Poll: Favoured technology for beam point defence.

[amimai]

And once you have fleets that have a dozen or so of ships around that size (and role), very little of what your defending against can actually harm you.

scratch that, this is when you should consider re rolling the universe and putting the enemy difficulty modifier 50% up
(or at least that is my opinion)

  Loosing is fun! 

but in general i use the same theory mostly focusing on tanking power with minimal dedicated AMS like Gauss
my secondary Laser cannons dual purpose as AMS (paying that additional 6HS and 2HS/turret gearing is cheap enough)

[83athom]

scratch that, this is when you should consider re rolling the universe and putting the enemy difficulty modifier 50% up

  Loosing is fun! 

I generally play at 150%-250% anyway.

[sneer]

I doubt many games pass tech level 6-8
many  games possibly have most fights with tech level 3-5
and these ranges shields are not as effective
some techs / designs are not exactly tech linear

[alex_brunius]

but in all seriousness, outside of RP reasons and personal rules I dont use gauss early, even if you win the missile->empty magazine phase by taking out maybe 1-2 more missiles per wave then my laser armed Beamhound AMS fighters, they would would mince you in short order from well outside your gauss firing range ( 1 hanger bay for 2 heavy fighters costs the same as a gauss gun space wise)

Yes, that assumes the 1-2 more missiles per wave per 20HS difference isn't decisive though, because if it is it means the fighters very soon will lack a mother-ship and the gauss defense has survived without little or no damage from some stray hits.

It also assume the offensive payload that the gauss defenses protect doesn't have any kind of anti-fighter weapons / sensors.

[amimai]

It also assume the offensive payload that the gauss defenses protect doesn't have any kind of anti-fighter weapons / sensors.

Gauss / Speed / Beam_Weapons / Missiles* / Armor / Ammo
Pick 3, cant fit the rest and maintain efficiency (or at least that is how ship design works in my mind)

its what makes this game fun, there is no "best setup" to be had

*you CAN pick "missiles / missiles / missiles" as your 3 options for great fun and profit!

[sneer]

it is rather
you can choose any of
2 - on early small designs
3 on mid game meds
4 on big late nasty warships

[amimai]

never believed in that theory of design

a 25%HS engine on a small ship is still a 25%HS engine on a BIG ship, just because its bigger dose not mean you can get more speed out of a engine per HS

in a battle of giants there isn's really any change between battles of equal sized ships, you can only multi spec a ship unless you massively out tech your enemy

or you amalgamated your entire fleet of specialized ships into 1 massive uber brick (which just isn't a good idea)

[sneer]

possibly yes
but
past tech 6 you can get any opponent who would test you enough
so only recogition point are Invaders
vs them this rule works well as I wrote

[Iranon]

Gauss / Speed / Beam_Weapons / Missiles* / Armor / Ammo
Pick 3, cant fit the rest and maintain efficiency (or at least that is how ship design works in my mind)

its what makes this game fun, there is no "best setup" to be had

*you CAN pick "missiles / missiles / missiles" as your 3 options for great fun and profit!

Depending on tech and what you consider Speed, it may not make sense to pick Speed and Gauss.

You can fit slightly more than 2 Railguns per quad-speed Gauss barrel (taking into account  turret gear and faster-tracking fire controls vs. power plants and higher crew requirements).
So when we're concerned about performance against large waves of fast missiles, we can compare

(Gauss RoF) shots at 4x speed for Gauss
against
8 shots at (actual FC speed/basic FC speed) for Railguns

Which is more expensive depends mostly on fire controls. With a single one on a large ship, Gauss tends to be cheaper. With multiples to account for many small salvos, Railgun gets an edge in both cost- and space-effectiveness.

[joeclark77]

There's no reason to make "quad" turrets of any kind (unless you're armoring the turrets).  Four single turrets are the same size as one quad turret.  So I always do single turrets and then I can use 3, 4, 5, or however many to make it fit into my desired tonnage.

[83athom]

There's no reason to make "quad" turrets of any kind (unless you're armoring the turrets).

RP man. Also unless you show proof in math, I shall not believe you.

[Prince of Space]

Multi-gun mounts get a percentage of their gear tonnage shaved off as an incentive for not simply using a bunch of single mounts. The change log for 5.50 states this is for laser turrets, but I assumed it applied to all turrets (gauss included) and the phrasing was just part of Steve's pro-laser agenda 

Have I been mistaken about this and just never noticed?

[CharonJr]

No hard data here currently, but I am very sure that weight per barrel goes down with each additional one for Gauss as well.

[linkxsc]

Here to confirm that it does happen that way.
Example. 6HS per gauss cannon, 6250 tracking (which is the 10% size) at my tech level

1 gun, size = 6.6
2 gun, size = 13.14 (instead of 13.2 less than 4% difference)
3 gun, size = 19.66 (19.8, 7% more efficient than 3 singles)
4 gun, size = 26.16 (26.4, 9.1% better than 4 singles)

Now lets add some armor (2)

1 = 9.44
2 = 17.63 (18.88, 7% diff)
3 = 25.53 (28.32, 11% diff)
4 = 33.26 (37.76, 13% diff)

Coincidentally, it gets even more effective the more armor you go with. Though I've never actually tried out, heavily armored turrets in game and seen their effectiveness. But as an example
Say your ship is a beam ship with 8 armor all around, and you're packing 8 more on your turrets, the difference between 1 gun, and 4 guns is 17.94 per single gun vs, 13.64 per gun in quads, almost 30% Also larger lasers seem to be more efficient in large turrets than smaller ones... but theres rarely a use for turreted large lasers in the game, maybe 15cm at best for mixed PD/AS weaponry.


Also for those of you who haven't noticed before, in the turret design window it says in the text box, how much HS/gun is getting used, by increasingly armed turrets. Its marked as SPW, to the right of the overall turret size.

[Iranon]

Yes, quad turrets are slightly smaller than 4 single turrets, but I think this was kicked off by a misunderstanding:
While I assumed quad mounts, I only explicitly mentioned quad-SPEED Gauss barrels, i.e. turrets with enough turret gear to give them the maximum speed for our fire control tech.