Ships & Modules

Thanks, but it looks like that is not the general consensus.

One doesn't need to think of cycle time when the target is gone in one volley.

Overkill is wasted damage, but reps from NPCs are also wasted time. Ideally you volley each rat with each gun, but of course it isn't that simple.

Some people want maximum ROF with less damage, as this leads to less wasted damage when one groups their guns but, if you really want to do best, you would degroup guns and use exactly the amount of guns needed to alpha a ship to prevent it from using it's reps at all. NPC battleships will almost always get a rep or two in, but for all of the other rats this can be a consideration, less guns needing to be grouped to instapop a cruiser, the less wasted damage. Admittedly this is less important with weapons with a very high ROF like autocannons as it can be hard to instapop much of anything without grouping all weapons, but it is a centrally important part of maximizing PVE profit. The easiest way to see this is take a thanatos and group all fighters, and watch them waste cycles on battlecruiers when you can assign 3 to 3 battlecruisers and pop them instantly (or better yet 3 missiles and 3 guns and pop six at a time), those who keep their fighters grouped all the time will make noticeably less on their ticks than managing the alpha on ships like battlecruisers that you can kill without them getting a chance to get a single rep cycle off.

TL;DR doing too much alpha wastes damage, and doing too little lets rats repair and take longer to kill.