People probably mean Laser Cannons are meta because of the unlimited ammo with now increased damage. Thankfully ballistics do have a lot of ammo now and they still go straight through shields. So bigger juicer targets are probably easier with ballistics. However, cannons still last longer cause of the “infinite ammo.” You are right, and they are right. It all depends on the target, the skill of the pilot, and how they want to fight. I typically run lasers because of the ammo situation. Good analysis and bringing this further to light though. 👍
Nice testing. Shield Resistance Bonus is +50% when power is set to shields. It was +25% prior to 3.23, so that's also a reason ships, especially big ones, feel so much beefier, even though the S3 shields lost 15k shield HP.
Excellent video, with well presented useful information. I think much of the "laser cannon meta" is coming from the dedicated PvP crowd. For them the possibility of being goaded into taking marginal shots and ending up depleting all their ammo is not a position they ever want to be in. And given how poorly the (high ammo) gatlings are doing right now they see LCs as the way to go. Although some have noted that the mass drivers can be extremely effective, so long as you are good enough to actually get hits.
Thanks for this. Just the testing/perspective I needed. Saw someone recommend 2x deadbolt and 2x M7A. Slight difference in velocity, but maybe a good balance? I really hate the idea of not having ammo and every time I have run ballistics, I run out. Servers are often shitty enough to chain bounties as well, lol. But, in the case of them working, I agree, ballistics seems clearly superior. Nonetheless, I have been doing okay with omnis on my taurus. But it is clear I need to get rid of those after some research, lol.
I went las cannon and ballistic for a while with my Harbinger... Now I swapped it to full Ballistic repeaters... It might need rearming constantly but damn it makes me grin like a child when the 4xS2 and the 1xS5 start to go Brrrrrt xd
Why are your lasers operating only at 33% ;-) To be honest, tested both and the Omnis just doing a much better job, not because the deadbolts lacked damage, but simply for the staying power. I still would not want to kill a 890 with lasers though.
I test flew the Inferno for a bit and was wondering if it might be better long time DPS to tap fire it. First you spin it up fully, then you release the trigger for a short time to let the weapon cool down a bit but without letting in spin down completely, the you fire again.
Ive always used ballistics, lasers are just so much more lame to me. Like you said i have no idea why having to stop to reload is such a big issue for people, most likely you're gonna stop to repair anyways
I'm going to like and subscribe even harder now, don't tell me what to do ! Dakka for life ! Also, bummed my Ion is really crappy right now, it's even fun to play with it, does the inferno have some viability ? It feel like a Corsair would be doing a better job
Yeah ION got beat down. Inferno is still fairly viable but not really for ERT. It has the firepower but dont have the shields to survive. I still do VHRTs in it.
Not a thing. Bounty hunting is one of the most lucrative things you can do in SC right now once you can comfortably do ERTs. The amount of drugs and loot spawning is insane. Im making 500k-2m per hour running ERTs.
@@StarCitizennonsense-ms2zc great to know - im just coming back to the game and the lower level ones dont seem to payout even enough for running my ship. I've heard the cargo is the real money maker- that sucks for my hornet i guess. What ships do you recommend for ERT's? (obviously the inferno from this video but any others?)
@@herbv3449 best solo ship for ert is probably corsair with his massive pilot firepower, connie very strong too, they both have room for cargo, gunner seats if you have friends tagging along, and affordable (ingame) at least before 3.23 they were
@@StarCitizennonsense-ms2zc That's interesting. I had given up on looting ERT's after the nerf as the admittedly small sample I did turned up crap. Are you widening your pool of commodities you are looting and playing a volume game or just sticking it out til a good drop hits? Thanks.
i agree with you mostly but i will stick to my M7As. i play the game alot and the countless rearm bugs and pad bugs when you cant rearm or repair etc is just a pain in the ass with ballistics or missile throwers. so yes the M7As are king until the nasty bugs are gone.
I play a lot too and have been using ballistics exclusively since 3.23 launched and have never even heard of this happening. You would think such a massive bug would be on the issue council. If i hit resupply, my ammo is back. You got a link to this bug on the issue council?
@@StarCitizennonsense-ms2zc i have no idea if its on there bcus im not on there at all. every moon i flew too the landing pats were clustered with abandoned ships. and when i land i cant repair or do anything.
@@StarCitizennonsense-ms2zc I have same problem as this guy. I go on a pad/hangar I attempt to refuel/restock/repair and well... it takes my credits but nothing happens. Only fix I've found for this is to store ship and retrieve it again, or server hop. Happens way too often
Good testing, it makes the difference very clear, altough for me personally, flying a Talon and doing ERT, i can simply stick onto a big target's ass and get my hits all in the same spot, thus "removing" the only minus of the laser cannons, since smaller targets generally have bubble shields, but since this is personal other people might prefer to use ballistic if they want a "turn your brain off " kinda weapon XD
Because power to weapons does absolutely NOTHING for ballistic weapons. Like literally not a single thing. So why on earth would i dump my power into absolutely nothing instead of boosting my survivability? You would know this had you actually watched the video. That is explained in detail.
@@StarCitizennonsense-ms2zc that doesn’t even make sense obviously ballistics don’t need power to weapons but laser weapons have a huge difference when using power to weapons. Most people will put all power to weapons when using laser weapons so if ur testing effectiveness of ballistics vs lasers then that’s not a fair test because you’re not using lasers as they should be used
@@justkickback those people are morons though. You're gimping the living hell out of your shields for slightly more DPS. The entire point of this video that you can do the opposite of that and keep the DPS.
@@StarCitizennonsense-ms2zcHM no mate. While I really love your video here (clear and straight to the point, actual testing and good arguments) you absolutely miss the comparison of Ballistic with powers to shield vs Laser Cannons with powers to weapons. The TTK WILL go down 100 %. You get faster reloading AND more laser shoot capacity this way. This way you just take the advantage of ballistics can go full shield, but don't take into account lasers are best with powers to weapons. And I'm in the boat (maybe my servers sucked) that I do NOT need to repair after every ert so chaining them is a thing in my corsair with MXAs and powers to weapons.
@@StarCitizennonsense-ms2zc Sorry mate, you made a good point, but ended screwing up this one. Now I would just put this under skill issues, but I have not yet get even up back to ERTs, soon I will finally reach at least VHRTs, so far 100% energy to weapons is the way to go, because NPCs are still Stormtroopers, they just miss in a different kind of way, but still can't hit a properly moving target. Looking forward to see for myself, but certainly incursions had been a pain with Ballistics and had been slightly less of a pain with lasers, simply because you do not have to constantly reload when you solo them. Overall it seems like the smartest move is to bring more even more Firepower in general as the TTK is high enough to make this worthwhile.
Being an owner of both Ares Star Fighter Inferno and the Ares Star Fighter Ion, I notice a big difference in the two after the great nerf of 3.19 I believe. Before I would only take the Ino out, after the second round of nerfs to it, I now find the Ino useless in my book. "Thanks CIG, I will remember this one" So I switched to the Inferno. Reloading was the one thing that kept me out of its seat before the nerf of the Ino. Even with the reloading I loved it, It became my daily driver for all I did was space stuff. Then nerfed it, first with a crap loadout of ammo and then added its count back but added overheating. "What the hell are coolers for and don't they know, space is cold as hell". So to catch up, the 3.23.1 and the OP NPC's energy weapons seem as if they lack the punch they use to have. I think if they don't remove the overheating, it should take longer to over heat, again space is cold. I'm just on hold on making any more purchases until they get it together, I'm tired of this up/down stuff on weapons, good this year, trash the next, then good again. I feel I'm seeing some Star Trek stuff here, the Borg shields are somewhat useless with ballistics too in their Star Trek Online game. Sure wish the devs played their own game daily as we do. 8 hours a week should be a requirement, lol. Thanks for comparing weapons for ERT's I agree, ballistics really is the way, they just need to address the ammo count and the overheating better. The Ino most likely won't make it to the hangar after this year, sadly, I keep thinking about melting it.
You're actually extremely wrong about how guns overheating in space would work. Space is not cold in the traditional sense, for one. There's no air, and therefore nothing for temperature to even travel through, which also segues me into my point about guns overheating. If anything, guns would never cool down in space, rather than never get hot. The way heat sinks and, even real life guns overheating works is the heat dissipates into the air. There's no air in space, there's nothing to conduct the heat away from the gun, plus factoring in things like direct, unfiltered sunlight with no atmospheric protection would likely cause guns to heat up so much it could even cause the ammunition to explode. Space is the best insulator in existence, because the only way to transfer heat in space is through radiation, which is very slow and very inefficient. So, realistically, it does make sense that guns overheat in a situation where the only way for the heat to dissipate would be through manufactured heat sinks or active cooling systems, which obviously take a set amount of time to conduct the heat away from the object and are only effective to a certain degree, like liquid cooling in a computer. Overheating makes perfect sense in space, and in reality, it should actually be much slower, but I'm using the fact that Star Citizen takes place over 900 years in the future as an excuse for why it cools down as fast as it does, because they likely have insane heat sink technology. This isn't a glaring, unrealistic issue, you just aren't very well educated on what space actually is or how it works, no offense intended.
And also I wanna add, having to reload AFTER a mission is not the only reason some people hate having to reload. Depending on what you are doing you might not even make it past the mission before you end up having to reload, and bounties are not the only space combat activity. IMO people should just test ALL the weapons that look good to them and find out what works best for them.
I usually have just under half my ammo left after an ERT using deadbolts. I have never had a situation where i am running out of ammo mid fight. Just look at the video and see how little ammo it takes to kill an M2 with deadbolts. Keep in mind thats my m2, NPC ships have lower armor than player ships do so they will take even less ammo than mine does. 45 ammo from the deadbolt to kill a player M2. That means using 0 missiles i can kill 6.2 of them before running dry. Thats plenty of ammo for an ERT...
People are so much shortsighted they can only see one dimension. Ballistics are superior why? Because they can kill faster? Well if you plan to do only 1 mission ok I guess. But I doubt it. You wanna farm dont you? Then when you account all the time lost going for ammo restocks, which weapon type you think will earn you more credits per hour? Pfff
It's like you say, you can't trust what youtubers are saying, including you. Because you, too, forgot about certain aspects that matter a lot in a fight. 1. Ammo pool, which tends to be bigger on bigger ships/weapons. And although that has been normalized a lot, it is still limited and something you need to factor in whether it works for you or not. 2. Ship capabilities to handle the heat will impact the dps a lot. 3. You are shooting fish in a barrel. The viability takes a much harder hit against moving targets, especially small, nimble ones, because the projectile velocity of the Deadbolts is really, really low, so you have to lead your shots a lot more, especially with lag and unpredictable movements. So I think you have a point but are only half right.
LOL what a tool... 1. Ammo pool is not bigger on bigger ships. Ammo capacity is determined by the weapon, not the ship. Its completely normalized, you are just dumb. 2. The heat dispersion on ballistics is the same on all ships, again thats determined by the weapon not the ship, you are just dumb. 3. This video is specifically about ERTs, thats a non issue for ERTs. You want the biggest slowest guns possible for ERTs, you are just dumb. I didnt forget shit you are just a moron. Everything you said was so wrong it hurts.
@StarCitizennonsense-ms2zc I understand that he is wrong but still you don't have to be such an asshole to the guy. He is just stating an opinion so stop being an Ass
@@johnwells2401 he's a clueless moron that's only here to argue. He's got multiple comments arguing really stupid shit. Fuck him. He can go away. If you don't like it you are free to join him. I don't want any of you here anyway
