Early weaonry?

[Fyron]

But, once the shots fire ... the disruptor wins, because it does ALL 1125 shield-loss, AND some internal-hull damage, in one fell swoop. It would take two turns for the Depleters to match that.

Against a single target, maybe. But, battles are often fought with lots of ships on each side. In that case, the Depleters, able to fire at 3x as many ships, win out.

The range is an issue, however, if you're closing to point-blank anyway (for whatever reason) ...

I like max range better.

Not all shields on a crystalline-armored target. All shields the target ship starts the round with. IF the generators are still live, however, then every shot has some of it's energy siphoned back into shields, to resist the next shot. Disruptors, however, remove the shields entirely -- and thus, also remove the Crystalline Armor's special ability entirely.

Umm... please reread what I posted on this.

If they need to fire more than once in a combat, you're either outnumbered, or otherwise doomed already. The Disruptors could have a 30-round recycle rate; the idea is, only their first shot matters. After that, there shouldn't be shield generators LEFT on the enemy ship.

As I said before, disruptors can only fire on 1/3 the number of ships as depleters can. This is a very crucial crutch in large fleet battles.

Note, in games like P&N, wiht the HEavy Shield components (200kT, generates 3000 shields, regenerates 100 per round), one depleter would need 15 turns to drop that shield, and there'd still be 100 shields regenerated each round after that.

We were not discussing mods, you know. Those tend to completely change the balance of things.

One disruptor doing 40 damage would need 5 shots, and there'd be -no- regenerating shields. Same time in total, yes (15 rounds), but: 5 disruptors would then do in one round, what would take TEN depletors a single round to do. So which costs more, 10 depletors, or 5 disruptors?

Umm... 5 disruptors cost a lot more than 10 depletors.

Range issues aside, ofc.

That is one of the most important points.