Weapon size balance

[Gabethebaldandbold]

big dakka is gud against armour boyz.
moar dakka is gud against shield boyz. and missile boyz.
dakka is gud.

[Tikigod]

Kind of a minor annoyance, but it has always bugged me that missile launchers appear to have a 360 degree firing arc when really you would expect missile to actually have to expend fuel to course correct to establish its initial heading to the target after being launched based on the facing of the launcher, unless we treat missile launchers are turrets and apply the same rules to them as actual turrets. 

At present in the VB version, I guess we'd have to assume all missile launchers are front facing and so missiles fired at targets directly ahead would be a continuous engine burn building up speed each second and that would be basis for missile distance figures.   However if a missile is launched in front of the ship with a intended target behind the ship firing, the missile would actually need to burn fuel to negate its initial momentum after which it would have to expend even more fuel to get to the speed similar to what it had when first launched, and depending on the missile design that could actually greatly impact the missiles effective range. 

So what are missile launchers? Turrets? Fixed mounted Weapons? Magical Space Unicorns that poop large explosive objects of death into space?

Missiles don't need to expend a lot of fuel for initial targeting, you push them out of the launch tube at small speed, they orient themselves towards their target and then fire their engine to accelerate towards the target.   You're probably assuming that missiles leave the launch tube at high speed.  The game Children of a Dead Earth models this well.

Good point there.

I was mostly thinking of the case in Aurora where as soon as the missile is observable in space it's already going full speed which to me translated into high launch velocity, but as someone pointed out Aurora Physics Wizards kind of cancel out the significance of this.

[xenoscepter]

Also, Spinal Laser and Advanced Spinal Laser technology make each laser diameter tech more valuable as time goes on. 20cm lasers become 22cm lasers and so on and so forth. Plus a Spinal Laser and an Advanced Spinal Laser can be mounted on the same ship, so even more bang for your buck.

[Paul M]

The only two weapons in aurora that should be spinal mounts are particle beams and mass drivers.  "spinal mount laser" is pointless.   Nothing in a laser system benefits from being spinal mounted.  The particle beam certainly does as it boost the energy of the beam significantly (assuming the others are either shorter linear accelerators or cyclotrons) while clearly a mass driver goes to something you saw in Renegade Legion: Leviathan where you did everything under your power to line up a shot of your spinal mount and the enemy did everything they could to avoid being in arc.

Yeah I know...but this sorta thing really bugs me!  Along with lasers should base range on "size" and damage on wavelength not the way it is done...not that a 20 cm laser makes any sense but I read that as 2 m diameter focal array.

Back..to turn progress...just failed my will power save!

[iceball3]

I do think the reason that spinal mounted railguns were passed was because they currently behave like flak cannons in aurora itself, anyway, they're oriented around taking a lot of firepower per ton and splitting it up into smaller shots.

[alex_brunius]

I do think the reason that spinal mounted railguns were passed was because they currently behave like flak cannons in aurora itself, anyway, they're oriented around taking a lot of firepower per ton and splitting it up into smaller shots.

Yeah I agree and it makes sense.

Now if there were a version of the railgun called maybe railcannon or something that shot a single larger shot ( perhaps with flatter damage profile but higher chance of shock damage ) that I could certainly see work extremely well thematically as a spinal version.

There is something very satisfying with the concept of an entire ship just built for throwing a huge chunk of metal at insane speeds against an enemy...

[Paul M]

Renegade Legion: Leviathan's crowbar hit or as I called it "Thunderstrike" was not "flak." It was closer to watching a good chunk of the enemy ship vaporize.  That is a spinal mounted mass driver in action.   A BB sized one (several km long) was basically instant death if it hit, so far as my memory goes.  I only ever got to fire one twice...one hit one miss...

Makes will power saving throw!

[QuakeIV]

Could call it a macro cannon or such I guess.  That might be too much weapon variety creep though.

fakeedit:  Notably in 40k a macrocannon is like a giant fusion bomb gun, which might actually be more fun than just a giant railgun as I was picturing originally.  you could build engine-less missiles to shoot out of it like bombs and use that as ammunition, but otherwise it shoots like a beam.  that might be a fun concept as a sort of bombardment siege gun or for close range anti warship duty (assuming you were fairly sure you werent going to miss with too many of your precious nukes)

[space dwarf]

If you have a railgun that fires a single massive projectile don't you just (In Aurora terms) now have a gauss cannon?

[TheBawkHawk]

Gauss cannons still only do 1 damage, what you'd have is basically a reflavoured laser

[Gabethebaldandbold]

It could make more damage but be shorter range, kinda like the plasma carronade, but good.

[iceball3]

It could make more damage but be shorter range, kinda like the plasma carronade, but good.

That is the railgun already. It does more damage than the laser per size, and is shorter range.
Effectively wider like a carronade already too.

[QuakeIV]

I mean, if it were actually a bomb gun like mentioned earlier, that would be fairly unique.

[Garfunkel]

What's the difference between a bomb-gun and an extremely short-ranged missile? Type of fire control needed?

[Gabethebaldandbold]

What's the difference between a bomb-gun and an extremely short-ranged missile? Type of fire control needed?

If it uses beam FC, that would be very different  but would it have ammo though? Would we need a magazine, with bombs to use it?