I really don’t agree with this one. You died because you weren’t smart enough to get away or not get caught in the first place. Yes, there is a skill gap but it’s almost always about knowledge and not the amount of SP.
I looked at that guy on Zkill and it looks like he likes fitting scrams to his Cyclones, which means that being away from the site’s warp-in point would give you a chance to escape before he gets in range.
Also using an (overheated) microwarpdrive works wonders in getting away from warp disruptors of bigger ships as it only takes a few seconds to align and fly 25km to be able to warp away.
One last thing, this is how I know the stuff above. Dying is learning and always has been. Your loss will surely save you in future encounters while flying a more valuable ship, which makes it worthwhile.
I fit my larger ships with both long range ( low turret tracking speed ) and short range ( high turret tracking speed ) weapons. The turret speed is the issue…as at longer range the transverse motion of an enemy ship across the sky will be small, so you are more likely to hit it. So for example I fit a Gnosis with four 250mm guns with a range of 35km but slow tracking, a Neutron Blaster II with high tracking speed, and a Rocket Launcher. The latter two are for anything that does manage to get in closer than 10km…and which will have a higher transverse speed. And I have 5 drones for that purpose as well. The total DPS is actually higher than if I’d just fitted six 250mm guns…but more spread out over range.
If you only fit long range, slow turret tracking, weapons then you are going to get problems if smaller ships get in close and orbit you.
This is incredibly controversial generalized advice.
“Don’t mix guns” is a very common refrain. There used to be a whole website dedicated to this (dontmixguns.com, but it’s dead, so wayback machine link). You can find similar archived discussions on the old forums as far back as 2008, in addition to more recent threads on Reddit.
In general, larger ships should use their drone bay and Light / Medium drones to take care of smaller ships. Piloting skills should be used to keep enemies of similar size or up within optimal, varying ammo types as needed. The ship should be fitted with turrets of the type it gets bonuses for.
Even if a Gnosis hull does have a bonus for all the weapon systems, that’s not an invitation to fit them all at the same time. As it will teach bad habits, and if kept up, you’ll wind up fitting a Marshal with mixed weapon types, and people will look at that lossmail and chuckle.
There are exceptions where due to high slot and hardpoint layouts (ex: Typhoon Fleet Issue) it is possible to use 6 turret hardpoints and, instead of 2 high utilities, perhaps 2 launchers to augment DPS are desired instead (or vice versa, 6 launchers and 2 turrets). But such fits are indeed meant to be the exception, not the rule.
All that matters to me is whether somethings works or not in the context I am using the ship…which my my case has been PvE. I replaced six 200mm guns with four 250mm guns plus the shorter range weapons…and found the PvE much easier, as I have the full range covered without having to launch drones and my entire goal is to zap rats as quickly as possible and move on to the next site. As I regularly also fly right through groups of gankers at gates…I also want to be able to get in on those Concord kills.
Same goes for mixing shield and armour. If I can get an extra 2000 EHP by replacing a low slot shield membrane with a 400mm steel plate…why would I not do so ? None of my other ships mix stuff…but the Gnosis now has 100K EHP…so I can afford to play around a bit.
All my point was: It is one thing to give this advice to someone using a Gnosis for specific kind of PVE, it is another to generalize the advice to “[any] larger ships” and deliver it to someone using an Abbadon – where this advice is not good.
I’m glad it works for you & the way you fly in a specific case with a specific ship. I don’t think OP should be mislead to believe mixing weapon systems is how large ships should be generally approached when fitting them. Instead, even with beams, they would benefit to learn how to “warp at range”, lock from very far out, and apply battleship level DPS as the PVE frigates approach with 0 transversal. Or learn how to use drones to deal with this scenario. And fitting the ship for speed (to maintain distance) since tank isn’t an issue. That is far more a transferrable skill to approaching PVP as well.
It teaches about the relationship between piloting skills, fitting, and execution. And how to negate drawbacks, instead of trying to use modules to make up for lack of piloting skill.
Not only does mixing gun sizes mean that you are never at optimal range for all your weapons at the same time and therefore always deal sub-optimal damage, you are also mixing gun types, which means that any weapon damage and application modules your ship has equipped to improve the effectiveness of your blasters do not apply on your rocket damage and vice versa.
Generally it’s not a good idea to mix guns, but there are some exceptions. Anyway, think twice before you mix guns on a ship - I wouldn’t recommend it as a solution for a player who has trouble fitting their first battleship.
There are a number of ships…the Gnosis included…that allow a mix of types. Indeed, the Gnosis has 5 turret slots and one missile slot where you cannot add the same type anyway.
Only a few minutes ago I had precisely the situation that shows why I have the setup I do. My drones were 20km away fighting rats, and a Kikimora warped in just 3km away. My 250mm railguns are too long range and slow tracking to deal with that. The one missile launcher has the right range but only deals 30 DPS. The Neutron Blaster…perfect range…would have added 80 DPS to that had he attacked.
Sure, I lose 1/5th of my optimal long range damage in this setup…but the remaining damage is more than enough, most of the time I’m easily swatting rats like flies, and the total DPS of the ship is actually more than with just the railguns. Anything that gets through the four 250mm guns gets zapped with a blaster than has more DPS than those guns. The total combination of weapons means there is no safe range at all for enemies.
The earlier point made about keeping range…when you are up against 8 rats you can’t always keep range from all of them. All the more so if you have disruptors working on you, and drones are dealing with rats one at a time. So I’m quite happy to forego some of the long range damage in order to protect at short range. To me it makes perfect sense.
I think it really all depends what the ship is being used for, and a balancing of the various risks. I’m sure there are situations where I’d want all of that optimal long range damage.
Sometimes in a PVE situation you just insta pop the rats with “too” much damage. In such situations it makes sense to split your guns and so that you can shoot more of them at once. This isn’t usually the case in PVP, of course.
You can be doing PvE and suddenly find it turns into a PvP situation. zkillboard is full of the outcome of such…including short range attack by others with blasters. It depends if one’s drones have enough DPS to deal with that. Of the 510 DPS of my Gnosis, only about 120 DPS is drones. My setup increases that short range DPS to 210. The remaining long range DPS is more than enough for most rats…especially as the ship can lock on targets at 60km.
I think whether to mix weapons really depends entirely on the sort of situations one is likely to find oneself in.