Weapon size balance

[xenoscepter]

I'd like some kind of kinetic cannon myself. Maybe just a flavor of railgun that fires one shot with the equivalent damage of a spread. Thus you trade PD ability for penetrating power. I make bomb guns with size 1/2 missiles and focus on throw weight. Lots of little tubes which I imagine as being arranged Gatling Style.

[TheBawkHawk]

I don't necessarily see the need for a separate kinetic weapon that fires one shot since that's basically just a reflavoured laser. I do though agree that it would be cool and good since the totally unbiased truth is that kinetics are infinitely superior to lasers. Perhaps instead, add an option to the railgun design that lets us choose how many shots a railgun will fire per shot, and divide the damage accordingly?

Alternatively for a separate weapon, I really do like the idea of a custom-ammo flinging cannon. Perhaps allow us to design cannon shells with various effects (flak = lots of str-1 hits, penetrator = lower overall damage but only deals damage to a single armour column instead of spreading out, etc) and store these shells in magazines(?). The downside is that it might be more micromanagement, but its nothing that missiles don't already create. The obvious upside to this being a beam weapon and not just missiles is that the weapon can't be intercepted by point defence or AMMs.

[QuakeIV]

To be honest my thought had been it would be missiles but with no need for any kind of engine whatsoever, makes use of beam fire control, has a very high effective velocity (presumably not interceptable as mentioned by bawk hawk), potentially a very high damage insofar as its a bomb ala the missile maker, and it requires magazines (which can presumably cook off) in order to store the ammo.  I do think that is noticeably different from the weapons available currently.

e: As a side note, I do rather favor the idea of custom ammo in general for the various kinetic weapons, and think that could make a really nice differentiating factor against plasma/laser weapons.  I think that arguably should just apply to any of the current kinetics though, rather than that sort of thing only being accessible to a single weapon.

e2: made mention of beam fire control

[Rabid_Cog (OP)]

Let's pause the theorycrafting for a second and look at where we are coming from for some context.

Spinal mounted weapons, at their essence provide
* Increased range and damage
At the cost of
*All the normal penalties inherent in increasing range/damage
*Only being able to fit 1 on your ship.

What is important to note is that spinal mount weapons do not alter the rules. All their calculations are done in exactly the same manner as a normal hull mounted weapon. Rate of fire, damage, range, everything is calculated exactly as if they are a weapon of exactly their size, the only change is that the size limitation is increased by 25%/50%.

With lasers, increasing the focal lense size by 25% increases the base damage, which in turn increases both the range and the energy consumption (which could result in reduced rate of fire if capacitor tech does not keep up).

If we apply the same approach to railguns, the solution seems simply to increase the calibre by 25% in a similar vein. Base damage increases which again causes an increase in range and energy consumption, all following the same rules as hull mounts.

Is there any reason railguns were not originally allowed to be set as spinal mounts under these rules?

[QuakeIV]

As pointed out earlier, the only difference for railguns would be size, since you already cannot turret them.  So I suppose another way of framing it would be that they are effectively already spinal.