Effective cram packing/loadouts?

[Kermit With A Gun]

Relative newbie here

I've got a cram cannon on a large ship hunter aircraft, it does the job well but I want to get any extra DPS out of it possible.

What do people find to be an effective cram packing %
&
What do people find to be a good ratio of payload compactor to frag(/damage) pellet

Payload compactor weight 48
Frag pellet weight 100
80% packing
2000mm
135 frag angle

Cheers

[Eudaimonia]

As with everything in this game, it depends. The bigger the gun is the higher you want the gauge and so on. But generally the pellet/compactor ratio is just read as reload time, which generally works best at 30 seconds +-10s

The 135 degree frag angle is a really old thing, multiple cram reworks, over multiple years, made it obsolete a long time ago. If you want to detonate on impact then something around 30 will usually be best, but if you get inside the target with some AP then you want full 180

[Kermit With A Gun]

Awesome, thanks for the help!

[direstorm]

It's worth throwing about 10% hardener pellets onto your cram, as that adds HP to the shell and makes it harder to shoot down before it hits the target. Under ideal circumstances, this also lets your shell penetrate the deck before exploding. It's also worth throwing 10-20% HE even on a frag shell since under ideal circumstances, that can leave a really big hole in the enemy ship.

The payload compactor ratio depends on your preferences, since this is an aircraft and your crams are basically bombs, you might be happier with a lower ratio of compactors because your aircraft may spend time circling beyond range before making an attack run; if you are spending a minute or two outside of combat range after your attack run you can afford a cram cannon that only reloads every minute.

Contrariwise, if your aircraft gets in close and then stays close, you might find a reload time of 10-15 seconds is more helpful, as long as your shells are still impactful enough to cause crippling damage with every strike.

Also worth mentioning is to set altitude fuses to -10 meters so that even on a near miss, you can still detonate near the craft and do some splash damage.

[Kermit With A Gun]

Thank you for all the help with this its been super useful. I am currently running 180 + pen depth and find it gives some great results.

Is there still an optimum packing % (that is < 100)? I believe there used to be but FTD seems to default to 100% as of now.

[Guardian Talon]

That is several years old, when there was diminishing returns. Now it's linear, so having less then 100% just reduces your effectiveness and you would be better off with fewer compactors.
However, if it's a bomber for example. Having less then 100% minimum would let you fire with every pass over, even if the shell isn't at it's best.