You state self-evident facts, imply that your incorrect conclusions from them are equally self-evident, and obfuscate by mixing in hyperbole, unubstantiated gushing and real-life analogies that don't translate to Aurora mechanics. You don't make clear what should be taken at face value, and what is colourful prose you already know to be incorrect. Stating the self-evident facts in an even simpler fashion does not help, it's the rest that is causing me problems.
If the initial salvo matters, large railguns don't deliver because they lack high single shot damage (which shock damage depends on) and penetration if that matters.
If continuous output matters, large railguns fail because they are held back badly by capacitor tech.
You want to have it both ways: "large calibre is good" and "many shots are good".
Railguns never had most advantages associated with the former, and lose the latter on anything but the first salvo if their fire rate is >10s.
You talked up the effect of the shock damage. Let's look at it.
Expected shock damage is proportional to (single shot damage)^1.3*(total damage)
A large railgun deals 2/3 the shock damage over time as 2 lasers with the same single-shot damage and triple the fire rate, but twice as much on the first salvo.
A large railgun is much worse at dealing shock damage than a laser of the same calibre. A 35cm laser has a 90% chance of dealing shock damage vs. 53% for a 35cm railgun, and expected amount is 4.7 times as large.
There is a trade-off between devastating single volleys and continuous output, but you are better off mixing weapons that are actually good at what they are doing rather than using one that fails on either account.
ROF8 Gauss Cannon x4 = Kill everything. Ok? Doesn't get simpler than that. You put a ship with two of these, next to another hostile ship, and in 30 seconds, no more hostile ship. Now imagine this: Imagine the hostile ship was hit twice by a laser, that removed some of the armor. Now you don't need 30 seconds, now you need 15. Why? Because the GC, with it's huge volume of fire, will hit internals very very often now.
I already mentioned the effect. I think very highly of 15cm lasers paired with 10cm railguns.
The raw damage output of this combination may not be the highest in a knife fight, but the format is good:
One carves respectable gashes. 4 layers deep, and many of them: it can fire every tick at reasonable tech and is quite compact at 4HS.
The other delivers more than one shot per HS, making sure that any gap in the armour will be found.
If the most practical sniping weapon (which is also good at area defence) and the finest point defence weapon for fast ships make for a good combination in a knife fight... any dedicated brawling weapon needs to be very good at it to be worth it.
Now you plug ECM into a ship, say ECM 80, and the laser has a 20 percent chance to hit. Railguns have 4 shots, at 20 percent.
Does this change anything of relevance? Sure, the railgun only has a 41% chance of missing entirely, but the important metric - expected damage - is reduced to 20% in either case.
