well I believe that the optimal weapon level/class is that which you could basically hold down the trigger and fire continuously and only drain your energy down minimally. The Max is the most you can have on there.

It sometimes is a drag when you have been attacked continuously by 12 Bounty Hunters and barely let off the trigger and finally you are only shooting that lvl 7 gun that you haven't gotten rid of yet.

"On this ship you are to refer to me as Idiot, not you Captain. I mean... you know what I mean."

that means you can put weapons without too much energy drain whereas if you put loads of maximum class weapons your enrgy will rapidly get depleted

Optimal = Medium fire power, so you can fire for longer before running out of power, so not needing to recharge as quick. Max = max fire power but at a cost that your power reserves go down quickly.

that doesn't matter much if your using Nomad weapons, though, because they use absolutely no energy.

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If you equip guns of the so-called 'optimal weapon class' then it is guaranteed that you cannot utilize the energy generated by the powerplant efficiently, so it is quite a bit of a misnomer. The job of a gun is to turn the energy inside the powerplant into destruction at the target, as quickly and as accurately as possible.

Financial aspects aside, the optimal weapon class is always the maximum that can be equipped. A bigger gun can convert more energy in a shorter time than a smaller gun, and so you can do more damage in the small time window of opportunity and, consequently, destroy the target faster.