Ships Bi Wave Shields. Is it always better to go fast charge?

I usually go fast charge when the PD is the same size or larger than the bi-weave generator, and low draw when the PD is undersized.

I use this rule for thermal bi-weaves. For reinforced I use sometimes high-cap, if it's used in a similar way as a prismatics.
 
Well, if you love fighting, you do realize a Conda, like a Vette, can engage 3-6-9 NPC.s at once, a thing a Krait cannot do... The Krait is a lovely ship, indeed, I have mine fully engineered and is a joy to fly her, but cannot do what my Conda can... Conda is by far the most versatile ship in-game, ridiculous OP ....
My Krait use a Hi-Cap bi-wave, I found this build more effective. Once you reach 1200-1500 in shields, your Krait will be almost invulnerable.

Well, I havnt used the Conda for anything other than 60LY cargo jumps so far. What is the trick to fighting 9 NPCs? Turrets all over? I cant imagine how to track vipers using frontal gimbals with that slow pitch/yaw.
 
Well, if you love fighting, you do realize a Conda, like a Vette, can engage 3-6-9 NPC.s at once, a thing a Krait cannot do...

Unless your talking about ATR, sure it can, just not as well as the bigger, tougher, larger distributor ships.

Well, I havnt used the Conda for anything other than 60LY cargo jumps so far. What is the trick to fighting 9 NPCs? Turrets all over? I cant imagine how to track vipers using frontal gimbals with that slow pitch/yaw.

The conda can track NPC Vipers with fixed weapons without much issue.
 
Well, I havnt used the Conda for anything other than 60LY cargo jumps so far. What is the trick to fighting 9 NPCs? Turrets all over? I cant imagine how to track vipers using frontal gimbals with that slow pitch/yaw.
2 gimballed efficient beams with TV, and all the rest a mix of MC.s or/and Frags. Use the beams to strip the shields, the MC.s usually only take 3-5 sec to pop hulls on Kraits, FdLs, etc, and 5-8 sec vs other big things ( Condas, T10.s etc) ;
You must use her aggressively, and keep the target under 1000m - not a hard thing;
The beauty of all this is you can fire NON-STOP ALL the MCs AND the beams - so you basically deliver hell from your bow - I do NOT use turrets, all gimballed - just unselect the target and the gimballed will act as a fixed weapon.
 
Interesting. thx

I advise you to load a grade 6 fighter hangar, put a decent pilot NPC there, and keep him near you ( "defend" ) - you see a wing of tough NPC ? - get near them (under 1,5 km) , have a keyboard key bound to the command "attack" and send your fighter first - WAIT until your fighter hit FIRST the target - when the NPC turn to face your fighter, only then you open fire, preferably from under 1000m ; the NPC will ignore you and he will focus the fighter, so usually you can kill a NPC elite Conda like that in under 10 sec and WITHOUT taking damage :p

After you killed the "boss", fast kill the small ones, deploy limpets (4-5 of them) in the middle of the debris field, harvest all, and repeat. Even if you carry one or two SCBs, you never need to use them - a SCB for Conda or Vette vs NPCs is more like a safety measure if you did something very wrong. Usually you won't need SCBs at all since your shields will never fail.
 
Shields are all about how a player plays the game and what they fly. Many go with bi-weaves so when in combat and they go down they can run away and recharge faster than others with a good distributor. Then back into the fight. A good solution for small and medium ships dedicated to combat.

Then there is the Federal Assault Ship probably the most 'tank' in the game who doesn't need shields and can go down to 50% hull before taking any damage. Engineered it can boost to 550 m/s and is very formidable even upsetting PvP players.

Going to larger ships and still doing bi-weaves is a mistake. They are bigger, slower and need better shielding as they will not run away as fast. Going to a CZ it will be a primary target. Add in flying a large ship well is totally different in combat.

If a player wants to build a large ship such as an Anaconda, Corvette or Cutter taking out every play style may I suggest engineered Prismatics?

Regards
 
2 gimballed efficient beams with TV, and all the rest a mix of MC.s or/and Frags. Use the beams to strip the shields, the MC.s usually only take 3-5 sec to pop hulls on Kraits, FdLs, etc, and 5-8 sec vs other big things ( Condas, T10.s etc) ;
You must use her aggressively, and keep the target under 1000m - not a hard thing;
The beauty of all this is you can fire NON-STOP ALL the MCs AND the beams - so you basically deliver hell from your bow - I do NOT use turrets, all gimballed - just unselect the target and the gimballed will act as a fixed weapon.
I wonder how to aim with MC or cannons without a scope ...
 
Shields are all about how a player plays the game and what they fly. Many go with bi-weaves so when in combat and they go down they can run away and recharge faster than others with a good distributor. Then back into the fight. A good solution for small and medium ships dedicated to combat.

Then there is the Federal Assault Ship probably the most 'tank' in the game who doesn't need shields and can go down to 50% hull before taking any damage. Engineered it can boost to 550 m/s and is very formidable even upsetting PvP players.

Going to larger ships and still doing bi-weaves is a mistake. They are bigger, slower and need better shielding as they will not run away as fast. Going to a CZ it will be a primary target. Add in flying a large ship well is totally different in combat.

If a player wants to build a large ship such as an Anaconda, Corvette or Cutter taking out every play style may I suggest engineered Prismatics?

Regards

Here you are wrong, for several reasons: Prismatic.s "eat" a lot more from your distributor, are a lot heavier, and when depleted , lets say, at 50%, need 2-3 times MORE time before reaching back 100% !
In a CZ, ResH, CNP, you need to get ready for next "wave" faster as possible, so a shield who will take ages to recharge at 100% will be a pain in the....
More, you will get less power for weapons, since the distributor will feed the Prismatic a lot more, and sure enough, the weight will reduce your agility.

You gain, indeed, some extra hundreds of MJ, but the price for is not worth - less power for weapons, less agility, a lot longer time to recharge 100% - to many big disadvantages for just one small advantage.

A big ship like a Conda or Vette do not need those extra MJ - you can get easily with a Bi-Wave at 5000, or more ; In fact, any decent player will never worry to lose shields in a Vette or Conda - especially the Vette.
I only use Prismatics in trade ships, where you need some extra MJ until you make your escape, and the recharge time is not important, since you are there for trade not combat.
Hell, I use bi-wave even in the T10, and Cutter !
 
That's not the worst part, but shooting without a marker is something else.
I would just take a turret and switch it to direct fire.

MC.s gimballed have the advantage of "spray & pray", at 500m - 1000m the fire cone is so wide you will hit any chaff protected ship constantly - if you have enough Mcs, you practically rise a "wall" of shells ahead and NPC using chaff, when get under 1000m, will get hardly punished, with or without chaff ! Not once I watched Vipers hulls melting in seconds with all the chaff deployed, when they come near, at 500m and you can see the shells impact - is so many of them in a volley, you will hit - no matter the chaff - just aim in general direction, unselect the auto-aim ( if chaff deployed) and wait to have them near, under 500-600m.
 
MC.s gimballed have the advantage of "spray & pray", at 500m - 1000m the fire cone is so wide you will hit any chaff protected ship constantly - if you have enough Mcs, you practically rise a "wall" of shells ahead and NPC using chaff, when get under 1000m, will get hardly punished, with or without chaff ! Not once I watched Vipers hulls melting in seconds with all the chaff deployed, when they come near, at 500m and you can see the shells impact - is so many of them in a volley, you will hit - no matter the chaff - just aim in general direction, unselect the auto-aim ( if chaff deployed) and wait to have them near, under 500-600m.
I think in this situation you don't need MCs, it's easier to shoot with Frags.
 
I think in this situation you don't need MCs, it's easier to shoot with Frags.

What I profoundly dislike on frags are 2 things: awfully RoF AND very poor ammo load ( add to that relatively expensive synth, compared with MC ) ;
After just 1 h of mining I get enough raw to synth 150 refills on all my Conda MCs ( and are many of them, ;p) - but with frags, is another story...
 
Here you are wrong, for several reasons: Prismatic.s "eat" a lot more from your distributor, are a lot heavier, and when depleted , lets say, at 50%, need 2-3 times MORE time before reaching back 100% !
In a CZ, ResH, CNP, you need to get ready for next "wave" faster as possible, so a shield who will take ages to recharge at 100% will be a pain in the....
More, you will get less power for weapons, since the distributor will feed the Prismatic a lot more, and sure enough, the weight will reduce your agility.

You gain, indeed, some extra hundreds of MJ, but the price for is not worth - less power for weapons, less agility, a lot longer time to recharge 100% - to many big disadvantages for just one small advantage.

A big ship like a Conda or Vette do not need those extra MJ - you can get easily with a Bi-Wave at 5000, or more ; In fact, any decent player will never worry to lose shields in a Vette or Conda - especially the Vette.
I only use Prismatics in trade ships, where you need some extra MJ until you make your escape, and the recharge time is not important, since you are there for trade not combat.
Hell, I use bi-wave even in the T10, and Cutter !
You are probably right. But being a trader making billions of credits not all that interested in combat my 14,000 mj using Prismatics on a Cutter no NPC and a few PvPers cannot put a dent in the thing. As for a Cobra it is a totally different ship build. Prismatics don't help a Cobra much. Great lying skills works best.
 
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You are probably right. But being a trader making billions of credits not all that interested in combat my 14,000 mj using Prismatics on a Cutter no NPC and a few PvPers cannot put a dent in the thing. As for a Cobra it is a totally different ship build. Prismatics don't help a Cobra much. Great lying skills works best.

The Cutter is the Queen trader AND the King miner, no doubts about, and you only need some 2000 MJ in PvE - enough to resist a potshot before you boost away and laugh at any pirate... More than that is redundant in PvE.
 
On a PVE multi purpose mission build (example below). Once you have about 50%+ on shield resistance, is it better to go fast charge over hi-cap for the shield mod?

e.g. over the 30 seconds or 1 min it takes for your shields to get knocked down, would the fast charge more than compensate for the slight drop in absolute shield strength? Is there some formula to calculate the break-even timing (for shields to drop) for fast charge vs hi-cap? Thanks.


on that build you can go fast charge

generally speaking, the easiest way to test is to put 4 pips in shields (in coriolis) and see what are the minimum values for recover and recharge then gradually put pips in something else so you have 3.5 pips to shield, 3 pips to shields etc - and see how the numbers are varying.
 
oh, the irony :D

Brilliant argument, indeed, all those points I didn't tough about ! :p

But lets go back to OPP question:
Did anybody mention something important, like the fact a medium shield, in the range of 2500MJ, can be very effective in PvE if are boosted with 4 pips when the incoming fire occur ?
Is some 250% stronger with 4 pips, so a build who can use only 2 pips for weapons and still can deliver a decent burst of 6-8 seconds or more for those 2 pips, keeping in the same time 4 pips on the shields, will be a very effective build ?....
 
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