| Hellbore Cannon
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| General Information
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Huge cannon, which fires slow-moving plasma-charged projectiles. Rounds are highly effective versus armor, and obliterate any hull structure left underneath.
A feared weapon platform, rarely deployed due to the complexity involved in manufacturing a built-up barrel that can safely fire enormous high-explosive shaped charge rounds. When such a shell impacts a target, the Neumann effect causes the warhead to propel a jet of molten metal into the target's armor, vaporizing a small area, causing hull breaches, depressurization and extensive internal damage from the spall.
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–In-Game Description
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The Hellbore Cannon is a large ballistic weapon firing high explosive shells. Due to the armor mechanics heavily favoring larger single shots over many smaller shots, Hellbore excels in the anti-armor role against large targets. It has the second lowest OP cost of any heavy weapon in the game, beaten only by the Pilum LRM Catapult. At the same time, the slow turret turn rate, rate of fire and projectile velocity leave it ineffective against smaller targets.
It is often seen with considerably larger modified range since it is often mounted on capital class ships which will also often mount Dedicated Targeting Core or Integrated Targeting Unit. At those longer ranges the normally moderate spread of automatic fire is magnified. It is notable that manually controlling the fire rate and waiting a extra second can completely negate the spread i.e. the Hellbore has 10 max spread and 10 spread reduction per second.
While the Hellbore is almost always seen on larger ships do be careful of the odd Mudskipper Mk.II packing a Hellbore.
Trivia
- This weapon's name is likely a reference to the 1992 game Star Control II, in that game the Hellbore Cannon is the strongest weapon that a player can mount to their customizable flagship. Alternately, it could be a reference to the Bolo series of science fiction novels by Keith Laumer, where the term first originated. The term also appears in the Starfleet Battles and Starfleet Commands games, in the Space Empires games, and in the Orion's Arm science fiction universe.
Animation
Change History
0.8a
- Halved rate of fire
- Reduced flux cost to 750/shot (was: 825)
- Adjusted visuals for muzzle flash, shot, and impact (more prominent)
- Overall: low dps, very high per-shot damage, very low flux cost
Template:Version 0.97a-RC11
