EVE New Citizens Q&A

Something I have been thinking about recently involves the fact that high power guns tend to break the bank for fitting if you put all of them in the slots, such as focused pulse/beam. Would a better option be to use less guns of the more powerful type, and then have the last slot up for use as utility, such as NOS or NEUT, etc?

Also beware that the high power gun may not always be the "better" gun. Yes, against a stationary large target you'll have higher dps, but the smaller version often have better tracking, meaning that in an actual combat situation you end up doing more damage.

One of my first favorite setups was complete "insanity": a smartbomb Condor. Great against anything one can get under the guns of, and a Condor is quick enough to get under the guns of a lot of things.

Why it worked:
* Infinite capacitor, thanks to a NOS.
* No tracking issues.
* Kills drones.

How I came up with it: experimentation. "What would happen if..." I also ignored conventional wisdom about what wouldn't work, and used the same wisdom to craft something that did.

Don't be afraid to experiment, but do get platinum insurance.

I see. A torm with 3 dual pulse and conflag vs 2 focused pulse actually does more damage with the three lasers, bu with an identical volley damage. If that third high slot did something to break their tank, like neut, then even at a lower DPS may not matter because they're not able to spend cap into tank, which Im assuming for frigs is either speed mixed with passive or speed mixed with active.

I suppose if you had 100 DPS, but they had a recovery/avoidance rate of 60 DPS, you're only really doing 40 DPS, and if you only had 80 DPS, but you lower their recovery/avoidance rate to 10 DPS, you're still coming out ahead with 70 DPS, and even DPS might not even matter if they cant escape or shoot back, you could do 5 DPS and eventually kill them.

If you are not using EFT (Eve Fitting Tool) then you might want to start. Like other's have said you need to understand gunnery if you want to understand combat in this game and that is true even if you fly missile boats. There are lots of gunnery and tracking guides out there as well as a flash based tutorial. Do some google searching.

Like other's have said there is no one answer for any of these types of questions everything is situational and personal. Not only does what you are trying to do figure in but your personal play style and character's skill point spread figure into it as well.

The only real rule that I can tell you with regards to this kind of stuff is that from my experience when dealing with long range guns like artillery, beams and rails it is in most cases not ideal to use the biggest ones for PvE. The projectiles, meaning artillery, are probably the worst offenders in this in that the 1400's have a very high alpha which while good for PvP lead to lots of over kill which is wasted DPS also the 1400s have a smaller clip size which means more reloading, which again is lost dps and the tracking on the 1400's is terrible. I've noticed a similar effect with the 720's versus the 650s on the mediums. Beams and Rails while not the same are similar especially with regards to fitting requirements where they seem even harder to fit.

and this is why I like ships with utility highslots, (un?)fortunately ccp seems like the idea of getting rid of or limiting these slots on most ships. For most uses that is a benefit as they gain a mid/low and makes the ship more useful, but sometimes I miss them.

years ago I had to choose between an 8/4/7 abaddon, and 8/3/8 geddon, the abaddon had 8 guns and a nice resist bonus, where the geddon had a utility high but only 3 mid slots. most of time time I took the abaddon. Sometimes I took the abaddon, but switched a gun for a neut, as that might turn off someones tank and let our dps get a kill. These days I'd probably take the geddon almost every time, but that is the effect of balance changes, and the environment I usually fight in. and a BS brawl isn't really a fight I'd expect to get in so that takes the abaddon out for me. Then there were spider rep tactics, where every BS in gang fits a remote rep, made utility highs nice to have.

Also I went on a roam with a hyperion, back then it had 8 highs and 8 turret slots. a neut might have been helpful, but I had 8 guns. A neut may have been useful when I got into a fight with someone who could kite me. I had a web+scram so if I could have just caught them for a moment I would very likely have had them. Also a smartbomb would have been very useful as I got swarmed with ECM drones, and didn't even get a chance to fight back. I let myself get caught because I was tired, done with my roam, and far from home. I didn't really mind the loss as it was a suicide mission from the start. but to just get jammed out by drones, what a boring way to go.

Similar points for other ship classes, but a lot also depends on things like gang size, what ships you are with, current meta, and whatever else.

A good way to think about this problem is. If you can't fit a full rack of the appropriate guns because you can't afford to dont fly the ship. Down size what you are trying to do and fly a lesser ship until you can afford to appropriately fit the ship. Losing a poorly fit ship will cost you much more in the long run then what you will gain by flying something appropriate to your SP. Join ( M.Public Channel ) and any member of our corp would gladly give you an explanation of gunnery and the things to think about.

Tristan

If that is the case.

Ships in eve are built to be optimal with a full rack of highslots (Plus or minus utility slots). If you cant fit a full rack you will also probably have a problem fitting a tank or prop. OP decide what is important to you Tank or DPS or Utility then fit the important part first then fit the rest around that. If power grid is a problem bring down the size of the guns till you can have a full rack. If it is capacitor try and compensate with other modules. the other points made here are all excellent.

DPS will win the day but try and understand what is needed to apply that damage weather it is slowing the enemy or making your sensors more effective.

Tristan

If those high slots are empty, there is almost certainly an objectively better fit.

Very hard to get across fitting discriptions in text.

Tristan