A group of friends were thinking about certain ships that fly in certain areas we wished to take on someday when everyone is online and they are online. Someone noted that by scanning ships as they passed by a gate, he saw Caldari, Gallente, and Minmatar ships and almost all of them had shield extenders, even battlecruisers that were normally armor tanked often had 1 shield extender. Also a few times his corvette was blown up. So we have weeks of data on ships where he recorded shield extenders, armor plates, ECM, tracking disruptors, and tackle modules. Unfortunately, he didn’t actually record armor or shield hardeners.
So should Phased Plasma or Tremor is better for an alpha strike? Obviously if we can’t close the distance, Tremor is better since it has a range bonus instead of a penalty. On the other hand, if the plan ends up being “someone tackles and everyone warps on them” then what matters is the most damage. The targets are big enough tracking should not be an issue since we’ll be shooting the ships, not any drones that are launched.
If there are no shield hardeners, the T1 ammunition, except for Nuclear and Fusion, does more damage to most of the ships according to Pyfa. If there is a single multi spectrum shield hardener, EMP does best. But… I would expect the guys to cover their damage hole with a multispectrum shield and EMP hardener which would make the ammo with the most base damage the best, which would be Tremor. It would be best if every module was recorded, but since he didn’t keep track of everything (aside from not keeping track of some modules at all, my favorite was him listing all missile weapons as “missile launcher” instead of the module name like he did with railguns and blasters), it would be safe to assume a PVP ship wouldn’t have such a damage hole. Tremor, aside from being able to deal damage without exploiting a damage hole that might not exist, also means there are engagement options besides “everyone warp to the tackle” since it gives range boosts.
I think you answered your own question.
All depends what kind of shielding the ships have you never know.
While ammo like Tremor is long distance, it also doesn’t have the power of something like phased plasm.
Trade offs.
I don’t know why that guy isn’t fitting hardeners most pvp fits try to be pretty even across the board. But yeah if he has that hole hit it hard.
Actually Tremor has more damage if the damage hole is covered.
No, I meant one guy used 3 alts to scan for modules and then recorded the pilot name, system, date, and modules. The idea is that any ship that’s scanned 3 times you probably know all the modules. Except he chose to only record some modules and not others. “Do they have multspectrum or themal shield hardeners?” “Uh, I didn’t think it was important to keep track” so it’s not “they have a hole” but “we don’t know if they have one”
Oh lol, I would just go with max damage or thermal heavy ammo.
Thermal as it tends to be the hole of there is one
Oh also have you looked up this guy’s kill board?
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Kill boards are a great way to get an idea of how someone for their ship
If the damage hole is covered with an EM and multispectrum shield hardener, we’re looking at a resist of something like “EM 59.9, thermal 70.4, Kinetic 88.8, Explosive 63.” This isn’t quite a uniform resist, but it’s close enough that Tremor would do more damage than the T1 ammo.
I don’t understand why it would do better against a resist than a hole? 
If they have a hole, we can exploit it.
If they covered the hole, it’s not there to exploit.
And we don’t know if they did or not.
he means if the resistance hole is plugged.
so if the em resist is at 0% hes better using em ammo but if he has brought the hole up to just under 60% where explosive is only 63% (the primary damage of tremor) he will get more damage from using the tremor ammo as it has a higher damage multiplier than something like EMP
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if its a shield tank make sure to check against OH resist that is what you will be fighting against in small gangs. even large fleets smart pilots will OH shield hardeners on yellow box
If alpha-striking, I almost always use phased plasma, especially Domination phased plasma. If they’re PVP fitted, then they’d most likely have plugged their EM or explosive hole.
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Miss my panther and shooting volleys costing over 8m each
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We normally reload Em damage against cerbs or Orthruses. Of we encounter tech 2 minmatar ships then we use kinetic damage. Never use tremor is a waste, if you are using artilery the go for republic Emp and titanium sabot.
I just checked and the most expensive faction ammo is Domination EMP L at just under 200k. So with 5 guns on the Panther, that would make one volley cost around 1 mil.
Am i missing something or was there a significant decrease in faction ammo cost?
There was a decrease in cost. It’s all based on who lives where and is feeding the market. Hence the “I miss”
Tremor could work if you really need the maximum range, but generally speaking it’s not that good against shields because it does explosive and kinetic damage. It also has bad tracking, so it tends to completely miss smaller targets in PVP situations. I load Republic Fleet EMP or Republic Fleet Phased Plasma by default for maximum DPS, then reload into Republic Fleet Depleted Uranium when I need extra range and/or tracking.
In this case, we’re not worried about tracking at all. However, it does seem Tremor doesn’t actually do as much damage as we thought compared to Republic Phased Plasma since for some reason we were comparing Tremor with T1 ammo. Go figure “fancy” ammo doesn’t do the most damage even on paper.
I thought my situation was “hmmm, we’re dealing with shield tanks, but we don’t know if they covered the EM hole with a hardener or not. If they did, then Tremor has the best alpha even if we warp to 0, but if they didn’t we should go EMP or Phased Plasma if we warp to 0. And if our plan is to warp to 30 instead of 0, Tremor or Carbonized Lead is out best bet since Plasma would be out of range” so I was wondering which we should bet on since we don’t know if they had hardeners or not. In other words I was mistaken on the paper damage Republic Phased Plasma did.
Well now I know Tremor isn’t a good choice whatsoever if we get close since Republic Phased Plasma does a lot of damage. Regardless of it they covered the possible resist, our decision basically boils to Republic Phased Plasma or Tremor depending on if we want to warp to 0 or 30. Eh, I think we’ll just get both just in case. And some EMP even though we don’t plan to use it in case after a reload we want EM damage after all. And maybe some Republic Carbonized Lead if we want a range boost without a tracking penalty even though the plan was just to blow up 3 cruisers (who we don’t care about tracking) in one volley, which will make the situation untenable for any frigates with them.