I switched to running long range lasers after trying all of the alternatives and it was a game changer for me. I fly a Vette in a HazRes or CZ and the LR weapons help enormously. I use a fast charge Biweave, which also helps and between these two I can manage my pips pretty easily. Incoming ships are often stripped of their shields before they even get within their 3km firing range. Once inside 2km I open up the huge Multicannon to finish the job. If you haven't tried LR lasers (especially beams with thermal vent) and fly a larger/slower/less manuvable ship with a large PP and PD, then give LR lasers a go. I've switched my entire fleet over to LR now (but I like to fly the big ships, the FDL / Chieftain is just too much hard work). The smaller ships I use for cannon flying and exploration rather than combat. If I'm on the edge of the bubble with only outposts I fly a Python with frag cannons (for close quarter combat). As others have said, it largely depends upon your playing style.
It depends on your play style and ship, I fly a mamba and long range beams don't make sense after trying them compared to efficient. The mamba is a very fast ship that can keep close to it's target. In my experience, I have been doing an average of 10% more damage in a burst with long range than efficient, but I was using 75% more distributor power and producing twice as much heat from firing it so in sustained DPS I was doing similar sustained Damage while being able to keep more of my pips to shields and engines at the same time or being able to fire the beam laser forever
especially with a fast ship you could even with more ease stay out of the others weapon range while shooting him all the time. and if you fly smart then its even irrelevant how strong/good the other is (because he has to fly a straight line to at least try to reach you) ...
It depends how you play the game. If you can make long range work for you, and find them useful, then that's brilliant. If they work with your ship's setup and you're happy with the results then that's awesome, and more power to you. You make some good points, and illustrate the positives well. But I'll try to explain why I don't use them. Ever. 1. For me it's not about failing to realise the damage falloff. Anyone who uses non-long range lasers soon realises that at ranges up to the maximum of the weapon, all you're trying to do is tag someone. To get them to come to you. And you said it yourself, once you tag a ship they start flying towards you. Once they do that, the closer they get, the less useful the long range mod becomes. In RES sites and CZs, relatively few ships are at, or stay at ranges where you need to do more damage at long range. They try to hug your backside and orbit you like your own personal moon. Which makes Efficient preferable. For me, anyway. And if you're bounty hunting with a fast scan KWS, then you HAVE to get within 3km at the very furthest (with an A-class one) to even scan the ships. Which kinda limits the long range mod's usefulness. 2. The distributor draw isn't just about having enough to power the things. For me it's about having the distributor to fire all my weapons while keeping my shields as strong as possible. That's just how I play. SYS pips gives you natural shield strength and resistances on top of what you can achieve with engineering, so it seems a wasted opportunity to not utilise that mechanic to its fullest. Long range only really works IF you can micromanage your pips, and swap them out when needed, between WEP and SYS. But again, at closer ranges I find that you end up playing unnecessary pip gymnastics because the long range lasers suck up too much of your charge. And a lot of people don't even bother. They put 4 pips into WEP and just leave it there, then wonder why their shields are getting obliterated. 3. I use my SLFs extensively. If I need to tag a ship at very long ranges while scooping up materials I send my SLF after it, then tell them to come back once it's been tagged. Same if a ship runs off. I send my SLF after it. And since my pilot is Elite, they do more damage to it than even Long Range lasers could. If employed effectively, they provide a lot more utility than just an emergency backup for when there's a ship too small for you to turn on. They basically give you long range lasers for free. 4. I hate overcharging my powerplant. Aside from the distributor draw, there's also the power draw. And the need to carry shield cells because your shields are weaker than they could be in order to fire them. For me that feels like an unnecessary waste of power. Heat may not be an issue when you're firing thermal vent lasers, but it can be when you're scooping from a sun or trying to jump somewhere. As I said above, it's a matter of how you play the game. There isn't really any wrong way to do things. You do what works for you. And what's best is dependent on how you fly your ship. Which is the beauty of this game. The freedom to find that out for yourself.
I use 3x Large Long Range on my Python, but you have some very good points there! Maybe, I should engineer two of them as efficient and not Long Range, that way I could still tag people
Good points here, generally. Efficiency for me is more useful than range. Like you, I tag a target and send out small craft to harass at range. Baiting he/she to come towards you makes sense, and then the Pulse Lasers can do their work. The damage falloff is mitigated, especially for fast craft that bolt towards you like it's a 3km sprint. I use an Anaconda, so speed wasn't the deciding the factor when purchasing it. Again, you make a good point about power distribution. I use a 8C Bi-Weave (with three shield boosters), so not having at least three pips in Systems makes little sense to me. I realize that you made this comment some time ago, but I've only just seen this video.
This is the type of coment that i have to give regards... very well explained. i never use long range aswell, to be honest i think the only way they can be better used is to make one build that works from a distance, so that u can gain more damage and still have enought defense because your target wont hit you hard enought from so far away if they ever hit you. But again that is a very especific way to make it work and is boring as shit fighting running like a chiken... so yeah, for me they are worthless. there is a few more things to mention, against bigger ships you will always be close enough to make the efficient more effective, and against smaller prey the dropoff damage just doesnt matter. if u are flying a fucking corvette is not to kill eagles for crist sake, so if they are tagget with a bigger ship you will kill then regardless the dropoff damage after you have dealt with the condas, vettes, type 10 or cutter. the only place that using long range makes sense is in conflict zones, since you dont want to be close to where the hell is breaking loose, and you can snipe your targets, and if they decide to como to you the other ship he was atacking will be free hitting on his ass all the way to you. on a side not, type 10 and cutter can make good use of the long range, one because can hit when running, and is quite good at that, and the other because is too slow to chase people, but the distributor draw can hinder a few choices in builds.
This is literally most generic points that everyone can tell by themselves already. Nobody needs smartasses that says "You do what works for you". No shit! People look online for useful things like data and facts - not for your life advices. Video decently explained it, you just wrote wall of text with nothing new in it, perhaps to feel better because "behold muh way of play, I feel so smart now". Thanks.
Efficient lasers are usually the best choice for aggressive ships that have historically weak distributors, such as a vulture or an FDL. This allows them to extend their dogfights and keep shooting against thicker targets. It's also good for ships for whom combat is a secondary function and they wish to preserve their distributor pips for other purposes, like a small, fast ship that prefers evasion over everything else. Long range lasers are great for larger ships that fight behind others, because they're getting full damage no matter the range, jitter notwithstanding, and their distributors are probably good enough to keep up anyway. They also give that long range ship a considerable headstart in terms of shield and hull damage, since most ships have to cover about 3km of ground before they can return fire. Long range is also good for turrets, allowing a well-protected turret boat to set his guns on "fire at will" and be able to engage a much bigger sphere of targets. I wouldn't use long range on a ship that plans to be in the thick of things, circling foes at 500M, but with a little positioning and a good wingman, long range lasers can score tons of free damage at a very safe distance. They prevent foes from disengaging to reduce your damage and they make it incredibly difficult to run from a fight.
In my opinion it's a matter of ones playstyle. You obviously aren't going to chase targets around in a vette than you would in a chieftain for example. So having long range weapons makes a lot more sense in this case. As you said, you got their shields down when they didn't even had the chance to pull the trigger. Great vid, as always!
you have a very good point and your videos have shown that you are efficiently using your ship to the max of its capabilities. I for once thinking of re-engineering my efficient laser (Pulse) to make them long range. Now your other video about the HEAT trick to cool down your ship I am still working on getting the mats, also a very good video... I would highly recommend your viewers to review that and add those to the setup. Combined that will make a huge difference when in a combat zone or Haz-Res
I generally try and use long range as well, especially on slower ships. Only ship I run efficient lasers on is my Clipper, but that's simply to allow me to keep more pips into engines. With 500m/s normal speed I generally have no issues staying very close. Besides, the build (two thermal vent beams and inertial impact bursts) is build around being very close anyways, so the damage drop off removal of long range is kinda moot. But I agree, long range generally is the way to go with lasers. Thanks for the video and putting it out there!
How do you find the your build up against heavier targets like the conda? I was planning a similar loadout for my clipper but was worried about the weapon dist draw and enemy armor.
Hence the engineering and experimentals. Two large bursts with efficient weapon to lower heat and distributor draw, and inertial impact to be more efficient against hulls without having to rely on ammo. Two medium beams with efficient weapon and thermal vent take care of the rest of the heat and distributor issue.
I only use them so i can fire my burst almost indefinetly whilst being able to shoot woth my multi cannon. It also allows me to only put 3 pips to weapons and 3 to engine while still having good dps
One thing I see you doing that I think is a bit silly, is maxing out the engineering for long range lasers, even when you’re struggling with power. If they don’t reliably hit past 4.5km why max them out to 6 at the cost of power draw and mass. I find that maxed out grade 3-4 is very nice on my vette. Which also lets you use “oversized” easier.
especially with a fast ship you could even with more ease stay out of the others weapon range while shooting him all the time. and if you fly smart then its even irrelevant how good /strong the other is (because he has to fly a straight line to at least try to reach you) ...
I've been running long range turreted beams on my 4 smallest Corvette gun ports for quite a while now. It's particularly effective for tagging in Combat zones. The new engineering system has helped to fine tune everything so that I can use them constantly. It's a big help to burn off an opponents shield before you get within range of their weaponry.
i use 3 large pulse lasers (efficient) on my anaconda and when i spot a god target far away i send my fighter after it. As soon as it gets reed i set the fighter on maintain formation and it comes right back with my neew target :)
My Corvette uses 6 lasers in it's current build (only the large is a Overcharged MC with Corrosive). The Huge and Medium are efficient, the small are long range for tagging. With the setup I've got I tag the target with the turreted smalls, let the target come in close and blast it with the huge. If I drain the PD I can switch to the medium and small lasers (and MC too) and continue to use it while the PD recharges. Full uptime on firing weapons, and so far the setup has worked for me in PvE very well.
The long range option has it's place. I took an Imperial Courier that was mostly outfitted for racing, and put some long range lasers on it and it became something of a cheese ship against AI up to a certain point. That ship was faster going backwards than most other ships could even boost so it automatically could dictate the pace and range of a skirmish. You do 100% damage, they do 1%. Problem was that against harder defenses the lasers just wouldn't cut it. One time I fought a helpless Chieftain that had lost all it's thrusters and was drifting. I swear I had to hit it with 10 or 15 pulses just to drop the hull 1%.
Thats were a vulture with efficient beams and heat venting comes in it can dominate any short range fight one of my favorite ships to do pve in when im bored out on my big ships
another notable factor is that realistically you can use literally 1 piece of whatever the grade 1 long range mod needs since trying to engage at long distances (with gimbals) is basically pointless with the jitter, so just to gain that consistent damage output up to 3km where jitter isnt as detrimental is enough to give it all the advantage it needs
It's pretty simple: Efficient when you have to and other mods when you can. I tend to use lasers as smaller, secondary weapons and a long range turreted laser is pretty attractive option on large ships, especially for some hazres or conflict zone mass NPC slaying.
The argument is valid, my only issue with that vette build is a beam on the large hardpoint. My group does only PvE and we are hardcore combat focused. Most of us are dedicated Vette pilots as well, including myself. The placement of the large hardpoint makes it very difficult to use a dps weapon like a beam effectively. After a lot of research all of us came to the same conclusion that a front loaded weapon such as a focused PA or a caustic cannon is more effective for the short period where you can use it. Even a burst laser would be a better fit than a weapon that relies on sustained fire like a beam.
Agreed especially on large class ships, where you lack speed and agility of smaller ships, long range does more damage overall especially with thermal vent I can keep 2 mediums and 2 smalls firing continuously to melt off shields like butter, then open up with Multi cannons to finish off the hull firing all weapons at once with no overheat and most of time running cold plus with thermal vent you no longer need heat sinks 👍
My PvE Corvette is a death star - all gimbaled beam lasers, all grade 5 efficient, all oversized except one class 4 which is thermal vent. I have weapon focused PD which gives me 13 sec of non-stop fire from all lasers (160 dps) at once with very quick weapon recharge. That thing burns everything to ashes in no time and feels totally OP. No re-ammo required, can keep going until run out of fuel. You guys should try this thing, it is so addicting, makes you feel like PvE god
On my corvette I did large long range beam with oversize. Then 2 medium overcharged beams with thermal vent. Use the big one to pull them in doing great damage from as far as 6km and when they get close all beams can hammer away at over 65dps/second.
Honestly I'd go all the way with short range + thermal vent. Short range doesn't increase power distributor draw, only increase your heat load with is off-setted with thermal vent. If target is far away you can outfit long range rails with feedback cascade on your ship, or just boost and catch up with them.
I completely agree. Currently using two large long range pulse and one large efficient beam on my Python. The pulses are good to agro targets, and do damage beyond 3km until they get in range of the beam. I was running a long range beam as well, but the distributor draw while running all the lasers was too much for my liking.
It depends on your combat protocols. I use an FDL, and rarely engage at over 1 kilometer. My FDL has one huge fixed efficient beam laser (oversize), and 4 gimbaled medium overcharged multi-cannons (3 incendiary rounds, one corrosive). The lasers decreased power and distributor draw, and the better heat efficiency let me fire the beam for a really long time, and be cooler when I use multi-cannons which really heat my ship up and drain the distributor. My play style is to stick close to my enemy and in their blind spot, so long range would be a waste for me.
4 med lasers and 1 huge multi is better than 1 huge laser and 4 multis. Also, if you're fighting that close, then you should be using short range blaster, not efficient for one beam.
On my anaconda I’ve got efficient purely because I’ve got 3 beam lasers and the rest are multi cannons just for defence as I’ve equipped it for multi role exploration.
I run efficient gimballed beams on my anaconda and that's great for getting down shields of large elite ranked ships that stack SCBs. I use the multi cannon on both medium hard points to take down ships that have thermal resistant bulkheads. I see the appeal for long range but most battles at higher levels occur usually under 2km. And the damage fall off at 2km is certainly sustainable. You just need to get a strong positioning game and keep the ship in front of you when they try to do circles.
I personally use Fixed Efficient Beams because when I ran the numbers I found that Gimballed Long Range only started out-damaging my efficient fixed at over 1500m. At that range, the gimbals are missing about 1/3 of the time anyways, so I would say that they really only get better than efficient beams when used against large targets at around 1800m (small targets they miss so much that it dosn't matter, not to mention any ships that have chaff are annoying AF). 1800m is also the range that the falloff on overcharged multi cannons starts. My fast scan KWS also has a range of 1900m. I have never really had trouble staying inside of 1800m with my corvette because I fly with a 0-3-3 pip config. when I am bounty hunting. I only put power to shields to let them recharge between fights, usually they are full again before my next engagement. I am using Fast Charge Bi-Weaves with high resistance, they only take 4 minutes to recharge from 50% to 100%, and I almost never lose more than 15% in any fight, even against wings. I can keep the beams firing for over a minute with 3 pips to weapons, so I have plenty of firepower to kill any ship I have come across in Haz Res (even when I start firing multis as well). The 3 pips in engines lets me stay on them with fixed weapons easily. Sometimes when chasing small ships like eagles, I switch to 0-4-2 pips. I still get 18 seconds of beam firing time, plenty to kill all small ships I come across without using any ammunition. I farmed nearly 9 million in bounties in 1 sitting without using a single SCB yesterday, only stopping when I got bored and all my multis were out of ammo. Current build: inara.cz/cmdr-fleet/25045/480396/ I thought about using Long Range Fixed, they overtake efficient fixed at 1000m, but the capacitor draw was not conducive to flying with anything less than 4 pips to weapons. When I used this setup the 0-2-4 pip config. was not nearly as much fun as the reduced maneuverability was making using fixed weapons more difficult. I was either having trouble keeping small ships in my sights, or didn't have enough distributor to kill them once I switched to 0-4-2 to get a bead on them. This led to me having to start using SCBs when fighting wings and slowing down TTK significantly. Got frustrated and headed back after only 2.5m in bounties, out of multicannon ammo, and having used over 1/2 my SCBs.
Yep, good points. On a Vette or slower ship, it makes lots of sense. I use 3 Fixed Efficient Beam Lasers on the bottom of my FAS, and if I'm flying right, I hardly ever even notice the damage falloff. If I'm engaging at >1KM I'm out of position and should close the range before even trying to fire. It eats medium and large NPCs for breakfast. It's a bit slower to kill against little fast guys that can dance around and kite me, but those aren't what I'm worried about for HazRESs. Still, a very good point about long range. Definitely makes sense on a Vette, Cutter, Anaconda, Python or something like that that can't close the range as fast as an FAS, Chieftan or FDL.
I go long range also and I use thermal conduit. It absolutely desimates. AFMU for when things get a little damaged but it is easy to keep up with if you repair things as soon as they get to 95% (ish).
My Chieftain is rocking 4 Efficient beams. I need to try long range, because I'm very often over 500m when I engage, especially when NPCs are perma-boosting around me. I bet adding Thermal Vent will increase the amount of time I can keep them on target, as well.
Love your videos, always informative, backed up by good research and just all around helpful so thank you. Off Topic question though: Do you ever play ED in VR? and if so, do you prefer it over none VR?
@@DowntoEarthAstronomy try using OVR toolkit. It makes using those external sites really easy in VR! You can even make the menus pop up when you look at them like the in-game menus
On fast ships I use efficient beams with thermal vent combined with focused pulses and a corrosive mc. I'm still experimenting with plasmaccs but I am loving focused on those too. During my opening salvo I get full damage from everything because I'm right on their butt. When dogfighting, my engagement range is around 1km, give or take. The focused pulses don't start to drop off until 1km, and the beams basically drop off to the same damage as the pulses at that range. The thermal vent is beautiful for managing heat from scbs or plasmaccs, and I don't get any major damage loss at that 1km zone. If I were flying a Corvette or something else big and slow chasing stuff around, long range would definitely be a solid choice so long as heat was not an issue.
2 yrs later but the topic is still good. I use efficient pulse but I use it on my Viper Mk.3, so it makes sense for me trying to fight pve in the 400-900 meter range. I do have fights where I can't uphold the distance (FDL, Python) but I believe the lower energe drain and especially with my Viper, the big% in heat dissipation totally make up for it. Earlier, most of my FDL, Pyt. fights were burdened with overheating at least once.
I found that efficient is perfect for my Vette, since I run regeneration sequence and concordant sequence to heal my wingmates, with 4 pips in wep I can fire all day and keep healing them, while I keep 2 size 4 overcharged pa for offense.
Long range in my fdl means I can worry a little less about speed and more on dps. Ex I usually turn between 15 and 20 km with long-range I do full damage for the entire duration of each pass
3 Long range bursts on my Conda and i can continuous fire those and build weapons capacitor charge at the same time. Full damage out to 4.5km. Even large ships have a ring or two out of the shields before they can start to return fire.
I mostly use my pve vette for engineering farming. After listening to your argument I'm going to tinker with the long range lasers. I'm also thinking of engineering the power distributor to weapon focused, the idea being that maybe I can go with a pip or two less in weapons and still keep the guns firing constantly. I usually go with the fewest pips in engines, the ship is a tank, it would be nice to have a spare pip for engines or shields to improve my maneuverability or shield resistances.
The avarage DPS depends on the avarage distance. So at 1100 m their dps is the same. If it gets closer the effinent dps more, and if it gets farther it dps less, but the mean of the two will be similar to the long range. Most of the ships get quite close. The long range may do more damage, but the distributor draw... Lesser distributor draw means more weapon to be powered! And the efficent distirubor draw is 50% less. This means you can fire two weapons instead of one, which means double dps. And that's a very imporant thing. In my Corvette i use the two huge for twin multi cannons, so ammo last for very long, and has less distributor draw. For the others i use beam lasers. The large and mediums are efficent, the small ones are long range. With this the distributor draw is optimal, i can fire all my weapons. But i can still ping enemys from afar. And they will close on me. So using both may be also a good idea.
If u move at 1.2km mark with gimballed long range lasers u will miss almost half damage becouse of jitter :/ Damage falloff is not the only problem here.
It's a really good explanation on why you build you're PVE Corvette the way you did. I have a question, though. You've build your Cucumber as if you're always going to a RES alone, and not in wing so, are you going to make a build for wing pirate hunting in RES? I'm curious if you'd rather have a healer in a big ship or a medium ship... Thanks for your vids!
Is there an argument to be made that perhaps Efficient helps minimize RNGineering? For example, let's say you stick two Huge Fixed Beam Lasers on your Corvette, with the assumption that hit scan weapons benefit from Fixed. If you mod them for Long Range, as you pointed out you have to play PD gymnastics more than if you used Efficient, AND you have to think about PP Engineering (Overcharged Vs. Armored). If you add in that maybe you swap one of those lasers to your FDL, then all of a sudden Efficient makes a lot more sense because you're going to be in close anyways, and really with a fully modified Corvette you're going to be in knife fight range too, at least for PvE. Honestly, I see Long Range as more of a PvP modification for both energy and ballistic weapons, since you get either no/less damage fall-off or increased shot speed to help with good PvP pilots. Against NPCs and general PvE, I consider Efficient to be the better mod, since even Elite NPCs tend to want to knife fight rather than joust/reverski.
It would be cool to have this in one application, I'd like to compare weapons in charts like this. For example heat per second, or capacitor duration, and so on.
This comes down to Theoretical DPS vs. Practical DPS. (Actual DPS for your fighting style ) * (Utility in your use cases) = Combat value to YOU. If you are a dedicated high-maneuverability, stay in close-range, in the enemy's face and up his ass, knife-fighter: efficient is probably far superior. His aggro pulling tactics and fighting style makes long range give him a better fit.
Vette looks like it can go either way, but since I fly cutter with 3-5k drift’s after boost turns, I absolutely love range upgrade. Almost never stay within 2k of enemy long enough to really take advantage of anything but range.
I often use at least 1 long range turret on many of the ships for exactly that one purpose of tagging or pulling enemies from far away. Sometimes when doing bounty hunting you notice a ship that is in a fight and pretty beat up. Just tagging it once at 6 km can net you nice money that you would have missed if you had to travel 3 more km before you can hit it. Also in my anaconda, I can just kill ships with cargo scoop down limpets getting materials and pull those new ships to the area with the long range turret so I can kill them with my "real weapons".
In my opinion, it comes down to how much of your distributor energy gets converted into damage. Say you attack all ships at the same range, and your lasers' dropoff is reducing damage to 80%. If the long range mod eliminates that dropoff completely, then the efficient mod must increase damage by 20% to be even with the long range mod, which it does. Not only that, but efficiency decreases power and distributor draw, increasing its damage/energy draw ratio. When engaging ships at close range, efficiency obviously has the advantage, but as range increases. The benefit of using long range increases, but the same cannot be said for efficiency. At some range, long range overtakes efficiency. So what range is that? The answer can be found by the following equation, which describes the range where the two are equivalent. lr(r)/(e'lr) = eff(r)/(e'eff) Notice that e'lr (energy draw of long range laser) and e'eff (energy draw of efficient laser) are constant. The only variable is the range. Because long range completely eliminates damage dropoff, the equation is really nothing more than finding when the damage dropoff of the efficient lasers causes them to do less damage per unit energy than the long range lasers, which won't lose damage as range increases, as for deciding which to use, the only thing you need to know is your average combat range, and which class and grade of weapon you will be engineering. Just plug it all in. Thanks for reading my text wall and good luck in combat commanders.
I might've commented here once before, but I don't remember... so I'ma do it anyway. When it comes to something like this? I've got a Corvette that is "over engineered." I say it like that because there is for sure, more I can do with it than what I've already gotten it... but anyway, so far with my experience with it? I recently switched from high cap on my Distributer to weapon focus. Did a little test, and I was able to regenerate my boost fast enough to boost again (when I could). However, I might not be able to boost a second time if say, I'm not recharging my engine capacitor... may be just barely short... then again, I'm always charging all my capacitors anyway. If I'm facing a hostile, my pips are always 4 into weapons, and 2 into systems. Sometimes I switch between 3 or 4 into systems. Other times when I have to turn to face them again, I either have 4 pips to systems, and 2 to engines, considering I'm not facing them, thus no need to recharge weapons I cant use at that moment. Anyway, when I am facing a hostile I have 3 Beams (2 mediums, and 1 large, all gimballed, turrets stopped working for me). I run efficient on my beams because I'm always fighting up close, plus, I've got 2 7B shield Cell banks that I use at the same time, to regenerate my shields... so the heat sinks work wonders, but the beams sure do slow the heat levels, if not, stop them completely with Thermal Vent. When it came to the drain on my weapons distributor, I went for higher capacity, over recharge, considering already (before I swapped to weapon focused) my recharge was doably fast enough for my likes. So switching to weapon focus? Originally, I was slowly, very slowly, draining my weapons capacitor with two beam turrets and 1 large gimballed, even all three with efficient. When I was REALLY draining it, was when I released my multicannons… and in many times, I had to stop firing because I had run out of capacitor. Swapped the two turrets with gimballed, same engineering and experimental, and now I was draining my capacitor much faster, it was actually noticeable to be accurate. Now that I switched to weapons focus, I hope that I'd be in much better shape with more capacitor and recharge. So imo, when it comes to long range or efficient? By the time you hit the target, they're flying straight toward ya. And if your beams do maximum damage at 4k km, then they'll be doing the same amount when the hostile is literally in your face... whereas with efficient? Imo, you get better bonuses more often, and it only gets better the closer they get. Of course, running efficient, its annoying having to shoot at a target that is running... :( then again, with the experimental upgrade I made on my small multicannons to fire corrosive rounds I really was taking out NPCs a lot faster. When it comes to a running target? I've got 2 heat sinks to deal with the two 7B Shield Cell Banks I have, and everything else is Shield Boosters, some with heavy duty, some with resistance, and some with thermal resistance... so sadly, I don't have a FSW scanner when it comes to targets running... but if I'm in a Haz Rez, why bother chasing? When it comes to mission targets, why bother chasing? Just jump out, then drop right back in...
I run 2 OC/TV turreted beams. They are a little more heavy on the power draw side, but the TV effect is WAY, WAY more effective. Up to the point where your whole cockpit freezes over, even with all guns blazing. So, no need to worry about heat at all, even when popping 2 SCB's at once. I tried LR and Efficient, turreted and gimballed, but was more than a little dissapointed. Waste of engi mats tbh...
i also use 1 large and 2 medium LR beams on my vette... only reason i switched from efficient to LR is because the vette is slow, even with dirty drags, and i have to boost alot to get in range. I use G5 CE power distributor in a vette and my beams are on their own trigger so power means nothing. funny thing is even with G1 LR, your lasers have a crazy 3+ km (at full damage) range. also worth mentioning i use thermal vent on all my beams, and correct me if im wrong here, i think they help your WEP energy cause they cool your beams so long as you hit your target. i only picked TV cause it drops my temp to 1% and covers my canopy in ice haha
I just tried a Type 10 with all efficient beams and armoured power plant. It's good being able to fire as long as you wish, but falloff is terrible, I'm going to try pulse or burst with long range g1 and flow control, to see if it works better. I need a more effective afk build.
Each effect has there own benefits, so it really depends on the play style you want to go for. Personally I use multi’s to increase the damage fall off to 2km then use overcharge with thermal & corrosion. That way you can hit shields & hull at a decent range with good damage. Just my preference though. To each his own of course. Find what works best for you & any build is good.
My opinion is not the popular view, but I think long ranged is over used and only really beneficial on large, slow ships that can't keep within range of faster moving targets. Focused is a better choice with most of the (useful) benefit of long range and more utility with the buff to piercing. The extra heat generation is negligible on most ships and manageable through the correct choice of powerplant engineering on ships that aren't very heat efficient at stock. Efficient is by far the best choice still for small, fast ships. So the question of which laser mod - the answer is it depends on the ship and there is no catchall solution that a lot of commanders seem to think long range is (as well there shouldn't be).
Sure, go long range if you have trouble keeping on target. I don't. I still use phasing long range pulse turrets on the smalls on my Vette for CZ tagging.
do not fall in for the burst upgrade. Eaven if they sey it is 50% more or eaven more damage you wont hit annything that is furter away than 500 meter. Not on a big shipe like the Corvette. If you fly in a little fast manuverable ship and you can hold possition on a enemy than it makes sin to put in shortrange and the burst thingy.
for pve efficient mod is my favorite, i know that others mods have way better burst damage, but man a want my vette shooting 2 class 4 beams forever thats just it. im running g5 dirty tunning on 7d thrusters, about 360m/s, NPCs don't run more than 420m/s and usually stick close while you shoot then, so long range for pve is not very interesting.
I'm running an fdl with a large multi 2 med multi all overcharged and 2 beams with efficient weapon mod. Can take out most ships in seconds can take a bit of time on the big 3.
I stay within 1000 meters and get infinite fire. The power draw is what efficient is about. Combined with a turret, of which I have six, efficient will always deal more damage.
I do just about the same. Keep my corvette as close range as possible because the AI tries to do the same. With the added detail of keeping you suppressed from behind (those a55holes). I've also went and buffed a 7c bi weave shield generator with reinforced mod and added a regen boost special effect on top of it. And on top of all that i took the liberty of adding 8 shield boosters that have maxed resist mod on them and capacity effect to boost shield capacity a bit. The reason i had the audacity to perform the blasphemy of making my build a passive shield tank (seriously, it's considered a blasphemy these days if you don't have at least 3 scb's on a combat ship) was because i just wanted to enjoy the game and my definition of enjoyment means melting armor off 3 anacondas at once without having to worry about shield capacity or scb's running out of ammo or any of that crap. Just melting armor. Btw i forgot to mention the weapons. I'm using 2 huge and 2 medium beam lasers with efficient mod on as primary fire and 2 small and the large hardpoint underneath as debuff turrets. And if i switch either the 2 mediums or one of the large off, i can melt armor forever. Bottom line, i don't believe range helps when the enemy tries it's best to close the distance as much as possible and flanks you all the time. Instead you should just employ the exact same strategy and try to do the exact same thing to get back at them for being a55holes or something. Luckily the AI are predictable and by the time you finish your maneuver, you're the one doing the flanking. Hope this helps... Peace.
I agree with just about everyone here and the video above. It all falls on play style and ship. My personal play style for PvE is get in close and have a turn battle with with the enemy. It's a more satisfying skill that way for me. Plus I use FDL and Python mainly. So efficient works best for those. However on my anaconda I use long range. Which they usually die even before I am in their weapons range. I dont think long range is the only go to neither is efficient.
I use two huge efficient lasers on my PvE Vulture. 4 pips to weps, 1 to shields, and 1 to engines.. I never have to let go of my trigger and the vulture can stay close I'm usually not suffering any damage falloff.
For a vulture this works because the PP and distributer arent that strong plus it really benefits when you can stay really close to them then you can really see the effect of the extra damage tho if it didnt have power problems as much as it does you could get away with fixed long range beams sniping enenmies from a great distance
But but NPC ships always come to you, so why long range needed? :) It completely makes sens for PVP or material collecting as metioned tho. But I usually have no issue keeping NPC ship within 1K
On my Imp Clipper I'll always go with efficient but on corvette, I might consider long range, maybe. I'd really rather try long range fix beam on a more nimble ship where the weapon is on your nose and not on your wingtips lol.
I think your graph is a little misleading. Efficient adds damage so by setting your graph to be range and damage % it implies the weapons are doing the same damage at the line intersection but that's not the case. In the case of fixed huge lasers efficient matches long-range at about 1600km and does more damage when any closer than that, without even taking into consideration all the other benefits efficient brings. Long-range is still fantastic of course, but I don't think it shines unless your fighting at or over 3km.
I say good luck hitting anything smaller than an Asp beyond 3km. Pulling in enemies while limpets are out, they will mostly likely destroy your limpets. Then you have to deal with hostiles AND redeploy limpets. Also since you are using Multi-cannons or Cannons, you want to be at close range. The Corvette ain't no slouch with a G5 dirty drive, so closing the gap is eezy-peezy. I have tried that exact build and does not work aswell compared to efficient beams.You won't be able to punch through npcs that spam shield cell banks. With efficient beams you only need 2 pips into weapons max unless you want huge energy weapons. You should try efficient beams or overcharged pulse before saying long range is the way to go.
I got a very big issue with pve combat in general. I have to loot a lot materials for the most ingi blueprints. It takes by far more time to build a battelship, than a explora or a trader or a mining ship. Have i done it, i am "payed off" by the most non worthy gameplay. You got a high risk and very small bountys.
You can with efficient cool you ship. When you put thermal cascade as experimental. Just a little thing if so off you not know. I don't nead heat sinks vor my shield cells anymore
This is what pisses me off about reading on loadouts for my Chieftain, everyone goes to the "best dps" on paper but forget that I don't have an engineered ship yet, power management is shit and having a lerge, medium and small beams means I can fire for about 6 seconds before I run out of juice, which is why for the time being I'm considering changing to pulse or burst laser instead, what's the point of having beams if I can only fire them for 6 seconds before having to then wait for ages to be able to fire them again for another 6 seconds? using build tools by switching to pulse lasers I instantly gain 100% more damage output even though on paper I do something like 15% less dps, from the extra time I can remain firing at the enemy alone. Regarding the "long range" mod, the amount of time I remain under or over 1km of the target is about the same throughout the fight, maybe leaning slightly more towards the over 1km area, so I can see long range lasers being much more beneficial to me, as long as my ship can handle the energy required by such weapons, and even then I wouldn't probably pick efficient beams over long range beams if I can use long range pulse instead and still have the same damage output, it will always depend on the ship you are using and the numbers look nice on paper but what about in reality?
I have tried long range and dissagree with you since I can get a longer fire rate using effiient than with long range, also when doing combat in a high res site most of the combat is within the range of efficient beam weapons so the extra range with LR if not necessary
Hi Astro, I've followed you're corvette build and after a few days prospecting and and getting USS items to get some engineering on my Anaconda done. ***** FSD Dirty Drive ***** Hull Reinforcement Thermal Resistant ***** Hull Reinforcement Kinetic Resistant ***** Long Range Beam Laser x2 ***** Multi cannons - just need to get auto loader and other corrosive shells etc. ***** Armour Just got to get that 2 second Kill Warrant Scanner, that's so awesome lol, would be nice to get an A Rated one but it tips me over on power so would going lightweight on a few things like power distributor help bring it down ?
Why has elite lasers in the first place and where is my 99.9% reflective ship paint job? Just apply some chrome vapors to your ship and it shines like a mirror....and 99.9% of your enemies laser power goes off into space. There's a reason why most realistic space shows like "The Expanse" have NO LASERWEAPONS. Cause they are so incredibly useless against a reflective ship. Once my enemy uses lases I just cover my ship in mirrors. Lasers are just ridicolous as weapons.
Could you do a video on distributor draw fall off? I noticed that my efficient lasers use more distributor the closer I am to at Target. I wonder if that's the same for all weapons?
I actually use both. :) I have long range guns, meaning I can always do damage and engage NPCs at range, but then the NPCs (for some reason) try to engage me at about 1k
Also I have five beam laser turrets on my corvette and usually give my weapons fewer than 3 pips. Somehow, my weapons almost never drain the capacitor.
yep this is what many players don't realize due to shitty game design... damage falloff never explained to the players... I now using g4 focused pule and g2 long range pulse for my large hardpoints in my chieftain.
I switched to running long range lasers after trying all of the alternatives and it was a game changer for me. I fly a Vette in a HazRes or CZ and the LR weapons help enormously. I use a fast charge Biweave, which also helps and between these two I can manage my pips pretty easily. Incoming ships are often stripped of their shields before they even get within their 3km firing range. Once inside 2km I open up the huge Multicannon to finish the job. If you haven't tried LR lasers (especially beams with thermal vent) and fly a larger/slower/less manuvable ship with a large PP and PD, then give LR lasers a go. I've switched my entire fleet over to LR now (but I like to fly the big ships, the FDL / Chieftain is just too much hard work). The smaller ships I use for cannon flying and exploration rather than combat. If I'm on the edge of the bubble with only outposts I fly a Python with frag cannons (for close quarter combat).
As others have said, it largely depends upon your playing style.
It depends on your play style and ship,
I fly a mamba and long range beams don't make sense after trying them compared to efficient.
The mamba is a very fast ship that can keep close to it's target. In my experience, I have been doing an average of 10% more damage in a burst with long range than efficient, but I was using 75% more distributor power and producing twice as much heat from firing it so in sustained DPS I was doing similar sustained Damage while being able to keep more of my pips to shields and engines at the same time or being able to fire the beam laser forever
especially with a fast ship you could even with more ease stay out of the others weapon range while shooting him all the time. and if you fly smart then its even irrelevant how strong/good the other is (because he has to fly a straight line to at least try to reach you) ...
It depends how you play the game. If you can make long range work for you, and find them useful, then that's brilliant. If they work with your ship's setup and you're happy with the results then that's awesome, and more power to you. You make some good points, and illustrate the positives well. But I'll try to explain why I don't use them. Ever.
1. For me it's not about failing to realise the damage falloff. Anyone who uses non-long range lasers soon realises that at ranges up to the maximum of the weapon, all you're trying to do is tag someone. To get them to come to you. And you said it yourself, once you tag a ship they start flying towards you. Once they do that, the closer they get, the less useful the long range mod becomes. In RES sites and CZs, relatively few ships are at, or stay at ranges where you need to do more damage at long range. They try to hug your backside and orbit you like your own personal moon. Which makes Efficient preferable. For me, anyway. And if you're bounty hunting with a fast scan KWS, then you HAVE to get within 3km at the very furthest (with an A-class one) to even scan the ships. Which kinda limits the long range mod's usefulness.
2. The distributor draw isn't just about having enough to power the things. For me it's about having the distributor to fire all my weapons while keeping my shields as strong as possible. That's just how I play. SYS pips gives you natural shield strength and resistances on top of what you can achieve with engineering, so it seems a wasted opportunity to not utilise that mechanic to its fullest. Long range only really works IF you can micromanage your pips, and swap them out when needed, between WEP and SYS. But again, at closer ranges I find that you end up playing unnecessary pip gymnastics because the long range lasers suck up too much of your charge. And a lot of people don't even bother. They put 4 pips into WEP and just leave it there, then wonder why their shields are getting obliterated.
3. I use my SLFs extensively. If I need to tag a ship at very long ranges while scooping up materials I send my SLF after it, then tell them to come back once it's been tagged. Same if a ship runs off. I send my SLF after it. And since my pilot is Elite, they do more damage to it than even Long Range lasers could. If employed effectively, they provide a lot more utility than just an emergency backup for when there's a ship too small for you to turn on. They basically give you long range lasers for free.
4. I hate overcharging my powerplant. Aside from the distributor draw, there's also the power draw. And the need to carry shield cells because your shields are weaker than they could be in order to fire them. For me that feels like an unnecessary waste of power. Heat may not be an issue when you're firing thermal vent lasers, but it can be when you're scooping from a sun or trying to jump somewhere.
As I said above, it's a matter of how you play the game. There isn't really any wrong way to do things. You do what works for you. And what's best is dependent on how you fly your ship. Which is the beauty of this game. The freedom to find that out for yourself.
Kaethena
, you have a lot of free time do you? to type sooo much :), cheers
I use 3x Large Long Range on my Python, but you have some very good points there! Maybe, I should engineer two of them as efficient and not Long Range, that way I could still tag people
Good points here, generally. Efficiency for me is more useful than range. Like you, I tag a target and send out small craft to harass at range. Baiting he/she to come towards you makes sense, and then the Pulse Lasers can do their work. The damage falloff is mitigated, especially for fast craft that bolt towards you like it's a 3km sprint.
I use an Anaconda, so speed wasn't the deciding the factor when purchasing it. Again, you make a good point about power distribution. I use a 8C Bi-Weave (with three shield boosters), so not having at least three pips in Systems makes little sense to me. I realize that you made this comment some time ago, but I've only just seen this video.
This is the type of coment that i have to give regards... very well explained.
i never use long range aswell, to be honest i think the only way they can be better used is to make one build that works from a distance, so that u can gain more damage and still have enought defense because your target wont hit you hard enought from so far away if they ever hit you.
But again that is a very especific way to make it work and is boring as shit fighting running like a chiken... so yeah, for me they are worthless.
there is a few more things to mention, against bigger ships you will always be close enough to make the efficient more effective, and against smaller prey the dropoff damage just doesnt matter. if u are flying a fucking corvette is not to kill eagles for crist sake, so if they are tagget with a bigger ship you will kill then regardless the dropoff damage after you have dealt with the condas, vettes, type 10 or cutter.
the only place that using long range makes sense is in conflict zones, since you dont want to be close to where the hell is breaking loose, and you can snipe your targets, and if they decide to como to you the other ship he was atacking will be free hitting on his ass all the way to you.
on a side not, type 10 and cutter can make good use of the long range, one because can hit when running, and is quite good at that, and the other because is too slow to chase people, but the distributor draw can hinder a few choices in builds.
This is literally most generic points that everyone can tell by themselves already. Nobody needs smartasses that says "You do what works for you". No shit! People look online for useful things like data and facts - not for your life advices. Video decently explained it, you just wrote wall of text with nothing new in it, perhaps to feel better because "behold muh way of play, I feel so smart now". Thanks.
Efficient lasers are usually the best choice for aggressive ships that have historically weak distributors, such as a vulture or an FDL. This allows them to extend their dogfights and keep shooting against thicker targets. It's also good for ships for whom combat is a secondary function and they wish to preserve their distributor pips for other purposes, like a small, fast ship that prefers evasion over everything else.
Long range lasers are great for larger ships that fight behind others, because they're getting full damage no matter the range, jitter notwithstanding, and their distributors are probably good enough to keep up anyway. They also give that long range ship a considerable headstart in terms of shield and hull damage, since most ships have to cover about 3km of ground before they can return fire. Long range is also good for turrets, allowing a well-protected turret boat to set his guns on "fire at will" and be able to engage a much bigger sphere of targets.
I wouldn't use long range on a ship that plans to be in the thick of things, circling foes at 500M, but with a little positioning and a good wingman, long range lasers can score tons of free damage at a very safe distance. They prevent foes from disengaging to reduce your damage and they make it incredibly difficult to run from a fight.
In my opinion it's a matter of ones playstyle. You obviously aren't going to chase targets around in a vette than you would in a chieftain for example. So having long range weapons makes a lot more sense in this case. As you said, you got their shields down when they didn't even had the chance to pull the trigger. Great vid, as always!
you dont have to chase targets with a vetta you can just sit and let them come to you an efficient beam will start to take down shields fro 1500mrt
Good video. Explains the difference between paper advantage and practical advantage.
you have a very good point and your videos have shown that you are efficiently using your ship to the max of its capabilities.
I for once thinking of re-engineering my efficient laser (Pulse) to make them long range. Now your other video about the HEAT trick to cool down your ship I am still working on getting the mats, also a very good video... I would highly recommend your viewers to review that and add those to the setup. Combined that will make a huge difference when in a combat zone or Haz-Res
I generally try and use long range as well, especially on slower ships. Only ship I run efficient lasers on is my Clipper, but that's simply to allow me to keep more pips into engines. With 500m/s normal speed I generally have no issues staying very close. Besides, the build (two thermal vent beams and inertial impact bursts) is build around being very close anyways, so the damage drop off removal of long range is kinda moot.
But I agree, long range generally is the way to go with lasers. Thanks for the video and putting it out there!
How do you find the your build up against heavier targets like the conda? I was planning a similar loadout for my clipper but was worried about the weapon dist draw and enemy armor.
Hence the engineering and experimentals. Two large bursts with efficient weapon to lower heat and distributor draw, and inertial impact to be more efficient against hulls without having to rely on ammo. Two medium beams with efficient weapon and thermal vent take care of the rest of the heat and distributor issue.
I use 2 efficient for one reason...I can infinitely fire them without heat generation or power usage.
I only use them so i can fire my burst almost indefinetly whilst being able to shoot woth my multi cannon. It also allows me to only put 3 pips to weapons and 3 to engine while still having good dps
Yeah, my builds are mostly built around my own laziness instead of the meta.
Me too, im very happy with the results
Or use rails like me. I use two class 1 and two class 2 long range rails with plasma slug. They can be fired constantly and destroy shields.
One thing I see you doing that I think is a bit silly, is maxing out the engineering for long range lasers, even when you’re struggling with power. If they don’t reliably hit past 4.5km why max them out to 6 at the cost of power draw and mass. I find that maxed out grade 3-4 is very nice on my vette. Which also lets you use “oversized” easier.
especially with a fast ship you could even with more ease stay out of the others weapon range while shooting him all the time. and if you fly smart then its even irrelevant how good /strong the other is (because he has to fly a straight line to at least try to reach you) ...
rank 2 + termal vent are enough for my vette , also i have 2 size 1 beam laser turrets + termal vent, its nasty
I've been running long range turreted beams on my 4 smallest Corvette gun ports for quite a while now. It's particularly effective for tagging in Combat zones. The new engineering system has helped to fine tune everything so that I can use them constantly. It's a big help to burn off an opponents shield before you get within range of their weaponry.
i use 3 large pulse lasers (efficient) on my anaconda and when i spot a god target far away i send my fighter after it. As soon as it gets reed i set the fighter on maintain formation and it comes right back with my neew target :)
thats genius, im gonna start using that strat
My Corvette uses 6 lasers in it's current build (only the large is a Overcharged MC with Corrosive). The Huge and Medium are efficient, the small are long range for tagging. With the setup I've got I tag the target with the turreted smalls, let the target come in close and blast it with the huge. If I drain the PD I can switch to the medium and small lasers (and MC too) and continue to use it while the PD recharges. Full uptime on firing weapons, and so far the setup has worked for me in PvE very well.
The long range option has it's place. I took an Imperial Courier that was mostly outfitted for racing, and put some long range lasers on it and it became something of a cheese ship against AI up to a certain point. That ship was faster going backwards than most other ships could even boost so it automatically could dictate the pace and range of a skirmish. You do 100% damage, they do 1%.
Problem was that against harder defenses the lasers just wouldn't cut it. One time I fought a helpless Chieftain that had lost all it's thrusters and was drifting. I swear I had to hit it with 10 or 15 pulses just to drop the hull 1%.
Thats were a vulture with efficient beams and heat venting comes in it can dominate any short range fight one of my favorite ships to do pve in when im bored out on my big ships
another notable factor is that realistically you can use literally 1 piece of whatever the grade 1 long range mod needs since trying to engage at long distances (with gimbals) is basically pointless with the jitter, so just to gain that consistent damage output up to 3km where jitter isnt as detrimental is enough to give it all the advantage it needs
It's pretty simple: Efficient when you have to and other mods when you can. I tend to use lasers as smaller, secondary weapons and a long range turreted laser is pretty attractive option on large ships, especially for some hazres or conflict zone mass NPC slaying.
The argument is valid, my only issue with that vette build is a beam on the large hardpoint. My group does only PvE and we are hardcore combat focused. Most of us are dedicated Vette pilots as well, including myself. The placement of the large hardpoint makes it very difficult to use a dps weapon like a beam effectively. After a lot of research all of us came to the same conclusion that a front loaded weapon such as a focused PA or a caustic cannon is more effective for the short period where you can use it. Even a burst laser would be a better fit than a weapon that relies on sustained fire like a beam.
I did long range Multi Cannons, do not do that do Long range lasers is in deed better.
Thanks for this idea. I kept long range with thermal vents. Was the best decision ever
Agreed especially on large class ships, where you lack speed and agility of smaller ships, long range does more damage overall especially with thermal vent I can keep 2 mediums and 2 smalls firing continuously to melt off shields like butter, then open up with Multi cannons to finish off the hull firing all weapons at once with no overheat and most of time running cold plus with thermal vent you no longer need heat sinks 👍
My PvE Corvette is a death star - all gimbaled beam lasers, all grade 5 efficient, all oversized except one class 4 which is thermal vent. I have weapon focused PD which gives me 13 sec of non-stop fire from all lasers (160 dps) at once with very quick weapon recharge. That thing burns everything to ashes in no time and feels totally OP. No re-ammo required, can keep going until run out of fuel. You guys should try this thing, it is so addicting, makes you feel like PvE god
On my corvette I did large long range beam with oversize. Then 2 medium overcharged beams with thermal vent. Use the big one to pull them in doing great damage from as far as 6km and when they get close all beams can hammer away at over 65dps/second.
Honestly I'd go all the way with short range + thermal vent. Short range doesn't increase power distributor draw, only increase your heat load with is off-setted with thermal vent. If target is far away you can outfit long range rails with feedback cascade on your ship, or just boost and catch up with them.
I completely agree. Currently using two large long range pulse and one large efficient beam on my Python. The pulses are good to agro targets, and do damage beyond 3km until they get in range of the beam. I was running a long range beam as well, but the distributor draw while running all the lasers was too much for my liking.
It depends on your combat protocols. I use an FDL, and rarely engage at over 1 kilometer. My FDL has one huge fixed efficient beam laser (oversize), and 4 gimbaled medium overcharged multi-cannons (3 incendiary rounds, one corrosive). The lasers decreased power and distributor draw, and the better heat efficiency let me fire the beam for a really long time, and be cooler when I use multi-cannons which really heat my ship up and drain the distributor. My play style is to stick close to my enemy and in their blind spot, so long range would be a waste for me.
4 med lasers and 1 huge multi is better than 1 huge laser and 4 multis. Also, if you're fighting that close, then you should be using short range blaster, not efficient for one beam.
Disgusting :q
On my anaconda I’ve got efficient purely because I’ve got 3 beam lasers and the rest are multi cannons just for defence as I’ve equipped it for multi role exploration.
I run efficient gimballed beams on my anaconda and that's great for getting down shields of large elite ranked ships that stack SCBs. I use the multi cannon on both medium hard points to take down ships that have thermal resistant bulkheads.
I see the appeal for long range but most battles at higher levels occur usually under 2km. And the damage fall off at 2km is certainly sustainable. You just need to get a strong positioning game and keep the ship in front of you when they try to do circles.
i like how you can turn a federal corvette into a freaking death star
I personally use Fixed Efficient Beams because when I ran the numbers I found that Gimballed Long Range only started out-damaging my efficient fixed at over 1500m. At that range, the gimbals are missing about 1/3 of the time anyways, so I would say that they really only get better than efficient beams when used against large targets at around 1800m (small targets they miss so much that it dosn't matter, not to mention any ships that have chaff are annoying AF). 1800m is also the range that the falloff on overcharged multi cannons starts. My fast scan KWS also has a range of 1900m. I have never really had trouble staying inside of 1800m with my corvette because I fly with a 0-3-3 pip config. when I am bounty hunting. I only put power to shields to let them recharge between fights, usually they are full again before my next engagement. I am using Fast Charge Bi-Weaves with high resistance, they only take 4 minutes to recharge from 50% to 100%, and I almost never lose more than 15% in any fight, even against wings. I can keep the beams firing for over a minute with 3 pips to weapons, so I have plenty of firepower to kill any ship I have come across in Haz Res (even when I start firing multis as well). The 3 pips in engines lets me stay on them with fixed weapons easily. Sometimes when chasing small ships like eagles, I switch to 0-4-2 pips. I still get 18 seconds of beam firing time, plenty to kill all small ships I come across without using any ammunition. I farmed nearly 9 million in bounties in 1 sitting without using a single SCB yesterday, only stopping when I got bored and all my multis were out of ammo.
Current build: inara.cz/cmdr-fleet/25045/480396/
I thought about using Long Range Fixed, they overtake efficient fixed at 1000m, but the capacitor draw was not conducive to flying with anything less than 4 pips to weapons. When I used this setup the 0-2-4 pip config. was not nearly as much fun as the reduced maneuverability was making using fixed weapons more difficult. I was either having trouble keeping small ships in my sights, or didn't have enough distributor to kill them once I switched to 0-4-2 to get a bead on them. This led to me having to start using SCBs when fighting wings and slowing down TTK significantly. Got frustrated and headed back after only 2.5m in bounties, out of multicannon ammo, and having used over 1/2 my SCBs.
Yep, good points.
On a Vette or slower ship, it makes lots of sense.
I use 3 Fixed Efficient Beam Lasers on the bottom of my FAS, and if I'm flying right, I hardly ever even notice the damage falloff. If I'm engaging at >1KM I'm out of position and should close the range before even trying to fire.
It eats medium and large NPCs for breakfast. It's a bit slower to kill against little fast guys that can dance around and kite me, but those aren't what I'm worried about for HazRESs.
Still, a very good point about long range. Definitely makes sense on a Vette, Cutter, Anaconda, Python or something like that that can't close the range as fast as an FAS, Chieftan or FDL.
People have long debated what weapons work best. The answer is Daka. Dakadakadakadakdaka.....
I go long range also and I use thermal conduit. It absolutely desimates. AFMU for when things get a little damaged but it is easy to keep up with if you repair things as soon as they get to 95% (ish).
My Chieftain is rocking 4 Efficient beams. I need to try long range, because I'm very often over 500m when I engage, especially when NPCs are perma-boosting around me. I bet adding Thermal Vent will increase the amount of time I can keep them on target, as well.
Love your videos, always informative, backed up by good research and just all around helpful so thank you. Off Topic question though: Do you ever play ED in VR? and if so, do you prefer it over none VR?
I do sometime play in VR. I think I prefer without VR. It makes it easier to use the external tool like eddb and inara.
@@DowntoEarthAstronomy try using OVR toolkit. It makes using those external sites really easy in VR! You can even make the menus pop up when you look at them like the in-game menus
On fast ships I use efficient beams with thermal vent combined with focused pulses and a corrosive mc. I'm still experimenting with plasmaccs but I am loving focused on those too.
During my opening salvo I get full damage from everything because I'm right on their butt.
When dogfighting, my engagement range is around 1km, give or take. The focused pulses don't start to drop off until 1km, and the beams basically drop off to the same damage as the pulses at that range.
The thermal vent is beautiful for managing heat from scbs or plasmaccs, and I don't get any major damage loss at that 1km zone.
If I were flying a Corvette or something else big and slow chasing stuff around, long range would definitely be a solid choice so long as heat was not an issue.
2 yrs later but the topic is still good. I use efficient pulse but I use it on my Viper Mk.3, so it makes sense for me trying to fight pve in the 400-900 meter range. I do have fights where I can't uphold the distance (FDL, Python) but I believe the lower energe drain and especially with my Viper, the big% in heat dissipation totally make up for it. Earlier, most of my FDL, Pyt. fights were burdened with overheating at least once.
I found that efficient is perfect for my Vette, since I run regeneration sequence and concordant sequence to heal my wingmates, with 4 pips in wep I can fire all day and keep healing them, while I keep 2 size 4 overcharged pa for offense.
Long range in my fdl means I can worry a little less about speed and more on dps. Ex I usually turn between 15 and 20 km with long-range I do full damage for the entire duration of each pass
Best video by far very informative thx
3 Long range bursts on my Conda and i can continuous fire those and build weapons capacitor charge at the same time. Full damage out to 4.5km. Even large ships have a ring or two out of the shields before they can start to return fire.
I mostly use my pve vette for engineering farming. After listening to your argument I'm going to tinker with the long range lasers. I'm also thinking of engineering the power distributor to weapon focused, the idea being that maybe I can go with a pip or two less in weapons and still keep the guns firing constantly. I usually go with the fewest pips in engines, the ship is a tank, it would be nice to have a spare pip for engines or shields to improve my maneuverability or shield resistances.
I think you make a good point. I'd have to try out long-range beams before I can say one way or another
The avarage DPS depends on the avarage distance. So at 1100 m their dps is the same. If it gets closer the effinent dps more, and if it gets farther it dps less, but the mean of the two will be similar to the long range. Most of the ships get quite close. The long range may do more damage, but the distributor draw...
Lesser distributor draw means more weapon to be powered! And the efficent distirubor draw is 50% less. This means you can fire two weapons instead of one, which means double dps. And that's a very imporant thing.
In my Corvette i use the two huge for twin multi cannons, so ammo last for very long, and has less distributor draw. For the others i use beam lasers. The large and mediums are efficent, the small ones are long range. With this the distributor draw is optimal, i can fire all my weapons. But i can still ping enemys from afar. And they will close on me.
So using both may be also a good idea.
If u move at 1.2km mark with gimballed long range lasers u will miss almost half damage becouse of jitter :/ Damage falloff is not the only problem here.
I agree, I use 2 efficient huge beam lasers, one oversized and one thermal vented and I can fire them forever with no overheating.
It's a really good explanation on why you build you're PVE Corvette the way you did. I have a question, though. You've build your Cucumber as if you're always going to a RES alone, and not in wing so, are you going to make a build for wing pirate hunting in RES? I'm curious if you'd rather have a healer in a big ship or a medium ship...
Thanks for your vids!
When running in wing I change the big beam laser from thermal vent to healing.
Is there an argument to be made that perhaps Efficient helps minimize RNGineering?
For example, let's say you stick two Huge Fixed Beam Lasers on your Corvette, with the assumption that hit scan weapons benefit from Fixed. If you mod them for Long Range, as you pointed out you have to play PD gymnastics more than if you used Efficient, AND you have to think about PP Engineering (Overcharged Vs. Armored).
If you add in that maybe you swap one of those lasers to your FDL, then all of a sudden Efficient makes a lot more sense because you're going to be in close anyways, and really with a fully modified Corvette you're going to be in knife fight range too, at least for PvE.
Honestly, I see Long Range as more of a PvP modification for both energy and ballistic weapons, since you get either no/less damage fall-off or increased shot speed to help with good PvP pilots. Against NPCs and general PvE, I consider Efficient to be the better mod, since even Elite NPCs tend to want to knife fight rather than joust/reverski.
I prefer Long Range too, but remember Efficient allows you to also fire longer with fewer pips and generate less heat
It would be cool to have this in one application, I'd like to compare weapons in charts like this. For example heat per second, or capacitor duration, and so on.
This comes down to Theoretical DPS vs. Practical DPS.
(Actual DPS for your fighting style ) * (Utility in your use cases) = Combat value to YOU.
If you are a dedicated high-maneuverability, stay in close-range, in the enemy's face and up his ass, knife-fighter: efficient is probably far superior.
His aggro pulling tactics and fighting style makes long range give him a better fit.
Vette looks like it can go either way, but since I fly cutter with 3-5k drift’s after boost turns, I absolutely love range upgrade. Almost never stay within 2k of enemy long enough to really take advantage of anything but range.
I run plasmas on the 2 huge hardpoints so I kind of have to use efficient on my lasers to make sure I have enough distributor for the heavy hitters.
I often use at least 1 long range turret on many of the ships for exactly that one purpose of tagging or pulling enemies from far away. Sometimes when doing bounty hunting you notice a ship that is in a fight and pretty beat up. Just tagging it once at 6 km can net you nice money that you would have missed if you had to travel 3 more km before you can hit it. Also in my anaconda, I can just kill ships with cargo scoop down limpets getting materials and pull those new ships to the area with the long range turret so I can kill them with my "real weapons".
In my opinion, it comes down to how much of your distributor energy gets converted into damage. Say you attack all ships at the same range, and your lasers' dropoff is reducing damage to 80%. If the long range mod eliminates that dropoff completely, then the efficient mod must increase damage by 20% to be even with the long range mod, which it does. Not only that, but efficiency decreases power and distributor draw, increasing its damage/energy draw ratio. When engaging ships at close range, efficiency obviously has the advantage, but as range increases. The benefit of using long range increases, but the same cannot be said for efficiency. At some range, long range overtakes efficiency. So what range is that? The answer can be found by the following equation, which describes the range where the two are equivalent.
lr(r)/(e'lr) = eff(r)/(e'eff)
Notice that e'lr (energy draw of long range laser) and e'eff (energy draw of efficient laser) are constant. The only variable is the range. Because long range completely eliminates damage dropoff, the equation is really nothing more than finding when the damage dropoff of the efficient lasers causes them to do less damage per unit energy than the long range lasers, which won't lose damage as range increases, as for deciding which to use, the only thing you need to know is your average combat range, and which class and grade of weapon you will be engineering. Just plug it all in. Thanks for reading my text wall and good luck in combat commanders.
I might've commented here once before, but I don't remember... so I'ma do it anyway.
When it comes to something like this? I've got a Corvette that is "over engineered." I say it like that because there is for sure, more I can do with it than what I've already gotten it... but anyway, so far with my experience with it? I recently switched from high cap on my Distributer to weapon focus. Did a little test, and I was able to regenerate my boost fast enough to boost again (when I could). However, I might not be able to boost a second time if say, I'm not recharging my engine capacitor... may be just barely short... then again, I'm always charging all my capacitors anyway. If I'm facing a hostile, my pips are always 4 into weapons, and 2 into systems. Sometimes I switch between 3 or 4 into systems. Other times when I have to turn to face them again, I either have 4 pips to systems, and 2 to engines, considering I'm not facing them, thus no need to recharge weapons I cant use at that moment. Anyway, when I am facing a hostile I have 3 Beams (2 mediums, and 1 large, all gimballed, turrets stopped working for me). I run efficient on my beams because I'm always fighting up close, plus, I've got 2 7B shield Cell banks that I use at the same time, to regenerate my shields... so the heat sinks work wonders, but the beams sure do slow the heat levels, if not, stop them completely with Thermal Vent. When it came to the drain on my weapons distributor, I went for higher capacity, over recharge, considering already (before I swapped to weapon focused) my recharge was doably fast enough for my likes. So switching to weapon focus? Originally, I was slowly, very slowly, draining my weapons capacitor with two beam turrets and 1 large gimballed, even all three with efficient. When I was REALLY draining it, was when I released my multicannons… and in many times, I had to stop firing because I had run out of capacitor. Swapped the two turrets with gimballed, same engineering and experimental, and now I was draining my capacitor much faster, it was actually noticeable to be accurate. Now that I switched to weapons focus, I hope that I'd be in much better shape with more capacitor and recharge.
So imo, when it comes to long range or efficient? By the time you hit the target, they're flying straight toward ya. And if your beams do maximum damage at 4k km, then they'll be doing the same amount when the hostile is literally in your face... whereas with efficient? Imo, you get better bonuses more often, and it only gets better the closer they get. Of course, running efficient, its annoying having to shoot at a target that is running... :( then again, with the experimental upgrade I made on my small multicannons to fire corrosive rounds I really was taking out NPCs a lot faster. When it comes to a running target? I've got 2 heat sinks to deal with the two 7B Shield Cell Banks I have, and everything else is Shield Boosters, some with heavy duty, some with resistance, and some with thermal resistance... so sadly, I don't have a FSW scanner when it comes to targets running... but if I'm in a Haz Rez, why bother chasing? When it comes to mission targets, why bother chasing? Just jump out, then drop right back in...
I run 2 OC/TV turreted beams. They are a little more heavy on the power draw side, but the TV effect is WAY, WAY more effective.
Up to the point where your whole cockpit freezes over, even with all guns blazing. So, no need to worry about heat at all, even when popping 2 SCB's at once.
I tried LR and Efficient, turreted and gimballed, but was more than a little dissapointed. Waste of engi mats tbh...
i also use 1 large and 2 medium LR beams on my vette... only reason i switched from efficient to LR is because the vette is slow, even with dirty drags, and i have to boost alot to get in range. I use G5 CE power distributor in a vette and my beams are on their own trigger so power means nothing. funny thing is even with G1 LR, your lasers have a crazy 3+ km (at full damage) range. also worth mentioning i use thermal vent on all my beams, and correct me if im wrong here, i think they help your WEP energy cause they cool your beams so long as you hit your target. i only picked TV cause it drops my temp to 1% and covers my canopy in ice haha
I just tried a Type 10 with all efficient beams and armoured power plant.
It's good being able to fire as long as you wish, but falloff is terrible, I'm going to try pulse or burst with long range g1 and flow control, to see if it works better. I need a more effective afk build.
Can u please make a video about the comparing of pulse and beams and the difference between long range and focused weapon.
Each effect has there own benefits, so it really depends on the play style you want to go for. Personally I use multi’s to increase the damage fall off to 2km then use overcharge with thermal & corrosion. That way you can hit shields & hull at a decent range with good damage. Just my preference though. To each his own of course. Find what works best for you & any build is good.
My opinion is not the popular view, but I think long ranged is over used and only really beneficial on large, slow ships that can't keep within range of faster moving targets. Focused is a better choice with most of the (useful) benefit of long range and more utility with the buff to piercing. The extra heat generation is negligible on most ships and manageable through the correct choice of powerplant engineering on ships that aren't very heat efficient at stock. Efficient is by far the best choice still for small, fast ships. So the question of which laser mod - the answer is it depends on the ship and there is no catchall solution that a lot of commanders seem to think long range is (as well there shouldn't be).
Depends if the lasers are for healy beams or battle for me personally.
I love long range. I've kitted my Type 10 out with all long range, and you can just fire and hit up to 4km (I think gd3 or4)
Sure, go long range if you have trouble keeping on target. I don't. I still use phasing long range pulse turrets on the smalls on my Vette for CZ tagging.
do not fall in for the burst upgrade. Eaven if they sey it is 50% more or eaven more damage you wont hit annything that is furter away than 500 meter.
Not on a big shipe like the Corvette.
If you fly in a little fast manuverable ship and you can hold possition on a enemy than it makes sin to put in shortrange and the burst thingy.
I agree long range has been working pretty good for me
for pve efficient mod is my favorite, i know that others mods have way better burst damage, but man a want my vette shooting 2 class 4 beams forever thats just it. im running g5 dirty tunning on 7d thrusters, about 360m/s, NPCs don't run more than 420m/s and usually stick close while you shoot then, so long range for pve is not very interesting.
I'm running an fdl with a large multi 2 med multi all overcharged and 2 beams with efficient weapon mod. Can take out most ships in seconds can take a bit of time on the big 3.
I stay within 1000 meters and get infinite fire. The power draw is what efficient is about. Combined with a turret, of which I have six, efficient will always deal more damage.
I do just about the same. Keep my corvette as close range as possible because the AI tries to do the same. With the added detail of keeping you suppressed from behind (those a55holes). I've also went and buffed a 7c bi weave shield generator with reinforced mod and added a regen boost special effect on top of it. And on top of all that i took the liberty of adding 8 shield boosters that have maxed resist mod on them and capacity effect to boost shield capacity a bit. The reason i had the audacity to perform the blasphemy of making my build a passive shield tank (seriously, it's considered a blasphemy these days if you don't have at least 3 scb's on a combat ship) was because i just wanted to enjoy the game and my definition of enjoyment means melting armor off 3 anacondas at once without having to worry about shield capacity or scb's running out of ammo or any of that crap. Just melting armor. Btw i forgot to mention the weapons. I'm using 2 huge and 2 medium beam lasers with efficient mod on as primary fire and 2 small and the large hardpoint underneath as debuff turrets. And if i switch either the 2 mediums or one of the large off, i can melt armor forever.
Bottom line, i don't believe range helps when the enemy tries it's best to close the distance as much as possible and flanks you all the time. Instead you should just employ the exact same strategy and try to do the exact same thing to get back at them for being a55holes or something. Luckily the AI are predictable and by the time you finish your maneuver, you're the one doing the flanking. Hope this helps... Peace.
I agree with just about everyone here and the video above. It all falls on play style and ship. My personal play style for PvE is get in close and have a turn battle with with the enemy. It's a more satisfying skill that way for me. Plus I use FDL and Python mainly. So efficient works best for those. However on my anaconda I use long range. Which they usually die even before I am in their weapons range. I dont think long range is the only go to neither is efficient.
I use two huge efficient lasers on my PvE Vulture. 4 pips to weps, 1 to shields, and 1 to engines.. I never have to let go of my trigger and the vulture can stay close I'm usually not suffering any damage falloff.
For a vulture this works because the PP and distributer arent that strong plus it really benefits when you can stay really close to them then you can really see the effect of the extra damage tho if it didnt have power problems as much as it does you could get away with fixed long range beams sniping enenmies from a great distance
But but NPC ships always come to you, so why long range needed? :) It completely makes sens for PVP or material collecting as metioned tho. But I usually have no issue keeping NPC ship within 1K
On my Imp Clipper I'll always go with efficient but on corvette, I might consider long range, maybe. I'd really rather try long range fix beam on a more nimble ship where the weapon is on your nose and not on your wingtips lol.
I think your graph is a little misleading. Efficient adds damage so by setting your graph to be range and damage % it implies the weapons are doing the same damage at the line intersection but that's not the case. In the case of fixed huge lasers efficient matches long-range at about 1600km and does more damage when any closer than that, without even taking into consideration all the other benefits efficient brings. Long-range is still fantastic of course, but I don't think it shines unless your fighting at or over 3km.
Cool vid! Thanks for the info! Standard R plot? :D
What are your thoughts regarding focused vs long range lasers? For non-beam lasers I mean.
hows about a FDL with short range ??
I say good luck hitting anything smaller than an Asp beyond 3km. Pulling in enemies while limpets are out, they will mostly likely destroy your limpets. Then you have to deal with hostiles AND redeploy limpets. Also since you are using Multi-cannons or Cannons, you want to be at close range. The Corvette ain't no slouch with a G5 dirty drive, so closing the gap is eezy-peezy.
I have tried that exact build and does not work aswell compared to efficient beams.You won't be able to punch through npcs that spam shield cell banks. With efficient beams you only need 2 pips into weapons max unless you want huge energy weapons. You should try efficient beams or overcharged pulse before saying long range is the way to go.
I got a very big issue with pve combat in general. I have to loot a lot materials for the most ingi blueprints. It takes by far more time to build a battelship, than a explora or a trader or a mining ship. Have i done it, i am "payed off" by the most non worthy gameplay. You got a high risk and very small bountys.
I use longrange om my beams too, and i use it on my multis as well, so when i gather materials the ships come to me :-D
You can with efficient cool you ship. When you put thermal cascade as experimental. Just a little thing if so off you not know. I don't nead heat sinks vor my shield cells anymore
Thermal vent?
This is what pisses me off about reading on loadouts for my Chieftain, everyone goes to the "best dps" on paper but forget that I don't have an engineered ship yet, power management is shit and having a lerge, medium and small beams means I can fire for about 6 seconds before I run out of juice, which is why for the time being I'm considering changing to pulse or burst laser instead, what's the point of having beams if I can only fire them for 6 seconds before having to then wait for ages to be able to fire them again for another 6 seconds? using build tools by switching to pulse lasers I instantly gain 100% more damage output even though on paper I do something like 15% less dps, from the extra time I can remain firing at the enemy alone.
Regarding the "long range" mod, the amount of time I remain under or over 1km of the target is about the same throughout the fight, maybe leaning slightly more towards the over 1km area, so I can see long range lasers being much more beneficial to me, as long as my ship can handle the energy required by such weapons, and even then I wouldn't probably pick efficient beams over long range beams if I can use long range pulse instead and still have the same damage output, it will always depend on the ship you are using and the numbers look nice on paper but what about in reality?
From my understanding also long range laser/beam weapons have a fall off I don't get you graph 🤔
The long range lasers do the same damage on full range when they hit.
hi, i prefer beam laser. thank you ;)
Do you ever play any other games just wondering? I don't mean this in a negative way either just to clarify.
Eficient and mal function it's the best for npc pve
I have tried long range and dissagree with you since I can get a longer fire rate using effiient than with long range, also when doing combat in a high res site most of the combat is within the range of efficient beam weapons so the extra range with LR if not necessary
Is this the same with railguns...?
Sturdy master race
Depends how far you enemy usually is
Hi Astro, I've followed you're corvette build and after a few days prospecting and and getting USS items to get some engineering on my Anaconda done.
***** FSD Dirty Drive
***** Hull Reinforcement Thermal Resistant
***** Hull Reinforcement Kinetic Resistant
***** Long Range Beam Laser x2
***** Multi cannons - just need to get auto loader and other corrosive shells etc.
***** Armour
Just got to get that 2 second Kill Warrant Scanner, that's so awesome lol, would be nice to get an A Rated one but it tips me over on power so would going lightweight on a few things like power distributor help bring it down ?
Hell I didn't think it was a bad choice at all.
Why has elite lasers in the first place and where is my 99.9% reflective ship paint job? Just apply some chrome vapors to your ship and it shines like a mirror....and 99.9% of your enemies laser power goes off into space. There's a reason why most realistic space shows like "The Expanse" have NO LASERWEAPONS. Cause they are so incredibly useless against a reflective ship. Once my enemy uses lases I just cover my ship in mirrors. Lasers are just ridicolous as weapons.
Could you do a video on distributor draw fall off? I noticed that my efficient lasers use more distributor the closer I am to at Target. I wonder if that's the same for all weapons?
No thats because the efficient laser do more damage on close range on grade 5 its almost 25% more damage
I actually use both. :)
I have long range guns, meaning I can always do damage and engage NPCs at range, but then the NPCs (for some reason) try to engage me at about 1k
Also I have five beam laser turrets on my corvette and usually give my weapons fewer than 3 pips. Somehow, my weapons almost never drain the capacitor.
Okay so I have a Vette 2x huge beams 2x small pulse and 1x larg multi 2x med multi all engineered...it kills fast but idk about PvE
Long range beam laser cant shoot focused properly from 6 - 4 km
Most likely You are right.
The way I see it, you use Efficient on all laser weapons, UNLESS your tailoring a build specifically to not have to do so.
yep this is what many players don't realize due to shitty game design... damage falloff never explained to the players... I now using g4 focused pule and g2 long range pulse for my large hardpoints in my chieftain.