Laser Types

[Brrokk]

I've been playing years but never really figured out the pros and cons of pulse, burst and beam lasers. I know those are steps up in power draw and damage, but also steps down in penetration, but never really sorted out their actual applications.

It looks like I'll be wanting a few laser turrets tomorrow.

Any education for me?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Pulse lasers are efficient - fairly low heat generation and distributor draw - and don't do that much less damage per second than a beam laser. So a big question is what ship you're fitting them to, what can its power distributor handle, and whether the extra theoretical damage per second of a full set of beam lasers actually gets realised, or whether you just end up draining the weapons cap in three seconds and overheating your ship. Obviously you benefit a lot more from being able to sustain fire with turrets which should be on-target almost continuously compared with fixed lasers where you might only get a few seconds on target anyway and want to make the most of it. You can also use the Efficient blueprint to bring the beam laser's heat/energy draw down to roughly the same as a normal pulse laser while still improving the damage ... but then you're not engineering Long Range, which is very useful on lasers if you don't intend to always fight close up because they have really bad damage falloff otherwise.

After that, the other big difference is the sets of experimental effects available - for example, Beam lasers have Thermal Vent and Regeneration Sequence, which are both absolutely amazing in the right circumstances and completely useless in others ... whereas Pulse lasers have Emissive and Scramble Spectrum which are nice to have and rarely bad but also rarely crucial. So provided your distributor can handle it the choice of experimental might be what determines your choice of laser.

Because they're all the same - infinite - shot speed, mixing laser types also is much easier than mixing most other weapon types, so you don't have to go for just one of them.

 

[Aashenfox]

Pulse lasers hurt my ears
Burst lasers hurt my ears and eyes XD
Beam lasers for the win.

Seriously though, I too have been thinking about this. With big ships and turrets you need to think about enemy approach vectors. I haven't had a really good look at the hardpoints yet, but I expect the optimal pve configuration will be efficient pulse lasers all around with one long range corrosive multicannon (medium ideally, NEVER large) in the belly, and one on the roof. I vaguely remember 'knowing' (lol) that burst lasers have better armor pen, but that could totally be in my head.
I don't know if anyone else mentioned this yet, but ordnance (flying physical projectiles, not lasers) turrets set to fire at will, tend to open fire at half the max range of the weapon, which is also worth bearing in mind when choosing engineering (and also sensible, kudos FD).

P.S. To be crystal clear, I seriously doubt the cap will be available to have 4 pips to shields and also fire beams, so simply forget them unless going for some silly 1v1mebro build

 

[KhaosDoctor]

I rarely use beam lasers, I mostly go around Pulse, but I'm now testing builds with burst just for the sheer DPS increase. I also rarely use the turrets if I can maneuver the ship nicely (if it's not a T10 or some other defensive brick), I prefer the gimbals because my sight is not that good so I often don't see the targets in the screen when using fixed lasers.

efficient pulse lasers all around with one long range corrosive multicannon (medium ideally, NEVER large)

Now this came as a surprise for me, I usually go MC's in the largest slots, 1 corrosive with high capacity, 1 incendiary with overcharged, if there's another, then I put emissive munitions with overcharged as well. For the lasers I tend to go long range + thermal shock or long range + phasing sequence since efficient and thermal shock don't match really well.

 

[Aashenfox]

I rarely use beam lasers, I mostly go around Pulse, but I'm now testing builds with burst just for the sheer DPS increase. I also rarely use the turrets if I can maneuver the ship nicely (if it's not a T10 or some other defensive brick), I prefer the gimbals because my sight is not that good so I often don't see the targets in the screen when using fixed lasers.


Now this came as a surprise for me, I usually go MC's in the largest slots, 1 corrosive with high capacity, 1 incendiary with overcharged, if there's another, then I put emissive munitions with overcharged as well. For the lasers I tend to go long range + thermal shock or long range + phasing sequence since efficient and thermal shock don't match really well.

The loss of dps and time on target due to spin up time of large MCs makes them a significant margin weaker, pound for pound, than their small, medium and huge counterparts. I'm a crazy minmaxer and a pvper, so I do admit this is less of a concern for pve and more casual users. But really, that spin up time on larges is just horrible.

 

[KhaosDoctor]

The loss of dps and time on target due to spin up time of large MCs makes them a significant margin weaker, pound for pound, than their small, medium and huge counterparts. I'm a crazy minmaxer and a pvper, so I do admit this is less of a concern for pve and more casual users. But really, that spin up time on larges is just horrible.

Makes sense, for PVE it doesn't affect me very much (I don't do PVP), but large lasers have a huge distributor draw even on the biggest (7, 8) distributors, how do you keep fire going?

 

[GunnerBill]

My favourite PVE ship is a heavily (completely) engineered Corvette.
Until recently it's loadout was Fixed class 4 efficient beams and the rest gimbaled overcharged multi-cannons.
It's a great combo.
However it bugged me that OC'd lasers exist and that they do so much more DPS - but I could never get them to work for me!

Q: What was the problem?
A: Wasteful usage - in other words spending too much time shooting lasers into space or shooting at too great a range.

So I became committed to making them work for me and I dug out my old class 4 thermal vent OC'd lasers from storage fitted them to my Vette and concentrated really hard on only pulling the trigger when I'm on target and also close enough for them to work properly!
Guess what?

THEY'RE DEVASTATING!

Watching shields melt away in seconds is amazing. And as I get better I rarely lose my distributor because I'm only shooting when I'm on target.
I've since combined them with some really nasty fixed frag cannons that I managed to get some lucky rolls on back when engineering was basically a game of chance.
What a loadout!

 

[Shurimal]

But really, that spin up time on larges is just horrible.

When I used the phasing CG multis with two large fixed multis (corrosive and thermal) on my Phantom, I put them on separate firegroups. Mediums on secondary, large in primary so I could pre-spin the larges while turning the ship around. I got pretty good at it, even being able to keep the larges constantly spinning without shooting by tapping the primary fire at a second (or so) interval. But it was a lot of workload.

As for lasers, there is no one recipe. On my Chief three small efficient TV beams were pretty good: at 4 pips to WEP infinite fire and low range is not important on a Chief that can stick right next to an enemy ship. One interesting effect of that is that I could have my ship at 0% heat during the fight and that makes NPC wingmen to lose target lock as they zoom past me. But LR beams work very well on "boom'n'zoom" ship where ToT is shorter anyway so cap drain is of lower importance. All long-range phasing pulse lasers setup is pretty fun, but not a very fast killer. Inertial impact bursts are really fun on nimble ships that can stay close to the enemy (like Vulture).

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

i went pre engineering old school yesterday and took out my old vulture with 2 fixed class 3 pulse lasers.

now with hindsite this was a terrible idea . i was playing on the tiny screen of the steamdeck, something i am not good at on at all...... however i got attacked by a wing of 2 sidewinders and an eagle........... and i just could not take them out. i ended up running away with shields on single digits and all 3 enemy ships still alive (i got the shields down and made a small amount of damage.

but between the low fire rate and the fixed weapon mount combined with tiny targets to shoot at it was a cluster mess.

 

[St0rmFury]

It takes a bit of practice, but I just start firing my large MCs while aligning my crosshairs to my target. By the time they are in my crosshairs, the MCs would have done spinning up and start blasting.

 

[PilotB]

Beams are expensive on fitting, credits and capacitor. They're your premium but their biggest use is thermal vent to let you cool.
Pulse lasers are easy to easy to fit, cheap and lighter on the capacitor. They can also be engineered with focussed which gives them a piercing value that'll maintain damage against bigger hulls.
Burst lasers are just not very useful as they fire a burst but have no focus and most of the shots seem to miss every time I try them.

If you've got loads of cap, credits and fitting beams. If the ship is tight on anything pulse.
If you're playing powerplay you can look into cytos and then keep all your larger slots for hull damage.

 

[Brrokk]

Thanks for the responses and advice, everyone.

 

[GunnerBill]

The loss of dps and time on target due to spin up time of large MCs makes them a significant margin weaker, pound for pound, than their small, medium and huge counterparts. I'm a crazy minmaxer and a pvper, so I do admit this is less of a concern for pve and more casual users. But really, that spin up time on larges is just horrible.

Exactly this. Class 3/4 MC's a virtually useless because of this.
In general the spin up on all MC's is why I've switched to frags for bounty hunting.

 

[Neilski]

Exactly this. Class 3/4 MC's a virtually useless because of this.

Well, class 3 has terrible spin-up time, but class 4 is fine.

 

[KhaosDoctor]

Coming back here to tell a sad story of my Corsair.

I recently fully engineered a Corsair to be a PVE ship. Equipe with 3 large MCs, 2 medium bursts and a rail gun. Each MC was engineered either a different type, had corrosive + high cap, oc + incendiary and oc + emissive

For the bursts I added focused on both but one with thermal shock and another with phasing sequence while the rail is long range and super penetrator

And it’s a complete disaster. Not because they are not good, I mean they can melt down a clipper in seconds, eagles are basically a fly, I had a sidewinder last precisely 2s from fully charged (shields and all) to blown. But the heat it generates is just enormous, even if I’m just using the lasers and not the rail, I can only fire for like 8s or so, even with one thermal shock.

I’m thinking if this is a problem of the burst lasers or if this is a problem with the engineering

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

could you swap out one of the MCs for a beam laser with thermal vent? (not the corrosive one)

personally i am not a huge fan of burst lasers...... i would rather have rapid fire pulse i think as they are similar but less demanding in power draw or heat generation. (but i am far from an expert)

 

[KhaosDoctor]

Possible too, I’m still tweaking the build. I thought that thermal shock would also spread the heat but it doesn’t