PVE Corvette Weapons

Opposite approach: all beam laser turrets (G5 efficient thermal conduit) apart from two huge gimbal multicannons (G5 overcharged auto-loader).

Messing about with ED shipyard showed me that this keeps all the lasers firing indefinitely on two pips, and the multicannons join in with extra pips once target's shields are down.
 
PVE you really do want to go with the armour-piercing values. Many NPCs have "typical" resists, so you need kinetic rounds with high piercing and piercing doesn't really matter on thermal weapons, because thermal will bounce off the NPC's default hull resistances.

This means that the OPTIMAL loadout for a PVE Corvette is to put two cannons or multicannons on the huge hardpoints, and make sure one of them is corrosive for the damage boost that provides everything else.

What you do with the other hardpoints is up to you, but for endurance reasons most people pick lasers, and the large PD of a Corvette is able to support beams, a luxury that not many other ships can boast. If I'm playing solo, I like to put a feedback cascade rail in there, to stop SCB-spamming assassination targets, and I always have an emmissive pulse laser on a small hardpoint since it helps with targeting reticule accuracy and gimbal/turret tracking if you're not going fixed. Personally, I'm keen on putting the two huge hardpoints on the top as gimbals rather than fixed because it provides so much more time on target and those kinetic rounds all have travel time, meaning you have to lead A LOT, not something that's particularly easy when trying to turn a Corvette past a fast NPC SLF or eagle.

So that's the optimal setup. The Fun setup for me involves high-yield fixed cannons all round. It's not practical but it's difficult to master and utterly devastating/satisfying to watch.
 

AP Birdman

Banned
PVE you really do want to go with the armour-piercing values. Many NPCs have "typical" resists, so you need kinetic rounds with high piercing and piercing doesn't really matter on thermal weapons, because thermal will bounce off the NPC's default hull resistances.

This means that the OPTIMAL loadout for a PVE Corvette is to put two cannons or multicannons on the huge hardpoints, and make sure one of them is corrosive for the damage boost that provides everything else.

What you do with the other hardpoints is up to you, but for endurance reasons most people pick lasers, and the large PD of a Corvette is able to support beams, a luxury that not many other ships can boast. If I'm playing solo, I like to put a feedback cascade rail in there, to stop SCB-spamming assassination targets, and I always have an emmissive pulse laser on a small hardpoint since it helps with targeting reticule accuracy and gimbal/turret tracking if you're not going fixed. Personally, I'm keen on putting the two huge hardpoints on the top as gimbals rather than fixed because it provides so much more time on target and those kinetic rounds all have travel time, meaning you have to lead A LOT, not something that's particularly easy when trying to turn a Corvette past a fast NPC SLF or eagle.

So that's the optimal setup. The Fun setup for me involves high-yield fixed cannons all round. It's not practical but it's difficult to master and utterly devastating/satisfying to watch.

I beg to differ. Try using that setup in a threat 7 pirate activity zone and you'll get crushed.

I run beams, rails and a huge PA and I annihilate condas in pirate zones
 
I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.

I stuck a heap of turrets on my vette once, just for the yucks.

You don't die but you just end up thinking you could explode attackers faster yourself.

Like I said, I do run a pair of burst turrets on my vettes in CZs, just to tag targets for the CBs.
 
T7 pirate activity isn't that bad. I don't think they are as bad as T6 wing assassination missions, which my Corvette chain-smokes without restocking, simply because you get to pick your battles and positioning in a T7PA, whilst a WA is 5/6/7 engineered ships vs you and as the only target they go straight for you.

PA's are fine and all, but you have to restock all the time, and they're a PITA on tiny targets when you're in a Vette.

What's a weapon-loadout got to do with shield/hull strength though? Why do multicannons not work compared to PAs (I call ) and 'getting crushed' is all about shield/hull/resists - nothing to do with this thread on weapon loadout.
 
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AP Birdman

Banned
T7 pirate activity isn't that bad. I don't think they are as bad as T6 wing assassination missions, which my Corvette chainsmokes without restocking.

I usually board hop until I have half a dozen wing assassination missions and then go and solo murder the lot; Quick and easy credits and I can usually make one SCB last the whole session, because I don't always need to bank - realistically of the various NPC wing setups, it's the I find the Cutter + FdL + 2Vultures + 2Vipers normally needs a bank because the Cutter shields take a long time and the Vipers are usually toting railguns that can't be dodged. Corvettes and Annie assasinations are 60 second hit-and-runs though. Usually finish on two shield rings....

Why you brought up shield strength and hitpoints in a discussion about weapons loadout is a total mystery to me though; it's just insultingly off-topic.

What? It's a thread about hardpoints on a Vette. I didn't bring up shield strength, what are you talking about?

I'm surprised someone still does wing assassination missions. That used to be my favorite pve thing to do until it got nerfed in 3.0.
 
So currently i use two huge beams with the rest of my layout being Multi. My huges have regen sequence on them cause im a nice guy and my multies are all extended clip + auto loader save for one thats corrosive (ive also heard that corrosive stacks? Confirm/deny?

Anywho im going to be swapping out the regen sequence for something else for when i solo but im curious as to what others do? ... Should i load out my Small/Medium's with shield strippers and use my Large/huge for more hull damage? ... Keep my shield strippers on the Huges and continue on with what im already doing? ... Also ... Beam VS Pulse VS Burst ... who prefers what and why?

Im just trying to switch it up a bit because ive had this same layout forever
(I actually have a set of imperial hammers that I run with on the two medium hardpoints as well (I have my huge beams and my Imp hammers on the the same fireing button and i just pulse my beams if i do not want my hammers to go off)

Opinions?

Thanks in advance too!

Bored of beams and MCs lately - my goto load out, I switched meta and am experiencing the joy of plasma and rails. It's a skill shift and funnier...
 
Like I said, I do run a pair of burst turrets on my vettes in CZs, just to tag targets for the CBs.

The C1 hardpoints on a Vette are useless for DPS, so you might as well use them for utility. One is FC rails for me, the other is an emissive turret to counter heatsinks better.
 
I stuck a heap of turrets on my vette once, just for the yucks.

You don't die but you just end up thinking you could explode attackers faster yourself.

Like I said, I do run a pair of burst turrets on my vettes in CZs, just to tag targets for the CBs.

I rebuilt the war Cutter with just turrets on top, it has a singular devastating use as a CZ mats gathering monster, boring but effective.
 
Bored of beams and MCs lately - my goto load out, I switched meta and am experiencing the joy of plasma and rails. It's a skill shift and funnier...

Definitely. But it limits your sessions to about 20 minutes before you need to either syth everything or go back to base and restock. And frequent supercruise to restock, or mining/SRV for syth mats is not my idea of fun.
Each to their own. I can only really recommend that people try a bit of everything and decide for themselves what works best.

When most people say PVE though, it implies stacking wing missions and spending anything from 30-90 minutes in a CZ, CNB, or Hazres which is why you see a lot of lasers. Don't get me wrong, lasers SUCK but they're free from the burdens of expendable ammo and they train you - no, they FORCE you - to learn close-range FA-Off combat since they're so completely useless at range for raw dps; If you can afford to long-range mod them, you can't afford the WEP draw for alpha damage, and if you efficient mod them, they hit like a wet tissue at anything resembling range.
 
I don't bother with FA-off, as I haven't found that I need it.

And I do prefer in-close knife fighting, even in my 'vette, so efficient weps do just fine. If I see a juicy target flying by, I simply 'tag' it, wait for it to make a run at me, and when about 1.5km out I start firing everything. By the time the NPC gets to me there's not much left, if anything. I found long-range fighting to be too boring for me.

And my 'vette has this wonderfully long and pointy nose that is really useful for bashing/flipping around medium and large NPCs. I'll start laughing when doing that, especially to condas, Pythons and FGS, even though my wife starts thinking I've completely lost it. :D
 
I think some are being over-complicated in this thread and I'd like to argue in favour of my vanilla build for PvE. I can see that against other players it's necessary to take into account that the opponent's shields will be engineered and have unpredictable resistances, but for PvE I don't think that's often the case. Experimenting with ED Shipyard has convinced me that there's no fundamental DPS advantage for PA or rails over lasers against "standard shields". There is a DPS boost for using fixed rather than turreted weapons, but that's ignoring the effect of time-on-target, which is dependent on flying technique. For PvE, enough beam lasers to use all the power continuously available is good for a Corvette, which in practice seems to mean all except the huge hardpoints (I have G5 charge-enhanced PD). I don't think the choice of lasers necessarily makes DPS less or fights longer (again, in typical PvE).

I know that many people aren't prepared to take the DPS hit for turreted weapons. For me, although I now can aim fixed weapons, I don't particularly enjoy having to do so. I prefer strategic and design-time gameplay rather than frantic joystick work. I also find the big ship laying out fire in all directions is more "hard-SF".
 
my PVE build..

https://s.orbis.zone/10j6

Lasers all the way.. (no ammo worries)

gimbals for the smaller ones and fixed for the monsters on top (for when the chaff starts flying)

all thermal vent to keep the ship ice cool (which helps when firing scb's)

all set as efficient, so no distributor issues as long as you keep at least 3-4 pips to weapons

can sit all day at the Nav beacon with no issues
 

Some friendly suggestions:

1 - You have a double-braced, inefficient powerplant (0.5) but loads of power to spare. Consider modding it G5 armoured and monstered instead for a huge 2.5x integrity increase and a 50% effiency increase. Using overcharged when you don't need to just makes your PP hot and fragile.

2 - You don't need to pay the weight and power cost of prismatics to achieve the shield setup you have. A 7C fast-charge/thermal-resist bi-weave with 4 res-aug/supercap and 3 HD/supercap boosters will give you the same absolute shield value and resistances, but you'll be gaining 4x faster regen than the prismatics at half the power and mass costs. Alternatively, 7A standard shields will give you a 30% stronger shield with the booster setup and you still get 50% faster regen than prismatics at half the mass. You really want to mix and match HD and res-aug boosters rather than spec all of one type.

3. You don't have enough hull integrity or resistance to justify 5x MRPs. You should probably be doing it the other way around with 5x HRPs and 2x MRPs. Protecting your modules is pointless if your hull has been destroyed. I think two 5D MRPs is a good balance for around 4000 hull integrity, doubling what you already have and adding far more resistance. You will lose MRPs before hull failure, but you'll be on frigteningly-low hull integrity by the time it happens. incoming damage only has a chance to pierce your hull armour so unless you are making a hull-tank build where you need to keep your hardpoints alive, there's no need for quite such a huge amount of MRP protection - and even for hull tanks, I'd probably say you need more HRPs than MRPs.

4. Add one corrosive shell effect (I prefer a 4A multicannon because it eats ammo really slowly and has zero spin-up time) The Corvette needs it for its pathetic C1 and C2 hardpoints if you're going to run lasers because those C1 and C2 lasers have rubbish armour-piercing. Against an Anaconda's 65 hull hardness, the 1E beam lasers do 18/65ths of their damage, the rest is lost to hull hardness. Corrosive effect adds 20 to all your armour piercing values, and 38/65ths is more than double the damage for the 1E beams. The 2D beams see about a 60% improvement and even the 3C beam gets a 30% dps increase because of the corrosive effect. Yes, you lose some damage on the C4 hardpoint by changing from fixed beam to gimballed MC, but you gain much more back from the flat 25% dps buff and increased effectiveness of the four smaller hardpoints; Also, you reduce your WEP draw when firing so you can fire for twice as long (personally I'd just rather allocate an extra pip or two to engines for more boosting!)

5. For PVE you really don't need point defense. Explosives ping harmlessly off shields with massive resistances against them and if you go for the 5x HRP that I've suggested, your increased hull integrity and hull resistances give you an effective 6500HP against explosives anyway. For PVP, the only real threat is packhounds and RC torps, which PD are utterly useless against anyway. Put heatsinks there for PVP. or chaff at least!

6. Nobody needs 25 minutes of life support. Save yourself the cost/power/mass and just go 5D! You're not going to carry on fighting once your canopy's out because you'll have no HUD. 7m30s is plenty of time to kill the current NPC and get to a station and if for some unbelievable reason it isn't, just make sure you have the materials to synth another 7m30s for yourself before you run out!

Other perks of these suggestions include a quadrupling of your cargo space, room to fit a KWS for increased bounty payouts, and very minor boosts to your speed/agility/jump-range. Oh, I removed reacive surface composites too, which has halved your rebuy despite this being a far tougher build with more absolute dps, sheild and armour.

Here's a link to the bi-weave version of my suggestions. Take as much or as little of my advice as you want, I'm just trying to help out a fellow Corvette fan.
https://s.orbis.zone/14jt
 
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