A rotatory cannon with generous engineering specifications which provide for great ease of operation and reliability. Weapons officers across the professional navies of the Sector, meanwhile, curse the Thumper for rewarding poor maintenance habits.
–In-Game Description
The Thumper is a cheap, general purpose weapon, best thought of as space CIWS. With fire rate of 20/second it can quickly shred enemy fighters and missiles. While desigend as a burst-fire weapon, the ammunition regeneration is generous enough so that it remains useful even if used continuously. Finally, once the armor is stripped from enemy ship the Thumper becomes a reasonable finisher weapon.
Do note that while Thumper sports an impressive flux/damage ratio of 0.25, against shields/armor this value becomes a rather unremarkable 1.0 once you include the fragmentation damage penalties.