Engineers Best effect for conda - full turret pulse? Thermal Shock?

[Aerodark]

Hi

So in my efforts to unlock those engineers I am now able to start upgrading my conda, it's a full turret pulse setup so I'll go all the way with rapid-fire modification. But for the weapin effect what is "the best" from what I've seen thermal shock seems incredibly OP so I was thinking:

1 small turret with Emissive Munitions, just to counter the occasional silent runner out there.
1 small turret with Scramble Spectrum, just to annoy and the enemy causing malfunction (since the rate of fire is incresed I'll assume this will cause even more malfunctions)
2 medium - 3 large + 1 gimbal with Thermal Shock, to cook the enemy while I'm recking his shields

Since thermal shock is proportional to the weapon class this setup seems kinda OP but maybe I understood something wrong of I have false assumption.
What's your opinions on this?

This video inspired me by the way but since it was beta of the previous update maybe theses weapons have been nerfed:

[video=youtube;WiwjnKILPdU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiwjnKILPdU[/video]

Thanks CMDR's =)

 

[TuxedoSteve]

Thermal shock has received numerous much needed nerfs to its affect, it's now much less powerful, heats substantially less through shields, can only get a ship just barely into overheating, has diminishing returns as it heats a ship up, and cold running ships have a slight resistance to the effect.

Outside of thermal shock being nerfed, however, an all turret build is really not necessary. The Conda is more than maneuverable enough for gimballs or fixed.

I would recommend a mix of pulse/burst lasers and multicannons/cannons. Overcharged on the MC/Cannons, and either efficient or long range on the lasers (long range removes all damage falloff, which means the dps of the laser is higher than a normal laser after 500m, because it does not experience any falloff. By 1,750m it's effectively 200% the dps, far outperforming the damage you would do with rapid fire or overcharged)

For special effects, phasing and scramble on the lasers (emissive on one to help keep your gimbal arc as high as possible. For the kinetics, use corrosive on one MC (even if you have cannons, I recommend one MC with corrosive) for +25% hull damage from all weapons, and then you could do autoloader or incendiary on the MCs, high yield on cannons.

 

[Aerodark]

Thermal shock has received numerous much needed nerfs to its affect, it's now much less powerful, heats substantially less through shields, can only get a ship just barely into overheating, has diminishing returns as it heats a ship up, and cold running ships have a slight resistance to the effect.

Outside of thermal shock being nerfed, however, an all turret build is really not necessary. The Conda is more than maneuverable enough for gimballs or fixed.

I would recommend a mix of pulse/burst lasers and multicannons/cannons. Overcharged on the MC/Cannons, and either efficient or long range on the lasers (long range removes all damage falloff, which means the dps of the laser is higher than a normal laser after 500m, because it does not experience any falloff. By 1,750m it's effectively 200% the dps, far outperforming the damage you would do with rapid fire or overcharged)

For special effects, phasing and scramble on the lasers (emissive on one to help keep your gimbal arc as high as possible. For the kinetics, use corrosive on one MC (even if you have cannons, I recommend one MC with corrosive) for +25% hull damage from all weapons, and then you could do autoloader or incendiary on the MCs, high yield on cannons.

wow thank you so much for those precious tips =) I'm gonna totally change my setup but this has raised a couple more question then:

1) You mention long range laser (I wasn't even aware laser had falloff too :O ) but this mod have very high penalties. You also said efficient laser, and beside the thermal load, rapid-fire seems to have way more dps. Am I missing something with efficient laser?

2a) scramble only work on hull damage right so is it that useful?
2b) emissive 'augment' the gimbal arc? (mind explaining that a bit more, I'm confused)

3) I get the multi-canon part but canons? isn't the rail gun better? especially for those shield tanker that spam shield cells?

So In the end my updated setup would be:

1 4A Overcharged Multi-Canon (corrosive)
3 3E Efficient?/Long Range Pulse Laser (2 Phasing + 1 Scramble)
2 2B Rail Gun G1 Short Range + Plasma Slung (tons of ammo + good against both shield and hull) the penalties are very little for G1 and many bonuses
2 1G Turret pulse Long Range (both Emissive Munitions)

That seems a way better setup than I had ^^ to be honest I dont really like using ammo but that multi canon will be worth it I guess.

What do you think?

 

[TuxedoSteve]

wow thank you so much for those precious tips =) I'm gonna totally change my setup but this has raised a couple more question then:

1) You mention long range laser (I wasn't even aware laser had falloff too :O ) but this mod have very high penalties. You also said efficient laser, and beside the thermal load, rapid-fire seems to have way more dps. Am I missing something with efficient laser?

2a) scramble only work on hull damage right so is it that useful?
2b) emissive 'augment' the gimbal arc? (mind explaining that a bit more, I'm confused)

3) I get the multi-canon part but canons? isn't the rail gun better? especially for those shield tanker that spam shield cells?

So In the end my updated setup would be:

1 4A Overcharged Multi-Canon (corrosive)
3 3E Efficient?/Long Range Pulse Laser (2 Phasing + 1 Scramble)
2 2B Rail Gun G1 Short Range + Plasma Slung (tons of ammo + good against both shield and hull) the penalties are very little for G1 and many bonuses
2 1G Turret pulse Long Range (both Emissive Munitions)

That seems a way better setup than I had ^^ to be honest I dont really like using ammo but that multi canon will be worth it I guess.

What do you think?

1) The long range mod, and most other mods, have been changed with the release of 2.2.03. In long range's case, the damage and distributor draw penalty has been removed, leaving the only downsides being increased draw from the reactor and increased mass.
2a) Scramble does only trigger on the hull, but it's useful to have as a utility on the smaller lasers for when the shields drop, especially as NPCs tend to lean more towards hull tank than shield tank.
2b) As a ship's heat decreases or distance from you increases, the maximum arc that your gimballed weapons can aim onto them decreases, so having one weapon with emissive helps keep that a bit higher than it would be otherwise on all but the hottest running ships.
3) Cannons are good because they have a great DPS, while generating very little heat and using very little distributor power (makes them the most efficient weapons in the game after missiles and mines), which also means you can min/max an overcharged G5 roll without noticing the massively increased distributor draw. Railguns are extremely powerful for their size, but use a lot of power from both the reactor and distributor, and generate a massive amount of heat when firing, and their damage falls off quickly after 1km, though that can be fixed with long range.

Some notes on your weapon choice: Railguns just got buffed to 80 rounds total rather than 30, so plasma slug isn't as essential anymore, and it has a -20% dps penalty as well. Because they suffer from such high damage falloff that occurs within the Anaconda's ideal slugging range (~1.5km) they will likely benefit more from long range rather than SRB. This is true for most weapons that begin experiencing damage falloff before 1.2km.

On the C3 pulses, I'd still recommend long range over efficient because the drain from pulses isn't too high that you'll run the capacitor empty too fast, and past ~1.2km the efficieny of the weapon in damage per capacitor MJ will be higher with the long range having no falloff than with the efficient. Though up close efficient has better dps and lower distributor draw.

Outside of that it looks fine, though your build seems a little focussed on thermal dps, so I might consider changing the lower class 3 laser to a MC as well, overcharged with autoloader.

 

[Aerodark]

Sir you are a true hero I was making a build on the assumption that the INARA website was correct.. I guess I'm lost now if it wasn't you to shed a bit of light in this =)
I'll definitively go for the long range laser now, so I'll resume:

1 4B G5 Overcharged Canon (High Yield)
2 2E G5 Long Range Pulse Laser (2 Phasing)
1 3C G5 Overcharged Multi-Canon (Corrosive)
2 2F G5 Long Range pulse Laser (2 Phasing)
2 1G Turret pulse Long Range (Emissive Munitions + Scramble)

For Shields -> thermal attack with 4 main lasers all with phasing
For Hull -> kinetic with multi-can... heeu.. Fire everything!

but one the serious note (I hope I was thinking right) I prefer going all the way with a huge canon because of the higher piercing stat and since I'll mod it to high yield more piercing is better I think (however rapid-fire can have piercing bonus too, which one you prefer? overcharged or rapid-fire?). I'll use only the laser to strip the shield at any range, then close in an fire away all I've got. If I target a subsystem I'm pretty sure it'll explode in the second with that setup and I can't even imagine the damage if I manage to land 1 shell on an eagle or viper with no shields xD

This is my build (with emulation of mod with moderate to worse drawbacks in term of power draw) https://eddp.co/u/Njd8JZq6
I've heard that the armored power plant can give you slightly more power if I'm lucky, is that true? because my build fit almost to the millijoule ^^

Thank you immensely CMDR, you helped me soo much, but where do you get all that data? I was using (like many people) INARA to 'emulate' best and worse case scenario for engineers, but if they aren't correct then you read all the patch note? a secret website with correct data? excel spreadsheets?

PS: I'm gonna spread some Reputation to return here and give you more Rep

 

[Aerodark]

By the way I was reading the changelog (you got my curiosity on that one ^^) and i saw this "Link Gimbal weapon tracking to the sensitivity of ship sensors" so i've put a grade A sensor. Since I have everything gimballed at least they will have increased accuracy with that module I think specially with those range. as anyone tested this?

 

[Joey2o15]

By the way I was reading the changelog (you got my curiosity on that one ^^) and i saw this "Link Gimbal weapon tracking to the sensitivity of ship sensors" so i've put a grade A sensor. Since I have everything gimballed at least they will have increased accuracy with that module I think specially with those range. as anyone tested this?

They never implemented the proposed tracking nerf on lower grade sensors.

 

[TuxedoSteve]

Sir you are a true hero I was making a build on the assumption that the INARA website was correct.. I guess I'm lost now if it wasn't you to shed a bit of light in this =)
I'll definitively go for the long range laser now, so I'll resume:

1 4B G5 Overcharged Canon (High Yield)
2 2E G5 Long Range Pulse Laser (2 Phasing)
1 3C G5 Overcharged Multi-Canon (Corrosive)
2 2F G5 Long Range pulse Laser (2 Phasing)
2 1G Turret pulse Long Range (Emissive Munitions + Scramble)

For Shields -> thermal attack with 4 main lasers all with phasing
For Hull -> kinetic with multi-can... heeu.. Fire everything!

but one the serious note (I hope I was thinking right) I prefer going all the way with a huge canon because of the higher piercing stat and since I'll mod it to high yield more piercing is better I think (however rapid-fire can have piercing bonus too, which one you prefer? overcharged or rapid-fire?). I'll use only the laser to strip the shield at any range, then close in an fire away all I've got. If I target a subsystem I'm pretty sure it'll explode in the second with that setup and I can't even imagine the damage if I manage to land 1 shell on an eagle or viper with no shields xD

This is my build (with emulation of mod with moderate to worse drawbacks in term of power draw) https://eddp.co/u/Njd8JZq6
I've heard that the armored power plant can give you slightly more power if I'm lucky, is that true? because my build fit almost to the millijoule ^^

Thank you immensely CMDR, you helped me soo much, but where do you get all that data? I was using (like many people) INARA to 'emulate' best and worse case scenario for engineers, but if they aren't correct then you read all the patch note? a secret website with correct data? excel spreadsheets?

PS: I'm gonna spread some Reputation to return here and give you more Rep

The way piercing works is that is can only lower the damage a weapon does, if the ship your firing at has a higher hull hardness stat than the weapon you're hitting them with. The way it works is Weapon Piercing / Ship armor hardness = damage multiplier. If that was to be above 1, it just defaults to 1. So a weapon with 20 piercing against a ship with 40 hull would do 50% damage because 20/40=0.5, but a weapon with 60 piercing would just do 100%. Because the highest armor hardness in the game at this time is 70, a large cannon is just as effective as a huge cannon in terms of DPS efficiency, though the huge cannon obviously still has higher dps.

That said, I would still recommend a huge cannon over a huge MC, because as MC size scales up they experience some large diminishing returns in the damage scaling, to the point that a huge MC only does 22% more dps than a large, while a huge cannon does 36% more dps than a large. the numbers say that the large MC will have some size penalties against a larger ship's hull, but I don't think it'd be too bad because corrosive decreases target's armor hardness while the effect is active (or so I've heard)

Rapid fire no longer increases armor piercing.
On cannons I'd recommend overcharged simply because they're a weapon of opportunity, so doing as much damage on one hit as you possibly can is the best way to go, plus rapid fire adds jitter which is a big no-no on low rate of fire and/or long range weapons.

I get the data from reading the patchnotes once or twice, then just having a really good memory when it comes to numbers.

 

[jacozilla]

This is not pvp specific build so if that's your thing, ignore. It is a pve build that can pvp as well - but not a pure 100% pvp, if you get the distinction. It is also not a camp at CZ optimize build (I use separate setup for that). But it is the most destructive, and imo fun build.

Steps to Conda awesomeness -

1. Carry some iron, nickel, and sulfur. All easily obtainable in mass quantities via ice mining if you don't like SRV scavenging. Even having just 5-6 of each means about 3 reloads - effectively infinite ammo unless you never stop at stations to rearm or camp at CZ for hour+ durations.

2. Roll a G1 overcharge mod for your 8A powerplant. Only G1, nothing higher. Further upgrades = more thermal efficiency reduction. A solid G1 roll can boost all the power you will need for power hungry weapons + shield booster stacking and still reduce thermal efficiency lower than vanilla.

Default best 8A PP has 40% thermal efficiency. 1 heat unit produced only turns into 0.4. But if you roll near low end 0.4 on the G1 overcharge and get the secondary effect of reduce thermal efficiency, you can get lower than 40%. After couple dozen rolls (all cheap and easy with just 1 sulfur per roll - also mined in massive quantities via ice mining) , I got an 11% power increase plus thermal efficiency of 38%.

To use bunch of OC weapons producing more heat indefinitely with no overheating, you need a sub 40% thermal efficiency powerplant. Keep rolling G1 overcharge PP till you get it

3. Roll G5 charge enhanced distributor - with 4 pips to weapons, you can squeeze the trigger infinitely with zero capacitor loss , or just run with 2 pips and have very long bursts, allowing constant 4 pips to shields same time

4. Overcharged incendiary multi cannons are now all thermal effect with new update. I like mix of OC incendiary MC to be my defacto heavy thermal hitters with the benefit of zero dmg falloff even at max 4km range. It is basically getting a freebie long range effect for lasers along with the OC.

So on Anaconda aside from special situation builds like long duration CZ camping (2+ hours), I like:
(All gimbal versions below except the turret pulse noted)
Huge OC incendiary MC
Large rapid fire corrosive (does great kinetic dmg, RF provides such massive reload time buff that smaller mag size from corrosive is irrelevant and you keep constant corrosive debuff effect uptime)
(2) Large OC incendiary MC
(2) Med OC no effect MC (so that you have some hard hitting kinetic dmg along with thermal via incendiary)
OR
(2) rapid fire no effect MC in place of OC above. Personally I find the RF on the med mounts to be slightly more effective
(2) Small rapid fire pulse turrets - whatever two special effects you like

5. 7C biweave shields with reinforced G5, plus (6) shield boosters - (3) heavy, (2) thermal, and (1) resist augmented. Gives you very nice shield strength, all the benefits of faster recharge biweave, and strong resistance to kinetic, thermal, and explosive. Heat sink and PD for last two utility slots

6. For mission mode G5 heavy on lightweight armor as it adds zero weight. Otherwise G5 lightweight on mil spec armor

7. Whatever mix of optional intervals you like for whatever mode you pick (cargo, combat, mining, etc)

8. You can run all of the power hungry build above with 90% usage of max power if you roll about 11% G1 overcharge on PP plus the lower thermal efficiency secondary

 

[Aerodark]

thank you for all your responses =) I truly appreciate it. I have experimented a bit with the above combo of multis / canons and lasers and even if it was effective I found very hard to shoot the canon, most of the time I didn't even knew if I was hitting the target (only when it hit a 10%+ dmg of his hull). plus managing all those different gimbals.. the laser + different gimbal for multis + another gimbal to track and 'aim' for the canon makes things a bit confusing.

to be honest I'm currently running again a full gimbal laser + 1L multicanon for the corrosive and it's stupid easy, just aim and shoot, even condas are a joke sooo.. I had an idea (might be stupid idea but on paper it's seems fun) since in terms of npcs (even wings) on a normal build it's easy to deal with, the only things that worries me is pvp, and since most people run shield tanks I think my setup would be quite nice since most of damage is thermal but you guys are right on the lack of kinetic damage for the hull but I saw some videos testing the scamble effect and that thing is insane.

My idea was to 'toy with your food style' -> all laser (long range) will be equipped with scramble (only 1 small turret with emissive) so in theory it should be the most effective against shields.
Then only I reached the hull with 5 scramble laser + 1 mc corrosive for the extra 25% damage is perhaps less effective but just to imagine all those malfunctions.. and there is a high probability to even have a power plant / drive malfunction, in that case that ship dead in the water + perhaps fsd malfunction for the runners ^^

I'm inspired by this video (and the guy use only 1 laser so imagine the probability with 6 ^^)
btw this video is from 10 days ago so what you see is what you get.

[video=youtube;Fr_4LFWHllA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr_4LFWHllA[/video]

 

[Wizzzard]

Personally landed on an all long-range pulse turret set up with one large and one huge MC in the belly (gimballed) after experimenting with various MC/cannon/rapid fire pulse/vanilla beam variants.
Pros:
- Turret lasers deal nearly as many deeps as gimballed (compared to, say, MCs). The % dps shortfall is probably much less than the % time that fast targets spend outside your gimbal arc, and being able to hit targets anywhere is nice for de-agroing your SLF.
- Long range mod shows good returns at low grades.
- Long range is a good fit for the conda, as your inability to set the range of encounters becomes irrelevant.
- Pip management is child's play. You can usually just leave it set to 4 shields, 2 weapons. Resistance-buffed shields with 4 pips are almost too tanky in pve!
- The spin-up time on huge MCs is very fast, letting you proc corrosive rounds quickly.
Cons:
- Pulses and MCs - yawn.
- Any pvpers running double chaff are going to be a bad time.