Advice about small hardpoints please

[CMDR COWBELLS]

Hi CMDR's
I need some advice about hardpoints
I'm trying to make sense of the pros/cons (DPS, thermal load, power draw, etc) with small vs large hardpoints.
Specifically If i have limited HardpointsP are two small (beams, PA, whatever), better than 1 medium (due to heat, DPS, power req.)

 

[Abysinth]

have you come across coriolis? it's a great place to explore your ship options

 

[Morbad]

In general, two small hardpoint will out damage one medium, except for low armor penetration weapons vs. sufficiently high hull ratings, but at higher energy/heat/power costs.

Note that there aren't any small PAs, unless you count Guardian Plasma Chargers.

 

[Kzak]

An exception to small weapons having low armor penetration is of course railguns, which have a penetration rating of 100 regardless of size (small or medium available, no large or bigger).

 

[CMDR COWBELLS]

Thanks Abysinth just discovered the loadout page in coriolis
My question is in regards to bringing down NPC shields time taken vs heat load etc uisng for example 2 small beams to save the medium slot for anti-hull wepaon

 

[Stealthie]

Depends what you put in them, and how much power you have available.

As a rule, the easiest way to compare hardpoint configurations is to use Coriolis.io and fill 'em all up with similar weapons.
So, for example, you could go to Coriolis, select a Cobra 3, fill up all the hardpoints with fixed MCs and you'll see that a small MC does 8.6 damage while a medium does 15.6 - thus 2 small hardpoint are slightly better, combined, than a single medium.

In practice, of course, it really depends on the ship and what role the weapon is for.
In, say, a Viper you're probably going to want to put a "normal" weapon such as MCs or lasers in the C1 slot whereas on a Corvette you might decide to fit rails 'cos there's not much else you can bung in the C1 slots that'll really add much to the ship's capabilities.

Alternatively, on a big ship, it can be handy to fit long-range pulse-turrets with the Emissive XFX in C1 slots to help track targets.

 

[Abysinth]

My general rule for mixing wpns is to have a roughly even split of beams and multis, for example on a Python or Krait II, I use 2 large beams and the other three multis or vice versa. On an Adder or Imp Eagle the med would be multi and the small beams one med multi and two beams.

If you have access to the engineers you can oversize the multis, efficient the beams and recharge enhance the power dist and you can keep firing forever either all of them or use the beams to drop the shlds and the multis to pound your way through the hull, switching to beams whilst the multis reload unless you go with auto-loader on the multis.

not sure which ship you're talking about or how much flight experience you have

 

[Abysinth]

oh, and on Coriolis look at the value for TTD [time to depletion] which is how long you can continuously fire for

and further down the page there are a row of four buttons to click on:
power and costs
profiles
offence
defence

these are really useful too

 

[Stealthie]

Thanks Abysinth just discovered the loadout page in coriolis
My question is in regards to bringing down NPC shields time taken vs heat load etc uisng for example 2 small beams to save the medium slot for anti-hull wepaon

For breaking shields I'd suggest Beam lasers in the largest slots possible and then apply an Efficient mod' so they'll keep shooting forever.
Some people seem to like long-range lasers with the Thermal vent XFX but at long distances you're probably not going to hit your target consistently enough to maximise the damage you inflict.
That being the case, you're going to have to get close enough to hit the target reliably, in which case the advantage of a long-range mod' is negated and you might as well use an Efficient mod' so you can keep shooting until the target's shield does break.

On something like a Cobra I'd suggest C2 G5 Efficient Beams and C1 Overcharged MCs with thermal and corrosive XFX.
Once a ship's shield is down it's surprising how quickly even small overcharged MCs (one with the corrosive XFX) will chew through a hull.

 

[CMDR COWBELLS]

Thanks all seems Coriolis is the go.
I have a bit of experience PVE (Nav BEacons and CZ low risk) but am struggling with loadouts due to heat buildup and time taken to drain drop a targets shields I am thinking my current load outs are generating to much heat for not enough dps vs shield then when i get them down I dont have enough grunt vs hull because I have stupidly wasted the slots on bad choices in lasers

 

[CMDR COWBELLS]

Wow the offense and defense metrics at the bottom on coriolis are the shiz
Thanks for the advice and the poiter to coriolis
o7 CMDR's

 

[Abysinth]

am struggling with loadouts due to heat buildup and time taken to drain drop a targets shields

engineering is the answer

 

[CMDR COWBELLS]

engineering is the answer

Yes I think i need to hoover up some more mats for the engineers to pimp-my-ride

 

[Mrat13]

Generally, your smaller weapons should be energy weapons, and your larger weapons should be kinetic. Smaller weapons do less relative damage to hull, but not shields.

 

[rrobes]

From personal experience, the only worthwhile size ones are rails, these, along with two Imp Hammers, four total, are part of my Corvette’s loadout.

 

[Sup3rfluiD]

Enforcer canons are also a fun option in c1 slots.

 

[Captain Willard]

LOL Several replies, several differences.
Variety on your play style and weapons to be used are a great part of this game.
You lose no money selling ships, as long as you strip the good modules first.
If I posted my builds I'd be laughed out of the forum by the experts.
I play solo and pg. Mine works for me.
Yours will work for you.

 

[Bigmaec]

LOL Several replies, several differences.
Variety on your play style and weapons to be used are a great part of this game.
You lose no money selling ships, as long as you strip the good modules first.
If I posted my builds I'd be laughed out of the forum by the experts.
I play solo and pg. Mine works for me.
Yours will work for you.

Just to chime in here a bit...
Generally in solo/PG most things work, compared to open where "the experts" mostly provide answers in regard to survivability and PvP weapons.
There are still preferences, but you can't do much wrong with a build in solo/PG if it works for you.
And one or another trick is still neat, even if you like to use your builds.
I never stopped learning in Elite, that's amazing.
So don't hesitate to post builds here, even if there are flaws or people who laugh at it, I'd never assume there aren't hints that could be useful
or something you (or I or OP) simply didn't thought of.

 

[GJ51]

I still like Pulse Lasers and Multi-Canons. Heat issues just aren't a thing unless you just hold the trigger down without actually hitting anything - and even then it won't overheat on some builds. If you're really good, use fixed weapons. Somehow they work better than new ones...

 

[Stealthie]

I never stopped learning in Elite, that's amazing.
So don't hesitate to post builds here, even if there are flaws or people who laugh at it, I'd never assume there aren't hints that could be useful
or something you (or I or OP) simply didn't thought of.

This is very true.

I have my own logic for how I do stuff and sometimes I'll look at somebody else's build and wonder what on Earth they were thinking but then I'll think about it a bit more and see the logic in it.

FWIW, my own philosophy - which usually dictates fitting big lasers - is that I like to be able to explode soft targets without using ammo' and I don't like synth'ing reloads for MCs unless I have to so, again, I prefer using lasers to break shields.
For PvP (on the rare occasions it happens) I'm all about MCs and frag's, which can really tear up a ship super-fast, but they just seem too wasteful of ammo' to use on NPCs.