STOCK AMMO Plasma Charger Clipper vs Cyclops - 2 Heart Kill | Raw Footage | Elite Dangerous: Odyssey
117I had a ton of fun with those Salvation Shard Cannons, but then I remembered that Salvation Plasma Chargers were a thing. I've used them extensively in the past, but I've never stuck four on a ship before. So I did, and noticed that a full salvo hits HARD- like, REALLY HARD. And then I got to theorycrafting...
Follow my late-night SCIECNE! for a moment: based on the in-game stats, Salvation Plasma Chargers (SPCs) loaded with STOCK AMMO (the stuff straight from the Rearm button🙂):
- Have a base AX damage of 4.6 MJs
- Deals 78.2 MJs when fully charged
- A full salvo of four SPCs can dish out a whopping 312.8 MJs.
The Cannon website has a list of the Thargoid Interceptor Hull HP, Hardness and Heart Integrities - found here: https://canonn.science/codex/thargoid-interceptor-hull-analysis/
From their analysis, I noticed that a Cyclops:
- Has ~811 MJs for HP
- A Hull Hardness stat of ~102
SPCs have an Armor Piercing value of 110, so they will deal full damage to a Cyclops. Assuming I'm within 1 km to avoid damage falloff, 312.8 MJs is 38.7% of the Cyclops' total HP.
That last bit got me wondering - if I can fire two fully-charged salvos in rapid succession after I destroy the second Heart, putting the Interceptor at 60% HP (~486.6 MJs), I might be able to pop the Cyclops without destroying the other two hearts.
A few hours of trial-and-error and some questionable tactics later, I got my answer: YES! Though looking back through the footage, it looks like each SPC salvo dealt closer to 44% of the Cyclops' HP rather than the expected 38.7%. Not sure what's up with that yet.
The setup is a tad finicky and requires some precise aiming (hence the less-than-stellar flying here), but it seems to work best right after destroying the second heart. The first salvo won't trigger the third heart's exertion phase, allowing just barely enough time for a follow-up salvo to take out the Cyclops before it regenerates too much HP. It's also plausible to bait a Lightning Attack and destroy the second heart then, as the Cyclops won't notice the heart's been destroyed until after the Attack.
If you do attempt this, make sure your WEP capacitor is full and 4 Pips are in WEP when you destroy the second heart - you'll need ALL of your capacitor juice to pull this off.
And now I'm wondering if I can do this with the Salvation Shard Cannons...
Also, don't be me and try this with a Clipper - get a ship with better / any hardpoint convergence 🙃
Also also - I was flying mostly FA-On here due to being in relatively close proximity to the ground at Farkas Oasis. If you boost in a downward trajectory with FA-OFF, you risk having your velocity locked above your top boost speed due to gravity / game bugs. Only reliable way out of that is to switch FA-On.
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