Weapon System Descriptions

[welchbloke (OP)]

I know that, in the past, when the forum was moved, some of the early posts regarding Aurora were lost.  I'm currently trying to get my head around the mechanics of the various weapon systems.  I've found discussions on missiles, HPMs and GCs but none of the other weapon systems appear to be covered in any depth.  Would someone have a series of descriptions they could post pease?

Welchbloke

[Brian Neumann]

A short description of the different weapons.

Lasers:  Long range energy weapon.  Damage drops off with range.  There is a seperate tech track for the range multiplier and the size of the laser.  Final range is the base damage of the laser times the multiplier.  Larger weapons are significantly longer ranged.  Limited by the fire control as to the actual maximum range obtainable.  Lasers can be mounted in turrets for point defence use.

Meson's:  Meson's only do one point of damage per shot, but it ignores shields and armor.  Same setup as lasers for the range and size, but the actual range on the meson is 1/2 that of the equivilent laser.  Meson's can be mounted in turrets for point defence use.

Torpedo:  This is a fairly long range energy weapon.  All torpedo's have the same range for a given tech.  There are two tech tracks.  One for the range of the torpedo, and one for the damage value.  Thier damage is constant over thier entire range.  A laser will hit harder at close range, but be weaker at long range.  I often find that large torpedo's are not really usefull now as you can get a better damage over time with smaller faster firing weapons.  The maximum range of a torpedo at any given tech tends to be slightly less than the fire control range.

Railguns:  Each time a railgun fires it actually gets four independant shots.  The range is based on the damage of the weapon times the range multiplier.  In general the railgun is cheaper to reasearch but does not have as many rungs in the tech ladder.  For a given size a railgun is also much shorter range than a laser.  A 10cm laser has a base damage of 3, a 10cm railgun has 4 shots with a base damage of 1.  While the total damage is probably higher than the laser, it will have a shorter range and needs to hit multiple times.  While it can not be mounted in turrets for point defence, it actully is fairly good in the early part of the game for point defence because of the 4 shots at a time that it gets.

Gauss Cannon:  Mainly a point defence weapon.  Only does one point of damage but gets multiple shots per turn.  There is a seperate tech line for range and number of shots.  The maximum is 10 shots every 5 seconds.  Unlike all of the previous energy weapons the gauss cannon do not require a power plant or capaciters. It always has a 5 second cycle time.  It can be mounted in a turret for point defence use.  Also unlike other weapons when in the design window you can choose to make a smaller gauss cannon that loses accuracy.  For 100% accuracy you need a 6hs weapons system.  A 3hs gauss cannon has it's base accuracy (from fire control) reduced in half.  A minimum size gauss cannon only has a 8% chance to hit but is small enough to be mounted in a fighter.

Microwave:  The microwave weapons work like lasers, except they only effect electronics.  They have a chance to destroy radar, fire controll, electronic warfare systems and passive sensors.  There is a line of tech to protect against this but it has to be built into the target systems from the start.  Other than that this works the same way a laser does with one exception, it can not be mounted in a turret.

Carronade:  Basically a large short range laser.  Cheaper to reasearch than the laser but without the range multiplier.  it works exactly like the same size laser except it's range multiplier is always a 1.  Carronade's can not be mounted in turrets.

Those are all of the current energy weapons.  There are also advanced versions for some of them.  You have to find them in ruins.  They work like the standard versions but with enhanced capability.

Advanced lasers do more damage for the same size and power requirements.  This also translates to better range as the base damage is higher.

Torpedo's also do more damage for a given size and power system.  Thier range remains the same however.

Railgun's get one additional shot (5 shots instead of 4) per cycle time.

Advanced Meson's.  I am not sure if they are working but they should have a better range than standard meson's.  Their range is based off of the advanced lasers.

Advanced carronade.  Not sure but I think there are advanced versions of the carronade that do more damage same as an advanced laser would.

I have not seen any advanced gauss cannon or microwave systems yet.

Hope this helps
Brian

[Erik L]

I'd call the torpedo systems medium-short range...

PD Class - Gauss/Meson
Short Range - Plasma Carronade (I see this as sort of a plasma shotgun type weapon)/Torpedo
Medium - Laser/Railgun
Long - Missile

The Microwave is a special class weapon so I didn't class it (and normally don't use it)

[Hawkeye]

I seem to remember that Lasers and Mesons also work within an atmosphere and are therefore usefull as PD-turrets in PDCs, while gauss cannons don´t.

Missiles are useless in a nebula system.

Is this correct?

[welchbloke (OP)]

Thanks everyone; I intend to repay the favour by collating all the descriptions into a doc that can be included in the tutorial section.

Welchbloke

[Brian Neumann]

I seem to remember that Lasers and Mesons also work within an atmosphere and are therefore usefull as PD-turrets in PDCs, while gauss cannons don´t.

Missiles are useless in a nebula system.

Is this correct?

Not quite.  Meson's ignore the effect of atmosphere.  All other energy weapons have their damage reduced by the percentage of of the atmosphere compared to 1 atmosphere pressure.  From one atmosphere pressure on up all energy weapons are useless as they do no damage except for Meson's.  Because gauss cannon only do one point of damage it does not take much of an atmosphere to make them ineffective.  Currently you need to do one point of damage to a missile to shoot it down.

Brian

[Brian Neumann]

I'd call the torpedo systems medium-short range...

PD Class - Gauss/Meson
Short Range - Plasma Carronade (I see this as sort of a plasma shotgun type weapon)/Torpedo
Medium - Laser/Railgun
Long - Missile

The Microwave is a special class weapon so I didn't class it (and normally don't use it)

I was actually only refering to the ranges for energy weapons.  Missiles are far longer ranged than all of the energy weapons.

The reason I called the torpedo a long range weapon is that it is still doing good damage at it's maximum range.  A small torpedo does not have the range limits that the laser have.  At the range were a laser can reach beyond the torpedo the chance to hit is already very low. (around 15% on down)  also for the most part it takes a larger laser to get out to these ranges with the matching slower fire cycle times and more massive weapons.  Torpedo's don't have that problem.  If a player wants they can make very good use of a thermal torpedo( the first one available) even into the late game.  After play testing them extensively I found that with the current armor rules there is little point to having a torpedo that does not fire every 5 seconds.  The total damage over time per weapon tends to come out the same, but the lighter weapons use less mass.  This makes the damage per ton of weapon favor the smaller torpedo's.    The problem that the laser's face is that the range is based off of the base damage of the laser.  Smaller lasers have good cycle times, but are much shorter ranged than the larger lasers.  Once you get into the really large lasers it is possible for the laser to still be doing good damage at the maximum range because of the fire control limit on range.  In every case though that I looked at the torpedo still did more damage over time as they could fire more quickly.  They also in general tend to take less energy than the big laser's require, and definitly less tonnage.

Brian

[Hawkeye]

Not quite.  Meson's ignore the effect of atmosphere.  All other energy weapons have their damage reduced by the percentage of of the atmosphere compared to 1 atmosphere pressure.  From one atmosphere pressure on up all energy weapons are useless as they do no damage except for Meson's.  Because gauss cannon only do one point of damage it does not take much of an atmosphere to make them ineffective.  Currently you need to do one point of damage to a missile to shoot it down.

Brian

Arrgh, so I have to redesign most of my PDCs  -  again.

Anyway, thanks for clearing things up

[backstab]

Can someone explain the difference between Gauss Weapons and Railguns ... I was under the impression that both were based on magnetic accelleration ? ... if this is the case then Gauss weapons should work in an atmosphere

[Erik L]

Can someone explain the difference between Gauss Weapons and Railguns ... I was under the impression that both were based on magnetic accelleration ? ... if this is the case then Gauss weapons should work in an atmosphere

In a technical sense, gauss projectiles have no contact with the accelerator of the weapon, whereas railgun projectiles have contact with the rails.

[welchbloke (OP)]

Backstab Wrote:
Can someone explain the difference between Gauss Weapons and Railguns ... I was under the impression that both were based on magnetic accelleration ? ...

In the Gauss Cannon thread Steve answered a similar question with the following Wiki quote:

A Gauss gun is a type of projectile accelerator that uses one or more electromagnetic coils to accelerate a magnetic projectile to high velocity. Gauss guns accelerate the projectile using contactless means. Gauss guns consist of one or more coils arranged along the barrel that are switched in sequence so as to ensure that the projectile is accelerated quickly along the barrel via magnetic forces.

A railgun is a form of purely electrical gun that accelerates a conductive projectile along a pair of metal rails. Railguns use two sliding contacts that permit a large electric current to pass through the projectile. This current interacts with the strong magnetic fields generated by the rails and this accelerates the projectile.

[Father Tim]

In game terms, the Gauss Cannon does one point of damage, with various options changing the size & acuracy of the gun, and/or the number of one-damage shots.  Railguns do a varying amount of damage per shot, with various technologies improving range, damage, or both.

GC:  One (to ten) shots at point-blank (to short) range, always doing one point of damage
Rg:  Four (or five) shots at short (to long) range, for one to three (sixty-four) points of damage


Oh, and you can squeeze a super-small Gauss Cannon onto a fighter.

[kdstubbs]

Problem of any collimated energy weapon is the problem of bloom, i.e., the individual photons are not actualy parallel with the other photons of the laser beam--regardless of frequency or wavelength.  In a perfectly collimated beam, all of the photons would be moving absolutely parallel, which would mean the laser pulse would travel any distance until it hit a physical object.  Lethiality would be the same over any distance since you would not get beam divergence.  I still believe longer ranged energy weapons could be developed at any frequency as long as you solved the beam divergence, collimation problem.  Would be interested to know why you are ignoring microwave, or other Radio Frequency weapons, since Masers would be very interesting weapons.  

Just a thought

Kevin

I'd call the torpedo systems medium-short range...

PD Class - Gauss/Meson
Short Range - Plasma Carronade (I see this as sort of a plasma shotgun type weapon)/Torpedo
Medium - Laser/Railgun
Long - Missile

The Microwave is a special class weapon so I didn't class it (and normally don't use it)

I was actually only refering to the ranges for energy weapons.  Missiles are far longer ranged than all of the energy weapons.

The reason I called the torpedo a long range weapon is that it is still doing good damage at it's maximum range.  A small torpedo does not have the range limits that the laser have.  At the range were a laser can reach beyond the torpedo the chance to hit is already very low. (around 15% on down)  also for the most part it takes a larger laser to get out to these ranges with the matching slower fire cycle times and more massive weapons.  Torpedo's don't have that problem.  If a player wants they can make very good use of a thermal torpedo( the first one available) even into the late game.  After play testing them extensively I found that with the current armor rules there is little point to having a torpedo that does not fire every 5 seconds.  The total damage over time per weapon tends to come out the same, but the lighter weapons use less mass.  This makes the damage per ton of weapon favor the smaller torpedo's.    The problem that the laser's face is that the range is based off of the base damage of the laser.  Smaller lasers have good cycle times, but are much shorter ranged than the larger lasers.  Once you get into the really large lasers it is possible for the laser to still be doing good damage at the maximum range because of the fire control limit on range.  In every case though that I looked at the torpedo still did more damage over time as they could fire more quickly.  They also in general tend to take less energy than the big laser's require, and definitly less tonnage.

Brian

[Erik L]

Problem of any collimated energy weapon is the problem of bloom, i.e., the individual photons are not actualy parallel with the other photons of the laser beam--regardless of frequency or wavelength.  In a perfectly collimated beam, all of the photons would be moving absolutely parallel, which would mean the laser pulse would travel any distance until it hit a physical object.  Lethiality would be the same over any distance since you would not get beam divergence.  I still believe longer ranged energy weapons could be developed at any frequency as long as you solved the beam divergence, collimation problem.  Would be interested to know why you are ignoring microwave, or other Radio Frequency weapons, since Masers would be very interesting weapons.  

Just a thought

Kevin

Microwaves are in, just that they do only EM damage.

Now a mixed damage type weapon would be interesting. EM and kinetic. (Or as I did in Astra Imperia, EM, Thermal and Kinetic, but I digress). I think before Steve adds any more weapons, he would need to ask himself, is there a need for this weapon that is not filled by another weapon.

[jfelten]

Problem of any collimated energy weapon is the problem of bloom, i.e., the individual photons are not actualy parallel with the other photons of the laser beam--regardless of frequency or wavelength.  In a perfectly collimated beam, all of the photons would be moving absolutely parallel, which would mean the laser pulse would travel any distance until it hit a physical object.  Lethiality would be the same over any distance since you would not get beam divergence.  I still believe longer ranged energy weapons could be developed at any frequency as long as you solved the beam divergence, collimation problem.  Would be interested to know why you are ignoring microwave, or other Radio Frequency weapons, since Masers would be very interesting weapons.  

Just a thought

Kevin

This is just my opinion as a (new) player but I take the laser frequency to be pure game color.  Obviously any advanced technology is going to be able to create lasers of any frequency they like.