Sooth sayer and frentix are drugs for improving weapon range. They offer bonus to falloff (sooth sayer) and optimal (frentix) ranges. Strengths for both are same 10%, 15% and 20% for standard, improved and strong.
At first look one could think that they would be somewhat equal for their use cases: optimal bonus for weapons with good optimal and falloff bonus to weapons with good falloff. But that is not the case.
Figures
Now some figures to show how bad sooth sayer is. Figures compare the ship with and without drug showing dps outputs and received increase in damage output. All figures are drawn from 0 km to end of first falloff (60% dps loss). Each figure has dashed 10% damage bonus marker.
Don’t mind if the ships shown here aren’t “good”. The same can be seen on any ship with similar optimal-falloff characteristics.
Lets look at frentix first.
Apocalypse with some beam lasers and multifrequency crystals.
The ship receives very noticeable boost in damage output at the falloff range. Soon after half falloff the ship already receives impressive 20% bonus to its damage output. The frentix greatly enhances lasers when fighting at the edge of optimal range.
This figure is for long range lasers but exact same happens with all weapon systems that have long optimal and shorter falloff.
And now sooth sayer.
Maelstrom with 800mm AC.
This time the damage bonus is visible practically at all ranges but it is so small. At half falloff the weapons receive measly 5% damage increase. Eventually when the ship receives 10% damage bonus approximately 40% of the damage is already lost to range.
Artillery doesn’t have things any better.
The optimal bonus is also noticeably better for railguns.
The weak sooth sayer is also clearly visible in market as the sooth sayer is clearly cheaper less desired drug and cheaper than frentix.
Fix
If you look at any module that modifies optimal and falloff ranges you will notice that they all are twice as strong for falloff: Tracking computer II gives +7.5% optimal but +15% falloff, trackign enhancer II gives 10% optimal but 20% falloff and so on.
I think this trend should continue in drugs so that the sooth sayer would give greater bonus to falloff.
Maelstrom with 800mm AC receiving 20% bonus to falloff.
The 20% falloff bonus would still give less dps increase than 10% optimal bonus on lasers, but that is acceptable as it spans over whole engagement range instead of only edge of optimal. 20% may be a bit too much for the standard drug but 10% is definitely too little.
The same problem exist for optimal range and falloff range implants. The 5% optimal implant is equal in requirements and costs to 5% falloff implant while offering much greater benefits.
