Best PVE weapon for Medium hardpoint?

[Innominatam]

What is the best all rounder weapons for Medium hardpoints?

[Dolphin Bottlenose]

It depends on what you have on your other hardpoints. And what you want to do with your ship.

[Stelar Seven]

Hardpoint location also matters.

[Chillermaschine]

Originally posted by Dolphin Bottlenose:

It depends on what you have on your other hardpoints. And what you want to do with your ship.

A question if I may, since over 4000 hours of elite won't lie I'd wager ;)
Let's assume I fly a cobra mkIII with core components A-rated, doing a bit of this and that, mainly courier runs.
I want to be able to defend myself in case I get sprung and miss the escape vector, ideally dishing out enough damage to at least scare pesky NPCs off.
What weaponry would you put on...

Originally posted by Stelar Seven:

Hardpoint location also matters.

...and where? Esp. with cobra's slightly silly hardpoint placement.

[LoboFH]

In that Cobra, against NPC's, you could use two medium gimballed multicannons (incendiary and corrosive), in the small hardpoints lasers or railguns.

[Dolphin Bottlenose]

Originally posted by Chillermaschine:

Let's assume I fly a cobra mkIII with core components A-rated, doing a bit of this and that, mainly courier runs.

In this case I probably would go with a gimbaled beam (if you are not very good at staying at your target) or burst (if you can keep your enemy for longer) laser. It will output enough of damage in a short period of time. And I would put a multicannon on another medium hardpoint, to hit hulls.

If I wouldn't mind some engineering, I would go with missile launchers, engineered for thermal damage. This way they do quite a lot of damage to shields. But they are ineffective if your enemy has point defences. In this case I would use another Cobra's strength - a very fast speed. So I would disengage and run away. :)

In general, for my mission runner ships I use weapons that can output a lot of damage in a short period time, even if they have a small amount of ammo. The idea is to win one-two possible fights on my way until I deliver my mission and reload the ammo. But not to get too much into fights that will delay my mission turnover, or put the mission's success into jeopardy.

[Stelar Seven]

Originally posted by Chillermaschine:

Originally posted by Dolphin Bottlenose:

It depends on what you have on your other hardpoints. And what you want to do with your ship.

A question if I may, since over 4000 hours of elite won't lie I'd wager ;)
Let's assume I fly a cobra mkIII with core components A-rated, doing a bit of this and that, mainly courier runs.
I want to be able to defend myself in case I get sprung and miss the escape vector, ideally dishing out enough damage to at least scare pesky NPCs off.
What weaponry would you put on...

NPC don't generally scare off until they are about to explode. Some civilians being the exception. In a Cobra 3 I'd fit for speed and boost away as odds are you have an Anaconda behind you.

Originally posted by Chillermaschine:

Originally posted by Stelar Seven:

Hardpoint location also matters.

...and where? Esp. with cobra's slightly silly hardpoint placement.

Silly can be offset with gimbals. Chaff will be obnoxious though.

If you have some closely grouped points I like a couple of rail guns. They will apply pain to whatever gets in front of you.

For more widely spaced spots, gimbled Multicannon for 3s and 4s, burst lasers for 1s and 2s. Or flack cannons for the range of interesting side effects if you engineer.

Engineer your ships weapons. Weapons without engineering are very bad at hurting things other than the pride of their users.

[Chillermaschine]

Great answers @ all, useful info provided! Thank you very much

Originally posted by Dolphin Bottlenose:

... The idea is to win one-two possible fights on my way until I deliver my mission and reload the ammo. But not to get too much into fights that will delay my mission turnover, or put the mission's success into jeopardy.

This is exactly how I should have phrased my initial request, because that's what I'm after atm ;)

Originally posted by Stelar Seven:

... Weapons without engineering are very bad at hurting things other than the pride of their users.

I read lots of good things about engineering, but nothing convinced me like that.
Would you say engineering weapons is paramount to core internals etc...?

Guess it's engineering how-to's next...

So far I ran with a rail gun and gimballed multicannon as 2s and a turreted beam laser and multicannon as 1s...
Are turrets worth it anyway if my aim sucks, can they be relied upon unless chaffed?

[LoboFH]

Turrets are only useful in slow, huge ships. A Cobra doesn't need it, fixed or gimballed.

[Stelar Seven]

Originally posted by Chillermaschine:

Great answers @ all, useful info provided! Thank you very much
....

Originally posted by Stelar Seven:

... Weapons without engineering are very bad at hurting things other than the pride of their users.

I read lots of good things about engineering, but nothing convinced me like that.
Would you say engineering weapons is paramount to core internals etc...?

I would say engineering is the true progression ladder in the game. Money is cake to amass but Engineering takes you on a tour of most of the basic game mechanics and a lot of the content you may otherwise miss. You can get by without it, but I wouldn't want to.

Originally posted by Chillermaschine:

Guess it's engineering how-to's next...

So far I ran with a rail gun and gimballed multicannon as 2s and a turreted beam laser and multicannon as 1s...
Are turrets worth it anyway if my aim sucks, can they be relied upon unless chaffed?

Rails are great. I like Multicannon but the 2's burn through their ammo too fast.

Turrets are an also ran. The only place I use them is on a purpose built Thargoid scout killer.

[Geedly]

Don't, run away

[Chillermaschine]

Originally posted by Game_Difficulty:

Don't, run away

But... my space-honor...
No, seriously, that's what I do all the time, got pretty good at hitting escape vectors.

Only times I got into a fight, I went weapon-testing on harmless pirate bounties.
One of which initiated a jump and did, indeed, escape (the space-honor again, argh...)

To possibly prevent this and because I don't aim for PvP it seemed fitting to post in a thread that already attracted some knowledgeable elite gun-nuts ;)

[Hobo Misanthropus]

Cobra ideal hardpoints are

1x Burst LaserM and 1xBurst Laser Medium on either the Right or Left hardpoints (make them both on the same side.

and 1x Multicannon (Short Range Blaster + Auto loader)M and 1x Multicannon (Corrosive, Short Range Blaster) S on another side.

It's important to align the sides right, as it improves attack grouping better. Particularly for the Multicannons. I also usually have two firegroup sets. One dividing the hardpoints up (L hardpoints on L trigger, R Hardpoints on R trigger) and then another fire group where R trigger fires all 4.

[BigKill]

Beam Lasers...no explanation...Just Beam Lasers