Author Topic: Designing Turrets with Reduced Size Lasers  (Read 1581 times)

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Offline Prince of Space (OP)

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Designing Turrets with Reduced Size Lasers
« on: October 28, 2012, 08:35:38 PM »
I have an itty bitty laser that I designed for mounting on fighters, shown below:

Code: [Select]
Damage Output 3     Rate of Fire: 100 seconds     Range Modifier: 1
Max Range 30,000 km     Laser Size: 2 HS    Laser HTK: 0
Power Requirement: 3    Power Recharge per 5 Secs: 0.15
Cost: 2    Crew: 3
Materials Required: 0.4x Duranium  0.4x Boronide  1.2x Corundium

When I try to mount it into a turret I'm designing, I get the following error:

"Error 11 was generated by Aurora
Division by zero
Please report to hxxp: aurora2. pentarch. org/index. php/board,11. 0. html"

This looks like an old problem, one that was reported in the 5. 56/5. 60 Official Bugs Thread, but I didn't see much discussion of it past the first report, so here is my experience.

I get this error for single, twin, and triple mounts, but not for quad mounts.  I suspect that the problem is the laser's Power Recharge per 5 Secs multiplied by the number of guns in the turret is less than 0. 5 for any turret with less than four of my mini-lasers, which produces a rounding error in the rate of fire.  Or something to that effect.  Here is the single-gun turret:

Code: [Select]
Damage Output 3x1      Rate of Fire: 5 seconds     Range Modifier: 1
Max Range 30,000 km    Turret Size: 2.67    SPW: 2.67    Turret HTK: 0
Power Requirement: 3    Power Recharge per 5 Secs: 0
Cost: 5    Crew: 3
Maximum Tracking Speed: 10000km/s
Materials Required: 3.75x Duranium  0.4x Corbomite  1.2x Corundium 

Development Cost for Project: 50RP


This gives the error message.  Note: "Power Recharge per 5 Secs: 0"

Here is the quad-turret:

Code: [Select]
Damage Output 3x4      Rate of Fire: 60 seconds     Range Modifier: 1
Max Range 30,000 km    Turret Size: 10.4    SPW: 2.6    Turret HTK: 0
Power Requirement: 12    Power Recharge per 5 Secs: 1
Cost: 20    Crew: 11
Maximum Tracking Speed: 10000km/s
Materials Required: 13.6x Duranium  1.6x Corbomite  4.8x Corundium 

Development Cost for Project: 200RP

This one does not give the error message.  Note: "Power Recharge per 5 Secs: 1"

Interestingly, the rate of fire for the two turrets is 5 seconds and 60 seconds respectively, while the rate of fire for the constituent lasers is 100 seconds.

More interestingly, if I change the design over to the quad turret and then switch back to single, twin, or triple, I get a different rate of fire.  Here is the single turret from above after clicking the "Quad" radio button (turning it into the quad turret from above) and then clicking the "Single" radio button again.  Note the Rate of Fire remains at the quad's 60 seconds rather than returning to the single's original 5 seconds:

Code: [Select]
Damage Output 3x1      Rate of Fire: 60 seconds     Range Modifier: 1
Max Range 30,000 km    Turret Size: 2.67    SPW: 2.67    Turret HTK: 0
Power Requirement: 3    Power Recharge per 5 Secs: 0
Cost: 5    Crew: 3
Maximum Tracking Speed: 10000km/s
Materials Required: 3.75x Duranium  0.4x Corbomite  1.2x Corundium 

Development Cost for Project: 50RP

I should point out that the turret design window in my save defaults to a gauss cannon I designed and I need to scroll down to my only other beam weapon, the mini-laser, to get these designs.  Anyone attempting to reproduce this bug might get different results without the gauss design, since the rate of fire field may just be retaining its previous value when it encounters the divide by zero error.  Or maybe that's the default value; I'm not sure.

So I think there are three related bugs here, or perhaps three manifestations of a single bug:

1.  Mounting slowly-recharging lasers on a turret can sometimes produce a division by zero error.
2.  The RoF for turrets with reduced sized lasers does not display properly in at least some cases.
3.  Changing the number of guns mounted in a turret sometimes causes the displayed RoF to be inconsistent with an otherwise identically designed turret.

Any thoughts? I'm not misinterpreting the numbers, am I? Should I report this in the 6. 10 bug thread?
 

Offline TheDeadlyShoe

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Re: Designing Turrets with Reduced Size Lasers
« Reply #1 on: October 28, 2012, 10:37:51 PM »
Just a side note, but the second size reduction tech doesnt actually reduce the size of a 10cm laser.  They're both 2HS.  At least, last time I checked.
 

Offline Prince of Space (OP)

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Re: Designing Turrets with Reduced Size Lasers
« Reply #2 on: October 30, 2012, 04:17:47 PM »
Ah, good to know. I had designed that 10cm laser just for proof of concept earlier, but as I scrolled through the list of available beam weapons in the turret design window I had an error message thrown at me. My curiosity took over from there and I started picking at it. I did eventually design a larger reduced size laser turret and I got the same error. I even mounted it in a ship to see which would win out: the zero power recharge per five seconds or the five second rate of fire. The zero recharge won out and my ship fired only once.

Anyway, I'm not sure if this is already a known issue that I shouldn't bother Steve about or if it's worth throwing on the pile.
 

Offline metalax

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Re: Designing Turrets with Reduced Size Lasers
« Reply #3 on: October 30, 2012, 04:54:51 PM »
Post it in the bug report thread. I'd noticed this myself and was going to do some testing when I got some free time.
 

Offline Charlie Beeler

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Re: Designing Turrets with Reduced Size Lasers
« Reply #4 on: October 30, 2012, 05:58:11 PM »
Just a side note, but the second size reduction tech doesnt actually reduce the size of a 10cm laser.  They're both 2HS.  At least, last time I checked.

Non-reduced (ie standard) 10cm lasers are 3hs not 2hs.
Amateurs study tactics, Professionals study logistics - paraphrase attributed to Gen Omar Bradley