Cannons > Beams right now. Possible fix.

[Winterhome]

Right now, cannons are dramatically better than beams for reliably killing ship HP - both Armor HP and Structure HP.

When a ship is entirely out of Armor HP, it has the problem of armor still existing, and in a moving battle, beams run into the problem that they're continuing to hit armor blocks as they deal damage, resulting in very little, if any, damage reaching the structure. For beams to be effective at killing systems, they need the entire outer hull of a ship to be stripped away somehow, which requires either absolutely enormous waffleguns or massive amounts of missiles (and to be honest, if your missiles are hitting your target, they're probably doing a better job at killing Structure than your beams ever could).

Cannons have the benefit that the shots are able to cleave through armor and reliably hit systems on the other side, provided the armor isn't enormously thick.

Of course, beams are balanced against Armor HP in that they're not able to penetrate a ship without first killing its a armor, but after that point, they're nearly useless.

I personally recommend adjusting Beams so that there's no penetration while hitting a ship with Armor HP remaining, but so that they also have 10-20% of the penetration against armored blocks that they would have had if they were hitting unarmored blocks. Cannons will still be better for killing structure, of course, but at least beams won't be totally worthless against large ships when compared to cannons, and cannons will still scale better than beams at large sizes because they're receiving proportionally less damage reduction as they get larger (EHP of advanced armor vs. linear damage growth).

 

[Lancake]

Hm, this would be a concern for smaller sized beams. But once you go past a certain damage threshold, with piercing effect blocks (armor HP damage/armor efficiency/extra block damage) you should be able to kill armor really fast, possibly with your first damage tick.

Edit: of course the same goes for cannons, but their penetration depth is less no matter what so for cannons you'll have more wasted damage.

 

[Winterhome]

Hm, this would be a concern for smaller sized beams. But once you go past a certain damage threshold, with piercing effect blocks (armor HP damage/armor efficiency/extra block damage) you should be able to kill armor really fast, possibly with your first damage tick.

Edit: of course the same goes for cannons, but their penetration depth is less no matter what so for cannons you'll have more wasted damage.

The problem isn't killing armor HP. It's killing systems.

Even if your first damage tick kills the armor block, subsequent ticks won't hit systems unless you're shooting a totally stationary target. Cannons don't have that drawback.

 

[Tunk]

There is a silly simple solution to your problem.
Take your waffle and turn it into a linear array.

 

[Winterhome]

There is a silly simple solution to your problem.
Take your waffle and turn it into a linear array.

Even more useless, mate.

I use single outputs when possible.

 

[Loadout]

Beams have always been finicky to me. On the one hand you're right, moving targets mean full damage is applied evenly across the outer shell of a surface. On the other hand though they are capable of doing things cannons just are not good at.

Multiple hits means rapid delivery of several different effects that really make beams shine. In the case of Explosives - 5 hits means 5 different explosions, these can readily take about 10% of the beams damage(per hit), and apply it to anything behind the block they hit, which includes armor. So the solution to your problem is already in game, simply add an explosive effect and watch the beams chew up minor blocks behind armor all day.

You can of course add punch through or pierce effects and beams will apply much the same effect as cannons but with more rapidity.

Alternatively, and I really hate suggesting this currently but it could be theoretically useful, use Beam - missile combos. Having 5 or 6 beams(forgot how many off the top of my head) could apply damage over a greater area and switch from systems removal to armor stripping which is what beams are really good at to begin with.

 

[Winterhome]

Cannons benefit far more from Explosive than beams do (even to the point that a large array of cannon-cannon-explosive is one of the more devastating weapons ingame right now), and Punch and Pierce effects do not permit beams to penetrate armor blocks. Cannons still win.