Aunty Sledge
Ahh, you have grade 3 beams, I was quoting grade 5 stats. I can see the value in only upgrading them to a range where you want to work at.

ThinderI'm using FIXED Lasers, just saying.

That's another important factor, I use gimbled. Closer is better for fixed, and that being the situation I can see why you'd want to work with Short Range mod. It's not my preference but I can see the logic you are going with.

Luke WilliamsSo Plasma chargers are the same as modshards?

AHSomeone mentioned something called "power play". How do you "enter" it? I can only see it as one option on the map.
Open play, private group, solo, arena, train. This is it.

Glial2

AH Human NPC fighting.

A) grab a frame shift interdictor and fly around in supercruise looking for 'wanted' targets and work your way through the ranks of harmless to expert (interdicting is a good to have skill)
B) take combat missions from a station. (missions that pay 1.5 million plus will often be elite targets with good engineering so take missions with low pay and no 'wing recommended' / 'dangerous' icons and work your way up).
-- If you do take missions, be sure to READ the mission briefing ... some missions may want you to scan an outpost for your target which you'll need an SCV for, while others will simply need you to scan a nav beacon. There will also be details about distance; don't take missions where you need to fly 300k LY to a target. Missions where you need an SRV definitely FEEL really difficult but when done properly they are a hidden gem of ED
C) try undermining. This is where you pledge to one of the powerplay powers then fly to an enemy control system and shoot down the relevant ships. Usually the ships are of easy to moderate difficulty and rarely of elite difficulty. You will need an FSD interdictor. Look in the powerplay tab in the right-hand panel on your ship for more info. This might change with the upcoming pp2.0 update but I expect undermining wont change drastically so it's a good way to experience another level of the game). Don't worry too much about this having an actual effect on powerplay - usually you need to kill well over 200 ships for undermining to have an effect

AH
Now I am getting interdict literally the moment I show up in the system or on my way to the next target. LOL. Not once but usually 2x per short trip. Good target following practice.

Glial2

AH
Now I am getting interdict literally the moment I show up in the system or on my way to the next target. LOL. Not once but usually 2x per short trip. Good target following practice.

Not 100% sure I follow... do you mean you are getting interdicted or you are the interdictor?

Do you have something in your cargo hold? What are the NPCs who are pulling you saying?

AH They (NPC) are trying to pull me off the FTL. I have no idea what they want because I never see them. I keep going because their interdictions are kinda easy to beat.
I have 8 limpets in my cargo. I was planning to use those to pick up the valuable stuff after I blow up the pirate ship. Damn limpets do not work at all. Cant recall having this problem before.