[Taera]

I think that reducing the ROF without increasing the damage would make it unsuitable as a primary weapon. You would have changed it to a torpedo then. If you do that then any race that uses the PPB should be changed to use it only as a secondary weapon and stick with a ROF 1 weapon for main armament.

I have to agree with the Baron that reducing rate of fire would make it unsuitable for the role of a primary weapon. Increasing size might not be a bad idea, but I really think that increasing the research effort would be all that is needed.

OK. I will explain my own opinion.
You might notice that in the game all weapons with some special abilities are support weapons - NSP has RoF 3, Ionic Dispenser have been fixed, Tachyon Projector is expensive and has ROF 4. Repulsor/Tractor weapons are limited in their strenght by size tonnage.Shield depleter is shield depleter, no damage to anything else. Shield dustruptor is just same as Tachyon Projector, a hell expensive thing. Same with Computer Virus.

So all the weapons with "special ability" are made this way that even while being mostly not any difficult to reach, having disadvantages from "normal" weapons and thus being reduced to support weapon scale, what they are supposed to be.
Very similar thing was in SEIII - the PPB was reduced in effect due to being not too easy to research and having 2/3 of the damage the PPB does have, plus to the deal that Emmisive Weapon was stopping it completely.

The point is that PPB is supposed to be a "special" weapon, support weapon, call it however you want. But in the SEIV the PPB is brought to the point of being one of the cheapest techs to research (50+100 research, and then 5 levels beginning from 5k -- cheap), having damage superior to most weapons of the same time, including APB at most levels and being averagely cheap with tonnage of 30kT only.

I realy wish to see the weapon reduced back to its special place. There are many ways and each one is good.