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EVE New Citizens Q&A

 
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Ammunition Types and Disadvantages?
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Effie Jamaycia
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#1 - 2012-07-02 19:19:05 UTC
So I'm looking into PVP and potentially fitting a ship specifically to fight a certain player. I was noticed he was a heavy shield tanker and that his particular ship had no EM damage resistance, I think this is common for most shields though.

Anyway, I saw that hybrid weapon ammo only does heat and kinetic damage where as every other type of ammo has damage versatility, missiles can be tailored to a specific damage type, lasers can be tailored, and projectile ammo even does three kinds of damage on impact.

I'm wondering if there are any reasons or advantages to hybrid weapons and their ammo that I'm missing. Because it seems a serious disadvantage to most gallente ships in PVP versatility.
Lost Greybeard
Drunken Yordles
#2 - 2012-07-02 20:23:18 UTC
Hybrid only does thermal and kinetic.
Lasers all do both EM and thermal.
Missiles can change damage types, but with a 10-second delay on changing ammo.
-- Additionally, many ships only have damage bonuses to a limited selection of missiles
Projectiles have what's usually regarded as the best ammo selection and only suffer targeting delay.


Gallente and Caldari ships running hybrid turrets (about half of them, the other half rely on drones or missiles) are designed to do large amounts of consistent damage at close range. Kinetic and thermal are not the most extreme resistance holes (that's EM for shield and explosive for armor) but it hits a moderately low point in both shield and armor before hardeners, meaning you can deal effective damage to about the widest variety of ships in the game.

Speaking in terms of PvP specifically, generally speaking any half-competent PvP ship is built around some degree of omni-tank, which means at minimum they'll have filled in the resist hole. This makes the de facto base shield resist for shield tankers 35 to 55% and the base exp resist for armor tankers 45-60%. Essentially, damage type isn't a huge concern, Amarr, Gallente, and Caldari gunships have no real issues. It might slow you down in _ganking_, but that's not really PvP so much as just being annoying.
Kahega Amielden
Rifterlings
#3 - 2012-07-02 20:33:34 UTC  |  Edited by: Kahega Amielden
Quote:
Projectiles have what's usually regarded as the best ammo selection and only suffer targeting delay.


Projectiles have the same 10 second timer as missiles. Missile damage type versatility is either on part with projectiles (in the case of Kinetic bonused ships) or better than projectiles (in case of ships without a specific damage type bonus). All projectile ships are free to pick their damage types without losing bonuses, but there's no kinetic option and all of the other damage types are diluted...And t2 ammo is all explosive.



Paying attention to damage types is still important. While yes, most PVP ships will fill major resist holes, the hole will very rarely become the strongest resist.
Lost Greybeard
Drunken Yordles
#4 - 2012-07-02 20:58:40 UTC
Kahega Amielden wrote:
Paying attention to damage types is still important. While yes, most PVP ships will fill major resist holes, the hole will very rarely become the strongest resist.


No, with a lazy fill-in fit it will be the _second_ highest resist. Which isn't really much better as you typically want to target the _weakest_, which in an offensively-fit ship with minimal tank is usually Kinetic or Thermal due to simple fill-in with one hardener. On a _heavily_ tanked ship it can go either way, yeah, and if it's a shielder using the actual omni modules EM is still your friend, I guess.

There are still subtleties like chewing off shield on an armor tanker quickly with EM and saving some ammo of the appropriate type for things likely to have no tank at all (tackle frigates that rely on speed and need to die before their spiral finishes), but in the context of the New Player forum it's not terribly important, and your weapon systems should generally be picked on range and available damage bonuses instead as a newer player.

Also, titanium and carbonized are both Kinetic primary ammo, unless something has changed recently, so that bit's just outright incorrect. Speaking of which, T2 ammo is explosive with secondary kinetic damage, not straight explosive, so good job whining about something that's not actually, y'know, real.

Link to Ammo page on Wiki
Effie Jamaycia
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#5 - 2012-07-03 00:34:30 UTC
I realize it's not generally feasible to tailor your ship to specifically fit another in terms of damage type, considering you can't see exactly what resistance boosters they have on their ship. But if you knew for instance your target was flying a ship with no armor repair modules and shields have a baseline of 0% EM damage resist; it would make sense to want to fit as much EM damage as possible since most of your em damage would be going straight to the armor.

I'm just concerned about the lack of versatility hybrid weapons and ammo compared to other weapon and ammo types. It seems as though there would be at least some choice of damage when it comes to hybrid weapon ammo.
Forest Archer
State War Academy
Caldari State
#6 - 2012-07-03 02:20:23 UTC
Every type of weapon has benefits and drawbacks, that's hybrids. Just as missiles have the issues of flight type but allow for you to choose your damage type, or that lasers use cap and only do em/thermal damage yet don't have an ammo swap delay.

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Ione Hawke
Darkness Industries
#7 - 2012-07-03 07:39:18 UTC
Effie Jamaycia wrote:
I realize it's not generally feasible to tailor your ship to specifically fit another in terms of damage type, considering you can't see exactly what resistance boosters they have on their ship. But if you knew for instance your target was flying a ship with no armor repair modules and shields have a baseline of 0% EM damage resist; it would make sense to want to fit as much EM damage as possible since most of your em damage would be going straight to the armor.

I'm just concerned about the lack of versatility hybrid weapons and ammo compared to other weapon and ammo types. It seems as though there would be at least some choice of damage when it comes to hybrid weapon ammo.



Every decent shield tank will at least fit an EM-ward and plug the EM-hole and as a result either thermal or kinetic will become the lowest resist.
Luba Cibre
Global Song Setup
#8 - 2012-07-03 07:49:36 UTC
Ione Hawke wrote:
Every decent shield tank will at least fit an EM-ward and plug the EM-hole and as a result either thermal or kinetic will become the lowest resist.

Depends, but most of the people do.
That said, finding the right resist hole on a random pvp fitted hull is luck based.

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Sin Pew
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#9 - 2012-07-03 08:02:35 UTC  |  Edited by: Sin Pew
Effie Jamaycia wrote:
I realize it's not generally feasible to tailor your ship to specifically fit another in terms of damage type, considering you can't see exactly what resistance boosters they have on their ship. But if you knew for instance your target was flying a ship with no armor repair modules and shields have a baseline of 0% EM damage resist; it would make sense to want to fit as much EM damage as possible since most of your em damage would be going straight to the armor.

I'm just concerned about the lack of versatility hybrid weapons and ammo compared to other weapon and ammo types. It seems as though there would be at least some choice of damage when it comes to hybrid weapon ammo.

Damage bleads through shields when it reaches less than 25% (modified by Tactical Shield Manipulation), even if you have 0% shield resist in EM (per say). (EDIT: but it just bleeds a little, you have to peel the shields first no matter what)

CCP tries to keep a balance between weapons and ammos, or everyone would use the same and it would kill the other options and the whole manufacturing/trade market associated to it.

Actually, you can't base your own strategy on assumptions of the opponent's fitting, you may sometimes guess what fitting they'll have according to the ship they fly in some situations, because some ships can't be used in many original ways.

Instead, you'd better work on fitting against your ship's weaknesses and make the best possible use of your ship's bonuses, find the best possible compromise between tank and gank, then your skills (in-game and as a player) will do the difference.

[i]"haiku are easy, But sometimes they don't make sense, Refrigerator."[/i]
J'Poll
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#10 - 2012-07-03 08:15:34 UTC
0% resist doesn't mean you damage goes straight to armour.
It means you will do 100% of that type of damage when hitting. So ammo with 100 damage will hit for 100 damage when his resists to it are 0%. If his resists are say 66% it means you can only hit him for 34% of the damage possible, so with same ammo you can hit him for 34 damage.

Resists dont make the shield (no resist doesn't mean no shield), resists make your shield negate some of the damage. Same counts for armour and hull.
And ANY decent PvP fit will have it's resist holes plugged

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