Ship Builds & Load Outs Ships Laser ship build

This is for PvE bounty farming. It's a shield tank. I've never lost more than one ring of shields against even the toughest wings that could be encountered. There's no reason to worry about what happens when the power plant goes down because in 4 weeks (about 100hrs of fighting), the power plant has never been anything other than 100%. You can't change any engineering on the lasers because the PD wouldn't be able to supply enough power to keep them going.
Flow control doesn't change distributor draw.
 
Stick with the laser arrangement I suggest. It's important for the power drawn from the distributor. You can set 1-1-4 pips nad rarely need to change them in 3 hours of continuous fighting.

If you're going to consistently run 1-1-4 pips then why bother with Bi-Weave or fast charge? It doesn't seem like a good synergy between design intent and usage.

If you're going to use it that way, flip the shields for Prismatic and get about 5k more effective shield.

Another alternative way to build the shields would be to switch the main shield engineering to Thermal Resist/Force Block and run 3x Resistance Augmented/Force Block and 4x Heavy Duty/Super Capacitor boosters. That would shift about 2500 protection from kinetic to thermal, and there does tend to be a bit more thermal damage incoming when fighting NPCs.

Another thing I think helps on the Corvette is running at least one fixed weapon. For an all-laser build I'd put it in the L slot. Reason being that on a full gimbal setup you will tend to have that slot out of arc and not consider it because all the top weapons are firing, but putting a fixed weapon in there you'll have something that will help you discipline yourself into keeping all guns on target.
 
If you're going to consistently run 1-1-4 pips then why bother with Bi-Weave or fast charge? It doesn't seem like a good synergy between design intent and usage.

If you're going to use it that way, flip the shields for Prismatic and get about 5k more effective shield.
I can't understand your first point. can you explain with different words.

We tried prismatics, but they're no good. They just go down and down over an hour or so. I tried SCBs, which cover that, but the biweaves are so much more convenient. You have to understand that we're fighting continuously for three hours or more to get the 120 mission targets for the 600 mil payouts. It's not like doing mission POIs or assassination missions. Incoming fire is more or less continuous the whole time.
 
I can't understand your first point. can you explain with different words.

We tried prismatics, but they're no good. They just go down and down over an hour or so. I tried SCBs, which cover that, but the biweaves are so much more convenient. You have to understand that we're fighting continuously for three hours or more to get the 120 mission targets for the 600 mil payouts. It's not like doing mission POIs or assassination missions. Incoming fire is more or less continuous the whole time.

If you're running 1 pip to systems you're almost certainly going to be running on a drained SYS distributor much the time, so your recharge rate is halved. The higher recharge rate of bi-weave shields relies on it having energy in the distributor to feed the faster recharge rate. You need at least 2 pips to get the full recharge rate on a Corvette (if your distributor is the same size or smaller than your shields you may need more).

Also of note is that every pip in the SYS capacitor actually grants 15% damage resistance to shields which is multiplicative with your resistances. So by only running 1 pip in shields you're actually reducing your effective shield strength by about 25%.

Another option you have is to wiggle around your weapons. Change the two beam lasers to Efficient/Oversized Bursts (and all your other topside weapons to Efficient/Oversized), put a Long Range Beam in the 3 slot and put it on a separate fire group (because it's just your cherry tapping weapon anyway to claim damage against distant targets so you don't need to fire it most of the time and on a Corvette that hardpoint tends to be out of arc because it's blocked by the nose and targets tend to be slightly above you in turn fights, as previously noted) and run 2-1-3.

You won't need thermal vent if you're sitting on high weapon capacitors all the time (heat generated is proportional to missing energy in the WEP capacitor and 3 pips will feed a set of efficient bursts/pulses all day). You'll have stronger effective shields because of the extra pip, and double the recharge rate.
 
I can't understand your first point. can you explain with different words.

We tried prismatics, but they're no good. They just go down and down over an hour or so. I tried SCBs, which cover that, but the biweaves are so much more convenient. You have to understand that we're fighting continuously for three hours or more to get the 120 mission targets for the 600 mil payouts. It's not like doing mission POIs or assassination missions. Incoming fire is more or less continuous the whole time.
@GloatingSwine covered a lot nicely, also SYS & heat with the Lasers. Just to add some detail to Shield Generator vs. Distributor:

Out of combat Recharge of a 7A Bi-Weave Shield Generator G5 Reinforced with Fast Charge takes the equivalent of 2 pips to SYS from an 8A Power Distributor G5 Charge Enhanced with Super Conduits. (If it ever would happen to you, recovery from a collapsed shield it drains the SYS Capacitor unless you put 4 pips to it.)

You can replace Fast Charge with Low Draw on the Bi-Weave, then it takes 1.5 pips to recharge at almost maximal rate. You get a bit slower recharge, but also recharge more MJ shield per MJ SYS.

Larger Prismatic Shield generators have very limited charge, therefore it makes often sense to put Fast Charge experimental on them. In your case maybe G5 Thermal Resistant. But I too am not happy with 4 times less out of combat recharge. Reboot and Repair can restore them quickly to half full, if you don't get hit. Otherwise you are stuck with shields that recover even more slowly.

Note that recharge while being hit is 1MW (1MJ/s) for all Shield Generator types and sizes if SYS is not empty.
This is for PvE bounty farming. It's a shield tank. I've never lost more than one ring of shields against even the toughest wings that could be encountered. There's no reason to worry about what happens when the power plant goes down because in 4 weeks (about 100hrs of fighting), the power plant has never been anything other than 100%.
You tried open at combat community goals?
 
If you're running 1 pip to systems you're almost certainly going to be running on a drained SYS distributor much the time, so your recharge rate is halved. The higher recharge rate of bi-weave shields relies on it having energy in the distributor to feed the faster recharge rate. You need at least 2 pips to get the full recharge rate on a Corvette (if your distributor is the same size or smaller than your shields you may need more).

Also of note is that every pip in the SYS capacitor actually grants 15% damage resistance to shields which is multiplicative with your resistances. So by only running 1 pip in shields you're actually reducing your effective shield strength by about 25%.

Another option you have is to wiggle around your weapons. Change the two beam lasers to Efficient/Oversized Bursts (and all your other topside weapons to Efficient/Oversized), put a Long Range Beam in the 3 slot and put it on a separate fire group (because it's just your cherry tapping weapon anyway to claim damage against distant targets so you don't need to fire it most of the time and on a Corvette that hardpoint tends to be out of arc because it's blocked by the nose and targets tend to be slightly above you in turn fights, as previously noted) and run 2-1-3.

You won't need thermal vent if you're sitting on high weapon capacitors all the time (heat generated is proportional to missing energy in the WEP capacitor and 3 pips will feed a set of efficient bursts/pulses all day). You'll have stronger effective shields because of the extra pip, and double the recharge rate.
You need 4 pips to weapons to fire continuously with all the lasers. What your saying about shields makes sense, but it doesn't correspond to practice. I've never lost more than a ring of my bi-weaves, so the arrangement and technique I use works fine. My original question should be rephrased to "How can I make my 7C biweave shields stronger".

Just for information and clarity, I'm not a beginner. I have about 8000 hours in the game with at least 2500 of those doing RES farming - in particular, experimenting and finding ways to optimise it. That's around 150,000 kills. I don't just fly around in the blue zone with 1:1:4 pips. 1:1:4 is probably what I use most of the time because the shields recharge very fast and the incoming fire isn't very strong. I adjust them like anybody else would according to circumstances, though it's not particularly necessay. Obviously 4 pips for ramming. Remember, this is RES farming, not PvP. The goal of the project is to make a newb -friendly battleship that can earn as much as possible.

The beam lasers are really important to keep the ship cool. I can't see that working with the cooling beam in the 3 slot for the reasons you mentioned. Again the theory is good, but you need the 4 weapons pips to keep the lasers going, not 3. In fact even 4 pips aren't enough, and I have pulse lasers in the class 4 slots, not bursts because bursts empty the capacitor 12.5% sooner from 8 second to 7 according to Inara. I had already tried that. The aim is not to survive a long battle, but to kill quickly and repeat as frequently as possible for as long as possible.

Also, I've been playing with an absolute newb regarding combat. He hasn't quite figured out how to use his pips, but he has had no problem at all using the exact build I mentioned above. Previously, he had prismatic shields, but had to keep leaving to recharge them.
 
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@GloatingSwine covered a lot nicely, also SYS & heat with the Lasers. Just to add some detail to Shield Generator vs. Distributor:

You tried open at combat community goals?
Yes I have, but not in this ship. As I said already, this is supposed to be a noob-friendly build for RES farming, not PvP. OP asked, "so I would like to get laser only ship to stay in hazres or combat zones as long as I want". It just happened that I was already experimenting at the time to find an ideal build.
 
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You need 4 pips to weapons to fire continuously with all the lasers. What your saying about shields makes sense, but it doesn't correspond to practice. I've never lost more than a ring of my bi-weaves, so the arrangement and technique I use works fine. My original question should be rephrased to "How can I make my 7C biweave shields stronger".

Just for information and clarity, I'm not a beginner. I have about 8000 hours in the game with at least 2500 of those doing RES farming - in particular, experimenting and finding ways to optimise it. That's around 150,000 kills. I don't just fly around in the blue zone with 1:1:4 pips. 1:1:4 is probably what I use most of the time because the shields recharge very fast and the incoming fire isn't very strong. I adjust them like anybody else would according to circumstances, though it's not particularly necessay. Obviously 4 pips for ramming. Remember, this is RES farming, not PvP. The goal of the project is to make a newb -friendly battleship that can earn as much as possible.

The beam lasers are really important to keep the ship cool. I can't see that working with the cooling beam in the 3 slot for the reasons you mentioned. Again the theory is good, but you need the 4 weapons pips to keep the lasers going, not 3. In fact even 4 pips aren't enough, and I have pulse lasers in the class 4 slots, not bursts because bursts empty the capacitor 12.5% sooner from 8 second to 7 according to Inara. I had already tried that. The aim is not to survive a long battle, but to kill quickly and repeat as frequently as possible for as long as possible.

Also, I've been playing with an absolute newb regarding combat. He hasn't quite figured out how to use his pips, but he has had no problem at all using the exact build I mentioned above. Previously, he had prismatic shields, but had to keep leaving to recharge them.

The only thing on the build that will be causing heating is firing weapons with an empty distributor, and you're only firing on an empty distributor because of the beam lasers. Heat generated by weapons fire is not static, it is proportional to the missing energy in your WEP distributor. With Efficient Bursts in your 1 slots then you wouldn't get above about 65% heat ever. You're using thermal vent beams to solve a problem that only exists because you're using beams at all.

A single 1E Long Rage Beam has nearly as much distributor draw as all of your other weapons put together. With bursts in those slots, you would maintain a full or nearly full distributor almost all of the time. Especially because, as noted, the 3 slot often doesn't fire because it's out of arc in turnfights.

The logic behind putting an LR beam into the 3 slot isn't to use it for cooling, it's to use it for cherry tapping long range targets that are about to be killed by something else so you get included in the bounty for them, you simply don't fire it most of the time because it's out of arc anyway and you can fire all of the other guns basically forever (at 3 pips they would take something like 2 minutes to drain the distributor with all efficient oversized, meaning that your sustained DPS is almost the same as it is now despite removing one hardpoint from most engagments). You simply don't fire it except at long range targets, your distributor stays full long enough to kill any target you care to choose without you heating up, and your shields are more effective and charge twice as fast because you have an extra pip for them.
 
A lot of excellent points well explained. It took me some time to figure all this.
I started using Beam Lasers again to pop Power Plants.

TBH when I used all lasers I found most power plants could be easily encouraged to asplode with 2x class 4 bursts. That said against NPCs you only really see a benefit in CZs where they're stuffed with hull reinforcements, in RES sites NPCs pop like overexcited balloons.

(I use Plasmas now, because I find them more fun even if I'm a bit crap with them, I just synth rearms to stay out in the RES because low tier raws are super common.)
 
I've mocked this up with an illustration of the weapon and shield changes I've talked about:


Usage would be simple. Target inside 2km - Fire bursts and pulses only. Target outside 2km - Fire beam only.

Either weapon group would fire basically forever at 2-1-3. (The beam on its own can actually fire indefinitely without draining cap so the other weapons are always ready to switch in, the bursts and pulses get nearly 4 minutes of fire from a full distro, enough to kill any NPC).

With the extra pip and the different balance of resistances you would have more effective shields against the most common NPC damage types.
 
The only thing on the build that will be causing heating is firing weapons with an empty distributor, and you're only firing on an empty distributor because of the beam lasers. Heat generated by weapons fire is not static, it is proportional to the missing energy in your WEP distributor. With Efficient Bursts in your 1 slots then you wouldn't get above about 65% heat ever. You're using thermal vent beams to solve a problem that only exists because you're using beams at all.

A single 1E Long Rage Beam has nearly as much distributor draw as all of your other weapons put together. With bursts in those slots, you would maintain a full or nearly full distributor almost all of the time. Especially because, as noted, the 3 slot often doesn't fire because it's out of arc in turnfights.

The logic behind putting an LR beam into the 3 slot isn't to use it for cooling, it's to use it for cherry tapping long range targets that are about to be killed by something else so you get included in the bounty for them, you simply don't fire it most of the time because it's out of arc anyway and you can fire all of the other guns basically forever (at 3 pips they would take something like 2 minutes to drain the distributor with all efficient oversized, meaning that your sustained DPS is almost the same as it is now despite removing one hardpoint from most engagments). You simply don't fire it except at long range targets, your distributor stays full long enough to kill any target you care to choose without you heating up, and your shields are more effective and charge twice as fast because you have an extra pip for them.
OK, I'll try it. Unfortunately, I'm going to be busy for a while with other things, but I will come back to it as soon as I can. Thanks for your explanation.
 
Your WEP capacitor will be drained in 10s with 4 pips to it, without maximising your T10's Power Distributor (to A7 PD G5 Fast Charge with Thermal Conduits) even faster.
OP's last Corvette build's WEP lasts 28s. It also has substantially higher DPS vs shields and hull.
When all your Lasers are engineered to G5 Efficient and Oversized, then your WEP lasts for 32s, but the OPs Corvette still has significantly higher DPS, more pronounced against larger ships with harder hulls (T10s).
It helps to play with pips in coriolis.io and check the effects in the "offence" tab, and also on shield recharge, shield recovery and boost interval.
Really sorry but with 4 pips to weapons it and all firing, it lasts all night. Even if I play with 3 to Sys they rarely go into overload.
The Distributor is Engineered.
I'm open to comments and even critical improvements so thanks for the input. I did only put it up as a help to others looking for a low res AFK but cheers.
 
You can include your engineering on Coriolis by clicking the little spanner on each module.

If you want to just sit at 4 pips to weapons and go AFK, then you can slightly optimise your damage by flipping your weapon scheme. Put beams in the 2 and 1 slots and pulses in the 3 slots. If they're all efficient/oversized you'll get continuous fire. (You can actually go 1 pulse/3 burst in the 3 slots. All bursts there will technically drain the distributor, but it will take 10 minutes to do it so you'll probably have enough time between opponents for it to recharge)
 
OK, last night I changed it to all efficient burst lasers with oversized effect, except the class 3 slot, where I fitted athermal vent beam. I would say that it's a bit better than what I had before. Some of the time I was able to put more pips to shields, but, as I never had a problem with shields before, I can't say that I noticed much difference. I didn't have any problem with overheating, but neither did I before. The main difference is that the time to kill is a bit shorter, and I've always loved the sound that the big burst lasers make. You can really feel them cutting through the hulls into the power plants.

Thanks for your comments and advice. I feel that this build is pretty close to the perfect RES farmer.

One thing that did occur to me is that when dealing with multiple opponents (say 6 or 8), the previous twin thermal vent beams would freeze the ship, which would have made it untargetable for many of them, while as with the single C3 one, which is only landing 50% of the time, my temperature never went right down. maybe that's why I didn't notice any difference in shield behaviour even though I had at least 1/2 pip more to them all the time. Whichever way, they're so strong and fast to recharge that they only ever go down in battles with multiple medium/large opponents.
 
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