Engineers Best special effects for a pure Multi-Cannon Corvette or Anaconda?

[Doc-Orange]

Hello.

I want to make a pure Multi-cannon loadout. So I try to find the best special effects for all cannons. Am I right with one (which one - a huge/large...?) corrosive cannon and the rest with Incendiary Rounds to generate additional heat damage?

 

[Jankules]

OC 6 of them with autoloader + 1 small hardpoint with increased ammo mod plus corrosive...

 

[Doc-Orange]

Ok, this is interesting because the autoloader was totally out of my scope. I thought that I should enhance damage. Why do you think that autoloader is better than Incendiary Rounds?

I'll go for gimballed weapons but Would you take a turret for the small corrosive to make shure that the effect is always on?

 

[Jankules]

Because they nefred the inc. you have a lot of heat , also they are full thermal now,means you are firing lasers,a lot of disadvantage against hull.The loadout i said above is ultimate dps for multies.

 

[Nero Tacitus]

ED Ship Yard

^ That's the current loadout I run on my "Vette after a metric tonne of testing. The 2 cannons have autoloader, the 1xLarge 2xMed MCs have Incend Rounds, the 1xSmall MC has corrosive and the frag cannon has drag munitions. It obliterates...everything. Huge autoloading cannons do filthy amounts of DPS, almost as much as PAs against engineered shields, more against unengineered and leave PAs in the dust for hull damage (punching out an elite-conda's power plant in a single salvo is sooo satisfying). Although incend rounds increase heat generation by 200%, a large and 2 smalls don't budge my meter, even with a G3OC power plant. The thermal damage is much nicer for tearing down shields, not sure what Jankula means about the disadvantages against hull as kinetic is +20 vs hull, -40% against shields, while thermal is +20% against shields, no malus or bonus vs hull, making them a nice addition to the kinetic damage of the cannons. You're giving up a little hull damage for a tonne more shield damage, which is where a kinetic loadout falls short. Then again, I haven't tried all autoloader MCs, so take that with a grain of salt.
I used to run 2 small feedback rails for SCBs on the bigger craft, but since I couldn't lead the cannons while using them, and SCBs on anything other than Elite ranks is trivial, I swapped them out for the corrosive buff on a small (freeing up my large MC for inced rounds) and a drag cannon. I was spectical of the drag cannon's usefulness at first, but I'm glad I tried it, it's amazing for keeping FDLs and FGSs and even Vultures in your sights, couldn't go back to not having one now.

Run whatever loadout makes you happy, but before you engineer everything, keep in mind that MCs have surpisingly limited ammo, and different hardpoint sizes fire at different rates. I originally tried a full MC loadout and got tired of the redock/synth spamming every 30-40 minutes, and my smalls running out 5 minutes before my meds, which were dry 5 minutes before my large etc; felt like I spent more time keeping track of all my different ammo levels than looking for new targets.

Edit: Firing groups can get a bit tricky with the above. I have the 2 cannons + the gimballed drag cannon bound to my secondary fire (drag last the 4-5secs until I fire the cannons again, so works out well) while the 2xmed 1xLarge MCs are bound to primary, once the shields go down, I switch to my second firing group which adds the small corrosive to my primary fire. Just don't let your crew fly it, they'll spam everything and you'll be out of drag/corrosive in 5 minutes.

 

[StiTch]

Depends on PvP or PvE.

In PvE on a pure MC build I might recommend one corrosive and the remainder split incendiary/autoloader.

In PvP, one corrosive, one emissive, remainder auto loader.


Incendiary now carries an overall DPS penalty, with its advantage being solely it can deal some thermal damage - making it a good shield shredder in PvE if you don't care about ammo/don't have the distributor juice to comfortably use lazors.

Auto loader is my fave mod now. Non stop dakka dakka? Yespls.

 

[Jankules]

ED Ship Yard

^ That's the current loadout I run on my "Vette after a metric tonne of testing. The 2 cannons have autoloader, the 1xLarge 2xMed MCs have Incend Rounds, the 1xSmall MC has corrosive and the frag cannon has drag munitions. It obliterates...everything. Huge autoloading cannons do filthy amounts of DPS, almost as much as PAs against engineered shields, more against unengineered and leave PAs in the dust for hull damage (punching out an elite-conda's power plant in a single salvo is sooo satisfying). Although incend rounds increase heat generation by 200%, a large and 2 smalls don't budge my meter, even with a G3OC power plant. The thermal damage is much nicer for tearing down shields, not sure what Jankula means about the disadvantages against hull as kinetic is +20 vs hull, -40% against shields, while thermal is +20% against shields, no malus or bonus vs hull, making them a nice addition to the kinetic damage of the cannons. You're giving up a little hull damage for a tonne more shield damage, which is where a kinetic loadout falls short. Then again, I haven't tried all autoloader MCs, so take that with a grain of salt.
I used to run 2 small feedback rails for SCBs on the bigger craft, but since I couldn't lead the cannons while using them, and SCBs on anything other than Elite ranks is trivial, I swapped them out for the corrosive buff on a small (freeing up my large MC for inced rounds) and a drag cannon. I was spectical of the drag cannon's usefulness at first, but I'm glad I tried it, it's amazing for keeping FDLs and FGSs and even Vultures in your sights, couldn't go back to not having one now.

Run whatever loadout makes you happy, but before you engineer everything, keep in mind that MCs have surpisingly limited ammo, and different hardpoint sizes fire at different rates. I originally tried a full MC loadout and got tired of the redock/synth spamming every 30-40 minutes, and my smalls running out 5 minutes before my meds, which were dry 5 minutes before my large etc; felt like I spent more time keeping track of all my different ammo levels than looking for new targets.

Edit: Firing groups can get a bit tricky with the above. I have the 2 cannons + the gimballed drag cannon bound to my secondary fire (drag last the 4-5secs until I fire the cannons again, so works out well) while the 2xmed 1xLarge MCs are bound to primary, once the shields go down, I switch to my second firing group which adds the small corrosive to my primary fire. Just don't let your crew fly it, they'll spam everything and you'll be out of drag/corrosive in 5 minutes.

The topic by OP is full multicanon build.

 

[GoStu]

I love Autoloader. Even if you just glue down the trigger, Autoloader reloads 1 shot per 2 shot intervals. If you have a 70-shot magazine on your Overcharged Multicannon, by the time you've fired off all 70 bullets the Autoloader has put 35 more back in. By the time you fire off those extra 35, it got another 17 in... etc.

In actual combat it's even better. Say you cut loose with 50 shots out of those 70 at a target on one pass, and then turn to face your target again. Without Autoloader you'll turn to get the target back in your sights and have 20 shots ready to go. WITH Autoloader, while you were firing off those first 50 it'll tuck another 25 back in, so you'll still be at 45/70. As you turn it'll keep reloading; so you may very well be back at or close to 70 by the time they're in your sights.