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Single Cannons - front and aft please
questerius
Member Posts: 8,485 Arc User
A mention of the old omni meta reminded me of the red head stepchild of the sto weapons: single cannons.
With a fire mode like CSV the larger firing arc of is no longer relevant since every cannon can get a 180 with it.
In particular this leave Single Cannons which traded a lower damage output for a larger arc at a significant disadvantage to other weapons.
Single cannons are also restricted to the front arc of ships compared to their direct rival the beam array.
In my opinion an elegant solution which could give SC a niche of their own would be to lift the placement restriction of ships and allow them to be placed both front and aft.
It would allow broadsiding with SC and CRF while turrets keep their spot for support of DC/DHC in front of a vessel.
Devs, please consider this small request which could open some nice build options.
With a fire mode like CSV the larger firing arc of is no longer relevant since every cannon can get a 180 with it.
In particular this leave Single Cannons which traded a lower damage output for a larger arc at a significant disadvantage to other weapons.
Single cannons are also restricted to the front arc of ships compared to their direct rival the beam array.
In my opinion an elegant solution which could give SC a niche of their own would be to lift the placement restriction of ships and allow them to be placed both front and aft.
It would allow broadsiding with SC and CRF while turrets keep their spot for support of DC/DHC in front of a vessel.
Devs, please consider this small request which could open some nice build options.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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I believe they meant that turrets would still be preferred in dual cannon builds, because turrets have a 360 arc and can therefore fire forward from the aft weapon slots.
They would absolutely have a place/open up new buildcraft options and the "turret" response(s) is narrow-minded nonsense(not directed at anyone specific: don't get offended).
One of the best use-cases for aft-cannons is in a tow-ship configuration. Cannons in back, turrets up front; drag your enemies behind you with inverted TBR/Risian Consoles/etc.; pelt them down with CSV, mines, and exhaust/point-blank attacks. The ideal candidate for setup is a 3/5 ship, but we only have one of them currently(that's difficult for new players to actually get). Aft Single Cannons would open the door to a new ship layout/playstyle that they would be able to build and sell, so there's even a money reason behind doing it.
The main alternative is broadsider builds. However, the firing arc would probably need to be extended very slightly so there's actually overlap for that playstyle. With that said, I still use single cannons on a couple 5/* layouts where I want a little more side firepower between strafing runs(1-2 single cannons alongside your aft turrets can let you easily chew up frigates without having to bother to point your nose at the "small fries"). 5 forward D(H)Cs is generally overkill for most things anyways - you're only trimming killtime by a fraction of a second outside of elite content(which isn't really relevant to this discussion).
Back when weapon power drain was a bigger concern, the use for aft single-cannons to NOT steal power from your dual cannons(as turrets do) made them a very appealing idea back then as well. Aft Single Cannons would also protect your butt better than anemic turrets in a typical D(H)C gunship setup too. It created an awkward situation where you'd want to run beams in back and dual cannons up front.. but at that point it makes more sense to just run DBBs infront instead.
All that said, I suspect the main reason we don't have aft cannons is that either someone in charge is just being a jerk OR(more likely) the spaghetti code would require them updating every individual single-cannon in the game and there is nobody on the team who is passionate/diligent enough to go through everything and do that.
EDIT:
For the sake of being constructive towards the future: I would be interested in the next lockbox releasing with single cannons that have a special 'AFT' mod on them. I'd be willing to eat a mod slot if it meant actually getting them.. even if only as a test case. If it goes well, add it as a crafting modifier.
I'm not sure if that would be the answer. With one weapon mod one gives up about 20% damage potential, combined with the fact that cannons still suffer more from the range drop off any such weapon would start of in a bad spot.
Definitely not an ideal route, but it's the only practical one I see (as an outsider) that doesn't involve them going through the entire weapon database.
A workaround for going through the entire database would be that Single Cannons only gain the possibility to be placed in aft slot AFTER being placed in an upgrade slot.
It's a trick previously used to replace old style equipment with updated style. Don't quite remember, was it kits?
Forward mine launchers and aft DHCs, with synergy bonus for having no two weapons of the same energy type.
Jokes aside, I have always wanted 'broadside weapons slots' for the dreadnoughts and heavy cruisers/battlecruisers. This would be an ideal fix for single cannons. It would give them a place on canon-builds.
With a 3-1-1-3 layout, one could use port and starboard Single Cannons to gain 5-forward or aft cannons in a very limited arc with a seven weapon broadside, versus beam arrays which can currently do 4 and 8. Make the broadside slots suitable for any forward-firing weapon, or even limit it by disallowing DHCs.
I remember what you're talking about.. I know Quad Cannons and some rep/lobi items were like that, but.. doing it(presumably cloning the items/bloating the database) for every single-cannon in the game is still a huge undertaking.
That is if cloning is required to make it happen. We simply do not know how the template for Single Cannons looks and how much wiggleroom there is. Firing arc and damage output are probably easy, but e.g. if the single cannons use a variation of the DBB template then opening the aft slots may be challenging.
In addition SC get little attention since their role is not the usual spike damage, but rather sustained damage.
Remember an old PVP build with SC and a Trico (sustained firepower and a torp for when the shield finally went down) which spurred me to experiment with non meta builds.
Can be slotted in the back.
Done.
I saw @avoozuul mention making CRF and CSV more effective for Single Cannons. Which changes did you have in mind?
My proposal would be to add Single Cannons to aft slots.
One experiment from long ago was the Hirogen Heavy Single Cannon with a 15Km range. Could be interesting if regular SC were given a range of 12Km.
I actually still use that long range artillery cannon on one of my builds(my only remaining tetryon build, actually). It's a bit of a special case because it doesn't suffer the same type of damage falloff that regular cannons do. Unfortunately, range is a bigger detriment for cannons than beams, so extending their range would likely cause more(widespread) problems than benefits.
That said, I would like to see the idea played with more via experimental weapons. I still want a spinal/fixed-axis artillery experimental that can fire 'concussion'/AoE shells beyond 10km. Likewise, it would be neat if "broadside cannons" were implemented as an experimental weapon(something like the gatling emitter, but sequentially fired along the port and starboard arcs from multiple firing nodes). It would probably be a fun weapon for the T6 Patrol Escort if they keep/update the tempest tailgun(allowing you to choose between an aft or broadside experimental, depending on which version you have).