After playing with the new Heavy Cavitation Cannon for a bit, I thought I'd pop over here to offer my thoughts on it. And fish for information, since Google hasn't turned up any kind of existing discussions about it.
Positives:
+A dedicated AP heavy weapon!
+A long-range successor to the ancient pre-nerf Field Gun of yore.
+Very satisfying to use. The overall feel and sound of the gun gives it the feeling of a powerful main cannon.
+Very wide firing arc, comparable to a gatling gun.
+Can one-shot armor on test-targets and common Alliance enemies (on normal).
+Shockwave does a good job of damaging or disabling multiple components.
Negatives:
-You're going to have to bring something else for hull. Justified, as it is a dedicated AP weapon after all.
-That charge time. I timed it as 12 seconds to auto-fire, 8 seconds with greased rounds.
-Low overall DPS due to said charge time, this could potentially lead to problems if it encounters armor it can't one-shot (lochnagar to the rescue?) or drop with an uncharged follow-up.
-Slow traverse rate. A fair tradeoff for that firing arc, in my opinion.
Unknown:
*I have not tested the gun in PvP, so I do not know how it performs against the various player ships. Anyone got some experience they want to share with that? Actually now that I think of it, I haven't checked if any of the new guns are available in PvP. This may be a moot point.
*I do not know how the gun does on higher difficulties. I can see some potential for it falling behind if enemy armor scales to the point that it can't one-shot them, as 8 or 12 seconds is plenty of time to repair.
*The lightning gun has a mechanic where its damage ramp-up finishes quite a bit before the gun auto-fires. Does the cavitation cannon do the same thing? The firing animation doesn't seem to indicate this (the gun auto-fires as soon as the pistons finish retracting), but if it is the case that means the actual charge time would be shorter than it appears.
What's your opinion on the new Heavy Cavitation Cannon? Good, bad, noob-trap? Will it hold up on higher difficulties or PvP, or will its charge time be its undoing? Which ships/weapons/ammo would pair particularly well with it?
