Topic: Some interesting findings on ammo & resists vs NPC's.
tl;dr - pay attention to what the NPC's you fight are dropping for loot. If they are dropping resist plates, that resist is buffered. Also pay attention to the ammo they drop - that is what they are using against you.
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I've been working a pack of T3 blues assault mechs near Radholme using my Waspish. This is a fairly bad mix - they do damage to my weakest resist and are most resistant to my strongest damage type - good for testing out different ammo usage.
I've tried a few different types of ammo with them and here's what I've seen.
Small 'Smite' ballistic Missiles - best results - average of 9 volleys to kill them (45 missiles).
Damage Types: 8 therm, 8 kin, 8 chem, 21 seismic (45 total damage)
Small doublecore ballistic Missiles - average 15 volleys to kill them. (75 missiles)
Damage Types: 15 therm, 20 seismic (35 total damage)
Small chemical ballistic Missiles - 14-15 volleys to kill them. (70-75 missiles)
Damage Types: 15 chem, 20 seismic (35 total damage)
Small armor piercing ballistic missiles - 16 volleys to kill them (80 missiles)
Damage Types: 15 kinetic, 20 seismic (35 total)
Small sonic ballistic Missiles - worst tested - 20-21 volleys to kill them. (100-105 missiles)
Damage Types: 40 Seismic.
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The reason doublecore (therm damage) didn't come out on top is these blue mechs were dropping thermal armor on a regular basis. As such, they had "filled the resist hole".
By fitting the thermal plates, chemical then became their weakest resist but it also doesn't look as if they activated the plates.
If the plates had been activated, that would have been +100 points to thermal, putting it at the second highest and that would have shown with the number of volleys that I fired to drop them.
Overall - the end resists on these guys:
Seismic highest
Kinetic second
Thermal third
Chemical weakest
-- with the 3 lowest within 5-10 points of each other.
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Just some interesting findings I thought I'd share.