I'm finding that even six lines of 8/8/8 beam/pulse/overdrive is having difficulty breaking through hull. I'll up it to 12, and if that doesnt work, just use cannons.
thanks for the help everyone!
Yeah, you're going to want it to where each shot/tick can break at least one block of your desired type. Because if you don't break the block outright, all you've done is scratch their armor hp, you haven't actually damaged the ship itself in any way.
So say you're designing a weapon you want to use against pirates. Isanths have standard armor and no passives.
Standard Armor has 100 hp, and 60% armor. And as long as the target has any armor hp, all block damage is cut in half (after the armor % reduction is applied).
So to destroy a Standard Armor block in one hit, you start with the 100 hp. The 60% reduction means you have to do 250 damage to destroy the block (because only 40% of the damage makes it through, and 250*0.4=100). Now double that to destroy the block in one hit while the ship still has armor hp left (because armor hp cuts the damage in half). So you need your weapon to do 500 damage per shot. That will ensure that every single shot fired will destroy at least one piece of armor on your standard Isanth.
And if memory serves, base weapon output is 10 damage per module per shot, that means you need 50 cannon modules in order to get the desired output without using tertiary blocks.
At least I think thats right, its early and I haven't had my coffee yet and I'm just doing napkin math here.