EVE New Citizens Q&A

depends on size, ship your flying and what you're shooting.

This. Mainly the latter, it is situational.

Honestly they are the worst 2 weapon systems in the game. They are limited in their damage types while range and damage aren't better than projectile, missiles, and drones.

Hybrids are just as locked in damage as lasers are. I don't do anything where my enemies are so strictly one sided resists that it matters which I pick, in that regard.

I use drones, so guns was just some secondary DPS to apply, I used lasers so I didn't need to carry ammo plus they look cooler . Possible with a set of faction multifrequency to swap into for extra damage on close large ships.

Now I use missiles, not all those range issues, just shoot at the rats where ever they start and until they are all dead, on the other hand even far away elite frigs takes forever to missile to dead where large guns pretty much one-shot them.

*EDIT* Been using all sizes, including small lasers on cruiser to handle frigs without having to reduce main DPS from large drones.

Since flying a railgun Coercer or a beam laser Cormorant are equally bad ideas, rails and beams are sort of "bound" to their ships. Same goes for bigger versions of rails/beams. Instead, it falls to "when is it appropriate to use the ships that use these weapons"?

Railguns:

• Have very long range. Even more because of Spike ammo for T2 railguns, and because some railgun ships receive multiple range bonuses (Cormorant, Harpy, Eagle).
• Apply OK damage in the form of a Kinetic/Thermal mix.
• Have poor tracking, and are rather bad when a target gets too close.
• Take 5 seconds to swap between ammo types. Longer range ammo types do less damage, more slanted towards Kinetic, and use less cap.
• Are typically fit on shield-tanked (Caldari) ships. Some exceptions for Gallente ships.

Beam lasers:

• Have medium range. They range from just below T2 pulse lasers with Scorch, to mid-railgun range.
• Apply great damage in an EM/Thermal mix.
• Have the best tracking of the long range weapons, and with a little bit of assistance (tracking bonus, webs, etc) can hit same-size targets fairly up close.
• Instantly swap between ammo types. Longer range ammo types do less damage, more slanted towards Thermal, and use less cap the closer they are to Standard ammo.
• Are typically fit on armor-tanked (Amarr) ships.

They both benefit enormously from range bonuses, as the longer range means you can either hit farther away, or indirectly increase your damage since you can use shorter range ammos.

Which are "better"? Neither. It depends on your situation.

Purifier, Malediction, Omen, Maller, Augoror, Pilgrim, Curse, Guardian, Prophecy, Damnation, Oracle, and Armageddon all make appearances in small-scale PvP. Armageddon, Abaddon and Paladin appear in high-end PvE sometimes too. Most of those are not laser ships because, yes, lasers have niche uses. They have pretty obvious vulnerabilities (armor ships, tracking disruptors, capacitor drains) so they're not as multi-purpose as, for example, drones. When used in the right circumstance, though, I've seen ships both from those mentioned above and others not mentioned perform admirably. That includes using beam lasers.

Historically, laser ships (especially battleships) have seen a large amount of usage. The current metagame is a tough place for them, though.



Rail Tengu is one of the current dominant fleet metas (on Reddit here). Railguns make an appearance in small-gang PvP on Merlins, Atrons, Tristans, Cormorants, Comets, Thoraxes, and Nagas. They make an appearance in PvE on the Megathron and its hull variants. They are far from unused.

"Not as [popular / convenient / easy / easy to train] as [current best possible option]" is the story of balancing in Eve (and almost every other MMO out there). Since balancing a game to the point where everything sees use is hard/impossible, there will always be a "most effective" way to do stuff, which will change over time as rebalancing happens. Only using what is "best" is aiming for a moving target that may rapidly change from under you.

An alternative to chasing the meta is to train and fly whatever you find fun. Almost everything "works" to some degree. You might not be as effective, and might get rejected by some groups who rely on fleet uniformity, but on the upside you're more "nerf-proof" and are hopefully having more fun.

Anyway, that's my 0.02 ISK take on it. Hope it helps!

I love my scram and web.

And then let the rest of the fleet worry about the actual shooting.

p.s. Thanks CCP for the fireworks, my stash was running low. I still think that anybody that is about to die to a fleet, at least should die with a smile on their face so I shoot fireworks at them.