Is cannon ammunition solid gold? ;)

Gilmir

Gilmir
Victory said:
OP didn't talk about Multi-Cannon. he talked about Cannon.
Click to expand...
This.

As I wrote later in this thread - MULTIcannons are on the slightly expensive side, but still viable. If I needed around 900 Cr to kill a (very passive, so I barely missed anything) Cobra, then I find it more or less balanced.

On the other hand CANNONS are not balanced at all. I can't say how much the ammo to kill the same Cobra would have cost, but it's certainly at least around 5k as cannons are way less accurate than multicannons, so you can't assume you can hit with every shot.

So, even to hunt the "really big fish" (with bounties of 100k) it's not viable. Because bigger ships need also much more ammo expenditure, meaning that it's not realistic to kill a 100k - bounty Annaconda expending 10k of ammo. Probably around 30k at least. So you would have a loadout that would make any profit ONLY if you fight high bounty
targets and never fire a shot on anything else. Considering how many high value targets are flying around (hint - not so many...), it's definitely NOT a viable option. Especially as you can have the same (or because of better accuracy - rather higher) firepower if you install multis.
 

Veldryn

Veldryn
In SB1, Canon ammunitions were both unlimited *and* cheap. Now they are limited (30 vs ~2k) *and* expensive. So, multiple canons is definitely not viable (Unlike Multi Canons, which still have cheap ammos). Canons clearly needed a nerf, but that's a little bit too much. A full load of multi-canons ammos is much cheaper and lasts much longer than a full load of canons.

But maybe the idea is that Canons should only be used against big ships (Anaconda, Type9, maybe ASP and Type 6), which typically bring bigger rewards. And since we barely see any of these big ships, then canons are currently useless?

Anyway, I think having twice as many ammos for the same price would be a little bit more balanced. 30 doesn't seem enough (And I actually stopped using them exactly for that reason: you have to land and refill after each couple of fights)
 

Demonic Squid

Demonic Squid
There's two issues I personally have with both Cannons and Multi-Cannons:

1. Ammo cost as has already been stated, the cost/reward ratio is very poor for the majority of targets despite the speed with which you can kill stuff. Cannons are worse, but even MC could do with a little rebalancing. This could be offset with increasing the base bounty rewards by 10-20%, which would make MCs fine as they are.

2. Ammo capacity. Cannons do not have enough capacity. MC are way out the other direction in terms of capacity. I may have missed this buried elsewhere, but I assume there is no way to increase ammo capacity/reserves by using some sort of ammo hopper module or something in your cargo bay, if not, is this planned?
 

Tornado

Tornado
assuming the ammo is made from depleted uranium a quick look on the internet makes gold 2324 times as expensive so it is unlikely to be gold :)
 

Veldryn

Veldryn
I currently use 2 C1 burst lasers (Mainly for shields) and 2 C2 multicanons (Mainly for hull). I also switch between both when I need to either reload the MC or cool down the Lasers. Doing this, I can fight for ~45 minutes at a Nav Beacon (Shooting anything Wanted). So, that's fine IMO.

However, before that, I had 2 C2 Gimballed Multicanons and 2 C1 Burst lasers. Since Gimballed weapons can be used much more often than fixed ones (Especially on a Cobra), I used to deplete my ammos in less than 10 minutes.

Of course, this means that the bounties/rewards are proportional: currently, I can do a ~50-100K bounty with the MC ammos, whereas I barely did 10k with the gimballed ones (20-25k when lucky). So... MC ammos are not so expensive (5k I think, at least for C2 - not sure if the price differs for C1), and you don't need to land too often. Unless you use Gimbals and shoot non-stop, in which case it's probably not so interesting.

Using only MC is also probably a bad idea, and I guess ammos deplete much faster in this case.

I've never (really) tried other weapons (Rail guns, Missiles, ...). I think they have the same issue as canons: too expensive, and/or not enough ammos. Not really something to hunt bounties. I think canons should be an intermediate choice between MC and Missiles, but right now they seem to be much closer to missiles in their role, so not really interesting.
 

Jigsaw

Jigsaw
Yeah, ammo prices can blindside you. I bought a missile rack once and was impressed by its destructive capability. I was less impressed when I saw the restocking bill at the station, which exceeded the bounty vouchers by a good margin. I sold the rack and never used one again. Not worth it for bounty hunting and in any other situation running away is a lot cheaper. Pointless.
 

foxpur

foxpur
See, you are thinking the cost of ammo in todays terms... inflation is still a issue no matter what the year :)
 

Philip Coutts

Volunteer Moderator
Philip Coutts
I've got 2 lasers and 2 cannons on my Cobra. It's very effective but the cost of the ammunition means it really isn't worth using them unless it's against a very high value target. Probably going to end up selling the cannons as they are just too expensive to run.
 
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