the thumper is bad; everyone knows it's bad; it's especially bad since residual armor became a thing; it's arguably unusably bad and certainly less good than, say, putting an arbalest there and hoping for the best, which is itself still worse than downsizing to a railgun, and probably will continue to be so in 0.95 unless the arbalest's base damage increases to 200 and its RoF decreases commensurately, but that's okay because weapon rarity i think
it's okay for a gun to be bad but it'd be nice if it was at least cheap and bad, or if it's going to stay not-cheap it'd be nice if it was less bad at the things it is already sort of usable for - those being murdering frigates and slow-moving fighters
as such i propose the following buffs:
1) drop that OP cost, it'd be a mediocre choice at 7 right now and even with one of the buffs below it'd probably be okay at 7 or 8
and/or either
2a) bump base damage up (possibly combined with increasing chargedown between bursts), so it murders frigates more effectively
or
2b) give it a constant, fast RoF (possibly combined with lowering base damage) and raise projectile speed slightly, so it murders fighters more effectively
please sign my petition to save the humble thumper