plasma carronades - who uses them?

[joeclark77 (OP)]

Simple question.  I have got one researcher developing a few levels of plasma carronade tech so that I can see what they're good for, but it isn't really clear to me what advantage they offer.  How do you use them?  I was thinking of a ship that combines particle beams for range with carronades for up-close damage.  On the other hand, I can put meson cannons on my ship for up-close damage and get a better ROF and bypass armor...

[Brian Neumann]

Plasma carronades are basically the same as lasers without the range multiplier.  The carronade is also much cheaper to research a 15cm carronade cost 1000 to research while a 15cm laser would cost a total of 7000 points.  For 7000 points of research you could have a 25cm carronade doing 16 damage instead of 6 points of damage.  The actual cost of the weapon is also somewhat reduced as there are less multipliers involved.  Each major tech in a weapon system has a cost and that cost is multiplied together for the final cost of the system.  For a carronade the major systems would be the capacitor, and the carronade size.  For a laser the range multiplier would also be included.

Brian

[Narmio]

I have never really seen them as valuable.  They are outdamaged by a same-tech laser at quite short ranges, meaning their envelope of superiority is small.

They are fun for jump-point defence, but so is every other energy weapon.  When you're shooting fish in a barrel, why worry about choice of gun?

[JacenHan]

This Let's Play by Bremen uses a plasma carronade gunboat strategy, if you want some idea of it's effectiveness. It's a pre-6.0 game, so there is some difference, but it is still a nice example, as well a good Let's Play.

[MarcAFK]

The game I just started has me with 25 cm carronades along with decent gauss tech pre researched, every other energy weapon is basically at bottom tier. As a result the longest range energy weapon i have is the carronade at 100,000 kilometers, so I'm using them as my main energy weapon, along with Twin gauss for point defence.
I am researching lasers for the range but it will probably take 10 years to catch up with my carronades for range/damage.
Just as an example here's an early design which 90% uses the predesigned components already available at the game start.

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CS Cornwallis class Strike Cruiser    17,000 tons     492 Crew     1973.8 BP      TCS 340  TH 1224  EM 0
3600 km/s     Armour 4-58     Shields 0-0     Sensors 36/6/0/0     Damage Control Rating 7     PPV 144
Maint Life 2.04 Years     MSP 508    AFR 330%    IFR 4.6%    1YR 162    5YR 2437    Max Repair 153 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months    Spare Berths 3   

306 EP Ion Drive x1.5 (4)    Power 306    Fuel Use 182.98%    Signature 306    Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 1,500,000 Litres    Range 8.7 billion km   (27 days at full power)

20cm C2 Plasma Carronade (24)    Range 100,000km     TS: 3600 km/s     Power 10-2     RM 1    ROF 25        10 5 3 2 2 1 1 1 1 1
Fire Control S04 96-3000 (2)    Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 3000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1 (11)     Total Power Output 49.5    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor MR25-R20 (1)     GPS 1920     Range 25.8m km    Resolution 20
Thermal Sensor TH6-36 (1)     Sensitivity 36     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  36m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-6 (1)     Sensitivity 6     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  6m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
You'll probably notice the speed is terrible, but the predesigned ships were 2111km/s, using 72% engines and only devoting only 17% of hull space to engines, these things are terrible fuel hogs, but at least the speed is fairly decent. However 24 carronades firing every 25 seconds should give me a fairly decent punch while my PD destroyers hopefully swat whatever out of the sky. Once I have 15cm, visible light, and spinal lasers researched I'll see what I can do with my destroyers.

[joeclark77 (OP)]

Nice design using starting tech!  Are the carronades small in size, or comparable to lasers/mesons/etc?  24 of them must take up a chunk of space.

[Brian Neumann]

Nice design using starting tech!  Are the carronades small in size, or comparable to lasers/mesons/etc?  24 of them must take up a chunk of space.

The carronades are the same size as the same type of laser or meson, they also use the same amount of power as well.

Brian

[MarcAFK]

The design is : 42% carronade, 20% engine, 11% armour, 8.9% fuel.
I should mention that this game is testing my standardised engine system. A single 850 ton engine for all ship classes, each ship gets one engine per 4,000 or so tons. At the moment considering the low engine tech every ship has a high multiplier and therefore a single battle might very well destroy my fuel reserves, however later on i may make different engines for different roles, but I'll still keep my standard size system.
If I design a 1700 ton engine It'll save 20% on fuel, but cost twice as many RP to develop, however once I've researched efficiency .6 and power multiplier 1.75% I may be tempted to make larger higher lowered engines for my next gen cruisers. Or i could go straight to the next engine tech.

Anyway back to carronades, The interesting thing to note with the design is that anywhere past 30k kilometers and they will only do 1 damage each, 10cm infrared lasers only start doing damage at 30k kilometers, so basically your effective range is basically the same with either.
For reference here is the same ship with 40 10cm lasers.

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CS Cornwallis - Copy class Strike Cruiser    17,000 tons     604 Crew     2192.8 BP      TCS 340  TH 1224  EM 0
3600 km/s     Armour 4-58     Shields 0-0     Sensors 36/6/0/0     Damage Control Rating 7     PPV 120
Maint Life 2.24 Years     MSP 564    AFR 330%    IFR 4.6%    1YR 152    5YR 2275    Max Repair 153 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 6 months    Spare Berths 1   

306 EP Ion Drive x1.5 (4)    Power 306    Fuel Use 182.98%    Signature 306    Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 1,500,000 Litres    Range 8.7 billion km   (27 days at full power)

Prototype 10cm C3 Infrared Laser (40)    Range 30,000km     TS: 3600 km/s     Power 3-3     RM 1    ROF 5        3 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S04 96-3000 (1)    Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 3000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48
Fire Control S04 24-12000 (2)    Max Range: 48,000 km   TS: 12000 km/s     79 58 38 17 0 0 0 0 0 0
Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor Technology PB-1 (27)     Total Power Output 121.5    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor MR5-R1 (1)     GPS 96     Range 5.8m km    MCR 627k km    Resolution 1
Thermal Sensor TH6-36 (1)     Sensitivity 36     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  36m km
EM Detection Sensor EM1-6 (1)     Sensitivity 6     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  6m km

This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This one has 40 5 second lasers bringing 120 damage, or 600 per 25 seconds, compared to the carronades with 240 damage per 25 seconds.
The lasers have basically the same hit percentage as the carronade since I'm using the same firecontrol, BUT, this ship can also double as point defence, my question is which fire control should i use, the 12,000 km/s but 79% accuracy one, or the 3000km/s 95% accuracy one, I',m heavily leaning towards the faster lower accuracy one being better for missile defence, but am including the more accurate slower one for firing at ships.
The only major difference is this one costs 11% more Build points.
So the question is, which ship is better? Well the only thing really going for the carronade is the possibility of shock damage, and the slight amount of damage it can do at longer range, but keep in mind that while it can do 10 damage every 25 seconds at 100,000 km albeit at terrible hit rate, the fact is that merely 10 seconds after firing it's carronades at max range an enemy ship travelling towards at the same speed will be 72,000 kilometers closer and able to fire It's 10 cm lasers with impunity.

[Wolfius]

This one has 40 5 second lasers bringing 120 damage, or 600 per 25 seconds, compared to the carronades with 240 damage per 25 seconds.
The lasers have basically the same hit percentage as the carronade since I'm using the same firecontrol, BUT, this ship can also double as point defence, my question is which fire control should i use, the 12,000 km/s but 79% accuracy one, or the 3000km/s 95% accuracy one, I',m heavily leaning towards the faster lower accuracy one being better for missile defence, but am including the more accurate slower one for firing at ships.
The only major difference is this one costs 11% more Build points.
So the question is, which ship is better? Well the only thing really going for the carronade is the possibility of shock damage, and the slight amount of damage it can do at longer range, but keep in mind that while it can do 10 damage every 25 seconds at 100,000 km albeit at terrible hit rate, the fact is that merely 10 seconds after firing it's carronades at max range an enemy ship travelling towards at the same speed will be 72,000 kilometers closer and able to fire It's 10 cm lasers with impunity.

Carronade has lower DPS but the damage is all front-loaded into one initial salvo - if you can do crippling damage with it you, or outright kill the enemy, you remove or reduce their ability to hurt you in return.

[Narmio]

In 6.3+ there's also the option of spinal lasers, which allow me to field 38 damage lasers (25cm + advanced spinal mount) by the early mid game. Whilst you can only have one per hull and they only fire every 50 seconds at my tech level, they do high damage even at the very limit of my largest fire controls (320kkm), and murderous damage up close.

And they use many of the same technologies as my laser-based PD, which is nice. At 150,000km range my beam cruisers can hit a ship with ten 1-damage lasers and one 12 damage one. At point blank it's ten 3-damage hits and one 38 damage one. Hopefully that'll leave a mark.

[joeclark77 (OP)]

It might be interesting if Steve were to change carronades to do "explosive" crater-shaped damage instead of beam damage.  Then there'd be a special role that they could fill.

[Charlie Beeler]

I asked Steve about damage template assignments a couple of years ago.  Plasma Carronades actually use the same template as missiles (type 1).  Lasers use template 3 and Railguns use template 4.

[MarcAFK]

I'm running a test with the carronade ship vs the laser one, I'll shove the results here: Plasma carronade vs infrared laser: a short test

[davidb86]

The lasers have basically the same hit percentage as the carronade since I'm using the same firecontrol, BUT, this ship can also double as point defence, my question is which fire control should i use, the 12,000 km/s but 79% accuracy one, or the 3000km/s 95% accuracy one, I',m heavily leaning towards the faster lower accuracy one being better for missile defence, but am including the more accurate slower one for firing at ships.
The only major difference is this one costs 11% more Build points.
So the question is, which ship is better? Well the only thing really going for the carronade is the possibility of shock damage, and the slight amount of damage it can do at longer range, but keep in mind that while it can do 10 damage every 25 seconds at 100,000 km albeit at terrible hit rate, the fact is that merely 10 seconds after firing it's carronades at max range an enemy ship travelling towards at the same speed will be 72,000 kilometers closer and able to fire It's 10 cm lasers with impunity.

Be aware that the Tracking Speed of the lasers or the carronade is the lesser of the fire control speed or the ship speed.  Your 12,000 kps fire control is limited to 3600 kps due to ship speed.  In that case I would recommend a 4000 kps tracking speed to get the most out of your ship speed and then as high an accuracy or range as you can afford.  The only way to improve on the ship speed is to put the lasers in a turret with a higher speed to mach the fire control.  Carronades cannot be put in turrets, that is why they tend to end up on small high speed fast attack craft.