Ship Builds & Load Outs How to keep Modified Shard Cannons cooler?

[DjVortex]

Modified Shard Cannons are awesome. What's less awesome about them is their thermal load.

A 2A Guardian Shard Cannon has a thermal load of 1.1.
A 2A Modified Shard Cannon has a thermal load of 19.8.

It's bonkers. With four MSCs you just need to fire them a few times and your ship is already overheating.

Is there any existing way to counteract this? I have already fully engineered my power plant for low emissions.

 

[metatheurgist]

Install heatsinks?

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

4 pips to weapons.

The low emission power plant doesn't help as much as a good weapons capacitor focused on faster charging.

Bind half your shards to one fire group and half to another and stagger shooting them more.

The weapons capacitor will have more time to kick in and cool the guns.

Hold fire or pop a heatsink when the weapons capacitor is near empty.

It's often ok to pop off the last shot even if it overheats you and let the ship cool during reloading instead.

 

[DjVortex]

It's just that I have four (fixed) Modified Shard Cannons and one gimballed AX multi-cannon, the idea being that while I'm searching for the direct aim at the enemy, the gimballed multi-cannon can use that time to keep grinding at them. Then, when I got aim, the shard cannons can wreak havoc. I think this setup works quite well, especially for the small fast-moving thargoid vessels.

The problem is of course that repeatedly firing four MSCs heats up the ship like crazy.

However, after doing some combat I think I have got the hang of it. The trick is to manage your shots (and thus the heat). Don't just spam the fire button like crazy. Fire tactically. One shot, one hit, watch the heat meter, pace your shots so that the ship doesn't overheat (unless you want to, in order to get rid of caustic substance). Those smaller thargoid ships don't need that many shots anyway; 2-3 direct shots from the four shard cannons, and a bit of help from the AX multi-cannon, and they go down. Kaboom!

 

[Kayvan]

On my FAS I have 3 Modshards and 1 TV beam. Ideally I first use the beam to cool down to near-zero. One 3-shard salvo spikes the heat just about 15-17% or so, so if I have enough patience I can keep orbiting and grinding the ceptor down until the heart is exerted. When I get a clear shot at the hearts, I let rip with everything I've got until the heart is broken, even if that means I'm taking a bit of heat damage. The latter can be avoided with a heat sink but sometimes the timing just isn't right, or I'm saving my sinks for a more dangerous enemy.

I once tried a Challenger with a single MC and 3 modshards -- it wasn't great. One MC just takes too long to take down even a scout on its own, and if you're pumping in shards the presence of an MC is barely noticeable, especially against interceptors.

That said, what could help would be a "Gatling" setup like some AX pilots prefer to use with their Gauss. You'd need some 3rd-party software (maybe the joystick software) that allows you to program a precisely timed macro: "Next fire group - fire group 1 - next fire group - fire group 1 - " etc. with certain millisec intervals between the commands. And of course you'd set up 4 different fire groups that each fire a single different modshard (or make it 2 and 2). So then you just have to keep your fire button 1 pressed and the macro does the rest. I would have tried it if I wasn't too lazy to dig myself through that joystick gremlin software, and with the FAS it's not that urgent.

 

[Kira Goto]

My personal way of doing it [for AX with a Krait] was to have the shards separated, and one of the two triggers to have a heatsink assigned to it(so no need to waste one just to fire at scouts).

But I also use a controller(not a flight stick) which poses some limitations, and I find having to remove a hand from it to hit a keyboard, key, while I’m trying to aim or evade fire… a little less than ideal.

 

[AEBRAM]

Modified Shard Cannons are awesome. What's less awesome about them is their thermal load.

A 2A Guardian Shard Cannon has a thermal load of 1.1.
A 2A Modified Shard Cannon has a thermal load of 19.8.

It's bonkers. With four MSCs you just need to fire them a few times and your ship is already overheating.

Is there any existing way to counteract this? I have already fully engineered my power plant for low emissions.

I would compare the damage output to thermal load. Could your ammo dump on the 2A non-Modified and get the same time-on-target damage burst as the 2A modified before you are forced to stop shooting before the thermal load causes internal damage? IF so, then the 2A non-Modified would be better. Or blend the two to have a more balanced thermal cost per shot broken into two fire groups.

 

[Kayvan]

The standard shards aren't really good and also not compatible with modshards due to wildly different shot speeds. Shards travel at sth like 1300m/s which doesn't sound bad but makes them nigh unusable against Thargoids. Also they have a full 5° spread so most of your pellets will miss, and even those that hit will hardly do any damage because of much lower piercing, also they lack the Penetrator effect that modshards have.

I've once seen a guy flying an Anaconda with 6 regular shards and he wasn't very effective. He had to fly in the Cyclops' face to hit, and then all his awesome firepower did was trigger the panic shields because he still couldn't hit the hearts well enough.

Modshards do require heat management, but it can be managed, it's part of the game. If you don't want to deal with the heat, use Modplasmas instead - they travel just as fast, have even higher piercing, and don't generate as much heat. The big splash cloud is annoying but wcyd. You lose out ön the extra effect vs hearts but do more hull dmg.

Also, both modshards and modplasmas are not bad vs NPCs (humans). The high shotspeed makes it very easy to score hits, which balances out the mediocre damage (mediocre compared to a Large hardpoint, mind you). Especially the Modplasma is useful because the non-AX damage portion is Absolute so it will all go through.

 

[AlSki]

4 pips to weapons.

The low emission power plant doesn't help as much as a good weapons capacitor focused on faster charging.

Bind half your shards to one fire group and half to another and stagger shooting them more.

The weapons capacitor will have more time to kick in and cool the guns.

Hold fire or pop a heatsink when the weapons capacitor is near empty.

It's often ok to pop off the last shot even if it overheats you and let the ship cool during reloading instead.

Good list, but also
Thermal vented beam to lose you heat whenever you are not firing the shards. This saves your heatsinks a lot of the time making those you have last a lot longer.

Why do you think you see AX pilots making glitterballs of interceptors?

 

[tipiattos1]

Modified Shard Cannons are awesome. What's less awesome about them is their thermal load.

A 2A Guardian Shard Cannon has a thermal load of 1.1.
A 2A Modified Shard Cannon has a thermal load of 19.8.

It's bonkers. With four MSCs you just need to fire them a few times and your ship is already overheating.

Is there any existing way to counteract this? I have already fully engineered my power plant for low emissions.

Yeah, those modified Shard Cannons pack a serious punch but man, that thermal load is a killer! Even with a low emissions power plant, they still make your ship feel like it's sitting in a sauna. Have you tried tweaking your power distributor? Sometimes adjusting the priorities can help manage the heat better. Or maybe looking into some heat sink launchers could give you a quick cooldown option in a pinch.