Having got my skills to the point where I can realistically use T2 beam lasers, I’m now looking hard at what crystals to use. (I’m using small lasers so far and haven’t verified if M/L have the same basic traits.)
I’ve been heavily using the Imperial Navy crystals so far, and had previously noticed that Gleam offered more damage, less range, and better tracking than Multifrequency. Now that I’m actually looking at the details though, and comparing it specifically to the Imperial Navy Multifrequency, I’m baffled.
As far as I can tell, Gleam is basically just worse.
Gleam has 1.4% more DPS, but half the range and only 25% better tracking to help you actually hit at that short range.
It’s about a quarter of the cost per crystal, but racks up damage four times as fast, so it’s gonna be the same price overall.
Apart from the corner case where you’re engaging at extremely close range (in my simulated build, the T2 beams have opt/fall-off of around 4/7km), they seem just plain bad, and even in that corner case I’m not sure the tracking bonus would be enough to hit fast stuff.
I feel like I must surely be missing something…? Maybe I need to give them a whirl and see
i use tachs on my paladin for missions, i use exclusively INMS, mainly gecause 1000 shots per crystal as compared to 300 for t2 , yes gleam does more damage but the drawbacks and the long term costs are worse.
No. You got that competely right. You use Faction Multis as long as you don’t need that additional tracking bonus from Gleam. As long as you are able to hit your targets just fine, the additional range (aka projection) of Faction Multifrequency lenses is simply better.
@Afriles_Jasmone Right, I like one size fits all and it’s not like we’re talking extreme differences here except for the range. You’ll choose one or the other depending on how far you want to be from the enemy.
There’s one other pro with this approach – you won’t lose 1-2 seconds for a crystal swap in the middle of the fight. I know guys tend to think that swapping crystals is immediate – and it is in relation to other ammo – but under some circumstances those 1-2 seconds of swap can cost you your ship (e.g. in a PVP frigate fight). So when you’re gonna be 0km on top of your target anyway, it rarely makes sense to load anything other than Gleam.
I think a lot of the choices from FC in the past were not to make Gleam surpass the faction’s navy ammo entirely, to avoid making it obsolete or causing power creep, and to give it a use case against other ammo types. You can see this balancing choice within each faction’s weapon ammo types.
If there was an implant that would add 25% tracking, it would cost billions. In a world where improvements tend to be 3, 5 and sometimes 10%, 25% is HUGE.
Since turret damage application is very important especially close up and ESPECIALLY with a ship line that tends to lack mid slots, Gleam is insanely good in the right circumstances.
Heavy beam Zealot vs non mwd Retribution (to mimic a frigate NPC) where the Zealot is moving at an angle (which is what tends to happen when fighting multiple targets). Green is Gleam, red is Navy MF. At 15KM it’s pretty much double the damage, it’s not GOOD damage but that’s because there’s tracking issues (duh).
Nice, thanks. Is that graph from pyfa? If so, I hadn’t realised it could do that.
I wasn’t dissing the extra tracking, as such, but 25% just seemed weak when combined with the factor of 2 in range. Clearly (from that graph) there is a sweet spot where it is indeed dramatically better than the INMF
Yup, have two fits open. One attacker and one target (or create a ship that mimics NPC stats and behaviour), or if you want a direct comparison add a copy of the attacker with the changed fit/ammo.
Click Fit > DPS Graph. In the left bottom window add the attacker(s), in the right one replace the “ideal target” with your intended one. If you don’t do that it assumes perfect stats which means you’ll just always hit.
Then use the two vectors bottom right to mimic both attackers as target’s speed and direction in relation to each other. Also probably change range to something that suits the fit.
And the more you toy with this, import known fits from others and see how they fare in your situation against your target and you will find that fits that lack application options (whether that’s turrets or missiles) will mostly suck in most forms of PVE and THAT means you can then easily start to distinguish between crap or good fits in about 3 seconds.
And THEN you can add stuff like “what happens if it gets target painter by this specific ship, fit and perhaps even skills” or “what happens if someone is running these specific command links”, “what happens if there’s a Rapier on the field using 2 webs” etc etc etc. And if you do Abyssals “what happens with a certain type of Abyssal weather”.
Pyfa is how you start to understand things when it comes to combat.
Have a look at Imperial Navy Gamma. On my Zealot it has optimal range of 44km, falloff at 53km…which is more than twice the range of Gleam, yet the Gamma is 123 DPS per turret while the Gleam is 136 per turret. So Gamma is only slightly less DPS. Gleam has slightly better turret tracking…but then the increased range of Gamma means you can shoot stuff further away where the angular velocity wont be so high anyway.
I use Gamma for lasers and Depleted Uranium for hybrid turrets for my sniping at Jita.
