Wow, 1HS is very big and not worth it, thank you. (Why are you using 4x range 4x Speed for PD instead of 1x range 4x speed or even 0.5x range 4x speed?)
I'm not. I was pointing out that the only time when the math works in favor of smaller gauss cannons was when your hit percentage was already over 100, and that that required big fire controls. Which are stupid.
Reread what I said. "getting a possible 48 missiles hit" "I know that is unlikely because of the math of the chances". Yes I know the average missiles hit will NOT change, however, going from 8 shots to 48 on its own has its own advantages because of the POSSIBLE hits.
No, for two reasons. First, because analyzing this based on the maximum possible number of hits is very, very wrong. It's like analyzing the payoff from the lottery on the basis you'll win. You will do better in the long run by looking at expected value.
Second, the math doesn't back you up at all. I decided to do this properly, and used a binomial distribution to compare an 8-shot turret with a 50% hit chance with a 48-shot turret with an 8.333% hit chance. I will admit that I expected the distribution for the 48-shot case to be much more sharply peaked around 4 hits, and it in fact was not.
I don't feel like re-creating the entire table. If you wish to do it yourself, the excel binomdist function is pretty easy to use. So I'll just give the highlights. The 48-shot weapon is much flatter. For instance, it has a 1.5% chance of no hits, as opposed to a 0.4% chance for the 8-shot case. 42.5% of 48-shots will have 3 or fewer hits, as opposed to 36.3% of 8-shots. If we raise our target to 4 or fewer shots, then it's 62.9% for the 48-shot and 63.7% for the 8-shot, a dead heat. On the other hand, 4.3% of 48-shot cases will have 8 or more hits, as opposed to .4% for 8-shots. (Just to clear up any confusion, the chances of 9 or more hits is 1.6% and 10 or more will only occur 0.6% of the time. The cumulative chance drops below 0.1% for 12 or more hits.)
Oh, and the chances of 48 missiles getting hit? 1.58E-52.
That is why many modern CIWS use Gatling style weapons for volume of fire over accuracy (Goalkeeper, Phalanx, AK630, etc). However, I will concede that there are CIWS that fire slower (such as Dardo and Millennium) for a larger effect per shot which would equate to railgun point defense.
That's not right on several levels. First, that's not how CIWS works. They don't just randomly spray bullets in the path of the missile. They actually use a very sophisticated closed-loop guidance system to bring the bullets and the missile together. DARDO and Millennium are designed to deal with faster missiles, which need to be killed further out to keep debris from the missile from hitting the ship. Second, the analogy to railguns is wrong. Railguns work by throwing up more rounds at lower accuracy when compared to full-sized gauss cannons. Going to a smaller gauss cannon doesn't change these numbers significantly, and is basically a red herring. If anything, you could say that Phalanx and its ilk are more like railguns, although the entire analogy is not a very good one. Aurora weapons are not modern naval ones.
Personally, I'd rather have the 8-shot configuration. The one thing I most want in a missile defense system is consistency. Something which always takes out 4 missiles is better than something the same size which gets 10 50% of the time, and 0 50% of the time. (Assuming that I'm only allowed to mount one, that is.)