Flak turrets feel weak

[chemical_art]

Their damage seems fine, especially considering they have a multi-fire line AOE damage shot type. It could use a slight buff, but not too much.
What I'm disappointed about is their heath. They have a smaller ship cap than flak turrets, but that same HP. And flak turrets are already having survivability issues (though admittedly that is due more to their range, not their HP).

With their description, I'd expect them to have low health. But their low caps and health (for their cost and cap) need to be justified by greater damage. I'd rather they get a cap on the number of targets they can hit (if not already done) and get a damage boost or a cap boost. Either you put them on the bee line on to the command station (and thus get destroyed by the waves) or you put them to the side and have them do paltry damage after the alpha strike, requiring micro on the shot placement to justify their cost.

EDIT: The beams really need to puncture multiple ships in a line to be justified, regardless of being destroyed.

[TechSY730]

HBC shots aren't traditional aoe, no, but if they kill the first target hit the beam punches through and hits anything behind it, and so on.  Same deal with the HBC modules on spire capital ships.

If that's the case, but they rarely seem to be able to "penetrate" due to them having trouble landing the killing blow, they may need a decent damage increase, possibly with a small fire rate decrease to keep DPS from getting out of hand.

Sure, their single target efficiency won't change much, but they would be more likely to actually take advantage if their shot penetration effect when they do fire, meaning they become more effective on groups of ship.

Also, increasing number of lasers per shot may be worth looking into, but not too much without some per laser damage decrease or fire rate decrease, or else DPS would get out of hand.

[keith.lamothe]

FYI, cracked open the numbers to rebalance the HBCs so that they would be in the same ballpark cap-for-cap as other turret types... suffice it to say, it's a whole new set of numbers.

[chemical_art]

I look forward to seeing the stats of the new HBCs

[keith.lamothe]

The new HBC stats are now in the release notes.  These numbers are actually tamer (on damage) than what I had last night; trying to keep it from running from UP straight to OP, but it's still rather... substantial.  But when I targeted the ballpark of the other turret types' at-cap numbers, that's what came out, so there it is.  Y'all weren't kidding about the old numbers being bad.

[chemical_art]

Numbers seem a big improvement, but I can't judge until I see them on the field.

*I heard they do not scale base on cap. Is this true? If so, why is it?

[keith.lamothe]

*I heard they do not scale base on cap. Is this true? If so, why is it?

Correct.  The same reason everything with low base caps don't scale: dividing a small number leads to more balance fluctuation than dividing a large number.  And more specifically: the ship cap for mkIV HBC's before scale was introduced was 1.  1 doesn't divide cleanly

[TechSY730]

May I humble request that OMDs get added to the list of things that get 75% damage multiplier (as opposed to 25%) while under forcefield?

This seems like enough of a buff to actually make OMDs useful for defence again.

[keith.lamothe]

Thanks for the reminder, just gave OMD's that in my working copy; will put it in the release notes once it's committed.

[Hearteater]

Just a thought, I know I'd jokingly mentioned giving Ion's Turret armor to resist Raid Starships, but (being less common) maybe OMDs could get this tweak to see how much tougher it really makes removing them.  Optionally bump Raid Starships Turret multiplier up to 0.25 (from 0.2).