You're allowed one weapon...

Stealthie

Stealthie
What would it be?

I've got 3 ships which are built for speed (Viper 3, iCourier and iEagle) and, to this point, have usually been completely unarmed.
I'm toying with the idea of fitting them with a single weapon so I can do more than run away from bandits.

The weapon IS going to get a G5 lightweight mod' and (if there's a decent one available) an experimental effect.

All the ships have undersized PPs, to minimise mass, and an engine-focused PDist but with a bit of fiddling I can find enough extra juice to run a laser.

My first thought was a C2 rail, which I'm normally pretty handy with, but in those ships I normally encounter other Eagles and iCouriers and I struggle to hit them more than half the time.
Course, maybe this is the best choice and I just need to git gud with it?

Beyond that, I'm really left just thinking "laser of some sort" cos at least that's guaranteed to strip shields.

What would you pick?
 

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
Pulse lasers FTW!

Good Vs shields and hull, infinite ammo. :)
And can module snipe.

The first few months of my ED life involved entirely pulse laser builds, because I was too lazy to use ammo based weapons.

Now with modifications, they're even better*!

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

*Except when they're not.
 

YinYin

YinYin
For your purpose, a full set of light weight frags. They are so low power and light yet powerful that taking all instead of one will be more than worth it.

For my own purpose, a mining lance.
 

Iskariot

Iskariot
Stealthie said:
What would it be?
Click to expand...

If I were allowed just one weapon, it would definitely be a weapon that did not use ammo.
I would probably go for a pulse laser.

My favourites are beam lasers, because they look so cool, but they use a lot of power..
 
Last edited:

YinYin

YinYin
By the way. All thermal weapons are probably futile on an engine focused distributor.

Care to share your current builds and absolute priorities (range/speed/heat/etc)?
 

CMDR Ahab

CMDR Ahab
You're forgetting that the plasma slug effect special on rails got a huge buff in the last beta with -40% thermal load and only does -10% less dmg. Does me you'll have to fit a full sized fuel tank and scoop of course. Of course it's still a pain to shoot small ships with them.

A couple of ion disruptor mines (which don't draw any weapon juice from the capacitor) would help alleviate that small problem though!
 

baqar79

baqar79
I mostly do exploration, so any weapon that has the "plasma slug" modification would be my choice (very handy for dumping fuel quickly), which is either a Rail gun (your original choice), or a Plasma Accelerator. Since both are fixed, I usually prefer to go with the rail gun.

On my new FDL, I use 2x2B rails (w/Plasma slug which works out to be around 20 shots (both rails, ie 40 individual projectiles) per 1 Tonne of fuel). Plasma slug's damage penalty from the beta 3.0 will be reduced from -20% to -10% assuming FD don't change this for the actual release, however with smaller ships (8T fuel or less), Plasma slug is a mostly useless modification (unless you are exploring and want to dump fuel).

Damage is good against both shields and hull in my experience, but I have gotten a bit of a sore wrist grinding to combat rank "Dangerous" while trying to carefully control my aim so that the rail projectiles hit.
 

Ashnak

Ashnak
Rails - personally, I can't hit a barn from the inside with them. Plus, if you're runing a lightweight speed build and need to lightweight mod the gun(s), you can't use any of the juicier mods to keep the heat down (and you're probably already runnning pretty hot with G5 DDs and an undersized&overcharged PP)

Plasma - like rails, only more so. And you're faster than the slugs.

Frags - only fun if you can slap on the Double Shot mod, which is out. And again the speed.

Cannon - good for some laughs if you add force shell, not so good for combat if your ship is faster than the shell.

Mines - apparently fun if you can hit reliably, deadly to yourself if you can't and the fuzz run into them.

Leaves you with lasers or multicannon. MC use less power, but need ammo. With a speed build, I'd say lasers are the least bad. They do their job *shrug*.

Incidentally, yesterday I swapped out my (double shot) Pacifiers for a set of (unmodded) burst lasers on my Vulture. Needs switching off a couple of modules in combat and took me longer to take down mid sized and large ships, but is better against small ships. Overall, in a RES, net income is just about the same.

So I'd suggest either git gud with mines, or stick to burst lasers. Add scramble spectrum for effect, or inertial impact for laughs (you won't be able to hit anything, but it will look good...).
 

baqar79

baqar79
YinYin said:
That doesn't help the crippled power distributor.
Click to expand...

G5 Lightweight weapons get some very nice buffs in regards to power and distributor use (providing the changes aren't revoked from the beta):
-Power Draw: decreased from -20% -> -40%
-Distributor Draw: decreased from -20% -> -35%

With the fairly good distributor buffs (everyone will get 45% to WEP/ENG/SYS recharge at max level), you can go pretty far even on a D-class distributor.

EDIT: I didn't read the OP's requirements clearly enough, "Engine Focused Distributor", sorry about that!
 
Last edited:

crushdepth

C
Courier - fixed beam. iEagle - gimballed beam on that gorgeous top hardpoint, taking advantage of the ships manoueverability and speed.
 

YinYin

YinYin
Ashnak said:
Frags - only fun if you can slap on the Double Shot mod, which is out. And again the speed.
Click to expand...
Screening shell does well enough making them fun. But being on a fast hit and run even that isn't required. Drag munitions and corrosion will do better.

Also both overcharged and rapid fire are better than double shot for overall damage potential and sustained dps respectively.

baqar79 said:
G5 Lightweight weapons get some very nice buffs in regards to power and distributor use (providing the changes aren't revoked from the beta):
-Power Draw: decreased from -20% -> -40%
-Distributor Draw: decreased from -20% -> -35%

With the fairly good distributor buffs (everyone will get 45% to WEP/ENG/SYS recharge at max level), you can go pretty far even on a D-class distributor.
Click to expand...

Ah, that's good then. Still tight as you don't wanna waste power distribution in this kind of ship on weapons.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom