@ Sylow
Maximum damage output of short range (SR) and overcharge (OC)is the same.
As you mention, distributor draw and heat is relatively small on MC’s and can be neglible.
Using short range over overcharge will give you less drain on your distributor and will keep you shooting for longer or at least let you allocate more pip points into shields or engines if you prefer.
The increased heat of shortrange is negated by MC’s need to reload, during which heat will dissipate.
Choosing between SR and OC then comes down to distributor drain vs range.
I would always go for distributor draw. Using short range will keep dps high and opens for good options for combining MC’s with lasers - especially beams that also have short range.
In a laser/MC build, the MC damage output would be the same with either SR or OC. But the SR will use less power which the laser can burn through before the distributor is drained - this will effectively increase OVERALL dsp on the SR MC build compared to using OC together with lasers.
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But as you even agree yourself at the start distributor draw is so low on the MC that it's basically negligible. And you even claim that the damage increase is the same. Actually short ranged gives a tiny bit more damage than overcharged. On a MC, due to capacitor drain being so small, the small damage advantage is virtually the only advantage it short ranged has.
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I also quite often combine lasers and MCs. But between charge enhanced distributor and a little bit of pip management, the only reason MCs ever manage to drain my weapons power is when I fly late at night and should rather be in bed, means when I completely and utterly mess up pip management.
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SR damage suffers dramatically above 2000m. OC less so. I believe we’re in agreement here.
An OC projectile travels with the same (relative low) speed as a SR or unengineered (UE) projectile.
In general I would never use a MC on at target at ranges above 2000m with any of the three beforementioned types. SR because dps is stupidly low. OC and UE because the projectile travelspeed is low and a lot of the shots would propably miss (in my experience anyway) unless the target is flying directly at you). There’s also always the risk of hitting someone else and getting a bounty if you long range spray at above 2000m.
If I wanted to use a dedicated long range build I would always med the MC with long range (LR). This increases projectile speed and increases the chances that any fired projectile acually hits the target at long range.
This bring me to my conclusion.
Unless I wanted to try out a dedicated long range combat build, I would never use MC’s at ranges above 2000m.
With heating being a no-issue on MC’s, this makes SR the obvious choice over OC because you’ll be getting better damage/energy draw.
This is even more significant if you combine SR MC’s with lasers where the lesser energy draw will increase energy reserves for the lasers and thereby active shooting time before the distributor needs recharging. Choosing SR thereby increases overall dps compared to OC.
OC is (imho) only relevant if you’re in a slow turning ship that lets the target run away often at ranges above 2000m.
I always fly very agilele ships and use manouvering to keep myself as close to enemies as possible to keep dps high and my ship outside the enemy firing cone. My favorite vulture build is a SR corrosive MC + a SR vented beamlaser. Absolutely brutal when you leech close onto any target.
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"Suffers drastically" is nice wording. After all, short ranged can't deal any damage to a target over 1500 meters away. That is the maximum range you have when running G5 short ranged weapons, a hard limit. (At least according to Inara. I haven't touched short range engineering since a while, so i don't have the numbers at hand. But for engineering blueprints, Inara usually is up to date. ) Shoot at 1501 meters and the damage you do is zero. Just like the regular weapon can still do low damage at 3000 meters and zero at 3001 meters. Luckily short range doesn't reduce the ranges for damage falloff. So you're right there, up to 1500 meters, the overcharged and the short ranged weapon performs similar. For anything over 1500 meters overcharged is ahead, simply by being able to still hit the target.
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And yes, you describe well how you work around the drawback of short ranged. If it doesn't trouble you, it's a good choice. But unless I am in my Courier, there's always one or another ship which is a tad faster than me and sometimes is a bit further out than the mentioned 1500 meters. Considering that the Vulture is extremely agile but has mediocre (for a combat ship) speed, I would expect you to know the effect. If you don't, I would rather attribute that to your pick of targets than to the ships advantages. (After all, a Vulture is a great pick against bigger ships. )
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Anyway, the question of the OP was not ship related, it was only about overcharged or short ranged on multicannons. And at least in general, you have to expect that you also sometimes fight a faster ship, which might not stay within close range all of the fight. Being able to reach out beyond 1500 meters is welcome there. With G5 short ranged, you sacrifice that ability and I find that the price is too high, when considering that overcharged gives you almost exactly the same advantage (actually minimally less damage output), without costing you any range.
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Thus I'd still say that generally overcharged is the better choice.
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