PvPer's don't recommend beams; too hot and power hungry. They recommend Pulses and the long range mod (for damage falloff reduction). Personally, if I have the power I do bursts with efficient, otherwise Pulses.
Everything without ammo I tried kinda sucks. Even more so against hardened pimpships. Burst seem to do slightly better. I believe this is due to damage falloff for the most part, so long range might be somthing to try. I know I would if I engineered.
Depends on how hot your ship becomes in fights (vent), if you want to stress your opponent out (heat) or if you got buddies with weak shields (heal). Your mileage will vary, cmdr.
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For strictly PvE and only you versus NPCs, you want Thermal Vent if anything. Thermal conduit is not a powerful enough effect to matter, and NPCs don't really care if they overheat from Thermal Shock. If you fight in a wing, the healing beams are always welcome.
I have 2 Huge Beams on the Corvette, and to be honest, I just don't care about the experiments. They are just long range and fixed, IIRC. My buddies love it when I take the Anaconda out with the 2 medium healing beams, though!
I have 2 Huge Beams on the Corvette, and to be honest, I just don't care about the experiments. They are just long range and fixed, IIRC. My buddies love it when I take the Anaconda out with the 2 medium healing beams, though!
Depends on your ships heat ratio, if your ship tends to overheat easily, then "Thermal Vent" is best. My Corvette has all beams, cept for the 2 huge MCs, the 3 largest ports the beams are efficient with healing beams, the 2 smallest ports are both efficient with "Thermal Vent", with 3.5 pips to wpns, can fire sustained all 5 beams for 45 seconds, or longer if the underbelly beam isn't firing cause the target is above you, with 4 pips to wpns, my engineered PD keeps pace with the juice required and can fire without letting up. Now, firing all weapons, the MCs included, runs outta juice in bout 20 seconds, but doesn't matter cause by that time the target is toast anyhow, regardless what I'm firing out. In CZs, I can burn through a Corvettes shields in under a minute, unless its a cheater NPC that spams shield cells, but once his shields are down, its about 10 rounds of the huge MCs into the PP and its is a sitting duck. For the cheater NPCs, I like to do a boost ram to overcome his "cheat." Thermal Vent takes heat away from your ship if your beams are connecting, of course, it loses the effect if you are missing the target. Some ships run hotter than others, so if you go with beams, efficient with thermal vents will keep it from overheating. On my Corvette, the only time it gets close to heating up is when I am firing every weapon at the same time, but even then it does not overheat.
On my FGS Wing Bounty Hunter Build I use
1 Large G5 PA Rapid Fire with Plasma Slug
4 Medium Pack Hounds G5 Enhanced Ammo with Drag Munitions
2 Small Beams G5 Efficient with Concordant + Regeneration Sequence respectively
G5 Long Range Sensors
G5 Increase Scan Rate KWS
It's the healing beams that make it a great wing support vessel
1 Large G5 PA Rapid Fire with Plasma Slug
4 Medium Pack Hounds G5 Enhanced Ammo with Drag Munitions
2 Small Beams G5 Efficient with Concordant + Regeneration Sequence respectively
G5 Long Range Sensors
G5 Increase Scan Rate KWS
It's the healing beams that make it a great wing support vessel
I used to use thermal shock, but is wasn't very effective for PvE, I find thermal conduit to be very handy for blasting away targets without overheating. I can empty a G5 7A distributor without pushing over 70%. in fact All my beam weapons combined only generate a portion of that of pack-hounds.
Just a recommendation if you still want Beams. I like the others too as Pulse and burst are significantly cheaper and have a very wide range of effects.
Best of luck!
So... this is pretty much my idea for my vette that I want to try out. Minor differences, surely.. but out of curiosity, what's your PD engineered with? Thinking of going High Charge Capacity, but not sure.... cause I'm sure you get more energy to weapons if you spec for it. Cheers
Thermal load is irrelevant if you have thermal vent. Distributor draw can be problematic, as can raw power consumption, especially if your typical engagement ranges force you to use long range to mitigate fall off.
That said, I still like efficient beams, even for PvP.
Not since several patches ago it won't.
Thermal shock hasn't been very effective for anything since 2.1.
Charge enhanced is pretty much the only mod you should be looking at for combat vessels.
Thermal vent is always worth it because it has no downsides at all, unless you are shooting without hitting...and if you are shooting without hitting, you should probably let go of the trigger until you have an actual shot.
Basically this.
If you have basic trigger control, thermal vent.
If you don't...I just wouldn't bother putting an effect on.