Cuttie
- Thread starter BigPapaK60
- Start date
Welcome aboard!
Right now balance is not in so it's a hard question to answer as a lot changes between patches... but perhaps a few questions will help find the right PEW for you:
- What's your fighiting style, close and personal or far and spacious?
- Can you land your shots every time or do you miss as much as you hit (like me)?
- Are you looking to kill your target outright or just disable it?
- Will you be okay with having to go back to rearm when your ammo runs out or will you be happier with having infinate ammo but having to wait for a targets shields to falter before doing damage?
Great timing on this question. So I've been absent for 2-3 years, finally built a rig that can keep up, and at the IAE bought a Cutty Black. I've spent the last month learning how to fly again. Now I'm ready for some pew-pew myself. I've done enough flying missions to save up some aUEC, and was just getting ready to see if I could upgrade some stuff and go do some shoot 'em up.
- What's your fighiting style, close and personal or far and spacious?
Was doing close in, but if I can figure out how to lock in missiles, would go for the far and spacious.
- Can you land your shots every time or do you miss as much as you hit (like me)?
I miss way more than I hit! Grab another beer, miss even more!
- Are you looking to kill your target outright or just disable it?
Obliterate targets at this point. Boarding parties will come much later, I think.
- Will you be okay with having to go back to rearm when your ammo runs out or will you be happier with having infinate ammo but having to wait for a targets shields to falter before doing damage?
I'd prefer to not have to go back. But if the ballistic is much more effective, I can certainly live with going back to rearm.
I know I'm not @BigPapaK60, but maybe it helps both of us!
Kind thanks space wandererers, so:
- Will you be okay with having to go back to rearm when your ammo runs out or will you be happier with having infinite ammo but having to wait for a targets shields to falter before doing damage?
I'd prefer to not have to go back. But if the ballistic is much more effective, I can certainly live with going back to rearm.
As you may be aware there are two main types of weapon, Ballistic and Energy. Ballistic are ammo limited but have positive side effects like lower signatures to avoid detection, and they bypass a certain amount of shields and do their damage direct to the armour. Energy have no ammo limit but will effect your ships energy output meaning a bit of a juggling act between your shields and weapons in battle. Once an enemies shields are down, energy rounds cut through armour like butter, though.
Sounds like what you are looking for is energy, the advantage of no ammo limit is a big one.
- Are you looking to kill your target outright or just disable it?
Obliterate targets at this point. Boarding parties will come much later, I think.
As you may be aware, there are two main types of damage in the game - Destructive and Distortion. Destructive is just that, made to blow up ships you can blow bits off another craft but their intention is to damage and destroy. Distortion does minimal damage to hulls, but his high shield damage and penetrates into ships to damage components.
Sounds like you are looking for damage over distortion, but perhaps consider mixing a few distortion with damage to see if you can get shields to drop faster.
- Can you land your shots every time or do you miss as much as you hit (like me)?
I miss way more than I hit! Grab another beer, miss even more!
There several types of weapon at the moment, but mostly fire as Canon/Autocanon and Repeaters/machine guns.
The Canon/Autocanon fire higher damage shots slower, so if you get two shots a second but if you are only on target for half a second per second, you have hit them once (and if that half second falls between your two shots, you have not hit them at all) whereas with a machine gun/repeater the shots have much lower damage but if you fire 20 rounds a second and are on target for half a second you have hit them 10 times.
The difference between a Canon and an Autocanon is a canon is a shot per click, it will only shoot if you click no holding the button down, the autocanon you hold the mouse button down and it will continue to fire until you stop holding the button. In a game like this, it is pointless to not have an autocannon. The Repeaters (Energy) and Machine Gun (ballistic) are just that, fast firing guns which spit out a stream of lower powered shots as long as you have your finger on the button.
For people like me who have a hard time keeping shots on tearget, Repeaters/Machine Guns are the ones to go for, Canon are far too easy to miss with.
- What's your fighiting style, close and personal or far and spacious?
Was doing close in, but if I can figure out how to lock in missiles, would go for the far and spacious.
Canon have the longest range but are too slow firing for close combat so you need to be able to keep your distance, Repeaters are good between close and medium range but we also have a wild card:
Scatter/Shot guns for super close range. These are very, very powerful very, very close up. You have to make sure almost all of the pellets hit, so they are better against larger targets, but if they do you get a hellva lot of damage all at once. I am not very good with them so don't know much beyond that but believe that there are ballistic and energy versions.
To fire missles, lock on by clicking the middle mouse wheel/button when you have a ship targeted, once the locking animaiton completes hold the middle mouse wheel/button to fire them off.
I believe Energy Repeaters would be what will do you best to get on with to start.
Advice: Get into Arena Commander, rent some of the options you like the look of with the rental REC currency and have a go with them (assuming it still works properly). You may find that some of what I have said above definitely applies to your style, but some doesn't.
Can't really go wrong with the laser repeaters low ish power usage and cooling needs and good on shields.
My 2 cents:
To start, let me recommend this calculator for planning loadouts: https://www.erkul.games/
Now, the first question is whether you're one of those guys who can do 180 no-scope snipes all day, or if you need bit of assist with the aim.
I can't do them no-scopes, I use gimbals. Bit less damage, but my hit rate goes just waaay up so for me personally, that's more damage overall. But if you got the sort of skill where you can just stay on target 24/7, you might do better with fixed weapons. But I don't think the difference between different sizes of weapons is really that huge, in most scenarios, to worry too much about this.
Secondly, there are 3 different loadouts that I'd consider depending on your intended target:
If you're hunting small ships, ballistic gatlings are way nice. The default loadout with 2 ballistics, two laser aint bad. Keep in mind that the ballistics, while they do penetrate shields, most shields absorb 95% of the ballistic damage at full health, going down to 50%, that is, only 5% to 50% of the ballistic damage actually penetrates the shield. Though this is fine against small ships that don't have that much component HP to begin with, that tiny bit damage that penetrates may already destroy stuff quite quickly.
Also, if you're hunting small to medium sized ships, you might want to take laser repeaters, as you won't be running out of ammo. Though unless you're fighting several freelancers or something, you wouldn't really run out of that ballistic ammo either, S2 Scorpion GT-215 has 8k ammo, so if you had a loadout with 4 ballistic gatling guns, you'd have 672000 damage in them before they run out. For reference, freelancer has 43 752 shield hp total, and you only need to destroy 1/4th of this, that is, one shield face, to really damage the hull. Sure, some of that damage potential you have will be wasted as you miss and some of it is spent against shield regen, but... still, you'll be fine as long as you don't just shoot random space rocks all the time.
Now, if you're going after larger targets, let me tell you about our savior: shield regen. Something like Starfarer Gemini has S3 shields. If it's specifically using FR-86 overclocked, it has 6772 hp/s continuous shield regen. That is, if you want to destroy the ship, your loadout has to be doing more damage than that per second. If you have 4 gimballed Badgers, even if you overclock them, that's only 1 761 dps, which is not enough to do anything against the gemini. You might be able to throw in some missiles and maybe get the shield down, but missiles aren't a surefire solution and you'll run out of those real quick. Instead, 4 Dominance-2 scatterguns will do up to 7013 dps, that'll at least be effective against the shield, as in, you'll *eventually* get it down. Especially if you get one or two missiles to hit and with the assist from the manned turret. Though that'd be one very long fight. Meanwhile, 4xS3 dominance 3 scatterguns do 8 568 dps overclocked. That's seemingly not that big of a bump, but the time to get one shield face down goes down significantly:
19 111/(7013-6772) = 79 seconds of continuously hitting the gemini with the full scatter (Not gonna happen)
19 111/(8568-6772) = 10 seconds of continuously hitting the gemini with the full scatter (Might happen)
Keep in mind that you need to stay *very* close to the target to get the full dps of scatterguns. And you basically need a macro key that sends mouse clicks every 0.35 seconds (mb1, 350ms, mb2, 350ms, repeat. That way, you got fire groups 0 and 1 doing staggered fire. Might need adjustments once overclocked.), as scatterguns don't continuously fire with a single press, which is just dumb.
One thing to keep in mind is that the situation might change with any update. Like scatterguns probably shouldn't be the ultimate answer against larger targets, the current situation is as if a shotgun was entirely ineffective for hunting ducks, but would be the ultimate weapon for hunting main battle tanks. Which is bass ackwards, so I'd expect that to change, possibly with the introduction of hull armor. Also, I think there was a bug about some laser weapons penetrating some shields.
To start, let me recommend this calculator for planning loadouts: https://www.erkul.games/
Now, the first question is whether you're one of those guys who can do 180 no-scope snipes all day, or if you need bit of assist with the aim.
I can't do them no-scopes, I use gimbals. Bit less damage, but my hit rate goes just waaay up so for me personally, that's more damage overall. But if you got the sort of skill where you can just stay on target 24/7, you might do better with fixed weapons. But I don't think the difference between different sizes of weapons is really that huge, in most scenarios, to worry too much about this.
Secondly, there are 3 different loadouts that I'd consider depending on your intended target:
If you're hunting small ships, ballistic gatlings are way nice. The default loadout with 2 ballistics, two laser aint bad. Keep in mind that the ballistics, while they do penetrate shields, most shields absorb 95% of the ballistic damage at full health, going down to 50%, that is, only 5% to 50% of the ballistic damage actually penetrates the shield. Though this is fine against small ships that don't have that much component HP to begin with, that tiny bit damage that penetrates may already destroy stuff quite quickly.
Also, if you're hunting small to medium sized ships, you might want to take laser repeaters, as you won't be running out of ammo. Though unless you're fighting several freelancers or something, you wouldn't really run out of that ballistic ammo either, S2 Scorpion GT-215 has 8k ammo, so if you had a loadout with 4 ballistic gatling guns, you'd have 672000 damage in them before they run out. For reference, freelancer has 43 752 shield hp total, and you only need to destroy 1/4th of this, that is, one shield face, to really damage the hull. Sure, some of that damage potential you have will be wasted as you miss and some of it is spent against shield regen, but... still, you'll be fine as long as you don't just shoot random space rocks all the time.
Now, if you're going after larger targets, let me tell you about our savior: shield regen. Something like Starfarer Gemini has S3 shields. If it's specifically using FR-86 overclocked, it has 6772 hp/s continuous shield regen. That is, if you want to destroy the ship, your loadout has to be doing more damage than that per second. If you have 4 gimballed Badgers, even if you overclock them, that's only 1 761 dps, which is not enough to do anything against the gemini. You might be able to throw in some missiles and maybe get the shield down, but missiles aren't a surefire solution and you'll run out of those real quick. Instead, 4 Dominance-2 scatterguns will do up to 7013 dps, that'll at least be effective against the shield, as in, you'll *eventually* get it down. Especially if you get one or two missiles to hit and with the assist from the manned turret. Though that'd be one very long fight. Meanwhile, 4xS3 dominance 3 scatterguns do 8 568 dps overclocked. That's seemingly not that big of a bump, but the time to get one shield face down goes down significantly:
19 111/(7013-6772) = 79 seconds of continuously hitting the gemini with the full scatter (Not gonna happen)
19 111/(8568-6772) = 10 seconds of continuously hitting the gemini with the full scatter (Might happen)
Keep in mind that you need to stay *very* close to the target to get the full dps of scatterguns. And you basically need a macro key that sends mouse clicks every 0.35 seconds (mb1, 350ms, mb2, 350ms, repeat. That way, you got fire groups 0 and 1 doing staggered fire. Might need adjustments once overclocked.), as scatterguns don't continuously fire with a single press, which is just dumb.
One thing to keep in mind is that the situation might change with any update. Like scatterguns probably shouldn't be the ultimate answer against larger targets, the current situation is as if a shotgun was entirely ineffective for hunting ducks, but would be the ultimate weapon for hunting main battle tanks. Which is bass ackwards, so I'd expect that to change, possibly with the introduction of hull armor. Also, I think there was a bug about some laser weapons penetrating some shields.
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I second all the raccomandation above, especially the DPS calculator linked by FZD, regarding that just keep in mind that some weapon does have addditional feature that are not reported in the DPS and will effect your performance.
For example, the Attrition laser repeater serie and the Dominance scattergun winn improve theyr damage the more they get hot, this is not a feature that is taken into account in the DPS, but should be considered while playing.
Another thing that is not really perceptible just looking at it is the projectile speed: the faster the projectile the easy is to score a hit since there is less time for the target to deviate from the estimated point of impact, so even if a weapon wil appear as better do the highter damage, it could inreal term be less effective do to the less shot actually hitting the target.
For me for exaple the varius Neutron weapons, like the NDB28 suks since for my flying stile I cant land enough hit to be effective...
This is the best way:
It's called "spingarda" and was used on river and lake to hunt ducks... I mean storm of ducks... on a single shot....
Not sure about it's effectivness against tanks, I suppose that if you've loaded this with a single solid round instead of half a kilo of smal pallet it chould have had something to say about it...
For example, the Attrition laser repeater serie and the Dominance scattergun winn improve theyr damage the more they get hot, this is not a feature that is taken into account in the DPS, but should be considered while playing.
Another thing that is not really perceptible just looking at it is the projectile speed: the faster the projectile the easy is to score a hit since there is less time for the target to deviate from the estimated point of impact, so even if a weapon wil appear as better do the highter damage, it could inreal term be less effective do to the less shot actually hitting the target.
For me for exaple the varius Neutron weapons, like the NDB28 suks since for my flying stile I cant land enough hit to be effective...
Ehmm.... about this sentice.... actually shotgun are not the best way to hunting ducks...
This is the best way:
It's called "spingarda" and was used on river and lake to hunt ducks... I mean storm of ducks... on a single shot....
Not sure about it's effectivness against tanks, I suppose that if you've loaded this with a single solid round instead of half a kilo of smal pallet it chould have had something to say about it...
Some great feedback! Thanks. Especially the new method for hunting ducks. I suppose it would work for goose hunting also. LOL.
I looked at the DPS calculator. I'll need more than one beer to figure it all out, but what a great site for planning loadouts. I've OBVIOUSLY got some research to do! As far as the comment about shields, that was actually the first thing I was looking to upgrade. If I stick with the Civilian grade, the 7MA Lorica gives about a 75% increase with minimal increase in power draw, and is in the affordable range for my current level of gathering aUEC. I haven't looked at the advantage of Military over Civilian, but the similar increase in protection had double the power draw for the FR-76. Why would one want to choose that one as it cost significantly more as well?
Too many choices...
I looked at the DPS calculator. I'll need more than one beer to figure it all out, but what a great site for planning loadouts. I've OBVIOUSLY got some research to do! As far as the comment about shields, that was actually the first thing I was looking to upgrade. If I stick with the Civilian grade, the 7MA Lorica gives about a 75% increase with minimal increase in power draw, and is in the affordable range for my current level of gathering aUEC. I haven't looked at the advantage of Military over Civilian, but the similar increase in protection had double the power draw for the FR-76. Why would one want to choose that one as it cost significantly more as well?
Too many choices...
The English term for that is actually a "punt gun". Also known as "a very large shotgun"
I second all the raccomandation above, especially the DPS calculator linked by FZD, regarding that just keep in mind that some weapon does have addditional feature that are not reported in the DPS and will effect your performance.
For example, the Attrition laser repeater serie and the Dominance scattergun winn improve theyr damage the more they get hot, this is not a feature that is taken into account in the DPS, but should be considered while playing.
Another thing that is not really perceptible just looking at it is the projectile speed: the faster the projectile the easy is to score a hit since there is less time for the target to deviate from the estimated point of impact, so even if a weapon wil appear as better do the highter damage, it could inreal term be less effective do to the less shot actually hitting the target.
For me for exaple the varius Neutron weapons, like the NDB28 suks since for my flying stile I cant land enough hit to be effective...
Ehmm.... about this sentice.... actually shotgun are not the best way to hunting ducks...
This is the best way:
It's called "spingarda" and was used on river and lake to hunt ducks... I mean storm of ducks... on a single shot....
Not sure about it's effectivness against tanks, I suppose that if you've loaded this with a single solid round instead of half a kilo of smal pallet it chould have had something to say about it...
When you absolutely, positively gotta eradicate every single mothaducker in the lake... The Punt Gun... accept no substitute.The English term for that is actually a "punt gun". Also known as "a very large shotgun"
When looking at components take also a looks at the "power draw request time" and the "dirstortion recovery time".Some great feedback! Thanks. Especially the new method for hunting ducks. I suppose it would work for goose hunting also. LOL.
I looked at the DPS calculator. I'll need more than one beer to figure it all out, but what a great site for planning loadouts. I've OBVIOUSLY got some research to do! As far as the comment about shields, that was actually the first thing I was looking to upgrade. If I stick with the Civilian grade, the 7MA Lorica gives about a 75% increase with minimal increase in power draw, and is in the affordable range for my current level of gathering aUEC. I haven't looked at the advantage of Military over Civilian, but the similar increase in protection had double the power draw for the FR-76. Why would one want to choose that one as it cost significantly more as well?
Too many choices...
The first is the time that require the component to reach the maximum efficiency, that means for a powerplant to provide the maximum nominal output, or for a cooler to reach the maximum dissipation capacity, while the second I think is self explanatory is the time need foor recovery after being shut down by an EMP attack or a distorion weapon.
Usually for a combat ship the lower are those the better, meaning you can reach the peak efficiency sooner and recover rapidly fomr EMP, just keep in mind that for shield the "power draw time" does NOT rappresent the time to ereach the full shield capacity.
Alsto talking to shield one of the key factor is the regen speed: industrial sheild foor example have a greater overall capacity, but they regen rate is very slow and olso theyr recovery time after being shutdown is far more long thena military one.
So if you are going into combat you'll usually favoor a more rapid regenerating shiled over one that has more hit point but is basically useless after it has been depleated.
Exactly as @Cugino83 said, it's not just about the total HP of the shield.
For a more concrete example, let's compare Cutlass black with Rampart v FR-76
Rampart has 32 085 shield HP (8 021 hp per face) and 268 regen overclocked. Damage regen delay is 0s, that is, it recharges continuously under fire.
FR-76 has 24 793 shield HP (6 198 per face) and 480 regen overclocked. Again, regen delay is 0s.
When it comes to their stealth values, well, either shield makes you visible at max range anyhow, their distortion dmg values and recovery are pretty much similar, etc. etc.
Let's say the attacker is 315p with CF-337 Panther laser repeaters, overclocked for 1 320 dps
Rampart: 8021/(1320-268) = 7.6 seconds of continuous fire for one shield face to fall
FR-76: 6198/(1320-480) = 7.4 seconds of continuous fire for one shield face to fall
Now, that's basically identical in this scenario, where the attacker has the sort of firepower that can totally just overpower the shield regen.
What if it was 315p with same weapons, but without overclock? Now, the dps is 880.
Rampart: 8021/(880-268) = 13.1 seconds of continuous fire for one shield face to fall
FR-76: 6198/(880-480) = 15.5 seconds of continuous fire for one shield face to fall
Here we see that as the firepower decreases, the strength of FR-76s regen value is starting to shine.
Just for fun, what about if that 315p was using gimballed weapons, CF-227 badgers without overclock? The dps is 587.
Rampart: 8021/(587-268) = 25 seconds of continuous fire for one shield face to fall
FR-76: 6198/(587-480) = 58 seconds of continuous fire for one shield face to fall
As we can see, the less powerful the attacker is, the more that recharge matters. And even if the attacker has DPS that totally overpowers the recharge rate, having 2k more HP on each shield face doesn't really help Rampart that much, we're talking fractions of second here.
Now, of course that recharge matters in other ways as well.
Rampart takes 123 seconds to recharge back to full (overclocked).
Meanwhile, FR-76 takes only 53 seconds to recharge back to full (overclocked).
That is, during dogfight, your opponent probably won't be doing like 10 seconds of continuous fire on you, there will be some gaps. These gaps will help FR-76 much more than they will help Rampart.
So all in all, you probably want FR-76 rather than rampart in basically every scenario. The only other shields worth considering for S2 in my opinion are Sukoran (100% phys damage absorption, but 18 second regen delay after damaged) and Umbra (Much better stealth values). The rest I really don't see the point, unless it's some super specific scenario where you're maybe limited by power draw or cooling.
TL;DR:
- Get FR-76, unless you're playing stealth
- Always overclock your shields and guns, unless you're playing stealth
- Make sure you have the cooling and power plant capacity to overclock your shields and guns
- Things may change in any patch, at any time.
Thanks @FZD for doing all the math that I don't want to do! 
Just to reinterate on the subject: do not make your choices by only looks at the big shiny number: SC is way more complex then that and almost EVERY item have some plus and drawback (when they do not is likely becouse the full mechanics is not yet implemented).
now, about this:
Cooling and power plant sure matters, but keep in mind that overclock also put some strain in the components and that could cose a failure.
In particular weapon will overheat faster, much much faster whenoverclocked, no matter how big and efficient your cooler are.
To be more specific, overclocking in general boost the component performace, for weapon menas that fire rate is increased by abount 50%, that means more heat generated by the weapon, but also moore ammo spent (in case of balistic weapons): that mean that every second you don't hit the target you loose 50% more ammo.
Also the heat generated by the weapons is exponentially increased: for example a GT-220 (S2 gatling gun) NOT overcloked can fire for about 20 sec before overheat, the same weapon overclocled will reduce this time to about 5sec.
Sure in those 5 sec you spit out a lot more bullet and can potentially do more damage, but after that you'll have your pants down ultill they fully cool down.
Just to reinterate on the subject: do not make your choices by only looks at the big shiny number: SC is way more complex then that and almost EVERY item have some plus and drawback (when they do not is likely becouse the full mechanics is not yet implemented).
now, about this:
Be mindfull with the overclock....
Cooling and power plant sure matters, but keep in mind that overclock also put some strain in the components and that could cose a failure.
In particular weapon will overheat faster, much much faster whenoverclocked, no matter how big and efficient your cooler are.
To be more specific, overclocking in general boost the component performace, for weapon menas that fire rate is increased by abount 50%, that means more heat generated by the weapon, but also moore ammo spent (in case of balistic weapons): that mean that every second you don't hit the target you loose 50% more ammo.
Also the heat generated by the weapons is exponentially increased: for example a GT-220 (S2 gatling gun) NOT overcloked can fire for about 20 sec before overheat, the same weapon overclocled will reduce this time to about 5sec.
Sure in those 5 sec you spit out a lot more bullet and can potentially do more damage, but after that you'll have your pants down ultill they fully cool down.