What diminishing returns i dont get it. A darn mi english.
The idea was that since a heavy beam cannon is well kind of hard to swollow ina ship that is suposed to be smaller then a corvette yet a slasher beam would be too weak to be usefull you would actualy take steps to adapt other heavy beams for this ship. Sure they would be smaller then theyre destroyer mounted counterparts and do less damage but the idea behind it was to make it fire faster as to compensate for this situation. Sure it probably wont do as much damage even with its increased firing rate as the standard BG but the diference cant be too big since it would be again unusable.
Also such beams after an initial trial test could posibly be adapted for the corvettes and why not some of them even on destroyers if you can.
But regardless if you can actualy mount them on anything else they should be more the good for the specific ship class . This combined with thery forward firing ark (all beam can fire straight ahead) and numbers should be a deadly combination. When i ment numbers i ment not only for the number of beams on the ship but actualy the number of ships involved.
Lets imagine 2 or 3 of these vesels ambushing a destroyer. I somehow doubght the destroyer would stand much of a chance. Especialy if its a Hecate...you know the whole slasher beams on the side thing.
Diminishing returns is simple; technological development of a
specific technology - be it a piece of software, an engine, or a beam turret - is not a linear or exponential growth of efficiency and power, etc. More of a bell curve, I think.
Essentially, we can't be sure that 2 years will bring a significant improvement; it may be that 2 years will result in the theoretical limit of some technology - perhaps not even in the cannon, but in the hull material, the power conduits, reactor output, etc - that prevents a big development leap. Putting these weapons on a craft that is small and cheap (because it will be
highly vulnerable in any defensive position, and the larger it becomes the more uneconomical), does require IMO a significant advancement.
For example, if you take the Deimos - probably the newest and best ship in FS2 - and move all its beam (including AAAf) weaponry to a frontal position, is that realistic? Bearing in mind that even just shifting the turrets on the current hull would result in heat, power delivery, stress-during-firing, and soforth issues. i'm not sure that's feasible within 2 or 3 years, making a ship built around that spec which is viable in both cost and battlefield terms.
