Emissive Munitions - not what I thought

[Scoob]

Hey all,

So, using gimballed and turreted weapons as I do on some ships, chaff can be a pain. With the gimballed weapons I just break lock and fire manually, harder sure, but I can still deal damage. With turrets I'd just break lock and save power of course.

While chatting about this in another thread a short while back, I was told that "Emissive Munitions" was what I needed as they increased the signature of a ship, breaking the effect of chaff and allowing both gimballed and turreted weapons to stay on target. Sounded great, but I didn't have the required materials at the time for that particular experimental effect.

Fast forward a little while and I've added the emissive effect to two of my ship builds now, and it really doesn't work in the way it was explained. My emissive multi-cannons are hitting their targets, I see the effect applied on the ship in the target display, but chaff still breaks lock as effectively as it always did. Was I given wrong information or am I not understanding something correctly?

From what I can tell, emissive does raise a ships signature, but not enough to defeat chaff. I can imagine it might help if facing a cold / stealth build - more likely a player tactic than an NPC one I assume - but it has no effect against chaff.

I used to run fixed primary weapons on my combat builds, with some turrets as backup to shoot down SLF's and particularly nimble targets for me. These fixed primary weapons were good, but harder to use of course. Plus the larger the ship you put them on the trickier they become to use effectively vs. smaller, faster targets.

So, as emissive clearly isn't quite what I was told to expect, what are people's tactics for combatting small, fast and nimble ships that appear to constantly spam Chaff from multiple launchers? As I can shield tank a bit, I tend to just wait them out - plus they're often not shooting me when dropping chaff, though not all the time. I then fire again when I can lock on. Verses a larger target, I just break lock and fire manually though, in the Corvette at least, my weapons don't naturally converge at the same spot when unlocked, so I need to be close for all to hit.

Not a huge issue, but I was wonder how people adapt to the chaff spammers

I'm talking PvE here as I'm part of a PvE group, but this applies to PvP too of course, so I'm happy to hear from both perspectives.

Cheers,

Scoob.

 

[Aashenfox]

Indeed emissive doesn't work like that, it doesn't defeat chaff it just gives your gimbals optimal tracking regardless of heat signature. It is not just for fighting stealth builds, it should be included in any primarily gimballed loadout. Gimballed multicannons are more optimal than fixed in 99% of hands on any size ship, you just have to either wait for chaff to run out (even double chaffers don't last forever) or have a fixed sidearm, like a railgun or something. On the vette I always have the two small railguns, gives you something to do when they're chaffing or banking.

 

[Old Duck]

Not a huge issue, but I was wonder how people adapt to the chaff spammers

It's a pain, but I often just stop firing and route pips to shields when an enemy drops chaff. I'll use that time to get a good angle on them so as soon as the chaff disperses, I have a clear shot. Thankfully their chaff supplies WILL eventually exhaust themselves.

High-ranked NPCs are doubly dubious, as they'll time their chaff and their SCBs together, making it really hard to knock down their shields. Thankfully their SCBs also have limits.

I'm speaking as a Vulture pilot with gimbaled beams. My Conda has a mix of turrets, fixed weapons, and seeker missiles, so I always have something I can fire at an enemy, regardless what defenses they may have.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

For PvE, I found that G5 LongRange Sensors reliably (within reasonable limits) keep those Heat Sink launching or cool-running NPCs on the Scanner just fine.

Never found a use for Emissive on any on my Combat Ships for that reason.
The time windows where a PvE contact still disappeared momentarily seemed too rare and narrow to be worthwhile taking care of like that.

The coldest running NPCs also aren't part of Combat Scenarios, so firing anything at them would be counterproductive anyway (i.e. looking at SAR Refuel/Repair scenarios).

 

[Shir]

I use a lot of gimballed weapons so i always have one with emissive to magnify the enemy signature.

 

[Aashenfox]

For PvE, I found that G5 LongRange Sensors reliably (within reasonable limits) keep those Heat Sink launching or cool-running NPCs on the Scanner just fine.

Never found a use for Emissive on any on my Combat Ships for that reason.
The time windows where a PvE contact still disappeared momentarily seemed too rare and narrow to be worthwhile taking care of like that.

The coldest running NPCs also aren't part of Combat Scenarios, so firing anything at them would be counterproductive anyway (i.e. looking at SAR Refuel/Repair scenarios).

Emissive doesn't affect your typical emissions range and sensors have no effect on gimbal accuracy...

Emissive is very important to gimballed builds, trust me. I urge you to do your own experiments, comp nav, HAZRES, you'll see a huge difference in the size of the effective gimbal arc when using emissive, and not just when they use HS. Even more important in pvp.

 

[Stealthie]

The best place to see the difference Emissive makes is, erm, anywhere that you might find hostile DBXs and DBSs.

I used to find it was REALLY frustrating the way they could just blink off your scanner even though they're less than 1km in front of you... and you'd pretty much have to ram them before your scanner reacquires them.

Mod' a turret with the Emissive XFX and that stops happening.

+EDIT+

As for Chaff, just un-target your, erm, target and keep shootin'.

 

[Scoob]

Seems like I'm doing things ok then, as I do break lock and manually target or just wait them out if they're a lower threat to me. As for the Emissive effect, judging by the status effect on the target display, it doesn't really last very long. So, couldn't a ship drop chaff break my Gimbal lock then be harder to re-acquire once the chaff has run out due to it no longer being effected by Emissive?

I must admit, I'm very much a Lasers and Multi-cannon person, I've not played with Plasmas, Railguns or even missiles in a long long time...perhaps I should give them a go again.

I think I'd have a wider spread of weapons if we could have more separate but active weapons per fire group. I.e. Primary, Secondary and Tertiary fire. I'd love to be able, for example, to set some turrets firing in one group, and have them keep firing while I manually control weapons in another group. However, weapons in unselected groups just shut down of course. But I digress lol.

Scoob.

 

[dm06]

Not a huge issue, but I was wonder how people adapt to the chaff spammers

I'm talking PvE here as I'm part of a PvE group, but this applies to PvP too of course, so I'm happy to hear from both perspectives.

Three class 3 plasmas + two class 2 rails. This is to hunt big ships.

 

[War Eagle]

Emissive does work as your op suggest in this video and others on my chan you can see if you watch as I fire during chaff on the holo of the target- they are all hitting the target even with chaff:

 

[War Eagle]

Although I will note I have gimbled not turreted.

 

[Stealthie]

So, couldn't a ship drop chaff break my Gimbal lock then be harder to re-acquire once the chaff has run out due to it no longer being effected by Emissive?

.....

I'd love to be able, for example, to set some turrets firing in one group, and have them keep firing while I manually control weapons in another group. However, weapons in unselected groups just shut down of course. But I digress lol.

TBH, I've got no idea how long the Emissive XFX lasts but I think the best bet is just to apply it to a turret of the smallest possible class (to avoid "wasting" DPS that could better be spent in other ways) and then just leave it to do it's thing continuously.
Once I pull the trigger, I can't say I've ever noticed my turrets stop firing - which I assume they'd do if a target successfully "went dark".

There's nothing to stop you putting turrets in more than one FG, so they'll carry on doing their thing regardless of what else you do.
Just make sure they're linked to one or the other fire button in each FG.

FG-A: Lasers on Fire1, Hammers on Fire2. Soon as I pull the trigger the turrets start firing and carry on regardless of what else I do.
FG-B: Lasers & MCs on Fire1, Hammers on Fire2. Turrets carry on firing regardless of what else I do.
FG-C: No manual weapons on Fire1, Collectors on Fire2. Turrets carry on firing while I deploy Collectors.
FG-D: No weapons. All scanning stuff. Switch to this FG and turrets cease firing.

 

[Scoob]

Although I will note I have gimbled not turreted.

I'm currently using Gimballed beams and MC's and they just go nuts the moment a ship drops Chaff - I'm not seeing what you do in that they stay within a fairly tight area still, allowing you to hit larger ships. Sure, I can still hit larger ships, but I have to be really close so the ship remains within the wild movement range chaff creates.

This is against ships that are having Emissive applied again and again as the MC with that effect fires. I'll do some more observing...

Note: in another post, I had observed that going from D-Rated to A-Rated sensors improved the lock-on in general for my Turreted loadout - not vs. chaff though - didn't expect that. However, with NPC ships and loadouts potentially varying a lot between instances, it was far from a conclusive test.

As an aside, should we really expect a counter for the counter? For me, that was always fixed weapons, but they're harder to use, so there's a balance there. Emissive was described to me as a solid counter to Chaff, but it doesn't work that way and, in a way, I'm happy it doesn't.

What does surprise me a little is how well chaff still works on larger ships, IIRC it used to be the common advice that you don't fit chaff on a larger ship as they're too big for it to work. However, I frequently observe it working just fine and totally freaking out my gimbals.

Thought: does chaff work to exaggerate jitter? I.e. a high-jitter weapon - due to mods - would be more impacted by chaff than a low-jitter weapon? I'm just trying to understand the subtleties of weapon choice and modifications when dealing with chaff.

Scoob.

 

[XW_Ziggy]

Indeed emissive doesn't work like that, it doesn't defeat chaff it just gives your gimbals optimal tracking regardless of heat signature. It is not just for fighting stealth builds, it should be included in any primarily gimballed loadout. Gimballed multicannons are more optimal than fixed in 99% of hands on any size ship, you just have to either wait for chaff to run out (even double chaffers don't last forever) or have a fixed sidearm, like a railgun or something. On the vette I always have the two small railguns, gives you something to do when they're chaffing or banking.

The small hardpoints on big ships are perfect for utility, mainly because the armour piercing value makes them pretty awful for meaningless hull damage.

I put an emissive pulse on one to keep the C2 and C3 hardpoints tracking optimally, and use the other for the mandatory feedback rail - which also gives me something to do whilst targets are chaffing. My Corvette, Conda, and Mamba all use a small feedback rail and utility pulse laser of some description.

 

[War Eagle]

I'm currently using Gimballed beams and MC's and they just go nuts the moment a ship drops Chaff - I'm not seeing what you do in that they stay within a fairly tight area still, allowing you to hit larger ships. Sure, I can still hit larger ships, but I have to be really close so the ship remains within the wild movement range chaff creates.

This is against ships that are having Emissive applied again and again as the MC with that effect fires. I'll do some more observing...

Note: in another post, I had observed that going from D-Rated to A-Rated sensors improved the lock-on in general for my Turreted loadout - not vs. chaff though - didn't expect that. However, with NPC ships and loadouts potentially varying a lot between instances, it was far from a conclusive test.

As an aside, should we really expect a counter for the counter? For me, that was always fixed weapons, but they're harder to use, so there's a balance there. Emissive was described to me as a solid counter to Chaff, but it doesn't work that way and, in a way, I'm happy it doesn't.

What does surprise me a little is how well chaff still works on larger ships, IIRC it used to be the common advice that you don't fit chaff on a larger ship as they're too big for it to work. However, I frequently observe it working just fine and totally freaking out my gimbals.

Thought: does chaff work to exaggerate jitter? I.e. a high-jitter weapon - due to mods - would be more impacted by chaff than a low-jitter weapon? I'm just trying to understand the subtleties of weapon choice and modifications when dealing with chaff.

Scoob.

The chaff after being hit with Emmisives seem to still work just not to the degree they would if you didn't have emmisive- in my opinion, I have been firing more after chaff is deployed as I test out the loadout I have on the FGS seems to penetrate quite well.

 

[Raino]

The small hardpoints on big ships are perfect for utility, mainly because the armour piercing value makes them pretty awful for meaningless hull damage.

yes, i use 2 small MCs aside the rails on my cutters, one emissive the other corrosive, this nicely adds 30% to the 30% primary ammo i use on my huge MC

I always defend my fridge...

 

[XW_Ziggy]

Note: in another post, I had observed that going from D-Rated to A-Rated sensors improved the lock-on in general for my Turreted loadout - not vs. chaff though - didn't expect that. However, with NPC ships and loadouts potentially varying a lot between instances, it was far from a conclusive test.

I thought FDev have confirmed on more than one occasion that sensors have ZERO effect on gimbal and turret tracking speed or target acquisition. It was tested in a beta and subsequently dropped due to backlash, so almost everyone just runs D-rated to keep their mass lower for speed/agility/jump-range.

yes, i use 2 small MCs aside the rails on my cutters, one emissive the other corrosive, this nicely adds 30% to the 30% primary ammo i use on my huge MC

See, I like corrosive on a huge MC because that's the slowest-firing MC. The corrosive ammo is the most important one to not run out of mid fight, and because of the lower fire rate, it lasts 2.4x longer than a small MC.

 

[War Eagle]

I thought FDev have confirmed on more than one occasion that sensors have ZERO effect on gimbal and turret tracking speed or target acquisition. It was tested in a beta and subsequently dropped due to backlash, so almost everyone just runs D-rated to keep their mass lower for speed/agility/jump-range.

Except my explorer ship- it has A rated.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

Emissive doesn't affect your typical emissions range and sensors have no effect on gimbal accuracy...

Emissive is very important to gimballed builds, trust me. I urge you to do your own experiments, comp nav, HAZRES, you'll see a huge difference in the size of the effective gimbal arc when using emissive, and not just when they use HS. Even more important in pvp.

I can give it a try, although I was fairly happy with my Gimbals in PvE as well as PvP. Either way, it's no harm to carry it as an extra.

 

[Steyla]

I use a class 4 Fixed Beam G5 LR w/ thermal vent on my Cutter. Chaff is a no issue. And with a long range beam most of the enemies shields are gone when they reach me. The thermal vent keeps my ship ice cold. And when the NPC does not chaff I use my gimbaled MC's to finish it. I don't care much about PvP, makes no sense to me.