The heat management may come into issue with the plasmas: probably not too bad with good hit to low miss ratio. You probably would get comparable benefits with Efficient plasmas, in context to heat management and improved damage, paired with the short-range ones. The Armored and Thermal experimental helps quite a lot in dropping down heat spikes after it's been ramped up still yielding the bonus damage from the plasma experiments. Some thought on that. Kind of like how you can equip a Viper mk3 with 4 railguns and never run into heat problems: 2x SR and 2x Lightweight. And be able to fire them consecutively between reloads.
I have had a lot of fun running some tests in a hazardous mining site, with a hot running build and full short range and overcharged plasma load out. I'm starting to realise just how powerful the krait 7A distributor is, as it is able to handle this quite easily. Fine tuning the damage so that it is only 2% max on modules each combat. A lot of fun and the fights are over very quickly.
However, I tried this build on the pirate assassination mission and it is nowhere near as efficient as my previous builds for that. I was surprised how tricky it can be when your opponent is going after others too. Rather than blasting them in the face each round in a joust.
I need to learn to fly somewhat better, or alter the build.
Ive been having some fun with rails, looking for another path, having reread the posts above, I've also been trying frag cannons. Which are great to, two rails and two frag cannons is pretty awesome. But I'm not fond of the frag cannons lower armour piercing, as it means that you have to put a caustic Ammo mod on one, which seems a bit of a waste.
I tried the high yield shell mod on the c3 cannons, I still love the cannons, but not this mod. I just noticed on inara that there is a +25 armour piercing on that, which is not a lot of use on the c3 as they are already piercing 70. So perhaps this mod will work well on smaller cannons, but for the c3 I really did not like it, did not try targeting individual models with it though.
I seem to have settled for now on two rails and two short range blaster plasmas accelerators, loving this combo, the rails are superb fun when the ships are to far for plasma, and they warm the ship up nicely for when they move in for the plasma volley. I've got them both with long range and feedback cascade.
I've found the larger power plant with a thermal mod to be best, prefer running cool, and heating up to fire, it does seem, as I think you mentioned above, that they peek hot just long enough and then cool back down again quickly. So far less internal damage, but the shot still appears to hit hot. I need to do more experimentation with this though, and try some missions with it. The thing I don't really like about theis is the weight, so I'm fiddling with the build still to see if I can get a decent balance of shields and sensors, with the weapon load and heat setup. Removing a shield booster, to free up a slot for either heat sync or chaff. Prismatics were mentioned above, which I still do not have, nor have I used. I tend to try to run with bi-weave, but then this is not PvP it's for pirate missions, essentially for testing builds and getting materials. Of course the whole material thing is about to change though.
I'm kind of realising at the moment that I'm going to need a different build for missions, than what ever I use in PvP.
I'm pondering boost and boost turning at the moment, wondering whether I can incorporate that into my combat style with the FDL in most pirate missions. I always end up jousting, I would need I think, break this routine, if I want to have any success with 4 plasma in this. I will find out soon enough for the rails and plasma mix, as that's the next test combination for missions.
Thanks for your thoughts.
