Shock Cannons - Unlimited Ammo?

Hole in Head

H
Shock Cannons are fun weapons, but they're in a horrible spot right now. The exceedingly low ammo count makes these a poor choice to use.

I'd like to propose these get unlimited ammo to make them truly an "energy" projectile weapon. I think this would not be an imbalance because of the following ways they are already limited:

  • cannot be engineered
  • use a fair amount of distributor
  • generate quite a lot of heat
  • spread increases with rapid fire
 

Chaparral

Chaparral
I just built a res zone viper with two thermal vent lr fixed beams and two medium fixed shock cannons. I really love the ship, and it does great in the res. Save your ammo until the shields are down.

But yeah, this weapon needs a buff. Either change the synth reload formula to something that makes sense (grid resistors and lead - cmon - that's just silly), or up the total ammo store to something like 500 (pretty sure the total damage capacity lags behind OC cannons or rails). I think a plasma repeater version with unlimited ammo would be op. If it was a plasma repeater doing absolute damage instead of kinetic, that would work as well.
 

Hole in Head

H
Yeah, I'd be up for a large ammo buff, just throwing out the idea of it being unlimited given it's got plenty of limitations already. :)

I think would need more than 500, would probably need closer to 1000ish. It should not be balanced to be around non-engineered weapons if it itself cannot be engineered.
 

Gryphorim

G
Yeah, shock cannons currently have the "autoloader: experimental effect built in, which is cool, but personally, I'd like a version with the "plasma slug" effect, allowing it to have unlimited ammo, so long as it draws from the fuel store of the ship. Also comes with a damage debuff on that effect.

Also, the weapon should be at least partially thermal damage, as it is a plasma projectile weapon.
 

Hole in Head

H
That'd be interesting to use fuel for reloads. I suspect the auto-loading nature of it might cause a problem though and suck fuel dry crazy fast. If they use the same effect as on Plasma and Rails, it'll probably consume the same amount of fuel per rail shot and plasma reload for every shot reloaded, which will drain you dry very fast. I'd rather go for just a straight up ammo buff quickly rather than requiring code changes which take time in this case.
 
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