Ship Builds & Load Outs Cannons? Cannons. Cannon discussion thread.

[Psycho Romeo]

I'd like to see pooled information about cannons. As more information comes, I'll organize it into a nice format.

Here's the less commonly known facts that I know:

Each class has a different projectile speed.
Cannons count as one class higher than they are for hull damage calculations.

In addition, they are great for jousting. A 6 cannon fit asp is one of the best PvP ships out there, doing a respectable 67 shield damage per volley. That's 7035 total shield damage before exhausting its ammo supply. Then good hull damage on top of that.

I read that speed and angle mean a lot whether a cannon will successfully hit a subsystem. I've never noticed this - every time I hit something with a gimballed cannon, it always did consistent damage to the subsystem I was aiming at. Is this because of its penetration score? Does anyone have more information on this?


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The hull of the ship does not exist as an entity that can block damage.
Every single shot will hit a subsystem or pass through the ship dealing more hull damage.
A ships drives can be knocked out through the ship so long as you don't hit another sub system on the way.
Armour has no effect on the amount of damage subsystems take.
Hull reinforcements have no effect on subsystem damage.
Buying armour is a waste of credits on anything bigger than a Cobra. It will provide 0 protection while almost doubling your re buy.
The FDL and Clipper have tiny Drive hotboxes making them almost unkillable in PVP even when the shields go down.
Ships like the Dropship/Diamondback that have poor shields cannot compete against ships with strong shields as armour means nothing.

 

[LittleJP]

That explains why my four class 2 cannons tore through anything once the hull was down. I can't 100% confirm angle/speed, but I do varying damage on subsystems with either the PA or cannon depending on angle. If I'm perpendicular to a dropship, I will one shot it's power plant. If I'm at an angle facing the front, I will do maybe 80-98% damage.

 

[Psycho Romeo]

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=159296

This thread has a useful video with many insights, not only relevant to cannons.

The hull of the ship does not exist as an entity that can block damage.
Every single shot will hit a subsystem or pass through the ship dealing more hull damage.
A ships drives can be knocked out through the ship so long as you don't hit another sub system on the way.
Armour has no effect on the amount of damage subsystems take.
Hull reinforcements have no effect on subsystem damage.
Buying armour is a waste of credits on anything bigger than a Cobra. It will provide 0 protection while almost doubling your re buy.
The FDL and Clipper have tiny Drive hotboxes making them almost unkillable in PVP even when the shields go down.
Ships like the Dropship/Diamondback that have poor shields cannot compete against ships with strong shields as armour means nothing.

 

[persephonius]

I'd like to see pooled information about cannons. As more information comes, I'll organize it into a nice format.

Here's the less commonly known facts that I know:

Each class has a different projectile speed.
Cannons count as one class higher than they are for hull damage calculations.

In addition, they are great for jousting. A 6 cannon fit asp is one of the best PvP ships out there, doing a respectable 67 shield damage per volley. That's 7035 total shield damage before exhausting its ammo supply. Then good hull damage on top of that.

I read that speed and angle mean a lot whether a cannon will successfully hit a subsystem. I've never noticed this - every time I hit something with a gimballed cannon, it always did consistent damage to the subsystem I was aiming at. Is this because of its penetration score? Does anyone have more information on this?


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There is not a lot that this video demonstrates really:
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1) The weapons that they used were a pulse and a beam laser. The pulse laser has better armour penetration then the beam laser. The test that I would have used was a weapon with the least armour penetration as the standard, then experiment with other weapons on different bulkheads. I would have tested fixed weapons of small medium and large, and determined what I expected the slope of the damage profile to be normalised from the standard based on increasing damage and penalties. If the slope of this increase deviated from what was expected, then you could say that the bulkheads may have had an effect.
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2) That video does not show any quantitative evidence that bulkheads are not providing damage mitigation. The damage mitigation of military grade bulkheads is about 50% over light weight I think. If you use pulse lasers with class A armour penetration, you would expect that it would bypass a fraction of the mitigation. It is only possible to see this in effect by running these tests with various armour penetrations on different bulkheads. It could well be that bulkheads do provide mitigation to subsystems, but the effect is obscured as it is a flat value and we do not see any difference when attacking the same ship.
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3) This video was with thermal weapons not cannons. My experience with cannons with the huge cannon on the fer de lance is that I have just about 1 shot the power plant of an Anaconda when I was doing fast strafing jousts with it. I was travelling at speeds over 350 m/s relative to the anaconda. Other times I have fired the cannon and barely done any damage at all. I put this down to angle of incidence and relative speed, as the game I played before elite (eve online) had this feature, however eve online is basically just a dynamic mathematical equation when it comes to combat, so it probably is easier to implement this in eve then elite.
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4) To test this out seriously, you would need to use lightweight, composite and military grade bulkheads at least, and test with multiple weapon types to see if you can extract a trend where the bulkheads are affecting damage.
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5) I would be happy to lend my fer-de-lance, python and anaconda as a pin-cushion for such a test, I am also interested in better results.

 

[Hollis_Renatus]

I've enjoyed using multi-cannons so far (gimballed), but I've been curious about my other options. I've tried fragment cannons but I didn't really see much effectiveness using them and they ran out of ammo very quickly. Anyone have better suggestions? Whether gimballed or fixed?

 

[Mephane]

Ever since 1.3 vastly improved the sound of cannons, I have switched out my multi-cannons for cannons on all my ships but the Viper. I am very satisfied with them now, though I still would like to see

a) The same projectile velocity for all classes, so that combining different classes of cannons does'nt basically force you to go gimballed.
b) A higher projectile velocity in general; even at mid range, a sudden change in course of an Anaconda can make a projectile already in travel miss it.
c) (Wishful thinking) A better model for the class 3 and especially class 1 cannon. This is just my personal taste, I love the design of the class 2 cannons, the class 1 cannons are such ugly things and class 3 doesn't look so good, either, in my view.

Class 1:

Class 2:

Class 3:

 

[Rubbernuke]

What about the Enforcer?

*runs away really fast*

 

[Ben Ryder]

I dont know much about cannons but I plan to build a tank as soon as they sort the hull stuff out. No shields, all hull and and big cannons on a cobra.

 

[Ben Ryder]

What about the Enforcer?

*runs away really fast*

I have an Eagle with 3 Enforcers. Brilliant!

and a Stealth Cobra using Cannons and Enforcers. Yet to be truly tested.

 

[Psycho Romeo]

I dont know much about cannons but I plan to build a tank as soon as they sort the hull stuff out. No shields, all hull and and big cannons on a cobra.

You sir want an orca.

50% cannons. 50% faceram. 100% unexpected results.

Bonus points for going though the airlock sideways at 99m/s.