I need help from the combat cmdrs

Can someone tell me what the difference is between the different lasers? Burst, Pulse, Beam. is one better than the other? I know the beam is just a constant laser beam going forward. But I am running a viper atm and I am using 2 Pulse Lasers and 2 MC's. But should I be using the pulse or maybe the burst? Help please.
 
Burst - best armour penetration
Beam - best shield depletion
Pulse - middle of the road

So how would a load out of 2 burst lasers and 2 beam lasers be better than what I am currently using? Are the burst lasers better than the MC's for armor penetration?
 
If you are carefull with your power management (and now of course your heat managment), I find that the beam lasers to be far better at taking down sheilds quickly. I run two upper class gimbaled beam lasers. I get in a close as I can and shields just melt away. They do drain your power really fast, so you still need to be careful about when and how you pull the trigger. They provide the biggest advantage up REAL close where having any kind of pulse just adds to the delay. Up really close they don't miss, so might as well hold them on solid. You can still manually pulse them if you wanted.

I wuoldn't run 4 lasers, as heat and power will be a huge issue in a viper. I run two gimbaled beams, and two gimballed multi cannons.
 
Beam is a constant stream, lots of energy used fast.
Burst is rapid fire laser that uses energy at a medium pace.
Pulse are slower firing, lower energy use lasers.

Beams are great if you can aim very well and not waste energy, bursts are good if you miss a few. Pulse are what you put on when your powerplant cant handle anything better :p
 
Beam is a constant stream, lots of energy used fast.
Burst is rapid fire laser that uses energy at a medium pace.
Pulse are slower firing, lower energy use lasers.

Beams are great if you can aim very well and not waste energy, bursts are good if you miss a few. Pulse are what you put on when your powerplant cant handle anything better :p

I have top of the line power plant and distributor. I'm just messing around with weapons trying to figure out what would be optimal in taking things out. What I am using now I haven't had that many problems. A few things here and there though. But I am looking for something to eat away the hull better than my MC's.
 
So how would a load out of 2 burst lasers and 2 beam lasers be better than what I am currently using? Are the burst lasers better than the MC's for armor penetration?

I haven't played with the new heat mechanics yet so can't really comment, even though burst are best laser vs armour, mc's are still better
 
combat involves straffe'ing and vectoring and constantly changing from flight assist on and off. Getting the hang of that is more important than weapon loadout specifics.

The other thing you want is feel around for how you want to upgrade components. I always upgrade my power distributor first, then I work on ensuring i can upgrade in parallel, reactor, shields and thrusters. It's really important than you can do certain upgrades in parallel or it puts you at a serious disadvantage.

Once you're ready for guns, my favorite thing is to put at least one turret on with pulse laser. This thing can fire _all_day_ and that is important for keeping shields from recharging, and intimidation. The next thing i like to do is make ample use of cannons. I usually throw a cannon turret on. I dont use gimballed weapons as they lose target far too much and waste significant time when they do. Since i have 4 guns, I'll either throw two big ole fixed mount cannon on or one cannon and one fixed beam. This way I will throttle the beam all over my target until it runs out of power, then I'll use my cannon while it recharges and cools down. Then back to beam.

It's a pretty nice setup for me. I was wrecking an anaconda (it had shields) in my Viper post 1.1 pretty decently. Had it down to less than 50% and I still had shields (I dont have SCB's and i dont use missiles) before I accidentally turbo'd into it at 300+m/s. Got too excited since I was doing much better than I thought I'd be able to since the whole rebalancing
 
Also:

Beam is the highest DPS but the worst DPJ (damage per joule - a measure of how much damage you can do with a certain amount of capacitor energy)
Pulse is the highest DPJ but the worst DPS

On a short fight, beams win because damage per second is more important. On a long fight where capacitor recharge is an issue, pulse win, because they are most efficient at converting a limited supply of energy into damage.
 
Can someone tell me what the difference is between the different lasers? Burst, Pulse, Beam. is one better than the other? I know the beam is just a constant laser beam going forward. But I am running a viper atm and I am using 2 Pulse Lasers and 2 MC's. But should I be using the pulse or maybe the burst? Help please.

Burst - lose all your weapon power and overheat and explode
Beam - overheat all year
Pulse - pewpew forever

also mixing burst and pulse up all the time ftw
 
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I open with beam and careful aiming to deal massive damage while my weapon charge depletes and beam overheats. This usually drops shields and starts damaging hull. I then use cannons to finish while beam recuperates. If necessary, i repeat.

Do not waste time with gimballed guns. Turrets and fixed seem to outperform gimballed setups with current aiming behavior of gimballed guns.

A viper can easily defeat npc anaconda's as long as they're not elite, and anything smaller than a anaconda. even post 1.1.
 
I open with beam and careful aiming to deal massive damage while my weapon charge depletes and beam overheats. This usually drops shields and starts damaging hull. I then use cannons to finish while beam recuperates. If necessary, i repeat.

Do not waste time with gimballed guns. Turrets and fixed seem to outperform gimballed setups with current aiming behavior of gimballed guns.

A viper can easily defeat npc anaconda's as long as they're not elite, and anything smaller than a anaconda. even post 1.1.

Good advice except.......
If like me you have a joystick that does not have sensitivity adjustments then fixed weapons are useless as we are unable to keep the sight consistently over the target. So in this case gimballed is the best way to go.

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Are you sure about this? I thought all lasers were for shields and all projectiles were for hull armour?

Thats what I thought too
 
Using beams and tracking cannon (the harder hitting one). Even though they are tracking i still have to line up and cant just "spurt" like the multicannons. But i think the impact is worth it and i need very few usually. Beams remove the shield very fast and then i do a combo with the beams and a few cannon shots. The cannons also sounds and looks awesome. BOOM! BOOM! :)
 
I use only D2 beam lasers in the medium hard points of my ASP to remove shields and missiles in the four small hardpoints for the armour.
 
I haven't had much time to play with my Viper (set it up earlier tonight and spent about an hour in combat zones), but fixed class 2 beams and gimballed :1 MCs seemed to work well. I may try gimballed C1 cannons at some point, along with gimballed C1 beams and C2 rail guns.
 
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