Newcomer / Intro Help! Combat Viper Loadout!

[FinnegansWake]

I'm currently running two Dgrade beam Lasers (gimballed) An AGrade Shield, Power plant (12Mwz), Power distributer, and sensors. B grade fuel scoop and FSD, C grade thrusters and life support, and a D grade hull reinforcement pkg, with no cargo hold.

Lacking punch to take on more powerful NPCs at this time, anyone with a little more viper experience able put me on to a good set of weaps, and were I might find them?

My main goal for this boat is an hour of loiter time without needing to run back and reload, so most weapons systems that require ammo are right out.

 

[Ancipital]

I think my Viper is something along these lines:

http://www.edshipyard.com/#/L=60M,7u57u55Ap5Ap3we0_g,314s4s4s3m4s5K3c,05U7Pc4yG9ok

(Cargo hatch, fuel scoop, FSD and interdictor set at low priority, so that they auto-disengage when hardpoints are out. First firegroup has lasers as primary, MC as secondary. Second firegroup contains the interdictor and the KWS.. all from memory, so details might be slightly garbled)

Sadly, you can't really* stick with just thermal weapons on a Viper the way that you can on a Vulture. You only have small and medium hardpoints, so you get nasty modifiers vs large hulls. If you want to kill large targets in a realistic timeframe, you really will be wanting to pour kinetic weapon fire into the powerplant. You put lasers on the smaller hardpoints, as the size differential modifier doesn't apply vs shields, and lasers are extremely effective at dropping them. Then, when shields drop, you spin up the MCs and start bringing the hurt. The MCs will get less of a modifier, as they're a) bigger and b) kinetic, so you will be able to do serious damage relatively quickly, even with such a small, inexpensive fighter.

If you want to stay out there with just lasers, save up for a Vulture. A couple of class 3 (large!) burst lasers on one of those is beastly. Meanwhile, this will kill NPC Pythons and Anacondas nicely, as long as you stay on your toes and don't try and tank the full frontal firepower. You will need to keep out of trouble, and reload occasionally, but them's the breaks.

Regarding finding weapons- use the galaxy map filters, show just high-tech systems with large populations.. that will greatly improve your chance of finding well-stocked shipyards.



* Well, you can, but the results will be distinctly sub-optimal.

 

[Reaver 2.0]

http://www.edshipyard.com/#/L=60M,4yH4yH5QH5QH3wU,304s4s4s3m4s4s3c,05U7Pc4xy2Uc

This is my current Viper. I typically only need to move out of a fight (just long enough to recharge shields) against Anacondas that have a lot of thermals. I've farmed in RES's with class 1 gimballed beams and class 1 gimballed multi-cannons too. But I stepped up to class 2 beams and pulse lasers for the sake of being able to stay in that "magic" instance that just keeps throwing money at me. I never want to have to leave one of those to re-arm my kinetics.
Honestly it's so easy to make money in RES's I sometimes wish Master Anacondas were too tough for a Viper. I like the money but it just doesn't seem realistic.


Just play smart. Always wait until there are at least one or two NPC cops to help bear the burden of enemy guns and target the power plant. Don't wait till shields are down before moving 3km (out of gun range) away to recharge.

 

[FinnegansWake]

http://www.edshipyard.com/#/L=60M,4yH4yH5QH5QH3wU,304s4s4s3m4s4s3c,05U7Pc4xy2Uc

This is my current Viper. I typically only need to move out of a fight (just long enough to recharge shields) against Anacondas that have a lot of thermals. I've farmed in RES's with class 1 gimballed beams and class 1 gimballed multi-cannons too. But I stepped up to class 2 beams and pulse lasers for the sake of being able to stay in that "magic" instance that just keeps throwing money at me. I never want to have to leave one of those to re-arm my kinetics.
Honestly it's so easy to make money in RES's I sometimes wish Master Anacondas were too tough for a Viper. I like the money but it just doesn't seem realistic.


Just play smart. Always wait until there are at least one or two NPC cops to help bear the burden of enemy guns and target the power plant. Don't wait till shields are down before moving 3km (out of gun range) away to recharge.

This helped, and allow me to give a bit back

I remembered an old Sim trick taught to me by a Marine buddy, for ammo conservation. (This works just as well from kinetic and therm weapons)

Pull trigger, say to yourself "Die, motherfracker, Die." release trigger, cycle next weapons group, rinse, repeat. Of course, I don't say frack, and neither did my Marine buddy, but I'm not sure how stringent the language policies are on this board.

in short about a 3 second burst, even if you miss, you havent wasted a lot of cap/ammo. and your ready for the next salvo.

 

[the100thmonkey]

Actually, there is no damage penalty on thermic weapons, only kinetic.

I took my Asp into a RES last night fitted with 6 gimballed beam lasers. It was awesome - I used the two medium beams two strip shields, and then go at the power plant of Anacondas. It was easy to see the healtj percentage going down. Once it got down to about 15%, switched to all 6 beams to deliver the coup de grace.

It was difficult to manage the energy for the beams - I expect 6 gimballed pulses to be much easier in that regard. However, I've re-evaluated my choice of loadout recently due to flying the Vulture. I'll be placing much more emphasis on thermic weapons from now on.

 

[Ancipital]

Actually, there is no damage penalty on thermic weapons, only kinetic.

Really? FD begs to differ:

A Class 1 weapon will have damage reduction on anything larger than a hauler. A class 4 weapon will be effective against everything.

Sidewinders firing pulse lasers at an Anaconda for example get their damaged cut to 1/3 their normal damage potential. That might throw such a test in game because you don't know the exact numbers behind how weapons and ships compare to one another other than the vague notion that small weapons are weak against big ships.

..as does the ever-reliable wiki:

http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Weapons


Conversely, some of the more tedious kinetics even get a bonus, if you can be bothered with them:

Cannons and Railguns are meant to be able to deal more damage against larger ships than the ship you're firing from than a same sized multicannon would. If you're attacking smaller or same sized ships then multicannons may do better because of the amount of damage you can still do when missing a few shots where cannons and railguns are punishing if you miss.

Railguns, missiles, cannons and torpedoes punch above their weight in terms of their effectiveness against larger ships. There is a stat missing from outfitting that is supposed to indicate roughly speaking what the weapons is good at shooting at in terms of rough ship size (small to huge). Under the hood is slightly more complicated but effectively every weapon has a number that is compared against another number on the target ship that if lower will result in lower damage than normal. If higher then it doesn't change. The largest hard point size on the ship is a good indicator to show what kind of weapons you need to be effective against it. So a cobra is best dealt with size 2/medium weapons.

 

[the100thmonkey]

Really? FD begs to differ:

Holy moly! I'm sure I've read on these very forums that thermic wepons don't have a damage penalty while the kinetcs do... Information that I've repeated. Can you link the thread those quotes are from?

Thank you for correcting my understanding.

..as does the ever-reliable wiki:

http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Weapons

There's nothing on that page about damage bonuses.

 

[Ancipital]

Holy moly! I'm sure I've read on these very forums that thermic wepons don't have a damage penalty while the kinetcs do... Information that I've repeated. Can you link the thread those quotes are from?

Thank you for correcting my understanding.

You're very welcome.. there's so much half-baked hearsay and folk wisdom in these parts that you could easily lose your mind trying to untangle it all. You're not the only one who feels that way. I fell for the "better sensors improve gimbal and turret accuracy" meme for ages, for example.

If you'd like to see the threads, there's a little clicky ">>", just after "Originally Posted by Mike Evans". Each links back to the relevant thread.

There's nothing on that page about damage bonuses.

"Energy weapons are effective at stripping shields, but less effective at destroying hull armour. "
"Kinetic weapons are good against armour, but are not as useful against shields."

..not overly precise, but you probably expected nothing less- included just for completeness. It's all Voodoo around here. I have a bit of history as a relentless MMO theorycrafter, so all this imprecision drives me nuts.

Edit:

Additional:

Regarding weapon size and hull size, I recall FD saying that each size tier "difference" causes a 33% penalty. However, there are no bonuses from having a bigger weapon per se- you just don't suffer a penalty. Thus, a small weapon is -33% vs a "medium" hull, and -66% vs a "large" one. I believe that they said that this penalty tops out at 66%, though I have exhausted my ability to use the forum search engine for today, so take it with a pinch of salt (as I am not citing sources). However, that's why I'd be using medium MCs and small lasers, to maximise overall effectiveness.

If you find hard info from decent sources regarding the effectiveness differential on hulls, I am all ears. I hate guesswork