About a month ago, I ran across a forum post that was complaining about large amounts of small AMMs being used as offensive weapons on precursor ships. As far as I can remember, the general consensus was the only way to combat them was tanking with shields/armor.
With that in mind, I came up with a PD orientated weapon loosely based on Gauss cannons: Grapeshot.
First, some background on how I
think (turreted) Gauss cannon are used as point defense:
Chance to hit is governed by the following equation:
Chance to hit = Base chance * Size modifier * Tracking factor * Missile evasion factor * Max range / Target range
Where tracking factor is determined by the turret/beam fire control.
You also get a number of shots based on your rate of fire tech.
I propose grapeshot as a non-turreted PD oriented weapon specialized for swarms of small missiles.
Chance to hit would be governed by the following equation:
Chance to hit = Base chance * Size modifier * Missile evasion factor * Area saturation factor / Missile Size
You would get 3 to 5 times as many shots as comparable Gauss rate of fire tech
There are some notable differences between grapeshot and Gauss cannons that have to do with the fact that grapeshot works by saturating a small area of space with essentially a cloud of ball bearings
- Grapeshot cannot be turreted
- Grapeshot has a maximum range of 10,000km (smallest increment of distance in Aurora)
- Grapeshot, like CIWS, has an integrated fire control system
- Grapeshot has only two fire modes:
- Final Defence Fire (Self)
- Target ship (This would have a massive penalty to hit, as the cloud of bearings has spread out. I am not at all attached to this option, I just thew it in so grapeshot would have more utility
- Grapeshot is optimized for smaller missiles. (It's not that larger missiles are realistically harder to hit, but theoretically, they could survive more impacts with bearings; to simplify things, I just give the grapeshot a penalty to hit. Additionally, I'm hoping this would let larger missiles reclaim part of the niche they lost when missile armor was removed if NPRs use grapeshot.)
- Grapeshot's chance to hit is independent of the missile's speed. (As grapeshot does not rely on one specific projectile to hit the target, but rather saturates an area with bearings, the launcher saturates the sea the missile must fly through, negating the need to "track" the missile in a turret. Missile evasion does affect the chance to hit, as the missile tries to "evade" the cloud of bearings)
- Misslie evasion is countered by packing more ball bearings into the cloud
Some important things to note that are similar to Gauss cannons:
- Grapeshot does 1 damage to anything it hits
- Grapeshot fires "salvos" every 5 seconds, though I am open to having a system where same sized grapeshot launches fire more shots per salvo in less frequent salvos (e. g. If a launcher fires 10 shots in a salvo every 5 seconds, the launcher could be designed to fire 20 shots every 10 seconds, or 30 every 15, etc. )
This post is by no means complete. I would appreciate any feedback,
Duane
EDITS:
Clarified that grapeshot's chance to hit is not affected by missile speed.
