Single Cannons

schlampe · May 22

Single Cannons should be able to be equipped in the back. They are analogous to beam arrays for beam weapons and beam arrays can be equipped to the back. This would open new types of builds. I have played it for a month with it equipped in the back during a glitch and it was awesome.

wbaker256 · May 22

Honestly, I'd support that. Would also be nice to have Heavy Single Cannons as well. I think we only have two at present, and they're lockbox weapon type based.

questerius · May 22

I would like that.

inferiority · May 22

The whole point of cannons is that your ship is mostly facing the enemy, so having weapons that face away from the enemy seems rather pointless.

schlampe · June 2

For larger slower capital ships it doesn't make sense to have dual cannons and single cannons makes much more sense. In the show there were many encounters with ships that only had single cannons

questerius · June 2

inferiority wrote: »

The whole point of cannons is that your ship is mostly facing the enemy, so having weapons that face away from the enemy seems rather pointless.

The age old argument is that single cannons are supposed to be the cannon counterpart of the beam array and therefor they should be equip-able on both front and aft.

Aside from that, broadside cannon builds FTW.

Turrets would still have their spot in DC/DHC/Turret builds.

vetteguy904 · June 3

I'd be happy with increasing the arc to 270

questerius · June 3

vetteguy904 wrote: »

I'd be happy with increasing the arc to 270

+ front/aft?

inferiority · June 3

Increasing the firing arc should come with a reduction in damage output - balance is important.

Omni-Beams and Turrets have 360° firing arcs and thus have the lowest damage output.
Beam arrays are next with 250°; Cannons with 180°; Dual Beam Banks with 90° and finally, Dual Cannons with only a 45° firing arc.

As the firing arc narrows, the damage output increases - balance is important.

As to equipping single-cannons in the back, they'd have to end up pointing backward instead of forward. This would effectively reduce a ship to having only half the amount of weapons, and would eliminate the broadsiding strategy.

questerius · June 3

inferiority wrote: »

Increasing the firing arc should come with a reduction in damage output - balance is important.

Omni-Beams and Turrets have 360° firing arcs and thus have the lowest damage output.
Beam arrays are next with 250°; Cannons with 180°; Dual Beam Banks with 90° and finally, Dual Cannons with only a 45° firing arc.

As the firing arc narrows, the damage output increases - balance is important.

As to equipping single-cannons in the back, they'd have to end up pointing backward instead of forward. This would effectively reduce a ship to having only half the amount of weapons, and would eliminate the broadsiding strategy.

While i agree that there is a need for a balance, single cannons have been ignored for ages and low level firing modes for cannons fall short compared to those of beams due to drop-off.

An increase in arc should not cause any significant issues since SC will be a weapon type geared toward sustained damage compared to DHC and spike damage.

Dual Cannons (not Dual Heavy Cannons) also need adjustments to fill a niche.

Something with synergy with a high rate of fire. E.g. raise % proc to 15%

Edit: I mentioned low level firing modes since ships with higher firing modes like Lieutenant commander Tactical or above will endeavor to use spike damage not sustained damage.

Single cannons are also an interesting option on ships which naturally cannot use DC or DHC. These cruisers/science vessels usually do not have access to higher fire modes.

phoenixc · June 4

Single cannons used to be balanced by the fact that their per-shot fire rate is higher which would proc a lot more often than DHCs (DCs were similar but the gap was smaller, so their damage wasn't reduced as much). It has long been suggested to raise the proc percent chances on single and regular dual cannons (usually by having them set at 2.5% for DHC, 5% for DC, and between 10% or 20% for singles) to restore the balance and make procs actually meaningful, but so far suggestions like that have fallen on deaf ears.

Increasing single cannon arc to 120 degrees without changing their damage and also allowing them in rear mounts would help since it would give a narrow but doable broadside arc even for lumbering cruisers, or some combination of that and raising the proc chances.

Edit: changed wrong symbol (percent instead of degrees) to the word 'degrees'.

vetteguy904 · June 4

questerius wrote: »

vetteguy904 wrote: »

I'd be happy with increasing the arc to 270

+ front/aft?

with 270 arc would not care about fore/aft, TBH.

Single Cannons

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