Theory on the Kiloton Cannon Bug

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I have stated that a theory why Kiloton shells don't prime straight after they leave the barrel. If they were to, they would run the chance of damaging the ship they were fired from. This may not be so much of a deal for small craft, but the Ranx use in on a large Dreadnought. The main purpose for it is to clear out enemies from a distance, but should the enemy get that close, there is a severe chance of, say, a Sandstorm battlepod running in front of the barrel if the Kiloton Cannon, the shot priming as soon as it leaves, and exploding pretty much as soon it gets out of the barrel, causing damage to pretty much everyone. So Ranx Imperial Space Fleet, or whatever is using the Kiloton Cannon has extended the fuse a bit. My question: does this whole scenario make sense? And for the Devs, why does it actually do that?

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There's a value called "failsafe" that stops a fragmenting missile from doing so until a certain number of ticks after it's been fired. That's set to 10 on the kiloton cannon, so it won't arm itself until after the first third of a second after launch.

In terms of why.. Mostly it's a mechanic designed to allow getting very close to something like the ranx dreadnought without it being able to hit you over and over with the main gun. At longer range you can (nominally) dodge a shell, at short range you can attack without worrying about that but you can't dodge the primary projectile damage or the secondary guns. Whether this is tuned correctly is another matter and more subjective.

So yeah, not a bug - it's that way intentionally.

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The Ranx Dreadnought armour is Transuranic, yes? HP of 400, and thermo resist of 75. The Kiloton Cannon shell fragments deal about 2-9 thermo damage, which would be pathetic if not due to the fact that there is 48 of them or so, according to the wiki. I imagine that it would cause a dent.