This is what the thread is (intended to be) about. Can you expand in this? earlier in the thread it was broadly agreed that the difference was between combat & non-combat ships, a split I'm not entirely sure is the case.
Can you expand on how & why your loadouts are different, and what you think would allow you to use one loadout for all combat?
NPC's have crazy things like gimballed rail guns with 100% accuracy, so you need to run higher base shield strength to tank the hits. Also because NPC's are a joke and you need to farm them, you use energy weapons so you don't have to go back and reload, at the cost of lower damage.
PvE = Survivability over Damage
In PvP, because the combat and flying is more dynamic and unpredictable, you're best to run bi-weaves because players won't always land rails 100% of the time. You can afford to run PA's / Rails / Frags / Multis (i.e. ammo capped weapons) because the engagement is only 1 flight. You do way more damage.
People can say "But the DPS is higher on xx weapon" but PvP is pure burst damage. You nearly always want to run weapons that do the highest amount of damage with as little amount of time on target as possible (Hence the PA / Rail meta we currently have when passing another ship in jousts)
You then have the next level of module targeting. 99.9% of the time you target a NPC's Power Plant. In PvP you actually have to think about what you want to target, as most PvP ships will have engineered armour, so modules will actually go before the base hull does. Do you hit the PP and hope that they haven't set power priorities so they're crippled? Do you go for their weapons to lower their DPS?
I generally run x4 loadouts:
For Pure PvE, I run a Clipper with BiWeaves Thermal Resist (Because the shield on the clipper is bad anyway and most NPC's have energy weapons so combined with resist shield boosters, mitigating 70% of energy weapon damage is possible even with an overall strength of like 400 or whatever it is) with x4 long range pulse lasers all scrambled spectrum (To tag the target asap to get credit for the kill + no damage falloff). The large slots are Turrets, and I absolutely hate turrets but this is for PvE (Scramble Spectrum doesn't affect NPC's, so I do need to change this to something else). Can boost to 610 and has 2.2k HP.
For Pure PvP, I run a FAS with BiWeaves, x2 APA's Focused (For the faster shot speed and lower heat generation) and x2 Imp Hammers Super Pen. I think the hull is the one that lower thermal weapons but I can't remember. I can run the Clipper above in PvP but it's not really competitive. It does average in 'Impromptu PvP'
For Solo Thargoid Interceptors I run a FDL with x3 Guardian Rail things and x2 Flak Cannons, All Hull reinforcements and BiWeaves with enhanced broken regeneration rate. Also run Clean Drives because of the heat that Guardian Weapons make. (I would run G5 DD's otherwise)
For Maximum immersion mode in CG's I run an Anaconda with Prismatics, Shield Boosters all boost augmented (some thermal enhanced) and x4 limpet controllers to collect all the materials I need because you can't buy them.
This is all from memory and could be wrong. G5 DD's are the only option for Drives. I'm by no means an amazing PvP player, it's hard getting practice in because every time you lose, that's a good 6 million in rebuy per match and I'm down to like 100m
