Distributor Draw Question

[Skatez69]

I'm playing around with my Corvette, trying to find the optimal weapon loadout, but something is confusing me. I'm looking at just the two huge hardpoints for this question.
When I have 2x huge beams, max engineered with efficient and oversize, I can fire them permanently with 4x pips to weapons (Distributor is also max-engineered for recharge rate). I've just tried out a couple of huge burst lasers, max engineered with overcharge and phasing sequence which I can fire for half a dozen shots or so before the weapon capacitor is empty.
Looking at outfitting, my beam lasers use 51% MORE distributor power (4.94MW) than the burst (3.25MW) so why can I fire the beams permanently, but the burst only a few times? I would have thought it would have been the other way around?

My understanding of power draw vs distributor draw is that power draw is counted against the power plant, and distributor draw against the distributor... am I wrong in this regard, or is it more complex than that?

Scientists! Help!

A further question. What other weapon loadouts should I try, or am I about at the optimal already? I run purely PvE, and the rest of my current loadout is 1x large, 2x medium and 2x small MCs, all max engineered with overcharge and a mixure of corrosive shell and oversized. I basically want to be able to melt shields and kill hulls in the quickest time possible. I prefer gimbal weapons to statics as it gives me much longer on target, and hence, in theory anyway, more bang for my buck...

 

[Morbad]

Distributor draw on beams is per second, on burst lasers it's per shot. ROF for a huge burst is ~1.6 so 1.6*3.25=5.2.

Huge burst lasers are rather crap, outside of very niche uses.

 

[CMDR Harada]

Efficient allows firing for a long time, but damage fall-off is CRAZY. You're doing almost nothing at 1000m or more. Granted, your target can't recharge shields while you're touching them, but damage is minimal. They have to be under 700m to do anything realistic, and in a Vette, keeping them in your firing arc is the hard part when they are that close. Unless your FA off flight is superb. Mine is not quite that good.

I've found LR beams is the way to go. No damage fall off, so I can dump on them at 4000m+ as they come in, swap out to MCs to recharge the PD as they continue to close, and then give them another dose while continuing to fire with MC's as they pass. Seems to work much better for me, at any rate. Pops PVE eagles before they complete the first pass, drops shields on almost anything else.

I don't PvP, so your mileage may vary in that arena.

 

[Stealthie]

I've found LR beams is the way to go. No damage fall off, so I can dump on them at 4000m+ as they come in, swap out to MCs to recharge the PD as they continue to close, and then give them another dose while continuing to fire with MC's as they pass. Seems to work much better for me, at any rate. Pops PVE eagles before they complete the first pass, drops shields on almost anything else.

I don't PvP, so your mileage may vary in that arena.

The big problem with fitting huge LR beams on a 'vette is that there are ships (Elite Cutters/Corvettes and Elite Annies in CZs) who's shield can withstand LR beams for long enough to empty the capacitor.
Once that happens, it becomes a pain in the Arx trying to finish the job.
You start firing again straight away, your capacitor runs dry again. No damage done.
You wait until your capacitor is fully recharged, your target has a chance to pop an SCB and you're back to square 1 - still unable to break the target's shield before your capacitor runs dry again.

By contrast, if you're using Efficient beams, you can keep plugging away permanently until you do bring your target's shield down.
Comparing hit for hit, an LR beam might be better but the additional time that an Efficient beam can spend putting fire on target makes it much more effective against big shields.

To be fair, this is really only the case because of how dumb NPCs are.
If they were smart enough to try and maintain their distance then LR beams would be more useful.
At it is, I have an LR pulse turret which can reach out to 6km and then anything it hits cooperates perfectly by flying straight toward me and into range of my Efficient beams.

 

[fu9ar]

I don't use a 'vette because I'm not a fed but if I did I would do it the opposite way you do it. I would use two huge gimbaled multicannons, a large PAC under the nose (probably), two medium laser turrets, and two small laser turrets.

 

[Northpin]

Efficient allows firing for a long time, but damage fall-off is CRAZY. You're doing almost nothing at 1000m or more.

That's wrong
At 1100m you are doing roughly the same damage with efficient beams as with the long range beams. The difference is Damage per Energy is more than double for Efficient versus Long Range.
Even at 1500m your efficient beams are still efficient.

At 4000m your Long range Beams can only hit if they're turrets (but not reliable) or with fixed. Gimbaled will wobble too much to be useful at that range.

 

[Mohrgan]

I wouldn't recommend putting gimballed kinetic weapons on c3 or larger hard points. Especially on a big ship. They track too slowly. When I have outfitted a 'Vette, I was happy with gimballed pulse in the huge hard points to handle shields, and use the large and medium H/Ps for burst/kinetic weapons that track faster.

Disclaimer: I, of course favor gimballed weapons. This advice applies only to those that do as well.

 

[Hanerib]

What other weapon loadouts should I try

You should try all of them.

Love my Mamba with a huge fixed long range phasing burst laser.

 

[badibeat]

Distributor draw on beams is per second, on burst lasers it's per shot. ROF for a huge burst is ~1.6 so 1.6*3.25=5.2.

I found that the distributor draw figure for burst lasers is per burst, not per shot.

This places burst lasers between beam and pulse, also distributor-draw wise.

For my test I equipped a Class 4 fixed Beam, Burst and Pulse Laser in succession and timed how long it takes for each to empty a full WEP capacitor with zero pips to WEP.
My result is some 4.6s / 7.6s / 10.3s, which fits the calculated distributor draws of 9 MW / 4.8 MW / 3.9 MW for Class 4 fixed Beam / Burst / Pulse Lasers.
The capacitor drain times I got from coriolis.io match nicely ("Will drain WEP in 00:04 / 00:08 / 00:10").
Note that the burst laser can not completely drain the rather small capacitor I used for testing (39.36MJ), I got four bursts out.

Addition: Turreted Burst Lasers have poor breach damage, making them less suited for module sniping. Fixed and gimballed have normal breach damage.

 

[JetsonRING]

I run huge MCs on top to minimize power draw and a SINGLE burst laser underneath for the scramble spectrum special effect.