Auxillary Compressors for CRAM. (CRAM Spam With One Gun)

[Pathos The Kosmonaut]

Premise:
Currently, there are two main issues (and one gripe) with CRAM preventing it from being as viable as systems like APS or PAC;

• Very dependent on landing shots due to slow ROF. This coupled with its slower shell speed means that CRAM can usually be completely avoided just by going fast and doing zigzags
• Any ship with a half decent LAMS will be nigh immune to your steampunk-themed compression cannons
• Due to the way CRAM is set up there's little reason to build a CRAM cannon system surpassing a certain size (other than maybe bragging rights), and it's more efficient to simply build another gun.
  

A good way to fix both of these would be to give CRAM cannons a little spammability insurance without turning it into an APS clone.
"But Pathos," you say, "How can we do that without breaking literally everything?"
I present to you...

The Auxillary Compressor Unit
(Patent Pending)

While your CRAM cannon packs a shell in its firing chamber, the A.C.U. packs an extra shell using on-system pellet and ammo resources. This allows the CRAM cannon to fire two shells in quick succession! You can add as many compressors as you'd like for maximum barrage fire. You can also set your maximum burst ROF, allowing for a single shotgun like burst or a slower, steady stream of CRAM shells. Keep in mind that your accuracy will suffer if you fire too quickly!

However, since you're packing multiple shells at once, your effective number of pellet boxes of all types is halved for each onboard compressor, resulting in doubled reload times between bursts for the same amount of damage per shell, assuming you only added one A.C.U! Plus, your CRAM will consume ammo for each shell.

Better start investing in some ammo and pellet boxes, buddy, cause you're gonna need 'em!

So here's a brief pros and cons list to this remarkable module:

Pros:

1. Burst fire for CRAM!
2. Gives an incentive to build beyond diminishing returns for single CRAM shells.
   

Cons:

1. You're effectively building for multiple CRAM's in terms of ammo and pellet boxes. They're just conveniently wrapped in a cute single cannon package!
   

[Tyr3n]

So in short building a second (third, fourth,...) gun without using a firing piece, instead one trades reload for burst?

Yeah sure, sounds fun to me.

The only point some might find unbalanced: the high alpha potential. With a single (compact deck space wise) turret you could ramp out the same initial damage as a way bulkier 2-4 barrel system, without having to put the firing piece or barrels in dangers way...hmm.

As far as I understood your post the backend of the cannon remains comparable to multicannon systems...

Just imagine a A.C.U quad turret...

Don't get me wrong, I kind of want this now. Gotta carry that to the modding thing first.