Ship Builds & Load Outs How to manage all the stuff on your ship, with only two fire groups?

[Branithar]

I'm obviously not a newcomer, but I'm a newbie when it comes to combat, and alas, there's no forum here dedicated to combat tips and strategy. You might have various types of scanners (like kill scanners, interdictors, wake scanners, discovery scanners), heat sync launchers, chaff launchers, and more firepower than a small army. How do you manage all of it, when you only have two fire groups? My experience is in exploration, and all I had were some heat sink launchers and a discovery scanner. How do you manage all the things you've packed into your ship, with only two firegroups? 'Cause it seems like you'd need firegroup 1,2,3,4,5,6....to accomodate everything.

With my current setup, I have a discovery scanner, chaff launcher, heatsink launcher, beam lasers and multicannons. I know you can setup multiple firegroups, but switching between all the assigned firegroups seems awkward during a firefight (like if you have two or more weapon sets, heat sinks and chaff launchers). It seems like it would be easier just having dedicated/separate buttons for all the utilities and scanners, and just using the firegroups for weapons.

 

[Ceekay]

Autonomous systems like turrets can have the same fire/initiation button (LH mouse button)as the primary weapons, the RH mouse button I usually map to scanners and PA, rail gun,MC the chaff and HS launcher can have dedicated key mapping I believe.

Agreed switching fire groups can be a pain so I only use them for mining builds not for combat.

 

[SMcA]

I'm obviously not a newcomer, but I'm a newbie when it comes to combat, and alas, there's no forum here dedicated to combat tips and strategy. You might have various types of scanners (like kill scanners, interdictors, wake scanners, discovery scanners), heat sync launchers, chaff launchers, and more firepower than a small army. How do you manage all of it, when you only have two fire groups? My experience is in exploration, and all I had were some heat sink launchers and a discovery scanner. How do you manage all the things you've packed into your ship, with only two firegroups? 'Cause it seems like you'd need firegroup 1,2,3,4,5,6....to accomodate everything.

With my current setup, I have a discovery scanner, chaff launcher, heatsink launcher, beam lasers and multicannons. I know you can setup multiple firegroups, but switching between all the assigned firegroups seems awkward during a firefight (like if you have two or more weapon sets, heat sinks and chaff launchers). It seems like it would be easier just having dedicated/separate buttons for all the utilities and scanners, and just using the firegroups for weapons.

You can bind lots of things to keys or switches on a Hotas. I have Chaff, Shield Banks and heat sinks bound to switches on my J/stick. As for only two Firegroups I'm sure you mean triggers as you can have multiple firegroups (As you cycle to the right of the last one used a new one will appear). You can cycle through them with a binding.

 

[pippo]

Tip one:

You mentioned chaff launcher, heat sink launcher.
Those can be bound outside of your regular fire groups, with their dedicated button (from the option/controls menu).
It's also true for shield cell banks.

Tip two:

About the discovery scanner, and other things you normally use in supercruise like the frame shift drive interdictor.
You could bind them to the same button to your cannons.

For example, FSDI and multicannon on the same button.
In supercruise, that button will activate the FSDI (multicannon dont work in SC)
In normal space, that button will fire your guns (FSDI won't do anything in normal space)

As for the disco scanner, It would just be annoying to hear it fire everytime you press the gun trigger (and that would be why you'd set a second firegroup)

 

[YinYin]

Combat relevant modules all have a dedicated input (chaff, heat sinks, shield cell banks). Bind them and you won't need to put them into a fire group.

Most weapons for combat can be assigned to the same button. I personally always use two fire groups, so switching them is only a toggle. The resulting 4 fire buttons are enough for everything.

 

[Wyldwiisel]

I use a hotas and a mini numeric keyboard some people!e can do it all in a hotas but I find it to complicated to remember all the different combinations so prefer to keep it simple

 

[Madrax573]

I normally only have multiple weapon groups setup and a single 'scanning' group with the stuff I use in SC or general scanning stuff. If you have multiple scanner link them all to one fire button. Only the ones that will do stuff to your scan target will active when 'fired'

For weapons I have a couple of ships that need multiple weapon configurations so I link the fire group switch button to one of my thumb buttons and away I go.