Author Topic: Beam Cruisers  (Read 4054 times)

0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.

Offline Felius (OP)

  • Chief Petty Officer
  • ***
  • F
  • Posts: 40
  • Thanked: 1 times
Re: Beam Cruisers
« Reply #15 on: July 20, 2018, 09:42:09 PM »
you need *something* to hit targets on planets, but mesons have such anti-teamwork with your primary suite that you want to keep them to a minimum

conceivably you could make hull-mounted 10cm railguns a fairly heavy component of your weaponry.  your ships are fast and armored enough to be willing and able to knife fight, where the rails make a very good supplement for the big laser gashes you're going to do.   2.5 (ish) railguns at tracking speed 12000 are darn close to an equal substitute for one four-shot gauss turret tracking at 32000 in pure point defense mode. 

i probably owe iranon royalties for this post :)

i am very *very* much in favor of mixing roles as much as practical.  there is no economic case for specialization, and you're just gratuitously adding a point of failure to your entire fleet if you concentrate your missile defenses onto one ship.
Generally so far, with the first iteration, my doctrine has been to sit around at the meson max range and fire from there, instead of really closing in for a knife fight. Wouldn't the damage falloff of the railguns make them much less useful, at least at such mid range?
 

Offline misanthropope

  • Lt. Commander
  • ********
  • m
  • Posts: 273
  • Thanked: 73 times
Re: Beam Cruisers
« Reply #16 on: July 21, 2018, 10:22:25 AM »
sure, either the lasers or the mesons could be the tactical driver.  but i think you ought to pick one, i think in a lot of cases if you're kiting around at 210 kkm, your lasers are just keeping the other guy's armor and shields from getting lonely.

the spinal mount is always kind of cool, and one-punch knockout power is certainly nice to have.  but if you're mostly about the mesons, the 35 cms are pretty weak, and IMO better off as point defense (or more mesons, natch).

spinal mount backed by 8 15cm lasers i think matches spinal mount backed by 8 15cm mesons even at the mesons' optimal range.  the laser array gives you catastrophic knife-fighting power when backed by railgun point defense and obviously better range, but the mesons give you the ability to kill PDCs without a specialty class.  if your empire has the resources to build a bunch of mk4s, then youve got too much "niche" and have left too much pure ship-killing ability on the table if you go with the mesons.  if a half-dozen mk4s are going to be the backbone of your navy id probably favor the mesons.