Ship Builds & Load Outs [FAS] PvP loadout

[Turnspit]

Cheers everyone!

I was thinking about plunging a bit deeper into PvP and thus wanted to modify my FAS. As a sidenote, I have close to zero experience in PvP.

This is the starting point I was thinking about:
https://eddp.co/u/TyvgveQA

After I was assaulted by a Clipper with what seemed to be a full FragCannon build that dealt incredibly huge amounts of damage to my Conda, I wanted to give it a try myself.

What do you think, is this a worthwhile build? Or should I ditch the Shield Boosters for Heatsink and go for a silent build? Would a completely different weapon loadout a better alternative?

 

[Only Mostly Here]

I'm by no means an experienced PvP player, but having built a fragboat FDS I can offer a bit of advice on them. Double shot seems great, but you chew through your ammo incredibly fast while generating massive amounts of heat (especially with incendiary). In terms of a practical setup that can break through massive PVP build shields without running out of ammo too much, I'd recommend overcharged instead as it increases the effectiveness of the shells that you fire rather than firing more of them - leaving you with a bit less DPS, but much much more total damage carried per gun and a lower heat load.

Shield resistances in PvP tend to be pretty flat at around 50% or more across the board. This means that incendiary on so many of your guns isn't really necessary - it brings with it an increased heat generation and a 5% reduction in damage output while not helping much against modded shields compared to kinetic damage. An effect that you could try instead is screening shell - it reduces your reload time by 50%, effectively offering nearly double DPS for the guns that have it on them. Drag munitions can help to pin down a target a bit while not negatively affecting your weapon, too.

Your shield setup is a little inefficient - going with a reinforced shield generator means that your bi-weave's excellent broken recharge rate takes a hit and you need to fight quite hard with your boosters to equalise your resists. A thermal resist shield generator on the other hand will single handedly equalise your resistances, leaving you free to use resist augmented boosters which offer a higher overall resistance gain than single-resist type boosters. Thermal resist also comes with a nice free integrity increase on the shield generator module.

Hope this is helpful, and also not too far off the mark. Sure I'll be corrected by future posters on at least some counts...

 

[Turnspit]

Wow, that was a ton of input, thanks a lot!

For testing purposes I engineered G2 Double Shot with Incendiary on all four Frags and went to a HazRES - damage output is beyond awesome, what a burst damage! Ovearheating though isn't even remotely a problem on my FAS, running with a 4/1/1 or 4/2/0 setup.

I like the idea of Overcharged instead of Double Shot, more damage per shot than just "faster" shooting should be more worthwhile, especially on the long run. And Frags fire incredibly fast anyway. I will give it a try!
But do you really think Incendiary ain't necessary? I always felt them to be a huge deal against shields? Screening Shell in the other hand with just 2.5 seconds reload time sounds seducing... I guess I will just take a run with Vanilla Frags to a RES and see how well they fare against shields.

I know that any increase in Mj with Bi-Waves is pretty much nonsensical, and I've reverted to all-resistance builds on my other ships, but I've found that the FAS is an incredibly great battering ram and fear that losing 20% of my max shields would be counter-productive with ramming in mind?

This is my current setup btw.:
https://eddp.co/u/bTlExX7K

Since I didn't take any module damage in the tests, I went for full HRP to further support ramming.
And yes, Gimballed weapons, shame on me, but it's just a personal preference...


EDIT:
Incendiary indeed seems to be inferior to Screening Shell on Frags, shame on me for not believing you!
Just ran two setups - one with Screening Shell and one with incendiary - through the beta site of coriolis, comparing their damage against a resistance modded Corvette (yes, this is purely theoretical).

Screening Shell:
https://eddp.co/u/lc8ZkyBf
Incendiary:
https://eddp.co/u/J8mZpPBk

Time to remove Shields:
Screening Shell - 2:14
Incendiary - 4:23

Time to remove Armour:
Screening Shell - 0:37
Incendiary - 1:20

Overcharged with Screening Shell it shall be!