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[Elshama]

There is a topic about the Monitor that got me thinking. Why do we try to make the most efficient builds as possible? What does that even mean? I commented that my Monitor (Which I am not using at the moment) just has two mortars on it. Why did I do that because mortars have the same re-fire rate as the built in flak. I do not want to pilot it and this should make the ai use it's system better. Yet other people had different, interesting, and good ideas of what else you can fit the monitor with. Then I see the Gigacannon is getting a buff and I thought that was great as I already like the Gigacannon. I like it on the Ziggurat, Champion, and the New ship coming out but I also like it on the Paragon. The Ziggurat and Anubis can change the wait time for the cannon to fire while the Champion can make it more effective. I made a comment about how I thought it was great but I got feedback that the Giggacannon is not so great and I thought why? Maybe I am just accepting it for it's niche and thinking what role can it play. That is why I think it is great for the Paragon.

Giga Paragon

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I had a Paragon before this and it looks something like this

Average Paragon

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This Paragon does a decent enough job and I can't remember a time it ever got disabled or destroyed. But once I got Gigacannons I realized that they would do a better job and they do in fact preform better. So why do people think Gigacannons are not that great and why they may think that this build in turn is also not that great. Maybe because it has low DPS. Enter the Dakka Paragon

Dakka Paragon

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All it needs is built-in extended mags and it can fire till it is over fluxed. And there in lies the problem. The Paragon is not supposed to be a gun with no shields it is meant to be both a anvil and hammer, a shield and sword. It is why I just put to mortars on my Monitor. The Monitor is a shield and when it is done protecting then it can "shield bash" the enemy but it is not a sword. Same for the Paragon it needs it's shield. It bides it time and then strikes back. I do not like weapons on my Paragon that eat all of the flux it has. Am I looking at this wrong and what is efficiency when it comes to this ship build. Anyone please help me figure this out!?

[Phenir]

It's disliked because:
Low dps.
Somewhat slow projectile and a wind up making it a bit unwieldy to use.
Huge cost to fire per shot meaning ships with high flux can't fire it.

The thing about 4 autopulse paragon is it can dump all that damage and then sit in fortress shield (or not if it isn't under threat, not much is going to survive 4 autopulses), vent off the soft flux and regenerate ammo, and it still does more dps than the gigacannon. That autopulse paragon lacks armor pen though. It could use some reapers or phase lances or maulers or... a gigacannon or two to crack armor/force overloads.

[PixiCode]

Do not cite the Deep Gigagon to me, Refitter. I was there when it was written.

The reason why people dislike current Gigacannon is it has so little 'right' going for it. It has the performance of a budget large weapon (low dps, efficient) with the OP cost of an expensive large weapon (tachyon lance, plasma), in a weapon class that is dominated by very powerful weapons (autopulser, plasma, HIL, Tachyon). It's also very clunky to use, the turn rate on a turret is abysmal since its 'firing turnrate' activates during its long charge-up, leading to many missed shots if it's not a 1v1 scenario. Hardpoint gigacannon has it even worse. It's not even a good choice on the Ziggurat compared to your other options, since the DPS is so low and your flux budget on the Zig is so high. It doesn't mean GigaZig is a bad ship, just that GigaZig is not as powerful as TachyZig or PlasmaZig or even AutoZig.

I used to be a huge proponent of gigacannon Paragon when gigacannon was first released, but not as a 4 gigacannon paragon but instead as a 2 gigacannon 2 plasma paragon. The overall idea is that gigacannon is very flux-cheap and flux efficient with a long refire time to combo with fortress shield, so that should mean it, on paper, basically replaces autopulser for the 2x auto 2x plasma Paragon.

Unfortunately, testing showed a gigantic flaw for AI use that has made gigacannon basically be a huge waste, particularly the hardpoints but this likely fits for the turrets too, though probably to a lesser extreme. As far as I've observed the AI driving the Paragon does not care if it will hit an enemy when it shoots its gigacannons, only that an enemy is currently in the path of the gigacannon shot when it clicks fire. The charge-up is so long that this means it's extremely likely to just miss. In the hardpoint's case, constantly missing if there's more than one enemy nearby. Which is probably very likely if you're using a Paragon.

Player piloting can avoid this issue and if you do that, Gigacannon is a perfect 'support' weapon for better large energies on ships that have more than 1 converging large energy weapon.

I might pick up the Gigagon again after the update, but this time use it on the turrets instead of the hardpoints. I was hesitant to do that because of the low DPS, but with the increased DPS next patch maybe it'll be a good option in the turrets. It should miss less often there compared to the hardpoints.

[Void Ganymede]

Gigacannon's the energy Hellbore Cannon.

On flux-strained ships with more mounts than they can fill, it's a solid way to convert flux to damage. However you need to ensure hits (Salamanders, Claws, big game hunting) pressure shields while it's recharging (emp+kinetics, light explosive+heavy kinetics, sustained rocket spam) and maintain the engagement within its effective range long enough to secure a kill. (Speed, Claws/Salamanders, being horribly outnumbered.)

Some ships just can't get all that going, like the Hellbore Dominator's hardpoints don't quite get full value.

[BigBrainEnergy]

When I see the gigacannon miss it's usually because it starts firing as soon as the weapon's line of fire overlaps with the target's shield radius. This means that if the target drops its shields or is moving in the opposite direction, it's guaranteed to miss. If it acted more like an anti-armor weapon and waited until the line of fire overlapped with the ship's hitbox and NOT the shield hitbox then it would work better.

To see what I'm talking about, try putting gigcannons in the turret slots of a paragon. Once it gets close enough to shoot, they start turning forward and will fire right at the outer edges of the onslaught's shield arc, which usually causes both to miss.

[PixiCode]

Gigacannon's the energy Hellbore Cannon.

On flux-strained ships with more mounts than they can fill, it's a solid way to convert flux to damage. However you need to ensure hits (Salamanders, Claws, big game hunting) pressure shields while it's recharging (emp+kinetics, light explosive+heavy kinetics, sustained rocket spam) and maintain the engagement within its effective range long enough to secure a kill. (Speed, Claws/Salamanders, being horribly outnumbered.)

Some ships just can't get all that going, like the Hellbore Dominator's hardpoints don't quite get full value.

I plan to make an ir pulser HMG Gigampion once the next patch comes out. Likely with IPDAI S-mod + PD ELITE so that the ir pulsers range match better with the gigacannon.

[Bungee_man]

If you're asking why people don't like when a weapon is weaker than alternatives, even if it's still usable, weapons can be fun without being optimal, but nonetheless, balance is something to aspire to, so that casual players can enjoy all of the weapons instead of just sticking with the ones that aren't harder to win with than all the others.

As for the reason it's weaker than alternatives:

 - On the Paragon, the ability to hit distant targets with interlocking weapon arcs is a huge advantage. As a shield, the ability to deter and weaken approaching enemies from extreme distance is invaluable. It also has the flux pool to support heavy weapons, and its ship system functions similarly to Phase Anchor, in that it lets you vent excess soft flux safely, vastly increasing your effective flux cap. You want high-flux weapons, you can afford them.

 - On the Champion, defenses are fairly weak, and speed is fairly low. You don't really have the means to close in on a serious enemy and kill it. You want range (though I'm not sure how to properly build a Champion to be good, admittedly).

 - On the Ziggurat, tach lance is the be all end all of non-Omega weapons. A constant beam of instant death, supplemented by needlers if need be, recharging and venting soft flux in phase to avoid any meaningful downtime. It's good with any large energy, but GC is one of the weaker options on it.

 - On the new ship, the number of slots and the flux limitations are tailor-made to make it viable. Some people find this contrived. Personally, I like it, and think it makes for an interesting ship, but they're not wrong in saying that a weapon being (potentially) good on the Anubis does not mean it isn't underpowered everywhere else.

[Wyvern]

Gigacannon's the energy Hellbore Cannon.

...Except that the Hellbore is actually good, and the gigacannon... isn't.

For me, personally, it's the charge-up time that really kills it. In a hardpoint on a player-piloted ship, the gigacannon is... vaguely okay-ish, I guess? But if you give it to the AI in any way (turret, or hardpoint on non-player ship), it just misses way too much.

And even for a player-controlled ship, why would I install a gigacannon when I could, for the same OP cost, instead install the vastly superior tachyon lance?


For an AI-controlled Paragon, specifically, you're best off with burst-firing weapons: Heavy needlers, tachyon lances, plasma cannons; anything that, when you click fire, does damage and then keeps doing damage for a bit. This is because turning fortress shields on stops the guns from firing... but any burst-in-progress will still finish. Ammo-based weapons like the autopulse laser are a good second-choice though.

[Doctorhealsgood]

Wonder if the upcoming AI fixes will help out the gigacannon

[PixiCode]

I tried out the gigacannon paragon again before the patch, but this time swapped the plasma into the hardpoint and the gigacannon into the turrets. Did pretty well actually, I still saw it miss like half of its shots (lol) but it managed to deal about as hull damage as the 2 plasma cannons did. They dealt 4x less armor damage (?) and 2x less shield damage, though.

though the next sim test I did with the same Paragon, the plasma cannons did like... 10x the total damage. So, well. Yeah. Mario Party MISS.mp4

[Nettle]

Average Paragon

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The butt ion pulsers go crazy. Also, in this build you should probably use plasma cannons in forward hardpoints, while lances can be moved further back just fine.

[Wyvern]

Average Paragon

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The butt ion pulsers go crazy. Also, in this build you should probably use plasma cannons in forward hardpoints, while lances can be moved further back just fine.

That's certainly a better configuration for dueling against single enemy capital ships, but for a general purpose, I find it better to have the plasma cannons in the turrets and the lances in the hardpoints: lances in turrets will miss or partially miss a lot, especially against lighter enemy ships.

[BigBrainEnergy]

That's certainly a better configuration for dueling against single enemy capital ships, but for a general purpose, I find it better to have the plasma cannons in the turrets and the lances in the hardpoints: lances in turrets will miss or partially miss a lot, especially against lighter enemy ships.

I find the opposite. Plasma projectiles are too slow to hit faster ships while tachyon lances don't have much of an issue.

[Wyvern]

If find the opposite. Plasma projectiles are too slow to hit faster ships while tachyon lances don't have much of an issue.

I found this observation to be really weird, so I did some testing. Conclusion: If you're running with advanced turret gyros and no maneuverability boosts (and no advanced optics) on a Paragon, then lances in turrets will hit pretty consistently. Otherwise it's hit or miss; sometimes the lances will get on target and stay there, and sometimes they'll manage to consistently miss with literally every shot.

Plasma cannons, by comparison, are... hm. Maybe 50-70% accurate against enemy frigates? But it's a much more reliable failure mode; even in the worst case you usually still get at least one shot on-target out of three, and you never get them just missing every shot because they couldn't keep up with the Paragon's turn rate.

I almost always have maneuverability boosts on capital ships, and often multiple maneuverability boosts; it makes a big difference in whether or not you can get your hardpoint weaponry on target. So that probably explains why you have a different experience there.

Edit: There's one other critical difference in weapon behavior, here: Plasma cannons get more accurate as the enemy ships get larger/slower. Tachyon lances in turrets... don't. That occasional "consistently missing the enemy because the Paragon is currently turning" thing? That can happen when targeting frigates... and it can happen when targeting cruisers.

[SCC]

The only insight on this I can offer is that my Paragon with elite Helmsmanship and gyros has plasmas on the hardpoints and tachlances on the turrets and TLs did about 50% more damage than plasmas. I don't know if swapping big guns would make a big difference, I didn't need to tweak the design thus far. Still, in AI hands (and with a level 7 officer - me) it's still about as good as my Radiant, which is rather good I'd say.