Thermal Shock, no real heat meta?

[David Findley]

First of all I want to say I think moderate heat meta is an excellent idea because it forces pilots to consider their ship build and combat tactics with added complexity.

So I run a t-10 with 6 long range burst lasers with thermal shock. I don't know how much this is overkill, but I imagine it negates enemy heat-sinks and is a nasty surprise when they try to pop a SCB.

...But to my dismay, heat damage to modules seems very negligible. The idea is I should force them to limit their capacities (like NPCs do,) so they can't perma-boost and shoot rails/PAs without repercussion. But in my experience, they just push through it (repeatedly) without real consequence. It seems that there are no real repercussions for heat going up to 150%, 200%, 300%... But anyways, I'm left wondering if thermal shock warrants the 20% damage reduction. (Fandom says 10%, but coriolis says 20%, and I don't know who to trust?)

An example, hunter-killer FDLs (PAs, rails,) might engage me via interdiction and fight for prolonged periods of time, and by the end of the fight I will see modules just only entering ~80% mark when I can expect they will start to experience intermittent module malfunctions. This is around the END of the fight when I need to start considering retreat. And this, the FDL should be an extremely heat inefficient ship with an extremely high-heat build.

To be fair I did recently get interdicted by a Corvette, and by the time I ran away (because he was all projectiles and I am geared against thermal attack, and projectiles are low-heat which counters my thermal shock...) but as I was retreating I noticed his modules were on the verge of the 80% mark when they might begin to malfunction. He must have popped a couple SCBs or something? I slightly regretted the retreat at the last minute, maybe I could have forced him out instead... But on the other hand if he broke through my shields my hull/modules probably would have been toast in 20 seconds...

FINALLY I will leave a note that in an extreme thermal-shock build such as this, where it should have most impact, I still can't actually kill anything because my top boost speed is ~279 and literally almost anything can escape me within seconds, (including my ~6k weapon range,) ..so.. I am hoping for another CZ CG, which I thought was great fun (despite the fact I died more than I killed,) because I think that is when my boat will shine the most, if I can engage from maximum distance. Probably still couldn't actually kill anything, but more easily force retreat. Also, carrying a single chaff launcher single-handedly defeats the whole build. ......unless it is burnt out......... which I don't think it really is.....

...If a slightly improved heat meta could force pilots to reconsider tactics and ship builds, whereas now they simply push through it without real consequence, I think that would be ideal.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Heat was nerfed into the floor ages ago, not to mention PvP ships running hot to get the +60% damage bonus via thermal conduit.

 

[Starman 1966]

NPCs completely ignore module damage unless it's down to 0%. E. g. they are always happy to wake out any time with the FSD down to 2% integrity. Likewise they are almost completely immune to scramble spectrum.

 

[Morbad]

Thermal shock and thermal cascade effects were both nerfed multiple times, which rendered the former trivial by the end of 2.1 and the later mostly useless by 2.4.

On top of that, a more recent change dramatically reduced the rate at which high temperatures damage internal modules. There was a bug where module damage was being multiplied by the number of CMDRs in an instance and instead of just addressing the underlying issue, they implemented a blanket reduction in the damage from high ship temp. This fixed the issue in heavily populated instances, but also made ships almost functionally immune to high temperatures in lightly populated ones.

Heat and malfunction attacks work normally against NPCs. NPCs just don't care, because there is no reason for them to care. There isn't any reason for CMDRs to care either...inexperienced ones occasionally panic at all the little fires and warning alarms, but it's a purely psychological thing.

I do think they went too far with these changes. The original state of thermal attacks turned them into a meta that had to be built around to survive, but the mechanisms were all toned down so much that they became a waste rather quickly. Barring extreme niches, they may as well not exist. Indeed, if you have thermal load attacks, it's more likely to help your opponents by feeding their thermal conduit PAs or beams than it is to harm anyone.

 

[Danieros]

Combat times vary a lot.

I remember trying out a thermal conduit build on PvE since it has an absurd damage multiplier. You can use it for a good 10~15 minutes of almost constant combat before you start getting malfunction issues, so it's enough even for a high CZ. That speaks a lot about how negligible the state of heat is right now.

That is enough for most combat situations. If it isn't enough, well, you can have a FC very nearby to fix you up. I didn't have a FC back then, and I needed to keep going for hours and would be switching systems a lot (Powerplay undermining), so I shelved the idea back then. I should give it another try now...

On the other side, you also have another problem though. If the thermal shock/cascade effect is too good to threaten even a ship that isn't running hot builds or the 1~2 minutes long combat against NPCs, then it's going to hard counter anything that runs remotely hot in the 5~10 minutes of a single PvP combat can take. Hard counters aren't very fun...

 

[cmdr Ramius007]

I would like to see heat matter again, pvp is too dependant on thermal conduit dmg bonus without real problem associated with overheating, in some extreame cases it's possible to beat full gimbal multis medium ship in another chafless meta build, even dispersal effect on plasmas is often traded for another TC plasma, even efficient one!

 

[Trollymctrollerson]

I dont think thermal shock stacks does it? It used but i think when it got nerfed into the ground, they removed the stacking of multiple TS weapons. Someone else might correct me though.

 

[David Findley]

I'd certainly like to know. I've got 6-7 of them, largely based on heresay that they do indeed stack, (not past a certain marker, but in terms of speed, ie perhaps completely negating a heatsink maybe?)

 

[Sucette]

They are caped at 90% heat anyway and you're just giving free tc to your opponent.
And yes, tc meta have almost no variety in builds, because this meta is dependant of a single experimental rulling them all, so beside Tc, there is nothing.
But the state of combat is fine according to fdev.

 

[Trollymctrollerson]

The thermal shock seems to only really be effective when the target is already overheating from my experience using it on a multi cannon. If the target is doing something like hot banking an SCB or silent running, the thermal shock will exacerbate their module damage. I'm not sure its very effective against a ship under normal conditions though.

 

[Crimson Kaim]

Heat weapons in their current state should only be considered as a support/utility weapon. I use one on my flechette bomber, which syngerized with heat damage as extra module damage can make out the last 1% integrity before a critical module malfunctions or gets destroyed.
As a main weapon, they are not to be recommended for the reasons previously mentioned in this thread.

However, what many people don't see (literally) is the effectiveness against silent/cold builds. I frequently use silent builds as, especially in chatic wing fights, hiding your signature denies startegic information and you can freely deal damage or cause chaos while the opponent is wondering what the hell is going on.
Ofcourse, emissive munitions completely negate that effect but as soon as the effect vanishes, the signature does too.

Heat weaponry effectively causes the silent target to manually disengage from silent running or use a heatsink (which is precious ammunition). Even when the effect ends, the added heat must first be radiated before being able to go into silent running without taking heat damage.
And since silent running magically increases heat generation by a factor of 10, so does it increase the incoming heat damage from heat weaponry. Meaning heat weaponry is super effective against cold targets and thus.

But it's still inferior to the emissive effect as it just blantly overrides the signature with its max level, regardless of heat/silent running of the targeted ship.
Heat weaponry merely increases the likelyhood of the ship taking heat damage and as I mentioned before, should only be used as support/utility weapon to supplement a build idea.