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About this mod
Some personal adjustments to the Solar Cannon item from the Creation Club to make it more suitable for heavy assault characters.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-DISCLAIMER-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
To get any use out of this file you will still need to have official content, the Solar Cannon Creation from the Creation Club. This does not bypass or otherwise grant you access to said content on it's own.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-DISCLAIMER-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
To get any use out of this file you will still need to have official content, the Solar Cannon Creation from the Creation Club. This does not bypass or otherwise grant you access to said content on it's own.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-DISCLAIMER-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
So I love the Solar Cannon. I think it's a gorgeous weapon, great firing effects, I love the (albeit brief) lore around it, the way it would theoretically work, and I'm a big fan of Shoeburglar's other work. That said, it definitely suffers from "Early Creation Club" syndrome and is comparatively a little underwhelming to the point it's more or less a much heavier Plasma Rifle with a more accessible ammunition type (Fusion Cells vs. Plasma Cartridges).
Enter The Heavy Solar Cannon. In vanilla the gun is a juicy and absurd forty pounds at maximum modifications, the Solar Cannon is (reasonably) switched to a heavy weapon and gives it a minor lore-friendly buff. Here is all this little barely-there ESL file does:
- Changes the associated perk from Rifleman to Heavy Gunner by altering the associated keyword.
- Adds 25 Radiation damage (the loading card will say one of the reasons it was scrapped was it's high radioactivity output) - with maximum Heavy Gunner and Nuclear Physicist this will go all the way up to 100 Radiation Exposure damage.
And that's it. It feels balanced around being viable up to Very Hard in a mostly vanilla game. The hip fire improvement is, I feel, rather noticeable for keeping the projectile on target and the stagger effect has some thematic flare (no pun intended) if you consider the fact you're burnt and blinded when you get hit by this baby. Obviously if you're level 100+ you may still find it underwhelming, but at that point I'd assume you have a better, probably mod added weapon that you love more than this anyway.
"Design" Logic (If you Care):
In addition to the aforementioned just loving the weapon stated above, there was three niches up for grabs in my current play-style:
- First, a single-shot weapon affected by Heavy Gunner that wasn't also explosive in nature, ex. the Missile Launcher or CC Tesla Cannon.
- Second, all of the above but an energy weapon - the Gatling Laser is certifiably boss tier but that's basically it if you're the type of person who wants to romp around as a high tech mobile tank man.
- Third, radiation based weaponry is few and far between and the ones that exist are practically a novelty of a novelty.
- Why no flat damage buff? I took into consideration that one of the original selling points of the Solar Cannon was the reliability of the ammunition type. You get 100+ Fusion Cells just in the opening scenes of the Museum of Freedom. They're cheap, plentiful, and sold everywhere and I tried to keep that in mind when tinkering with it. Doing as much damage as a missile launcher while not having any semblance of struggle for the ammunition type gets fairly cheap, and fast - at least for me. That said, as I get further on and if it seems to be lagging behind too much I may come back with other improvements - damage, fire rate, etc., for those who want to get more mileage out of the gun.
Enjoy!
Looking for improving the Solar Cannon experience without completely changing it's Perk type? Or maybe you want a Commando version instead? Check out Captainoob's Improved Solar Cannon as an alternative.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=Credits=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Bethesda for the game.
Shoeburglar and Kris Takahashi for the Solar Cannon