Battle Armour mounting special armours. A Re-Engineered laser will kill off a trouper (and thus reduce the firepower of the squad/point by 25~20% respectively) in far fewer turns than a pair of standard lasers will.
That really only holds true at a few specific thresholds which you are not going to see all that often. Even against BA, odds are you will need multiple hits from either weapon system to knock out a suit so things will even out fairly quickly and get you back to grinding through a wall of armor with luck mattering more than which weapon you chose.
But this is where the endless arguing begins:
1) Someone asks what use a Re-Engineered Laser has
2) Someone replies that Re-Engineered Lasers have a niche use at X
3) Original person replies that weapon Y is better at use X than the Re-Engineered laser (E.g, someone will say to just bring a SRM with Infernos)
Which is moving the goal posts.
I have never done that. I limit my arguments to the RE-Lasers vs. the standard of the same model because while an artillery cannon will make a mess of any BA unit you point it at, it is a very different weapon with a very different roll that is not comparable to any of the lasers.
Indeed. A lot of the Battletech weapons can be classified as either 'hole punchers' (for lack of a better term) like Gauss Rifles and AC20s that deal a lot of damage to a single location and the 'Damage over time' or 'sandblasters' like SRMs and LBx.
A battery of SRMs or Medium lasers may do more damage over time than an AC20 but the AC20 can cripple a light or medium 'mech in one shot. Most people here can agree that both types have their uses.
The Re-Engineered lasers fall between the two against special armours. Medium lasers essentially become SRMs against special armour, the Re-Engineered lasers perform similar to their standard equivalents against regular armour, and the big guns (Gauss Rifles, AC20s, whatever) remain the big guns.
Anytime you'd use a medium laser instead of, say, SRMs or an AC20 is when you'd use a Re-Engineered medium laser against a unit with special armour. That's their niche.
The thing is, that cluster band is all about raw damage efficiency. You gain real advantage from either very concentrated damage or lots of hits, so the way weapons like the Medium Laser remain viable is by being one of the most efficient ways to pump out lots of raw damage to grind through heavy armor. By extension, the RE-Lasers should be filling the same roll because their cluster size is similar with twist of doing it against specialty armors, but the fact of the matter is that they are no more efficient than the degraded standard models in that roll so there is absolutely no reason to use them.
So your default stance on all new equipment is "That's useless"? Or is it just the RE-laser that you've decided to single out? If it's just the RE-laser, what's your actual testable proof that it is? And no, the example that will never appear in game play does. not. count.
I was going to keep ignoring you, but I had to respond to this complete butchery of logic. We have already provided an argument against the RE-Lasers backed up by mathematical reasoning. It may not be the most 100% rock solid bulletproof evidence ever because we did not chew through every possible statistical permutation, but it is still concrete evidence that the RE-Lasers do not work as intended. In order to refute that, you have to provide stronger counterevidence which I have yet to see in any form. The closest I have seen are cherry picked examples and individual incidents which are far from conclusive proof. After all, it is entirely possible for a Sucession Wars-era Wasp or Stinger to kill a Dire Wolf in a duel if the dice work out right, but no one in their right mind will claim the bugs are actually superior to that monster of an assault.
I have. You have, as well, with proxies. Do you ever use Medium lasers instead of SRMs? What would you rather have, 2 Medium lasers or a SRM4 for dealing with Battle Armour? For attacking the undamaged rear armour of a 'mech? If you've ever played with a unit that has both medium lasers and SRMs on it, which weapons do you fire first?
I'm on break at work, so I'll keep this quick and not actually bother with MegaMek. We can simulate 'gameplay' right now. I will cut corners and assume all shots will be hits.
2 Re-Engineered Lasers: 5 tons, 4 crits, 14 heat, 12 damage (in two groups of 6 damage)
5 Medium Lasers: 5 tons, 5 crits, 15 heat, 25/10 damage (in five groups of 5/2 damage)* *- First number is against standard armour, second number is against reflective.
2 Re-Engineered Medium Lasers vs a squad of Kishi Battle Armour (From the preview of TRO3145: Draconis Combine)
It has 7 points of Reflective Armour (+1 for the trooper)
From [url=http://www.random.org]Random.Org[/url] Dice Roller:
20 Virtual Dice Roll Results: 1,2,5,2,1,1,5,4,5,4,2,3,3,1,6,3,5,1,1,3
Turn 1:
- Trooper 1: Hit for 6 damage. 1 Armour point remaining
- Trooper 2: Hit for 6 damage. 1 Armour point remaining
Turn 2:
Result of 5 is 'Rerolled' due to squad only having 4 troopers. Skipped to the next die result of '2'
- Trooper 2: Hit for 6 damage. Dead.
- Trooper 1: Hit for 6 damage. Dead.
Turn 3: (Squad is now at 50% effectiveness)
Result of 1 is 'Rerolled' due to trooper 1 being killed on the previous turn. Skipped to the next result of '5'
Result of 5 is 'Rerolled' due to squad only having 2 troopers. Skipped to the next die result of '4'
- Trooper 4: Hit for 6 damage. 1 Armour point remaining
Result of 5 is 'Rerolled' due to the squad only having 2 troopers. Skipped to the next die result of '4'
- Trouper 4: Hit for 6 damage. Dead
Turn 4: (Squad is now at 25% effectiveness. All die results will be rerolled until the only remaining trooper is hit)
- Trooper 3: Hit for 6 damage. 1 Armour point remaining
- Trooper 3: Hit for 6 damage. Dead.
***Squad is dead in 4 turns.***
5 Medium Lasers vs a squad of Kishi Battle Armour (From the preview of TRO3145: Draconis Combine)
It has 7 points of Reflective Armour (+1 for the trooper)
From [url=http://www.random.org]Random.Org[/url] Dice Roller:
20 Virtual Dice Roll Results: 1,2,5,2,1,1,5,4,5,4,2,3,3,1,6,3,5,1,1,3
Turn 1:
- Trooper 1: Hit for 2 damage. 5 Armour points remaining
- Trooper 2: Hit for 2 damage. 5 Armour points remaining
Result of 5 is 'Rerolled' due to squad only having 4 troopers. Skipped to the next die result of '2'
- Trooper 2: Hit for 2 damage. 3 Armour points remaining
- Trooper 1: Hit for 2 damage. 3 Armour points remaining
- Trooper 1: Hit for 2 damage. 1 Armour point remaining
Turn 2:
Result of 5 is 'Rerolled' due to squad only having 4 troopers. Skipped to the next die result of '4'
- Trooper 4: Hit for 2 damage. 5 Armour points remaining
Result of 5 is 'Rerolled' due to squad only having 4 troopers. Skipped to the next die result of '4'
- Trooper 4: Hit for 2 damage. 3 Armour points remaining
- Trooper 2: Hit for 2 damage. 1 Armour point remaining
- Trooper 3: Hit for 2 damage. 5 Armour points remaining
- Trooper 3: Hit for 2 damage. 3 Armour points remaining
Turn 3:
- Trooper 1: Hit for 2 damage. Dead
Result of 6 is 'Rerolled' due to squad only having 4 troopers. Skipped to the next die result of '3'
- Trooper 3: Hit for 2 damage. 1 Armour point remaining
Result of 5 is 'Rerolled' due to squad only having 4 troopers. Skipped to the next die result of '1'
- Trooper 1: Hit for 0 damage. Already dead this turn.
- Trooper 1: Hit for 0 damage. Already dead this turn.
- Trooper 3: Hit for 2 damage. Dead.
Turn 4: (Squad is now at 50% effectiveness)
[Additional dice rolled: 4,5,6,2,6,3,6,1,2,5,6,5,4,1,6,5,4,4,3,6]
- Trooper 4: Hit for 2 damage. 1 Armour point remaining
Results 5 and 6 'Rerolled'
- Trooper 2: Hit for 2 damage. Dead.
Results 6,3,6 and 1 'Rerolled'
-Trooper 2: Hit for 0 damage. Already dead this turn.
Results 5,6 and 5 'Rerolled'
-Trooper 4: Hit for 2 damage. Dead.
***Squad is dead in 4 turns***
Now, while both the 2 Re-Engineered Lasers and the 5 Medium lasers killed the squad in 4 turns, you'll note that the squad was crippled more quickly with the Re-Engineered Lasers.
While that is true in this single test, it is more the result of unusual luck than anything else. Your first four shots all landed on the same half of the squad which is a 2/16 chance (12.5%), and your next two both went into the same trooper as well which is another 2/4 chance (50%) for a combined 1/16 chance (6.25%) of getting that kind of grouping. That is very far outside the bounds of expected values and significantly altered the test results here. Realistically, you would need to either do some heavy duty number crunching to see what the expected values are or set up a program to simulate a very large number of tests (I would go for at least 10,000) to generate a statistically significant body of data to work from in order for this type of test to be statistically meaningful.
Now, looking at it I do think there is probably a small advantage for the RE-Lasers here, but it is very minor and not at all worth taking the REMLs for.
This example is also in favour of the Medium lasers because:
-It 'only' takes 4 hits from a medium laser to kill a trooper, whereas the 2 lasers from a Re-Engineered Medium laser results in a lot of 'wasted' damage (~50% more damage is expended on a trooper than is required).
If we used a heavier suit- for example a medium suit with 10 or 11 points of reflective armour it would take six shots from a medium laser to do what a pair of Re-Engineered medium lasers could do.
This is true, although the optimal cases for the RE-Lasers are still extremely rare and do not offer a drastic advantage over the standard, especially when you factor in how far behind the RE-Lasers are against anything else including the internal structures of 'Mechs that used to be covered by Reflective or Hardened Armor.
Still, while RE-Lasers do have some minor advantage cases against BA with Reflective Armor, it is not a reason to use the weapons on its own. After all, if you are really that worried about BA with reflective armor that you are specifically selecting weapons to counter them, you will probably be gravitating towards something with a more definite advantage against them like the Mech Mortars or Artillery Cannons which will inflict massive AE damage on every trooper in the squad with each hit. After all, the enormous Long Tom Cannon can instantly annihilate a full squad of assault BA with max reflective armor on a
miss (AE damage is doubled against Reflective Armor), although it is not even close to directly competing with the REML at 20 tons, 15 crits, and 20 heat a shot plus several tons of explosive ammo (but it is hilarious against all kinds of things, especially in urban combat >:D).
Now, if you can come up with some other meaningful advantages you might be able to make a case for them on a combination of small advantage cases, but I am still not seeing anything that is even remotely close to making up for their pitiful damage output.