Is cannon ammunition solid gold? ;)

[Gilmir]

That's of course a gross exaggeration. But still...

After a break from ED (back problems, so couldn't really comfortably sit for two weeks) I hopped into my Viper and decided to give the old "four cannons of doom" loadout a spin. Only size 1, by the way. No "big cannons" yet.

I picked up some missions (kill civilians in Eranin among those) and decided to pay the nav beacon in transit from I Bootis to Freeport a visit.

During the short skirmish:

I killed a "wanted" hauler (to get the civilian kill count up) and engaged a wanted Viper. I got him down to 2% after which he was shot by a cop Eagle who suddenly decided to intervene. Meanwhile the Viper's partner in crime also attacked me.
What really surprised me, though was, that for some reason the same cop who killed the Viper now persistently attacked me instead of the other pirate. This, although my status showed "clean" the whole time.

I decided to bug out and jump to Freeport to deliver mission cargo.

My ammo tab after killing two ships: 13.000 Credits!!!!!!

Seriously - what are the bullets made of?

Why introduce so many different and cool weapons into the game, if only energy based ones are in any way economically viable?

Also - it looks like a few weeks before gamma and launch the balancing seems much worse then I can ever remember...
Kinda scary

 

[Thygrrr]

Tungsten Carbide and uranium. Might be gold, too, it has a nice specific weight suitable for kinetic weapons.

 

[Chazzie]

lol - just been talking about this, have a read of this..
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=57595

Frontier might balance it out a bit before release anyway!
* I hope *

 

[Hanni79]

Tungsten Carbide and uranium. Might be gold, too, it has a nice specific weight suitable for kinetic weapons.

Are you aware of the price of 1 ton of Gold ? Or Uranium ? Like I said in another thread :

At these prices it would be probably better to throw with Sidewinders.
Even with reduced Collision damage this should result in a far better Price / Damage ratio.

 

[bassman]

I hopped into my Viper and decided to give the old "four cannons of doom" loadout a spin.

I think its a massive improvement precisely because it relegates cannons to certain tactical niches e.g. a couple of well placed shots to finish of a hull after youve taken out the shields with an energy weapon. Also its seems cannon shots do much less damage to shields than previously, again a change I welcome.

In PB2 you put yourself at a massive disadvantage using anything other than cannons, I tried about a dozen different loadout in corba and viper and had to always go back to cannons otherwise I'd lose any fight with a player that had them. The very low thermal output of kinetic weapons made everything else more or less obsolete, it needed serious nerfing and got it ...

 

[Defacto]

I kind of like how ammo cost places a new variable into the weapon choice options.
If you were assaulted in a back alley by a gang of thugs, would you rather be carrying a unloaded Windlass Crossbow or a Sword? Not the best analogy, perhaps, but I hope you get what I mean: some weapons are for some occasions.
If you are bounty-hunting random Sidewinders who didn't pay their parking tickets, you might want to use a more economical weapon.

 

[Morbad]

Might be gold, too, it has a nice specific weight suitable for kinetic weapons.

Nah, the tungsten and (depleted) uranium you mentioned before are both denser and cheaper.

I think its a massive improvement precisely because it relegates cannons to certain tactical niches e.g. a couple of well placed shots to finish of a hull after youve taken out the shields with an energy weapon. Also its seems cannon shots do much less damage to shields than previously, again a change I welcome.

In PB2 you put yourself at a massive disadvantage using anything other than cannons, I tried about a dozen different loadout in corba and viper and had to always go back to cannons otherwise I'd lose any fight with a player that had them. The very low thermal output of kinetic weapons made everything else more or less obsolete, it needed serious nerfing and got it ...

The biggest nerf it got seems to be in projectile velocity. Also, size 1 and 2 cannon have different projectile speed now, and you can't hit the same target with both unless at the same time unless its nearly stationary and you are moving almost directly at it.

They aren't good for much of anything now.

 

[Gilmir]

I think its a massive improvement precisely because it relegates cannons to certain tactical niches e.g. a couple of well placed shots to finish of a hull after youve taken out the shields with an energy weapon. Also its seems cannon shots do much less damage to shields than previously, again a change I welcome.

Not what I experienced. The first salvo still stripped the shields of the hauler entirely and the Cobra needed two. I needed many more shots to get him down to 2% hull after that.

Also. Think about it - missiles were always a niche weapon (only viable as defence / to scare off pirates) for ultra wealthy merchants.
Now any projectile weapon turns into niche, too? But for whom? A cannon is waaay harder to aim compared to lasers, so who is it viable for? Definitely not bounty hunters or pirates. Definitely no merchants (you need a maneuvrable ship to use them at all). Who then? The military? At the moment just people who already have so much cash that they don't need to make any profit. So basically they are absolutely useless...

 

[Ortikon]

I made the mistake of putting two Rail Guns and two Gimbaled autocannons on my cobra before jumping into combat missions. For every few kills I paid the price of a new sidewinder. For the moment I was having fun and had lots of money so I treated it like going out on a Friday night and blowing my money on consumables after a long week of work.

After that, I swapped over to pulse lasers and beams.
I feel like ammo based weapons are more legitimate as a self defense investment for those not necessarily looking for combat as much as they are at least trying to fend it off. But like Gilmer has said above, they are hard to use. Any pirate can easily assume that ____ ship will have ___ amount of ammo and be more likely to take the beating while picking at it until it's shields are down and out of ammunition. But hey, if their ship blows up they aren't paying to refill the ammo so I guess that's a perk amiright?

 

[Tempered]

The price of the ammo needs to be high. In the original elite, I recall conserving every missile so that I wouldn't blow any profit I was making on a trade run. It made for tense game play where you had to be concerned about when to fight and when to run. There also needs to be a reason to use other weapons, not just the biggest and baddest. I think that by adjusting the price of ammo instead of just nerfing the cannons, FD has accomplished a well balanced and thought provoking combat dynamic. Choices actually matter. You have to think about what you are using and who you are fighting.

 

[Gilmir]

The price of the ammo needs to be high. In the original elite, I recall conserving every missile so that I wouldn't blow any profit I was making on a trade run. It made for tense game play where you had to be concerned about when to fight and when to run. There also needs to be a reason to use other weapons, not just the biggest and baddest. I think that by adjusting the price of ammo instead of just nerfing the cannons, FD has accomplished a well balanced and thought provoking combat dynamic. Choices actually matter. You have to think about what you are using and who you are fighting.

Absolutely not true. Because at the moment there is no viable scenario in which cannons make sense as a weapon.
So by making the ammo price too high, the item itself became not viable for any scenario.
Or can you give me one concrete loadout for which it makes sense?
Don't answer with "it's a choice", or there "needs to be a reason for other weapons". This is evading the point.
Just post one combination of ship / weapon loadout in which the canon makes sense at the moment.

As I wrote - missiles DO make sense, even if they're expensive - as a deterrent.
Any weapon which could be mounted on a turret can make sense, even if the ammo is expensive - as a deterrent.
The canon has no viable uses at the moment. It can only be used by ships nimble enough not to need a deterrent (bounty hunter / pirate), but those "jobs" need any profit margin to want to use a weapon.
The canon only burns money now and can't generate profit in any way.

By the way - I switched to multicannons now and they look much more viable. 2 small gimballs and two medium fixed killed me a Cobra for around 900 Credits of ammo. That's much better balanced in my opinion. It's still too expensive to hunt "small fries", but cheap enough to hunt "big fish". with canons it would have probably cost around 10k...

 

[Tempered]

I was mainly refering to multi cannons as I have not used cannons since beta 3.01. I still make money using 3 multi cannons and a beam laser.

As for scenarios where they are useful, you said it yourself. You don't use them for small fries, you use them on the big fish. If I were to go after an anaconda bounty mission, I would take either a couple cannons or rail guns. 10k in ammo for a 100k bounty is a fair exchange in my opinion. It's really just a matter of what you prefer. Some people would use missiles, hence the choice. You could load a cannon, 2 multi cannons and a missile rack on a cobra if you wanted to and have a good spread of damage for killing big ships.

 

[Borgkube]

Is Canon Amunition Solid Gold?

I prefer the Platinum myself. Gold is too soft to penetrate well.

 

[Jarek Storm]

I've posted this before in another thread, and a fellow CMDR even posted screenshots to verify, but everyone seemed to ignore both our posts.

I am not paying that much for multicannon ammo. I've drained all my shield cells and emptied both level 1 multicannons and my total reload cost was 5k.

Either something is broken somewhere, or maybe you're using a level 2 multicannon and that makes the difference, I don't know.

Would be nice to talk it out though and figure out what's going on, because ammo costs are different for some people it seems.

 

[the darkwalker]

I kind of like how ammo cost places a new variable into the weapon choice options.
If you were assaulted in a back alley by a gang of thugs, would you rather be carrying a unloaded Windlass Crossbow or a Sword? Not the best analogy, perhaps, but I hope you get what I mean: some weapons are for some occasions.
If you are bounty-hunting random Sidewinders who didn't pay their parking tickets, you might want to use a more economical weapon.

i'd rather choose a spear

and yes, i agree that ammunition cost too much in comparison to what missions, bounties, or warzone kills give

 

[Waldi]

Strange i have 4 multi cannons 2 beam lasers on my asp and never have a reload bill of more that 5-8k after 3-4 fights against wanted ships. True im not spending my time looking for lots of bounties and hunting them (think ill do that tomorrow) but took out a viper a drop ship and a sidewinder on way to a station and i think i had to spend about 6k to reload but the viper took awhile to get ( dropship was real easy) and had bounties to collect of about 40k. I love being way out from the core so cant remember what nav points or combat zones are like anymore.

 

[Zeeman]

After many hours contemplating the same question, I decided to investigate further.

So, I wrote the cannon ammo makers a letter, posted it (luckily, the Hauler in question survived the interdictions it faced), and I recently got a reply.

"Dearest CMDR,

It is our privilege to inform you of the process used to make our ammunition.

Our exact process is a closely guarded secret, however, I can inform you that it is an allow we call Expensevidium™, and contains depleted palladium, gold, titanium, platinum, and a unique and specialised carbon composite, which is then rolled on the thighs of virgins under the triple full moons of a system we can not name, for fear of corporate espionage, however, due to said triple full moon only taking place once a year (8.2567 Earth years), this results in a necessary high price.

I'm sure, however, that you'll find the results worth our efforts!
Please enjoy using our products.

Kindest regards,

Head of Creative Marketing
F.O.Shight"

There ya have it.

Z...

 

[Hermit]

The high cost of ammo is what I've been saying all along. It came into being with beta 3 and it needs to be rebalanced. It's like the devs at FD have taken the idea from Chris Rock's "bullet control":
-
[video=youtube;VZrFVtmRXrw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZrFVtmRXrw[/video]
-
Perhaps we should ask "I believe you got my property!" after dispatching another player or NPC - LOL!

 

[Jarek Storm]

Strange i have 4 multi cannons 2 beam lasers on my asp and never have a reload bill of more that 5-8k after 3-4 fights against wanted ships. True im not spending my time looking for lots of bounties and hunting them (think ill do that tomorrow) but took out a viper a drop ship and a sidewinder on way to a station and i think i had to spend about 6k to reload but the viper took awhile to get ( dropship was real easy) and had bounties to collect of about 40k. I love being way out from the core so cant remember what nav points or combat zones are like anymore.

Are those level 1 or level 2 grade multicannons?

 

[Victory]

OP didn't talk about Multi-Cannon. he talked about Cannon.