Newcomer / Intro Fire weapons individually or together?

[Youda]

Hello. I'm starting with Elite Dangerous and i'm deciding how to bind the controls to my joystick. However as usual, i miss at least one more button, so i'm searching where to save some and i have a question.
How much important is it to have primary and secondary weapons binded to different buttons? Does it make sense it ever fire them individually or you just fire them always together?

 

[Factabulous]

Normally you want weapons that work well against shields separate from weapons that work well on hulls. And scanners etc. So yes - two fire buttons are good.

 

[Northpin]

IF you mix fixed hitscans with any other type of weapons you need separate triggers since you will rarely have the leading reticle overlapping the reticle for fixed hitscans
Else you will waste amo or wep capacitor or both

 

[Ashnak]

Any weapon mix, really - even gimballed hitscan and fixed slow weapons. Having my gimballed beams and fixed PA on the same button would waste a lot of PA ammo. PLus, dfferent weapons may have different trigger behaviour. With lasers, you can keep the trigger pressed, with multicannon, you must keep the trigger pressed, and at least with one or two of the Guardian weapons, you will need to release the trigger at the right moment.

 

[avow555]

No chain fire like an X-wing, very upsetting...

 

[Mr T]

As others have intimated, it totally depends what mix of weapons you have installed. On my Krait mk2 I have beam lasers to bring down the shields and then multicannons for the hull. I don't want them on the same trigger because it would be a waste of ammo to use my multi's when bringing down the shield. However, once the shield is down I tend to fire both for maximum impact. My vulture just has pulse lasers so they are both just on the 1 trigger.

 

[Esteban]

Starting out, you'll likely find it useful to group weapons together to bring down your opponent's shields, then to go to work on their hull, as mentioned by @Mr T. But keep in mind that this simplistic configuration (while very useful in many cases) may not make sense in the future for your "special fun" ships. The sensibility of weapons/fire groups will evolve as your game play evolves. Example:

Some time down the road you may want to have the ability to disable ships to keep them from escaping during hostage-rescue missions, diplomatic-bag missions and the like.
This requires a little finesse that 's difficult to achieve if your entire complement of weapons - designed to take out shields or to damage modules - fires together. That can be too heavy-handed, resulting in the premature destruction of your opponent.

Welcome to the galaxy. Have fun learning and flying out there!

 

[Northpin]

Since Krait Mk2 was mentioned, i have a weapon combo on one of my Kraits that fits perfectly to single trigger.
That is 3 large fixed long range burst lasers and 2 medium long range rails. All weapons on a single trigger.
Short clicks to fire the bursts in a controlled manner, long press to get the rails in the mix. Nice trainer for both fixed weapons and trigger control.

Perfect sniper for long range fights and decent enough on closer fights. The bursts do nicely on shields and the whole setup is perfect for module sniping.
I used it quite extensively in High CZ

 

[Northpin]

No chain fire like an X-wing, very upsetting...

I so loved the laser cannon linking pattern used by my npc wingmates in the good old X-Wing. Single laser shots while on approach then switching to a couple of dual linked lasers then ending with a quad link then breaking off the attack run. Brilliant

 

[Youda]

Alright, thanks everyone for explanation.
Looks like i will have to save a button somewhere else.

 

[aRJay]

You can with gimbal and or turret mounts get rid of the differing lead issues between weapon types and while firing multi-cannons into shields and lasers into hull isn’t the most effective way of doing damage firing both at the same time works and will free up a trigger if you need it.

 

[d8veh]

You have the two triggers, but you also have fire-groups in the left panel to setup different firing configurations.

 

[Nightjar]

There are usually 2 buttons that I use for firing - trigger and thumb(?) buttons. What Joystick are you using? If you have those 2 buttons, the rest should be mapped around those.
The other button you need 'to hand' is the next-fire-group. I use the pinky button.
Those are all crucial.
However, I'm currently using a Saitek X56, so yours may be different ...
Early, easy settings for combat are a good idea (your choice of buttons OC) - muscle memory kicks in quite fast I find, but it gets harder to re-learn
Once you set it up right, and practice ...
o7

 

[Dragsham]

Using my krait ll like the above examples it's different.
2 rails with extra ammo armour penetration. These are purely to keep the enemy busy as l snipe his powerplant or fsd etc. The killers are shes built light weight and can boost to 580 plus and once I'm almost at point blank I let rip with x3 pacifiers double shot screening shell. Does a good job.

 

[Youda]

I have x52 Pro. I use the upper 4 buttons to "target a ship", "cycle target's subsystems", "cycle weapon groups" and "deploy/retract hardpoints". I also wanted to use the pinkie switch for "flight assist toggle" because i use it for flight control overrides in Su-27, F-18, F-5 in DCS. I have to free the pinkie (not this pinkie https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Demon/Doom_RPG) for the secondary fire and find something else for the flight assist.

 

[Chrystoph]

Alright, thanks everyone for explanation.
Looks like i will have to save a button somewhere else.

Another thing to remember is that you have multiple configurations by configuring more than one fire group. It is possible to separate lasers and multi-cannons on one group requiring a primary and secondary "trigger", and have them all on the primary in a second group.

Then, you just need to get used to flipping back and forth as required.