3 Weapon Doctrines

[liveware (OP)]

I'm interested in attempting a 3 faction game where I control all races. NPRs and spoilers will be disabled initially but will be enabled once I get used to managing multiple races. Each player race will be a conventional empire starting with 100k RP and BP each and will initially share the same home world. Starting population will be 250 million for each faction. I want each faction to feel different but share similar unit classes (for example each race will have a frigate class ship but each will have a different weapon load out, speed, range, etc...). I am trying to come up with some interesting weapon combinations for each faction. Here is what I have so far:

Faction 1: Railguns and plasma carronades. RG provide PD and PC provide close range firepower.

Faction 2: Lasers and mesons. Laser and meson turrets provide PD and spinal lasers provide close range firepower.

Faction 3: Particle beams and gauss cannons. GC provide PD and PB and lances provide firepower at a distance. Close range combat is to be avoided.

I'd like to work microwaves in somewhere but haven't decided where they fit best. Maybe with the PB and GC faction since MW are not turreted and PB cannot be turret mounted which leaves the laser faction as the turret specialist.

All races will use missiles and shields once developed, though likely with differences for each faction. For example the RG/PC faction I am currently working on is is going to use very short ranged, fast, and high (for low tech) damage missiles. Other races may use longer range missiles or larger missiles.

Anyone have any other suggestions for interesting weapon combinations for this 3 race game?

[Droll]

I'm interested in attempting a 3 faction game where I control all races. NPRs and spoilers will be disabled initially but will be enabled once I get used to managing multiple races. Each player race will be a conventional empire starting with 100k RP and BP each and will initially share the same home world. Starting population will be 250 million for each faction. I want each faction to feel different but share similar unit classes (for example each race will have a frigate class shop but each will have a different weapon load out, speed, range, etc...). I am trying to come up with some interesting weapon combinations for each faction. Here is what I have so far:

Faction 1: Railguns and plasma carronades. RG provide PD and PC provide close range firepower.

Faction 2: Lasers and mesons. Laser and meson turrets provide PD and spinal lasers provide close range firepower.

Faction 3: Particle beams and gauss cannons. GC provide PD and PB and lances provide firepower at a distance. Close range combat is to be avoided.

I'd like to work microwaves in somewhere but haven't decided where they for best. Maybe with the PB and GC faction since MW are not turreted and PB cannot be turret mounted which leaves the laser faction as the turret specialist.

All races will use missiles and shields once developed, though likely with differences for each faction. For example the RG/PC faction I am currently working on is is going to use very short ranged, fast, and high (for low tech) damage missiles. Other races may use longer range missiles or larger missiles.

Anyone have any other suggestions for interesting weapon combinations for this 3 race game?

At first glance it feels like faction 2 will perform very poorly against missiles compared to the other two but otherwise looks good.

[Froggiest1982]

I am using a Railgun Gauss race currently. Railguns are the main guns and Gauss are for Pd.

the interesting thing about this combination is that they do not require any Power Plants leaving more space for payload amending the lesser ductility of the kinetic weapons.

They use variegated missile ranges depending on the situation, if they cannot close in they will use mid to low-range if they are while if they can close in they use Long-range to start weakening the defenses. Because of that, each ship is classified as A, B, or C where:

A has long-range (afar)
B has both (both)
C has short-range (close)

Missiles are usually all size 10 so the bulk ship is fundamentally the same and all is changing are Sensors and Ordnance helping with retooling and production.

[liveware (OP)]

I am using a Railgun Gauss race currently. Railguns are the main guns and Gauss are for Pd.

the interesting thing about this combination is that they do not require any Power Plants leaving more space for payload amending the lesser ductility of the kinetic weapons.

They use variegated missile ranges depending on the situation, if they cannot close in they will use mid to low-range if they are while if they can close in they use Long-range to start weakening the defenses. Because of that, each ship is classified as A, B, or C where:

A has long-range (afar)
B has both (both)
C has short-range (close)

Missiles are usually all size 10 so the bulk ship is fundamentally the same and all is changing are Sensors and Ordnance helping with retooling and production.

I am actually experimenting with that setup in a separate game. I decided if against it this time around because I wanted multiple factions with distinct weapon systems and I felt that gauss and railguns are the two strongest PD options available so putting them both on the same race would be difficult to balance.

[nuclearslurpee]

If you are going to rely on weapon doctrines to distinguish your factions I think you are going to have a lot of difficulty accomplishing this if you reserve missiles as something all three factions use. Three factions with beam races are frankly going to be fairly similar as the differences between beams are not nearly as large as the difference between beam and missile combat.

You might alternatively consider basing the three factions around the three weapon types that can each be used as a single-weapon fleet basis, which are Railguns, Lasers, and Missiles. All of these are capable of filling anti-ship and PD roles to a serviceable extent but in such a way that you get a "soft" weapons triangle with missiles > lasers > railguns > missiles - as laser turrets are the worst PD, but beat railguns at range unless the railgun fleet has high enough speed, while railgun PD is quite strong especially at low tech levels before Gauss becomes stronger.

Then each faction could use a complementary secondary weapon, e.g. the Laser Faction adds Gauss for better PD, the Railgun Faction adds PBs to cover the long range niche, and the Missile Faction adds HPMs to blind enemies who close in to facilitate their escape. Of course not every weapon type must be used necessarily.

That said, even so a potential problem with limiting weapon choices is that each faction is very limited in how they could evolve their doctrines over time in response to events. This may be acceptable if you're not heavy on RPing and just want to make three different fleets fight each other but is worth noting. For me this is a big reason among others that I would prefer to differentiate factions by other factors and leave the weapon choices more open-ended.

Regarding your specific combinations:

• Railguns and Plasma don't work well together. They are both short-range weapons and as railguns are quite strong aside from lacking in penetration there is not much that plasma contributes. Railguns are an ideal weapon to combine with a specialized secondary weapon instead as the railguns are so all-purpose.
• To combine with lasers I think the best choice is something that is specialized, but not in that it has weird mechanics like mesons or HPMs, rather a weapon type that is very good at a specific niche. Gauss is ideal for this as it excels at PD which lasers are a bit weak in despite having access to turrets. Mesons I think are generally just too weak to be useful.
• PBs and Gauss are a strong combo, but research-intensive. The trouble with PBs is they basically lock you into railguns or Gauss as otherwise you have no good PD, which is why I suggest using missile as the third primary weapon.

It might also be good to think beyond just weapons and ask more questions about how each faction designs their fleet. There are many options here which are even weapon-agnostic, e.g. you can pursue a carrier strike doctrine, capital ships, cruiser fleet, FAC and other smaller ships, even exotic ideas like the tractor beam "block ship" idea Zap0 has used in their fiction universe. Similarly, in terms of design you can have varying philosophies on how to use the tonnage of your ship, e.g. one faction may have more and larger engines, another may go for heavy armor, a third might spend the RPs to develop strong shields and/or cloaking devices. Not only can these effectively differentiate a faction but in fact they can guide weapon choices in a quite organic manner.

I am using a Railgun Gauss race currently. Railguns are the main guns and Gauss are for Pd.

the interesting thing about this combination is that they do not require any Power Plants leaving more space for payload amending the lesser ductility of the kinetic weapons.

They use variegated missile ranges depending on the situation, if they cannot close in they will use mid to low-range if they are while if they can close in they use Long-range to start weakening the defenses. Because of that, each ship is classified as A, B, or C where:

A has long-range (afar)
B has both (both)
C has short-range (close)

Missiles are usually all size 10 so the bulk ship is fundamentally the same and all is changing are Sensors and Ordnance helping with retooling and production.

Railguns totally require power plants...

[Jorgen_CAB]

I'm interested in attempting a 3 faction game where I control all races. NPRs and spoilers will be disabled initially but will be enabled once I get used to managing multiple races. Each player race will be a conventional empire starting with 100k RP and BP each and will initially share the same home world. Starting population will be 250 million for each faction. I want each faction to feel different but share similar unit classes (for example each race will have a frigate class shop but each will have a different weapon load out, speed, range, etc...). I am trying to come up with some interesting weapon combinations for each faction. Here is what I have so far:

Faction 1: Railguns and plasma carronades. RG provide PD and PC provide close range firepower.

Faction 2: Lasers and mesons. Laser and meson turrets provide PD and spinal lasers provide close range firepower.

Faction 3: Particle beams and gauss cannons. GC provide PD and PB and lances provide firepower at a distance. Close range combat is to be avoided.

I'd like to work microwaves in somewhere but haven't decided where they for best. Maybe with the PB and GC faction since MW are not turreted and PB cannot be turret mounted which leaves the laser faction as the turret specialist.

All races will use missiles and shields once developed, though likely with differences for each faction. For example the RG/PC faction I am currently working on is is going to use very short ranged, fast, and high (for low tech) damage missiles. Other races may use longer range missiles or larger missiles.

Anyone have any other suggestions for interesting weapon combinations for this 3 race game?

At first glance it feels like faction 2 will perform very poorly against missiles compared to the other two but otherwise looks good.

In my opinion this is not true... the reason why lasers are good PD is because you get both decent PD and long range firepower in one and the same weapon. The fact that they also can be turreted makes them way less susceptible to things such as ECM for PD duty which can otherwise make railguns really ineffective. With gauss cannons you need to dedicate specific tonnage to PD and specific tonnage for long range beam weapons, lasers don't have that problem. In a laser fleet you put one spinal weapon and then the rest are turreted lasers with quick rate of fire and good range.

I would rather combine the laser fleets with microwave than meson, allot more dangerous combination of weapons. Measons don't have allot of synergy effect with lasers and microwaves is a cool weapon (and dangerous).

[Jorgen_CAB]

If you are going to rely on weapon doctrines to distinguish your factions I think you are going to have a lot of difficulty accomplishing this if you reserve missiles as something all three factions use. Three factions with beam races are frankly going to be fairly similar as the differences between beams are not nearly as large as the difference between beam and missile combat.

You might alternatively consider basing the three factions around the three weapon types that can each be used as a single-weapon fleet basis, which are Railguns, Lasers, and Missiles. All of these are capable of filling anti-ship and PD roles to a serviceable extent but in such a way that you get a "soft" weapons triangle with missiles > lasers > railguns > missiles - as laser turrets are the worst PD, but beat railguns at range unless the railgun fleet has high enough speed, while railgun PD is quite strong especially at low tech levels before Gauss becomes stronger.

Then each faction could use a complementary secondary weapon, e.g. the Laser Faction adds Gauss for better PD, the Railgun Faction adds PBs to cover the long range niche, and the Missile Faction adds HPMs to blind enemies who close in to facilitate their escape. Of course not every weapon type must be used necessarily.

That said, even so a potential problem with limiting weapon choices is that each faction is very limited in how they could evolve their doctrines over time in response to events. This may be acceptable if you're not heavy on RPing and just want to make three different fleets fight each other but is worth noting. For me this is a big reason among others that I would prefer to differentiate factions by other factors and leave the weapon choices more open-ended.

Regarding your specific combinations:

• Railguns and Plasma don't work well together. They are both short-range weapons and as railguns are quite strong aside from lacking in penetration there is not much that plasma contributes. Railguns are an ideal weapon to combine with a specialized secondary weapon instead as the railguns are so all-purpose.
• To combine with lasers I think the best choice is something that is specialized, but not in that it has weird mechanics like mesons or HPMs, rather a weapon type that is very good at a specific niche. Gauss is ideal for this as it excels at PD which lasers are a bit weak in despite having access to turrets. Mesons I think are generally just too weak to be useful.
• PBs and Gauss are a strong combo, but research-intensive. The trouble with PBs is they basically lock you into railguns or Gauss as otherwise you have no good PD, which is why I suggest using missile as the third primary weapon.

It might also be good to think beyond just weapons and ask more questions about how each faction designs their fleet. There are many options here which are even weapon-agnostic, e.g. you can pursue a carrier strike doctrine, capital ships, cruiser fleet, FAC and other smaller ships, even exotic ideas like the tractor beam "block ship" idea Zap0 has used in their fiction universe. Similarly, in terms of design you can have varying philosophies on how to use the tonnage of your ship, e.g. one faction may have more and larger engines, another may go for heavy armor, a third might spend the RPs to develop strong shields and/or cloaking devices. Not only can these effectively differentiate a faction but in fact they can guide weapon choices in a quite organic manner.

I am using a Railgun Gauss race currently. Railguns are the main guns and Gauss are for Pd.

the interesting thing about this combination is that they do not require any Power Plants leaving more space for payload amending the lesser ductility of the kinetic weapons.

They use variegated missile ranges depending on the situation, if they cannot close in they will use mid to low-range if they are while if they can close in they use Long-range to start weakening the defenses. Because of that, each ship is classified as A, B, or C where:

A has long-range (afar)
B has both (both)
C has short-range (close)

Missiles are usually all size 10 so the bulk ship is fundamentally the same and all is changing are Sensors and Ordnance helping with retooling and production.

Railguns totally require power plants...

I fully on agree with allowing a campaign evolve dynamically, I always do that in my games too. Initial weapons choices usually depend more on research capabilities than anything. For example most factions tend to have at leas rudimentary railguns as they are the best forms or early defensive weapons in terms of both beam and point defences, especially as AMM is not an option early on at all.

On the issue of plasma I find them to actually be a decent good long range weapon early as they are so cheap to research you get access to pretty powerful ones quite early... I primarily like to use them on planets as planetary guns. Most factions also tend to research plasma because it also provide really good armour penetrating ground combat weapons for really cheap research, this effect should not be understated in how powerful it is.

In my last campaign I did just this... started with some rudimentary railgun technology and spent most time with plasma weapons for ground troops and STO. My plasma did even outrange my planetary fire-controls by quite a fair amount. The goal were to basically focus on Gauss and Missiles with Plasma as a secondary weapon as time went on and then in mid game perhaps tech up in particle beam and lances for a more beam focused fleet, but that was never a sure thing.

[Froggiest1982]

Railguns totally require power plants...

Holy Cow, I just realized that my Railgun Corvettes have no Railguns on them!

So that's why they didn't need any power

 

[liveware (OP)]

If you are going to rely on weapon doctrines to distinguish your factions I think you are going to have a lot of difficulty accomplishing this if you reserve missiles as something all three factions use. Three factions with beam races are frankly going to be fairly similar as the differences between beams are not nearly as large as the difference between beam and missile combat.

You might alternatively consider basing the three factions around the three weapon types that can each be used as a single-weapon fleet basis, which are Railguns, Lasers, and Missiles. All of these are capable of filling anti-ship and PD roles to a serviceable extent but in such a way that you get a "soft" weapons triangle with missiles > lasers > railguns > missiles - as laser turrets are the worst PD, but beat railguns at range unless the railgun fleet has high enough speed, while railgun PD is quite strong especially at low tech levels before Gauss becomes stronger.

Then each faction could use a complementary secondary weapon, e.g. the Laser Faction adds Gauss for better PD, the Railgun Faction adds PBs to cover the long range niche, and the Missile Faction adds HPMs to blind enemies who close in to facilitate their escape. Of course not every weapon type must be used necessarily.

That said, even so a potential problem with limiting weapon choices is that each faction is very limited in how they could evolve their doctrines over time in response to events. This may be acceptable if you're not heavy on RPing and just want to make three different fleets fight each other but is worth noting. For me this is a big reason among others that I would prefer to differentiate factions by other factors and leave the weapon choices more open-ended.

Regarding your specific combinations:

• Railguns and Plasma don't work well together. They are both short-range weapons and as railguns are quite strong aside from lacking in penetration there is not much that plasma contributes. Railguns are an ideal weapon to combine with a specialized secondary weapon instead as the railguns are so all-purpose.
• To combine with lasers I think the best choice is something that is specialized, but not in that it has weird mechanics like mesons or HPMs, rather a weapon type that is very good at a specific niche. Gauss is ideal for this as it excels at PD which lasers are a bit weak in despite having access to turrets. Mesons I think are generally just too weak to be useful.
• PBs and Gauss are a strong combo, but research-intensive. The trouble with PBs is they basically lock you into railguns or Gauss as otherwise you have no good PD, which is why I suggest using missile as the third primary weapon.

It might also be good to think beyond just weapons and ask more questions about how each faction designs their fleet. There are many options here which are even weapon-agnostic, e.g. you can pursue a carrier strike doctrine, capital ships, cruiser fleet, FAC and other smaller ships, even exotic ideas like the tractor beam "block ship" idea Zap0 has used in their fiction universe. Similarly, in terms of design you can have varying philosophies on how to use the tonnage of your ship, e.g. one faction may have more and larger engines, another may go for heavy armor, a third might spend the RPs to develop strong shields and/or cloaking devices. Not only can these effectively differentiate a faction but in fact they can guide weapon choices in a quite organic manner.

I am using a Railgun Gauss race currently. Railguns are the main guns and Gauss are for Pd.

the interesting thing about this combination is that they do not require any Power Plants leaving more space for payload amending the lesser ductility of the kinetic weapons.

They use variegated missile ranges depending on the situation, if they cannot close in they will use mid to low-range if they are while if they can close in they use Long-range to start weakening the defenses. Because of that, each ship is classified as A, B, or C where:

A has long-range (afar)
B has both (both)
C has short-range (close)

Missiles are usually all size 10 so the bulk ship is fundamentally the same and all is changing are Sensors and Ordnance helping with retooling and production.

Railguns totally require power plants...

Many excellent points! I had not considered the railgun-> laser -> missile triangle, that is a good one but I'm not sure that's the path I wish to take for this venture. The missile / microwave combo is an especially interesting combination. I considered making missiles a faction-specific weapon but decided against it for reasons which I think are similar to your reasons for not specializing specific beam weapons. My plan is to diversify missile design by faction rather than only permitting a single faction to use missiles. Missiles are somewhat unique as they have many more design parameters than any single beam weapon, so putting racial restrictions on beam weapons is less problematic for me in this case.

Recall also that part of my goal is to have similar races... differences are desired to be slight.

Regarding your itemized points:

1. I want to keep particle beams as a primary weapon for one of the races. So if I am using railguns for one race already that race should not also use PBs as railguns are diverse enough to serve as both a PD platform and a primary weapon system. Of course, that line of reasoning suggests that I should remove plasma carronades from the railgun race, as PCs are at least as much of a primary weapon system as particle beams are. Maybe I should move carronades to the PB race? But then the PB race has 2 primary weapon systems (gauss being a secondary PD system) More thought required here for me.

2. I considered gauss here but since I wanted to use gauss with something that had weak PD capabilities I decided against it. I went with mesons in order to share the turret tech specialization primarily with the intention of mounting a combination of meson and laser PD turrets along with larger spinal lasers and possibly some large laser turrets. A shortcoming of this combination I see is that both mesons and lasers have good armor penetration, so I think it may be better to combine the lasers with something that has poor armor penetration or some useful secondary ability. So in that sense HPM are a possibility as they could be mounted alongside the spinal lasers. Note also that I have exactly zero C# meson experience... I recall distant memories of VB meson fighters which were probably overpowered but super fun to use :-)

3. I am willing to accept the gauss cannon RP shackles in this case.

Fleet design will be the next exciting chapter in the design of these factions for me. There will certainly be more to follow on that front :-)

[liveware (OP)]

Railguns totally require power plants...

Holy Cow, I just realized that my Railgun Corvettes have no Railguns on them!

So that's why they didn't need any power

 

10cm railguns are easy to mistake for 4 shot gauss cannons if you happen to rename them 

[Froggiest1982]

Railguns totally require power plants...

Holy Cow, I just realized that my Railgun Corvettes have no Railguns on them!

So that's why they didn't need any power

 

10cm railguns are easy to mistake for 4 shot gauss cannons if you happen to rename them 

Yep, spot on.

Still, I should have questioned that as I should also know that only Gauss is energy exempted.

[nuclearslurpee]

Railguns totally require power plants...

Holy Cow, I just realized that my Railgun Corvettes have no Railguns on them!

So that's why they didn't need any power

 

This one is going on the bulletin board in the officer's mess. 

Regarding your itemized points:

1. I want to keep particle beams as a primary weapon for one of the races. So if I am using railguns for one race already that race should not also use PBs as railguns are diverse enough to serve as both a PD platform and a primary weapon system. Of course, that line of reasoning suggests that I should remove plasma carronades from the railgun race, as PCs are at least as much of a primary weapon system as particle beams are. Maybe I should move carronades to the PB race? Bu then the PB race has 2 primary weapon systems (gauss being a secondary PD system) More though required here for me.

2. I considered gauss here but since I wanted to use gauss with something that had weak PD capabilities I decided against it. I went with mesons in order to share the turret tech specialization primarily with the intention of mounting a combination of meson and laser PD turrets along with larger spinal lasers and possibly some large laser turrets. A shortcoming of this combination I see is that both mesons and lasers have good armor penetration, so I think it may be better to combine the lasers with something that has poor armor penetration or some useful secondary ability. So in that sense HPM are a possibility as they could be mounted alongside the spinal lasers. Note also that I have exactly zero C# meson experience... I recall distant memories of VB meson fighters which were probably overpowered but super fun to use :-)

3. I am willing to accept the gauss cannon RP shackles in this case.

Fleet design will be the next exciting chapter in the design of these factions for me. There will certainly be more to follow on that front :-)

I might also suggest just using Railguns as a standalone weapon. They can do PD, act as a primary weapon...you don't really need another one. Steve did this in his last WH40K campaign and it worked pretty well, and the class designs you get more than make up for the lack of weapon variety (although you'll have at least two types of railguns anyways) in just how clean and efficient they are.

The main thing about mesons is that they got nerfed hard after being frankly OP in VB6. Now they do not penetrate armor reliably, instead they have a chance to penetrate each layer of armor which means in practice fairly little of their damage gets through anything with decent armor and when it does you only deal one point of damage anyways. The one thing they have going for them, if this wasn't also changed, is that they can bypass shields, and shielded ships do tend to be more lightly armored, so they can have a niche utility.

PB plus Gauss are expensive but fun, so do enjoy them.

[misanthropope]

in the VB6 epoch i ran a railgun + microwave composition and liked it pretty well.  you are pretty darn dependent on having initiative superiority, but considering your weapons dont really eat research points, you can pour effort into engine tech.  since you're knife fighting not kiting you don't get hard countered by an ECM advantage- not to say you like fighting into that.  because it takes so little HPM to put a ship out of action, you can lean hard into 10cm rails, and wind up with a shocking level of point defense as a result.

[Zap0]

I have a faction using primarily particle beams with short-range microwaves as a secondary weapon. The reasoning being that the PBs excel at long-range combat, but have terrible DPS at close range compared to other weapon systems, so if something gets close having a secondary way of dealing damage is nice. They also like non-lethal weapons from an RP perspective. This faction does AMMs for missile defense.

Alternatively I could see them going with plasma carronades as a secondary weapon. Agree that carronades are a bit awkward a fit with railguns, especially smaller ones.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I think that both Laser and Rail-guns are exceptional in that they are so good on their own that you are usually better of just using that weapons system alone and perhaps invest moderately into something else as a secondary weapons type, not counting missile technology that obviously is a branch of its own and don't really compare with the other weapon technologies well.

I think that in general you should not hard-code the factions too rigidly but allow them to choose one or two early on to focus on. If you have a faction that concentrate in Particle beams you should still give them ability to get say 10 or 12 cm rail-guns for PD as it is cheap and effective and pour the rest of their tech into particle beam, they can continue to use rail-guns for efficient PD even later on, no need for developing expensive Gauss-cannons. Everyone should be able to waste 2000RP what is need to get access to 10cm (10kkm) Rail-guns who will be effective PD for the rest of time. It almost is criminal not investing in it even if you intend to go down the Gauss route.

I think that Gauss cannons are best used for someone that concentrate mostly on Missiles and have really good Missile and Kinetic researchers. A really cool combination of weapons are Plasma Carronades, Gauss and Missiles... one really cheap energy weapon, leave you available to research turret technology and the Gauss Turrets you need. This can be your more missile focused faction, perhaps carrier based makes most sense here.

One can be solely focused on Lasers and the other on Rail-guns... they can both invest in Microwaves and or Particle beams as a secondary option. Both factions can also have missiles as a weapons system but not as focused as the first faction, perhaps more on missile cruisers rather than carriers with a focus on more beam combat. The Railgun faction are most interested in fast ships while the Laser side can focus more on reliability, shields and defences.

This will give you three rather different factions with very different doctrines yet relatively competitive overall.