Is it possible at all to use dual rails with plasma slug on the python? Thinking of running 3 x multis and dual rails RES hunting and clean drives and low emissions PP.
Posted Nov 1, 2016, 8:45 AM UTC
It will be cooking. One to two salvos and you are cooking.
The question is if you can make bursts with a minor cooldown period without going over 100%? The manoeuvrability of the Python sometimes makes it difficult making manual sequential hits.
I'm using Beams which works pretty good for PvE. As you said you might not have the time to continuously keep your target focussed. So you need to make as much damage as possible in a small amount of time. One salvo or two salvos of a Railgun is not enough for sure. Grilling his shields with Beams results in same DPS (against shields a bit more) and some seconds of sustainable firepower. If you mod the Beams with Thermal Vent you can fire even longer.
That is not a bad alternative.
With 2 Pips to Weapons you can strip nearly every PvE ships shield in on capacitor charge without overheating. you just have to be carefull when heat is induced by your enemies fire.
For the belly C3 slot I'm using a turreted pulse laser with fire at will. It's enough for killing SLF or an Eagle while fighting the main wing target.
I think its feasible. Pythons don't run hot as it is, especially if you can LE your PP. But remember that LE doesn't increase how well you disperse heat, it only decreases how much your core/internal modules generate...your rails will still increase your heat the same amount, you'll just be starting from a slightly lower baseline heat generation value. What's much more important is how you engineer your rails - I just G1 Long Ranged a pair of med rails for my Keelback, and got -28% thermal load as a secondary on one. But you're never going to be able to just spam them on CD without cooking yourself.
I think the bigger problem, though, is being able to hit with them on a Python. Its not the most nimble ship, and if you're going Clean over Dirty then your agility is a little less than usual too. Railguns suffer very significantly from damage falloff at distance, so you cant just count on sniping from far away where apparent motion is less. You have to be fairly close and very accurate, and that's not playing to a Python's strength
Thx for this. Good points about the LE on PP.
For RES the idea would be to be hard hitting with the rails on the bigger ships, since manoeuvrability, as you correctly point out, is an issue.
Yes, in theory that works, but in practice rails just arent that much better where its worth it. Their listed DPS as sometimes listed is greater than their practical DPS.
A C2 railgun does 41.5 damage per shot, but has IIRC a 2.7 second firing cycle (0.5 sec spinup, 1.2 sec CD, 1 sec reload), so its doing ~15 DPS. A C2 fixed beam also does about 16 DPS while being much more sustainable, having slightly better falloff damage, and not suffering from complete DPS loss if you miss.
I was running Python with 2x imperial hammers and 3x MCs in 2.1, it worked fine. Sure it spiked up a bit occasionally when I unloaded too much but I think it's definitely possible and probably worth trying. Just bring some heat sinks!
You'll want to use the cool running weapon railgun mod before even trying it, it think its "Efficient Weapon"
Doesn't apply to rail guns unfortunately.
idk man, if railguns overheat my cutter to hell i cant imagine a python