The changes we’re proposing are:
- Thermal diminishing returns cut in later but much harder, previously they would start at 60% and prevent you going over 190%, whereas they will now start at 80% and prevent you going over 120%.
- The heat effects of Thermal Shock are doubled.
- The heat effects of Thermal Cascade are 25% more than they are on live (the previous beta heat nerf is being reversed, and then a small buff), combined with a slight nerf to PackHounds to stop them being so superior to other missiles.
The effects that this should have are slightly different depending on how many thermal weapons you use compared to the size of your target ship.
For Thermal Shock:
- If you use one or two smaller weapons, they’ve gone from minimal effect to being able to cause some heat damage if the defender uses hot equipment.
- If you use 2-4 appropriate sized weapons for the ship, you should be able to hold them between 100-110% heat, taking steady slow module damage.
- If you stack a full heat loadout, you can hold them near the 120% cap doing slightly more heat damage.
How the defender acts will obviously affect this. Activating hot equipment will increase the damage they take, but it should never become game-endingly high and the benefits of stacking more than a handful of these weapons are probably lower than the direct damage you lose.
Missiles with Thermal Cascade behave a little differently, it’s relatively easy to spike someone up to 120% heat briefly with a volley, but a full alpha strike won’t do anything more, you’ll generally get better results from a steady stream of fire (which is also more able to beat the newly improved ECM defences).