Author Topic: One big laser or 4 Gauss cannons on a Heavy Fighter  (Read 3228 times)

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Online ExChairman (OP)

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One big laser or 4 Gauss cannons on a Heavy Fighter
« on: September 02, 2016, 09:25:51 AM »
Cant decide! Having a relativity good laser on a fighter with good range and speed is nice. But having a Gauss hose is also nice to counter enemy missiles


The standard Falcon has a respectable Spinal Laser and has killing power! This is the one I favor most

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Falcon class Heavy Fighter    497 tons     4 Crew     1156.4 BP      TCS 9.94  TH 72  EM 0
30181 km/s     Armour 1-5     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 4
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 99%    IFR 1.4%    1YR 126    5YR 1884    Max Repair 422 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 0   

Altheim-Freitag Corporation Fighter Gas Core AM Drive (2)    Power 150    Fuel Use 617.3%    Signature 36    Exp 30%
Fuel Capacity 45 000 Litres    Range 2.6 billion km   (24 hours at full power)

Lyons-Whitehouse Fighter Spinal Laser (1)    Range 250 000km     TS: 30181 km/s     Power 6-16     RM 9    ROF 5        6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 5
Ehrlich-Moses Fire Control S00.5 125-15000 H50 (FTR) (1)    Max Range: 250 000 km   TS: 60000 km/s     96 92 88 84 80 76 72 68 64 60
Tokamak Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (2)     Total Power Output 16    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Friedberg Sensor Systems Active Search Sensor MR11-R100 (70%) (1)     GPS 1000     Range 11.0m km    Resolution 100

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes

A friend of mine, that doesn't play Aurora thinks this Heavy fighter with 4 cannons should bee better, could bee that he likes the Me 110 Zeerstörer fighter and this reminds him of it....  :-X
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Falcon MkII class Heavy Fighter    447 tons     3 Crew     610.9 BP      TCS 8.94  TH 72  EM 0
33557 km/s     Armour 5-5     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 4
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 89%    IFR 1.2%    1YR 34    5YR 507    Max Repair 211 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 0.1 months    Spare Berths 1   

Altheim-Freitag Corporation Fighter Gas Core AM Drive (2)    Power 150    Fuel Use 617.3%    Signature 36    Exp 30%
Fuel Capacity 45 000 Litres    Range 2.9 billion km   (24 hours at full power)

Matías-Carbajal Gauss Cannon R5-17 (4x5)    Range 50 000km     TS: 33557 km/s     Accuracy Modifier 17%     RM 5    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
Goddard Dynamics Type II Fire Control S00.2 62.5-15000 H50 (1)    Max Range: 125 000 km   TS: 15000 km/s     92 84 76 68 60 52 44 36 28 20

Bentley Warning & Control Active Search Sensor MR5-R1 (1)     GPS 18     Range 5.8m km    MCR 627k km    Resolution 1

This design is classed as a Fighter for production, combat and maintenance purposes

If I reduce the armor on the MkII by one layer, I could put on one more cannon...
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Offline Thanatos

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Re: One big laser or 4 Gauss cannons on a Heavy Fighter
« Reply #1 on: September 02, 2016, 10:35:48 AM »
I think the second design is superior to the spinal laser one. Your Gauss does a total of 20 damage, and trades it for 200k of range, which is meaningless, and it has greater speed, PLUS PD. What more could you ask for? Alternatively, try railguns instead of gauss. You could very easily quadruple your PD ability, and obliterate smaller ships, provided you keep the railgun small.
 

Offline iceball3

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Re: One big laser or 4 Gauss cannons on a Heavy Fighter
« Reply #2 on: September 02, 2016, 02:25:26 PM »
The tracking speed in the first design seems a bit over-engineered,while the second seems to be a bit under-engineered.
I think the second design is superior to the spinal laser one. Your Gauss does a total of 20 damage, and trades it for 200k of range, which is meaningless, and it has greater speed, PLUS PD. What more could you ask for? Alternatively, try railguns instead of gauss. You could very easily quadruple your PD ability, and obliterate smaller ships, provided you keep the railgun small.
Worth noting that the gauss cannons only have 17% accuracy, as mounted. Even with crew bonuses, you're going to be hard pressed to deal out a significant ratio of the listed damage.
Railguns are probably your best choice for total damage over time, at this tech, as well as anti-fighter combat, considering you've got the capacitor tech to keep up with it.
If you want a high-power alpha-striker, i suggest instead using a much larger spinal mounted reduced-capacitor laser with the intention of firing a single extreme-powered shot into the enemy hull. The shock damage could do some serious work on top of the massive gash you put in the armor, though I'd be worried that it would be expensive to the point that making and losing one could be a mess on your mineral stocks.
A particle gun FAC/Heavy Fighter does sound like a pretty good idea if you want a vessel that can kite enemy vessels quite vigorously.
« Last Edit: September 02, 2016, 02:27:24 PM by iceball3 »
 

Offline davidb86

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Re: One big laser or 4 Gauss cannons on a Heavy Fighter
« Reply #3 on: May 18, 2017, 07:44:29 AM »
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The tracking speed in the first design seems a bit over-engineered,while the second seems to be a bit under-engineered.

I think the problem is that the second design is an off the shelf design for a ship and did not get the x4 tracking speed of a fighter fire control.
 

Iranon

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Re: One big laser or 4 Gauss cannons on a Heavy Fighter
« Reply #4 on: May 18, 2017, 11:17:40 AM »
Midsized laser and bullet spray are both viable, with different strength (standoff range agains other beam ships, point defence). Some design details:

Unturreted Gauss Cannons really need RoF-6 to be competitive with 10cm railguns. Still nominally behind on space efficiency, but with crew bonuses getting reduced-size ones up to par and lack of capacitors it's close.

Some components are iffy. Tracking speed of second design was already mentioned. First design uses a flawed weapon that draws much more power than it needs, greatly increasing cost and requiring additional power plants. There's also no need to make it spinal, a regular 15cm laser would have the same performance but doesn't have any restrictions.

Propulsion plants are very thirsty. 40% of engine weight in fuel is the theoretical performance optimum, more and you lose performance as well as wasting fuel.
May be somewhat justifiable in fighters that push their tonnage limit, when you can't fit another engine and don't want to trim down the mission package.
 

Offline Michael Sandy

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Re: One big laser or 4 Gauss cannons on a Heavy Fighter
« Reply #5 on: May 18, 2017, 05:48:33 PM »
Got a couple of fire control speed mismatches.  That is really bad on fighters that are on an intense mass budget.

There are merits to both.  The laser one, you can have a kiting strategy, and as long as the enemy either has no missiles or they wasted them on your PD force, you can get a clean if tedious kill if you outrange the enemy... and they have no shields.

The gauss one, gauss benefits extremely from fighter combat bonus officers, but you are unlikely to have enough of them for a mass force.  The problem with close combat beam strategy is you really need a large mass of them to work.  You can have a small squadron of kiting beam ships or fighters, and not lose much if you can't employ them.  But close in beam weapons, you HAVE to close the range, which means the force that closes has to have superior firepower to the entire enemy fleet at point blank range.

I notice both designs are strike designs.  Neither has the capability on staying on station for a jump point defense, which is traditionally a good use for fast beam platforms.
 

Offline Barkhorn

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Re: One big laser or 4 Gauss cannons on a Heavy Fighter
« Reply #6 on: May 18, 2017, 11:41:20 PM »
The laser fighter has a vastly over-engineered fire control.  Your laser fires too slow to be useful against missiles, so there is no reason to be able to track anything faster than you.  I'd cut the fire control speed and make a bigger engine.  Speed is easily the most important attribute for a beam fighter.  High speed helps you survive, both by crossing missile range as fast as possible and by making it hard to hit you.  Further, beams have ranges so short compared to missiles that it will take a slow fighter ages to even be able to shoot back.

Same idea with the Gauss fighter really; the armor is a bad choice.  Speed is key.

As it stands, the Gauss fighter is probably the more useful design.  It'll be OK at PD if you fix the mismatched fire control, it'll shred FAC's and fighters, and it can soak a lot of AMM's.  ASM's or AFM's will kill it quickly though, as will turreted lasers.  Beam corvettes will massacre these, though they're deadly to nearly all beam fighters.  The laser fighter is only good against big ships without laser turrets.
 

Offline Michael Sandy

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Re: One big laser or 4 Gauss cannons on a Heavy Fighter
« Reply #7 on: May 19, 2017, 07:28:57 AM »
Since the gauss fighter needs to close to point blank range, I would argue that armor is actually a fairly reasonable choice for it.  Unless the strategy is to simply have more gauss fighters than the enemy has fire controls, in which case it should also be a lot smaller.
 

Offline baconholic

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Re: One big laser or 4 Gauss cannons on a Heavy Fighter
« Reply #8 on: May 20, 2017, 03:44:06 PM »
One thing to keep in mind about beam weapon fighter is that they need to be 100% trained on every single fighter in the group in order to be effective. Between research, building fighters, and training, you could be looking at a decade before they are combat ready. By that time, you'll have new techs and will want to upgrade, but since fighters cannot be upgraded, you'll have to train new ones again. In practice, your combat ready fighters are most likely going to be at least one generation behind missile fighters or beam FACs.

The second problem is cost. At 610 to 1156 BP, neither design is cheap. The big laser design will likely run into missile problems since they can't defend against missile attacks very well. The Gauss cannon design can defend against missiles, but at 610 BP, they aren't exactly expendable. I suggest replacing the Gauss with 10cm railguns. If you want to use them for PD purposes, then add more engines so your speed matches your max tracking speed. Otherwise just use the cheapest engines available that can still give you a speed advantage over the enemy ships.