Ships & Modules

Hello,
Since I m bored of projectiles grazes and glances and missiles which are slow I want to try something different and Im thinking going for paladin .Some really good and old players told me that if I go for paladin i will never look back .

I would like some opinions since i have nothing trained for amarr but I have battleship 4 for gallente and some hybrids.

The thing is I want a ship with great optimal and do level 4s for SOE agents.

Also what s the ship I can try before paladin to see how lasers work?Nightmare?Apocalypse navy?Or something else?

I'd like to second the older players who said once you go Paladin you never look back. That ship is the duck's nuts.

Having said that, here's the advantages and disadvantages to the gunnery weapons systems as I see them:

- Projectiles: They have very short optimal range and very long falloff. This means that in reality, you're often fighting with up to half your paper DPS simply not there due to misses; as you noted yourself, grazes and glances. Fighting in falloff is why. Damage type select ability is good, with only Kinetic proving to be somewhat lacklustre. T2 ammo is all Explosive heavy. Good tracking and the best alpha. 10 second reload time (the longest)

- Railguns (I'll clover Blasters below): The longest range weapons in the game. If you can target it, you can hit it. Tracking is terrible (due to being the longest range weapon system) but you can still do average damage to anything past about 30-50kms. Damage type is restricted to Kinetic/Thermal. 5 second reload time.

- Blasters: Highest paper damage, best tracking, shortest range. If you can get something at your optimal (very short) you will absolutely melt it. Falloff is decent as well, so you can shoot things a little farther out, but as with Projectiles, damage drops sharply past about 50% of your falloff and Blasters don't have as much falloff as projectiles. Damage types restricted to Kinetic/Thermal. 5 second reload time.

- Lasers: The middle of the range. Good damage, ok tracking, good alpha. Their strength lies in their ability to always be shooting at their optimal. Instant reloads mean you can go from sniping at 80kms with scorch to melting faces at 15kms with the click of a button. If you have the correct ammo on hand, you should never see grazes unless something is close enough that you can't track it. Longest optimal range among the short range weapons systems and a semi-oversized long range system (Tachyons). T1 ammo never runs out, T2 and faction ammo does. Damage type limited to EM and Thermal only, with closer range ammo leaning more towards Thermal and longer ranges leaning more towards EM.

Why do I say go lasers if they are mediocre at everything? You can't get the face melting DPS of Blasters, you can't get the huge alpha of Artillery and you can't get the obscene range of Railguns. What good are they?

Blasters can't shoot to 80km, Pulse Lasers can.
Artillery has good alpha, but less DPS and is more prone to wasting damage by massively over-killing a target. Also you can take a nap between shots.
Railguns can't track targets in close and have anemic DPS.

As a laser user, you have 80-90% of the strengths of the other weapon systems but none of their weaknesses.

If you're still keen to try out lasers, I'd recommend the Apocalypse. The downside of course is that you don't really see any weapon system shine until you can fit the T2 version, this is even more so the truth with lasers, as Scorch will rock your world.

Speaking in defence of the other gunnery systems, they too have their strengths and as a general rule, you're going to want to use each system against the pirates that live nearby (i.e hybrids against Serpentis/Guristas, Lasers against Sansha/Blood Raiders and Projectiles against Angels).

EDIT to add: I have all of the gunnery systems trained to V with all of the spec skills at IV and all gunnery support skills at V. They are all useful in certain situations, and it will be up to you to know what those situations are.

Start with a normal Apoc and then see if you like it.

10/10 would read again