[Misanthrope]

I know most people would say locators are better but I would like some advice from the UFP community. Here's some details to help you guys decide which I should use: My base crit chance on my ship with my current gear (without locators or exploiters) is 39.1% and my crit severity is 168.4%. I'm a tac captain flying a pilot ship with pure directed energy beam build and my main damage skill is beam overload III. I've heard over 30% crit chance is plenty and you don't really need more so would using exploiters be better in my case since my crit chance is already so high or no?

[Dark]

No.

Your weapons should be [CrtD]x4, which is +80% severity. This means that your weapons have 168.4% + 80% = 248.4% severity, not taking [CrtD/Dmg] into account.

4 Locators is +8% chance.
47.1% chance + 248.4% severity = avg 117.00

4 exploiters is +39.2 severity.
39.1% chance + 287.6% severity = avg 112.45

For the vast majority of cases, you use [CrtD] weapons and locators.

I have no idea where you heard that over 30% crit chance is plenty, sounds like nonsense.

[darthnovawave]

It really depends on your build in practice. Most players will in practice see a higher CritH than the stats screen will show when you are sitting idle out of combat. In combat, you likely will get various buffs from gear, abilities, Accuracy stat overflow, etc. If you are exceeding 100% CritH, you gain zero benefit from the overflow, so it is better to shift to CritD.

On certain builds like Surgical Strikes, this overflow might be to the point where you can run some or even all exploiters, but it really requires parsing to figure out. As long as you are running 90-ish% or higher in sustained combat like an ISA run after swapping a locator to an exploiter, the change is probably beneficial. CritD is meaningless if you aren't scoring critical hits though, so for a lot of scenarios the math will favor locators.

As far as weapon mods, CritD or Dmg mods are what you want there, and the difference is generally negligible unless you are extreme min-maxing for tiny improvements. Which is the absolute best usually requires complex calculator tools considering your total build to figure out, but for most players they are virtually equal.

[Bridger]

As a Tac Captain you should use the Dmg Mod, CrtD and Damage are nearly identical in performance main difference is still the fact that CrtD mod only benefits you if you land a critical hit while the buff from the Dmg Mod is always there.

Also you want to have as much CrtH on your ship and once that is reached you switch from Locators to Exploiters but that requires some expensive consoles and good piloting.

Best thing to do is to parse an ISE and look at your CritH in that run so you know were you are.

[Misanthrope]

I went with 5 locators on my ship, the 6th universal console slot on my ship (I have a t6-x ship) will be lorca's custom fire controls as I've heard that out-performs a 6th locator somehow. Also side question regarding a ground build, is the burnham's cqc armor better than advanced fleet recoil compensating armor?