Engineers So is anyone *actually* using Thermal Conduit beams?

[Heavenly-Hammer]

Topic.

I'm trying to understand the case use for them. Weapons that really only do better damage over standard beams when you're close to or exceeding 100 degrees and does something like 20% less damage at normal operating temperatures?

Is anyone *actually* using these things on a daily basis? If so why? What compels you to choose it over a Vent beam, for example?

I ask because I rolled one and every day I ask myself why I wasted the mats. Just seems like such a troll item. Maybe if it didn't have the 20% damage reduction when firing at low temperatures I'd be cool, but that damage reduction really hurts.

 

[CATPAIN KIRK]

I'm not using them but I've tried them.

The idea was a Python using the middle hardpoint for a lightweight thermal vent beam in the centre, 2 lightweight hammers in the medials and 2 thermal conduit beams in the lateral hardpoints. The thermal vent beam is in the primary, the rest in secondary.

Once primary hits reliably, add secondary and the additional rails and beams will overheat your ship instantly and result in nice burst damage.

It actually worked, but required a lot of distributor-juggling and timing.

Besides that I use it as a mission runner and experienced heat-related cargo-scoop failures with the setup, which is about as much fun as playing a body packer with diarrhea, so I dropped it.

 

[Heavenly-Hammer]

Yea I was using mine in a similar way on my Python. It just seemed like so much effort with so little to justify it.

 

[Heavenly-Hammer]

So is that it? Nobody is using these effectively? Thought I'd ask one more time.

 

[n4p0l3on]

Now that I think about it, there should be engineering mods that alow us to perform harakiri as well, something like nuclear bomb rigged into our hull/armor.

 

[Frenotx]

The cost of being at normal temps is too high, and the reward for going over is not high enough.

 

[V'larr]

The cost of being at normal temps is too high, and the reward for going over is not high enough.

I would hate for this to turn out like Corrosive, though, and just be a pure damage boost with little in the way of downsides (I really don't see how that isn't going to be nerfed at some point)....

What if they shifted the "curve" here "left" and "down" if it were on a graph - that is, reduced the damage penalty to 10%, but also reduce the maximum damage boost by 10%, whilst also making the boost kick in sooner as temperature rises?

 

[Heavenly-Hammer]

I would hate for this to turn out like Corrosive, though, and just be a pure damage boost with little in the way of downsides (I really don't see how that isn't going to be nerfed at some point)....

What if they shifted the "curve" here "left" and "down" if it were on a graph - that is, reduced the damage penalty to 10%, but also reduce the maximum damage boost by 10%, whilst also making the boost kick in sooner as temperature rises?

Seems like it should have simply been balanced around the heat generation. If it didn't have the initial/low temp damage nerf, it would be okay. You'd only get the reward by putting yourself in danger of overheating so there'd still be tradeoff decisions to make. Running close to 100% heat means any heat-increasing weapons the enemy could put you in a very tight spot.

 

[X-Terminator]

I got a Imp Courier with Thermal Conduit Beam Gimble & Turet Beams Short Blast to work with each other. The turets really does well to get more hits more often then my Gimble just packs in all the damage on top for the extra punch. I then switch Turets off via group whenever I overheat so much. I run a Railgun beneath for when I'm either in a face off or they're standing still. It's a fun fast Ship but the FAS is still better. I do get more kills with the Python & Conda but it can become too easy and predictable unless I venture into HazRES but at high risk of losing way too much on the rebuys. So I find the smaller ships to be great fun.

 

[V'larr]

Seems like it should have simply been balanced around the heat generation. If it didn't have the initial/low temp damage nerf, it would be okay. You'd only get the reward by putting yourself in danger of overheating so there'd still be tradeoff decisions to make. Running close to 100% heat means any heat-increasing weapons the enemy could put you in a very tight spot.

You have a point. I'm just extra wary of the Engineer-exponential-buff-meta at large.

 

[CMDR MERANGO]

No I am only adding more because the of the minimum word count

 

[Soulkiller]

Frontier baffles me sometimes. They expect us to write constructive and detailed reports on issues and on suggestions but they cannot do so when designing their own game. I mean its a little ridiculous, that all the Conduit tells you that it does "more" damage the "higher" your heat is. Surely one cannot make any meaningful decisions based on "more damage as you have higher heat". So my question is how much is more at certain heat levels? If Frontier would actually inform players on the mechanics that would be amazing.
*sarcasm on* Back in my day we had a UI which told you that a weapon has a DPS of 3 out of a 5 scale with various other informations similarly presented using a scale system. Was very very useful. *sarcasm off*
Would be great if these mechanics wouldnt be hidden from the player but actually be presented by understandable numbers. If you could give me a rough formula how much the dmg increase is at various heat levels I could work with that, but not with "more", that doesnt help at all.

 

[Evoflash]

On my Annie I have a huge efficient beam and the rest overcharged MC's with incendiary and one corrosive. Typical mode of play is Beam attack followed by MC addition until hit 100% temp then back to beam only, wait for temp to drop, second attack with MCs and repeat.

I'm very tempted to try this on my beam, and use the MC's tipping in and out to maintain near 100% temp. I've got a few errands to run first but in a couple of weeks I'll give this a go. I'm not convinced I want the effort to be honest but an experiment is probably worthwhile.

 

[fus roh potato]

I've been using huge fixed long range conduits on my vette in tandem with small rails. With G5 dirty drives and OC pp, it's not hard to stay between 90 and 120% heat for CZ farming. I open by boosting at 90 degrees (or whatever appropriate direction), lay down the beams and then kick start the conduit dps with rail shots. Once you get over 70%, the dps drop disappears and it only takes a second to reach that. By the time the cap is half drained, I'm over 100% and dealing massive damage. If I spot another large ship in the distance and have low shields, I can pop a cell instead to make good use of the entire capacitor. They die before every thinking about getting within their weapon range. In fact, they die even more stupidly fasterz if I stay locked on to their pp.

The build lasts about 100 kills in a CZ before having to feed modules with AFM candies. As long as I float between 90 and 110%, the heat-module damage is minimal. For the mediums and large HPs, I tried out 3 efficient gimballed beams with conduit as well. The idea was, crank up the temps to 105% with the rails and long range huge beams, then if something gets within 1000m, switch to the efficient beams at 105%. Despite being modded to not add heat, they actually do a good job of holding 105% flat for about 10 seconds until the cap starts to fill up, but I can always just tap the huge beams to crank things up again.

The trick honestly is maintaining a good game of temp balance by draining the cap. The overall DPS with the conservative approach (90-100% heat) is a little less than the multicannon approach, but you can kill stuff before they get within their standard range (safer). You can also pluck at the almost-dead things in the distance, and in an emergency, really lay down insane dps with a cell bank.

I have an anaconda with small rails and the rest autolaoder MCs, have tried full plasma builds, longrange and rapid fire burst builds. I don't think anything beats the DPS of thermal conduit except thermal conduit plasma, assuming you can land all shots.

If I get some free time tomorrow night, I'll see if I can record a demo of the experience.