Railguns as a Main Weapon

[Borealis4x (OP)]

My favorite sci-fi fleets are the UNSC from Halo and the Alliance from Mass Effect who both use massive spinal mounted mass drivers.  However, from what I gather the proper way to go are beam weapons and missiles for ship-ship combat and kinetic weapons for point defense.  Rather disappointing considering I wanted the opposite, beam weapons for point defense and kinetics for ship killing. 

Missiles of course are always needed, that goes without saying.

So what do you think?

[MarcAFK]

There's nothing wrong with going heavy on railguns, as they can't be turreted they arent ideal for point defence, but they can be used for it in overwhelming numbers.
If you want a primarily non missile fleet you need to ensure fleet speed is enough to catch up or outrun the enemy and point defence is up to scratch.
Or alternatively just have tanks with enough armour to withstand everything the enemy throws at them till they run out of ammo.

[Thanatos]

I actually mostly 'specialize' in beam/kinetic weapons, and what MarkAFK says is pretty true. Railguns are extremely devastating weapons, especially when you get into the 30cm range. Same goes for lasers.

The problem you have with missiles that is slightly alleviated by railguns, but still present, is reload speed, magazine capacity size, and limited ordnance. Now, when you count in the extra engines and armor you need, it kind of matches the tonnage of either option. But if you go into missiles, there are other things you need to consider due to logistics: Redundance for one. If you have only one ship with grav sensors, them getting knocked out means you don't have a fight anymore. Next up is size of fire controls. They need to be approximately as large as the sensor. So it's basically like you have a sensor anyway. Next is research, it takes a lot more research to get missiles up to speed than it does for railguns.

And lastly, of course, if your missiles are ineffective, your ship is ineffective, and you are a finished story. Point defense cannot counter railguns, and you can always find a way to approach a ship, whether through speed, or herding.

Lasers are sort of heavy on the research, but not as much as missiles, and they also have unlimited ordnance. They're nice as PD because of their range, but they get pretty heavy.

[Iranon]

The main problem is that railguns are throttled badly by capacitor tech while small lasers with equivalent damage-per-shot aren't.

A 15cm/c5 railgun is similar to 2 10cm/c3 lasers in size and output, more expensive to build and especially to research.
A 15cm/c10 railgun does the job of 4 such lasers, worth the higher price because it is much more compact. If we have a need for such a weapon at this tech level.

Similar comparisons apply at larger sizes, and 50cm railguns are particularly bad at sustained damage output because they can never fire faster than once every 3 ticks.
The largest railguns our capacitors can handle are attractive dual purpose weapons on fast ships that don't need turrets... but how much are we willing to invest into such a limited and inflexible tech line? Low-tech 10cm railguns will do for point defence, and midsize lasers can match our maximum fire control range while still being adequate at area defence.

[Borealis4x (OP)]

The main problem is that railguns are throttled badly by capacitor tech while small lasers with equivalent damage-per-shot aren't.

A 15cm/c5 railgun is similar to 2 10cm/c3 lasers in size and output, more expensive to build and especially to research.
A 15cm/c10 railgun does the job of 4 such lasers, worth the higher price because it is much more compact.  If we have a need for such a weapon at this tech level.

Similar comparisons apply at larger sizes, and 50cm railguns are particularly bad at sustained damage output because they can never fire faster than once every 3 ticks.
The largest railguns our capacitors can handle are attractive dual purpose weapons on fast ships that don't need turrets. . .  but how much are we willing to invest into such a limited and inflexible tech line? Low-tech 10cm railguns will do for point defence, and midsize lasers can match our maximum fire control range while still being adequate at area defence.

So giant spinal-mounted dreadnought sized space guns are out of the question then in terms of practicality?

[AL]

The thing is, if you're just playing against the AI you already have numerous advantages over them. Most of the time it is possible to beat the AI even with (really) suboptimal ship designs. So really, if you're wanting to use railguns as your primary ship armament then go right ahead. I think the flavour of whatever system you prefer to use comes before any considerations of whether it is optimal or not. If it really bothers you that others say lasers are better, then just name a laser project as "high velocity railgun" or something, and imagine it as such.

[Thanatos]

The main problem is that railguns are throttled badly by capacitor tech while small lasers with equivalent damage-per-shot aren't.

A 15cm/c5 railgun is similar to 2 10cm/c3 lasers in size and output, more expensive to build and especially to research.
A 15cm/c10 railgun does the job of 4 such lasers, worth the higher price because it is much more compact. If we have a need for such a weapon at this tech level.

Similar comparisons apply at larger sizes, and 50cm railguns are particularly bad at sustained damage output because they can never fire faster than once every 3 ticks.
The largest railguns our capacitors can handle are attractive dual purpose weapons on fast ships that don't need turrets... but how much are we willing to invest into such a limited and inflexible tech line? Low-tech 10cm railguns will do for point defence, and midsize lasers can match our maximum fire control range while still being adequate at area defence.

Actually, this is not really correct. For one, the discrepancy between recharge rates of railguns and lasers is not that much different. A railgun does about 30% more damage than lasers at point blank, and a 20cm railgun requires 12 capacitor tech, while a 20cm laser requires 10. 10 capacitor is a 100k research. You are not gonna have that unless you SM add it.

The range of a 20cm railgun at velocity 8, is like... 300k, while the laser at 20cm is 600k.

They both have 2 unique research techs, with the added disadvantage that the laser actually requires so much more beam fire control RANGE than the railgun. And those techs are EXTREMELY expensive. Like, pay through your eyeballs expensive. And their worth? Actually pretty crap. At max range, lasers are bad. Really bad. I mean, not worthless bad. But not as good as railgun in your face.

If you put a laser into a spinal mount where you can abuse max range, for maximum impact power and all that, you are shooting like... every 60 seconds for something that is actually worth the trouble. One blast from a 35cm railgun, even at 30 seconds per shot, is gonna ruin a ship's day.

You don't even need a 50, but, a 50 is gonna be like the 9th circle of hell on whatever it hits. But in the same vein, the same can be said about a maxed out laser.

The important thing to take away in beam-type weapons, like railguns and the energy variants, is that you want less bling on your ships, and more oomph. You want armor, but none of that other stuff you put on your blinged out ships. You need light, tough, and fast. Forget CIWS, off-load that to a Frigate. Forget tracking and sensors, leave that to a support ship. Disregard Jump Drives.

No, really, you want big railguns/lasers attached to a thruster with some nice cabins with consoles with big red 'FIRE' buttons on the sides, separated from the coldness of space by 250 tons of armor.

[Vandermeer]

What AL said. Aurora is easy once you figure it out, and the AI cannot adapt to divergent tactics at all, making approaches that sound weak and eccentric on paper still very successful, even though a player opponent would have an easy time countering. As an example, both I and AL often play games with huge ships of 100kt+ range and fitted as extremely inefficient multi-role designs, ..but the AI is usually completely overwhelmed by this, because they just don't realize that a whole pallet of counter-measures exist that would expose the ridiculousness of this doctrine. (Advantages of big ships are natural thick armor and amazing shields, so counters: a meson fighter flotilla, large caliber "beam" ships for shock damage, or concentrated size-1 missile spammers who kill anything anyway)

The renaming is also a huge thing. AL had his shields renamed to "reactive armor" once for example, while we both had CIWS pretending to be some sort of Gravity or else Shield. Sometimes fire controls are "turrets", while the launchers are "barrels" or "capacitors", lasers become phasers or plasma blasters, and particle beams will be fusion lances. ..I had missile ammunition masquerading as artillery shells, or yes, even as railgun cartridges, as recently as in 7.1. (is interesting, because you actually exhaust an ammunition reserve this way) Picture from a recent Tau themed game:

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I had simiar rewrites for Warhammer, Stargate and Star Trek themed games, and even do it when I do original games.
Since there are no visible graphics, and ambiguous description detail on what weapons do when impacting, you could see the naming in Aurora as essentially just a label that Steve put on some mechanics, and you can basically change it into whatever you see fit. Especially when you mount a different fantasy setting like Halo.
I try to keep to Aurora still when I can, or at least keep the rewrites in categories that seem related, but sometimes you just have to break it for your own fun and simulation.

[Iranon]

@ Basileus Maximos: Unfortunately, unless you adjust the fluff.
You could rename spinal lasers into something more to your liking. You could rename missile launchers as cannons and make (high-speed, low-agility?) missiles as shells to fit the flavour. But I don't think highly of large railguns as per defaults.



@ Thanatos: I disagree vigorously, and consider most of your points incorrect or irrelevant. In the context of optimisation rather than flavour:

Comparing one weapon to another simply because they have the same nominal calibre makes no sense.
20cm railguns do something very different from 20cm lasers, long-range artillery vs. dual purpose medium artillery/missile defence. They do something similar to 12cm lasers, and supporting techs determine whether they do it efficiently.

If I don't have capacitor-12, I don't make 20cm railguns because they'd be terrible. Yes, many campaigns are over before then, which is why I called large railguns mostly useless.
12cm lasers are already weak. At capcacitor tech 4 or 5, 20cm railguns are even worse (33% more output per weapon, 75% larger. This combines to only 76% of the effective output per ton).
With capacitor-6 they're about as bad (14% more space efficient, 29% more expensive for a given output)... while 15cm lasers become fantastic, imo the best general purpose weapon for a long time.

Having more range is never a disadvantage. At worst it's neutral, like in your stated case where the overhead for sophisticated firecontrols is deemed excessive.
"Long-range lasers are weaker than a railgun in your face" makes no sense. If the long-ranged laser ship has the smallest speed advantage it just needs to deal more damage per tick than your shields regenerate to score a flawless victory.

If you rule out range concerns and just want to evaluate the use of lasers for short-range brawlers versus a railgun solution, you should consider any implementation: small numbers of large lasers,  large number of small lasers. The first ist difficult to predict and may require experimentation, effect of shock damage and armour penetration depends on details of the deisgns.
Evaluating the latter against railguns is easy: They do the the same thing, we just need to compare who gets more shots for a given size/cost.

Your 35cm/C5 railgun (4x9 every 30 second) should be measured not against a spinal laser that does something entirely different, but against a pair of 20cm/C5 lasers (2x10 every 10 seconds). 40% higher output for the lasers, adjusted for size requirements.
Personally, I'd invest the RP in the next capacitor tech and field 15cm/C6 lasers: We lose a third of the range, but deal 2.5 times as much damage per tick and HS.

[83athom]

A pip in; go for it. Its actually a good idea. I'm doing it as a test for a v7.2 game I have planed so I SM gave me max size railguns (which is sadly 50cm compared to the laser's 80cm which can be increased to 120cm with spinal tech (hint hint Steve, we want our spinal railguns)) which I will use 1-3 of based on ship class paired with defensive gauss cannons and missiles. Another game a while ago I went with railguns as a main weapon with particle beams as a secondary, It worked quite well. Also, a point being left out is that you can increase the fire amount of rails from 4 to 5 through tech without changing the fire rate.

The main reason people keep saying "laser are the best weapon, don't use the others" is because the laser is the best all-round weapon. Other weapons shine better in different circumstances, different ranges, and different synergies. At the long ranges, particle beams have the best damage per increment per size, at point blank ranges its the gauss cannons with the railgun right behind that. Mesons will bypass armor and shields but always does a flat 1 damage at a limited range, making it a good fighter weapon. HPMs will disable a ship so it can't fight back by taking out sensors and fire control and deals triple damage to shields, but is useless otherwise because it doesn't do physical damage to ships. I had a graph showing the statistics of the weapons at what ranges and whatnot from the wiki, but that is down atm. However, I did post it somewhere on the forums, you just have to dig a bit.

[Borealis4x (OP)]

I'm confused about a term, so when someone refers to a beam weapon are they referring to a laser based beam or both a laser beam and a projectile?

[83athom]

I'm confused about a term, so when someone refers to a beam weapon are they referring to a laser based beam or both a laser beam and a projectile?

All non missile weapons are considered "beam weapons".

[Thanatos]

@Iranon

I don't get your point. Why are you comparing smaller lasers to larger railguns. They both start at the same focal size/caliber size. So why are you comparing 2 lasers to 1 railgun?

12cm Railgun > 12cm laser. By 1/3. That is fact. They are the same size, railgun has slightly more power consumption. And that is it.  20 cm laser at capacitor 4 or 5 tech, is just as bad as a railgun 20cm. So there is no point in saying 'a larger railgun is worse at this capacitor tech, than a laser at that one'.

By your train of thought, when you call my very logical calculation 'wrong and irrelevant in terms of optimization', to you this statement is correct:

A 30cm c6 laser, that has damage output 24 and ROF 20, is better than 2 12 cm railguns with ROF 5 and damage output of 4x2. Because that is simply not true. Damage per tick of laser is 6, and the railgun have 16.

So no, you cannot compare arbitrarily rapid fire weapons with one slow slug-thrower.

Ton for ton, railguns are better at effective ranges than lasers. Lasers will undoubtedly output more damage at the max range of a railgun, but that is hardly relevant. If you have the speed to catch up to someone to shoot him with lasers, then you have the speed to close in and shoot the railguns effectively. That is optimization. There is no reason to go the less effective route of lasers if your ship is fast enough to field railguns.

[Iranon]

@Iranon

I don't get your point. Why are you comparing smaller lasers to larger railguns. They both start at the same focal size/caliber size. So why are you comparing 2 lasers to 1 railgun?

12cm Railgun > 12cm laser. By 1/3. That is fact. They are the same size, railgun has slightly more power consumption. And that is it.  20 cm laser at capacitor 4 or 5 tech, is just as bad as a railgun 20cm. So there is no point in saying 'a larger railgun is worse at this capacitor tech, than a laser at that one'.

Because, strange as it may seem, nobody forces you to build the biggest gun you can. If you consider railguns, you apparently find several smaller shots useful. Maybe more so than one large shot. You can achieve this with multiple smaller lasers. If small lasers can do the job of a larger railgun, it seems natural to check which does it better.

By your train of thought, when you call my very logical calculation 'wrong and irrelevant in terms of optimization', to you this statement is correct:

Inappropriate self-aggrandisement, and the introduction to a  strawman.

A 30cm c6 laser, that has damage output 24 and ROF 20, is better than 2 12 cm railguns with ROF 5 and damage output of 4x2. Because that is simply not true. Damage per tick of laser is 6, and the railgun have 16.

Not at all. They do something different. The laser has range, penetration and single shot damage. The railguns have number of shots, and also damage output... not least because they are matched by an appropriate capacitor, the importance of which I've been trying to point out the entire time.

So no, you cannot compare arbitrarily rapid fire weapons with one slow slug-thrower.

Your example contained incomparables. Comparing space/build/research costs between setups with the same damage per shot, where the main difference is 4 shots every 10s to 2 shots every 5s, is much less problematic. Granted: The former is better at final fire and is 1/4 of a turn ahead on average (1/2 of a turn's output on odd turns if both start firing at the same time). These advantages can be quite expensive though.

Ton for ton, railguns are better at effective ranges than lasers.

Assertion with no basis in fact. Effective range depends on doctrine and needs to take into account  weapon, fire control and possibly defences of both combatants.

Lasers will undoubtedly output more damage at the max range of a railgun, but that is hardly relevant.

Not what I have been focusing on. I've been explicitly comparing laser setups that are similar in effect to railguns with regard to volume of fire and firing range. That the laser line also gives you access to long-range heavy artillery is a bonus.

If you have the speed to catch up to someone to shoot him with lasers, then you have the speed to close in and shoot the railguns effectively. That is optimization. There is no reason to go the less effective route of lasers if your ship is fast enough to field railguns.

You neglect that a single ship that outranges and outruns the opponent can score flawless victories... but again, that is something entirely different. I'm not arguing that you always need snipers instead of brawlers, I'm pointing out that you can make better brawlers with tech you consider sniper-only.

[Thanatos]

Oh, ok, I get what you are saying now.

I suppose you do make a good point, but I don't think it is fair to say just because they fire 4 shots at lower damage per shot, that this means that if you take a big railgun, you should compare it to a laser that outputs similar damage per shot, after factoring in weight and research cost and what not.

Indeed, you were right when you said that they provide different roles in combat. However, I cannot agree that lasers are superior to railguns. I have literally played 50 or so early start campaigns, at both very high tech levels, and very low, and the only two types of ships that were able to beat the nastiest sort of spoilers, at very low tech levels, were masons and railguns.

You underestimate the power of railguns on a few fronts:

4 pellets means 4 chances to hit. When you fire upon a very fast ship, you have a chance to miss. With a laser, you either need to turret it, which will increase it's size, or you need to fire more shots.

At high enough caliber sizes, railguns will cause shock damage per pellet. This means 4 shock damage rolls per railgun. This is absurdly powerful. At the same focal size, a laser will ruin your day, end of story.

It takes more research investment for laser, period. Beam fire range is extremely expensive to research. When you consider the damage output of lasers at long range, it may seem like it's not worth bothering with, but if you want to call laser long range artillery, you must take into account that it costs absurdly high amounts of RP to set lasers up to use their maximum range.

Some lasers can have such a huge range, that no beam fire control can actually support it.

The problem you point out that I like smaller shots more than one big one, is that to set it up with lasers, it costs a lot more power. And it is not very useful either- it is just a drawback of railguns.

Consider this: If you have 4 damage 8 lasers, you will penetrate 1 spot, 4 times. The chance of hitting the same spot is so low it's not even worth calculating. Railguns don't have that problem. 4 railguns will fire 16 damage 2 pellets. The chance of hitting the same spot is worth considering, and on subsequent runs it will just chew up armor.

I think at the end of the day, lasers and railguns will always have different roles in combat, depending on their focal/caliber size. Small railguns are as useless as small lasers, as you have pointed out.

You say that a 15cm laser with a matching capacitor is the best all-around weapon. I am inclined to agree. But I have played with 15cm railguns, with matching capacitors, and I can guarantee that they are the best brawling weapon in existence, that not even mesons can match.

Consider these two ships:

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Laser Boat class Cruiser    6,000 tons     234 Crew     2920.4 BP      TCS 120  TH 3000  EM 0
25000 km/s     Armour 6-29     Shields 0-0     Sensors 12/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 5     PPV 20
Maint Life 2.54 Years     MSP 1521    AFR 57%    IFR 0.8%    1YR 330    5YR 4945    Max Repair 1500 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 0   

3000 EP Magnetic Fusion Drive (1)    Power 3000    Fuel Use 233.83%    Signature 3000    Exp 30%
Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres    Range 12.8 billion km   (5 days at full power)

15cm C6 Far Ultraviolet Laser (5)    Range 300,000km     TS: 25000 km/s     Power 6-6     RM 5    ROF 5        6 6 6 6 6 5 4 3 3 3
Fire Control S01.5 180-10000 (1)    Max Range: 360,000 km   TS: 10000 km/s     97 94 92 89 86 83 81 78 75 72
Magnetic Confinement Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (3)     Total Power Output 30    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor MR11-R1 (1)     GPS 48     Range 11.5m km    MCR 1.3m km    Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor MR345-R100 (1)     GPS 14400     Range 345.6m km    Resolution 100
Thermal Sensor TH2-12 (1)     Sensitivity 12     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  12m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

Off-Topic: show

Railgun Boat class Cruiser    6,000 tons     240 Crew     2566.4 BP      TCS 120  TH 3000  EM 0
25000 km/s     Armour 6-29     Shields 0-0     Sensors 12/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 5     PPV 24
Maint Life 2.33 Years     MSP 1337    AFR 57%    IFR 0.8%    1YR 336    5YR 5035    Max Repair 1500 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 14 months    Spare Berths 0   

3000 EP Magnetic Fusion Drive (1)    Power 3000    Fuel Use 233.83%    Signature 3000    Exp 30%
Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres    Range 12.8 billion km   (5 days at full power)

15cm Railgun V4/C5 (4x4)    Range 120,000km     TS: 25000 km/s     Power 9-5     RM 4    ROF 10        3 3 3 3 2 2 1 1 1 1
Fire Control S00.5 60-10000 (1)    Max Range: 120,000 km   TS: 10000 km/s     92 83 75 67 58 50 42 33 25 17
Magnetic Confinement Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (2)     Total Power Output 20    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor MR11-R1 (1)     GPS 48     Range 11.5m km    MCR 1.3m km    Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor MR345-R100 (1)     GPS 14400     Range 345.6m km    Resolution 100
Thermal Sensor TH2-12 (1)     Sensitivity 12     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  12m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

The difference between these two ships is almost immediately visible. The railgun boat has one less railgun battery, lower deployment time and lower rate of fire. This railgun boat, in it's current state, obliterated the laser ship. The lasers could not penetrate the armor in one shot, and due to the fact that the railgun boat has 29 columns, every 10 seconds it returned 48 damage, in 16 pellets. The lasers did 30 damage every 5 seconds. Indeed, this is more than the railguns, but it did not matter. It could not penetrate the same spot, and the railguns chewed it out, with a 33% chance to hit the same spot. After the armor was cratered enough, it did not even matter.

But let's not draw the line here. Let's take it a step further, and pick a railgun caliber to match the 10 second ROF, with the capacitor-6 that the laser boat uses, and bring the number of weapons up to the same number, at the cost of our speed and tonnage.

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Railgun Boat II class Cruiser    7,000 tons     275 Crew     2867.6 BP      TCS 140  TH 3000  EM 0
21428 km/s     Armour 7-32     Shields 0-0     Sensors 12/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 5     PPV 35
Maint Life 2.02 Years     MSP 1280    AFR 78%    IFR 1.1%    1YR 418    5YR 6277    Max Repair 1500 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months    Spare Berths 2   

3000 EP Magnetic Fusion Drive (1)    Power 3000    Fuel Use 233.83%    Signature 3000    Exp 30%
Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres    Range 11.0 billion km   (5 days at full power)

20cm Railgun V4/C6 (5x4)    Range 120,000km     TS: 21428 km/s     Power 12-6     RM 4    ROF 10        4 4 4 4 3 2 2 2 1 1
Fire Control S00.5 60-10000 (1)    Max Range: 120,000 km   TS: 10000 km/s     92 83 75 67 58 50 42 33 25 17
Magnetic Confinement Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (3)     Total Power Output 30    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor MR11-R1 (1)     GPS 48     Range 11.5m km    MCR 1.3m km    Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor MR345-R100 (1)     GPS 14400     Range 345.6m km    Resolution 100
Thermal Sensor TH2-12 (1)     Sensitivity 12     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  12m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes

These railguns are not matched for their max range, to round off to a close number, I added another layer of armor- and this has resulted in a 3 column increase of armor, with 7 depth. The railguns now fire 20 damage 4 pellets for a total of 80 damage per 10 seconds, or 40 damage per 5 seconds. Even in the previous example, if we kept the same number of railguns as lasers, the damage per 5 seconds would've been 30. But since it is obvious that lasers have the advantage in ROF, we are taking this little detour in matching the capacitors with the caliber on a 2:1 ratio.

This ship is bad news for the laser boat and whatever the hell gets within that 120k range. But obviously, considering we did this, it cannot defeat the laser ship, as it is now faster, due to it being lighter.

Even in the previous case, it could maintain it's range, if I wanted to set it up that way, but just looking at it statistically, I believe it is clear to see which ship is superior. In this scenario, obviously, speed is life. And if we were to get into a optimization arms race, the clear winner is the laser, as it is lighter. For this purpose I specifically used max power ratio to demonstrate this fact. The lasers are lighter, if we were reduced to just one weapon, the laser ship would be faster, and thus, able to maintain it's range away from the railguns, and end up victorious.

In closing, I did not mean to start a war over this. True, I found issue with your statements, due to my misunderstanding of what you originally intended to convey, but I hope this breakdown, and yours, will shed some light on the matter of beam weapons, where they are useful, and what role they fulfill.