Engineers Thermal Shock as an alternative to Emissive Rounds

[Old Duck]

I run a Vulture with twin gimbaled beams, both using Thermal Vent. I'm planning on changing one of those over to Thermal Shock, as running ice cold all the time is actually a bit of hindrance (it's hard to see through the ice). I've experimented with TS in the past, and while disappointed in their ability to damage a ship above and beyond the base damage, I have found them useful for preventing NPCs from spamming SCBs.

Today a new thought crossed my mind. The hotter a ship is, the more visible it becomes on our radar, yes? So TS in theory might offer similar benefits as Emissive Rounds, yes? A hot target should stay on radar longer and at a further range. I'm not sure if this will help my gimbals track better or not. For that matter, I don't honestly know if ER helps with gimbal tracking.

I bring this up because ER seems to be a loved special effect, but I like my symmetric twin beams, and TS seems like it might be a decent substitute to the pulse laser's ER SE. Thoughts?

 

[GeoJase]

I can't really answer your question about the target heat signatures, but I'll throw you another curve ball instead..

I've always been curious about running a pair of Beams with Thermal Conduit and Thermal Shock. They seem symbiotic to me.

• Thermal Shock strikes to shields and hull impart additional heat into the target (useful for longer targeting I suppose).
• Thermal Conduit increases damage output based on heat level of the firing ship (acquired from above).

Presumably the TC beam damage would be amplified by the TS.

I'm not sure what impact that has on your own heat management though. I'd go with Long Range primary, and drop to Efficient if too much heat.

 

[fu9ar]

I've been playing with Anaconda large turret loadouts. I built three large efficient thermal shock beam turrets and then I built a load of focused scramble spectrum pulse/burst turrets. I think I like the thermal shock turrets more. I'm giving you a gut judgement from a relatively small sample set of combat engagements, but enemies seem to avoid lobbing so many PAC blasts at me when their heat is maxed out.

 

[Voracity_T]

Thermal shock will only somewhat impact your opponents heat signature but it's not an alternative to Emmisive.

Thermal shock will cause heat damage, but gives no buff to targeting, Emmisive is all targeting buff.

But in PvE..? Neither are useful.