Wait, so the Katana and Altan Orde survive with tons of health left despite all enemy beams being intact?
wut
So nonbeam turrets actually are causing the majority of the DPS? In every run I've played, I usually disarm all the Terslashes well before they get a chance to fire, and I still lose the Katana. Mind, I didn't remove the bomb loadouts from all the bombers leading up to that point in the mission.
e: tested fusion mortars on very easy. I believe the damage reduction only applies to the player, otherwise you'd run into all sorts of problems with things not blowing up when they're supposed to.
I know for a fact that certain missions are easier or harder in retail because beams (as a whole) are doing more or less damage based on difficulty. I can't remember if this is because lower difficulties cap the number of turrets that can fire simultaneously or if actual damage values are played with. I might be wrong about actual numercial values changing though. The mission I'm thinking about is the one where you're field testing pegasus fighters, but then have to escort the Hecate past a Moloch. In lower difficulties, the Moloch will pretty much refuse to die because the Hecate's DPS isn't high enough. Here: the quote from the wiki is as follows
"On lower difficulty settings, the Aquitaine won't do enough damage to the Moloch to destroy it. The solution to this problem is to play this mission on Medium difficulty or higher. On the other hand, the Oberon is extremely difficult to defend on Hard or Insane difficulty. "
However, I have no idea whether this information is reliable at all. Come to think of it, I think in Feint! Parry! Riposte! the Colossus reliably destroys the Orion before their dialogue starts on insane. I haven't played that mission on lower difficulties in a long time, so I can't say if it's because the Colossus brings more beams to bear or if the beams themselves do more damage.