Gauss Cannon Fighters vs Guass Turrets vs CIWS

[liveware (OP)]

So I have been min-maxing various gauss cannon designs because I am a boring person. I have been messing around with the concept of the gauss fighter as a dedicated PD fighter for ASM protection of my larger ships so I started to wonder if there was a point at which it becomes more efficient (technologically, economically, etc...) to produce gauss fighters or gauss turrets. Currently I'm at gauss tech level 4 and internal fusion engine tech, and I came up with the following fighters, turret, and CIWS:

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Barracuda-G class Fighter      500 tons       21 Crew       167.2 BP       TCS 10    TH 175    EM 0
17533 km/s      Armour 3-5       Shields 0-0       HTK 3      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 0      PPV 3
Maint Life 12.82 Years     MSP 232    AFR 8%    IFR 0.1%    1YR 3    5YR 39    Max Repair 87.5 MSP
Lieutenant    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 0.3 days    Morale Check Required   

Chaimberlin-Sherman Internal Fusion Drive  EP175.00 (1)    Power 175    Fuel Use 1002.23%    Signature 175    Explosion 25%
Fuel Capacity 15,000 Litres    Range 0.5 billion km (8 hours at full power)

Chaimberlin-Sherman Gauss Cannon R300-50.0 (1x4)    Range 30,000km     TS: 17,533 km/s     Accuracy Modifier 50.0%     RM 30,000 km    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Chaimberlin-Sherman Beam Fire Control R32-TS16000 (50%) (1)     Max Range: 32,000 km   TS: 16,000 km/s     94 88 81 75 69 62 56 50 44 38

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction


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Barracuda-G3 class Fighter      500 tons       23 Crew       156.2 BP       TCS 10    TH 150    EM 0
15003 km/s      Armour 1-5       Shields 0-0       HTK 4      Sensors 0/0/0/0      DCR 0      PPV 5
Maint Life 4.41 Years     MSP 79    AFR 20%    IFR 0.3%    1YR 7    5YR 98    Max Repair 75 MSP
Lieutenant    Control Rating 1   
Intended Deployment Time: 0.3 days    Morale Check Required   

Chaimberlin-Sherman Internal Fusion Drive  EP150.00 (1)    Power 150    Fuel Use 1082.53%    Signature 150    Explosion 25%
Fuel Capacity 10,000 Litres    Range 0.3 billion km (6 hours at full power)

Chaimberlin-Sherman Gauss Cannon R300-85.00 (1x4)    Range 30,000km     TS: 15,003 km/s     Accuracy Modifier 85.00%     RM 30,000 km    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Chaimberlin-Sherman Beam Fire Control R32-TS16000 (50%) (1)     Max Range: 32,000 km   TS: 16,000 km/s     94 88 81 75 69 62 56 50 44 38

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and planetary interaction


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Single Chaimberlin-Sherman Gauss Cannon R300-85.00 (1x4) Turret
Damage Output 1    Rate of Fire 5 seconds     Range Modifier 30,000
Max Range 30,000 km     Turret Size 6.62 HS  (331 tons)     HTK 3
Cost 50.48    Crew 10
Maximum Tracking Speed: 16,000 km/s
Development Cost 500 RP

Materials Required
Duranium  6.40
Neutronium  4.08
Vendarite  40

I created the -G fighter variant first and then, after considering the relative merits of additional hangar space vs CIWS vs gauss turrets on my carrier class, created the -G3 variant with improved accuracy. I estimate the -G3 variant chance-to-hit accuracy to be approximately 80% taking into consideration the BFC tracking speed and the speed of the ship (target speed is ignored in this calculation), which is a considerable improvement over both CIWS and the -G variant, but not the gauss turret (which is smaller).

I personally like the gauss fighter concept better than the CIWS or turret because the fighter has some mobility, and gauss has better range than CIWS, so those concepts are driving my continuing design efforts. I am wondering if other people have come up with any relevant research data relating to CIWS, gauss cannon, and/or gauss fighter design trade-offs? I know Mr. Spike created a detailed thread a while back about gauss turrets specifically, and I've read through that several times, but what I am interested in is determining whether a larger ship with a gauss turret would be better or worse than a fighter with a fixed mount gauss cannon, and what the critical design trade-off parameters are if there is a potential for design trade-offs as I have described them here.

Also, I am intentionally ignoring railguns because I have intentionally neglected to research them in my current campaign.

*Edit: Updated range bands to 2000 and target speed to 10k (originally had them set to non-sensible numbers)

[Iceranger]

I can see a few pros and cons comparing Gauss fighters to Gauss turrets:

+ Fighters are easier to build without the need for a dedicated shipyard.

- BFC efficiency. Now a single BFC can engage an unlimited number of incoming salvos, so on a dedicated PD ship, a single BFC is good for a lot of Gauss guns/turrets. On the other hand, without the specialized fighter BFC in C#, a 1-1 ratio on fighters feels wasteful.
- The engine + fuel fraction needed on a dedicated PD ship is likely to be much lower than what is required on Gauss fighters. Thus for the same total tonnage, a PD ship can pack more guns than a swarm of Gauss fighters. This is even without considering the carrier needed to house those fighters.
- Fighters are more micro heavy.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

The -G is too fast for its fire control so the extra speed is wasted.
The -G3 is too slow for the control, incurring an additional ~6-7% speed penalty, effectively downgrading the FC to 88% at FDF range instead of 94%.
For the turret I'd use a 100% gun mount.  The reduced size doesn't make up for the reduced accuracy.

[liveware (OP)]

The -G is too fast for its fire control so the extra speed is wasted.
The -G3 is too slow for the control, incurring an additional ~6-7% speed penalty, effectively downgrading the FC to 88% at FDF range instead of 94%.
For the turret I'd use a 100% gun mount.  The reduced size doesn't make up for the reduced accuracy.

I arrived at the same conclusion for the turret after messing around with my carrier design some more.

For the fighters I was lazy about the engine design and called it 'good enough' at 25 ton increments for new engine research projects.

[liveware (OP)]

I can see a few pros and cons comparing Gauss fighters to Gauss turrets:

+ Fighters are easier to build without the need for a dedicated shipyard.

- BFC efficiency. Now a single BFC can engage an unlimited number of incoming salvos, so on a dedicated PD ship, a single BFC is good for a lot of Gauss guns/turrets. On the other hand, without the specialized fighter BFC in C#, a 1-1 ratio on fighters feels wasteful.
- The engine + fuel fraction needed on a dedicated PD ship is likely to be much lower than what is required on Gauss fighters. Thus for the same total tonnage, a PD ship can pack more guns than a swarm of Gauss fighters. This is even without considering the carrier needed to house those fighters.
- Fighters are more micro heavy.

The ability to produce fighters without having to retool a shipyard is a considerable advantage in both production time and control micro savings. I would argue that fighter combat micro is not that much more intense than larger ship combat micro, and also I tend to over-micro during combat anyway. It is also cheaper on a RP basis to design new fighter components than larger ship components as they are smaller/cheaper.

BFC designs have less range resolution per hull size than do engine designs. I noticed that, for example, I could design either a 32km or 64km BFC at the same BFC tracking speed but their hull sizes were significantly different. Engines on the other hand have a lot more resolution when varying total power output. So, considering that overall ship speed affects total accuracy, I found there was a design trade-off between engines and fire control tracking speed. One of my design goals was to match ship speed to BFC tracking speed closely, but not necessarily perfectly.

I think there is an advantage to having more BFCs than incoming missiles so that each BFC can target a different missile (though I am sure that there some programmatic idiosyncrasies which cause problems with this theory which require further testing).

[Jorgen_CAB]

I can see a few pros and cons comparing Gauss fighters to Gauss turrets:

+ Fighters are easier to build without the need for a dedicated shipyard.

- BFC efficiency. Now a single BFC can engage an unlimited number of incoming salvos, so on a dedicated PD ship, a single BFC is good for a lot of Gauss guns/turrets. On the other hand, without the specialized fighter BFC in C#, a 1-1 ratio on fighters feels wasteful.
- The engine + fuel fraction needed on a dedicated PD ship is likely to be much lower than what is required on Gauss fighters. Thus for the same total tonnage, a PD ship can pack more guns than a swarm of Gauss fighters. This is even without considering the carrier needed to house those fighters.
- Fighters are more micro heavy.

The ability to produce fighters without having to retool a shipyard is a considerable advantage in both production time and control micro savings. I would argue that fighter combat micro is not that much more intense than larger ship combat micro, and also I tend to over-micro during combat anyway. It is also cheaper on a RP basis to design new fighter components than larger ship components as they are smaller/cheaper.

BFC designs have less range resolution per hull size than do engine designs. I noticed that, for example, I could design either a 32km or 64km BFC at the same BFC tracking speed but their hull sizes were significantly different. Engines on the other hand have a lot more resolution when varying total power output. So, considering that overall ship speed affects total accuracy, I found there was a design trade-off between engines and fire control tracking speed. One of my design goals was to match ship speed to BFC tracking speed closely, but not necessarily perfectly.

I think there is an advantage to having more BFCs than incoming missiles so that each BFC can target a different missile (though I am sure that there some programmatic idiosyncrasies which cause problems with this theory which require further testing).

I have said this a couple of times over the last couple of weeks in different threads... PD fighters is a very expensive form of PD if their role is to replace Gauss turrets. The cost of the engine and the fire-control are way to expensive.

One fire-control is enough to guide an unlimited number of Gauss guns or turrets as they can target multiple salvos. Although one gun or turret is needed at minimum per salvo... this make smaller Gauss guns more effective in general as they overkill incoming salvos much less then the larger Gauss cannons do.

On ships the most effective Gauss are the 17% reduced size one as it has 1 HTK so use that in a single turret or a a few mounted on a fighter hull. Larger guns might be somewhat better if you face huge salvos but their inefficiency against smaller salvos is so bad you generally don't want them outside role-playing reasons.

If you intend your PD fighters to do multiple jobs and their fleet PD role is one of them then build them, but you still should have dedicated fleet Gauss turrets as they are much cheaper and need far less fire-controls when mounted on capital ships or escorts.

[Iceranger]

I can see a few pros and cons comparing Gauss fighters to Gauss turrets:

+ Fighters are easier to build without the need for a dedicated shipyard.

- BFC efficiency. Now a single BFC can engage an unlimited number of incoming salvos, so on a dedicated PD ship, a single BFC is good for a lot of Gauss guns/turrets. On the other hand, without the specialized fighter BFC in C#, a 1-1 ratio on fighters feels wasteful.
- The engine + fuel fraction needed on a dedicated PD ship is likely to be much lower than what is required on Gauss fighters. Thus for the same total tonnage, a PD ship can pack more guns than a swarm of Gauss fighters. This is even without considering the carrier needed to house those fighters.
- Fighters are more micro heavy.

The ability to produce fighters without having to retool a shipyard is a considerable advantage in both production time and control micro savings. I would argue that fighter combat micro is not that much more intense than larger ship combat micro, and also I tend to over-micro during combat anyway. It is also cheaper on a RP basis to design new fighter components than larger ship components as they are smaller/cheaper.

BFC designs have less range resolution per hull size than do engine designs. I noticed that, for example, I could design either a 32km or 64km BFC at the same BFC tracking speed but their hull sizes were significantly different. Engines on the other hand have a lot more resolution when varying total power output. So, considering that overall ship speed affects total accuracy, I found there was a design trade-off between engines and fire control tracking speed. One of my design goals was to match ship speed to BFC tracking speed closely, but not necessarily perfectly.

I think there is an advantage to having more BFCs than incoming missiles so that each BFC can target a different missile (though I am sure that there some programmatic idiosyncrasies which cause problems with this theory which require further testing).

If you already have a fleet of larger ships, then for a dedicated ship the only thing that needs to be researched is the gauss turret themselves (which are optimally to be smaller ones according to recent studies thus cheap in RP) and perhaps the beam fire control, which the fighters also need anyway. So I don't see a significant saving in RP in this case.

For fighters to participate in long-range fleet operations, you need a dedicated shipyard for a carrier design, so there needs to be a shipyard anyway.

Tonnage wise, gauss turrets will have more shots per ton than gauss fighters (railgun fighters compete pretty well with gauss turrets but you have already ruled it out), even without considering the tonnage needed for the carrier.

Cost-wise, gauss fighter swarm needs more BFC (which is btw one of the most expensive components in-game per HS), but turrets are more expensive than bare gauss guns. So perhaps cost-per-shot wise, dedicated PD ships perhaps is on par with gauss fighters swarm. That is again excluding the carrier.

I'm not sure how multiple BFCs will help in engaging more salvos since right now 1 BFC can engage an unlimited number of salvos.

BTW, for using railguns on PD fighters, all you need is the 10cm railgun tech and capacitor recharge rate 3, both of which are dirt cheap at your tech level.

[liveware (OP)]

I am intentionally avoiding railguns. I don't really have a reason except that I don't want to use them. I guess I am stubborn in that regard.

I suppose after considering the above responses that I am trying to balance a somewhat different equation than what is being considered above. Preceding posts identified that a single engine and BFC can provide maneuverability and targeting capability for multiple gauss turrets. This is certainly true and may be useful for gauss turrets with accuracy less than 100%. However, what I am interested in exploring are the design trade-offs between a single minimums size 100% accuracy gauss turret and an equivalent performance fighter craft. It is possible I don't yet possess high enough engine or gauss tech to make this trade-off useful with regards to a fighter craft, as it seems that turrets are generally more efficient in terms of cost and RP (though the RP cost for individual fighter components is smaller than the RP cost for individual ship components due to smaller size and generally poorer performance).

[liveware (OP)]

One fire-control is enough to guide an unlimited number of Gauss guns or turrets as they can target multiple salvos. Although one gun or turret is needed at minimum per salvo... this make smaller Gauss guns more effective in general as they overkill incoming salvos much less then the larger Gauss cannons do.

I am under the impression that one BFC is required per target salvo, but that within each salvo, each gun can hit multiple targets.

Example 1:
1x BFC and 1x Quad Gauss Turret
BFC targets incoming salvo. Quad turret fires 4 x ROF shots per 5 second increment. So if ROF = 4 (as is my case in original post) each shot can target a different missile but all target missiles are in the same salvo. So this combination of BFC and turret could destroy at most 20x missiles in a single salvo in a single 5 second increment. 1x BFC with 2x of the same turrets could destroy at most 40x missiles. Et ce…

Example 2:
4x BFC and 4x Quad Gauss Turret
Each turret is assigned it's own unique BFC. Each BFC can target a different salvo OR the same salvo (not sure how this target selection is performed in-game, according to other recent threads it seems somewhat unintuitive). Each quad turret fires 4 x ROF shots per 5 second increment. So using ROF = 4 as above, each turret can destroy up to 20 missiles, but each set of 20 missiles can be in a different salvo because each turret has a separate BFC. So this BFC and turret combination could destroy up to 80x missiles in 4x separate salvos, with a maximum of 20x missiles destroyed per salvo if each salvo has at least 20x missiles and each BFC targets a different salvo. However, if a single 80x salvo was targeted by all 4x BFCs, I am not sure that all 80x missiles would be destroyed. I believe there would be overkill of some of the missiles and that at most, 20x missiles would be destroyed.

[Ulzgoroth]

One fire-control is enough to guide an unlimited number of Gauss guns or turrets as they can target multiple salvos. Although one gun or turret is needed at minimum per salvo... this make smaller Gauss guns more effective in general as they overkill incoming salvos much less then the larger Gauss cannons do.

I am under the impression that one BFC is required per target salvo, but that within each salvo, each gun can hit multiple targets.

I'm certain I've seen it repeatedly stated that that is not the case in current versions.

I can't find an original source for that at the moment though.

[liveware (OP)]

One fire-control is enough to guide an unlimited number of Gauss guns or turrets as they can target multiple salvos. Although one gun or turret is needed at minimum per salvo... this make smaller Gauss guns more effective in general as they overkill incoming salvos much less then the larger Gauss cannons do.

I am under the impression that one BFC is required per target salvo, but that within each salvo, each gun can hit multiple targets.

I'm certain I've seen it repeatedly stated that that is not the case in current versions.

I can't find an original source for that at the moment though.

It's entirely possible I am operating on outdated data. That is certainly a real and frustrating problem.

[Iceranger]

One fire-control is enough to guide an unlimited number of Gauss guns or turrets as they can target multiple salvos. Although one gun or turret is needed at minimum per salvo... this make smaller Gauss guns more effective in general as they overkill incoming salvos much less then the larger Gauss cannons do.

I am under the impression that one BFC is required per target salvo, but that within each salvo, each gun can hit multiple targets.

I'm certain I've seen it repeatedly stated that that is not the case in current versions.

I can't find an original source for that at the moment though.

It's entirely possible I am operating on outdated data. That is certainly a real and frustrating problem.

When in doublt, check the change log
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg115853#msg115853

A fire control in this mode will continue to fire on incoming salvos as long as it has unfired weapons remaining. Each individual weapon or turret will only be able to engage a single salvo. This means point defence ships no longer need a large number of fire control systems, although there is still a design choice in terms of redundancy.

[liveware (OP)]

One fire-control is enough to guide an unlimited number of Gauss guns or turrets as they can target multiple salvos. Although one gun or turret is needed at minimum per salvo... this make smaller Gauss guns more effective in general as they overkill incoming salvos much less then the larger Gauss cannons do.

I am under the impression that one BFC is required per target salvo, but that within each salvo, each gun can hit multiple targets.

I'm certain I've seen it repeatedly stated that that is not the case in current versions.

I can't find an original source for that at the moment though.

It's entirely possible I am operating on outdated data. That is certainly a real and frustrating problem.

When in doublt, check the change log
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg115853#msg115853

A fire control in this mode will continue to fire on incoming salvos as long as it has unfired weapons remaining. Each individual weapon or turret will only be able to engage a single salvo. This means point defence ships no longer need a large number of fire control systems, although there is still a design choice in terms of redundancy.

That seems to be applicable to FDF mode only. I was hoping to use my gauss fighters in an area defense mode, which by my understanding also results in a somewhat longer engagement range than FDF. I believe FDF is limited to 10km max range?

*Edit: I should also note that the principle advantage that I see using gauss vs CIWS is that gauss can target missiles which are targeting ships other than the ship upon which the gauss is mounted. CIWS can only defend it's host ship.

[liveware (OP)]

The -G3 is too slow for the control, incurring an additional ~6-7% speed penalty, effectively downgrading the FC to 88% at FDF range instead of 94%.

Are you implying that at FDF range the BFC has 100% CTH if the host ship is at least as fast as the BFC and the target ship is slower than the host ship BFC? This has been my assumption but I have not attempted to prove this rigorously.

[Iceranger]

The -G3 is too slow for the control, incurring an additional ~6-7% speed penalty, effectively downgrading the FC to 88% at FDF range instead of 94%.

Are you implying that at FDF range the BFC has 100% CTH if the host ship is at least as fast as the BFC and the target ship is slower than the host ship BFC? This has been my assumption but I have not attempted to prove this rigorously.

No, the BFC range penalty is applied after tracking speed calculation. Also, the tracking speed of a beam weapon is the slower of its tracking speed, and the BFC’s tracking speed. So if you have a 10kkm/s BFC with a beam capable of tracking 5kkm/s, the tracking speed is 5kkm/s, effectively wasting half of your BFC’s tracking speed.

That seems to be applicable to FDF mode only. I was hoping to use my gauss fighters in an area defense mode, which by my understanding also results in a somewhat longer engagement range than FDF. I believe FDF is limited to 10km max range?

*Edit: I should also note that the principle advantage that I see using gauss vs CIWS is that gauss can target missiles which are targeting ships other than the ship upon which the gauss is mounted. CIWS can only defend it's host ship.

Gauss’s range is too small for any meaningful area PD attempt. Until perhaps the end tech, fighters are simply not fast enough to keep missile within its firing range to utilize area PD.

Your note for CIWS is true for any beam PD. That’s why CIWS is typically recommended only for ships that are designed to operate alone.