concern that boosted beams might refresh faster than it can realign for another passing strike, doubly so if it’s having to avoid drones & fighters. Perhaps adding more damage to the beams while extending the cooldown will keep its potential from being wasted without dropping its overall DPS, though I’ve no suggestion as to what those exact numbers should be.