Chieftain weapon setup...

Lasers have very significant drop-off after 500m, so are best for short range combat. If you engineer them for long range, you get full damage up to 6km, which makes them many times better than when engineered for efficient. Use flow control to reduce the capacitor drain. A class 1 long range laser does more damage than a class 2 efficient at 1850m. At 2000m it does about 25% more damage. At 2500m, it does more than double the damage, and after 3000m, it does an infinite amount more damage.

Tthe class 1 long range laser with flow control takes 10% more power than a class 2 efficient with thermal vent.

In other words, unless you're good at keeping your ship within 500m when fighting, always choose long-range as the engineering for your lasers as long as you have enough power.
 
That's debatable. I mean the efficient vs longrange beams

Efficient is good upto about 1300m - at that distance they do the same damage as longrange, but they still have the advantage of lower distributer usage, lower power and lower thermals which allows them to fire for longer time and do more damage or at least the ease pip management since the Wep Capacitor lasts longer

At 1800-2000m there is a clear damage advantage for longrange, but if we talk about high ToT scenarios, the efficient beams can fire for longer time than long range so they kinda compensate.

So if one manages to keep the fight under 1500m, efficient beams are better than longrange ones. IMO
And not at last, long range are really useable only with fixed or turrets. Gimbals wobble way too much to be reliable past 2500m

Use flow control to reduce the capacitor drain

i'm pretty sure Flow Control affects only Power draw and not PD usage.


@OP

IF you go for lasers and multicannons, it's better to use small lasers and big multicannons.
Simply because shield damage is not affected by weapon piercing, but hull damage depends of weapon piercing / hull hardness.
So the small lasers will do full damage on shields while small multicannons will do half their damage against most medium ships' hulls and about a third of their damage or less against medium/large combat ships
 
Heh, we have almost the same thread running over in the Engineering section. xD

So, to crosspost a little:
The Chief is my favourite combat ship even though I'm not even able to use it to its full potential for the lack of personal skill. Basically the hardpoint placement would be perfect for fixed weapons, and I intend to practice with them further, but so far I'm just so-so with them and use a partly gimballed setup.

Easy to use setup:
2 Large gimballed MCs, 1 Med and 2 Small gimballed Lasers (e.g. efficient beam), 1 Small gimballed Corrosive MC.
One main drawback of MCs is the low Piercing, but you counteract that partly by the Corrosive effect. Use lasers until shields are down, then switch to MCs.

I agree with Northpin on the Long Range vs Efficient debate -- having recently switched from LR to Eff myself, bc I want to practice keeping the fights at shorter ranges.

A step up:
As above, but 2 Large Focused PAs with Plasma Slug. Great for learning the ropes with PAs as you can keep shooting without worrying about ammo, and the high shot speed increases hit chances. These are what I used until recently. Now I have switched to Efficient PAs, which limits your ammo but increases damage per shot.

My future project:
2 Pacifiers, 3 Cytos and 1 CorrMC. Of course Pacs and Cytos are both fixed and short-range weapons with jitter so I will have to git gud. :p The idea again is to quickly strip the shields with the lasers and then turn the hull into confetti with the kinetics.
 
Great for learning the ropes with PAs as you can keep shooting without worrying about ammo

That's not really valid for Chief's puny fuel tank :)


2 Pacifiers, 3 Cytos and 1 CorrMC. Of course Pacs and Cytos are both fixed and short-range weapons with jitter so I will have to git gud. :p The idea again is to quickly strip the shields with the lasers and then turn the hull into confetti with the kinetics.

With Cytos you really need to stay close.
And Cytos are the special kind of fixed - you just need to point them in the general direction of the enemy - the short range and the spread will guarantee that at least some hits will land on the target 😂
 
I have never counted, but just as a wild guess I would say the Chief's core fuel tank holds easily 500 shots for each of 2 PAs -- estimating by how quickly I go through the regular 100 shots with the default PA. I have never even been close to draining the tank dry.

Anyway, if I turn out to be too dumb to use Pacs and/or Cytos, Lasers and PAs will probably remain my standard combo. ^^
 
Hi Skana,
Thanks for the thanks, but all I did was remember something that I'd seen somewhere
Cmdr Exigeous did the work, the thanks belong to him for putting the results out there for all to see.
 
That's not really valid for Chief's puny fuel tank

Not Chieftain, but Challenger. I had plasma PAs and rails on it and put a 64t tank in the 2nd size 6 slot to feed them. A good side effect was that I didn't needed a fuel scoop either to jump around. The fuel never ran out before I got bored.
 
I have never counted, but just as a wild guess I would say the Chief's core fuel tank holds easily 500 shots for each of 2 PAs -- estimating by how quickly I go through the regular 100 shots with the default PA. I have never even been close to draining the tank dry.

Plasma slug is 20kg of fuel per shot, or fifty shots per ton.
 
Plasma slug is 20kg of fuel per shot, or fifty shots per ton.


From my own observation about plasma slug, and I been using them a lot since years, that 20kg drain seems more per reload rather than per shot... Been trying it with variety of configurations, and but when finnaly used G5 highcap mod on railguns just to have 2 shots before reload, with plasma slug I noticed that I can fire twice as much ammo than with 1 shot ones for same fuel costs.

With 64 ton of fuel, and using 4 railguns, all with plasma slug, it gives around of 800 shots and thats about of number of shots I was getting. Tried rails with plasma slug on all 5 of mods that are available.

But when I did try G5 high cap railguns with 2 shots per reload instead of 1, I noticed that it did last way more longer, almost twice as long, before I ran out of fuel.

Noticed same thing with going full setups PA vs APA, where both have same fuel drain per reload but with APA's I was able to have longer HaRes sessions before fuel was drained up compared when used PA's.
 
From my own observation about plasma slug, and I been using them a lot since years, that 20kg drain seems more per reload rather than per shot... Been trying it with variety of configurations, and but when finnaly used G5 highcap mod on railguns just to have 2 shots before reload, with plasma slug I noticed that I can fire twice as much ammo than with 1 shot ones for same fuel costs.

Interesting. I've never tried it with high cap (seemed more than a little redundant) and assumed it would behave the same way as it did with imperial hammers (which to the best of my knowledge used 20kg per individual shot, or 60kg for a full volley).
 
Interesting. I've never tried it with high cap (seemed more than a little redundant) and assumed it would behave the same way as it did with imperial hammers (which to the best of my knowledge used 20kg per individual shot, or 60kg for a full volley).


Had same assume about it, and thats why I did try rails with G5 highcap as last ones, since when using plasma slug, you dont really care about upped ammo reserves that mod offers, but it does change from 1 to 2 shots before it needs reload at G5.. on paper, that alone seems like indeed lil'redundant especially if plan using it with plasma slug, but at actual combat... well, I was surpised how fun it is.

With 4 of those, c2 rails felt like using c1 ones but with dmg of c2. All because of extra shot and bit of RoF increase that comes with the mod. Surely no benefit like snipin from 3 km+ using LR or massive dmg from SR from upclose, but its quite fun on its own all thanks for RoF increase. Long as heat is handled and there is enough of distro juice, only SR can do more DPS. But only ships with distro size 7+ can handle rapid fire of rails like that (like 3 or 4 at once), and TV beam is must as well to get rid of heat or tons of heat sinks.


Maybe its just HighCap mod that causes mess with fuel costs? That would explain why I was able to have longer sessions with that mod, and not with rest of them... For APA/PA longer session, in these cases was probly how I used these setups anyway if I think about it...
 
I just read yesterday that the Hammer slug fuel costs are also messed up, with each Hammer shot costing as much fuel as a regular railgun shot.
 
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