Bolt vs Pulse?

[Ablomis]

What’s the fundamental difference between them?

I understand role of beam, plasma, shard… But when would you use bolt vs pulse?

[Wraith]

Bolt is like an auto gun.

Pulse is like a burst gun.

They both fill the same role.

Do you want an automatic gun that shoot faster but the bullet spread out more and travel slower but deal more damage.

Or do you want a burst gun that travel faster and is more accurate but deal less damage.

[Oddible]

Bolt are hard hitting slower moving projectiles. Great against M corvettes, not as good vs small fast fighters and cannot hit missiles. Pulse are small fast projectiles that do lighter but more consistent damage to M class ships but do great against fighters and can hit missiles.

Pulse is a middle ground between bolt and beam. More accurate than bolt but with less punch, less accurate than beam but hit harder than a wet noodle.

[zpc]

TER bolt (both L & M) bursts sound awesome - I always use them to beef up the soundscape of my space battles

In terms of usage they are best used against ships >= M. For S, they're usually not very effective. Pulse (M and TER L) or flak does that job better. So I wouldn't say bolt & pulse fill the same role.

If you aren't talking about turrets then it all comes down to your piloting skills. Hitting the enemy with all bolt bullets is usually hurting a lot more then pulse.

@Oddible

I didn't know that bolt has zero stopping power against missiles - good to learn about that...

[Oddible]

I mean, you might get lucky and a bolt could hit a missile, they're just not the ideal choice.

[zpc]

Righty right, fits the overall weapon design - accuracy isn't a bolt thing.

[ArcticISAF]

Kind of adding to everyone else, I'd regulate bolt turrets to only adding a harder hitting punch to medium or large targets. Especially if you control the distance to the target (say if you're in a medium ship or even a destroyer that gets in their face). Kind of a good option if you can use your main guns to deal with small ships (say for frigate or corvette of some kind).

Bolt theoretically can fight small ships. The time to target at max range for mediums is 3 seconds (1.1 km/s for 3.3 km range), so it's not too bad especially as they dart in closer. Pulse is just better at dealing with smaller ships (1.85 km/s at 3.4 km range), more hits on them.

TER L bolt turrets sounds awesome, looks great, love the overall feel of them... but they can't hit the side of a barn (1.3 km/s for 5.6 km range). They'll sit there plinking away at M/S ships all day and it'll be luck/short distance that you'll get a good hit. But - if you have enough medium turrets to deal with the flies swarming around (say on the Osaka), you can use the L Bolt turrets to boost your attack on capital ships. Plasma might be better here - but the bolt does still pack a decent punch. TER L pulse might be more worthwhile overall for versatility and bit extra range, as it can deal with M/S ships decently and still fight capital ships. For easy compare, damage for L plasma, TER Bolt and TER pulse is ~1050, 461, 379 MW.

TL;DR - Bolt for large/medium targets and some versatility, especially if you can deal with small ships another way (e.g. main guns). Pulse is good for everything, nice all-rounder. Consider what's the engagement distance, and if you control that or the enemy does.

[Oddible]

For my corvettes I usually put bolt main guns and pulse turrets. They can punch out other corvettes and any fighter that gets near them is going to get plinked down.

[Caramio]

That explains why Xenon were making fun of my destoyer filled with Bolt :( i just wanted more dakka but flak hits friendlies and currently im using destroyers for gate camps so no flak no bolt i guess pulse it is

[ArcticISAF]

Yeah I can see that happening lol. The Syn, the one that you get I just have loaded up with all pulse. They still take a few shots to hit/takedown the xenon fighters but it always clears them all up. Got swarmed by like 40 of them in Tharka's Cascade, and it took them down.

My fun reference for L bolt turrets is this youtube video, at about 1:57:40. Only 4 of the turrets onboard, but still just a few minutes of them not being effective against xenon M/S ships.

https://youtu.be/pmTcjzVvfaA?t=7060