Why are Pulse Cannons so bad?

[MoronicCinamun]

So let me preface this by saying I am on the beta branch so maybe something was changed, but the patch notes says pulse cannons are unchanged:

 

Pulse Cannons just are bad, Even with the shield penetration. At the tier of weapons I'm at (Naonite), a chain gun is doing ~8 damage a shot with dps ranging from 100 to 200, while a RARE pulse cannon has a damage of 2, dps of 25. This doesn't even scratch the hull of the ships it hits. I can get why they are weak, "you're supposed to use them to precision shoot important parts of the ship before the shields are down etc.", but this is TOO weak to do that.

 

Much better off just using weapons that strip the shields or even just a bunch of chainguns, at least then you get more versatility and synergy between your weapons.

[J4H3AD]

Be sure it doesn't have the Independent Targeting trait. "Independent Targeting but deals less damage." It drops the damage by a hefty amount just for being able to target enemies on its own. Most of the time, damage on that kind of weapon drops down to 1 or so per shot instead of anywhere from 8-10. It also depends on the roll. Sometimes you get great stats, sometimes garbage. I'd recommend getting a few before calling any one weapon type bad. With a cluster of them on an appropriately equipped ship, I managed to pick apart the AI boss relatively easily by bypassing its shields.

[Meesmaalt]

Jahad nope thats not the case mostly. pulse cannons have sucked since ive started playing which was in 0.13

max 600 dps ive seen and ive visited tons of facs in core.

while other turrs reach 30k dps

[MoronicCinamun]

Be sure it doesn't have the Independent Targeting trait. "Independent Targeting but deals less damage." It drops the damage by a hefty amount just for being able to target enemies on its own. Most of the time, damage on that kind of weapon drops down to 1 or so per shot instead of anywhere from 8-10. It also depends on the roll. Sometimes you get great stats, sometimes garbage. I'd recommend getting a few before calling any one weapon type bad. With a cluster of them on an appropriately equipped ship, I managed to pick apart the AI boss relatively easily by bypassing its shields.

 

Okay you do have a point, I thought I found more but it appears I actually found only 1 gun and somehow thought I had more whoops.

And it is indeed an independent tracking, but still is way worse than any IT gun I have otherwise, even worse rarity worse material ones.

[Gontarekt]

Pulse cannons are great, I like to mix them with Railguns, the hull penetration and ofc the pulse to get rid of the shield. Their a perfect combo. You must have just been unlucky with your find, because you can find extremely op Pulse cannons which will be better than any gun in the game. some up to about 10,000 firepower ( late game )

[Kamo]

They are weaker to balance the whole shield penetration thing... but they need to be de-nerfed a little thanks to the new Shield Reinforcer module that can counter them :).

[DivineEvil]

Pulse cannons work pretty well against shielded NPCs and should work well against player ships built from Naonite and Xanion, which doesn't have associated armor blocks and rely on shields for defenses. It's hard to tell whether their lower DPS is in balance atm, however I won't go against the increase in DPS - at the moment it feels that current damage output would only be justified if Pulse Cannons would ignore shields completely, not mentioning the fact, that Pulse Cannons do not synergize with any other weapons available.

 

My only strong complaint about them, is that I think they should take up a middle spot between Bolters and Cannons in terms of firing rate (2.0-4.0sps), as there's a substantial gap between the two. That would produce greater per-shot damage with roughly equivalent DPS and will make each shot bypassing shields count.

 

 

Also, they should look something like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qANAnmW67do

 

[Kyuhau]

Also, they should look something like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qANAnmW67do

 

 

 

I approve wholeheartly.

 

We need more weapons like this that are synced beautifully like this.

 

+1000 points for you for LoGtH