What is the point of plasma carronades?

[iceball3 (OP)]

Mainly asking Steve designwise, but previously, I thought that plasma carronades had some kind of balancing point that made them useful in spite of their flaws. Turns out they:
Per HS, have the same base damage and power consumption as a laser. Meaning that the particular HS Plasma carronade is almost strictly worse than a laser of the same size.
I actually can't think of any situation where carronades could be used to better or more useful than an equivalent size laser, primarily because of the spinal mounting techs.
Well, maybe there is only one, which would basically be a specialised vessel that is both large enough to use several carronades (assuming you dumped all your research into them for largest size), with engines fast enough to force engagements with whatever it might potentially encounter. An oversized, overloaded FAC if you will. The thing is, lasers can easily fill this niche a lot better anyway, and the only reason why lasers wouldn't is because you spent your research points on carronades instead of lasers tech.
Sure you can set up jump-point barrage-defense locations with carronades, but you can just as well do so with lasers, with a benefit of little damage fall of, or railguns just for the sheer DPS.
So, is there any point?

[TheDeadlyShoe]

theoretically they are the cheap option rp-wise,  but imo in practice theyre just bad   

[iceball3 (OP)]

theoretically they are the cheap option rp-wise,  but imo in practice theyre just bad   

Yeah! They're even more expensive than lasers that vastly outperform them. For example:
For instance, the carronade:

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Damage Output 6     Rate of Fire: 15 seconds
Max Range 60 000 km     Carronade Size: 4 HS    Carronade HTK: 2
Power Requirement: 6    Power Recharge per 5 Secs: 2
Cost: 9    Crew: 8
Materials Required: 1.8x Duranium  1.8x Boronide  5.4x Corundium

Development Cost for Project: 300RP

Versus the laser:

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Damage Output 6     Rate of Fire: 15 seconds     Range Modifier: 1
Max Range 60 000 km     Laser Size: 4 HS    Laser HTK: 2
Power Requirement: 6    Power Recharge per 5 Secs: 2
Cost: 4    Crew: 12
Materials Required: 0.8x Duranium  0.8x Boronide  2.4x Corundium

Development Cost for Project: 40RP
It's saddening that at the same size, the carronade is vastly outperformed by a laser Which uses the lowest tech level possible for laser range. And the carronade still costs more, both in materials and research points. Add that on top of the poor damage profile, and the extreme damage falloff, and well.
The carronade just doesn't work. D:
Carronades, as they stand, are likely one of the techs that just sit as simply "strictly worse" that laser tech, as what it purports to specialize in is something that is just not as good as lasers can do it. Pretty much every other beam weapon in the game has it's own use, but carronades are just "lasers, but much worse, and more expensive".

[Iranon]

Their main benefit is 2 free levels of focal size tech and reduced crew requirements.
The latter is actually quite useful, in cheaply-built ships crew quarters are more expensive than the weaponry.

Nevertheless... I played around with different design options, and even in their best application I found them only equal to lasers: between reduced-size, spinal mounts and the first wavelength tech, lasers could generally emulate their strengths. If their base cost was reduced to that of infrared lasers and either size or crew requirements got (further) reduction, I'd see a niche for them.

[iceball3 (OP)]

Their main benefit is 2 free levels of focal size tech and reduced crew requirements.
The latter is actually quite useful, in cheaply-built ships crew quarters are more expensive than the weaponry.

Nevertheless... I played around with different design options, and even in their best application I found them only equal to lasers: between reduced-size, spinal mounts and the first wavelength tech, lasers could generally emulate their strengths. If their base cost was reduced to that of infrared lasers and either size or crew requirements got (further) reduction, I'd see a niche for them.

Size reduction would probably need to be the biggest benefit for them to make them match lasers for usefulness, I think. Most of their sizes for their power are "too big to mount on a ship that can reasonably intercept a hostile ship for it's power level, thus lasers do more damage at the same HS usage."

[0111narwhalz]

It seems like the carronades might be useful by merit of their armor damage characteristics. From what I've heard, they kind of splatter over the armor, creating shallow pits over a large area, while lasers pierce in a small area.

[Iranon]

Isn't that a strict drawback?

[TheDeadlyShoe]

the smallest carronade is actually okay, but the real killer is the 10,000 km effective range on later carronades.   

even if your ship is much faster than the enemy, you have to have captains with superior initiative to get to point blank range. Even Gauss Cannons don't suffer from this as badly.

[iceball3 (OP)]

the smallest carronade is actually okay, but the real killer is the 10,000 km effective range on later carronades.   

even if your ship is much faster than the enemy, you have to have captains with superior initiative to get to point blank range. Even Gauss Cannons don't suffer from this as badly.

It's quite dissuading though when the smallest carronade is outclassed by a same size laser with no tech investment beside the laser size.

[Sheb]

Wouldn't the solution simply be to boost damage? The carronade niche should be high-damage, very low range cheap firepower.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

no matter how much damage the carronade has, without range mods its still gonna suffer from the initiative problem

[iceball3 (OP)]

I have a sudden idea: instead of the current damage reducing model the carronade has, give it the nominal beam damage reduction profile, with a catch:
On top of normal damage reduction, the carronade impact profile will get wider and wider, and as a result, shallower.
If this gets to the point of the damage depth being less than one, the shot will be counted as doing 0 damage.
Any width in excess of 80% of the cross section of the ship's armor, rounded  simply "misses" the excess.
Ships with shields active count as having a cross section 20% larger for consideration of carronade damage missing.

Basically, making carronades the weapon of choice for evaporated shields by dumping a large amount of damage, while also essentially reducing the armor level of whatever it hits by 1 over an area (assuming the carronade is doing significant damage to it). This makes it a lot easier to jack up the base damage of the carronade a bit, designwise, without making it deal massive penetrating damage.
I can also imagine a really silly situation where a carronade is fired at a 1 armor civilian design from far away, and the result being the ship being stripped naked of it's armor, but surviving for the most part, aside from some potential shock damage (though, whether a 1 deep crater should shock damage or not is a good question to ask).

[83athom]

Plasma carronades have a damage profile similar to missiles, so penetration is done in squares. Lasers' damage is done in cubes, and rail/particle is in ^4. The point of the carronades is to strip off armor so other weapons can get a better damage chance. Its quite useful for JP defence actually (but others are as well).

[Sheb]

I quite like the more damage/less penetration thing. As for initiative, I'm not sure it's so bad to have one weapon who is only effective in the hand of a skilled commander.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

it's more like less ineffective in the hands of a skilled commander