ECHO Ray

"The ECHO Ray (Electrical CHarge Overflow) is a VSec Energy weapon with the unique ability to bounce between adjacent targets."

General
The ECHO Ray is a long-range Energy weapon with the ability to bounce across nearby targets, dealing extra damage.

It fires an unstoppable thin, yellow laser at its target which ricochets off it and bounces onto a nearby target, repeating so three times, damaging a total of four ships. Each ship can only be hit once.

Advantages
ECHO Rays have incredible potential against multiple targets, being able to deal up to 2.176x their normal damage thanks to the chain effect. They are also mass efficient allowing your ships to pack a stronger punch and/or become more durable.

ECHO Rays also have incredibly long range as an Energy weapon. When equipped with Focused Optics V or Ionized Optics III, they can reliably kite other enemies and engage in battleship fights, the latter being the most popular use of the weapon.

Disadvantages
ECHO Rays are ineffective against a single target due to their low DPS. They also have problems focus-firing individual ships in a fleet battle because the damage is so spread out.

ECHO Rays deal reduced damage to modules, meaning that they are not suitable for base sniping. Nevertheless, they can still be exploited to lightly damage an enemy's Ship Factory by targeting nearby structures that are unprotected by Combat Modules, temporarily disabling his/her build queue.

Trivia

 * Each bounce reduces the damage output by 40%.
 * The ECHO Ray used to have 10/18/35 DPS for levels I-III. The level III version in particular got nerfed due to complaints about it being too powerful.