...I don't have any practical experience with mercuries, neither on the giving nor on the receiving end...
I can tell.
On a mobula, in the time it would take you to rotate from the arcs of mercs on your right side, to give arc to the mercs on the left side and stop rotation, the mercs on your right side would already be reloaded and ready to shoot again. You severely underestimate how long turning will take and/or how difficult it is to aim while turning. EDIT: And if anything manages to get in close range with you, you're screwed.
Your assessment ignores repairs, rebuilds, the presence of cover, the ability to break spots and line-of-sight, the ability to dodge, and the possibility of missing. If you get 4 mercs on a target and manage to hit with every single shot, yes, that can do a fair bit of damage. It's a legitimate strategy, and a strong one. But by no means will every shot hit in every circumstance, and they won't all be synched up to hit at the same time.
Math is all well and good, but the usefulness of math in this game is fairly limited in scope.
EDIT2: Sorry, I got kinda fed up with clueless newbie posts (and clueless newbies ingame) and took it out on you. My apologies.
The damage of two mercuries is actually STILL enough to take down the armor of most unbuffed ships if both fire a single mag.
Considering that that's at long range, they seem like a pretty solid option, as you can do so at the same time or even earlier than your enemy can engage you.
Although the limited usefulness at close range might make up for that...
Anyways, with charged rounds they have a rof of 20.4 rpm, which means 0,34 rps, which means that it takes 2*1/0,34=5,88235294 s to empty a mag+6 seconds reload=11,88 s per mag
(258,75*2)dmg/11,88s=43,55 dps.
A stock gatling gun with the buffhammer buff deals either 12 or 24 damage (is aoe damage counted in addition to the regular damage? The stats on the wiki are confusing)
at 60 rounds and 375 rpm it has 6,25 rps and it takes 9,6 seconds to fire all of them.
Plus the reload, it's 14,6 seconds per mag. If a single shot deals 12 dmg, it's 720 dmg per mag, if it deals 24 dmg it's 1440 per mag.
So either a dps of 720/14,6= 49,315 or 1440/14,6=98,63 dps. Bringing the piercing dmg armor modifier into the equation, we get 73,97 dps against armor or 147,95 dps.
So, as long as you manage to close the distance(3000m mercury range vs. 700 m gatling, that's more than 4 times the range and without heavy mag(which would worsen our possible dps even more, we can't reasonably expect to use our gatling at this distance), a gatling WILL win against armor and hull due to the high amount of piercing dmg, regardless of whether it has 12 or 24 dmg.
Hmmm.....
Screw this, if the turning radius on the mercury is as limited as people say, aside from the range it seems fine (seriously, being able to severly damage the armor of any ship like that at up to 3000m is insane).
