Ship Builds & Load Outs Pacifiers

[Rhialto]

Hello all.
For 8 weeks i have been sucking up to Zachary Hudson te get those Pacifiers.
I tried to earn them, but in the end i had to spend a couple of hundred thousand credits, i just didn't have enough game time.
Now i have four of them, two of which i have engineered with overcharged weapon and screening shell.
I have mounted those two with a multi cannon on my Python on one group, and two beam lasers on the other group.
I find it difficult to land a good shot with the Pacifiers, but they do quite some damage.
Maybe the Python isn't the best choice for these weapons, i might move to a Krait.
Any thoughts on this, or how to best engineer them?

 

[S0rkvild]

Yes, Pacifiers work better on Krait mk2. They have much higher shot speed and tighter spread as gimballed frag cannons yet damage is identical here. Speaking of mods, nothing can go wrong with overcharged and screening shell (fast shot reload) so with little time on target you would be able to deal more damage.

Some time ago I sported such build on my Krait with 2 medium beams, two pacifiers (oc + screening shell) and turreted medium multicannon (hi capacity + corrosive shell). Why not large multicannon? Because of too long spin up time. Class two works much faster. So the general idea is turret serves as a debuff weapon against hull so Pacifiers can deal more damage. Of course you can have corrosive shell on one of the Pacs but realod time here is too long plus corrosive shell cuts ammo by 20%, while with screening shell reload is cut to 2,5s and no ammo loss + massive boost to damage.

Personally I'm not a fan of pacifiers, gimballed frags work better for me. Just move up close, auto target and bang bang. Absolutely fun and worthy on Clipper.

 

[angusmadmac1]

I have a python with 3 pacifiers and two fixed medium one with drag and one with corrosive . The best way is to stick your ships nose I the engines of the other ship and giggle like a girl whilst watching it turn into space dust . The python and kraits builds have very little difference with a a few positives on either side .

 

[Rhialto]

Thanks.
I am now setting up a Krait m2 with the pacifiers.
The Krait is somewhat faster and more manoeuvrable then the Python. I still have to engineer the thrusters some more.

 

[Three Stars]

Yes, Pacifiers work better on Krait mk2. They have much higher shot speed and tighter spread as gimballed frag cannons yet damage is identical here. Speaking of mods, nothing can go wrong with overcharged and screening shell (fast shot reload) so with little time on target you would be able to deal more damage.

Some time ago I sported such build on my Krait with 2 medium beams, two pacifiers (oc + screening shell) and turreted medium multicannon (hi capacity + corrosive shell). Why not large multicannon? Because of too long spin up time. Class two works much faster. So the general idea is turret serves as a debuff weapon against hull so Pacifiers can deal more damage. Of course you can have corrosive shell on one of the Pacs but realod time here is too long plus corrosive shell cuts ammo by 20%, while with screening shell reload is cut to 2,5s and no ammo loss + massive boost to damage.

Personally I'm not a fan of pacifiers, gimballed frags work better for me. Just move up close, auto target and bang bang. Absolutely fun and worthy on Clipper.

Don't discount corrosive on a pacifier too quickly. Even with the ammo loss, an overcharged/corrosive pacifier pairs very nicely with one or more PAs (or cannons, if you're amenable). The idea is to make it a single click build, relying on the fact that the Pacifier fragments are faster (1000 m/s) and will hit the target first followed by the PAs (825 m/s). At close and close-medium range the shot speed difference is compensated for by the spread of the pacifier, so you aim the PAs and let the pacifier take care of itself. Once the shields are down, the pacifier will activate corrosive before the PAs impact. I call it a Tenderizer build, because the pacifier is softening up the target to let the PAs hit harder.

This one hits like the fist of an angry deity: https://s.orbis.zone/n6-j . The SR vent beam helps keep you cool, and you can even pre-chill if you wish.

You could do the exact same thing with a two OC/SR Cannons for a low power version, or even a high cap corrosive pacifier and two APAs. The ammo supplies are again very similar.

Really, any ship with a large forward-set hardpoint and at least one fairly well grouped large or medium hardpoint for PAs can do this. Even if the one large is even with the others, the shot speed difference means that the corrosive won't be wasted. You could use a FAS, a Python, both Kraits, the Chieftain and Crusader, and even an Orca.

 

[Kayvan]

I've Pacs on my PVE Chieftain. The absolute highest sustained DPS you can get out of them is with Rapid Shot & Screening Shell. It's significantly higher than OC, but ofc the total damage pool is lower (4500 pts vs 8000 for OC), so on extended runs you may have to synth or restock at some point.

On the Chief I complement the Pacs with 1 medium Corrosive MC and a bunch of Cytos. It's rather short-range but the damage is brutal.

 

[SergMx]

I've Pacs on my PVE Chieftain. The absolute highest sustained DPS you can get out of them is with Rapid Shot & Screening Shell. It's significantly higher than OC, but ofc the total damage pool is lower (4500 pts vs 8000 for OC), so on extended runs you may have to synth or restock at some point.

On the Chief I complement the Pacs with 1 medium Corrosive MC and a bunch of Cytos. It's rather short-range but the damage is brutal.

Rapid fire increases the spread a lot, maybe a double shot would be better ?

Also the Pacifiers fits well on the smaller version of FDL so called vulture.

 

[Kayvan]

Rapid Fire doesn't increase the spread that much - only from 1.7 to 2.2°. Of course it's advised that you get as close as possible.

Funny you mention it, when thinking about new things I could try I arrived at the same idea, so I'll mount some Pacs on my Vulture and see how it goes. Basically you have to brute-force your way through the shields with sheer DPS, and unfortunately there isn't a smaller HP for a Corrosive MC. The Screening Shell experimental is so powerful that it's really hard to replace. ^^

 

[Rexoplex]

I've preached this for a long time, but the high-cap engineer upgrade for pacifiers (and frags in general) is incredibly underrated. Most of the DPS loss when using frags is due to the fact that you spend far more time reloading than firing them, hence why rapid fire frags out-DPS overcharged ones pretty dramatically (because of the reload speed improvement MUCH MORE than the fire rate improvement, that is). Rapid fire drinks ammo obscenely fast as a result though, and the per-clip burst damage of overcharged can be more useful than the higher overall DPS in many fast matchups.

High-cap frags double the clip size from 3 to 6, slightly increase the fire rate, AND double your ammo pool. The ammo is just a bonus, but the doubled clip size raises your effective damage per clip to actually be significantly higher than overcharged frags, just at the expense of a longer time to fire off the whole salvo. While I haven't scientifically tested the dps difference of high-cap vs overcharged, I can say from extensive experience with both that high-cap is AT LEAST pretty close to on par, and is also immensely more consistent as long as you're in a quick enough ship to maintain decent time on target.

The extra ammo from high-cap lets you not only casually PVE bounty hunt for extended periods (they have ammo-longevity comparable to multicannons), but it also lets you use ammo synthesis very efficiently. I do maybe one trip out to a barnacle planet per 2 weeks of gameplay to refill my raw mats, and that's all it takes to literally always use high-grade ammo, and to stay in a hazres or a pirate site for hours using frags without a care in the world. Since you get twice the amount of buffed super-ammo due to your doubled ammo pool, and consume less ammo to kill things due to the higher damage, synthesis restocks with buffed ammo are genuinely very economic, even just for PVE grinding. I used to see frags mainly as PVP assassin weapons since they only really have the ammo to kill a few NPC targets or even just one beefy player ship. High-cap ones, however, can easily match or even exceed the other types in that regard (and overwhelmingly exceed them if you bring synth ammo) but also double as fun, economic, and hilariously overkill for PVE grinding.

Final note: size 2 fixed regular cannons in particular share a velocity with pacifier frags (so long as you dont put the explosive damage mod on the cannons). If you want a loadout for a krait or some other ship with s2 and s3 hardpoints that lets you put all your firepower on one button and leading reticle, bring pacis and fixed s2 cannons.

 

[Kayvan]

Great, thanks for the input. While I've never bothered with premium ammo, I did run the numbers on all the regular mods. The total looks as follows:

Pacifiers	Damage	ROF	Clip	Reload	SDPS		Ammo	Damage Pool
Standard	48,00	4,50	3	5,00	26,45		180,00	8.640,00
OC	80,40	4,50	3	5,00	44,30		180,00	14.472,00
OC/SS	80,40	4,50	3	2,50	81,92		180,00	14.472,00
Rapid Fire/SS	45,60	8,10	3	0,88	121,39	Jitter 2.2°	180,00	8.208,00
DS/SS	48,00	6,90	6	2,50	89,31		180,00	8.640,00
HiCap/SS	48,00	5,10	6	2,50	82,75		360,00	17.280,00

SDPS ofc stands for "Sustained Damage per Second", accounting for reload intervals.
So as we see, RF/SS is the absolute SDPS king, with almost +50% advantage over OC or HC, but of course at the expense of endurance.
(Also note how huge a difference engineering makes in general, comparing any of these mods to a vanilla one with its modest 26 SDPS)

Of course - almost needless to say - all this damage is 100% kinetic with 45 pierce, so take this into account when comparing to other weapon types.

The damage pool advantage of HC over OC is roughly 20%; that's not nothing but not worlds apart either. Ofc if you invest in premium synths you will probably want to get the most out of your mats' worth. I totally agree you wouldn't want to use RF in that scenario.

RF/SS however has another perk particularly in PVE imho: NPCs like to spam shield cells. 2.5 seconds of reload time allow the enemy to regenerate his shields quite substantially. Covering him with rapid fire, with hardly any interruption between clips, can make the shields collapse before the cell can tick through.