100% agree with nuclearslurpee and Jorgen that DPS is not the only consideration in beam combat, or even the most important. I very specifically did NOT say "particle beams are the go-to weapon" or "the best weapon now". In my games where I don't use missiles against NPCs, I find that PD is the overriding concern for fleet composition since you have to survive AMM spam to reach engagement range.
That said, my thesis (and the title of the post) is that the changes to particle beams make them more effective at DPS than lasers/railguns at significantly shorter ranges than before, because their damage per ton gets better and better as tech levels go up. In fact, even at point blank range particle beams outperform lasers in damage per hull space for the last two tech levels (1M and 2M RP, although I've never gotten that far), which was never even close to the case before. Once you start looking at ranges beyond the range modifier, that cross-over point comes much earlier in the tech progression. From a game design perspective, I think this is great! Balances shifting as tech moves along helps keep things fresh and make it more difficult to min-max.
Alorial, as Steve confirmed below, particle beams are now fixed at 300t each regardless of caliber, and particle lances are likewise fixed at 600. That means for 600 tons you can get one 35cm laser doing 32 damage or 2x particle beams doing 12 damage each (24 total) at any range. ROF is the same (20s for particle beam and for laser), although the laser has better penetration due to being a single larger shot and having the better damage template. As I guessed in my original post, the break-even range is around 100km.
Nuclearslurpee, I'm thinking out loud here, but the ability to turret lasers doesn't seem like that big of an advantage, unless you're planning to be slower than your targets*. If you're committed to beam combat, I usually try to be fast enough to control range (either keep a gap open to best utilize particle beam/lance advantage at distance or quickly close distance to get best damage out of railguns/lasers/plasma carronades). If you're going faster than your enemy to control the range, you don't need to turret your large lasers to be able to hit them. If you're not going faster because they're using FACs or fighters, you're probably better off countering with your own fighters or PD weapons (gauss, AMM, or small ASMs) than turreted lasers. Please poke holes in my logic!
*Planning to be slower than your targets is potentially viable, if you're approach is to put tonnage into weapons and armor/shielding, and move slowly to the location you desire to hold. You give up the ability to force an engagement range that is optimal for your weapon loadout, but you may be able to afford to do that because you have a proportionally heavier weight of armor/weapons since you spent less tonnage/cost/MSP on engines. I have not previously attempted to use that strategy, but am curious if others have found it effective.
All the above said, I am still very curious to see Yonder's chart updated, if he's willing to do so, since I think there may be some valuable conclusions to be drawn. Garfunkel, I have edit access, and updated the damage profiles on the laser article a few months back to add the particle lance. To your point though, I don't care so much about getting the wiki updated as just seeing the results of that specific set of charts being updated with the new rules/values.
