In the test I laid out and conducted.  Javs beat lums (upgraded and not). Lums beat assailants (upgraded and not).  Javs beat assailants. Therefore assailants can be considered the worst lrms in the game.  I found that bugged in the lums. There was a reason why they were so strong and were only fixed to do what they were designed to do.

Absolutely, in terms of sheer bang for your buck, LRM's are the best unit in the game.  Period.  Experimentation and spreadsheeting all confirm this conclusion.  A skilled TEC with a good economic opener who can get a LRM/Garda/Hoshiko fleet operational early is scary. 

That said, the assailants do have a lot of indirect perks (typical of the Vasari faction, really).  When focus firing capital ships or starbases, fully-upgraded assailants are better than LRM (since mitigation is more powerful in these cases, hence phase missiles provide more benefit).  Assailants perform much better against Advent battleballs than the TEC LRM do for the same reason.  Then there's the bonus that assailants share their damage upgrade with flaks and fighters.  Oh, and assailants also give less experience than LRM's despite costing more.

Personally, I think there's enough room to cast these two units as peers.  Yes, the LRM is the stronger one here, but the assailant has a lot of compelling selling points as well.  I also should add the Assailants vs Illuminator test isn't exactly valid, since in reality assailants are always mixed with sentinels which will absorb a significant amount of the side-beam punishment. 

Irrelevant against the LRM, which can and will focus fire high priority targets, so the fragility of the assailant will be exposed by any competent player.  This is, however, very relevant against the illuminator where you have no control over the target of side-beams, so a lot of it will be absorbed by sentinels.

With +30% damage, those 30 LRM deal 429 damage.  With the +20% of their final upgrade, those 20 assailants deal 312.  This is a 37.5% difference in damage output.  If we do a break-even on what mitigation values allow Assailant's 30% bypass to match this, we get a mitigation percentage of 55%.  So yes, any target which averages above 55% mitigation (typical for capital ships and starbases) the assailant hits harder.

Try a progen.

Nice to see your still around.How do you time this with no game clock?Would like to see this test with the 2 cap carriers added with all bombers.Both carriers lvl 3.Missile and sc up on sovas and sb on skirantra.

The point is not that assailants are the best LRF that I have seen mentioned in general but that vasari are the most OP.  Pound for pound, vasari can more easily take out a cap than any other race due to phase missles and bomber spam.  Outside of that they have many beneficial things going for them as a race.  Obviously if you are going to use 30 lrms against 20 assailants to be equal supply then you are going to have lrms come out on top.  They do the same damage unupgraded so if you have 10 more in a straight slugfest then TEC will win just through superior firepower.  The phase missle advantage is less with TEC due to high hull.  The assailant is also less research and less to upgrade.  As to the illuminator, its specialty is killing masses of frigates.  It is the single target it has trouble with such as a cap or starbase or whatever so straight frigate to frigate fight it already has an advantage given an even number.  Rarely are things so cut and dry that you are looking at lrf against lrf alone.  Testing such as this is helpful but hardly conclusive when looking at racial differences and comparative strengths.  These tests ignore the influence of caps, strike craft, starbases, timing of fights/etc, and micromanagement to a large degree.  I notice no replays btw.....

[_]-Greyfox

Read the original post.  Pound for pound is  cost. Converting metals and crystal at a cost of 500 credits per 100 metal or crystal you get:

Lums = 955

Assailants = 950

Javs = 625

I realize long ago even replays dont convince people.  Takes a dev to come out to say it

I see these tests sound annoying and take alot of time to do.

In your face u commie vasa nerfers

Up sorry forgot replay rnt proof as long as they dont confirm vasa r op.

Great job JJ, as usualy your test proof what i sence.

Pound for pound is referring to overall strength including caps, strikecraft and such.  I take it by that you are not going to show replays not that it matters.  These tests of yours takes LRFs out of context from everything else and is somewhat limited in its usefullness even if every word you say is true(your word is all we have at present).  Sure it is nice to know but overall it does not change much.  Vasari being OP is only partially about assailants.  I am aware how much these things cost.  It does not change vasari being OP not that you have necessarily disputed that.  One can only infer that it is your goal is to dispute vasari being OP.

[_]-Greyfox

In a game that involves 'counters', testing ship classes against each other is of little value. Instead, test Lrms and bombers against caps and starbases, flak against sc and lrms, Lf against support and carriers and HCs against several frigate classes including caps.

Then calculate the costs of the units as well as looking at the cost to upgrade them, also factor in the time to produce these ships. Oh and also try them against different races. 

Only if you factor in all the different variables will you get a conclusion on which is strongest. You will almost never see lrms fighting lrms and flak fighting flak and so this doesn't answer much. 

Actually not quite so, How a unit fares against its peers can be very different to how it fares against its counters. 

For example, the Vas bomber is equipped with phase missiles, a weapon designed to pass through shields. Testing these heavy hitters against other types of bombers would not result in a useful conclusion as none of the strike craft in Sins use shields. This test would give very different result than one against capital ships.

Also, pound for pound doesn't factor in upgrade costs. I know you do not have the Vas Enforcer as a winner in their category and this is certainly a fact. However its not just because enforcers are less capable due to their DPS and armour but their weapon upgrade (wave cannons) is unusually high on the tech tree making these vessels very inefficient to upgrade.

To determine which unit is the best in their class, all factors must be considered.