Shock cannons?

[N124Hawk]

Could we get these things improved? Apparently they were originally supposed to be plasma weapons, so they'd be worth the mats if they were. As it stands, shock cannons are useless on their own, and no one uses them.

A possible fix could be making these a plasma weapon, with absolute damage, and maybe not making the unlock process so complicated. If the weapons were unlocked the same as modules, where you only hand over mats once, and unlock every class and mount type for purchase, rather than needing more mats to unlock a single class and mount.

Ease of access would greatly expand the usability, and the number of people who would buy tech broker weapons, if they were actually useful.

 

[LIKILIKE]

From my point of view they are pretty good BUT also they have small amount of ammo(i think they need 2-6x more +-). Maybe a bit big heat generation but that is not that necessary but it would be nice. Unlock them from my prespective is pretty easy(let it be as it is).

 

[Vardaugas]

If they would do absolute damage, both the lacking ammunition and the high rearm cost would be justified, imho. As they are, they don't even compete with an engineered multicannon.

 

[Sylow]

The unlocking, at least in my eyes, is not the root problem. I have them unlocked, i still don't use them, as they are terrible weapons.

Too little ammo and even in shorter fights as already mentioned, engineered MCs are better already on paper, before considering the increasing spread of the shock cannon.

Once the weapon was made useful, the unlock might also be worth taking a look at. But if the shock cannon could compete with an engineered MC, then the lengthy unlock actually would be justified. After all, you then get a weapon equivalent to a fully engineered one, for the mere price of credits. (Reducing the grind on both sides would be even better. But as long as one side keeps the grind, it makes sense to have some on the other one, too. )

So really, the weapon itself could use a number of upgrades:

• Not essential but nice to have: automatic refire. Hold the button and it shoots at maximum speed, while quickly ramping up the spread. You can already do that by crazy button pressing or by using a program. (E.g. i did that when trying the weapon on my HOTAS profiler. I had an extra button for rapid shock cannon fire for a while. It didn't turn it into a better weapon, but it made it more enjoyable to use. )
• For actual value, higher ammo capacity would be a start, but not good enough. It would give the weapon much needed sustain, but would still leave it behind in terms of damage over time.
• Some other parameters need to be adjusted. Higher damage, a thermal component, absolute damage, built in high yield effect, etc. There's a number of options available to improve the weapon. I can't make up my mind, which one is best. I just know that in the current state it's not ever worth slotting it.

Thus any improvement would be welcome in my eyes.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

Well, I run them on basically all my non-combat ships, and they absolutely rock as self defense againt NPC interdictions. An AspE with quad efficient small beams and dual medium shock cannons punches far above it's weight, and a Cutter with 2 medium and one huge efficient beam under the nose and two each of large and medium shock cannons topside is crazy good. Smuggling Python with triple large efficient beams and dual medium shock cannons tears everything up.

 

[Sylow]

Hmm. Define "crazy good". I don't see them that way. So i wonder, is it a difference in perception and expectation, or due to other factors?

My experience on shock cannons is mostly on the C3 version. I unlocked it over last x-mas season and gave it some testing. I used a pair of them on my outer large hardpoints on the Krait MK II. During the first RES tour, they fared acceptably, but of course lacked the sustain of the multicannons. So i went for wing assassination missions. Since i just finished the grind for the shock cannons and did not want to discard them right away, i did way more wing assassination missions than actually reasonable, always hoping that in the next one they'd finally turn out to be really great and justify the time i spent to get them.

Unfortunately they just never managed to meet my expectations. I went for the shortest and most tense content i could find for them. Sustain mattes little there, only firepower does. But even there, a pair of well engineered class 3 multicannons (yes, those with the long spin-up time, which really makes them a bit inconvenient to use at some times) just plainly outperformed shock cannons for me.

I even put a script in my HOTAS configurator, where a button just repeatedly went "on/off" in a quick repeating loop, so i could easily fire my shock cannons at the highest speed the game allowed. Despite all of this, and despite it often ending up in a turn fight, where it's ability to fire immediately without having to spin up should be a huge advantage, the fully engineered C3 multi-cannons still performed better for me.

So i don't know. Is it my way of fighting? Or is it because i only compared the two C3 versions? I don't know why our experience is different. I can only say that i wanted to like the shock cannons but despite trying to make them work for a while they didn't perform well enough. They look much cooler than my MCs and i'd really like to have them on my ship instead, but the performance difference just is too much in favor of the MCs to do that.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

Hmm. Define "crazy good". I don't see them that way. So i wonder, is it a difference in perception and expectation, or due to other factors?

The build simply shreds NPC Condas that want to prey on a peaceful trader. The shock cannons last through the usual 4 encounters on a trade mission. The last time I was killing things with the Cutter that fast was with quad overload packhounds and triple pre-nerf long range high yield cannons. That build was out of packhound ammo after two fights though.

 

[Chaparral]

More ammo and a redo on the synthesis recipe (no manufactured mats) and I think they would be fine.

 

[CMDR X]

I love the Shock cannons.

+1 More ammo
+1 Less heat
+1 A bit more thermal damage
+100 fix the lame sound. Should be similar to regular cannon.

Add some sort of tracer round effect.

X

 

[Morbad]

These are experimental weapons, not production equipment. I don't think experimental weapons should ever be buffed in any way; they are essentially an in-setting beta test/trial.

Since they've been around for a while, I wouldn't mind them moving into the full production phase. However, the current experimental weapon would almost certainly have to be better than the base version for them to remain balanced as an Engineerable part. I'm thinking the current version should be considered roughly an OC G2 or G3 with autoloader; a production version could have those changes subtracted. Synthesis would also become easier in the production model.

Anyway, with regard to the weapons themselves, I think they are quite potent. They can't be one's primary source of damage in protracted engagements because of their limited ammo pool, but when used as a source of accurate burst damage, they are superb. They have acceptable projectile velocity, and they do full damage out to 2.5km. In two-shot bursts they also have zero jitter. At close range, they will fire as fast as you can pull the trigger up to ten rounds per second and the damage can be enormous.

I was experimenting with them a few days ago in a Threat 7 Pirate Activity area:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvKikV08e7A


Note that the seeming lack of effectiveness while module sniping has less to do with the weapon than that all of these NPC vessels are heavily engineered and well built. Against more mundane targets, they are quite good a knocking out subsystems.

 

[Sylow]

[...]

Nice video.But the one thing it in my eyes confirms is, that you are an excellent pilot. It does not prove that shock cannons would be adequate weapons.

To be sure, i did a few wing assassination missions yesterday and today. Also to be sure where i come from, i did use my HOTAS profiler to allow rapid fire by one button press. My finding adds up to this:

• It is a good burst weapon. With the profiler doing the rapid fire, the jitter still makes it require skill. You have to judge the distance, guess how long bursts you can afford and use it accordingly. It requires trigger discipline, else you run out of ammo, drain your weapons bar and heat up your ship for no reason. I really appreciate the "skill required" component. We should actually have more weapons which have higher skill requirement and reward you with better damage output if you can handle it well.
• It performs worse than MCs for me, though. And that's on my Krait, where i use C3 MCs with the long spin-up time. Yes, i press the fire button a second or two before i am on target. That's also a bit of a skill check, but it's very simply. Easy enough for everybody, i would say. Merely the fact that i was able to keep shooting for longer, while i had to pause and let the Shock Cannons recover and reload quite often weighted things strongly in favor of overcharged C3 MCs with auto-loader. (That's before even looking at how it would be with one of them being corrosive. )

So all in all, i again came to the conclusion that even in a short fight Shock Cannons are at best adequate to MCs. And that's the best-case scenario for the Shock Cannon. So at least form a PvE point of view, they would deserve being upgraded. I very much like the "requires skill to use" part, so the whole thing of limited ammo in the weapon and building up spread when firing several shots in a row should absolutely stay. But a bit more punch per shot would really be helpful.

While i am not into PvP, from what i gathered they are nonexistant in any competitive PvP, so i guess once again, upgrading them would make sense. What i can't judge is ganking. But i guess even with some more punch, they wouldn't make things worse there any more, either.

 

[Morbad]

While i am not into PvP, from what i gathered they are nonexistant in any competitive PvP

This is simply because nearly all PvP vessels that aren't built with specific limitations dictated by formal agreement are Engineered to the utmost.

Shock Cannon cannot be Engineered and thus they fall well short. They are still among the most potent of non-Engineered weapons.

I still think the solution to making Shock Cannon viable is to move them into a 'mass production' phase, with moderate adjustments, then allowing them to be Engineered like any other non-experimental weapon.

 

[Sylow]

I still think the solution to making Shock Cannon viable is to move them into a 'mass production' phase, with moderate adjustments, then allowing them to be Engineered like any other non-experimental weapon.

I don't know... for me the "unlock once, be done for" is one of the few good things about the tech brokers. That's better than all the engineering in my eyes. You already spent the effort by unlocking the weapon, so in my book it should be on par to engineered gear. Most hesitant am i because i know how FD ready your suggestion. They don't think like "convert it into a base weapon, available everywhere, now engineerable". They rather read "now weaken the weapon you have to grind to unlock it, so you can grind to engineer it to make it useful".

FD just loves to implement grind. If you give them anything which can just vaguely be read as a suggestion to stack and layer grind, they will happily go for it.

 

[Morbad]

I don't know... for me the "unlock once, be done for" is one of the few good things about the tech brokers. That's better than all the engineering in my eyes. You already spent the effort by unlocking the weapon, so in my book it should be on par to engineered gear.

None of the tech broker parts are on par with higher grade Engineered gear and the cost to permanently unlock them is quite a bit less than the cost to max out a single Engineered module.

Most hesitant am i because i know how FD ready your suggestion. They don't think like "convert it into a base weapon, available everywhere, now engineerable". They rather read "now weaken the weapon you have to grind to unlock it, so you can grind to engineer it to make it useful".

If it was taken as is and made Engineerable, it would become as common as rails and PAs, because they would be phenomenally powerful. They would be almost the best of both worlds between frag cannon and standard cannon, in one weapon. Only the low ammo capacity would keep them in check.

FD just loves to implement grind. If you give them anything which can just vaguely be read as a suggestion to stack and layer grind, they will happily go for it.

I'm not keen on Engineering, Tech Brokers, or really any kind of 'crafting' system, but I don't see Frontier altering shock cannon in their current state as an experimental unlock. These weapons are supposed to be niche.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

If it was taken as is and made Engineerable, it would become as common as rails and PAs, because they would be phenomenally powerful. They would be almost the best of both worlds between frag cannon and standard cannon, in one weapon. Only the low ammo capacity would keep them in check.

That would entirely depend on the available blueprints. Overcharged or efficient ? Yep, that would be OP. High capacity and sturdy would be fine.

 

[Sylow]

If it was taken as is and made Engineerable, it would become as common as rails and PAs, because they would be phenomenally powerful. They would be almost the best of both worlds between frag cannon and standard cannon, in one weapon. Only the low ammo capacity would keep them in check.

Hmm. Look at guardian power plant and power distributor. They play in G4/G5 territory. While having small but nice additional feats, which can be worth the tradeoff of not being completely on par to G5. Maybe not a PvP choice, but in many PvE setups they are an acceptable choice.

And that's where i'd like to see most of the other tech broker things. Not best there is. But being good enough to be an acceptable alternative, not just a nice oddity. At the moment shock cannons are just that for me. If they even under best conditions, everything stacked in their favour, can't do better than the most common alternative, they just are not really worth it.

 

[lenna]

As it stands, shock cannons are useless on their own, and no one uses them.

False in the general unilateral sense - I have Shock Cannons on some of my builds and find them perfectly serviceable for PvE.

Not sure I agree that they should be plasma/absolute damage weapons.

 

[Morbad]

Hmm. Look at guardian power plant and power distributor. They play in G4/G5 territory. While having small but nice additional feats, which can be worth the tradeoff of not being completely on par to G5. Maybe not a PvP choice, but in many PvE setups they are an acceptable choice.

And that's where i'd like to see most of the other tech broker things. Not best there is. But being good enough to be an acceptable alternative, not just a nice oddity. At the moment shock cannons are just that for me. If they even under best conditions, everything stacked in their favour, can't do better than the most common alternative, they just are not really worth it.

Shock cannon are human tech broker stuff; you don't even need Horizons to obtain them, only some raw materials that can be gain via mining and standard cargo. They are appreciably better than the closest equivalent, non-Engineered human weapons (frag cannon) and are better than standard cannon in most ways except module sniping, power, and heat. If you don't have Horizons, shock cannon are some of the best weapons you can equip.

Guardian modules are vaguely equivalent to G4 with no specials, but they require Horizons and unlocking them, while not exactly difficult, is very nearly as involved as Engineering.

 

[Sylow]

Shock cannon are human tech broker stuff; you don't even need Horizons to obtain them, only some raw materials that can be gain via mining and standard cargo. They are appreciably better than the closest equivalent, non-Engineered human weapons (frag cannon) and are better than standard cannon in most ways except module sniping, power, and heat. If you don't have Horizons, shock cannon are some of the best weapons you can equip.

Guardian modules are vaguely equivalent to G4 with no specials, but they require Horizons and unlocking them, while not exactly difficult, is very nearly as involved as Engineering.

So your point is that for somebody who hasn't gotten Horizon by now, despite it having been around for years and several sales, the Shock Cannon is a great choice? It might be just me, but the unlocks require things like Vanadium, Tungsten and Technetium. I wouldn't be aware that i ever got those by space mining. About missions i am not sure, so material brokers are the way to go. Which turns it into quite some effort.

Anyway, even if you consider that way viable, it's one point of view, but i see things differently. I would rather have them as adequate weapon option also for those who bought Horizon and have access to Engineers.

Mind you, it's not about them being the allmighty new weapon. But if i go into fights were all odds are stacked in favour of the Shock Cannon and still find that it just can keep up with fully engineered MCs (and those not even fully optimized!), they at least in my eyes could use a bit of help.

 

[Daynen]

I tried the shock cannons (I think I unlocked the C2 ones simply because I had the mats and didn't have to go out of my way to do the guardian junk) and I was pleasantly surprised. The low ammo count means you absolutely should not be firing on shields, but I otherwise enjoyed them. A controllable fire rate meant controllable damage output and (if memory serves) better per-hit damage than even a C3 multicannon meant good shots really stuck. The fact that it can't be engineered is a boon and a bane, of course, but given that I don't HAVE to engineer them means I can judge them fairly against the alternatives and I think they offer an acceptable niche. Maybe a tiny, TINY bit less heat per shot fired OR a way to give them a little more ammo would be nice, but I don't think it needs much. Pair it with a couple reverb torps to drop a hefty shield generator and you've got a respectable assassin's tool. At least it's something that actually PLAYS DIFFERENT instead of just "the weapon you like, but it works on 'goids!"

Granted, this might be because as mentioned I DIDN'T have to jump through any guardian hoops to get the one I bought. I also kind of chafed at having to not only bring a ship that could equip them all the way over to the tech broker but subsequently buy them one at a time and then pay to move the guns to any other stations with ships on which I wanted them, but that's as much to do with the way ED poorly handles menus and outfitting.