Engineers Drawbacks of "Thermal Shock" laser effect?

[Stealthie]

As per the title, what are the drawbacks of having a Beam laser with the Thermal Shock effect?

Just been engineering some weapons and, after only getting one accidental experimental effect in two years of playing, I got 3 G5 Efficient Beams all with it applied.
I also engineered a 4th with the same effect as well.
In for a penny, in for a pound, right?

3 of the lasers went on my AspX (1xC2 and 2 x C1) and there was a C4 laser for my Cutter as well.

Now I'm undecided whether or not it's a useful effect.
The 3 lasers on my Asp seem to do a better job of killing ships, overall, than the 4 x C1 G5 efficient beams that were on it previously.
Presumably, it's taking slightly longer to take down shields (as a result of slightly lower DPS) but the heat damage does more damage once the shields are down.

On the Cutter, however, the single C4 G5 efficient beam seems to overheat more quickly than a similar laser without the experimental effect.

Now I'm wondering whether or not to do the same thing with the C4 lasers on my Corvette.
Based on the performance of my AspX, I'd say yes.
Conversely, based on how my Cutter performs, I'd say no.

Advice/suggestions/opinions gratefully received. [where is it]

 

[Raino]

i am using thermal shock on my weapons for a while now (PvE)
but
i use it at most of my weapons, my cutter sgot 2 class3 beams with it and a class 4 mc with it
i also use a small mc turret with emissive ammo effect (makes your gimballed weapons track target a lot better)

if you want pump heat into ur oponent - you better pump a lot!

works great at small ships
works well at any ship which is hot by itself, you wont believe how badly some manage there heat

takes some time on big ships those can take more heat

in the end they got stuck in space cause whatever they would do would make em blow themselfes up

all u have to do is sink some more glowing bullets into and bum

 

[GoStu]

Thermal Shock has a 20% Damage penalty. It's pretty bad now; you might overheat a 'hot' build ship or cause someone extra module damage when they use a Shield Cell Bank, but you're doing less damage in general. Overall I'd just remove or exchange it.

 

[Ceekay]

Useful thread https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ects-of-weapon-special-effects-complete-table

 

[Wasp0]

I got rid of all my Special Effects on my beams, none of them are any good. (BTW i play solo in open, so no need of healing beams, which are useful if you wing!)

 

[Stealthie]

Hmmm...

I guess that explains why I'm seeing the results I am.

My AspX previously had weapons that were a bit of a hodge-podge of cast-offs and "seconds".
The weapons that are now on it (3 x MCs and 3 x Beams) are probably better than those, even though the G5 Efficient beams could have been 20% more powerful without the experimental effect.

My Cutter had already been running a G5 Efficient beam before I swapped it for the one which is now G5 Efficient and has the Thermal shock effect.
That being the case, I guess the -20% DPS is more noticeable because I had a more direct comparison available.

All my combat ships now have a weapons load-out which I'm relatively happy with, and which are all G5 engineered in various ways but with no experimental effects at all.
I guess the trick is to keep those weapons and buy new ones for any future tinkering.

*EDIT*

Perhaps more useful on all-laser ships, where you're relying on lasers to do all the hull damage as well as stripping shields?
In that case, I have a Keelback which could probably make better use of these than my AspX.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Hmmm...

I guess that explains why I'm seeing the results I am.

My AspX previously had weapons that were a bit of a hodge-podge of cast-offs and "seconds".
The weapons that are now on it (3 x MCs and 3 x Beams) are probably better than those, even though the G5 Efficient beams could have been 20% more powerful without the experimental effect.

My Cutter had already been running a G5 Efficient beam before I swapped it for the one which is now G5 Efficient and has the Thermal shock effect.
That being the case, I guess the -20% DPS is more noticeable because I had a more direct comparison available.

All my combat ships now have a weapons load-out which I'm relatively happy with, and which are all G5 engineered in various ways but with no experimental effects at all.
I guess the trick is to keep those weapons and buy new ones for any future tinkering.

Yup. Hang on the the good ones. They come in handy.

 

[Herbrand]

I got rid of all my Special Effects on my beams, none of them are any good. (BTW i play solo in open, so no need of healing beams, which are useful if you wing!)

Not even Thermal Vent?

 

[Lucius-Darcia]

Not even Thermal Vent?

Thermal vent has also 20% damage reduction and i have tryed to transfer the heat of a shieldcell into my opponent. I was going beyond 180% and so it's not even an option to drop the heatsinks against a thermal vent beam.
No, not even thermal vent. I am using on one single ship a concordant beam for wing fight but IMO all other effects are just useless.

 

[Wasp0]

Not even Thermal Vent?

No not even Thermal Vent, see Lucius's answer below!

Thermal vent has also 20% damage reduction and i have tryed to transfer the heat of a shieldcell into my opponent. I was going beyond 180% and so it's not even an option to drop the heatsinks against a thermal vent beam.
No, not even thermal vent. I am using on one single ship a concordant beam for wing fight but IMO all other effects are just useless.

Also see here for Beam Effects.......... This is why no special effects on beam are any good. Don't get me wrong, Beams are great and i use them on some load-outs, but FD you can keep your Beam Specials, they suck!

 

[Ceekay]

I tried inertial impact on burst lasers the 50% damage increase is really only useful if you hit the target which I'd guess is about 10% of the time, the 3 degree jitter renders this one totally useless I'm afraid

 

[Herbrand]

Thermal vent has also 20% damage reduction and i have tryed to transfer the heat of a shieldcell into my opponent. I was going beyond 180% and so it's not even an option to drop the heatsinks against a thermal vent beam.
No, not even thermal vent. I am using on one single ship a concordant beam for wing fight but IMO all other effects are just useless.

, why is this not in the description?! Now I have to redo those on my Vulture...

 

[znôrt]

, why is this not in the description?! Now I have to redo those on my Vulture...

not even that would have helped someone like me. i went quite some time with thermal vent around assuming that the dissipated heat was applied to the target! [knocked out]

no idea where i got that from, but i've decided anyway to give weed a rest for a while

 

[Kilostream]

....This is why no special effects on beam are any good.....

Regeneration Sequence can be somewhat good, if everyone has it - some buddies and I have run in wings where we all have RS beams in our load outs - everyone being able to receive shield support means reliance on SCBs can be greatly reduced, if not eliminated, and a wings-worth of beams all putting out 80% (+engineering bonuses, bonii?)damage is still not to be sniffed at.

Also, minor point, RS beams do not require the target to have pips in shields, unlike the the concordant sequence one, I think it's called.

 

[AnotherVoice]

Dunno about special effects, but i would advise you to try long range beams. Lasers lose a LOT of damage over distance.

 

[GoStu]

Not even Thermal Vent?

Thermal Vent is good. There is no damage penalty on that; the drawback is that the laser generates more heat. When you hit a target, you get an overall cooling effect that out-paces the extra heat generation; for Efficient beams this effect is quite good and with a good Power Distributor you can actually get your ship quite cool with it. Overall it's quite the net positive; you're only really "punished" for firing and missing, so playing with Thermal Vent isn't much different than without it. Boils down to "missing is bad, don't do it."

It's about the only good Experimental Effect on Beam Lasers.

 

[Herbrand]

Thermal Vent is good. There is no damage penalty on that; the drawback is that the laser generates more heat. When you hit a target, you get an overall cooling effect that out-paces the extra heat generation; for Efficient beams this effect is quite good and with a good Power Distributor you can actually get your ship quite cool with it. Overall it's quite the net positive; you're only really "punished" for firing and missing, so playing with Thermal Vent isn't much different than without it. Boils down to "missing is bad, don't do it."

It's about the only good Experimental Effect on Beam Lasers.

All right, so who's right? I need to test this one day...

 

[Wasp0]

Thermal Vent is good. There is no damage penalty on that; the drawback is that the laser generates more heat. When you hit a target, you get an overall cooling effect that out-paces the extra heat generation; for Efficient beams this effect is quite good and with a good Power Distributor you can actually get your ship quite cool with it. Overall it's quite the net positive; you're only really "punished" for firing and missing, so playing with Thermal Vent isn't much different than without it. Boils down to "missing is bad, don't do it."

It's about the only good Experimental Effect on Beam Lasers.

I agree with you Thermal is Good, Well not quite good, but not as bad as the others. Missing is bad as you say, and lets face it we would all like to 'Not Miss' but missing is unavoidable for all but the top ace pilots and the liars! So for the majority of players missing is gonna happen, and if your ship is a hot build anyway, (And let's not go into reducing all the other engineering we have all done just to get into bed with Thermal Vent) and you after that pesky little Viper, you are gonna overheat a tad!

 

[KW001]

At the moment on my FDL, I've got one medium G3 efficient beam with thermal shock (I meant to have two, but whoops I chose thermal conduit instead), and I like it. Coupled with a G4 charge enhanced distributor, with 4 pips to weapons I can fire the two beams indefinitely and my own heat never goes above 42%. Power draw and heat management are only a concern when along with the beams I start firing the 2 medium & 1 huge rapid fire MCs, and its only the most minor of concerns.

Ive no substantial PvP experience, but as far as PvE is concerned, many of even the high ranked NPC ships have trouble dealing with constant fire from just one medium beam with thermal shock. Their rate of fire slows, and a lot of the time now I don't even put much effort to avoiding their firing arc, and I just absorb the hits. The Imperial Clipper seems to take it the absolute worst of the lot, it can barely do anything. There are couple of exceptions though. Deadly & Elite ranked FAS', Fed Dropships, and Anacondas (haven't seen a Cutter in ages, and Ive never seen an NPC Corvette) seem to regularly have heat sinks in their loadouts. Generally these are the only larger ships where I have to remember that I actually might really have to use the FDL's speed and manoeuvrability. Keeping in mind though Ive currently only got the 1 thermal shock weapon. Once Im done G5'ing (Yay! I can finally G5 something) some new multi-cannons, I'll be heading back to add another TS beam. I expect that'll significantly cut down on the attack capabilities of the three high ranked ship types that usually carry heat sinks.

So yeah, as far as PvE is concerned, depending on the manoeuvrability/power draw/heat management of the ship you're flying (basically your ability to keep a near constant level of fire on the target), I definitely think thermal shock has its place.

 

[Raino]

i got 2 large BLs with thermal shock and a huge MC with thermal shock

def worth it