Newcomer / Intro Laser always neccesary?

heman86

H
hi,

I always use laserguns to get the shield of my opponents down and then use kinetic weapons to damage the hull.
are there good builds without any laser and only kinetic weapons or would that be dumb?
for example: instead of 2x laser + 3x cannon, 2x fragment cannon + 3x cannon.
thanks
 

Faded Glory

Faded Glory
Lasers are the best for taking down shields. You can put the incendiary round experimental engineering effect on multi-cannons which gives them some extra damage to shields, but what you are doing is the standard and I would say most efficient way to do it. It's certainly what I do on nearly all my ships, a mix of thermal for shields and kinetic for hulls with some railguns thrown in for fun.

Additional benefit of course is that lasers don't use ammo, so you never have to re-stock them.

(Can also use Plasma Accelerators, as they damage shields, but they ain't easy to aim.)
 

Faded Glory

Faded Glory
Certainly for PvE, the world is your oyster, and pretty much anything goes. Play around with the different weapon types (including fixed / gimballed / turreted versions) and see which ones you like best and work best for you.

For example, I really like pulse lasers since I can usually fire them for hours without depleting my WEP capacitor. I also really enjoy railguns...

Also worth noting that smaller weapons have a falloff in effectiveness against larger ships hulls, so personally I tend to go for larger kinetic weapons and smaller lasers. Not always, but on certain ships it can work wonders.

But yes, definitely experiment, that's so much part of the fun of the game. :)

Edit - As an example, this one is a beast, and once the shields are down the hull, even Federal Corvettes, are gone in no time.

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous
coriolis.io coriolis.io
 
Last edited:

B.Roberts

B.Roberts
heman86 said:
ok, then i will probably stick with a laser and maybe experiment, like just 1 laser und 4 kinetic weapons.
Click to expand...
The best combo that I found for myself so far is efficient beam lasers and overcharged multi cannons. Efficient beam lasers could be fired indefinitely (with proper distributor) and pretty good at taking shields down, while overcharged multi cannons pretty good against hull. I'm using variations of this setup on all my ships from Courier to Cutter and it always works just fine. For example here's my Courier. I have it as a light weight mission runner, pretty self sufficient in most scenarios.

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous
coriolis.io coriolis.io
 

Ashnak

Ashnak
You can use (almost) any weapon against shields or hull. It's just that thermal weapons are more efficient against shields, and kinetic weapons are more efficient against hulls. On the other hand, if you have equipped one of each, the combination of both will still be more effective than just using one - against either shields or hull.

If it's uo again, you can play around with different weapon configurations in Coriolis (offense or defense tab, plug together your opponent and check how fastr you can kill them and vice versa).

Coming to the exceptions:
  • explosive weapons (missiles) are nearly useless against shields, but extremely effeective against exposed modules (like guns - or thrusters) once the shields are down
  • there's one powerplay weapon, the Cytoscrambler, which is extremely good against shields but doesn't do any (or nearly) damage against hulls

Single type loadouts: sure - with exceptions.
I have a loadout for my Mamba with mainly efficient thermal vent beams, plus two small gimballed multicannon (or fixed Enforcers, i.e. powerplay MC). The MCs are there to deal special effects, in that case Corrosive Shell, which weakens the hull by IIRC 30%. The lasers work a charm also against hulls, and since it's hitscan, it's a safe as it gets for combat zones.
In the other corner is my general purpose Krait Mk.II - fully kinetic. 3 (large) Pacifiers (powerplay fragment cannon) on the top, two medium gimballed MC next to the cockpit. Again, one of the MCs equipped with corrosive, the other with incendiary. I hate to wast the corrosive effect on the Pacifiers, and the Krait isn't quite nimble enough (when I'm flying it) to hit small fighters with fixed weapons. And even though the Pacifiers are strictly kinetic, NPC Anacondas usually (2 out of 3) don't manage to go through a SCB cycle before they're down. Just don't take frags into a CZ.
 

A C Ender

A C Ender
Against NPC I can recommend playing with inertial impact burst lasers. Inertial impact make the lasers 50% thermal & 50% kinetic damage, while also increase damage by 50%. The drawback is it adds 3° jitter, so they're basically a laser frag.
 
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