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If you study the DPS for size M Thuon cf size M Particle beams the Thuon has 2.82 DPS cf 3.02 for the Particle beam.

This appears to be largely due to the single shot per volley of M Thuon unlike M Particle and long firing interval of 7.5s for the M Thuon cf 7.0s for the Particle.

Granted it has a high alpha strike of 24 but that is of negligible significance given no skip % and shield values in the hundreds.

Size S Thuon are a big improvement on size S Particle and have the same range improvement as M Thuon and a faster firing rate of 5s. So why is the M Thuon doing less damage than the Particle beam?

I find myself not believing that I am choosing to put M Particle beams in my escorts because M Thuon are worse in a fire fight.

Surely there is some mistake !

Because armor (and to a lesser extent, shield resistance).

Particle Beam [M] is really 2 [S] versions slapped together. Thuon Beam [M] is a single, bigger weapon. Especially against restored high-tech ships, the Particle Beam will do remarkably less damage to armor, while the Thuon will cut through it with hardly any noticeable difference. 12 damage is low enough that armor and repair can effectively nullify it.

There is a pattern of the first of a new weapon line having a tendency to perform a little worse in some ways. In this case, unless the enemy has some good armor, its preferable to stick with the Particle Beam [M], but this is a short-lived consideration.

Aside from this there also are some other things to consider that is done under the hood.

Every hit also have a chance to penetrate armour and damage some component, this is very dependent on the raw damage of the hit.

This means a single beam doing more damage have a much greater chance to penetrate both shields, armour and then damage some internal component. This is actually one of the really good things with beam weapons that have really high raw damage, especially the heavy beams but also to some extent the medium beams.

High DPS is mainly good against depleting shields as they have relatively little resistance values.

Weapons with shield and armor penetration have stats for these. Like the Haakonish Dealbreaker gravity beam.The absence of stats for Thuon suggests it does not and simply works on the shield then the armor then the hull and components.

So it isnt better at penetrating than Particle.

Though I can see it might effectively halve resistance.

Jorgen is talking about a calculation that the Galactopedia or weapons tooltips don't mention. There is a chance that weapons can penetrate shields, and also armor. The full details of this are unknown to the community, but apparently harder hitting ones have a better chance. This is not shield bypass or the chance of part of a shot going through shields. Its a small factor, but makes a difference against a hard target.