If you are concerned with power drain, rig the nastiest guns you can on your heavy hardpoints then use your lighter ones for missiles. This in general works better than mounting light weapons on all hardpoints.

"I'm about to drop the hammer and dispense some indiscriminate justice..."

The missiles in the lower slot are def a nice way to avoid the drain problems.

Trouble is missiles are a bit crap (except early on) and the cost bucks every time you fire. Bucks (especially in MP) are good to hold on to. The other problem is that the lower the level weapon the higher the efficiency - in general. You are usually sacrificing some efficiency when going for the higehst weapons.

Personally i take a couple of mid rangers with 1 or 2 top range depending on the number of mounts.

Its all about when your power cuts out. If you're a really good pilot you can probably afford to have all top class weapons cause you will be able to waste your foes before the juice runs out. I'm not that good tho and i hate having to fly around waiting for the damn lasers to recharge while dodging fire.

I plaster the whole ship with loads of mega hardcore guns, when you have 4 lv. 10 guns on it, it doesn't matter that the power goes down in 3 shots, you're target dies in 2!

I'm not a smuggler, i just sell alien artefacts and cardamine to the poor and needy!

Always look at fire ratio as well as power coz an 8.33 refire at less than half the power of a 4.00 is more deadly, also have a good mix of shield and armour destroyers, makes the kills easier. When I was playing earlier on I went for rapid firing guns with this mix till my flying got to speed, now I have a Titan so I use 4 lvl 10s and 2 lvl 9's, never use missles anymore - waste of money. with my layout a short burst and they are toast, for fun went back to Manhatten on cargo run and got jumped by some real idiots lined up on first started firing and slowly straffed across all 3, they all died before they got past . Even lvl 30+ missions aint a problem and makes an easy 120k credits, Still only at lvl 33 but been trying out different guns from the corsairs lately and looking for wrecks.