Elite Dangerous Weapons

The weapons in Elite Dangerous are mounted on hardpoints on your ship - you only have a limited number of hardpoints on your ship (ranging from 1 to 8) so you will need to pick your weapons wisely.

• Lasers do Thermic damage and are best against shields less effective on the hull
• Kinetic/Direct Fire/Projectiles are best against hull
• Rail guns and plasma accelerators do fair damage against both shields and hulls
• Missiles & torpedoes are best at targeting sub-systems after gimbaled weapons
• Mines can be used by traders to escape pirates
• …

When on the outfitting screen you will see several different icons for each weapon that gives you some information about its performance:

1. Fitting - this is either fixed (as in this example - shown with a reticle), gimbal (shows two over-lapping ellipses), or turret (shows a small turret icon)
2. Rating - this is general rating for the weapon from I (worst) through to A (best) - this example is a “G” rating so its not that great (letter ratings are also used for amour penetration). The ratings are relative to all weapons in the game, so an “A” is as good as any other “A”
3. Class - this is the class of the weapon, starting at 1 (worst) and going up to 8 (best). Higher classes are more powerful and deadly, but cost more money.

Weapons also have weights - e.g. 2T. Small hard points can have weapons up to 2T, medium hard points up to 4T.

When making decisions on outfitting in Elite Dangerous, you can always compare your weapons. To do so, click on the proposed new item you are interested in fitting, and then click on “Compare” to get a side-by-side comparison of weapon performance. The same comparison can also be used for non-weapon upgrades such as shields and cargo.

The numbers and ratings here are taken directly from the game which uses a simplified ratings and damage system do we do not have exact figures. Some of these numbers may be rounded in-game too, so for examplea weapon with a thermal output of 1 might be higher or lower than a similar one with a thermal output of 1.

• Damage is on a scale of 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest)
• Damage/s is the amount of damage dealt per second.
• Rate/s is the firing rate per second.
• Penetration is the armor penetration rating from I (worst) to A (best)
• Thermal refers to the heat output and is on a scale of 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest)

Fires a single intermittent laser pulse at the target.

Fires small intermittent bursts of laser fire at the target. Very similar to the pulse laser, except it will fire a “burst” pulses each time. The amount of damage per pulse is the same, but you're more likely to hit the target with multiple pulses.

Fires a continuous laser beam at the target making it easier to do large amounts of damage, but significantly adds to the heat output of your ship.

Energy projectile weapon that require ammo and has high penetration compared to normal lasers.

These weapons include things like canons and rail guns and only add minimal amounts of heat to your ship's heat output. They are cheap and cost effective weapons that work particularly well against unshielded hulls, with a wide range and variety of ammunition for different needs. Once you have run out of ammunition, you will need to buy more at a station.

Simple cannons and gattling-gun style cannons.

The rail gun is a powerful weapon that does a large amount of damage, but requires time to activate meaning that you will need to have excellent aim and timing to make sure the target is perfectly lined up at the precise moment that the rail gun fires.

Missiles tend to be smaller and in racks, while torpedoes are larger and mounted individually.

Missiles can be of multiple types, from very basic line-of-sight missiles that do not have any active guidance, to missiles that lock on to a track a target through various means.

Guided missiles require that the target is “locked” prior to firing for best results - you can fire before but the missile is more likely to miss. When locking on, keep the target roughly within the centre of your screen; the HUD will show two horizontal bars with a countdown - when that countdown is at zero, the missile is locked on.

Weapons can be mounted in different ways. The more advanced mounts offer great flexibility in targeting, but are more expensive and often lower powered.

Weapons on fixed mountings fire only in the direction of where your ship is facing - the entire ship must be moved to aim the weapon.

These are shown with “(G)” when outfitting your ship. Gimballed weapons in Elite Dangerous will partially track your locked-on target within a small area directly in front of your ship meaning that you do not have to directly aim your ship in order to hit the target, but offer slightly reduced damage per hit when compared to fixed weapons.

These are shown with “(T)” when outfitting your ship. Turreted weapons in Elite Dangerous allow your can fire against your current target regardless of where your ship is facing (although they can be quite inaccurate!) meaning you need to aim your ship even less precisely than both gimballed and fixed weapons, but again offer slightly reduced damage per hit when compared to both gimballed and fixed weapons.