Logbook entry

NEW PIRATE INITIATIVE: PVP BUILDS

1. PVP SHIP ARCHETYPES: The common categories of PVP builds that exist.
2. PVP SHIP BUILDS: Some popular "meta" PVP builds that are proven effective for particular purposes.
3. PVP ENGINEERING: How to engineer modules for PVP combat, explaining why the PVP builds work so you can come up with your own.

• Having the same chassis with several different hardpoint builds gives you options to try.
• Dakkalance is an easy gimbled starting build also easy for PVE.
• Metalance is a swappable fixed hardpoint set to train with until you get PA aim down and master it.

• Metalance: 3 TC PAs, 1 Feedback Cascade LR Rail, 1 Superpen LR Rail, 2 shield cell bank 5 booster 1 heatsink. There are many reasons the Metalance is THE meta PVP medium ship of Elite.
• Plasmalance: 6 booster no heatsink hull tank 5 Efficient Thermal Condut plasma. All-in maximum DPS with thermal conduit-boosted hot plasmas and no heatsinks to reduce heat while you cook yourself and them to death with heat-boosted plasmas.
• Dakkalance: Dakkalance is an intuitive starter hardpoint loadout with gimbled multicannons shredding most foes with ease using little aim. You can start 3 multicannons and 2 rail guns so you are training in rail aim for shield cell bank cancels. To train in plasma use, swap one of the rails for a plasma accelerator like you'll be using on a Metalance or Plasmalance until you get the hang of it enough to go for a full plasma-based build.
• Short Range Blaster Raillance: Uses 1 size 4 huge multicannon with corrosive with the rest as short range blaster superpen rails except for the feedback cascade which stays long range. Excels at wing fights where it supports a focused wingmate by damaging difficult to track enemy ships. Not the best 1v1 vs Metalances. This build is a League competitive build. For regular use away from a carrier, up the fuel and FSD a bit.

• HULL: Military Grade/Heavy Duty for tanky hulls or Lightweight/Deep Plating or Reinforced/Deep Plating for paper hulls maximizing maneuver speed.
• HULL REINFORCEMENT PACKAGE (HRP): Heavy Duty/Deep Plating. Fill every slot not needed for other things.
• MODULE REINFORCEMENTS (MRP): 2 MRPs is usually enough to handle some module sniping or heat damage.
• SHIELD GENERATORS: Prismatic Reinforced/Hi Cap in general to survive the onslaught that won't give you chances to recharge. Use Bi-weave Reinforced/Fast Charge if your ship is small or hull tanky or stealthy or you don't have Prismos yet.
• SHIELD CELL BANKS: 2 SCBs or more in slots larger than your prismo or smaller for a matched pair to double bank with. Fast Charge/Recycling Cell for most ships doing double banking for each heat sink used. Specialized/Recycling Cell for a hot-banking ship like the Corvette doing huge numbers of heatsink-less banks.
• SHIELD BOOSTERS: All Heavy Duty/Supercapacitors except 1 Thermal Engineered/Supercapacitors and 1 Resistance Engineered/Supercapacitors. This is to keep maximum absolute shield strength without having negative resistances. Absolute is king since the meta Plasma weapons deal absolute damage that ignores resistance.
• PLASMA ACCELERATORS: Efficient/Thermal conduit does the most damage when you heat up with the least downsides.
• MULTICANNONS: All Overcharged/Incendiary except 1 smallest with Overcharged/Corrosive or High Capacity/Corrosive. Incendiary shreds shields with 90% thermal damage and Corrosive boosts armor pen by 20 for all shots making it shred hull too. If you have trouble with heat, remember to pip weapons, use Thermal Spread power plant, don't shoot beyond effective range, and substitute some with Autoloader if necessary.
• FRAG CANNON: Mostly gimbled to get them to converge with forgiving aim during super speedy joust fly-by. Overcharged/Incendiary to shred shields with 1 small one Overcharged/Corrosive to shred hull and sometimes 1 Overcharged/Drag Munitions to slow targets down.
• RAIL GUN/IMPERIAL HAMMER: Long Range/Feedback Cascade to cancel shield cell banks and Long Range/Superpenetrator to snipe powerplants. See PVP Guide for number/size of rails needed vs the target bank size. Short Range/Superpenetrator if you're trying to do the Short Range Blaster builds for support in wing fights.
• BEAM LASER: Long Range/Thermal Vent to keep your ship's heat low while using long range weapons like rail guns.
• SEEKER MISSILES/PACKHOUNDS: Drag munitions to slow targets down.
• ADVANCED MISSILE RACKS: Rapid Fire/FSD Reboot to knock out frame shifters.
• GROM BOMBS: The Powerplay weapon from Uri Grom actually does more than reboot an FSD. It disables it for 17 seconds or 19 with FSD reset engineering. There's a 26 second cooldown before it can be done a second time.
• CANNONS:
• Long Range/Force Shell to knock people flying off their aim backwards.
• Long Range/High Yield Shell to blast modules.
• Long Range/Dispersal Field: These work as fire-at-will turrets to deliver special effects like dispersal to break targeting of gimbled weapons and turrets constantly.
• TORPEDO PYLON: Sturdy/Reverb Cascade to knock out shield generators on those slow enough to let you hit them. Can't synth ammo, so don't use unless you have enough to finish the job.
• MINE LAUNCHER: High Capacity/Reverb Cascade to knock out shield generators on those fool enough to straight line into them. You can synth ammo, so this works better on smaller ships and as a renewable backup if you run out of torps.
• HEATSINKS: Used to double shield cell bank at once and cancel the heat. You want 1 bank per 2 bank charges if you use pairs of banks to hotbank. Get the capacity upgrade to 3 so you can use less sinks and have more shield boosters.
• CHAFF: Get capacity upgrade. Good against gimbled unless you also have dispersal field experimental weapons to do it for you or stealth to be unlockable.
• ECM: Nobody uses these really. Packhounds evade them, torps are outrunnable and only temporarily jammed and seekers are weak against shields anyway and can be banked away.