Walt
Walt Do you see this being because the decreased accuracy?
After another hour of testing in a much more controlled situation, I've gotten a better feel for the balance.
I ran this saved fight about fifty times, changing certain variables. Save game. The test isn't perfectly scientific, but it was just meant to get a general feel for the balance.
OBSERVATIONS:
If I just let the fight play out with no intervention, the heavy wins handily, losing only 1 reactor, sometimes none. Clearly the heavy has superior DPS in a stationary fight.
If I change the heavy to alternating fire, it swings the advantage to the small lasers. I attribute this to synchronized fire being more burst damage, allowing it to better take shields offline. The smalls come out on top every time when I change the heavy to alternating.
If I command the smalls ship to strafe a little using the attack angle commands, it adds advantage to the smalls. Outcome is about 50/50. Makes it pretty even.
If I command the heavies ship to strafe a little, the heavy doesn't lose as much advantage, but the small still fares better that it did in the stationary fight. Adding any dynamic acceleration to the fight makes the heavies much less effective, to the point that you might as well have small lasers instead, if only for the cost difference.
If I command them both to attack from max weapon range, it adds advantage to the smalls ship. Outcome is unpredictable, but again, the small ship fares better than it would have in the original stationary fight, and it wins more often than you would expect for a ship that has significantly less dps.
To summarize, I found that the heavy laser has clearly superior dps in a stationary fight with synch turned on. But by turning off synch, increasing engagement range, or adding any movement to the fight, it is pretty similar in power to the small laser.
I felt like the biggest factors that make the heavy laser not as effective as you would expect are:
1. Inaccuracy
2. Seemingly worse power efficiency. (I felt like the heavies were running out of power more often. This may be just that the test ships weren't built around heavy lasers - it's a ship I built for standard cannons.)
3. Alternating fire bad.
