Weapons

Each ship can equip a variety of energy, projectile and missile based weapons. Most weapons are available in either fixed, gimbal, or turret variants. Weapons are organized into classes ranging from 1 to 4 indicating their relative size (the higher the number the bigger the hardpoint must be to equip the weapon). Only the Cannon, Multi-Cannon, Pulse and Beam Laser, and Plasma Accelerator have class 4 variants whereas most other weapons have class 3 as their largest variant. In the outfitting store fixed weapons are indicated with a crosshair icon, gimbal weapons with a gyroscope icon, and turret weapons with a small turret icon.

Weapons

Weapon damage is divided into four categories: Thermal, Kinetic, Thermal Kinetic, and Explosive.

Thermal weapons (lasers) have the benefit of unlimited ammunition, but they also tend to overheat your weapons systems more rapidly than Kinetic weapons do. Thermal weapons inflict more damage to shields than they inflict to a ship's hull.

Kinetic weapons require ammunition to fire and also require reloads when your current magazine runs empty; however, they build up heat slower than Energy weapons. Kinetic weapons inflict more damage to a ship's hull than they do to its shield.

Thermal Kinetic weapons require ammunition to fire, produce a lot of heat, and require a larger amount of energy to fire. However, Thermal Kinetic weapons are equally effective against shields and hull and tend to have high penetration. The Railgun and Plasma Accelerator deal Thermal kinetic damage.

Explosive weapons, such as missiles, torpedoes, and mines, are extremely ineffective against shields, but can inflict strong damage to a ship's hull. Explosive weapons have small and limited ammunition supplies, can be shot down by Point-Defense Turrets. They are capable of being fired without adequate weapons energy reserves at the cost of extreme system heat, which can easily overheat your ship and do module and/or hull damage to your own ship. The explosive blast from Explosive type weapons is capable of damaging multiple ships if they are near the detonation point, which can easily cause "friendly-fire" problems if not used carefully.

Most weapons, with the exception of several explosive weapons, will be unable to fire if there is insufficient energy in the Weapons Energy Capacitor. Increasing the number of pips to the Weapons Energy Capacitor will increase the recharge rate on the Weapons Energy Capacitor, allowing weapons to be fired more frequently. When there is insufficient energy to fire a weapon, a "Thermal Overload" Message will be displayed next to the Weapon's name on the HUD.

Thermal weapons

These weapons use a charging capacitor and thus do not need ammo, but tend to drain weapon energy quickly and take time to recharge.

Thermal weapons are effective at stripping shields, but less effective at destroying hull.

Beam Laser
Pulse Laser
Burst Laser
CytoScrambler (Powerplay faction locked)
Pulse Disruptor (Powerplay faction locked)
Retributor (Powerplay faction locked)

Kinetic Weapons

Kinetic-based weapons require ammunition to fire but generate less heat and consume less power as a result. Ammunition can be replenished at most stations or outposts. Kinetic weapons are good against hull, but are not as useful against shields.

Cannon
Multi-cannon
Fragment Cannon
Enforcer Cannon (Powerplay faction locked)
Pacifier Frag-Cannon (Powerplay faction locked)

Thermal Kinetic Weapons

Thermal-Kinetic Weapons require ammunition to fire, generate a large amount of heat, and consume a large amount of energy. However, they are equally effective against Shields and Hull.

Railgun
Plasma Accelerator
Imperial Hammer (Powerplay faction locked)
Advanced Plasma Accelerator (Powerplay faction locked)

Explosive Weapons

Explosive Weapons require ammunition to fire. Most explosive weapons can be fired with insufficient energy in the weapons capacitor, but do so at the cost of extreme heat generation that is quite capable of reaching critical heat levels that may cause heat damage to your own modules and/or hull. Explosive Weapons are extremely ineffective against shields, but do respectable damage to hull.

Missile Rack
Torpedo Pylon
Mine Launcher
Pack-hound Rack (Powerplay faction locked)

Defensive Weapons

Defensive weapons do not engage Enemy ships or vehicles. They solely fire at incoming explosive weapons.

Point Defence Turret

Mining Lasers

Mining lasers are a Thermal damage type weapon that while capable of inflicting damage against an Enemy, are ill-suited for use as a combat weapon. They are used to mine fragments from asteroids, and are mostly used in combat as a last resort.

Mining Laser
Mining Lance (Powerplay faction locked)

Weapon Mounts

Regardless of type, all weapons are placed in different mounts which determine how they aim at targets:

Fixed

Fixed weapons are rather powerful, but have very little tracking ability - they shoot straight ahead, and can only do minor tracking when the target is within the weapon's crosshairs. Because of this, fixed weapons depend heavily on your ship's manoeuvrability; however, they are cheap, use little power, are not affected by chaff and every weapon is available in a fixed mount.

The following weapons have fixed variants:

Gimbal

Gimbal means that the weapon is hung in a rotating construction, so it can move independent of the ship's orientation. Gimbal-mounted weapons can keep track of a target even when you're not pointed directly at the target, allowing far more firepower to hit a target. In exchange, gimbal weapons are usually weaker than their fixed counterparts and are vulnerable to chaff as it disrupts the weapon's ability to track the target. Also keep in mind that tracking systems track heat; if a target is not generating sufficient heat, gimbals will not lock on and behave much like fixed weapons. For this reason, gimbals do not track disabled subsystems as well, even if the target as a whole is hot enough to track.

The following weapons have gimbal variants:

Turret

Turrets are fully independent auto-firing weapons that have a 360 degree range of fire. Standard turrets generally act autonomously.

Note: You can select one of three "Turret Weapon Modes" from the Functions tab of the Systems menu

Forward Fire - Your turrets will act as fixed weapons and will be shooting manually. Pull the trigger to fire. Hold down the trigger for continuous firing. This mode removes all the advantages that turrets have, as they will operate as a lower damage version of their fixed weapon counterpart, but prevents them from being affected by chaff.
Targeted Enemy - The turrets will automatically shoot at your manually locked target. The turrets start firing autonomously once you pull the trigger once. Works within a distance of 3km ^{[citation needed]}.
Fire at Will - The turrets will fire automatically on any wanted target which is firing at you, once you pull the trigger. In this mode 2 turrets can focus on different targets at the same time. Since you cannot fire first at a target, even if the target interdicted you but did not shoot yet, this is rather a defensive setting.

The following weapons have turret variants: