Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => Bureau of Ship Design => Topic started by: Arwyn on February 07, 2012, 12:25:16 AM
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So, I have decided that I REALLY like gauss point defense ships. I have used lasers and mesons in the past (and railguns) but I wound up with pretty good Gauss tech in my current game, good railguns, poor laser tech, and no meson tech outside of the starting 10cm. So, I ran with it and equipped my close PD ships with triple Gauss turrets.
Griffin Mk II class Escort 10,550 tons 786 Crew 1889 BP TCS 211 TH 810 EM 600
5118 km/s Armour 5-42 Shields 20-300 Sensors 8/8/0/0 Damage Control Rating 14 PPV 58.2
Maint Life 1.81 Years MSP 448 AFR 222% IFR 3.1% 1YR 171 5YR 2561 Max Repair 164 MSP
Applied Dynamics Ion Engine E800 (18) Power 60 Fuel Use 80% Signature 45 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 350,000 Litres Range 74.6 billion km (168 days at full power)
Gamma R300/14 Shields (10) Total Fuel Cost 140 Litres per day
Triple Open Gauss R3-100 Turret (2x9) Range 30,000km TS: 20000 km/s Power 0-0 RM 3 ROF 5 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Teksystems Defender Turret Fire Control (2) Max Range: 96,000 km TS: 20000 km/s 90 79 69 58 48 38 27 17 6 0
Teksystems Skyband 15/50 Search Sensor (1) GPS 1400 Range 15.8m km Resolution 50
Defense Tech Bulwark AMM Sensor (1) GPS 56 Range 4.5m km Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH1-8 (1) Sensitivity 8 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 8m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-8 (1) Sensitivity 8 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 8m km
Yes, I know the gas and the maint is light, done deliberately, these operate with a fleet with dedicated fleet trains. And yes, I know the sensors are seriously overbuilt. Done by design.
The AMM sensor gives me more time to track inbounds, which gives a nice bonus to tracking speed, which I NEED with how fast the enemy inbounds are.
Fire control is overbuilt to give the best possible hit percentage against targets at engagement ranges
Overall, I am pretty impressed with how well these little guys actually work. With good crew training, I was seeing 5 to 7 missiles intercepted by these ships per salvo. With two of these, and a third ship with a single, the missiles that made it through the AMM fire got annihilated by the Gauss PD ships.
The extra bonus was finding out how nasty these things can be point blank. Bad guys jumped on top of us at a warp point, and while everything else was still powering up, these Gauss sawed through the enemy cruisers shields in 10 seconds of fire from both ships, and sandblasted the heck out of the armor.
I'm sold on em, I just wished the next rank of Gauss cannon velocity wasn't so expensive!
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Yeah, these kinds of ships are pretty great. ROF 5 just rips through things - though the message spam can be annoying. xD
* The thermal/EM sensors are unnecessary, particularly if you have stronger passives on another ship.
* Similarly, the Resolution 50 search sensor is unnecessary - it's not going to pick up any missiles, and your AMM sensor more than covers the range of your gauss weapons.
* If this is intended primarily as an escort you might be drastically over-engined. You don't really have the weapons range to be a secondary beam vessel IMO - Warp point defense is an important exception. Unless your battle-line also runs around 5000 km/s, I would consider reducing the number of engines. Speed is great, but all those engines are way driving up your cost (and therefore how much missile defense bang you're getting for your buck.)
*Shields are nice, but 20 points wont do a lot. If you dump the shields, the passives and the res50 sensor, you might have enough space to squeeze in another gauss turret. I'm not sure how big those things are, lol.
*Bear in mind that engineering spaces also reduce the rate at which failures occur, reducing MSP consumption, and it costs resources/wealth to manufacture MSP.
*Your fuel levels are fine actually. It only looks short because of the sheer number of engines the ship mounts Personally I rate ships by their range, not their days at full power. 75 billion km is more than the vast majority of my military ships.
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I tend to run sensors on all the ships, partly for RP purposes, partly because I have had sensors shot away in the past and was annoyed by not having replacements.
As far as the engines and speed, the battle line runs at 5000 km/s. After several games, I run fast by choice. Not cheap, but the option of running away from most similar tech opponents (and some higher tech) is very handy.
I actually find the shields VERY handy. If the shields are taking hits, that's armor I don't have to repair later, and a ship that I don't have to take out of service for the repairs. I find that flexibility worth while, especially with ships strung out over the warp lines. If the do get shot up, I have some protection should they get engaged again.
Agree on the engineering spaces. The Mk III version of the ship is coming soon, which has a massively upgraded sensor suite, which frees up a lot of space. That will get filled with engineering.
As far as adding another turret, its on the plans. The biggest issue is the turrets themselves, size 29 in this ship. 20,000 km/s tracking is expensive in ship board real estate. The new versions are size 23.33 for the exact same turret, which frees up a lot of space and weight. The fire control is only size 4, and its the bottleneck, if I could get tracking up to 30,000 km/s, I would really be tearing up the opposing sides missiles.... :)
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if you value speed so much, I suggest getting the -efficiency +power tech for engines... It reduces your durability a little, but with the amount of engines you are mounting it amounts to either decent tonnage savings or a nice leetle speed boost.
naturally, that would be for next generation ships, as refitting all those engines just for a minor upgrade would be hella expensive.
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In my not so humble opinion Arwyn you've got a good start here.
I'd drop the res 50 active and add that tonnage to the res 1. The res 1 already sees everything that the res 50 does and at a greater range once you up the size.
Dump the passive sensors on the escort. they're taking up tonnage that you need elsewhere and giving you nothing back that's useful.
Drop the armor to 3 layers and double the shields. unlike armor, shields are realatively cheap to upgrade later. 40 points of shield function as a full layer of armor that must be completely removed before anything else takes damage. With the exception of microwave and meson of course.
Instead of adding engineering spaces look into damage control.
If you don't have the space for a third turret and BFC try making the turrets quads.
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Here is the Mk III version;
Griffin Mk III class Escort 10,800 tons 856 Crew 2174 BP TCS 216 TH 378 EM 1200
5000 km/s Armour 3-43 Shields 40-300 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 15 PPV 61.82
Maint Life 2.37 Years MSP 629 AFR 186% IFR 2.6% 1YR 153 5YR 2292 Max Repair 179 MSP
Applied Dynamics E850 Ion Engine (18) Power 60 Fuel Use 60% Signature 21 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 300,000 Litres Range 83.3 billion km (192 days at full power)
Gamma R300/14 Shields (20) Total Fuel Cost 280 Litres per day
Phalanx Quad Gauss Turret (2x12) Range 30,000km TS: 20000 km/s Power 0-0 RM 3 ROF 5 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Teksystems Defender Turret Fire Control (2) Max Range: 96,000 km TS: 20000 km/s 90 79 69 58 48 38 27 17 6 0
Defense Tech Bulwark AMM Sensor (1) GPS 56 Range 4.5m km Resolution 1
Shaved weight by bumping fuel down, but with the more efficient engines, range is the same. Speed is a bit less, as is the armor. Shields are doubled, dropped the passive sensors.
Biggest change is that the new versions of the turrets, and the weight saved let me install quad Gauss turrets instead of triples.
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Hm, what is you tech level on turret tracking speed and beam FC tracking speed? Depending on these values Railguns can sometimes be a better choice than gauss
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Hm, what is you tech level on turret tracking speed and beam FC tracking speed? Depending on these values Railguns can sometimes be a better choice than gauss
Based on his designs it looks like is BFC speed is 5000kps since the example BFC should be a 4x speed installation. That limits railguns to a tracking speed of 5000kps since they may not be turret mounted. Even with the ability to mount roughly twice as many RG's, assuming 10cm, that have 1 more chance to hit on 1v1 mount comparison is not enough to overcome the 4x greater tohit penalty against targets that are faster than the tracking speed.
Keep in mind that doubling of mounts for RG's does not take into account the need for powerplants to feed the RG's.
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Based on his designs it looks like is BFC speed is 5000kps since the example BFC should be a 4x speed installation. That limits railguns to a tracking speed of 5000kps since they may not be turret mounted. Even with the ability to mount roughly twice as many RG's, assuming 10cm, that have 1 more chance to hit on 1v1 mount comparison is not enough to overcome the 4x greater tohit penalty against targets that are faster than the tracking speed.
Keep in mind that doubling of mounts for RG's does not take into account the need for powerplants to feed the RG's.
Keep in mind that each railgun shoots 4 projectiles though. Lets go through the math:
The proposed design hosts 2 Quad Turrets for a total of 8 Gaussguns. A Gaussgun is 6 HS so the weapons itself must weigh 48 HS. Assuming a turret gearing speed of 5,000 kps, the mounting in turrets will add 36% to the weapons weight, so we get a total of 65 HS for the weapons. If the BFC tracking speed is 5,000 kps, the base range might be 48k (one tech level higher, I actually would expect something like 24k), hence the two firecontrolls would have a size of 8 HS each, a total of 16HS. So overall the whole weapon system would likely weigh about 81 HS = 4,050t.
As you say, railguns can not be turret mounted, and thus would be limited to a tracking speed of 5,000 kps anyway. The Firecontrolls at that level would weigh only 2 HS each, or 4 HS for two of these. That leaves 77 HS for weapon systems. A basic railgun is 3 HS, and requires 3 Energy. At Ion technology a 2HS reactor can provide 9 Energy. So 3 railguns would occupy 11 HS. Thus for 77 HS we could have 33 (powered) railguns.
Now how do the two systems compare?
- The 8 Gaussguns launch 3 projectiles each, or a total of 24 projectiles every five seconds. Against missiles moving 40,000 km/s they would have a probability of 50%, meaning we can expect do down 12 incoming missiles every turn by Gaussguns.
- The 33 Railguns each launch 4 projectiles, totalling 132 projectiles. They would only have a hit chance of 12.5%, as they would only have tracking speed of 5,000 km/s. That still leads to 16.5 incoming missiles being shot down every turn by railguns.
Thus the Railguns are expected to shoot down 37.5% more missiles than the Gaussguns at equal weight. Note that this is derived under conservative assumptions. If the firecontrolls used in the example were (4xrange, 4x size), then they would weigh a total of 32 HS for the gaussguns, while only 8 HS for railguns – a difference of 24 HS, rather than 12 as assumed (i.e. 3 more railguns in that scenario).
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^^ Above math and similar comparisons is why I abandoned gauss cannons for railguns, even leaving aside the superior antiship potential of railgun technology. Gauss cannons do not become superior to 10cm railguns at point defence until you get 4x shots (~magnetoplasmic tech). 10cm railguns are also significantly less research intensive in every respect. On the other hand, gauss cannons can be scaled down to fit in fighters and also give you CIWS systems - though both CIWS and gauss fighters are of questionable value.
also, having 132 damage messages in the log is frigging ridiculous. screw that.
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Keep in mind that each railgun shoots 4 projectiles though. Lets go through the math:
The proposed design hosts 2 Quad Turrets for a total of 8 Gaussguns. A Gaussgun is 6 HS so the weapons itself must weigh 48 HS. Assuming a turret gearing speed of 5,000 kps, the mounting in turrets will add 36% to the weapons weight, so we get a total of 65 HS for the weapons. If the BFC tracking speed is 5,000 kps, the base range might be 48k (one tech level higher, I actually would expect something like 24k), hence the two firecontrolls would have a size of 8 HS each, a total of 16HS. So overall the whole weapon system would likely weigh about 81 HS = 4,050t.
As you say, railguns can not be turret mounted, and thus would be limited to a tracking speed of 5,000 kps anyway. The Firecontrolls at that level would weigh only 2 HS each, or 4 HS for two of these. That leaves 77 HS for weapon systems. A basic railgun is 3 HS, and requires 3 Energy. At Ion technology a 2HS reactor can provide 9 Energy. So 3 railguns would occupy 11 HS. Thus for 77 HS we could have 33 (powered) railguns.
Now how do the two systems compare?
- The 8 Gaussguns launch 3 projectiles each, or a total of 24 projectiles every five seconds. Against missiles moving 40,000 km/s they would have a probability of 50%, meaning we can expect do down 12 incoming missiles every turn by Gaussguns.
- The 33 Railguns each launch 4 projectiles, totalling 132 projectiles. They would only have a hit chance of 12.5%, as they would only have tracking speed of 5,000 km/s. That still leads to 16.5 incoming missiles being shot down every turn by railguns.
Thus the Railguns are expected to shoot down 37.5% more missiles than the Gaussguns at equal weight. Note that this is derived under conservative assumptions. If the firecontrolls used in the example were (4xrange, 4x size), then they would weigh a total of 32 HS for the gaussguns, while only 8 HS for railguns – a difference of 24 HS, rather than 12 as assumed (i.e. 3 more railguns in that scenario).
Great math, but your base numbers are wrong.
Granted the GC turrets are 32.64hs each but the BFC's are only 4hs. Most get the BFC wrong at first. You got that the base BFC range tech is 48k, but that is for a 50% tohit change with a max range of 96k as shown. To get the tracking speed of 20k the BFC is only 4x on speed and standard on range. This gives 73.28hs for the BFC's and turrets.
Since the Railguns require neither a range modifier nor speed modifier they only need standard sz 1 BFC's. That leave us with 71.28hs to play with. Playing with reactor sizes your only going to get 19 powered railguns into that space not 33 giving only 76 shots not 132.
You've also got the hit chances wrong. The 50% and 12.5% are only the penalty for the tracking speed being to slow. This still needs to be applied to the base 90% of the fire control at 10k/km assuming final defensive fire. That gives 45% per shot for the GC Turrets and 11.25% for the RG's. Which results in a probable 10.8 intercepts for the turrets and 8.55 for the RG's.
Once GC's reach 3 shots each they out perform the RG's on an equal hs basis for per missile intercept. The RG's installation would have a more flexability in that the lighter support BFC means that you could design to engage a greater number of salvos than the GC's can.
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Great math, but your base numbers are wrong.
Granted the GC turrets are 32.64hs each but the BFC's are only 4hs. Most get the BFC wrong at first. You got that the base BFC range tech is 48k, but that is for a 50% tohit change with a max range of 96k as shown. To get the tracking speed of 20k the BFC is only 4x on speed and standard on range. This gives 73.28hs for the BFC's and turrets.
Since the Railguns require neither a range modifier nor speed modifier they only need standard sz 1 BFC's. That leave us with 71.28hs to play with. Playing with reactor sizes your only going to get 19 powered railguns into that space not 33 giving only 76 shots not 132.
You've also got the hit chances wrong. The 50% and 12.5% are only the penalty for the tracking speed being to slow. This still needs to be applied to the base 90% of the fire control at 10k/km assuming final defensive fire. That gives 45% per shot for the GC Turrets and 11.25% for the RG's. Which results in a probable 10.8 intercepts for the turrets and 8.55 for the RG's.
Once GC's reach 3 shots each they out perform the RG's on an equal hs basis for per missile intercept. The RG's installation would have a more flexability in that the lighter support BFC means that you could design to engage a greater number of salvos than the GC's can.
Eh, I made a more basic error even. If we have 77 HS, and get 3 railguns per 11 HS, then of course get 21 Railguns, not 33 in the first place. So yeah, the gauss would be somewhat better under my original assumption.
Nevertheless depending on the BFC base tech it might still be better - it depends on what range multiplier he used. We do not know that he did indeed choose 1xrange, 1xsize (although I concede that based on some back-of the envelope math that would likely be the best use of hullspace, given the quickly diminishing returns of additional FC range for PD).
I deliberately ignored the hit chance modification due to the range, as it applies to both railguns and gauss guns, and therefore is irrelevant for a comparison of the two. You would also need to factor in grade modifiers and ECM to get the actual hit chances.
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I have used 10cm railguns for anti-missile duty early on in the game. Early on, they worked great. As tech picked up, and against some of the Precursors, they dont do nearly as well as the speeds increase.
Right now, I have the quad Gauss turrets tracking at 20,000 km/s, along with the fire controls. Fire controls space is size 4, so with the turret included, each turret + fire con package comes in at 34.91 in terms of space.
I focused on the speed portion due to the high speed of some of the missiles I am facing, most are running 24,800 km/s but I have a system full of annoying robots with "Axepunisher" anti-ship missiles running 38,200 km/s.
Against the latter, the railguns don't do much of anything. The Gauss turrets, with the higher tracking, have a much better chance to hit.
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Actually since he posted the design we can make several deductions.
We know for example that the ship is 216hs has 18 engines, 20 shields, 6 fuel tanks, and 2 quad GC turrets. All of these have fixed usage of 181.28hs leaving 34.72hs.
We also know that the active sensor has a gps of 56 resolution of 1 and max range for that resolution of 4.5m km and that there is only 1. Odds are good that the tech levels are 21 active grav sensor and 11 for EM sensor which would give a sz 2 suite.
Since the crew size is 2174 there is probably 9 full size (1hs) crew quarters.
The maintenance supply points are fairly low so there is most likely only 2 or 3 hs devoted here.
I made an induction that the armor tech would need to be at least ceramic Composite to have enough hs left for 2 size 4 BFC's with 3 layers of armor. And the only way for that to match the stats posted is for Beam range tech to be 48k for 50% and beam tracking at 5k kps.
I deliberately don't ignore the BFC hit chance since it is a known factor that will not change. Crew grade and ECM are intangibles and can be left out of the analysis.
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Currently the design has the following;
2x Phalanx Quad Gauss Cannon Turrets (61.82 HS)
2x Teksystems Defender Turret Fire Control (8 HS)
20x Gamma R300/14 Shields (20 HS)
13x Ceramic Composite Armor
1x Damage Control (3 HS)
18x Applied Dynamics E850 Ion Engines (90 HS)
1x Defense Tech Bulwark Mk2 AMM Sensor (2 HS)
3x Crew Quarters (3 HS)
2x Crew Quarters (small) (.4 HS)
6x Fuel Storage (6 HS)
5x Engineering spaces (5 HS)
1x Bridge (1 HS)
There was a change to the design posted above, after I posted I caught that I had too many crew quarters and reduced them. Ship went down 100 tons and crew went from 856 to 847.
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Actually since he posted the design we can make several deductions.
We know for example that the ship is 216hs has 18 engines, 20 shields, 6 fuel tanks, and 2 quad GC turrets. All of these have fixed usage of 181.28hs leaving 34.72hs.
We also know that the active sensor has a gps of 56 resolution of 1 and max range for that resolution of 4.5m km and that there is only 1. Odds are good that the tech levels are 21 active grav sensor and 11 for EM sensor which would give a sz 2 suite.
Since the crew size is 2174 there is probably 9 full size (1hs) crew quarters.
The maintenance supply points are fairly low so there is most likely only 2 or 3 hs devoted here.
I made an induction that the armor tech would need to be at least ceramic Composite to have enough hs left for 2 size 4 BFC's with 3 layers of armor. And the only way for that to match the stats posted is for Beam range tech to be 48k for 50% and beam tracking at 5k kps.
*bow* Ok, point taken. Also because size was explicitly posted. And yes, quite definitively these posted gaussguns are superior to railguns at this tech level (unless the encountered missiles were slower than about 15k kps).
I deliberately don't ignore the BFC hit chance since it is a known factor that will not change. Crew grade and ECM are intangibles and can be left out of the analysis.
Very well, but if we do not leave the range hit chance out of the analysis, then it should actually be considered as a variable. And its easy to see that for the railgun case it might be better to use a (2xrange, 1xtracking speed)-BFC. That only adds 2 HS for the two FCs in the design and increases the hitchance from 90% to 95%. That would cost us about half a railgun, or 2 projectiles, so we are down to 76. Still 76*0.95>78*0.9.
Ok, this is a very minor point, which is why i wanted to ignore it in the first place.
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Currently the design has the following;
2x Phalanx Quad Gauss Cannon Turrets (61.82 HS)
2x Teksystems Defender Turret Fire Control (8 HS)
20x Gamma R300/14 Shields (20 HS)
13x Ceramic Composite Armor
1x Damage Control (3 HS)
18x Applied Dynamics E850 Ion Engines (90 HS)
1x Defense Tech Bulwark Mk2 AMM Sensor (2 HS)
3x Crew Quarters (3 HS)
2x Crew Quarters (small) (.4 HS)
6x Fuel Storage (6 HS)
5x Engineering spaces (5 HS)
1x Bridge (1 HS)
There was a change to the design posted above, after I posted I caught that I had too many crew quarters and reduced them. Ship went down 100 tons and crew went from 856 to 847.
Arwyn thank you for posting.
I see that I'd used build points instead of crew, no wonder it seemed so high!! I should have also noted that the damage control rating dictated that you had a DC suite in there as well. That hs usage means I was also wrong about your turret tracking tech, it must be 6250kps and not 5000kps.
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6250 is correct. :)
Tracking speed is one of the first things I tend to research. I learned that lesson the hard way.... ;D
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I do cheat some. Over the years I've built an Excel workbook does a number of things for me. It started like as tool to preselect tech, from the tech system table, and then design various "standard" components. From that I can then design basic ships to see how those components interact.
It's not foolproof by anymeans. But it does let me have fairly good starting balances of tech in a new game. I can also advance the tech and see what the future changes might be. It also gives me a tool to reverse engineer posted designs to see the nuts and bolts and see what I might do differently.
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So having been converted to use Gauss Guns as my preferred PD Final defense method (at least when the rof reaches three), I have a question:
Gauss Guns can be reduced in size at the cost of accuracy. The trade-off is linear, so while the ordinary 6 HS gauss gun has a base hit chance of 100% (modified by the tracking speeds etc), a 3 HS gauss gun has a 50% hit chance, and a 1HS gauss gun has a 1/6=17% hit chance. Put differently, for a given weight and in terms of expected hits it does not matter how large the individual gauss guns are- One Size 6 gauss gun scores the same expected hits as six size 1 gauss guns.
A Quad Gauss Turret with ordinary size 6 gauss guns is quite massive, as witnessed by the design above. A single quad turret is around 30 HS or 1,500t. My concern is that this is not very flexible to employ.
So the question is: Is there a drawback in using Size 1 gauss guns as the basis for the turrets?
Following the example from above, the quad turret on this basis would only weigh 5HS or 250t. Then the "Griffin"-design from above could host 12 of these quad turrets for the same costs, and with the same PD-capacity in terms of expected hits.
The benefit of this would be that if I have a design with "extra" space of say 500t (e.g. shipyard size, or jumpsize constraints) I could fit in 2 of the small quad turrets, but not one of the large ones.
The only drawback I can see is in the variance of hits in the PD role (as opposed to the expectation value). The variance would be slightly larger, which means that the chance of an "overkill" of incoming missiles is slightly larger. In turn this implies the actual expectation value of hits against a finite number of incoming missiles is just very slightly lower, but is this really material?
Am I overlooking something?
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perhaps a space technology that allows an extra tracking unit as u scale down the size maybe
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One thing you are not allowing for is the effect of crew grade. While a half size unit has half the base chance to hit, the crew grade bonus is then applied directly to this chance. So a size 6 gauss cannon has a modified 110% chance to hit, then the two size 3 gauss cannons would each have a 60% to hit chance which combined comes out to 120%, or slightly higher. If however you had a conscript crew then the effect would be reversed. For most players if they have a general crew grade then having the half size or 1/4 size gauss cannon works out to their slight advantage. Their are other factors involved that keep it from being this simple, but the principle is there.
Brian
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Interesting point. I will have to give it a try and see how it performs.
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If we're talking about replacing all size 6 GC's with 6 size 1 GC's and all other things are equal then there is near zero net change.
Quad Turret of sz6 GC's with tracking speed at 4x turret tracking speed tech is 32.64hs.
Quad Turret of sz1 GC's with tracking speed at 4x turret tracking speed tech is 5.44hs. Replace the above turret with 6 of this turret is a net zero hs change.
Turret installations use fractional hs installations these days not integer.
On the point about crewgrade. 2 chances at 60% do not equate to a total of 120% for a single success. I don't recall to probability math, but my recollection is that it is less that the single 110%. Hopefully someone is into calculating things like Craps odds will have the formula.
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There was a long discussion on this topic of reduced size gauss a few months back. Very extensive, went on for pages. Have a search.
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There was a long discussion on this topic of reduced size gauss a few months back. Very extensive, went on for pages. Have a search.
Yes there was. It also discussed using different BFC's for the different turret builds.
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There was a long discussion on this topic of reduced size gauss a few months back. Very extensive, went on for pages. Have a search.
Cant seem to find it, any pointers would be welcomed.
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One thing you are not allowing for is the effect of crew grade. While a half size unit has half the base chance to hit, the crew grade bonus is then applied directly to this chance. So a size 6 gauss cannon has a modified 110% chance to hit, then the two size 3 gauss cannons would each have a 60% to hit chance which combined comes out to 120%, or slightly higher. If however you had a conscript crew then the effect would be reversed. For most players if they have a general crew grade then having the half size or 1/4 size gauss cannon works out to their slight advantage. Their are other factors involved that keep it from being this simple, but the principle is there.
Brian
Are you sure this is how it works? The original text by Steve indicated that the crew grade bonus was applied multiplicative, not additive. So if the bonus was 10%, then this would increase the hitchance from 100% to 110% for 6HS GG, or from 50% to 55% for 3HS GG.
I take this from the example in this post: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,227.0.html (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,227.0.html), but I do not know whether Steve actually implemented it as indicated there, or if maybe it changed?
However if this is the case, than its heavily in favor of small Gaussguns. Instead of a single 6HS gaussgun with a 110% hitchance (1.1 expected hit) you could have twelve 0.5HS with a hitchance of 18% each (2.2 expected hits- twice as much)
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One thing that I never understood during these discussions was the note on hitchance. This has come up a few times, as I've noted previously. What speed is the hitchance calculated for? 10,000? Most missiles are doing substantially higher than that, so I can't help but wonder-- what happens to that 18% chance for hitting a missile moving at 10,000 when its actually flying at 75,000? Would it be better then to frontload the hitchance with full size turrets? Or would everything be perfectly linear and the crew grade provide the necessary bonuses?
Also, I cringe at the thought of twelve times the quad turrets spamming up my missile screens :D
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One thing that I never understood during these discussions was the note on hitchance. This has come up a few times, as I've noted previously. What speed is the hitchance calculated for? 10,000? Most missiles are doing substantially higher than that, so I can't help but wonder-- what happens to that 18% chance for hitting a missile moving at 10,000 when its actually flying at 75,000? Would it be better then to frontload the hitchance with full size turrets? Or would everything be perfectly linear and the crew grade provide the necessary bonuses?
Also, I cringe at the thought of twelve times the quad turrets spamming up my missile screens :D
You are right in saying that this is actually not a “hitchance” as in chance to hit something. It is rather a “probability factor”, that is one in many factors that will influence our ability to hit. However the particular form of the function that calculates this ability allows us to disregard all other factors in the analysis (mostly). I.e. by large the speed of the target does not matter in deciding what size of gaussguns is best suited for beam defence – although it would influence the decision whether other forms of protection (AMM, shields, armor), might be superiour (after we have identified what hullsize of gaussguns maximizes their potential).
The particular function – to my best understanding- reads:
P(x,tr,v,grade,size) = p_dist * p_vel * p_crew * p_size
Where p_dist is the probability factor due to the distance, calculated as p_dist (x) = 1 – x / R. Where x being the distance at which the target is engaged, R being the maximum range of the firecontroll (not the 50% range!).
p_vel is the probability factor due to the speed of the enemy, calculated at p_vel (tr) = tr / v_target, unless the tracking speed is larger than the target speed. Where tr is the minimum of the tracking speed of the weapon and the associated firecontroll, and v_target is the speed of the target.
P_crew is the bonus (or malus) from the training level of the crew. Note that the earlier point in this thread would indicate that it is added to the product of the other two factors, rather than multiplied by it.
p_size is the probability due the size, which only applies to Gaussguns and is p_size= HS/6, i.e. the Hullsize divided by 6.
The important bit is that these are all multiplicative, which means that if you decrease one factor by 1/3, then the whole term becomes 1/3 smaller. And because every variable (speed, distance, size and crewgrade) enters only one term, you can easily reduce the much more complicated problem of considering the whole term to the simpler problem of considering only the relevant term for a variable. This way you don’t have to make a bunch of assumptions regarding the other factors, which are not relevant anyway.
An example: When comparing the different Gaussgun sizes you can easily see that Probability for size 6 is P(x,tr,v,grade,6)= p_dist * p_vel * p_crew * 1. Whereas for a size 3 Gaussgun you would have P(x,tr,v,grade,1)= p_dist * p_vel * p_crew * 1/2. So you can see that the second term is always half as large as the first – completely irrespective of the other factors. It does not tell you what chance you would actually have to hit a missile of course. If all other factors amount to 50%, then the first term would yield 50%, while the second would be 25%. If the other factors are a cumulative of 2%, then the first factor would be 2%, the second 1%. Either way, the normal size gaussgun is twice as likely to hit and thus roughly twice as valuable (but also twice as costly).
The last two paragraphs are not entirely true. P is a probability and thus naturally capped at 100%. p_dist and p_vel are always smaller than 1, so there is no problem, but p_crew can be large than one. Suppose a distance of 10k km for a firecontroll with a maximum of 120k km, then p_dist = 0.92. Further assume a tracking speed of 20k km/s, matching a target speed of 20k km/s, thus p_vel = 1. If the crew bonus is 10%, then the first three probability factors amount to 101%. The 3HS gaussgun would thus have a probability to hit of 50.5%, while the full size gaussgun would have a hitchance of 100% (since its capped there). So theoretically the smaller gaussgun would be superior on a per-weight basis. Note that this only applies under fairly generous assumptions (extremely high range of fc, low target speed, relatively high crew grade…), which is why I disregarded it initially.
The other point is that the hitchance is a good first indication but does not tell you everything. (Assuming gaussgun rate of fire of 1 for simplicity of the example) If you are fighting a single incoming missile, one 6HS gaussgun would be certain too shoot it down in the above example. Two 3HS gaussguns would each score a hit with 50.5% probability, which also means there is a chance that both miss of 0.495*0.495=24.5%, so the chance of hitting the single missile is actually only 75.5%, i.e. much worse than the full size turret. One the other hand if you were fighting two incoming missiles, the singe large gaussgun would be certain to hit one missile, but would also be certain to miss the other one. The two gaussguns would actually have a circa 25% chance of killing both missiles. In the long run you would probably be hit by the same amount of missiles, but with more smaller gaussguns the result of each salvo would vary more wieldy (25% of the time two missiles get through, 50% of the time one comes through, 25% of the time, none hits – while with the full size 100% of the time one comes through.