EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hello All!


I need some clarification...I need to understand why people use Lasers vs the other weapons system. Through my inexperienced eyes, they seem to be very lacking compared to the other option as they have low versatility and have a significant Cap cost to use.

On the other hand, lot of people use lasers. Why...other then the fact that they have infinite ammo?



Thanks for sharing the wisdom?

they're one of the best at projecting their dps to medium range (with t2 crystals, scorch in particular is stupidly good at this)
pulse lasers fit with scorch enables you to kite with short range turrets and you still have the option to switch down to close range ammo if you need.

beam lasers have excellent optimal ranges and tracking (for big guns) which means they apply their damage quite well.

Also cristals tale up shag all space and can be swapped out in a couple of seconds so no downtime for reloading.

Now its worth looking at amarr boats stats as they're designed specifically to use them and have hudge cap pools and often bonuses to keep the guns from capping you out.


And they look glorious.

As has been said, on balance they're a very efficient & competitive weapons system.

Used to be a time when all ships had 60% base EM resists. Horrible times.

As has been pointed out, their is no clearly superior weapon system. If you want to hit every time missiles are your weapon, but understand they have a low base damage point. You want to hit very hard, then tracking will be an issue. Lasers have nice base damage, are versatile across the damage types but can suffer from being to hit the bullseye for max damage.

Stated differently. A pilot who likes to get in range and orbits his target with afterburners on, is going to find that lasers perform poorly, even inside of optimal ranges. A highly skilled pilot who is adept at creating situations which have low transferals and can get into optimal ranges will excel with lasers.

The other point mentioned is the ability to change ammo types almost instantly. Missiles typically have a 10 second reload time, (35 seconds for Rapid Lights). Hybrids have 5 seconds and Projectiles 5-10 seconds depending on the type. 5-10 seconds is an eternity.

Understanding Lasers.

Questions have been answered already. People like lasers because they like Amarr ships, and that's the weapon the ships use. Some fights DO take hours of shooting, and any ship would run out of ammo given that cargo space isn't that big on a lot of ships. Options are: bring along "logistics" industrials full of ammo for reloads, or only invite laser ships when you set up your fleet.


Without prior knowledge about what the enemy will bring (intel), most people omni-tank their ship, bringing each resistance to 60+ and calling it done. After all, it's equally likely that you'll be attacked by lasers, some damn drone boat, blasters, missiles, or crazed Minmatar autocannon on full auto. Once you undock, you can't really change your defenses all that easily. So lasers or autocannons, they all hit equally hard, because you're omni-tanked.

Having intel, however, that's how the smart people play. You find out who the enemy is, you look at their killboard to see what ships they've flown in the past, you figure out limits on skillpoints given their age etc., and then you fit EM and Thermal defenses because the guy always flies Amarr ships. Well, and then you hope he doesn't bring a missile Amarr ship. Or Minmatar slaves friends.

You're firing hot beams of fiery death at your enemies. Do you really need another reason beyond that?

I'm sure that the fact that so many of the Amarrian ships look like sharks is a complete coincidence.

I can think of one.

A lot of good info so far that I will try and avoid repeating.

While lazors do use cap because of that fact Amarr ships have the best capacitor stats so the whole using cap thing has a plus side. If you fly amarr ships you will see that you can fit a lot of cap consuming mods and still be good on cap. Just dont' obsess about being cap stable in EFT.

Also I don't think that most people understand how much Amarr being the "Pretty Race" figures into how much use Amarr ships see. That is one of the problems that I have with CCPs current doctrine of nerfing what gets flown the most. Eventually Amarr ship stats will get nerfed because the ships look pretty which to me seems silly but I play the game fully zoomed out.

Also I know that it has been said but I can not put enough emphasis on the no reload time and infinite versatility with regards to range. Projectiles and Hybrids both seem to have a huge hole between long guns and short guns that is just non-existent with lazors.

To me lazors seem to be to good as compared to the other two turret types. I even have them on my Domi FFS. But then again I shoot Sansha mostly so my opinion is probably colored by that. I'm sure if I was shooting at angels I'd have a different opinion.