you are still ignoring that time, research, design flexibility, maintenance supplies and weight saving is all something you also need to consider over time...
Every little tech points will count, especially earlier on... I spend allot more time in the game at lower tech levels anyway. When you play with rather slow tech progression and restricted scientist labs you can be rather short on Missile/Kinetic scientists...
Jorgen, with all due respect, you are barking up the wrong tree here. The formula bean is showing in this thread is universal - the results are the same in every game, the specific details of your campaign/race/ship do not matter. I do not understand why you are arguing so hard against him. Saving a few hundred or even a couple of thousand RP is almost meaningless even in a low-tech game, especially if spending those research points translates to 20%+ improvement in PD efficiency. The mass/MSP savings are also trivial because again, who would choose NOT to get significantly improved PD if the price is few hundred more tons in mass or spending a little more MSP per annum per ship.
I do agree that full size gauss are more efficient and will produce less leaking missiles. Whether you value the RP saved or not is up to each and everyone to judge. For me playing with restricted admin and about 20-25% research 500-1000RP cost can sometimes be the difference between developing a component in 2 years instead of 4 years as I tend to use the scientist with low number of labs for developing components while the scientists developing more expensive techs have more labs.
Smaller gauss still allow for a bit more flexibility in design of ships and can also make the designs over time cheaper in maintenance cost while being less efficient in PD capacity.
If I have plenty of good scientist I probably also choose the more expensive option too.
The difference in maintenance cost are mostly about how big the turret is. So in many cases many single gauss turrets likely is better and more economical than using quad turrets especially for full size gauss as the full size gauss turrets are so large and expensive. The single turret will require more space but be considerably cheaper in the long run.
Overall I might agree that smaller gauss need to be rebalanced so they are more worthwhile to develop. Perhaps their to hit should not be linear with the size reduction. So a 33% sized turret hit on 50% for example. This would at least make them more interesting in some cases from an efficiency perspective.
