Projectile ammunition

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Ammunition Types

Name	Range Mod.	Tracking Mod.	Damage Types	Damage
EMP	-50%	0%	EM (75%)/exp/kin	High
Fusion	-50%	0%	EXP (83%)/kin	High
Phased Plasma	-50%	0%	THERM (83%)/kin	High
Titanium Sabot	0%	20%	KIN (75%)/exp	Moderate
Depleted Uranium	0%	20%	exp (38%)/therm (38%)/kin	Moderate
Proton	60%	5%	em (60%)/kin	Low
Nuclear	60%	5%	EXP (80%)/kin	Low
Carbonized Lead	60%	5%	KIN (80%)/exp	Low

Rules of the Autocannons

Pretend your optimal range doesn't exist

The only reasons why you should be taking autocannons into their optimal range is when fighting missile ships or if you've landed on top of a sniping battleship. All other times, fight in your falloff.

Always use your most damaging ammo

Besides Barrage (which gives a bonus so isn't really relevant), all projectile ammo range modifiers apply to your optimal range, not falloff. As we have tiny optimal ranges and huge falloffs, this means we can run about with EMP and not have to worry about losing the range as it stays virtually the same. Barrage does the same damage as EMP and gives a 50% range boost to falloff. It's wonderful, and you should use it.

If your ship has a falloff bonus, it's designed to fit autocannons.

Because optimal range bonuses on autocannons are as useful as explosive damage bonuses for lasers.

Barrage is your friend

It gives you a 50% boost to falloff and does oodles of explosive damage. The only thing it's a bit useless against are Invul-Field Shield tanks and T2 amarr ships, where EM or Thermal damage are far better.

Hail can actually be useful

When fighting missile ships or stationary targets, load in some Hail ammo and you will tear them to shreds. Be warned that it does have a speed penalty, which is why you can't fly around with it loaded all the time. It's best used in conjunction with a passive shield tank or a dura-armour tank to offset the cap recharge penalty.

Learn to love the low and middle-tier autocannons

125mm, 150mm, Dual 180mm, 220mm, Dual 425mm and Dual 650mm autocannons have stupidly low fitting requirements and allow you to either fit massive plates, loads of nos, twin reps, mwds and cap boosters without gimping your setup. This is because they all have identical falloff ranges, so the only thing you gain from using the next tier above is 4-5% more damage and a slightly reduced ammo consumption.

Fit Top-Tier autocannons when NPCing

The use a lot less ammo, which is very important when npcing with autocannons as they have the highest rate of fire out of all the guns.

There are only 3-3.5 different ammos you ever need to carry

In order of priority:

T1 Guns

1. EMP for general use & shield tankers
2. Fusion for armour tankers
3. Phased plasma for Amarr T2 resists

T2 Guns

1. Barrage for general use
2. EMP for shield tankers
3. Phased Plasma for T2 Amarr resistances
4. Hail, if you're feeling lucky

For Npc's (ratting)

Most people assume that since, for example Serpentis ships lowest resist is to kinetic damage Titanium Sabot is the best ammo to kill them. This is incorrect. The higher damage of Phased Plasma makes up for the slightly worse resists.

The resists on smaller ships such as cruisers and frigates are low across the board. Some dont exceed 30 in any type. For these the higher damage ammo such as EMP and Phased plasma are even better. The most effective ammo against Angel friagtes for example is EMP.

EMP also does significantly higher damage against stucture so you might notice EMP killing some of the weaker Angel BS faster than Fusion.

The ammo you should use per rat type: Best / 2nd best

Angel Fusion / EMP

Blood Raiders EMP / Phased

Guristas Phased / Titanium

Serpentis Phased / Titanium

Sansha EMP / Phased

Generally EMP or Phased Plasma are the best to rat with, since ACs fire LOTS of ammo you are going to want to use the cheapest one if possilble.

You'd think EMP is the most expensive, thats not always true. When you consider the materials required to produce the various ammos you get odd prices.

Small Ammo Phased is the most expensive, Fusion costs about 10% less and EMP is the cheapest being around 30% cheaper than Phased.

Medium Phased again is the most costly, EMP is half as much and Fusion is 1/3 the cost.

Large EMP is the most expensive, Phased is 10% cheaper and Fusion is 60% cheaper.