EVE New Citizens Q&A

Not all ships have the fitting room (CPU / Power Grid) to fit the best guns in class. Maximizing a ships effectiveness is not always done through dps. I've skirted the more heavy questions here to give you a general response.

Edit: Generally, the best in class short range weapon system is actually going to have higher applied and paper dps. This will also be increased by the ability to use a web/scram to increase damage application.

Hmz, first sign of an EFT warrior...just going by stats.


There is way more then just stats on which gun is best.

Look at things like how cost effective something is (a officer point might be the best in stats, but it's not effective to use).

Or ship stats, some ships just can't fit the biggest "tier" gun in the list.




Extreme close range guns not used?

Really, I think CODE. wants a word with you. As do many others that use blasters.



And why do people use the -50% range, higher damage?


Becasue, with that and dictating the fight, they win.

EVE isn't a "best stats" = win.
EVE has many factors that make you win or lose a fight.

It depends how you fight.

If you are blaster fitted for max DPS and you can catch a kiter off guard, he is toast.
If you let him dictate the range of the fight, sure the kiter will eat you alive.

Would you use ion blasters over neutron blasters? Pay attention here.

Well I see lots of dual pulse laser setups or even focused pulse laser but no gatling pulse laser. Is there a way to use the higher range ammo and dictate the fight to win when it's a 2000 optimal gun cause of -50% range ammo vs a 5000 optimal gun with lower DPS because it took the ammo that didn't reduce range? When I look at the stats for gatling and dual pulse lasers, a dual pulse with multifreq does lots of damage with it's base rate of fire and damage modifier, but also with the white crystal does even more, and had about equal range to a gatling laser with standard crystal, which is very bad damage modifier on top of lower damage crystal.

I think Shah said in some instances that can work, but in general with all the other variables out of the way, wouldn't the short range low damage modifier gun gatling pulse be inferior to the longer range dual puls?

First, a couple of people misread the OP.
He's not talking about Blasters vs Railguns. He's talking about Electron Blaster vs Neutron Blaster.

So yeah, most people do use the heavier weapons in each class, especially for short range weapons. But it's not as clear-cut a choice as you may believe it is.

For one, there's the fitting aspect - lighter weapons need much less CPU and PG and slightly less Cap/s - that can make a difference. And even though lighter weapons do slightly less paper damage, the difference is less than you might believe - especially if you have to figure in reloading time. Lighter weapons have a higher rate of fire, but an even bigger capacity, so they have to be reloaded less often.

The more important difference really is tracking vs distance. That is where the bigger differences are and if you go for extremely close distance speed-tanking, the extra tracking might help you apply more damage.

It's more common to use lighter long-distance weapons: fitting requirements are much bigger, so the difference is more noticeable and the extra tracking helps more with guns that have bad base tracking.

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As to ammo: there are two reasons why mid- and long-range ammo is rarely used.
1) You usually try to control range - given that short-range ammo is doing so much more damage, there's rarely a situation where you don't want to be in optimal range for your high-damage short-range ammo.
2) Tech 2 ammo. It's basically the damage of mid-range ammo (or better) and the range of long-range ammo (or better). There's little reason to use T1 mid- or long-range ammo. (Unless you are cheap and/or using T1 guns and/or really need that extra tracking.)

Finally, a lot of people have a hard time understanding tracking. Distance is easy: optimal is shown in the tool-tip and the default UI shows your distance to the target. If you are within optimal, you're good. Whereas you really have to search for the tracking speed of your guns, the default UI doesn't show angular velocity and there's almost no way to know the other person's sig radius, which also plays an important role in tracking. So, answering the question "Do I lose damage because of tracking?" is hard, which makes a lot of people ignore it, even though they shouldn't.

And if you ignore tracking, both lighter guns and the medium range ammo lose most of their appeal.

Okay that makes sense. Although usually dont people fit the biggest gun for short or long range and then fit a bunch of damage mods to push damage even higher? Would fitting smallest guns and pushing damage mods be sub par? It feels almost like there is a double nerf to choosing either one. If you fit tank and can only fit small guns instead of big, you lose damage from no damage mode but also then lose damage from smaller guns. If you fit with bigger guns and damage mods, your tank is still baseline of whatever it is for the ship, but you trade possible tank for double damage in a way from bigger gun and damage mods. It sounds very unstable, like would going a middle ground of small guns and damage mod or big guns and tank be useless PvP?

If you are shooting small, nimble targets, the tracking of smaller guns is often worth the lower damage output.

When I thought the Prospect would be a popular ship, I theorycrafted the best setup to gank them. My conclusion was that an electron blaster Catalyst with tracking rigs would not just outperform a neutron/DPS rig fit, but outclass it.

It is usually the case, however, that high tracking low DPS guns are only fitted on ships that can't fit a full rack of the 'best' ones for CPU or PG reasons.

Uhm.

2 things.

Fitting a tank doesn't equal not fitting damage mods. You can fit both damage mods and a tank, but that likely means not fitting the biggest guns.

Fitting the biggest guns however means you likely have to fit less tank or less damage mods (or both).


Which works best:

That depends on the situation.


If you are going to suicide gank, you know you WILL lose your ship, so fitting a massive tank is useless (CONCORD scales to the ship they are going to take down). So you will see massive damage mods / big guns fits there.


If you know that you will need a tank, you will likely trade of some of the gun ability to fit it. This way you can stay alive longer and thus deal damage over a longer period of time, even though it's maybe a bit less then you could with the biggest guns.

1 thing you do know, you can't deal any damage with your biggest guns if your enemy can kill you in 1 or 2 shot. That is a known fact.




So, you will have to make a decision on what you need. Tank or Gank, for the duty you are going to use the ship for...and fthen fit accordingly to that duty.

Okay I understand that, I think it's maybe something unique to frigs and destroyers then? When I push 200 AC on a rifter, it only needs 2 gyros to get 43 dps with no skills, and will take up less cpu and slots than putting on 125 AC, which needs 3 gyro to hit 43 dps. The same is also true of punisher frig. gatling vs focused, the CPU use will be almost identical for the three turrets with the right damage mods to make their DPS equal, means one more for the gatling. Things get even worse for the gatling when going from all skills at zero to all skills at V, because now the focused actually take up less CPU.

When I look at these things, the only thing that bigger guns have a disadvantage over is tracking and powergrid use, but I find it hard to use up PG anyway...