Why does it even have it? It’s the only weapon that does. What makes the Heavy Blaster so beastly that it needs a tracking delay while the Coil Mortar or Singularity Cannon don’t? The weapon is far too inaccurate to be of any real use at it’s stated maximum range of 4000m. It’s only truly potent at close range (2000m or closer) where the tracking delay makes it all but unusable.
Reduce the maximum range to ~2500m if you need to, but get rid of the delay or get rid of the slow ramp up in firing speed. Both together is overkill and makes using it a pain.
The speeding up part is fine, imo, you just need to fire before you have the lock on, or before the target gets in range, 15 secs to overheat and 1.5 sec to cool down is ideal for its speeding up mechanic.
You have stated what most everyone feel about it, low damage at long range, low barrel turning rate thus useless in short range.
It would seem this weapon is meant for area suppression. It’s basically a laser shotgun. If it didn’t have a slow rotation speed, one might argue the weapon would be far too effective against interceptors.
What the weapon probably needs is a longer optimal firing range. It works well for combating interceptor swarms camping beacons, but it needs a bit more range to effectively ward off targets trying to close in on the frigate’s blind spots.
It has fake range due to high scatter, you can attempt fire at stated max range but only 1-3 of the projectiles will hit resulting in little to none dmg. Target needs to be near and then you face another problem: Heavy barrels that turn slowly. Besides the Mortar overshadows this in terms of both dmg and AoE.
In my experience the weapon is only effective against frigates at close range. Beyond about 2500m you might as well sneeze at the enemy. It is useful as a suppressive fire cannon however, and it almost has the potential to be a great “don’t come near me” weapon but the slow barrel rotation means that you’re a sitting duck.
I see two potentialities to improve the use of this weapon.
Remove the barrel rotation limitation, but introduce a quicker heat up/cool down period
Keep the barrel rotation limitation, but tighten the spread so that it’s actually a usable mid range weapon.
I’d be happy with getting rid of the speeding up part of it. It’s the only thing that keeps me from actually liking the weapon.
For me it’s the opposite, it’s the only thing I like about the weapon. The slow moving turret is a nightmare though, it’s meant to be a point-defense weapon (it feels and behaves like one anyway) but you can’t for the life of you track a fast moving ship with it.
Given that it needs time to reach it’s full potential (speed up as you mention), the slow tracking speed is not required whatsoever.
The slow barrels are absolutely killing me during standoffs. It’s not so much that they are slow, but that they track the aiming reticle (pipper that leads the target automatically). I guess that’s great for people who can’t aim. Some of us, though, can aim and would prefer to trust our own skills over an auto-tracker. At ranges over 4000m, I score just a few hits and then my opponent begins to corkscrew and I can’t hit anything.
Even I know that someone who is being shot at is going to juke and jink to avoid taking sutained fire. The fact that Heavy Blasters have a projectile speed and I cannot maintain absolute control of where they are aimed makes them almost useless.
More like a minigun / chaingun. In other words we just got to play Duke Nukem Star Conflict syle! Dat big-a$$ frigate with that big-a$$ gun and balls of steel!
But yea, as it is now it’s useless, the suggestion is better than good, so +1.