I have seen people using TC beams as well, is that still a thing? It certainly is for PVE, where TC beams have very few disadvantages, and they are much easier to manage then PAs.
Info on Thermal Conduit effect.
- Thread starter Pigletslastand
- Start date
Yeah they still work
There used to be a thermal cascade era long ago, iirc it was broken af ("hurr durr I hit u with some braindead laser, now your modules are toast I win"). It was fun to troll with it maybe once, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't something you'd want as a balancing mechanism in wingfights, for example. Well I don't remember the exact details, maybe some of the older players here can tell the story better than me.
Most of us wait for the reunion of EDO and EDH players. Counting all modes and separate universes we have:
- 3 Platforms (PC, Xbox, PS)
- 3 Modes (Open, Private, Solo)
- 2 Versions (EDO, EDH)
Which together scale to a total of 3*3*2 = 18 different game universes. Imagine it like a matchmaker with 18 different queues of which only 6 queues (namely open on all platforms and versions) are valid for PvP.
Assuming even distribution of players, that's 33% on all opens modes and this devided by 6 a mere ~5% of the players residing in each open mode of which only, say ~10% do relevant PvP. So you have a ~0.5% of the player base in your respective mode.
This, however, is no big news. The PvP community was never the majority of the player base but it was the communtiy that relies on the multiplayer aspect of the game the strongest.
For instance, an explorer wouldn't care in which mode he was in as the chance of finding any player in the vast, deep void is near 0%. Thus they are not affected that much by yet another separation.
But PvP players are a strongly bonded community, most knowing eachother by name or recognizing their fighting style.
Now FDev ripped them apart and made them unable to play with or against eachother as not everyone was ready to spend 40 bucks on an expansion that is an insult to my hard drive.
Thus, most of us PvPers took vacation until the day FDev brings the expansion to a reasonable level of quality and most importnatly, reunions EDH and EDO players back into one and the same instance so we can play with the players we always used to play with for years.
In the meantime, we have fun playing other games such as Sea of Thieves for example, where first crossplay is enabled and secondly PvP is always around.
Albeit less complex and strategic than Elite, it does work well as a substitude for Elite PvP ... and the longer the vaccation, it might even serve as a replacement.
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I've heard the stories, thermal cascade meta should stay dead! There seems like there should be a way to make it applicable without making it OP, though, like by reducing a target's heat dissipation so heat they were already generating builds up, or by being more effective at increasing a target's heat based on the target's heat percentage to make intentionally overheating more dangerous.
yeah. Atm thermal cascade canons are ok - they aren't able to increase target's heat more than 90% but still can deliver some 'joy' to heatsinkless bank-tanks (mostly related to big ships with big banks)
I would just like to thank @StellarKnight for his helpful contribution to this thread along with others. You have given great insights buddy and have really tried to help and engage, appreciate the level headed analysis 
Most easy would be to remove that heat c*ap out of the game entirely. Keeping emissive against SR builds is sufficient enough IMO.
A completely different topic but emmissive is way too overpowered, it lasts for a very long time and doesn't have the cooldown it should.
that would be terrible. the very low heat damage that is taken now is a problem for balance now; removing it makes things worse.
Yeahhh.. NO
Most of 2.1 was the thermal shock era. Thermal cascade was less popular as heat weapons were so potent that the meta was zero shield boosters and 4-8 heatsink launchers for a while...thermal cascade doesn't work without shields being up, but thermal shock works irrespective of them. Thermal shock also being available on a much wider selection of weapons (namely lasers and MCs) made a big difference in adoption rates as well.
As an example, I had a mostly B rated sturdy/reinforced/armored corvette with five thermal shock weapons, biweave shields, and no boosters. It was rather comical against unprepared (anyone who didn't have at least half of their utilities as heatsinks) opponents of the time:
Over the course of 2.1 they nerfed heat damage, buffed heatsinks, and specifically nerfed the thermal shock effect more than once. The first wave of the heat meta was dead by the time 2.2 dropped.
After thermal shock was sufficiently nerfed and people learned how to most effectively stack engineered shielding, cascade saw a resurgence. Even though heat damage had been significantly reduced, thermal cascade wasn't hit as hard and the complete dependence on shielding made it very very potent from 2.2 through about 2.4. It was hardly an insurmountable threat, but it did require concessions to counter, especially for larger ships.
Later, further adjustments to various aspects of ships and heat gradually whittled away at the effectiveness of heat attacks until the half- fix for the heat multiplication bug and the buffs to TC essentially killed any reason to use them...you're more likely to help an opponent with thermal cascade/shock than harm them at this point.
They tried to balance it countless different ways and never could. I feel a large part of that is from the inherent difficulty in assessing how different permutations of effects will synergize and the other half is the utter unwillingness of the majority of the player base to adapt to change...most people can't figure out how basic damage and resistances work...add another consideration in, and no matter how well balanced you make it, they'll balk at having to take it into account.
There is no good way to balance heat without a major overhaul of many of the game's mechanisms, so we have a situation where temperature is a de facto irrelevance. While I certainly don't want a return to past 'heat metas', I think the loss of it as any kind of consideration reduces the depth to combat gameplay and effectively removes any risk to exploration gameplay.
Personally, I never thought directly dumping heat into one's opponents made a whole lot of sense, but heat management should be vastly more important than it is, and there should be ways to interfere with it. However, I don't expect any meaningful alterations to the mechanisms at this point, only minor tweaks to damage, and due to the outrage at past attempts, I don't think heat attacks will ever be viable again.
It's got an extemely narrow niche. Even against those ships that feel like they were otherwise built to be thermal cascade victims, a single heatsink launcher, or even a thermal vent weapon, can usually negate any meaningful advantage over other weapons and even when those are absent, it usually takes several minutes to disable a ship by cooking it.
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Yup One shotting everybody... also every experimental is now borked so this thread aged well didn't it!!
It's an integer overflow problem that leads to insane 9 quintillion damage or whatever it is, so you can insta kill anything you hit.
I also saw nothing about meddling with weapons in the update 7 patch notes.