Large Combat Lasers

[jedi72it (OP)]

I have a question:

Where is the utility in using a 30 cm / X-Ray Laser (range 1. 680. 000 km), if i can mount an abysmal range beam fire controller (nearly 200. 000 km) ?

Is a beam fire control mandatory for every laser?

I would like to produce a long range, and fast, laser ship, since i don't have too much sorium/oil.

[Theokrat]

The longer-ranged laser will do more damage at the maximum range of the beam fire controll, so there is some utility in using large lasers even for a relatively bad firecontroll.

You can assign multiple lasers to one FC, but you do need at least one on the ship.

[jedi72it (OP)]

Thanks for your feedback Theokrat.

I guess i will research a couple more levels of beam fire control then. . . while i scout for the Jump points. . .   

[jedi72it (OP)]

I downloaded the wiki beam fire chart, and another thing bugs me now:

an 80cm Gamma ray laser could reach 18 mil km, but maximum beam fire control will reach 1. 4 mil km only. . . isn't it a bit too much overkill?? I mean, with a Gamma ray laser i will only be able to fire on a target at no more than 1. 4 mil km away??

Or will i be able to target and hit (maybe with a penalty) to targets at 15 and more km away?

[Theokrat]

I downloaded the wiki beam fire chart, and another thing bugs me now:

an 80cm Gamma ray laser could reach 18 mil km, but maximum beam fire control will reach 1. 4 mil km only. . . isn't it a bit too much overkill?? I mean, with a Gamma ray laser i will only be able to fire on a target at no more than 1. 4 mil km away??

Or will i be able to target and hit (maybe with a penalty) to targets at 15 and more km away?

No you would only be able to hit anything at 1.4m km (and even that quite seldomly). A 30cm X-Ray Laser would extend to that range, so one might wounder why its useful at all. But Laser damage drops of lineraly until it hits 0 at the maximum range, so the 80cm Gamma Ray would still be able to do 92% of its damage at that range, while a 30cm would only do 16% of its inital damage (which would be smaller to begin with).

Also, if you are laging behind in FCs you might want to consider carronades. Punny range, but very good initial damage.

[jedi72it (OP)]

Alright, now i see why they are used at very limited range, and it is logical.

[Bremen]

Fire controls are limited to 1.4m km because that's how far light travels in 5 seconds.

There are still advantages to using big lasers, though. In addition to the previously mentioned damage reduction due to range, remember that because of how armor works a 20 point hit is better than 4 5 point hits. An 80cm Gamma laser is probably going to put a hole in nearly anything and damage internal systems, whereas at max range the 30cm would probably only be sandpapering armor.

Alternately, you could use a lower wavelength laser to reduce the max range, and save on cost. An 80cm far Gamma Ray Laser costs 3,888 for 20mkm range, an 80cm visible light laser costs only 648 and hits to 3.36mkm. By comparison, a 30cm Far Gamma Ray Laser costs 1469 for only a range of 2.88mkm, and does a lot less damage (All numbers with capacitor recharge rate 25).

[Nathan_]

does wavelength/range effect laser strength dissipation due to range? will that visible light laser hit for the same damage as the far gamma ray laser at range. If it does then the highest level wavelength is still valuable for full power hits.

[metalax]

Yes it makes quite a difference. Consider the two following otherwise identical lasers, with the increment for the damage at range set at 140,000km.

Code: [Select]

80cm Infrared Laser        Range 1,400,000km  12  6  4  3  2  2  1  1  1  1
80cm Far Gamma Ray Laser   Range 1,400,000km 143 72 48 35 28 24 20 18 16 14

[LoSboccacc]

does damage chart stop falling at 1?

if is that so, a tiny puny long range laser with the smallest damage gives a bit advantage in damage cost (as you can carry more)

[metalax]

Lets consider for a tim-array assuming that you are going to maintain maximum range.

The smallest laser that can reach out to the max distance is the 25cm size extreme x-ray laser.

Code: [Select]

25cm C16 Extreme X-ray Laser (1)    Range 1,400,000km Power 16-16 ROF 5           10  5  3  2  2  1  1  1  1  1
80cm C25 Extreme X-ray Laser (1)    Range 1,400,000km Power 168-25 ROF 35        107 54 35 27 21 18 15 13 12 10

The 25cm lasers are size 8 while the 80cm are size 25 so you can fit three smaller lasers for each 80cm laser. The smaller lasers wil require almost double the reactor output to charge 48/5sec compared to 25/5sec, but the slight space saving on the three smaller lasers will allow for that without increasing ship size. The smaller lasers are also significantly cheaper 576 each compared to 2916 for the 80cm.

The smaller lasers will be able to fire 21 times for each shot of the larger laser. Assuming reasonable hit chance this means that the smaller lasers will outdamage the larger over time, if you are maintaining maximum distance. However this is ignoring the large lasers primary advantage, causing sufficient damage in a single shot to penetrate the armour belt and cause damage to internals with each shot on anything that is light to moderately armoured.

[Dutchling]

How good are those small lasers compared to kinetic weapons? If I read your post correctly they serve the same purpose (shooting lots of small stuff at the enemy).

[metalax]

The primary difference is range. Even with maxed out tech gauss guns remain short ranged, and if you do have to close the distance to the range where gauss guns can reach your lasers will be doing far more damage, as gauss only does one point of damage at any range. You will get more shots with the gauss however for the same tonnage dedicated to weapons/reactor space.

[LoSboccacc]

I've found gauss to work wonders on fighters, you can keep them in PD mode until the enemy is dry and then consume them out of the space. a small fleet of 32 fighters with gauss can quickly kill by papercuts bleeding.

[jseah]

Gauss fighters?!  =/

I have never got energy weapon fighters to work.  They tend to end up getting swarmed under by clouds of AMMs fired in offensive mode. 

I might see meson FACs in jumppoint defence and fleet PD roles, but fighters!  =(