PD Gauss Turret comparison

[SpikeTheHobbitMage (OP)]

I spent the better part of today firing training missiles at PD Gauss Turrets to see how they fared.  It would have gone much faster if there was method to my madness, but such is life.

Setup
Sol start, one system, no NPRs.  Planet motion is off.  No officers were assigned to any ship.
Blue Team:  Hal is defending from Earth orbit with Eagle providing sensors.
Red Team:  Tester is attacking from Luna orbit using own sensors.  Trainer is in Earth orbit.

Blue Team

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AWACS Eagle class - 700 tons     25 Crew     235 BP      TCS 14  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 1-7     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control 1     PPV 0
Annual Failure Rate: 0%    IFR: 0%    Maintenance Capacity 210 MSP
Spare Berths 3


Active Search Sensor MR23-R1 (1)     GPS 210     Range 23.1m km     Resolution 1

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposes

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TGT Hal class - 48600 tons     2009 Crew     6573.5 BP      TCS 972  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 1-118     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control 20     PPV 830.2
Annual Failure Rate: 0%    IFR: 0%    Maintenance Capacity 1691 MSP
Spare Berths 21


Quad R6/C3 Meson Cannon Turret (10x4)    Range 60,000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 12-12     RM 6    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
Twin R6/C3 Meson Cannon Turret (10x2)    Range 60,000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 6-6     RM 6    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
Single R6/C3 Meson Cannon Turret (10x1)    Range 60,000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 6    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
Single Gauss Cannon R4-100 Turret (10x4)    Range 40,000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 4    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Twin Gauss Cannon R4-100 Turret (10x8)    Range 40,000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 4    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Quad Gauss Cannon R4-8 Turret (10x16)    Range 40,000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 4    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Twin Gauss Cannon R4-8 Turret (10x8)    Range 40,000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 4    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Single Gauss Cannon R4-8 Turret (10x4)    Range 40,000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 4    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Quad Gauss Cannon R4-100 Turret (10x16)    Range 40,000km     TS: 10000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 4    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S03 96-10000 (1)    Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 10000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Fire Control S00.1 8-2500 (1)    Max Range: 16,000 km   TS: 2500 km/s     37 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Reactor 108 (2)     Total Power Output 216     Armour 0    Exp 5%

This design is classed as a military vessel for maintenance purposesMeson Cannon testing was abandoned after the second set as the chance to hit matched the Gauss Cannon R4-100.  The first fire control was set to FDF-4 for all tests.  The second fire control was a mistake and was never used.

Red Team

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DMM Tester class -    17,550 tons     719 Crew     2825 BP      TCS 351  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 1-60     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 10     PPV 200
Maint Life 6.02 Years     MSP 1006    AFR 246%    IFR 3.4%    1YR 48    5YR 714    Max Repair 105 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 2
Magazine 2000


Size 1/5s Missile Launcher (200)    Missile Size 1    Rate of Fire 5
Missile Fire Control FC61-R20 (1)     Range 62.0m km    Resolution 20
DMM5k (2000)  Speed: 5,000 km/s   End: 8.2d    Range: 3563.2m km   WH: 0    Size: 1    TH: 16/10/5

Active Search Sensor MR51-R20 (1)     GPS 2100     Range 51.7m km    Resolution 20

Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposesTester could have used 160 launchers as that is the limit of the Quad Gauss turrets, but 2000 missile magazines were easier to change load-outs.  All missiles are part of the same series to ease switching between them.  5k km/s, 10k km/s, and 20k km/s training missiles were used with the only difference between them being the engine multiplier. 

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ASB Trainer class -    225,000 tons     11509 Crew     23697.5 BP      TCS 4500  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 1-329     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 100     PPV 3000
Maint Life 1.91 Years     MSP 6583    AFR 4050%    IFR 56.2%    1YR 2329    5YR 34938    Max Repair 225 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months    Spare Berths 0   


R1.5/C3 High Power Microwave (1000)    Range 15,000km     TS: 4000 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 1.5    ROF 5        1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S01 128-2000 (1)    Max Range: 256,000 km   TS: 2000 km/s     96 92 88 84 80 77 73 69 65 61
Reactor 75 (40)     Total Power Output 3000    Armour 0    Exp 5%

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This version never fired a full 1k volley but did use over 600 guns to raise Hal's grade from 60% to 100% in one shot.  This took around 90 real-time seconds.  The original 10k gun version proved to be overkill and set a personal record for longest 5s increment at 25 minutes.

Testing
Four sets of 18 rounds each.  Trainer was used to raise Hal's grade between sets.  0%, 30%, 60%, and 100% grade bonuses were tested.  Only one type of turret and only one type of missile were used in each round.  Missiles were fired in 200 missile salvos with successful shoot-downs counted.  Chance to hit was calculated against each weapon's maximum breadth rather than actual salvo size with singe mounts rated against 40, double mounts against 80, and quad mounts against 160 hits per salvo.

Results
In the first set the Quad R4-8 Turret ranked noticeably higher against the 20k missiles than expected.  This was the only outlier.  Hit rates were otherwise consistent with in-game reported weapon accuracy.
No significant accuracy difference between single, dual, and quad turrets.
No significant accuracy difference against 5k and 10k missiles, but 20k missiles were about twice as hard to hit.
Grade bonus acted as a flat multiplier with 100% grade bonus doubling accuracy.
All R4-100 Turrets exceeded 100% accuracy against 5k and 10k missiles at 30% grade bonus and higher.  Not a single miss occurred under these conditions.

To Do
Calculate hits/tonne for each weapon.
Redo R4-8 vs 10k using 100 salvos.
Redo R4-100 with a lower accuracy fire control.
Test whether commander bonus is added or multiplied.

Attached
Series.txt - raw hit counts for each salvo.
Series.csv - % accuracy for each round.

[Michael Sandy]

Hunh.  Microwave damage improves crew grade?  That is news.  That is a much faster way of cheesing grade with no chance of accidentally destroying your ships.

Thanks for testing!

[Hazard]

Why wouldn't it?

Ship's getting fired upon, doesn't really matter what weapon.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage (OP)]

It does work, but it can be a bit fussy.  The target ship must have a sensor or fire control to damage or you get database errors and the amount of grade points per hit varies a lot from one ship to another.  My initial practice target received 0.15 GP per hit, which is why I built that 10000 gun monster, but the target I used for this experiment received 9.72 GP per hit.

I'm also not entirely sure why this got moved to Chat, I was certain it belonged in Mechanics.   

[Garfunkel]

I don't quite understand the results. Are you saying that you wanted to verify that the in-game text regarding accuracy and mechanics were actually accurate?

[Gyrfalcon]

To be fair, in most games those stats are outright lies with no bearing on reality.

[davidb86]

Results
In the first set the Quad R4-8 Turret ranked noticeably higher against the 20k missiles than expected.  This was the only outlier.  Hit rates were otherwise consistent with in-game reported weapon accuracy.
No significant accuracy difference between single, dual, and quad turrets.
No significant accuracy difference against 5k and 10k missiles, but 20k missiles were about twice as hard to hit.
Grade bonus acted as a flat multiplier with 100% grade bonus doubling accuracy.
All R4-100 Turrets exceeded 100% accuracy against 5k and 10k missiles at 30% grade bonus and higher.  Not a single miss occurred under these conditions.

I would have expected the dual and quad turrets to have improved accuracy over the single turret, why pay for the extra size if no increased accuracy?
The 5K and 10K missiles had the same accuracy because the turret tracking speed was 10K, the speed accuracy penalty for 20k missiles would be roughly half as was demonstrated.
Grade bonus operated as expected.

[sloanjh]

I'm also not entirely sure why this got moved to Chat, I was certain it belonged in Mechanics.   

It might be a little out-dated (since VB Aurora is over and things have moved to C#), but we try to keep Mechanics free for Steve to post rules changes.  In the past, there would be a snowball effect - someone would post something in mechanics, then new users would see it and start posting stuff that should go in The Academy into it, and then we'd get a thread explosion and Steve's rules posts would rapidly be pushed deep into the back pages and diluted.  The thing that kicked me over the edge for this one (I was on the edge) was your statement "if there was method to my madness" - it wasn't clear to me what the post was trying to accomplish (confirm known rules, figure out what the rules are - exactly the question Garfunkel asked) so I figured Chat was a good place to work it out in discussion.

John

[SpikeTheHobbitMage (OP)]

I'm also not entirely sure why this got moved to Chat, I was certain it belonged in Mechanics.   

It might be a little out-dated (since VB Aurora is over and things have moved to C#), but we try to keep Mechanics free for Steve to post rules changes.  In the past, there would be a snowball effect - someone would post something in mechanics, then new users would see it and start posting stuff that should go in The Academy into it, and then we'd get a thread explosion and Steve's rules posts would rapidly be pushed deep into the back pages and diluted.  The thing that kicked me over the edge for this one (I was on the edge) was your statement "if there was method to my madness" - it wasn't clear to me what the post was trying to accomplish (confirm known rules, figure out what the rules are - exactly the question Garfunkel asked) so I figured Chat was a good place to work it out in discussion.

John

Fair enough, and thank you for telling me why.  I will try to keep that in mind in future.   

I don't quite understand the results. Are you saying that you wanted to verify that the in-game text regarding accuracy and mechanics were actually accurate?

The primary purpose of this exercise was to confirm things I've read elsewhere about Gauss Cannons and turrets, and yes to confirm that the game's stated figures are accurate.  I don't know if the rules have changed in the mean time or if those posts were just wrong, but this Steve fellow has proven surprisingly reliable.   

I would have expected the dual and quad turrets to have improved accuracy over the single turret, why pay for the extra size if no increased accuracy?
The 5K and 10K missiles had the same accuracy because the turret tracking speed was 10K, the speed accuracy penalty for 20k missiles would be roughly half as was demonstrated.
Grade bonus operated as expected.

A quad turret is smaller than four single turrets, with savings varying depending on the weapon, turret speed, and armour.  With large guns like the Gauss-100 it is only a few percent, but a quad Gauss-8 is a bit more than twice the size of a single.

Missile performance and grade were as expected as you say, but I wanted to be sure.

Strictly speaking, with a high enough crew grade the Gauss-8 will dominate the Gauss-100 because accuracy above 100% is wasted and missiles have a hard maximum speed, but I still need to calculate hits/tonne and verify how commander bonuses work to find the cutoff points.

[Jorgen_CAB]

It is also going to be interesting to see how things work in C# Aurora when the Max time tracking bonus will be fixed and actually working. This might then mean that you will want your Gauss turrets to be less than full size to take advantage of that bonus as much as possible.

In the current version I generally use 85% Gauss because they are just slightly more effective per weight and can in some rare occasion make crew grade go above the 100% limit and thus make the guns more than 85% accurate.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage (OP)]

It is also going to be interesting to see how things work in C# Aurora when the Max time tracking bonus will be fixed and actually working. This might then mean that you will want your Gauss turrets to be less than full size to take advantage of that bonus as much as possible.

In the current version I generally use 85% Gauss because they are just slightly more effective per weight and can in some rare occasion make crew grade go above the 100% limit and thus make the guns more than 85% accurate.

The Crew Grade bonus will exceed 100% if a ship has more than 12100 grade points.  During testing I was able to achieve over 300% Crew Grade bonus with 10k microwave hits, but that was prohibitively expensive.  Effective accuracy, after all bonuses and penalties are assessed, cannot exceed 100% because no weapon can perform better than a 100% hit rate.  This cap can tip the balance in favour of smaller weapons if sufficient multipliers can be applied, but it is not the only factor.  The ultimate goal of this exercise was to determine if and when smaller Gauss Cannons are worth using.  I don't have enough test data to model this correctly yet so I can neither confirm nor deny your assertion, but it is possible.

I was not aware that the tracking bonus is broken, so we can add that to my To Do list.  *sigh*

[Jorgen_CAB]

It is also going to be interesting to see how things work in C# Aurora when the Max time tracking bonus will be fixed and actually working. This might then mean that you will want your Gauss turrets to be less than full size to take advantage of that bonus as much as possible.

In the current version I generally use 85% Gauss because they are just slightly more effective per weight and can in some rare occasion make crew grade go above the 100% limit and thus make the guns more than 85% accurate.

The Crew Grade bonus will exceed 100% if a ship has more than 12100 grade points.  During testing I was able to achieve over 300% Crew Grade bonus with 10k microwave hits, but that was prohibitively expensive.  Effective accuracy, after all bonuses and penalties are assessed, cannot exceed 100% because no weapon can perform better than a 100% hit rate.  This cap can tip the balance in favour of smaller weapons if sufficient multipliers can be applied, but it is not the only factor.  The ultimate goal of this exercise was to determine if and when smaller Gauss Cannons are worth using.  I don't have enough test data to model this correctly yet so I can neither confirm nor deny your assertion, but it is possible.

I was not aware that the tracking bonus is broken, so we can add that to my To Do list.  *sigh*

I know.. which was my point that crew grade can bring an 85% miniaturised gun to better performance than a 100% one because of crew grade.

Although... 300% crew grade will practically not happen in a game unless you cheat the system which I would never do, I find it rarely go above around 150% in practice usually (if I remember correctly).

[SpikeTheHobbitMage (OP)]

It seems that my reading comprehension isn't as good as I thought it was.  I apologize for the misunderstanding.

More testing
This test was 100 volleys of 100 equal speed missiles against 5xQuad 5ROF turrets.  Results are scaled to hits/tonne, with lines showing best, worst, and most common single volleys.  Additional runs were done for the lower accuracy weapons so each weapon had at least 4000 hits total.

The -10's performed noticeably better than the rest, averaging 6% above median.  The -33's did the worst at 4% below.  The -8's were the only gun type to completely miss a salvo, while the -100's best was 99/100.

Retesting the -10's against 2x speed missiles had slightly higher numbers than expected again.  I suspect the discrepancy is due to rounding when calculating low accuracy scores, but lack the patience to properly test it.

The commander bonus I read about that supposedly gives -8's an edge doesn't seem to exist.  A change or misinterpretation of crew grade bonuses is suspected.

The missile tracking bonus does not appear to affect FDF or FDF(self) modes.  Testing this will require a slightly different setup.

Turrets

Turret size scales linearly with weapon size and count with a few exceptions:
-Combined weapon size is rounded towards even when calculating gear size.  This can only happen with Gauss Cannons smaller than 1HS and causes some weirdness.
-There are gear discounts for twin (0.5%), triple (0.75%), and quad (1%) mounts.
-The minimum turret size including gear is 1HS.

Armour cost per layer is constant for a given turret size.  Each layer provides 1 HTK per gun.
Racial armour tech reduces final armour size but does not affect cost.
Armour does not cost additional RP, just Neutronium.

In the AMM role, ROF 1 Gauss turrets are inferior to other turret weapons because the reactor doesn't need gear.  ROF 2 and above are always superior regardless of reactor tech.

Super Pea-shooter
A cute little exploit is that due to rounding Single-8's don't pay for gear.  They are always 1 HS without armour.

This is the cheapest possible turret in Aurora.

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10 RP Gauss Cannon R1-8
10 RP Single Gauss Cannon R1-8 Turret

Single Gauss Cannon R1-8 Turret (1x1)    Range 10,000km     TS: 300000 km/s     Power 0-0     RM 1    ROF 5        1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1 HS, 0 HTK
1x Vendarite eachThe difficulty, of course, is getting a matching fire control.

How difficult do you ask?  Paired with a speed x16 FC (x4/FTR) a Quad-100 gets ROF hits/14.64 HS.  This turret gets ROF hits/12.5 HS and is small enough to fit on a fighter.  It still loses to fixed mounts if your fighter can go that fast, but it might be a consideration for slower units.

One layer of armour gives it 1 HTK but increases the size to 1.97 HS and adds 5 Neutronium to the cost.  Bonded Superdense Armour reduces this to 1.16 HS, again putting it ahead of the Quad-100.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage (OP)]

It is also going to be interesting to see how things work in C# Aurora when the Max time tracking bonus will be fixed and actually working. This might then mean that you will want your Gauss turrets to be less than full size to take advantage of that bonus as much as possible.

In the current version I generally use 85% Gauss because they are just slightly more effective per weight and can in some rare occasion make crew grade go above the 100% limit and thus make the guns more than 85% accurate.

The Crew Grade bonus will exceed 100% if a ship has more than 12100 grade points.  During testing I was able to achieve over 300% Crew Grade bonus with 10k microwave hits, but that was prohibitively expensive.  Effective accuracy, after all bonuses and penalties are assessed, cannot exceed 100% because no weapon can perform better than a 100% hit rate.  This cap can tip the balance in favour of smaller weapons if sufficient multipliers can be applied, but it is not the only factor.  The ultimate goal of this exercise was to determine if and when smaller Gauss Cannons are worth using.  I don't have enough test data to model this correctly yet so I can neither confirm nor deny your assertion, but it is possible.

I was not aware that the tracking bonus is broken, so we can add that to my To Do list.  *sigh*

I know.. which was my point that crew grade can bring an 85% miniaturised gun to better performance than a 100% one because of crew grade.

Although... 300% crew grade will practically not happen in a game unless you cheat the system which I would never do, I find it rarely go above around 150% in practice usually (if I remember correctly).

This is entirely situational because target speed is factored in before the cap.  It works if the turret and fire control are as fast or faster than the target, but the 100's still give better PD performance against faster ASMs due to reduced leakage.

Sorry for taking so long to reply.

[Michael Sandy]

Since the new version of Aurora4x won't have sensor range go up linearly with size, as I understand it, having small screening anti-missile sensors might be more effective than a large single sensor, particularly if you know the threat direction.  In general, I like having the point defense and sensors on ships that are an order of magnitude smaller than the heavily armored targets that draw fire.

So you could have a chain of small AMM sensor screen ships that provide very extensive warning and therefore tracking bonus.