Weapons guide
There are many different and diverse weapon systems used in the EVE Online universe. Each race specializes in different systems of weaponry, but all races usually have at least one ship geared towards each system type. The three main system types are turret systems (Energy, Hybrid, Projectile), launcher systems (missiles, bombs), and drone systems. There are many sub-systems for each main system, most of which are listed below. The one oddball system that contains no real bonuses is the smartbomb systems, which can be equipped on any ship and are equally effective on all ships.
Contents
- 1 Systems Overviews
- 2 Damage Types Overview
- 3 Weapon Overheating
- 4 Energy Turrets
- 5 Hybrid Turrets
- 6 Projectile Turrets
- 7 Launchers
- 8 Combat Drones
Systems Overviews
Launcher Overview
Missile launchers use propelled warheads to cause damage to enemy ships. Caldari ships in particular offer many missile bonuses, making Caldari ships the best missile ships available. Launchers are sub-catagorized by the type of missile or projectile fired from the launcher: Rockets, Light Missiles, Defender Missiles, Assault Missiles, Heavy Missiles, Heavy Assault Missiles, Cruise Missiles, Torpedoes, Citadel Torpedoes, Bombs, and Mines. Missile damage is calculated simply using a target ship's speed and signature radius. The only way for a missile to miss its target is for the target to be traveling faster than the missile, thus out running it. Each missile fired has a set amount of hitpoints and can be destroyed by using smartbombs or defender missiles. Because missiles must take time to travel to their targets, they generally have lower damage per second (DPS) ratings than their turret counterparts. However, what they lack in DPS can be made up in volley damage and the ability to choose your damage type.
Turret Overview
Turret weapons are traditional gun-type mounted weapons. There are three main categories of turret weapons: Energy (Laser), Hybrid, and Projectile. Energy turrets use focusing crystals to fire a laser beam at the target. Hybrid weapons use advanced magnetism techniques to launch a solid projectiles at high speeds (railguns) or balls of plasma (blasters). Projectile weapons are classic chemically-propelled weapons that use solid projectiles to do their damage. Turrets are further categorized into two sub-categories, one long range type and one short range type, for each main category. Energy weapons can either be pulse lasers (short range) or beam lasers (long range). Hybrid turrets can either be blasters (short range) or railguns (long range). Projectile turrets can either be autocannons (short range) or artillery (long range). Turrets are also categorized by size of the turret: Small (frigate, destroyer size), Medium (cruiser, battlecruiser size), Large (battleship size), and Extra Large (capital size). Turret damage is calculated using tracking speed and signature radius. Each ammunition type used can affect damage via a modifier as well. Turret ammunition can also affect the range of the weapon, tracking speed, and damage type. More details on the mechanism of dealing damage with gun turrets can be found on the turret damage page.
Combat Drone Overview
Drones are unmanned, small crafts launched from a special bay on a ship known as the drone bay. A ship drone bay is measured in m3 and can carry any drone that will fit into the bay. Drones come in five different sizes for combat: Lights (5m3), Mediums (10m3), Heavies (25m3), Sentries (25m3), and Fighters (5,000m3). There are also drones available that utilize repair systems and electronic warfare. Each race has specific drones and damage type is determined by the drone race. For example, Caldari drones deal only kinetic damage, Amarrian drones deal only EM damage, Gallentean drones deal only thermal damage, and Matari drones deal only explosive damage.
Smartbomb Overview
Smartbombs are pulse weapons that emit a pulse attack around the utilizing ship. Smartbombs do not require a target lock and will always hit anything within range of the pulse attack. Despite their name, smartbombs do not discriminate between friend and foe, and therefore will hit any target withing range. Smartbombs are normally used to compliment a main weapon system and are rarely used as a ship's primary weapons system.
Damage Types Overview
There are four damage types: Electromagnetic, Thermal, Kinetic, and Explosive. EM does the most damage to shields, Explosive does the most damage to armor. Thermal does moderate damage to both, but more against shields. Kinetic is the same, but does more damage to armor. See the below graph for a slightly better explanation:
More Armor Damage - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - More Shield Damage
Explosive - - - Kinetic - - - - Thermal - - - Electromagnetic (EM)
More information on damage types can be found at this page.
Weapon Overheating
Overheating a weapon is essentially to take that weapon beyond its normal capability to do extra damage, give it longer range, etc. Doing so does damage your weapon at the same time, but this damage can be mitigated by using Nanite Repair Paste. Overheating requires the skill Thermodynamics. Each different turret, launcher, or system has a different bonus that you can gain from overheating it. There is also a heat damage amount and an HP amount assigned to the device. Every cycle of the device will cause the listed damage to the device until the device HP runs out, at which point the device will need to be repaired either at a station or using Nanite Repair Paste. Overheating a weapon rack has many advantages, namely the ability to destroy your target quicker and reduce the damage you may take.
Energy 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.
Ammunition
The ammunition of an energy turret is the frequency crystal. They come in four sizes to match the size of the turret. They also come in eight different variants per size, which determine damage amount, damage type and range of the turret. These eight variants are:
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Tech II energy turrets use specialty crystals that add a tracking speed bonus on top of range modification, but offer slight penalties to capacitor usage. Tech II crystals degrade over time with usage and will eventually disintegrate. Below are the variations of Tech II ammunition:
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Hybrid Turrets
These turrets use charged energy and physical ammunition combined and are good all-around 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 emphasizing range bonuses (Railguns), and Gallente bonuses emphasizing damage and tracking (Blasters).
Ammunition
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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, lower damage per shot.
- Artillery: Lower tracking, higher range, lower rate of fire, higher damage per shot.
Minmatar ships are designed to make the most of Projectile turrets, with numerous damage and rate of fire bonuses.
Ammunition
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Launchers
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 missile-users. Some Khanid (Amarr) designs also recieve bonuses to missiles, such as the Sacrilege.
Rocket Launcher
These only fire unguided rockets. They have a fast rate of fire and low fitting requirements. They can use Defender missiles. These launchers are ideal for fast frigates and interceptors.
Standard and Assault Missile Launcher
These fire Light missiles, as well as Defenders. They have a decent rate of fire and average fitting requirements. The difference between Standard and Assault launchers is that Assault Launchers have a much faster rate of fire, but much higher fitting requirements. Standard Launchers are suited for frigates, but Assault launchers have fitting requirements which usually limit their use to larger vessels such as cruisers.
Heavy Missile Launcher
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 fitting requirements, and are commonly found on Cruisers and Battlecruisers.
Heavy Assault Launchers
Unlike assault launchers, heavy assault launchers use a different ammo (missile) type than standard heavy launchers. In comparison to heavy launchers, heavy assault launchers have a shorter range, lower damage per missile but higher rate of fire. Their fitting needs are similar to those of Heavy launchers.
Cruise Missile Launcher
Cruise Launchers fire cruise missiles and Defenders. They are slower than Heavy Launchers due to their ammo, and also have large fitting requirements. These launchers can only be mounted on battleships.
Siege Missile Launcher
Bigger and slower than even Cruise Launchers. Siege Launchers can fire Cruise and Defender missiles. Their main design is to fire torpedo, and they are the only launcher that can do so. Their fitting requirements are so large that you won't need to worry about them for a long time.
Citadel Launcher
Very big launchers for use on capital ships (Dreadnoughts, Titans), the equivalent of Extra Large guns. They fire Citadel Torpedoes. The rate of fire is tremendously slow but can pump out massive damage to other capital ships, POS towers, outposts, and battleships. However, firing these at any ship smaller than a battleship would be a waste as the signature radius penalty would reduce the damage too much.
Bomb Launcher
Bomb launchers are specialty systems designed for stealth bombers. Bomb bays launch a warhead that causes area of effect damage.
Ammunition
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.
Missiles are divided into guided and unguided types. While all missiles will hit their targets, unguided missiles do not benefit from the Guided Missile Precision skill. Unguided missiles also tend to have shorter ranges than their guided missile counterparts, but possess larger warheads. Unguided missiles do not have a Friend-or-Foe variant.
There are many types of missile types. 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 sub-machine 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). Rockets are most effective against smaller craft such as frigates, interceptors, and drones due to their high velocity, high explosion velocity, and small explosion radius.
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Defender Missiles
Defender missiles are the anti-missile missile. These missiles can be loaded in multiple launchers and are used to shoot down enemy missiles as they approach. Currently defender missiles are seldom carried due to their limited effectivness. They need to be manually activated when there is an incoming missile and can't be activated when there are no missiles. When they do activate the act like a normal launcher firing an infinite amount of missiles (taking the launchers reload time into account) until the target missile is destroyed. When multiple missiles are homing for you the defenders will always target the missile nearest to you until it is destroyed. Meaning sometimes multiple defenders will target the same missiles, even when there are multiple missiles inbound. Defender missiles will only target enemy missiles that are intended for the launching vessel; they will not go after enemy missiles that are targeted at other allied ships in a fleet.
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Light Missiles
Light missiles have a medium range (20-40km), moderate speed, and small explosion radius. Their speed and size makes them ideal for use against frigates, destroyers, and light cruisers. Precision Missiles have a smaller explosion radius for better effectiveness against small targets, while Fury missiles have larger warheads for use against larger vessels.
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Heavy Missiles
Heavy missiles are long range missiles (approx 50-80km) and have heavier warheads than Standard Missiles. They are effective against anything from destroyers to battleships, and are moderately effective against frigates. Heavy Missiles come in Precision and Fury variants just like their smaller Standard cousins.
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Heavy Assault Missiles
Heavy assault missiles are an unguided version of the Heavy Missile. Heavy Assault Missiles fly slower, have shorter range, and do less damage than heavy missiles, however Heavy Assault Missile launchers have a much faster rate of fire than heavy missile launchers, and do greater amounts of damage. Javalin missiles have greater range at the expense of a smaller warhead, while Rage missiles possess a larger warhead at the expense of shorter range.
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Cruise Missiles
Cruise Missiles are extremely long-range missiles, with effective ranges from 100km on standard battleships to over 250km on a Raven. Cruise Missiles travel at very high speed, but can still require many seconds to reach their target when firing at the furthest targets. Cruise Missiles do large amounts of damage and are most effective against Battleships and Battlecruisers. Cruise Missiles come in Precision and Fury variants, with Precision missiles being effective against large cruisers, while their Fury counterparts are ideal for use against heavily shielded targets. Cruise Missiles are also employed against fixed structures such as POS Towers, where a large tower's shield diameter precludes the use of torpedoes and Citadel Torpedoes are otherwise unavailable.
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Torpedoes
Torpedoes are very large unguided missiles, and do incredible amounts of damage at the expense of slow speed and very short range. Their large explosion radius limited their ideal targets to battleships and large battlecruisers. Pilots who are able to get the most range out of their torpedoes are often utilized for attacking POS towers, where their large warheads are the most effective against stationary targets when Dreadnoughts are otherwise unavailable. Javalin and Rage versions are available which specialize in longer range and higher damage respectively.
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Citadel Torpedoes
These are super-large versions of Standard Torpedoes, and can only be launched from Citadel Launchers on capital ships. These are reserved for use against the largest targets, such as a POS or other capital ships.
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Friend or Foe (FoF) Missiles
FoF missiles are used when your targeting system is malfunctioning, for example, when you are being jammed. 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.
Bombs
Bombs are an area-of-effect damaging device that are launched from stealth bomber bays. Bombs deal a large amount of damage, and can be incredibly damaging against smaller vessels. Multiple bombs of the same type can be employed at once to maximise their effect; and a skilled group of bomber pilots can annihilate an entire fleet with skillful placement and timing. Bombs are not self-propelled, but retain the forward speed of the launching ship. Bombs detonate on a 10 second timer once released. While bombs cannot be targeted, they do have hitpoints, and can be destroyed without detonating by another area-of-effect weapon. Bombs possess a near 100% resistance to their own damage type, which allows multiple bombs of the same type to be detonated within range of one another without destroying the other bombs.
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Combat Drones
Drones are robotic mini-ships. 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.
Scout Drones (Small, Medium)
Scout Drones are much smaller than frigates, and are difficult to hit due to their amazingly fast orbit speeds.
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Heavy Drones
Heavy Drones do more damage, but require more skill points. Heavy drones were designed to damage battleship and above classes.
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Sentry Drones
Sentry drones are long range drones that do not orbit a target. They stay stationary and fire at the target from a distance. These drones are particularly effective against structures and distant targets.
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Fighters
Fighters are like drones except bigger and not robotic. They are single-manned fighters deployed from carriers and motherships. They have the power of a large frigate, or a small cruiser, and are a formidable force when swarming a battleship. They can be assigned to gang members, and can even follow them in warp. Note that drone-specific skills do not affect fighters, as they're flown by human pilots, not directly controlled by the host ship.
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Electronic Warfare Drones
These specialized drones provide additional EW capabilities at the cost of the drone damage. Each race's drone inherits the specialty EW capabilities of that race: Tracking Disruption (Amarr), ECM (Caldari), Sensor Dampening (Gallente), and Target Painting (Minmatar). See the tables below for additional information.
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