Thinking about damage rating for guns and shields etc. A better way?

[smartroad]

I was playing around with the E:D Shipyard and looking at the way guns and shields are damage is quoted. The website tries to make sense of the shields by giving the MJ capacity of what they can absorb before collapsing. The power distributed does the same (capacity and re-gen rates). Why does Frontier not quote the guns in the same manor? I mean lasers use a given amount of energy from the capacitors and could be quoted in MJ per shot for pulse and burst and MJ/s for beam. Projectile weapons can also be quoted in MJ per shot. This would enable a better way of judging what sort of damage could be dealt by each objectively. At the moment it is (for me) impossible to figure out if the beams I have on my Cobra are actually better than having class 2 pulse or burst's.

The heat could be done the same way, a ship is able to dissipate a maximum of X watts, each weapon could be given in watt per shot or per second (depending if it is a beam or not) thus giving an idea of which is better at heat management for the amount of damage they deal and how long they can fire for before overheating.

Like I say I am just thinking out loud here for a better way to understand rather then the bar lines which really tell you nothing at all.

[UnmarkedBoxcar]

It might also be interesting to see how/if the system will have to adapt once the ratings for weapons begin to change. I remember hearing mention that this was going to happen in the future, yes? E.g. the fact that a large plasma accelerator right now is rated B, but in the future they could run the gamut from E to A all in the same class hardpoint?

I think a change like that would certainly necessitate a bit more...informative layout. But I suppose we'll see.

I've never been much for crunching numbers...lately it's been mostly "aim the plasma at the little red square on the big moving target and watch it go boom."

[Arda]

Check this research regarding weapon dmg vs shields by StarLightBreaker on the ED forums.

All Weapon Stats in Actual Values Test Results (Stage 1.5 – Shield DPS DPE) (Added Single Shot Damage)