Good/Interesting Federal Corvette hardpoint loadout?

[Big McLargeHuge]

Are there any standout weapons that are fun to use on the corvette?

[Sighman]

1. Autoload gimballed multis in the 3 big slots, beams in the rest

2. Autoload gimballed multis in the 3 big slots, 2 multi turrets in the size 2 slots, 2 cytos in the small slots

3. All frags apart from cytos in the smalls

4. Beams in every slot.

(Common theme with the cytos - they're a size 1 weapon which strip shields like a size 3 or 4 beam)

[Agony_Aunt]

Originally posted by Sighman:

3. All frags apart from cytos in the smalls

I wish huge frags were a thing, but with this loadout it means you're putting large frags in huge slots.

[ждун]

Originally posted by Sighman:

1. Autoload gimballed multis in the 3 big slots, beams in the rest

beams suck. Damage too low, distributor cost too high. Almost useless against hulls.
Concord cannons much better in the middle slots. Much more damage and high chance of ciritical power plant hits.
Large multicannons with incindiary rounds will outperform the beams by big margin.
small hardpoints are better used for applying corrosive / drag / emmissive debuffs further increasing damage output for the main weapons.

[Agony_Aunt]

Originally posted by ждун:

Originally posted by Sighman:

1. Autoload gimballed multis in the 3 big slots, beams in the rest

beams suck. Damage too low, distributor cost too high. Almost useless against hulls.
Concord cannons much better in the middle slots. Much more damage and high chance of ciritical power plant hits.
Large multicannons with incindiary rounds will outperform the beams by big margin.
small hardpoints are better used for applying corrosive / drag / emmissive debuffs further increasing damage output for the main weapons.

Combined with a small high-cap turretted MC with corrosive, they do very well. One of my best ships for taking out other ships is my all beam (except for the smalls) Corvette.

I've got Concord Cannons on my Chieftan along with cytos - pretty nice at taking ships down, although not as quick as the Corvette.

The ship that takes any ship down the quickest is my all double shot frag Krait Mk2. Only downside is its not good for long engagements as it burns through the ammo.

[ждун]

I am doing pve with corvette for ong time and I have tested all kinds of loadouts, but I was always disappointed with any lasers but maybe cytos. However only 2 cytos aint realy worth it. My ultimate loadout for the corvette is now this:

2x huge gimb. MC, short range + incindiary rounds.
1x large gimb. MC, short range + incindiary rounds.
2x concords, short range + auto-loader
2x small gimb MC, high cap + corrosive / emmissive

also must have for this is A grade sensors, improves gimbals accuracy and sticks the locks better on cool runners.

Why not auto loader?
The large MCs are not only against hulls, they are also main weapons against shields. With inciandary rounds they burn the shields almost twice as fast. They definetelly outperform huge beam lasers against shields too. And they are still absolutelly devastating against hulls as well. Auto-Loader only increases sustained dps on hulls and not that much. Trading this for much more shield damage is worth it.

The huge + large MCs I am always loading with premium ammo. Because MCs have large magazines and relatively slow rate of fire. One reload is enough for about 100 kills, which is about a whole stack of massacre missions. +30% damage is absolutely worth it on those.

In the middle hardpoints definetelly concords. They deal as much damage as large MCs, but on top they are ultimate power plant killers. Better than rail guns. Im always subtargeting the power plant. In more than 50% of cases the power plant blows up before hull is destroyed. Often PP blows up when they are over 80% hull. I would never trade those concords for anything else in the middle slots.

smalls are mostly for debuffs. Corrosive ist must have. Against middle and large ships such as anacondas this noticably increases the damage of the large guns and concords as well.
The other is applying emmissive to support gimbals stickiness on cold runners and in case they start dropping heat sinks I am not losing the lock. Alternativelly one could use gimballed or turret frag for applying drag munitions. That makes the enemies less maneuvarable. Helps to certain degree against assault ships and other nimble targets.
Here its also possible to use turreted MCs, but I prefer gimbals actually. MCs because they have high rate of fire which greatly increases the chance of power plant blow up once the concords have put its health to 0%.

Another advantage of chosing kinetic only build is that MCs and cannons don't demand much from distributor. I can effort flying always with 4 pips to engines without ever doing any pip management. It is simply not necessary with only MCs and cannons. Always 4 pips to engines means much better maneuvarability and speed.

This loadout works best for me for the corvette in any pve, be it massacre bounty hunting, assassinations or power combat zones.

[fullarmor2]

I have two huge beam lasers with efficiency engineering, making them easier to power... Two huge beams are FUN! I have multi cannons everywhere else, engineered for extra damage.
That all works great. I use the beams to take out an enemies shields , and the multi cannons to finish the job! Or use the beams for the kill... The beam lasers can do it all.

[UnderNewManagement]

i like long range efficiency pulse for the fall off damage range and corrosive and heat multi cannons
also the beam fixed loadout for the fighter for some reason does quite a bit to hulls

[fullarmor2]

Originally posted by UnderNewManagement:

i like long range efficiency pulse for the fall off damage range and corrosive and heat multi cannons
also the beam fixed loadout for the fighter for some reason does quite a bit to hulls

Especially if you rank up your fighter pilot... I've been using my girl for a long time now, and her rank recently reached master... Its a big difference! She can kick some serious butt...

[ждун]

Originally posted by fullarmor2:

I have two huge beam lasers with efficiency engineering, making them easier to power... Two huge beams are FUN!

maybe looks cool, but besides that
An efficient / oversized engineered gimb beam laser demands 4.945 MW from distributor. Short range / incindiary rounds gimb multi cannon only 0.37 MW.
Beam Laser costs more than 13 times as much power on WPN distributor compared to Multi-Cannon. That is just insane and not really fun. You have too much down-time and you have to put all the pips into WPN if you want to fire it for longer than a few seconds. Hence you are seriously hindering your defense and maneuvarability. Also the beam becomes less efficient beyond 600m distance. At 2000m it is already almost useless where the short-range multicannon has no efficiency penalty up to 2000m.

[ждун]

Why I would never put anything else into huge hardpoints of the corvette but mulit-cannons:

The corvette is the only ship in the game that can carry two huge weapons.
Huge weapons profit more from premium ammo than smaller weapons.
Multi-cannons profit most from premium ammo, because they have large magazines (2100 rounds). Each synthetization of prems fills the magazines to the top in one go.
Huge multi-cannons are the only weapons that are really worth being loaded with premium rounds. It takes forever to empty their magazine. You can kill pirates for two hours before you need to reload them.

Considering the above, you get the highest possible total damage bonus per reload with premium ammo for the mats you invest with huge multi-cannons.

Therefore corvette is litterelly begging for huge multi-cannons loaded with premium rounds.

huge MC with premium rounds deals more damage than huge beam laser. However the laser needs 13x more distributor power. I think the things are clear.

[funkynutz]

Stick some dirty great big plasmas on there.

Doesn't matter what your targets thermal/kinetic resistances are, when you're firing something that completely ignores them.

And despite it's ungainly size, the Corvette actually turns well enough to use them effectively.

[ждун]

That is not quite true that plasma completely ignore the resistances.
Only 60% of plasma damage is absolute damage. Not 100%.
absolute damage does not bypass base resistance of shields, that depends on how many pips are in SYS capacitator. With 2 pips in SYS the targets shield has 33% base resistance. With 4 pips to SYS they have 60% base resistance. That is basically 60% resist against absolute damage.

Lets turn some numbers.

Assume we have an enemy with 50% kinetic, 50% thermal, 33% base (2 pips in SYS).
That is about like regular pirates with not too much egnineering. High engineered enemies is a whole different story.

We fire a huge efficient / oversized plasma at it and actually hit it. It deals a bout 160 raw damage from which 96 (60%) are absolute , 32 (20%) kinetic, 32 (20%) thermal.
The absolute is resisted by base of the shield (33%) down to 64.
thermal and kinetic 20% to 25.6 each.
So we have total damage on shield of 115.2 which is 72% of the raw damage.
Hence about 30% of the damage is still resisted by the shields when target uses 2 pips in SYS. With 4 pips in Sys they will resist more than 40%.

But PA's are a bit more effective against hulls. However considering that they have lower sustained raw DPS than multi-cannons, its not really worth the high distributor draw, heat issues and the fact that come only fixed and have relatively slow projectiles.

[Agony_Aunt]

Originally posted by funkynutz:

Stick some dirty great big plasmas on there.

Doesn't matter what your targets thermal/kinetic resistances are, when you're firing something that completely ignores them.

And despite it's ungainly size, the Corvette actually turns well enough to use them effectively.

I've done the all PA ship (efficient so its actually possible for all to fire at the same time and not completely empty the capacitor).

Works very well, if you can handle the slow shot speed. Obliterates enemies.

[ждун]

common, PA's works "pretty well"?
Maybe only if you have never made a build that really works well.
Python MK2 with pacifiers will have scored 10 kills already while you are still busy with the first using the plasmas.
My opinion - PA is the worst weapon in the game. And I mean not its hard to hit, its actually not that hard. It just takes forever to kill something with plasmas even if the enemy doesn't move. They just don't deal much harm, despite all their absolute damage.
Much worse then even beam lasers. The only use for PA is against resistance stackers in PVP.