Weapons-New

This section gives an overview of the different weapon systems available in EVE and gives a quick strategic overview to show why you would choose one weapon system over another.

You should be familiar with EVE's damage system before reading this.

Weapon Types

There are four fundamental weapon systems in EVE: turrets, launchers, drones, and smartbombs.

Turret Overview

• Uses the tracking system and a ship's signature radius to calculate hit percentage.
• Uses a damage modifier in conjunction with ammunition type to calculate damage.
• Range modifiable by switching ammunition.
• Relevant skill category: Gunnery

Launcher Overview

• Almost always hits.
• Uses a ship's speed and signature radius to calculate damage.
• Range not modifiable by switching ammunition.
• Relevant skill category: Missile Launcher Operation

Drone Overview

• Small craft launched from a special cargohold called a drone bay.
• Relevant skill category: Drones

Smartbomb Overview

• Always hits targets in range.
• Does not require a target lock.
• Relevant skill: Energy Pulse Weapons

Turret Types

Laser Turrets

These energy based weapons do EM and Thermal damage, making these weapons great for cutting through shields, and not as good at penetrating armor. They do not use ammunition, and instead rely on the ship's capacitor more heavily than other weapon types, so your capacitor can be heavily drained if you don't monitor your ship carefully.

Even though they have no ammo, they require focusing crystals, which you'll find under the ammunition tab in the market menu. Installing a focusing crystal modifies the beam of the laser; all this means is that it modifies damage type and amount, and weapon range. The weapon retains its damage multiplier and firing rate. So, if a turret has a 3x multiplier and fires every 5 seconds, whatever damage type the focusing crystal uses will be multiplied by 3, and it will still fire every five seconds. There is often a trade off with crystals, so a very powerful damage crystal might have very low range. One advantage to using crystals is that you can swap them in the middle of a fight, just like ammunition, and it takes less time for a crystal to be ready to fire than a new ammo type.

Lasers are generally divided into two types:

• Pulse Lasers: Faster tracking, shorter range, higher rate of fire, less damage per shot.
• Beam Lasers: Slower tracking, longer range, lower rate of fire, more damage per shot.

In general Amarr ships are best suited to use lasers, due to laser capacitor use and damage bonuses.

Hybrid Turrets

In sci-fi terms, these turrets use charged energy and physical ammunition combined. In game terms, they're good all-round turrets. They generally have good range and firing rate, and medium capacitor drain and damage. Hybrid turrets can only do thermal and kinetic damage. This means that most hybrid ammo is good for any situation, but not specialized overmuch for penetrating armor or shields. Obviously, if you want to penetrate shields, try to get ammo with more thermal than kinetic damage, and more kinetic for punching through armor.

Hybrid turrets use ammunition, which works the same as a focusing crystal, except that it is consumed with each shot. Hybrid ammo is available in four sizes and many different kinds; each hybrid turret, regardless of size, can load any kind of hybrid ammo so long as it is the same size class as the turret (large, medium, small). Each ammunition type has its own statistics, so one may do more damage, another may do a certain damage type, another has long range, and so on. They usually have the same trade-offs as a focusing crystal, but ammunition takes longer to load and reload. You can always switch out the ammo for another type in your cargo bay.

Hybrids come in two types:

• Blasters: Faster Tracking, lower range, higher damage per shot, higher rate of fire.
• Railguns: Slower tracking, longer range, lower damage per shot, lower rate of fire.

Hybrid turrets are generally the weapon of choice for Caldari and Gallente ship designs, with Caldari bonuses emphasising range bonuses (Railguns), and Gallente bonuses emphasising damage and tracking (Blasters)

Projectile Turrets

Projectile turrets are an ancient weapon type used for centuries before the EVE gate was discovered. They do not use complicated operations to charge the ammunition in the way a hybrid does, so they use the least amount of capacitor energy of the turret types. There are many kinds of projectile turrets, breaking down into two main classes: rapid-fire short-range autocannons, and long-range but slow artillery.

Projectile ammunition always does some amount of kinetic damage, as well as one or more other types depending on the ammo. Projectile ammunition can cover a wide range of damage types and uses, so you can select something to use for general situations, or you can tailor your choice to certain damage types. You can always switch ammo types if you need to, but this takes more time than swapping frequency crystals.

Projectile turrets come in two types:

• Autocannons: Faster tracking, lower range, higher rate of fire.
• Artillery: Lower tracking, higher range, lower rate of fire.

Minmatar ships are designed to make the most of Projectile turrets, with numerous damage and rate of fire bonuses.

Launcher Types

There are several launcher types, and some can fire multiple classes of missiles. In all cases, if a launcher can fire a missile class (light for instance) it can also fire its FoF equivalent. Here's a brief overview of launcher types and the missiles they use.

While most races integrate missile launcher hardpoints into their ship designs, the Caldari in particular have a number of ship bonuses in this field, making them superb bombers.

Rocket Launcher

These only fire rockets. They have a fast rate of fire and low system requirements. They can use Defender missiles, and there is no FoF Rocket at the time of this writing.

Standard Launcher and Assault Launcher

These fire Light missiles, as well as Defenders. They have a decent rate of fire and average system requirements. The difference between Standard and Assault launchers is that Assault Launchers have a much faster rate of fire, but much higher system requirements. Standard Launchers are suited for frigates, but Assault launchers have system requirements which usually limit their use to larger vessels.

Heavy Launchers

Heavy Launchers fire heavy missiles. Their rate of fire is slower than Standard or Assault launchers because of their larger payload. They can also fire Defenders. Heavy Launchers have high system requirements, so you probably won't use them on frigates.

Cruise Launchers

Cruise Launchers fire cruise missiles and Defenders. They are slower than Heavy Launchers due to their ammo, and also have big system requirements, so don't expect to mount one on a frigate.

Siege Launchers

Bigger and slower than even Cruise Launchers. Siege Launchers can fire Cruise and Defender missiles. Their main design is to fire torpedos, and they are the only launcher that can do so. Their system requirements are so large that you won't need to worry about them for a long time.

Drones

Drones are robotic mini-ships, you can think of them like fighter craft for your big vessel. There are drones that can do all kinds of damage, but each individual drone only does one kind of damage. Some are fast and lightly armored, some are slow and heavily armored.

Combat Drones

Combat Drones are miniature fighters that are carried in a ship's drone bay. Scout Drones are much smaller than frigates, and and are difficult to hit due to their amazingly fast orbit speeds. Heavy Drones do more damage, but require more skill points.

Mining Drones

There are also mining drones. A wide array of these are about to be released at the time of this writing, and these can help speed up mining. Just remember that a drone has to go to the asteroid, mine its fill, then return to your ship to deposit it, so if a mining laser and a drone have the same rate of mining, the laser will always be slightly ahead since it doesn't waste time bringing things to you. If mining in dangerous areas, you might want to use combat drones to guard your ship while you use turrets for mining lasers.

Although many ships have drone bays, the Gallente generally have far superior drone capacities, and increased control bonuses in several of their ships.

Smartbombs

Smartbombs create a sphere of damage around your ship in discrete pulses every few seconds. They consume capacitor just like any other energy weapon. They totally rule at killing drones and anything that gets really close. I've heard you can pod somebody with smartbombs before they have a chance to warp out. They also totally rule at getting you blown up by CONCORD or sentries in Empire because they're indiscriminate killers just like a shark or something.

There's supposedly a suicide smartbomb too!

Ammunition

Missiles

Missiles are quite different from the turret weapons. When launched, a missile tracks its target and maneuvers to hit it. Every missile has a Velocity, Flight Time, and Agility rating. Velocity is how fast it moves, flight time is how long it can fly, and agility is how well it can adjust its heading to follow a target. Velocity multiplied flight time together make the effective range of the missile. If a missile flies at 1000 meters per second, and has a maximum flight time of 25 seconds, then its maximum range is 25,000 meters (25km). Agility is simply how well it stays on target. If a person can maneuver around the missile for long enough, it runs out of fuel and does nothing to them, so agility helps with faster targets. Pilots can also warp out of the area before a missile reaches them, but there are ways around this as well (see Medium Power Slots below).

All missiles do a single damage type, but usually do a whole lot of it. So, you might have a missile that does huge thermal damage, but it only does thermal damage. You can also swap missiles in a launcher in the same way as swapping ammunition in a turret.

There are many types of missile types, and I'll briefly explain each. Not all missiles are for doing damage, either. Some have special purposes, so let's look at them in more detail:

Rockets

Rockets are like the submachine gun of the missile world. They are short ranged, and the better rockets have a very fast flight speed. They don't do as much damage per rocket, but the launchers are all fast firing (rockets have their own launcher type).

Light Missiles

Light missiles pack less of a punch and have less range, but have faster launchers.

Heavy Missiles

Heavy missiles are faster and have longer flight times, and also do more damage in a single missile, but their launchers are slower.

Both use the same skill to operate. Heavy missile launchers usually take more advanced systems to operate, so you'll be using light most of the time to begin with.

Cruise Missiles

Cruise Missiles are a step up from heavy missiles. They have a longer range and fly faster, and do more damage than Heavy missiles, but their launchers are slower. They use their own skill, and are even more advanced than heavy missiles, so don't expect to mount these on a small ship.

Torpedos

Torpedos aren't like other missiles. They do huge damage and have long flight times, but also have slower flight speeds. These have their own skill to use, and have high system requirements, so you probably won't be using these even on a cruiser.

FoF Missiles

FoF stands for Friend or Foe. These missiles come in light, heavy, and cruise varieties, and use the equivalent missile launcher. The difference is that they do not need to be targeted. If a ship damages you, or uses some form of electronic warfare on your ship, then you can launch these and they will automatically attack the culprit. You do not need to target the vessel, but you do need to manually select the fire button to start launching them. FoF missiles have similar attributes to their normal counterparts, aside from their targeting. May 2005: There is a bug that FoF missiles will shoot deadspace objects instead of NPC ships. This can be quite annoying if you are in a mission with many bunkers and walls and your missiles will target them instead of the frigates and cruisers targeting you.

Defender Missiles

As their name implies, these missiles are not used as a weapon. Instead, you launch these when an enemy missile is homing in on you. There are not many types (only one working model that I know of) but that can change in time. The Defender has fast speed and good range, but slightly lower agility than a normal missile. Not to worry, though, because Defenders have an explosion radius, so they don't actually need to hit the enemy missile directly. You can load these into a normal missile launcher, but not into specialist launchers for rockets, torpedos, and the like.

Projectile Ammunition

Projectile ammunition is very similar to modern bullets. They contain an explosive charge to launch them from the weapon, and the projectile itself that does damage when connecting with its target. Among the different flavors of projectile ammunition, the notable types are:

• Carbonized Lead - longest range
• EMP - most effective against shields, most EM damage
• Fusion - most explosive damage
• Titanium Sabot - most kinetic damage
• Phased Plasma - most thermal damage