Weapon of Choice (7 of 10)

This guide and video walkthrough will cover the Advanced Military Career arc mission, Weapon of Choice, in the MMO video game, EVE Online. Within you will find information on completing the mission objectives along with rewards and any other relevant details. This is the seventh in a chain of ten missions.

Objectives

“Use the civilian weapon you’ve been granted to destroy the pirate.”

Enemies (Caldari)

• Room 1:
  No gate.
  • Group 1: 1x Pithi Arrogator

Total Bounty: 3,000 Isk

Special Note: You don’t have to use the granted item to kill the pirate; any weapon works. If you’re just trying to blitz this mission, jump in and kill it with whatever you have available.

Overview

The purpose of Weapon of Choice is to familiarize you with the different weapon systems which are used by the 4 main races in EVE Online. Generally there is the ability to fit any kind of weapon to a ship as long as it has the appropriate launcher and turret slots; however, each ship generally has bonuses that favor a particular kind of weapon.

For example, a lot of Amarr ships give heavy bonuses to laser weapons, but you could still fit projectile or hybrid turrets on said ship, since they all share the use of turret slots. However, you’ll do far weaker damage or have a much lower effectiveness than if you used lasers. Generally it’s a good rule of thumb to use what weapons are bonused by the ship, since you’ll only be hurting yourself in the end if you do otherwise.

There are certain and rare special cases where fitting non-bonused weaponry serves a purpose; however, these will be covered separately.

There is not much to the mission itself—basically fitting the weapons you’ve been granted and flying out to the mission encounter where you’ll be shooting down a lone pirate. Since there isn’t much to cover there, I will cover a bit about the different weapon types below.

Weapon Types

Missiles (Caldari): As the mission text will mention, Caldari ships typically favor either hybrid turrets or missile launchers as their primary weapons, although the other races have a few ships of their own with missile bonuses. The benefits of missiles come with the ability to choose any 4 of the damage types for each bay, using the various ammo types. They require 0 capacitor to fire, leaving your energy reserves for other uses. Also, they are not affected by tracking effects or jamming, making it harder for the enemy to impede your damage dealing.

On the negative side, they take time to reach their target, delaying the actual dealing of damage with longer ranges. Their basic ammo types do not have some of the special modifiers such as +range or higher damage, etc., that hybrid, laser, and projectile ammos have. Finally, they can also be shot down by special defender missiles; however, these are rarely used by AI and even less so by other players since it means they have to sacrifice an offensive weapon slot to do so.

Projectile Weapons (Minmatar): Favored by Minmatar ships almost exclusively, the projectile weapons are similar to hybrid turrets with a few differences. Like missiles, they use no cap, but they do so with instant damage dealing. They can also change the type of damage done with the various basic ammos, which also modify some other attributes of the weapon like range or tracking modifiers.

The negatives for projectile weapons are similar to those affecting all turrets: They have to be able to track their targets to hit effectively and can be jammed by electronic warfare devices that reduce said tracking speed or range or both.

Lasers (Amarr): Like projectiles for Minmatar, the Amarians are the only ones who give bonuses to laser weapons. They benefit from their basic ammo being endless, since the weapons use nonexpendable crystals as ammo, thus freeing up cargo space for other uses and saving you money in the long run. Keep in mind, the Tech 2 and Faction variants still have limited use, unlike the basic variations, as the crystals will take damage with use and eventually break.

On the down side, the lasers use the most capacitor of all the weapons, which means less energy for other modules, making active armor tanking a bit of a challenge. Again, as turrets they can be disrupted, negating their ability to deal damage effectively. Even though you’re saving space on ammo, a lot of higher efficiency Amarr builds will still use consumable cap boosters as a sort of ammo for their energy reserves in order to keep all their modules running.

Drones (Gallente): Gallente ships are the only ones that possess any serious drone bonuses (not counting capital ships); however, most ships of all races have some space to equip a flight of drones. Drones are a special category of weapon separated from both launchers and turrets. For one, they don’t take up slots for either, since they are fitted in their own special drone bay on a ship. So you can augment your total damage by using drones without losing main weapon damage.

They utilize no cap, and they function almost entirely as separate ships that are under your command. Thus they are not affected by any e-war that is targeted on you. One great attribute of drones is they will often automatically target and attack hostile ships, though they generally need some orders to do so without splitting up and losing effectiveness.

The downsides of drones is that they are expensive to buy, especially their tech 2 variants, and can be shot down by AI or players. They also need to be launched manually from your ship and fly towards their target to fire. The AI in particular can be real irritating about targeting your drones, and you’ll need to order them to fly back to your ship and dock to avoid losing them, which takes time and often leads to some still being destroyed. They aren’t that great on their own without serious upgrades through skills and mods or other weapons supporting their efforts. You also cannot equip new drones to replace ones lost without docking up in a station.

Hybrid Turrets (Gallente & Caldari): Although not given to you in any variation of this mission, the hybrid turret is equally favored by both Caldari and Gallente ships. Most of the ammo types you choose have widely varying modifiers to damage, range and so forth, but lack the ability to swap damage type, always dealing kinetic and thermal.

They still require cap to fire, albeit less than lasers and like all turrets, are capable of being jammed by e-war, reducing their effectiveness.

Rewards:

• + 0.1347 % corporation standing
• Granted weapon systems
  • Amarr: 1 x Civilian Gatling Pulse Laser
  • Caldari: 1 x Civilian Missile Launcher
  • Gallente: 2 x Civilian Hobgoblin (drone)
  • Minmatar: 1 x Civilian Gatling Autocannon
• 30,000 Isk
• 30,000 Isk bonus (1 hours, 12 minutes)