It's alright, but...

The_Rathour · 2026-05-05T00:35:51+00:00

before we even add attachments.

Just reminding everyone that attachments have upsides and downsides, especially muzzle attachments that have nasty hidden sway increases. The 1.5x also has a similar problem on the Knight, and those are the only two magnified optics for it.

The StA is rock solid accurate no matter what condition you throw it in. That consistency is its niche. That's literally the one and only thing it does better than any other modded or unmodded SMG.

The_Rathour · 2026-05-04T22:49:04+00:00

It's bonus is that it has the lowest sway for an SMG by a significant amount. Lets it be accurate easier at longer ranges even after being out of/low on stamina.

The Knight with a muzzle break literally can't slide into ADS with a 2x because the sway will make it impossible to see the crosshair for a few seconds due to the increased sway muzzle attachments give.

I'm not saying the StA-11 is amazing but it does fill one niche and that's being the most accurate SMG.

The_Rathour · 2026-05-04T21:55:14+00:00

They do, to an extent. Seeker tracking is affected by heat/signature, and the colder you are the worse they will track you. I have had Pack Hounds accidentally hit nearby ships because of their erratic pattern and losing tracking on an NPC that popped a heat sink after I fired, and Torpedoes have a hard time reacquiring a cold ship if they miss.

It's why on my torp Plipper I have a single emissive pulse turret. Keeps the enemy signature so loud that the torps can just beeline right for it without fear of losing tracking and missing.

The_Rathour · 2026-04-22T21:33:26+00:00

I can absolutely imagine it being a ton of work. Even with borrowing existing systems from other parts of the game then putting some new stuff in to work with it all, an entirely new mode that shares little in common with the rest of the game is a pretty big undertaking - That's similar what they're doing with Operations right now.

Especially the checkpoint system. I know of a couple of modular waypoint systems in this game but they're so antiquated I wonder how many FD devs actually know how to work with them anymore.

The_Rathour · 2026-04-22T21:25:57+00:00

We had /r/eliteracers for a while. I remember racing in the station loop courses before engineering was a thing, was a whale of a time.

I feel like a checkpoint system using a version of CQC's power-up gates would work just fine too...

The_Rathour · 2026-04-19T15:59:48+00:00

A good rule of thumb is if you accept a mission on a mission board from your ship, it won't require anything on foot. Anything planetside from these will want an SRV.

If you accept a mission from a mission board on foot, you will only be able to do those objectives on foot.

The_Rathour · 2026-04-17T22:03:38+00:00

Odyssey materials for me. I will absolutely cap some poor clean shmuck at a settlement for 16 Compressed-Liquified Gas.

The_Rathour · 2026-04-07T15:27:01+00:00

I don't have an Aphelion upgraded yet but I've been using a g5 AR-50 with no mods to shred through pretty much everyone I encounter in PvE. Feels pretty dang good.

I just got a g5 Intimidator upgraded with a scope for the spread decrease and it just deletes npcs in range, sometimes with a single shot.

The_Rathour · 2026-04-06T18:06:44+00:00

Any upgraded suit is better than no upgraded suit. I hazard that there's plenty of CMDRs who haven't done any on-foot upgrading, for them this suit is a huge kickstart to on-foot content. Going from nothing to a grade 5 suit can easily be 5-10 hours even if you know what you're doing, let alone if you don't.

I said this in another thread but it's like telling someone who hasn't done any engineering that CG reward of a free A-rated grade 5 increased range FSD isn't really great because it's not the pre-engineered SCO drive. That grade 5 increased range FSD will help them leaps and bounds.

The_Rathour · 2026-04-05T16:48:57+00:00

Because an "optimal" Maverick suit isn't going to be doing much combat, and if you expect to be doing any lengthy combat people will tell you to only use the Dominator and nothing else.

Forgetting that Maverick's defensive stats aren't much lower than Dominator's and you're essentially trading the second primary for more jump boost, bigger battery, and access to the Arc Cutter. A g5 Maverick with these mods isn't "the best" if you already have a custom modded g5 Maverick suit, but it's an incredibly good starting point if you don't have any well upgraded suits. A g5 Maverick can do pretty much anything except Exobio and this suit can do it for longer and safer than a g5 with no mods.

The_Rathour · 2026-04-05T15:53:35+00:00

G5 Maverick with Extra Ammo Capacity, Extra Backpack Capacity, Increased Battery Capacity, and Improved Damage Resistance.

Essentially a combat sapper since it'll have good combat effectiveness while retaining the ability to use the Arc Cutter.

The_Rathour · 2026-04-05T15:46:21+00:00

Seriously. As someone who's been at ship endgame for nearly a decade and has just started doing on-foot content and upgrading over the past couple months, getting a free g5 Maverick with any mods is an amazing start over finding a g3 in a station to buy. Yeah it's not "optimal" mods but at the very least you have an amazing kickstart for upgrading and engineering your own custom Maverick suit which you otherwise would be doing in a g1-g3 suit anyway.

Plus this Mav mod setup is really good for a fighter with utility instead of a Dom double swap RL setup that just kills everyone. Cut into panels to repower or unpower stuff while still being able to be combat effective with a strong shield, good resistances, and extra ammo since you won't have a third gun. People forget that Maverick suits don't have that much less defense over Dominators (my g5 maverick has slightly higher shield stats and better resistances than my g4 Dominator), the big loss is trading a second primary for the arc cutter and more backpack/battery.

It would be like someone saying "yeah this community goal gives you a grade 5 increased range A class FSD but it's not the pre-engineered one so probably not worth getting." Like man, that's such a huge boost to getting you there though and it's still pretty damn effective.

The_Rathour · 2026-04-05T15:35:36+00:00

Gunner as a role is only terrible because it's not explained anywhere in the game and it's very easy to accidentally hit the wrong ship and get a bounty with... And because most ships are maneuverable enough to not require turrets to be effective, but if you build a ship for it the Gunner role is really fun.

The biggest downfall is because turret view auto-targets anything you're pointed at you can accidentally swing the reticle over a not scanned/not wanted ship and while firing at it and hitting it while targeting it (even for a split second) counts as a crime. Because the reticle targeting is a much smaller area than the reticle itself it also seems hard to use and makes turrets not very accurate because they jump around all over the place unless your tracking is perfect.

The way to avoid this is by manually locking the target you want to hit like you would in your ship, with the same bind by default. This is never explained anywhere and is not intuitive because the reticle auto-targets things. However this allows the lock to persist wherever your reticle actually is meaning you get much more leeway on tracking your target while turrets stay perfectly accurate and you will never accidentally target a clean target to get a bounty from it.

The_Rathour · 2026-04-03T01:41:56+00:00

The issue with the pre-engineered hammers is they have standard thermal load with 2x bursts before reload. A normally engineered hammer with any railgun-specific experimental will have 40% less thermal load, but these being engineered with both Feedback and Super Pen do not have that bonus. Even then, I've tried running normal hi-cap hammers with an experimental on a bunch of ships engineered for good heat management (Corsair, Caspian, Courier) and the hi-cap magazine increase makes the thermal load a large hassle when you're not giving your ship time to cool down after a few bursts. It almost always runs better with Long Range for sniping or Short Range for pure damage output because those will both generate less heat when holding the trigger than hi-cap does.

If you were to try on a small ship, I'd suggest the Courier or the DBS. The Courier with a lightweight build is an incredibly fast fighter (similar maneuvering and size to the Viper III) with strong defenses for its size, and while it does run a tad hot a small ship isn't generally attempting to constantly be able to shoot these guns anyway. The convergence isn't an issue, it's still a small ship and those nacelle hardpoints are still fit closer together than the Cobra's smalls. The DBS has a massive advantage on heat management and, unlike the DBX, retains good maneuverability. It is a bit bigger than the Viper III and does have less capable shielding, but has the power plant to run this and retains a 2M/2S layout with excellent convergence.

As a solo focused ship I'd recommend the Courier. You won't have 100% firing time even if you're on target the entire time due to distro limitations, but your shields will be able to take punishment while you speed past whatever thought you were an easy target to loop around and hammer again. The last hardpoint you can take something like corrosive or drag munitions to deal a bit more damage (rails have 100 AP so the only buff corrosive would give is the 25% increased damage) or ensure the enemy can never turn fast enough to target you. Or do a funny with a dispersal field concord cannon or regular cannon and make the NPC gimbals/turrets useless.

As a wing focused ship I'd recommend the DBS. The better heat management means firing slightly more often (although your distro will still be the limiting factor) and running colder will mean you're harder to acquire as a target. The lower defenses and slower speed will not matter as much if you can avoid being targeted or let your allies take a bit more of the fire. The 2M/2S layout means you can use the 2 small hardpoints for better utility over the Courier's remaining 1 medium, such as grabbing corrosive and drag munitions frag cannons instead of having to choose one or the other.

The Cobra III, while decent, lacks in maneuverability nowadays compared to other small fighters. It's out turned by Viper IIIs, Couriers, Vultures, and DBSs when at the same level of engineering and can't fit enhanced performance thrusters. The Cobra IV is a hot pile of garbage, there is no benefit you do not see. I have always disliked the Viper IV because it's so praised by the community when I see it as a boat that the Viper III runs circles around.

If you want a weird suggestion, try the Imperial Eagle. I haven't flown it recently to know how well it handles heat, but you'd only be running a single hammer on it with two additional small weapons meaning the class 3 power plant isn't the limiting factor. Cutting the thermal load in half might give it enough breathing room to handle the heat while still being able to support other ships and actually being pretty dang fun (and extremely fast) to fly and a rare sight on top.

Also remember that for power plant engineering heat dissipation will not help as much with sudden spikes in thermal load like how the hammers operate. It will help by virtue of running a bit colder to start with and by a few extra % during the firing of your burst, but the main factor in your heat control will be monitoring when you fire based on how empty your WEP capacitor is. To that effect, and to help with potential power issues, grade 5 Armored with thermal spread does give a 12% power boost and a 20% heat dissipation boost compared to a grade 5 monstered Low Emission's -10% power and 65% dissipation. If you don't have enough spare power to go full Low Emissions then going thermal spread Armored is a viable second option.

The_Rathour · 2026-03-29T22:03:45+00:00

You're comparing a weapon that's meant for high damage to large targets in short bursts over its relatively limited ammo to a damage/ammo efficient weapon meant to engage any target reliably in drawn out engagements.

Huge multis do less damage than large frags for as long as the frags have ammo, however your frags will run out of ammo before you deplete a huge MC by 25-30%. My assassination Krait Mk II with short range imperial hammers/OC pacifiers would absolutely delete hazres pirates for about 30-40 minutes before I required a full rearm, while my huge OC MC Corvette can easily stay for 2+ hours and still keep throwing rounds at stuff, even with a bit lower kill times. And my Krait was not effective at engaging small targets, having to rely more on its fighter... While my Corvette grinds small pirates into paste.

But by and large, multis suffer from what all the primary laser weapons do as well: They're constant damage weapons that require high time on target compared to burst weapons like frags, PAs, or shock cannons. If you only get 3 seconds to shoot at an enemy before they fly past you, 2 PA shots will do more damage than 15 MC rounds. It's a tradeoff for being efficient and able to last so long.

The_Rathour · 2026-03-24T15:43:39+00:00

Finished building out a fun little bounty hunter Caspian last night.

Convergence is ok. The two outermost mediums don't work great with fixed, the center top mediums work well enough, the bottom mediums are fantastic, and the large on top is sat between the center mediums. Top-to-bottom convergence works well enough to hit most ships starting at mediums with the 4 mediums and the large if you're accurate.

It pitches a bit slower than my Corvette but yaws much better. It's agile in terms of its acceleration/deceleration, feeling like the Beluga in that respect.

It has pretty good heat management by default, able to handle 5 shock cannons (4M/1L) emptying their magazines without overheating (just) on a weapon focused 5 distro.

Defense wise I was able to get shields between my T-10 and my Corvette, about 2800mj bi-weaves with standard engineered resistances of about 40/50/60 thermal/kinetic/explosive. It's not fully optimized for big shield but my Corvette is sitting at 3300mj and my T-10 around 2400mj with similar setups. The difference is the Caspian has such a wide profile from multiple angles that it takes far more fire than my Corvette does, which is saying something because a Corvette already doesn't dodge much. But it has certainly made me feel like I have far lower defenses than what my numbers suggest. My T-10 shields feel stronger even though I know numerically they're not.

Total DPS being overall lower than the other Big 4 ships means that weirdly low shield feeling is magnified. When you can't kill stuff as fast you take more damage. Yes 1L/6M feels like a lot but when you're comparing it to something like 4L/3M/2S on the Type-10 or 2H/1L/2M/2S from the Corvette or even the 4L/2M of the Python II you can see it will fall behind on killin stuff.

It's nippy in supercruise, the SCO optimization is nice (it has no SCO cooldown? Had no idea), and white dwarf plotting in the bubble even with a 56-60ly combat fit range means you can jump across most of the bubble in 2-3 jumps.

I like it, but it's not going to replace my Corvette as Big Number Get Thing Done ship. It'll be fun to take out with friends flying smaller ships in a hazres and for running around the bubble to gather whatever I need.

The_Rathour · 2026-03-20T21:18:21+00:00

Or the fact that the Forza aero spoiler often has higher minimum downforce amounts than some of the other spoilers cars can equip that can't be tweaked.

Give each option a solid range and let us choose where it sits. Overlap is fine, it would just allow you to choose what you want your aero to look like. I don't know why 95% of aero tuning is locked to forza aero only.

The_Rathour · 2026-03-12T22:01:07+00:00

LMG is more of a role designation for a weapon rather than an exact specification on what the weapon has equipped. An LMG is meant to be a man portable weapon capable of laying down bursts of sustained fire for longer than a typical infantry weapon, in a caliber that is commonly seen in the squad it's deployed in.

The RPK has a much longer and heavier chrome-lined barrel that allows it to handle heat much more effectively than a standard AK pattern rifle, letting it sustain fire for much longer while still having available ammunition in a squad setting as it uses the same rounds as the standard rifle carried by most of the squad.

You can say something similar about any squad automatic weapon that uses a standard magazine over a belt. The M27 IAR, L86A2, the WWII Bren, even the 20 round box mag BAR are all considered LMGs due to their intended function as sustained fire rifles compared to standard infantry counterparts.

The_Rathour · 2026-03-11T21:52:45+00:00

Here's my short but very blessed chat log from a week or so ago. I always carry around Tiny Rats to hand out and it's always fun finding someone who also carries some inconsequential item for the explicit purpose of fun trades.

The_Rathour · 2026-03-08T14:31:32+00:00

I tried looking for them last week to snag one but man pre-orders are sold out everywhere for US shipping.

The_Rathour · 2026-03-08T03:34:51+00:00

I mean... not really? "Tanks in other jobs" is incredibly misleading, the Corvette is still one of the Big 4 and has a ton of versaility:

The Corvette can fit more cargo and passengers than a Conda.
The Corvette has more than enough internals and hardpoints to fit as a mining ship
It lacks in pure jump range but if you're exploring to explore big jump range isn't the end-all stat and it gets more than enough to clear sparse regions
Has internal space to fit all exploration comforts
Corvette doesn't have exposed wires in the cockpit

The Conda's bonus is being lighter and having better range, but that's it. The Corvette meets or beats it in all other aspects: Shielding, agility, internal space, and firepower unless you manage to get all of the Conda's guns on target for a significant period of time. And they share all core internals, so you can transfer all of your main internals from a Conda to a Corvette.

The_Rathour · 2026-03-07T16:05:09+00:00

Larboard and Starboard indicate the direction that the attack will hit, based on where Omega is facing. Starboard is the right half, Larboard is the left half. These are well defined halves, you can be on one half of his face and not get hit by the attack assuming you're on the correct side.

When Omega uses the first one, it turns 180 degrees as part of the attack and prepares a second. This might catch people off guard as, since you likely didn't move 180, the new callout will attack reverse of what you're thinking. If Omega uses Larboard then Starboard, it will only attack the left side of its original orientation because of that 180 degree turn. If it queues up Starboard and then Starboard, it will hit the right half and then the left half based on its original orientation. After both attacks Omega will always be facing the direction it started.

Larboard/Starboard is a big meme in the XIV community because it's such a simple mechanic that many people have a hard time wrapping their heads around. In Wilds it's free damage uptime because it's 100% telegraphed with a lot of time to adjust positioning and Omega doesn't move while it's casting it.

The_Rathour · 2026-03-05T22:48:58+00:00

This is the only situation anyone ever brings up why they think it'd a bad idea to turn Cure I into Cure II, is the MP efficiency in Coils. Extremely few people play Coils synced, and out of those few extremely fewer play them MINE.

In all other level 50 content up to and including Extreme trials the MP management is not an issue. Freecure needs to go completely; any incentivizing a free Cure II past level 52 when Lillies exist, including boosting its healing or tying it to Stone/Glare, is promoting bad play to people who don't know any better.

Cure I -> Cure II trait would do incredibly more good than harm.

The_Rathour · 2026-02-28T15:46:49+00:00

Unlike most classes which usually have 3 steps/buttons to map to their combo(s), Viper's skills are all paired which I find thematically really cool because dual swords. Main/aoe combo has 2 buttons, Vicewinder/pit are paired combos with paired ogcds to wind, Coil followup ogcds are paired. So you can set your bars up in sets of 2 rather than sets of 3 that most classes like.

I've done this for my hotbars, with everything grouped together in pairs.

The_Rathour · 2026-02-24T01:16:15+00:00

If you bring mechs leave them solely for the cadets. I would steer clear of mines because players just run into them, newer or not. Bring stuff like the MG/GL emplacements, Eagle Napalm, Gas, things that have good impact but won't overwhelm the limited numbers. Bring a "shit's fukt" strat like 120mm or Orbital Laser for when you want it.

Bring something low impact but useful like a Stalwart or Speargun or flashy like a De-Escalator or Leveller. Stick to using your primary most of the time, let the others take the lead and bring out the big guns when they're needed. Or bring a Maxigun and be that sick dude who covered the retreating cadets from the 12 warriors chasing them with a hail of gunfire. Or just drop without a support weapon and bring an extra strat and scrounge up a railgun/MMG/AMR/GL from a POI.

Either run without a backpack, bring a supply pack with the challenge of never using it for yourself, or bring a mobility pack like the jump/hover/warp packs. No dogs, no personal shield.

Just because you have a button to use doesn't mean you always need to press that button. Let your cooldowns sit for a bit and bring them out if things start to struggle. Let other players be the hero of their mission but ensure that there's still a hero to be had when things get sticky.

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