That's not strictly true.  In fact, Maintenance Storage Bays cost money & minerals just like everything else.  There is currently a bug whereby their contents - i.e. maintenance supply points - are provided for free, 'out of thin air' if you will.  That bug will be fixed for the next edition and you will have to build the supplies to go into the bay.

I checked on this when it was first posted, and as far as I could tell, EarthquakeDamage was correct - the mineral cost of the ship (in the lower left window) doesn't claim to go up when you add an MSB.  Whether this is a display bug or a bug in the data tables I don't know.  [Pause]  Ok, I just took a look, and it's simply a bug in the DB entries - all the mineral costs are zero'd out.  Command Module is wrong too - it costs 2.5 but uses 1 Dur and 2 Merc (3 total).

I think I'll post something in the bugs thread....

John

Yeah, thanks for that. 

It does kinda make me want to use particle beams now though.  At least they'll be useful for energy weapon combat. 

They are actually one of my favorite beam weapons.  Combine them with mesons for point defense and you have a nasty setup.  Anything that closes to get into their effective range is probably closing into meson range where I just dice them up.  Stay back to avoid the mesons and you are in the particle beams best area.

Brian

Brian:
Noted. 

Paraphrased and modified particle beams and gauss cannons.  I took out most of your numbers though, since I don't want to bog my players down with math. 

That is fine as what I was aiming for was a basic understanding for you.  How you phrase it for your players is your choice, it just helps if you have some backup numbers to think about when writing.

Brian

One more correction about particle beams vs lasers.  For a given size the laser will do more damage in close but it drops off.  Particle beams were originally designed to give about 40% of the damage that a comparable size laser would give at point blank range.  This means that at the 50% range mark they are doing comparable damage.  Beyond that point the particle beam is doing more damage than the laser.  Railguns and carronades work with the same principal but as they are shorter ranged than the laser the point where the damage matches is closer in to the firing ship.  It is still about 50% of the range of the railgun/carronade, but that tends to be closer in.  Take a look at the first laser (10cm does 3 points of damage 3 hull spaces) and the first particle beam (2 damage and 5 hull spaces).  At close range the laser is clearly better.  But with comparable tech the particle beam will have twice the range.  Step everything up a couple of levels and the size and power requirements are now about equal, but the small particle beam has the range of the larger lasers and does equal or better damage at long range.  This game is all about trade off's and compromises to get what you want.

About Gauss cannon.  A full size gauss cannon is 6 hull spaces which is about the same as a 20-25cm weapon.  They are actually bigger than any comparable beam weapon, but as they quickly get more shots than the other, and can be turreted they are far better at hitting missiles.  (10cm weapons are 3 hull spaces)  Also you can make the gauss cannon smaller with a reduced chance of hitting.  A size 3 gauss cannon will have its chance to hit reduced by 1/2 after everything else is taken ino account, except for crew grade.

Brian

Thanks Brian, I have made the changes. 

Just a note:
Missiles deal triangle shaped damage and thus penetrate armour with the square root of their WH. 

Lasers basically cut twice as deep as missiles for the same damage.  If I had to rely on lasers for damage, like in a jumppoint defence/assault, I would mount as many giant lasers as I can in hopes of punching straight through their armour. 
DPS isn't quite that important unless you're dealing with ALOT of ships.  In which case, you could build box launcher frigates and simply blast away with humongous swarms of short-range sprint missiles that move insanely fast. 


Wealth = RP cost of project is also noted. 

an 1100 Build Point ship will cost 1100 minerals

That's not strictly true.  Maintenance Storage Bays require no vespene gas minerals.  I'm sure there are other ship components, perhaps even installations or other things, with costs that don't quite match.

Damage patters is lasers dig deep going roughly 1/2 as deep as the total damage your shot inflicts.  Railguns, carronades, and particle beams all have cone shaped damage templates that have the damage  penetrating roughtly 1/3 as deep as the total damage per shot.  Obviously big lasers can get through even heavy armour very quicklly.  Where the other weapons need more hits to penetrate in general.

Missiles and plasma penetrate the next level of armor at each perfect square of damage (1, 4, 9, 16, ...).  Lasers reach the nth level of armor, where IIRC n = sqrt( 3 x damage ).  Everything else hits the sqrt( 2 x damage ) = nth level of armor.  This is all integer math, so round everything down to the nearest integer.  The game uses damage templates rather than a formula, but those should tell you the max penetration for a given weapon.  Steve and others have posted those templates before, so run a search if you're curious.

Also, don't forget that actual penetration will be less than calculated, since actual damage drops off with range for everything but particle beams and missiles.

Side note:  Physically, I don't see why slug (e.g. gauss, railgun) damage drops over beam range in vaccuum.  Beam range is only 1.4m km max, after all, and a slug won't diffuse like beams (e.g. laser) or plasma.  Not if it's solid, anyway.  I suppose they could be molten or whatever due to friction, which might partially explain their poor range multipliers (gauss max x6, railgun max x9, compared to laser/meson/microwave max x12).

Thanks. 

Can someone check my description of particle beams?  I've heard them described that way before but looking at the research project for them seems to indicate that they're pretty useless overall. 

Being that lasers outrange them, and at short range lasers outdamage them. 
They also suck alot of energy. 

One mistake, particle beams have the same damage at all ranges.  In close the laser will be more powerfull, but a small particle beam (damage 2) has the same range as the largest particle beam (pb) you have reasearched.  This does two things, One is that you can put small pb on escorts and they will have the same range as your capital ships.  This will let them help with taking down shields at long range where escorts are often useless.  Second is that the capaciter tech is really critical for pb weapons.  I usually use the largest pb that has a 5 second fire time.  Because of the way that they work this will do more damage over time per hull space than larger, slower firing ones willl do.  As the damage template is cone shaped they are going to have a hard time getting through heavy armour quickly anyway and it becomes a matter of sanding off all of the armour as fast as possible which is what this does.
To cover the differences.  All railguns, lasers, and caronades have their damage drop off with range. This leads to bigger weapons having longer total ranges in general.  Mesons and High Power Microwaves (hpm) do 1 point of damage, but their range is based on the caliber times the range multiplier just like the lasers (1/2 the range of the matching laser actually) so larger mesons and hpm fire farther.  Mesons do 1 point of damage at any range at it ignores armour and shields.  Hpm's only damage shields (3 points) and shipboard electronics (fire control, sensors, ecm/eccm.  They ignore armour completely.  Particle beams do a fixed damage at all ranges, and the range is only determined by the range you have researched.

Damage patters is lasers dig deep going roughly 1/2 as deep as the total damage your shot inflicts.  Railguns, carronades, and particle beams all have cone shaped damage templates that have the damage  penetrating roughtly 1/3 as deep as the total damage per shot.  Obviously big lasers can get through even heavy armour very quicklly.  Where the other weapons need more hits to penetrate in general.

Hope this all helps
Brian

By the way, does anyone happen to know how much wealth research costs?

Everything thing in the game that I'm aware of costs one point of whatever for one point of whatever.  For example, an 1100 Build Point ship will cost 1100 minerals and 1100 wealth.  So research costs 1 wealth point per research point.

There might be exceptions, and the specific example above might be wrong, but that's how it's supposed to work based on the underlying principle.

John