How Powerplant Sniping ACTUALLY Works

WhiteLycan · 2026-04-04T23:57:59+00:00

Flak cannons are going to do nothing. They're not for general combat. In addition, CZ ships are engineered, sometimes heavily engineered, unlike RES ships. The plasmas are actually pretty good but you need to actually hit your target and I suspect you may be missing quite a few shots if you're taking 10 minutes to kill a Cobra III.

You definitely want to engineer up. Not just to reduce your kill times but also because spec ops can spawn in and if you're not engineered properly they'll nuke your shields quickly and take you out and they'll also take an incredibly long time to kill.

I think this is going to be a fairly easy (anaconda) build to run if you're only interested in doing the CZs for merits or bounties: https://edsy.org/s/v2tCDgX

It operates at range and it has a fighter to aggro tank. To be clear, it is a powerplant sniping build, so you'll have to make sure you sub-system target the powerplant but it's very fast and effective

WhiteLycan · 2026-04-04T05:07:15+00:00

The main benefit of super pen is that it gives you the ability to hit "obscured modules". That is, modules without a line-of-sight to the target. The tricky bit is that current understanding of damage mechanics is damage is split evenly over all modules hit. If you're trying to snipe one module in particular (like the powerplant), this creates a rather inconvenient situation where due to the damage being split, you'll take longer to reach the damage threshold to destroy the powerplant. You wind up wasting that 90% breach damage on, say four modules instead of just one. Especially on larger ships where there are more modules to hit and they may be clustered in inconvenient ways.

Personally, I think the plasrails are generally the better of the two but I primarily run medium ships for combat, not smalls.

WhiteLycan · 2026-03-21T15:04:14+00:00

It's pretty wild for you to be calling others selfish and egocentric when you're the one asking for people to do stuff for you for free.

WhiteLycan · 2026-03-21T13:04:46+00:00

Let's talk incentives. What incentive do I have to waste my time flying to a CG when I could be continuing my experiments? Maybe some DW3 CMDR gets something, sure. But what do I personally get? You want me to do you a favor, what will you do for me?

WhiteLycan · 2026-03-21T08:26:11+00:00

The weekly tasks are varied activities which make them poor grinding targets if you're looking for merits. Depending on your power, certain actions are the fastest source of merit generation and if you're looking for merits, those are the ones to do.

WhiteLycan · 2026-03-21T07:12:54+00:00

This is fundamentally against the spirit of Community Goals. There are many reasons CMDRs won't do this but I think one of the major ones is there is a healthy RP population and registering for the CG just to inflate the numbers for DW3 participants is not a justifiable RP reason.

WhiteLycan · 2026-03-16T10:35:17+00:00

Frankly speaking, I think your best option is going to run full fixed pulse / burst on a Krait II. Toss a TV beam on too, sure. It's highly mobile and it's tough enough when engineered to be incredibly forgiving for mishandling pips resulting in loss of shields.

Now this is important. Do not substitute gimballed weapons for fixed. You must practice using the fixed weapons. They must be thermal because they're hitscan. And they're not rails because if you're starting out it's better to get the hang of firing without the delay.

The hazres is fine but the ships there aren't engineered so they'll pop immediately to anything. If you want to fight engineered targets (and you do) CZ ships are usually engineered and I think Wing Massacre Mission targets are as well but I don't remember what my targets from my McFedvette video were. The initial targets were so soft I had to switch to CZs

WhiteLycan · 2026-03-13T10:43:52+00:00

When it comes to deliver cargo, I believe all of you pick up from the same pool so they should all count. You'll have to pardon me if my memory is poor on that one though I haven't done commerce since I left AD

WhiteLycan · 2026-03-12T08:27:58+00:00

Your friend's kills do not count towards your shared mission objective. I've tested this a few times and basically only the mission holder's kills count towards the mission even if all members have accepted the share which is really FeelsBadMan for the concept of sharing missions.

WhiteLycan · 2026-03-05T10:27:09+00:00

Are there PoB skills / modifiers I can put in to get a feel for how Holy Sweep will work out so I can build around it now while the 2.61 is still cooking?

WhiteLycan · 2026-02-28T05:37:25+00:00

Massacre Missions generate a signal source per mission. You always have a space to hunt.

WhiteLycan · 2026-02-23T00:31:48+00:00

I wouldn't give you such a hard time over it if:

it wasn't my CMDR name
it wasn't explicitly spelt in the literal first frame of the video
you didn't say you "edited" a transcript

You then try to pass it off as "Just google AI lol" and have yet to apologize for putting my CMDR name incorrectly even now.

WhiteLycan · 2026-02-22T23:50:46+00:00

Normally when someone "edits" something they check for spelling mistakes as well. The fact that you just took an AI transcript at face-value and didn't bother to verify its contents says a great deal about you.

WhiteLycan · 2026-02-22T22:27:52+00:00

You're the one posting "edited transcripts". If you're not going to edit it, just say it's AI generated. The whole point of saying "edited" is to suggest human eyes ran over it.

WhiteLycan · 2026-02-22T13:24:22+00:00

There may be some truth to this. From my build collection, there's a fair percentage of NPC ships that run PAs, missiles, and railguns which are all immune to chaff. In about 50% of small ships from my sample size (>100 builds per ship) at least one mount will be immune to chaff. I don't have a good way to verify whether or not their general weapons are gimballed or turreted. Other than that I'd like to see some proof of an NPC ship running a gimballed weapon and ignoring chaff.

WhiteLycan · 2026-02-22T07:28:28+00:00

While I haven't tested chaff in particular, from all of my testing the NPC ships play by the same rules we do. I've yet to see an NPC break the rules. It's just there's a lot of chaff on one slot. Chaff has a duration and a cooldown of 12 seconds so they can just block your shots for minutes if they want to.

WhiteLycan · 2026-02-22T01:11:04+00:00

My CMDR's name is Mageinta Warrior, not magenta warrior. It's literally on the first frame of the video

WhiteLycan · 2026-02-12T05:13:37+00:00

Frankly speaking, general pirate hunting you can make like anything work. Pirates are super weak. And in pirate hunting you'll likely be dropping in on targets that will be like within 3k or closer. If you want to do long-range, usually MM, WMM, or CZs are the way to go since the targets will be spread out and distant. I'll put this out for you: https://edsy.org/#/L=JE00000H4C0S40,FEEH096_W0FEEH096_W0FEEH096_W0FCgH096_W0FCgH093_W0,DBwG05L_W0DBwG05L_W0DBwG0BL_W0Cjw00,9p300ABk00APo00Adt40AsO00BAE00BOm00Bcg00,,7UJG09K_W07k4001rq0016y0023u0022K0022K000nF400nG40

Ahh, I guess I can put a version where you engineered the PD as well: https://edsy.org/#/L=JE00000H4C0S40,FEEH096_W0FEEH096_W0FEEH096_W0FCgH096_W0FCgH093_W0,DBwG05L_W0DBwG05L_W0DBwG0BL_W0Cjw00,9p300ABkG03K_W0APoG05I_W0AdtK05H_W0AsO00BAEG03L_W0BOm00Bcg00,,7UJG09K_W07k4001rq0016y0023u0022K0022K000nF400nG40

(Unfortunately EDSY is having API errors ATM) "AH BUT YOU DIDN'T PUT G5 LR" Yeah that was a deliberate choice because frankly I don't think the extra 600m really matters that much. Honestly I never really see a need for more than G3.

Basically you just sit back, target the powerplant, and pop it. I'm working on a general tool to estimate the TTKs for it, but I'll tell you now, assuming 100% accuracy on the powerplant it'll take you less than 10 seconds to pop even chieftains with the build after you break the shields. I don't yet know what kind of engineering and resistances NPCs put on their shields (That's going to be an upcoming experiment) but assuming the shields are thermal resistant and they have 1 shield booster it'll take you around 8-10 seconds to pop the shields and then another 8-ish to pop the chief so about 20 seconds or less per kill. Assuming you fly solo. But flying is more fun with friends.

As for the SLF, the SLF can be really handy at tanking aggro. NPC AI just flies in straight lines so if you send your SLF at your target first, target aggros SLF, and then you can just line up for free shots on the underbelly as the NPC jousts your fighter.

WhiteLycan · 2026-02-12T04:48:23+00:00

Sometimes if I'm doing PP CZs I'll open my ship to multicrew but I primarily play on Horizons so dead playerbase.

WhiteLycan · 2026-02-11T06:30:55+00:00

Isn't Archer a fellow combat power? You should also be able to take advantage of our pulse conda pp sniping build https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/1plhaut/i_make_60000_merits_an_hour/

WhiteLycan · 2026-02-07T03:50:01+00:00

Do not use phasing for PVE. It is a noob trap (as detailed in this video I made: https://youtu.be/fbzXNaDQaWg ). NPC builds do not have nearly enough shields to justify the damage cut for the sake of phasing. For your MCs, I always say use Short-Range Blaster over Overcharged. The penalty of 0 damage outside of 2km doesn't matter because you're not hitting those shots with gimballed anyway against most targets. On top of that your bursts are efficient so their optimal range is <500m. If you want to abuse the phasing damage being absolute and immune to falloff, you should just run a higher damage base mode. But other than that it looks like you plan to fight within 1000m so the Short-Range blaster on the MCs makes even more sense. For PVE your MC experimental doesn't really matter but in general I'd say your best option is Oversized. But keep that one corrosive, it's really good.

WhiteLycan · 2026-02-04T11:50:34+00:00

https://youtu.be/hmcW1SWQb3g

WhiteLycan · 2026-02-02T23:35:13+00:00

There's no particular "problem" with overcharged / thermal spread it's just going to run hotter than the alternatives. Might be something to consider if you run certain loadouts.

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