I remember when laser weapons were on par with or better than ballistics and the combat was actually a lot of fun. Back when lasers didn't have this terribly long time to kill (TTK), and fighting even the smallest ships didn't feel super bullet spongey. Punching through shields and having to work around them was great. Cycling shield phases on bigger ships, making the enemy react to it, turning a fight into a back and forth with timed disengages/re engages instead of a straight damage races with unavoidable damage. But ever since they changed weapon speeds and nerfed Attritions (only laser weapon that was decent after the speed change) we are stuck in a hard ballistic meta where none of these things matter. Right now the only meta weapons are Shredders, Deadbolts, or basically any ballistic that just penetrates and circumvents shields entirely. And yeah, I know you can still run lasers and clear any content, but everything feels way more bullet spongey when you do. It takes an eternity to kill anything. I want to be able to grab lasers and delete enemies just as fast as I can with ballistics. So why are lasers this bad? CF Repeaters went from 1800 speed to 1400 with no damage change to make up for it. Attritions got hit with a 30-50% damage nerf depending on weapon size. Meanwhile Shredder got a speed increase and kept their high damage and they also don't suffer from small capacitors. So you can just hold down your trigger button and basically infinitely fire. Ammo is enough for any reasonable encounter. Hull penetration wise the lasers obviously also lose in the direct comparison. Imagine what the Star Citizen or SQ42 cinematic trailers would look like with the current laser tuning. Nothing would happen at all. Where is the game that they are showcasing in these? Ballistics should have their niche, but they shouldn't be the be all end all that makes shields completely meaningless. Make lasers viable again and put them back on par with ballistics first, then tune ballistics down a bit. That makes the game more fun for everyone, from casual PvE all the way up to sweaty PvP. TLDR: Ballistics circumvent shields, so only hull HP matters. Shield gameplay is dead. Lasers are worse in every way: less capacitor, less damage, less penetration, and they hit shields first. Laser TTK is painfully slow, so every fight is a slog. Make Lasers viable again and get us out of ballistic meta