How often would I be calling fuel rats to save my butt?
Do anyone have exact numbers on plasma slug fuel consumption?
Do anyone have exact numbers on plasma slug fuel consumption?
x3-x4 plasma slug chieftain
- Thread starter CMDR EDGEL0RD
- Start date
I am not sure about chieftain, but my Courier runs out of fuel after about 15 minutes of fighting.
If you are looking at plasma slug weapons, be advised that they are not as fuel efficient as weapons, and will run away with a lot of fuel, but you can easily counter that by putting in some extra fuel tanks as optional modules.
I looked into this issue and tested it when I outfitted my Chieftan. The plasma slug fuel consumption works out to approximately 45 shots per ton of fuel for a C1 plasma slug rail. For a full loadout of 3 x C1 plasma slug rails that is approximately 15 shots per ton from all three rails simultaneously. The Chieftan has a 16 ton fuel tank which means that if you drained the tank completely with plasma slug shots it would be 240 shots from all three rails.
That is quite a big improvement compared to using normal rails with 80 shots each. You can basically fire nearly 3X as many shots before needing refuelling with the plasma slugs. It will be a little less than that because you're burning fuel while flying, but even if you consider using only 2/3 or 3/4 of the tank that is still over 2X as many shots with plenty of fuel in reserve. You also have the option of refuelling from a scoopable star which can be quite a bit faster if it's closer than heading back to a nearby station (i.e., if you're fighting at a Nav beacon or at a RES/CZ near the system's star).
The main disadvantages are that the plasma slug mod reduces damage by 10% (which is actually an improvement over the prior penalty of 20%) and you can't use other mods if you're using plasma slug so you can't benefit from super penetrator or feedback cascade. The fuel consumption can also add up fairly quickly (I was surprised how many shots I was making with the plasma rails). If you fire them constantly and don't watch the fuel consumption you could drain your fuel tank completely and run out of fuel but you should get an audible warning when your main tank is drained if you aren't paying attention which should be a reminder that you need to stop firing and refuel.
For sustained PVE combat the plasma slug rails are a great option overall. Otherwise they really only have enough ammo to be useful for PVP in most cases.
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Depending on what you call "sustained fight"
IMHO it doesn't matter if you go with slug mod or ammo on rails or PAs, you're going to run out of ammo OR fuel in about the same amount of time. Auxiliary tanks don't make sense on a combat build (they would have to be mounted instead of ammo racks)
For really "sustained fight" the only way are energy weapons.
Slug mods would make a semblance of sense on kind of an exploration/ready-for-everything build where you'd want a weapon with some kick but wouldn't want to care about ammo (fuel scooping is easier than ammo synthesis)
But for normal combat build within the bubble, plasma slug is useless. (It's fun, though.)
IMHO it doesn't matter if you go with slug mod or ammo on rails or PAs, you're going to run out of ammo OR fuel in about the same amount of time. Auxiliary tanks don't make sense on a combat build (they would have to be mounted instead of ammo racks)
For really "sustained fight" the only way are energy weapons.
Slug mods would make a semblance of sense on kind of an exploration/ready-for-everything build where you'd want a weapon with some kick but wouldn't want to care about ammo (fuel scooping is easier than ammo synthesis)
But for normal combat build within the bubble, plasma slug is useless. (It's fun, though.)
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In small ships with 4 ton or 8 ton fuel tanks you are often better off not using plasma slug because it won't let you get more than the standard 80 shots per gun before you run out of fuel so it isn't actually an advantage (and is potentially a disadvantage since you can run out of fuel using the plasma rails). Once you get to a 16 ton fuel tank however you can easily get 2X or 2.5X as many shots with plenty of fuel left in the tank which gives you twice as much combat time before you need to refuel. If they are your limiting factor in terms of when you need to return from a CZ/RES then you can make your combat runs much more efficient because you are able to stay out 2-3X longer. I find with the 2-3X duration improvement that plasma slug rails provide on a medium ship (i.e., 16 ton fuel tank) that is usually long enough so that I run out of SCBs/chaff around the same time which tends to work out well.
The other advantage is that if you still have plenty of SCBs/chaff left and only need to refuel the plasma slug rails you can often refuel by fuel scooping faster than from returning to a station because you don't need to spend time docking. You can just enter supercruise if you're already near the star and refuel there or you can make a small jump to the closest nearby system (i.e., a few ly away which takes a negligible amount of fuel) to avoid the SC travel to the star, then jump back and return to the RES/CZ which is often faster than flying round-trip to and from a station.
There is a another major advantage (that may eventually be changed at some point) where you can use premium ammo synthesis for plasma slug rails and the damage benefit remains as long as you don't use the "restock" option at a station. If you just keep refuelling the fuel tank (either from scooping or by using the refuel option at a station) but don't try to "restock" the plasma slug rails then you keep the damage boost. The 30% damage bonus from premium synthesis actually works out to only a 20% damage improvement over stock rails because of the -10% plasma slug damage penalty but it does provide another advantage for the plasma slug mod. The issue here is that you would need to remember not to hit "restock all" at the station and need to individually restock each of your weapons/SCBs/utilities from the station menu each time you dock. I haven't tested this myself but it has apparently worked this way since the plasma slug weapons existed and doesn't seem to be a "bug" or "exploit", it's simply a property of how the plasma slug mod interacts with premium synthesis.
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Wo! Mind blown! I would’ve been running plasma slugs long time ago had I known that. Also didn’t know its only 10% now. Ran test long time ago and was unimpressed but now I’m kinda anxious to try them again.
I belive premium ammo resets on either refuel on stations or when fuel scoop consumes an atom of hydrogen.
I hadn't really used rails at all but when I saw that the Chieftain had such good hardpoint convergence for the small hardpoints I engineered some plasma slug rails shortly before 3.0 launched. I've enjoyed testing them on my Chieftain and I found that the plasma slug mod is basically essential for PVE because of how quickly they would go through ammo otherwise. I also found that the Chieftain has a little more lateral drift than I was expecting which actually makes precise aiming for the rails harder that you might expect despite the ship's excellent overall maneuverability (I tend to use lateral thrust fairly often for precise maneuvers and find the Chieftain can overcorrect somewhat). Since then I've switched the plasma slug rails for a set of triple seeker missile banks which I use as a general purpose self-defence build (the alpha damage can be very useful to end a fight quickly or as a PvP deterrent) but I would probably go back to the plasma rails for any sort of sustained PvE because the damage output is quite good overall.
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I belive premium ammo resets on either refuel on stations or when fuel scoop consumes an atom of hydrogen.
I haven't tested it myself but from what I read prior to 3.0 it only reset upon selecting the "restock all" option at stations. The info I got was from this thread where the player tested that fuel scooping or refuelling wouldn't remove the premium ammo synthesis effects: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...hesis-for-PA?p=5515289&viewfull=1#post5515289
Apparently at that time restocking chaff only also didn't reset the effects:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...hesis-for-PA?p=5519721&viewfull=1#post5519721
This was during 2.2 from Apr. last year so it may have changed since then but as I mentioned I hadn't read anything about it in the patch notes or even read that FD had any plans to change how the mechanic works.
I've searched for more recent info and all that I've been able to find is a reddit post from Feb. that indicates that the synthesis damage boost is now removed upon fuel scooping or refuelling at a station:
https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/7uns3f/plasma_slug_permanent_premium_synthesis/
It would make sense that the effect would be removed with a refuelling so it wouldn't be that surprising if they did change it recently.
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I just got done fighting with my plasma slug Chieftain and it lasted the whole hour or two session, but that's because I put in another 16 ton tank.
Well that depends on the ship, might be true for the Chieftain. My pve Anaconda has 2 large and 2 medium plasma slug PAs, and with the normal tank I get around 300 shots, which is three times the normal ammo. And I can easily afford another class 5 fuel tank if I really want to stay somewhere, so that's 600 shots with 4 PAs.
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Word of warning: hammers drain 3 shots per salvo. Ill advised on a small ship lol.