Old timer just back to EVE (full time) and been trying to figure out which ammo is most popular and why, and which is least popular and why. One thing seems to be that arty ammo isn’t all that popular. Is this accurate?
There are a million variables required to answer that question.
There is no ‘popular ammo’.
What ship are you flying? What ship is your target flying? Are you going to brawl and punch them in the face or are you gonna send alpha volleys from 200km out? Where are your character’s skillpoints?
The closest possible answer begins with what YOU want to fly.
In general you want to carry the highest range ammo, the highest tracking ammo, and the highest damage ammo and aim to fire the highest damage ammo by setting your keep and range and orbit to roughly the same distance.
im a amarr pilot
the ammo i like
imperial navy multifrequency - good damage good tracking its the ammo i use the most
gleam - superb damage and tracking for beam , very low range , its noice
aurora - nice damage for a long range one , ■■■■ tracking , good to kill bad kiters
imperial navy radio - anti aurora , poor damage ,good tracking ,good range, switch wen the kiter is good
conflagration -very good damage, terrible tracking , low range, good to face damage slow stuff with pulses
scorch - medium range good damage for the range (amarr is a mid range race) bad tracking the amarr most famous crystal , i don’t particularly like it but i use it
edit:
noob pilots should have
pulse : scorch and imperial navy multifrequency
beam: aurora and imperial navy multifrequency
I use T2 Autocannons with Barrage for long range damage on small class hulls, Hail for short range damage on large class hulls and Republic Fleet Phased Plasma for medium range damage on medium hull class ships.
For missiles I mostly use Inferno Fury and for Rockets I use Inferno Rage.
For Drones I usually use Hobgoblins and Hammerheads.
A lot of people min/max using the highest damage ammo or the highest range. The middle ones are not as popular (IE gamma) but they are useful for various setups.
First things that would need to be considered, would be for weapon system.
Short range turret or long range.
Short range launcher or long range.
Ship being used
Target ship
Etc
Etc
…
Like everyone has said way too many possibilities.
You need to narrow down your question.
To help out, Triglavian disintegrators i use only 3 ammo types for specific reasons, and don’t even look at the other two.
Meson T1 ammo for long range sniper. Yes mystic t2 ammo does better damage, but meson will normal have already spooled up to and pass mystic start damage by the time target gets to mystic ammo range and you’ll have already done a lot of damage.
Tetryon T1 ammo for medium to close range, has high starting damage, no tracking loose and normally anything outside its range is a fast kiter or range focused and meson can handle them at range.
Occult T2 ammo is your heavy hitting ammo, has the highest damage starting point, but has reduced tracking and shortest range. Use against large slow movers, tackled targets or structures.
The other two ammo types fall in between these three ammo.
Mystic T2 ammo is second longest capable ammo, but has reduced tracking and marginal better damage than Baryon ammo.
Baryon t1 ammo is you middle ground ammo/average ammo in range and damage. Like mystic, meson out ranges it and thus can get to better damage before target gets with in range. And Tetryon and Occult do higher damage as they spool up.
Your primarily a PVE’r right? If that is the case, why use thermal damage missiles and drones? There are very few NPCs that are weakest to thermal. The NPCs that people would expect to be weakest to thermal, Gallente Navy and Serpentis are actually weakest to kinetic.
Thus Caldari drones ALWAYS out damage Gallente drones against Caldari and Gallente type enemies with the only exception being if you use Augmented drones. Even Amarr drones out damage Gallente drones when used against Amarr based enemies and rogue drones. This holds true even with Augmented drones.
The only time thermal missiles really make sense is on Guristas ships against Amarr based enemies.
So again, why the thermal damage?
Mainly because I’m an explorer and do a lot of traveling so I don’t want to carry a bunch of munitions with different damage types. Most NPC’s have secondary weakness to Thermal so I use that to save cargohold room for loot.
I want a corpse launcher , that will shoot corpses and those will splatter blood all over the targeted ship, this was already proposed by someone else on the forums .
Anyway , most popular ammunition is shitposting on Reddit.