Shock cannons...

[N124Hawk]

As it stands these things aren't even worth the materials to unlock them. They're a ty hybrid between cannons and multicannons, with the ammo pool only slightly better than PAs.

So, I've thought of a possible way to make these actually viable.

1- Streamline them. Currently you need to unlock each class, and mount type individually. Why not one unlock, maybe per mount type, or size. More materials to unlock them though, like throw a few extra mat types in, and double the quantities, so you can unlock shock cannons with ONE Material transaction, but it still takes time to gather those mats.

2- a damage rework.
Actually make them worth unlocking. Maybe add a small portion of thermal damage to them as well, or turn them into a plasma weapon.
Personally, I'd probably prefer if they were a thermal/kinetic (40/60) weapon, and leave absolute damage out of the picture. They'd be passably useful against shields as well as hull.

3- higher ammo. They've got a pool of 250-ish rounds. Double that, or even just an additional 50% they'd be more useful. A semi automatic weapon should surely want a better ammo reserve.

4- Add a class 4 version. 'nuff said.

5- DITCH THE GODDAMN TURRET VERSIONS.
Who even uses multicrew these days? There's zero need for turreted shock cannons when a fixed and gimballed are clearly superior.

If these were just a little bit better, they might actually get used.

 

[Amanojaku]

I haven't used shock cannons so I can't comment on those, but turrets aren't just for multicrew. LR turreted pulse lasers with emissive are the go to foil for silent/cool running ships. I see CMDRs use them all the time in their smallest available hardpoint. And ships like the Cutter and T10 are made for turrets. T10 is a turret boat and I often put turrets on my Cutter's nacells, and sometimes the top mounted C3s. You can get better damage over time from turrets when your pitch rate is abysmal.

 

[N124Hawk]

I haven't used shock cannons so I can't comment on those, but turrets aren't just for multicrew. LR turreted pulse lasers with emissive are the go to foil for silent/cool running ships. I see CMDRs use them all the time in their smallest available hardpoint. And ships like the Cutter and T10 are made for turrets. T10 is a turret boat and I often put turrets on my Cutter's nacells, and sometimes the top mounted C3s. You can get better damage over time from turrets when your pitch rate is abysmal.

Shock cannon turrets are multicrew only. Otherwise they're just a worse fixed mount

 

[Amanojaku]

Shock cannon turrets are multicrew only. Otherwise they're just a worse fixed mount

Ahh I gotcha. My bad.

 

[CMDR X]

I like Shock Cannons.

 

[JTFireblaze]

Streamlining the unlock for all the tech broker weapons would be good. Having to unlock each individual class and mount is ABSURD. Especially when you unlock all classes of internal modules for one item, like the Guardian FSD booster.

I can't speak for the damage or balancing though.

However I disagree on your desire to remove turret versions. We should be encouraging multiplayer and multicrew, everything is better with friends.

 

[EvoBeardy]

Allowing G1-2 Engineering or even only up to G1 on them would probably make them all viable alternative without making them abundantly overpowered.
Again, this can be controlled by how high you can Engineer them.

G2 is probably the threshold for Shock Cannons as they're pretty powerful.
Limited engineering would make sense as they never left the "experimental production" stage.

It's a shame having weapons with viable potential be gathering dust or never used by players.

 

[CMDR X]

Allowing G1-2 Engineering or even only up to G1 on them would probably make them all viable alternative without making them abundantly overpowered.
Again, this can be controlled by how high you can Engineer them.

G2 is probably the threshold for Shock Cannons as they're pretty powerful.
Limited engineering would make sense as they never left the "experimental production" stage.

It's a shame having weapons with viable potential be gathering dust or never used by players.

They are already "abundantly overpowered". Which is what makes me like them.
I also love the shooting mechanic and its looks. All they need is a bump in ammo to
4-500 and a bit more bass to the sound to be perfect.

 

[Chaparral]

There is a graph floating around that shows the damage potential of these weapons as being vastly below that of other weapons in the game. The damage potential is the total number of points of hull damage capable when the ammo pool is exhausted.

I think a simple removal of the manufactured component in the reload synthesis would make these weapons viable.

As it stands, there are too many better alternatives to shock cannons. An overcharged multicannon with corrosive secondary for example has a vastly greater damage potential, degrades harmor hardness with the easy to apply debuff, and is much cheaper to synth reloads.

It's a bummer, they look cool, sound cool and are fun to use.

 

[Stabby_Dave]

I use them on my Mamba for assassination missions. Load up, get close, and spam the target. Pop a heatsink and it's over before the ammo limit becomes a problem.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

I like Shock Cannons.

Me too. They go onto all my civilian ships for self defense against NPCs. Yes they have low ammo, so are not so useful on dedicated combat builds, but boy do they pack a punch, at least when you apply some trigger discipline, so the jitter doesn't go out of control. And they run a little hot. Two large and two medium almost cook a Cutter. Even a Doplhin becomes somewhat good in combat, if you give it one cytoscrambler and one shock cannon.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Shock cannons should be (and are almost) sweet gank weapons. Either ammo is increased, engineering allowed or make synth req. less nutty.

They should be an alternative to flak cannons and PACs really. As they are they are fun but very short lived.

 

[CMDR The Riz]

As it stands these things aren't even worth the materials to unlock them. They're a ty hybrid between cannons and multicannons, with the ammo pool only slightly better than PAs.

So, I've thought of a possible way to make these actually viable.

1- Streamline them. Currently you need to unlock each class, and mount type individually. Why not one unlock, maybe per mount type, or size. More materials to unlock them though, like throw a few extra mat types in, and double the quantities, so you can unlock shock cannons with ONE Material transaction, but it still takes time to gather those mats.

That would have saved me a fair bit of work to unlock most of them.

2- a damage rework.
Actually make them worth unlocking. Maybe add a small portion of thermal damage to them as well, or turn them into a plasma weapon.
Personally, I'd probably prefer if they were a thermal/kinetic (40/60) weapon, and leave absolute damage out of the picture. They'd be passably useful against shields as well as hull.

Absolute damage could be an interesting Experimental Effect for Shock Cannons when they get Engineering. I say when because of a recent CG that offered modified Enzyme Missile Racks for NMLA supporters; it wouldn't be a far stretch to expect Tech Broker Engineering in the near future (especially with all the double-modded modules that can be outright purchased from them).

3- higher ammo. They've got a pool of 250-ish rounds. Double that, or even just an additional 50% they'd be more useful. A semi automatic weapon should surely want a better ammo reserve.

Would you believe me if I told you they were intended to have less ammo? They originally had 162 rounds in total back in the 3.0 Beta. I wrote a thread about them at that time - took me some time to find it, but you can find it here.

I've been calling for Shock Cannons to receive ammo buffs ever since 3.0. They fall way behind every other option available to players. You could probably double to triple the total ammo capacity before they'd be on par with the other options once Engineering is considered.

4- Add a class 4 version. 'nuff said.

Very much yes.

5- DITCH THE GODDAMN TURRET VERSIONS.
Who even uses multicrew these days? There's zero need for turreted shock cannons when a fixed and gimballed are clearly superior.

They're there for completion's sake, though I wouldn't be surprised if somebody figured out a neat build that uses them.

If these were just a little bit better, they might actually get used.

They do see some limited use here and there.

While we're discussing suggestions to Shock Cannons, I'd also like to suggest switching the firing mode from semiautomatic to fully automatic, primarily because there's a weird quirk with Elite in that the semiauto rate of fire is tied to your framerate: lower FPS results in the game polling your inputs less often and thus you cannot fire as quickly. I found that out the hard way when testing how Shock Cannons respond to a repeater macro on my fire trigger whilst in VR with Asynchronous Warp active, dropping my FPS to 45. This was also noticeable in Odyssey's Alpha with the P-15 kinetic sidearm, which is also semiautomatic.

Shock Cannons inherently have bloom, so I don't believe that the change in firing modes would cause balancing issues. It's mostly a quality-of-life change.

There is a graph floating around that shows the damage potential of these weapons as being vastly below that of other weapons in the game. The damage potential is the total number of points of hull damage capable when the ammo pool is exhausted.

I'd post it here but the forum errors out every time I try to paste it in this post. Thankfully I organized a whole spreadsheet for comparing Shock Cannons to their Kinetic counterparts - which can be found here.

That particular graph can be found on the Engineered Graphs tab and scrolling to the bottom right corner.

It's laughable just how far Shock Cannons fall behind.

I think a simple removal of the manufactured component in the reload synthesis would make these weapons viable.

Counterintuitively, this would make them less viable. Because they use manufactured components, you can technically farm the materials from the ships you destroy - literally scavenging ammo from the wreckage of your enemies during prolonged engagements / patrols.

However, they use five different materials for Synthesis, which are as follows:

• Grid Resistors
• Heat Dispersion Plates
• Focus Crystals
• Phase Alloys
• Lead

We can do away with both the Grid Resistors and the Heat Dispersion Plates and leave everything else. That'll put their Synthesis roughly in line with Cannons, with the interesting trait of being able to scavenge Focus Crystals and Phase Alloys from you enemies (and they drop very often too).

Either ammo is increased, engineering allowed or make synth req. less nutty.

Why not all three and go for maximum mayhem? Long Range / High Capacity railguns are a thing nowadays thanks to that CG... and Enzyme Missile Racks would have received the dual-mod treatment if the NMLA won...

 

[Rubbernuke]

Why not all three and go for maximum mayhem? Long Range / High Capacity railguns are a thing nowadays thanks to that CG... and Enzyme Missile Racks would have received the dual-mod treatment if the NMLA won...

Why not indeed? Shock cannons get progressively more inaccurate as you fire so its not like its OP there if it went LR, and it would be an interesting alternative to flak.

 

[Chaparral]

• Grid Resistors
• Heat Dispersion Plates

We can do away with both the Grid Resistors and the Heat Dispersion Plates and leave everything else. That'll put their Synthesis roughly in line with Cannons, with the interesting trait of being able to scavenge Focus Crystals and Phase Alloys from you enemies (and they drop very often too).

Agree completely.

 

[Vardaugas]

Or they can change the damage type to absolute. Then the rest of the stats are fine.