Isnt it somehow lame that Multicannons are so much better than Railguns and Cannons?

[Lazerus Artificial]

I have watched a few videos now, about weapons, combat, systems...
and all came to the same hidden conclusion: Cannons, Railguns & Co are not worth it.

Ammo is expensive for Cannon and Railgun
A few missed hits from the Gatling wont hurt much, but a missed shot from C&R does. You cant cary around a huge amount of ammo, and each missed shot means a lot of missed time and so damage.

DPS is way higher for Multicannons
If you can get a steady hail of bullets on the enemy ship, they seem to be waaaaay stronger than C&R (just watched a video on how long it takes with different weapons to kill Anaconda´s...cannons were the slowest, then railgun, gatling, dumbfire).
Bigger Ship = Easier Target = More Hits = More Damage

I mean...what is the reward of using them? shouldnt it be like a balanced system? Why should i waste money on C&R Ammunition, when Gatling is so much cheaper, a kill is so much faster?
Wouldnt it be better if the "dps" would be closer to eachother? so that one cheap gatling cant dominate a huge railgun in damage, cost and usability?
Also wouldnt it be usefull to balance the prices for full magazines? so that a x thousand shot magazine of small gatling bullets costs nearly the same as a few hundred cannon bullets or a few railgun shells?

I mean...i like the style of Cannons and Railguns, i dont like those "shoot as much as you can" weapons...i like slow weapons that can hit like a truck, Grenades, Snipers... But from what i have seen they are not even close to be usefull (besides sniping modules)

Also from a "realistic" aspect...why is Railgun ammo so expensive?
All you need is enough energy to charge the capacitors for the rails, and a chunk of metal to accelerate. As long as it is conductive, you can fire almost everything with it. And even if its not conductive you can still use plasma to accelerate it.

 

[OneAmongOthers]

Don't worry Frontier will screw up multi cannons just like the did cannon, missiles, shield cells, chaff, community events, 1.1, sound effects... You need to be quiet or at this rate in 6 months all we"ll have left is mining lasers

 

[Jay8ch]

Agreed. The different weapons should suit different play styles, rail guns for sniping, frag cannons for devastating close up barrages. Nothing else in the game even comes close to the overall useability of a simple mix of lasers and multi cannons so the only way any other weapons get used is if someone is doing it just for the fun of it. I have cannons on my Asp instead of multi cannons because it's less boring, not because there's any genuine reason too.

 

[MoeDead]

Cannons and Railguns have higher burst damage potential.
As you said: "If you can get a steady hail of bullets on the enemy ship"
The IF is the problem, it is not always possible to get that constant fire. Also I think Cannons and Railguns are better for taking out subsystems.
I am currentliy testing 2x Tier 2 Pulse Laser + 2x Tier 1 Cannons on my cobra instead of my standard 2x Tier 2 Multis + 2x Tier 1 Beam.
So far it seemst be be pretty effective against larger targets in combat zones as I can take out their subssytems more easily.

 

[Jorlin]

There aren't even large or huge Multicannons

 

[madmann135]

I did a post on this a while back. I even did some math to help stress my point.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=113329
That is the post I made.

You are not the only one who thinks the weapons were done badly. I think the Railguns are overpowered, not damage wise but because they are kinetic and thermal weapons instead of kinetic weapons.

The weapons of ED in my opinion were done badly, and built with little consideration on how and why they work.

 

[bassman]

There aren't even large or huge Multicannons

Rails are fine (except for the ammo limit - should be 50-60 at least), I agree that cannons are rubbish though - the projectile travels barely faster than a dumbfire missile, Personally I would increase the projectile speed by at least 50%. Frag cannons have a ridiculously wide spread (I would halve the spread angle). But yeah I hate being effectively forced to used multis because no viable alternative projectile weapon exists.

 

[OnePercent]

Yeah instead of boost rail guns or cannons, they'll just nerf multicannons.

 

[Lazerus Artificial]

Cannons and Railguns have higher burst damage potential.
As you said: "If you can get a steady hail of bullets on the enemy ship"
The IF is the problem, it is not always possible to get that constant fire. Also I think Cannons and Railguns are better for taking out subsystems.
I am currentliy testing 2x Tier 2 Pulse Laser + 2x Tier 1 Cannons on my cobra instead of my standard 2x Tier 2 Multis + 2x Tier 1 Beam.
So far it seemst be be pretty effective against larger targets in combat zones as I can take out their subssytems more easily.

yeah, but the IF fits for all of them.

smaller target = less hit chance = less damage with all of them.
So miss with a Gatling a few times - no problem.
Miss with Cannon and Railgun - Ouch
bigger target more hits, still the multicannon is superior here. simply because it has a higher dps.

spending like 10x or even more money for ammunition just to damage subsystems better? do you realy think that is worth it, if you can just spend a few more gatling shots to totally shred the target?

burst damage is nice, if the dps would be balanced. if i can deal more damage in the same time with a gatling (even when i miss a lot of shots), then the burst damage is not worth it. burst damage is usually only good when you have enough range so that the enemy cant hit you...usually you dont have that advantage, and hitting with a cannon is pretty hard because of its slow moving projectiles.

Rails are fine (except for the ammo limit - should be 50-60 at least), I agree that cannons are rubbish though - the projectile travels barely faster than a dumbfire missile, Personally I would increase the projectile speed by at least 50%. Frag cannons have a ridiculously wide spread (I would halve the spread angle). But yeah I hate being effectively forced to used multis because no viable alternative exists.

from damage and function...yes, there they seem to be nice.
The ammo is the problem there...just a few shots that will make you poor in a very short time.
as i said...i think it would be better to actually balance those values. ammo price per magazine, damage per second, maybe even damage per magazine.

 

[Jezzah]

I agree the fallback setup is always lasers and mc for me. Keep dabbling with the others but I always fallback on the old setup. I'm not really sure what the answer is so I don't look for one and just keep using them.

 

[Splendour]

Try taking out a jinking eagle at 3km with multicannon and tell me they're better then railguns
Cannon I agree could do with some more love, they were balanced down a little to hard in beta

 

[bassman]

from damage and function...yes, there they seem to be nice.
The ammo is the problem there...just a few shots that will make you poor in a very short time.
as i said...i think it would be better to actually balance those values. ammo price per magazine, damage per second, maybe even damage per magazine.

Rail ammo price is an issue although that doesnt stop me using them but it does make them uneconomical for pretty much any PvE activity.

 

[MoeDead]

yeah, but the IF fits for all of them.

smaller target = less hit chance = less damage with all of them.
So miss with a Gatling a few times - no problem.
Miss with Cannon and Railgun - Ouch
bigger target more hits, still the multicannon is superior here. simply because it has a higher dps.

spending like 10x or even more money for ammunition just to damage subsystems better? do you realy think that is worth it, if you can just spend a few more gatling shots to totally shred the target?

burst damage is nice, if the dps would be balanced. if i can deal more damage in the same time with a gatling (even when i miss a lot of shots), then the burst damage is not worth it. burst damage is usually only good when you have enough range so that the enemy cant hit you...usually you dont have that advantage, and hitting with a cannon is pretty hard because of its slow moving projectiles.


from damage and function...yes, there they seem to be nice.
The ammo is the problem there...just a few shots that will make you poor in a very short time.
as i said...i think it would be better to actually balance those values. ammo price per magazine, damage per second, maybe even damage per magazine.

With my T1 cannons i have now blown up pythons and anacondas which had ca.30%Hull left simply because their PowerPlants went down. With my T2 Multicannons I never rellay acieved that and I had to use up loads of ammo to completely shred their hull.

And what I meant was that you don't always face the enemy they try to evade so you have times where you simply don't shoot at all. Of course this time shoukd be as short as possible but it's there.
Burst does not have to be limied to long range. I agree though that the projectile speed of the cannons is a tad too low. But I use them only vs medium and large targets anyway. Anything small gets shredded by my dual T2 Pulse lasers.

 

[bassman]

Try taking out a jinking eagle at 3km with multicannon and tell me they're better then railguns
Cannon I agree could do with some more love, they were balanced down a little to hard in beta

Cannons are without doubt the most glaring weapon imbalance in the game right now (IMO). As I said I would massively increase the projectile speed (damage is OK as it is I think). There just no reason to use them since dumbfires are almost as easy to aim and do much more damage. They were OP in beta 1 but they had a quad nerf - shield damage, speed, ammo amount, ammo cost. The speed nerf was not needed.

 

[SlickReed]

Kinetic rounds do higher damage on hulls not shields. Multicannons don't actually do more damage per round of ammo, they just expend more rounds per second then any other weapons.

 

[Devil's Refugee]

I agree the fallback setup is always lasers and mc for me. Keep dabbling with the others but I always fallback on the old setup. I'm not really sure what the answer is so I don't look for one and just keep using them.

The same, I've tried various loadouts and always fall back to this kind of set up, I think it just depends on personal combat style. But for God's sake, no more "rebalancing" FD, or if you do, at least consider the impacts as a whole and not nerf one weapon at a time because people cry about it.

 

[Lazerus Artificial]

Try taking out a jinking eagle at 3km with multicannon and tell me they're better then railguns
Cannon I agree could do with some more love, they were balanced down a little to hard in beta

That would be one of the rare cases were the mentioned range advantage would be usefull.
But if you cant hit the eagle, you would still run better with gatlings.
if you can hit them with a railgun - yes, they will hurt. a lot. but also your bank account...maybe even more than the price that the eagle pilot has to pay.

I did a post on this a while back. I even did some math to help stress my point.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=113329
That is the post I made.

You are not the only one who thinks the weapons were done badly. I think the Railguns are overpowered, not damage wise but because they are kinetic and thermal weapons instead of kinetic weapons.

The weapons of ED in my opinion were done badly, and built with little consideration on how and why they work.

actually quite a nice table.
its very very disturbing to see those rebalanced values...weapons in ED feel just wrong...

 

[Tacheel]

Rails definately have too little ammo capacity to be useful in anything other than assassination (or situational if you have enough weapon mounts to have them spare).

However I've seen an anacondas power plant go from full health to boom in 3 well aimed salvos (2xC1).

 

[RipperJack]

i found similair to what the tc is saying.

I have an A specc anaconda. I've pplayed with them all, my first setup was the usual lasers/cannons and underneath the size 4 plasma and the side 3 just below it (or was it size 2 i cant remember). It sucked....like i'd be bearing down on another anaconda from above and just blasting away, even ignoring the heat and consumption, the hit just didnt feel all that great, it would be something like 8% total, give or take.

Compare that to a solid hammering from 4 class 2/1 multi-cannons which i can hammer away with no end while the capacitor recharges giving me burst dmg from adding in 3 pulse/beam lasers, the plasma just didnt compare.

I was really dissapointed.

So i went for the class 4 and class 3 cannons and same thing, it could fire constantly compared to the plasma which was good but the dmg just wasnt all that great.

Railguns imo are the only exception, they have some really good long range potential which the others dont. Theyre both types of dmg also, they do fit their role imo.

But i do feel maybe there is a playstyle here, like the tc im the kinda player who latches on. I'm always using my full 6 degrees on movement so i almost always have the target in the middle of my screen meaning things like cannons and such are good if your bearing down, but chasing, you almost never have the target in your screen as your chasing the lead reticle. This makes me use gimbled so while i am chasing the reticle i'm still doing damage. It conflict with how i like to play making the constant countdown in damage from multicannons feel more natural.

 

[bassman]

Heres a thought - high ammo costs and low ammo count do not "balance" weapons, they merely restrict their use to PvP (where generally you dont care about costs and sustainability within reason).

This also works against players who are mostly PvE but get attacked by a player with a "PvP" loadout - they are potentially at a big disadvantage.

So I'm tempted to suggest that all ammo costs (except for missiles) be reduced to token levels and with decent ammo counts for everything (again excepting missiles) that way everything becomes viable for PvE use.