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.
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.
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. You also likely are using your least skilled scientists to research components and the more skilled ones to research more expensive technologies. That means that the components become relative to other tech more expensive.An RP is an RP. That's how this works. Sure, I'll grant you that the percentage is higher at lower tech, but again, the gains are substantial, and I think make sense by any metric, particularly if you're willing to invest in smaller-than-quad turrets.QuoteI rarely see leaking missiles as much of an issue when shields and decoys are used. If you don't use the shields they are also wasted space. If there are 6 or 10 missiles leaked is not very important when the decoys and shields stop it anyway. If your PD is overwhelmed then it does not really matter much anyway as it is the overkill that produce the leaking difference.I don't think this is true in the general case, or if it is, it speaks to weakness in the AI. I agree that some number of leakers are a fact of life, and recommend shields to deal with them in the OP. But to a first approximation, all of your inner-ring systems are going to be able to handle a specific number of leakers and anything past that is going to cause problems fast. (Yes, I know that decoys are a little more complicated, but that's a complication I'm ignoring.) Optimizing your beam PD means that you can handle a larger number of incoming missiles without getting overwhelmed. For instance, comparing your two ships, the 100% one will have 48 shots if I assume that the ROF is 3, while the 33% one will have 144. Let's say that you have a squadron of 4 of them, and base Ph is 0.5. If I fire 96 missiles, my math says that the average number of leakers will be 24 for the 100% ships and 32.15 for the 33% ships. For 64 incoming missiles, I get 8 and 12.4, respectively. Both seem like places where you might plausibly find a cliff in response, and the 100% ships could be fine while the 33% ships are taking damage. Sure, it's possible to get around this by being good enough to beat most AI and slightly overpaying, but you are overpaying.
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. You also likely are using your least skilled scientists to research components and the more skilled ones to research more expensive technologies. That means that the components become relative to other tech more expensive.An RP is an RP. That's how this works. Sure, I'll grant you that the percentage is higher at lower tech, but again, the gains are substantial, and I think make sense by any metric, particularly if you're willing to invest in smaller-than-quad turrets.
I rarely see leaking missiles as much of an issue when shields and decoys are used. If you don't use the shields they are also wasted space. If there are 6 or 10 missiles leaked is not very important when the decoys and shields stop it anyway. If your PD is overwhelmed then it does not really matter much anyway as it is the overkill that produce the leaking difference.I don't think this is true in the general case, or if it is, it speaks to weakness in the AI. I agree that some number of leakers are a fact of life, and recommend shields to deal with them in the OP. But to a first approximation, all of your inner-ring systems are going to be able to handle a specific number of leakers and anything past that is going to cause problems fast. (Yes, I know that decoys are a little more complicated, but that's a complication I'm ignoring.) Optimizing your beam PD means that you can handle a larger number of incoming missiles without getting overwhelmed. For instance, comparing your two ships, the 100% one will have 48 shots if I assume that the ROF is 3, while the 33% one will have 144. Let's say that you have a squadron of 4 of them, and base Ph is 0.5. If I fire 96 missiles, my math says that the average number of leakers will be 24 for the 100% ships and 32.15 for the 33% ships. For 64 incoming missiles, I get 8 and 12.4, respectively. Both seem like places where you might plausibly find a cliff in response, and the 100% ships could be fine while the 33% ships are taking damage. Sure, it's possible to get around this by being good enough to beat most AI and slightly overpaying, but you are overpaying.
I will grant you that this is technically true, but it's also not that much for the benefit you get. I just ran the numbers, and in a fairly high-tech game (gauss ROF 5/range 5) I would spend less than 2000 RP to deliver a quad 100% gauss from scratch. Extra turrets will be under a thousand each. Oh, and you've spent 134,000 RP in basic research to get to those gauss guns. So the trade here is spending an extra couple thousand RP (maybe 3% of what you've spent on gauss so far in the game) in exchange for 20%+ fewer leakers (or, you know, 60%+ fewer leakers with good FC). Now, the best option I can see for that kind of 20% reduction in (effective) leakers is another level of missile jammer, which is, oh, 80,000 RP. Yeah, I think I'll spend the extra research.2) Less research is a non sequitor, if one is going pure smaller, then there is no "less research" and if one is going for "more advanced" then once again, the research is going to be done regardless. Comparing different tech levels to one another is rather frivolous, especially in hindsight, either one wants/needs a tech or one doesn't, so there is no "research cost savings" ever.
If you use smaller gauss you need less turrets and the gun itself are cheaper to research so you need to research less number of turrets and the turret is less costly to research over the equivalent version. So you will save in research cost.QuoteOne example ship I created with 4 100% quad turrets and one with 12 33% quad turrets used 20% (1200 vs 1500 supplies) less supplies and was 200t smaller, less crew and slightly cheaper to build. That is why it is not a straight answer to what is best.Let's say that your FC has a 50% inherent to-hit, and you shoot 4 v 1 at 50% Ph with the basic sheet. I get 6.25% leakers. Now, if I shoot 12v1 with the 33% ship, I get 11.22% leakers. You have to shoot something like 16v1 to get the same leaker rate (technically, the slightly-higher 6.49%). To put it another way, if you're bound by the total number of guns and want a constant leaker rate, you need 33% more ships that are (being as generous as possible) 20% cheaper. Hmm. 1.3333*.8=1.06667. Again, better hit rate comes out the winner.
I will grant you that this is technically true, but it's also not that much for the benefit you get. I just ran the numbers, and in a fairly high-tech game (gauss ROF 5/range 5) I would spend less than 2000 RP to deliver a quad 100% gauss from scratch. Extra turrets will be under a thousand each. Oh, and you've spent 134,000 RP in basic research to get to those gauss guns. So the trade here is spending an extra couple thousand RP (maybe 3% of what you've spent on gauss so far in the game) in exchange for 20%+ fewer leakers (or, you know, 60%+ fewer leakers with good FC). Now, the best option I can see for that kind of 20% reduction in (effective) leakers is another level of missile jammer, which is, oh, 80,000 RP. Yeah, I think I'll spend the extra research.2) Less research is a non sequitor, if one is going pure smaller, then there is no "less research" and if one is going for "more advanced" then once again, the research is going to be done regardless. Comparing different tech levels to one another is rather frivolous, especially in hindsight, either one wants/needs a tech or one doesn't, so there is no "research cost savings" ever.
If you use smaller gauss you need less turrets and the gun itself are cheaper to research so you need to research less number of turrets and the turret is less costly to research over the equivalent version. So you will save in research cost.
One example ship I created with 4 100% quad turrets and one with 12 33% quad turrets used 20% (1200 vs 1500 supplies) less supplies and was 200t smaller, less crew and slightly cheaper to build. That is why it is not a straight answer to what is best.Let's say that your FC has a 50% inherent to-hit, and you shoot 4 v 1 at 50% Ph with the basic ship. I get 6.25% leakers. Now, if I shoot 12v1 with the 33% ship, I get 11.22% leakers. You have to shoot something like 15v1 to get the same leaker rate (technically, the slightly-higher 6.49%). To put it another way, if you're bound by the total number of guns and want a constant leaker rate, you need 25% more ships. So the full-size gauss ship needs the same number of supplies, and is cheaper everywhere else. I'll take that one.
2) Less research is a non sequitor, if one is going pure smaller, then there is no "less research" and if one is going for "more advanced" then once again, the research is going to be done regardless. Comparing different tech levels to one another is rather frivolous, especially in hindsight, either one wants/needs a tech or one doesn't, so there is no "research cost savings" ever.
Is it not so that the quad is also four times more expensive when it does fail so the cost would be the same.
I think this was a C# change, but multi-weapon turrets have modest reductions in tonnage to be a bit more cost and size-efficient than an equal number of single-weapon turrets. See here. No explicit cost decrease is mentioned but there is a reduction in crew requirement, so the cost is indirectly reduced if nothing else. Possibly the reduced size also affects the armor calculation, I don't know.
Is it not so that the quad is also four times more expensive when it does fail so the cost would be the same.
Therefore you will need to at least acknowledge that there are trade-offs that will show in other ways outside combat that you need to account for as well. Everything will impact the decision of what components you develop and why. In general a quad 100% gauss is always worse than a single due to how the maintenance mechanic works, you will never really save neither cost nor space with a larger turret.
It's worth bearing in mind that four single gauss weapons will fail 4x more often than a quad turret (because each weapon checks for failure, not each shot), so while the quad is more expensive when it fails, it might not be the most expensive over time.
Therefore you will need to at least acknowledge that there are trade-offs that will show in other ways outside combat that you need to account for as well. Everything will impact the decision of what components you develop and why. In general a quad 100% gauss is always worse than a single due to how the maintenance mechanic works, you will never really save neither cost nor space with a larger turret.
My point was that in a layered defence where you also include decoys, CIWS and shields it probably is not that much of a major issue as the size of the system actually might matter more as large expensive modules also have more impact on the design choices and maintenance requirements as well as research investment etc...I am not saying that there is literally no case where you should use anything other than size 6 gauss guns. I am saying that if you use something else and aren't in an extreme edge case, all of the other components of your defenses are going to have to work harder. How much harder depends on the base Ph you're dealing with, but it's going to be significant in a wide variety of cases. And if a twin or quad turret is too big or expensive, use singles. A lot of my ships do to preserve redundancy. It's a good tradeoff.
The current system where you allocate shots first certainly does favour high accuracy weapons over low accuracy that is for sure. I'm just saying it is not the only thing to consider when designing ships.
