Why are Zappers and the beam weapons not working?

[Haste]

Correct.

That's why big transports with lots of turrets that cover different areas of the ships just create an enormous, wasteful light show when they shoot Zappers.

Smaller transports or ones that fire every single turret in a specific direction (think a Shire firing backwards or forwards) can do quite a lot of damage with them, however.

I still wouldn't get them over Charons.

If their projectile speed was actually (nearly) as frighteningly fast as the effect looks, they could probably be a lot more dangerous though. At least then if you got someone in the crossfire of multiple Zappers, they'd melt accordingly. I think they're actually slower than Solaris Gunboat turrets right now.

Edit: Just had a look. Transport ones are 1600 m/s, so slightly faster than gunboat turrets. I'd say bumping that up to 2500 m/s or so would be reasonable. At least they might feel like laser beams then.

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