Its main function was to serve as a powerful, short-range, anti-ship and anti-crew weapon.Maybe an option that makes carronades cause extra crew/marine deaths? Like Neutron Blasters in MoO. Radioactive space grapeshot. That could make them especially useful as a complement for a boarding-focused strategy, which already synergizes with the carronade's point-blank range. Though, it already sort of does this with its likelihood to cause shock damage.
The carronade was designed as a short-range naval weapon with a low muzzle velocity for merchant shipsSo. . . maybe commercial ships should be allowed to use plasma carronades? Would that break the game too much? Maybe only let them be used in self-only final defensive fire against boarding attempts?
Simplifying gunnery for comparatively untrained merchant seamen in both aiming and reloading was part of the rationale for the gun
Carronades initially became popular on British merchant ships during the American Revolutionary War.
A lightweight gun that needed only a small gun crew and was devastating at short range was well suited to defending merchant ships against French and American privateers.
The smaller carronades served in three roles. First, they often constituted the entire armament of unrated vessels. For instance, the Ballahoo- and Cuckoo-class schooners were armed only with four 12-pounder carronades. Second, gunboats such as those that the Americans deployed at the Battle of Lake Borgne often had one large 18-, 24-, or 32-pounder gun forward on a pivot, and two smaller carronades aft. Finally, larger vessels carried a few 12-, 18-, or 24-pounders to arm their ship's boats—cutters, pinnaces, launches, barges, and the like—to give them firepower for boat actions.Hmm. Plasma carronades already seem pretty well suited to arming FACs and gunboat/corvette-sized ships. I don't think they'd need any more special options to be a valid choice for that role.
I quite liked a suggestion posted in another thread:
Add an option to allow for carronades to be equipped to ships which do not have reactors but require reactor-less carronade ships to 'recharge' from a ship that has a large enough reactor and hanger. Each recharge would allow the reactor-less carronade ship to fire a limited number of carronade shots (maybe 1-5?) and then it would have to return to base for another recharge. This would make carronades very unique and allow them to maintain their existing advantages while providing potential boost to reactor-less carronade ships which could leverage their reactor space for more armor/engines/weapons/etc...
I quite liked a suggestion posted in another thread:
Add an option to allow for carronades to be equipped to ships which do not have reactors but require reactor-less carronade ships to 'recharge' from a ship that has a large enough reactor and hanger. Each recharge would allow the reactor-less carronade ship to fire a limited number of carronade shots (maybe 1-5?) and then it would have to return to base for another recharge. This would make carronades very unique and allow them to maintain their existing advantages while providing potential boost to reactor-less carronade ships which could leverage their reactor space for more armor/engines/weapons/etc...
The problem I see with this is that reactors don't actually take up that much space to begin with.
I quite liked a suggestion posted in another thread:
Add an option to allow for carronades to be equipped to ships which do not have reactors but require reactor-less carronade ships to 'recharge' from a ship that has a large enough reactor and hanger. Each recharge would allow the reactor-less carronade ship to fire a limited number of carronade shots (maybe 1-5?) and then it would have to return to base for another recharge. This would make carronades very unique and allow them to maintain their existing advantages while providing potential boost to reactor-less carronade ships which could leverage their reactor space for more armor/engines/weapons/etc...
The problem I see with this is that reactors don't actually take up that much space to begin with.
This is true. Some further refinement is probably in order. Maybe some adjustment to the recharge rate of normal carronades is in order... they are already very potent alpha strike weapons. I'm not sure how useful they are in their current state in terms of pure DPS as I've always considered them an alpha strike weapon.
My 2 cents:HPM do triple damage versus shields.
1) make plasma cannons more effective against shields because there isn't a dedicated anti-shield weapon yet.
1a) straight 2x damage vs shields because it's simple
1b) +1 damage at base, can be increased by +1 per level by tech. This would make different permutations possible.
1c) plasma damage increases shield recharge time by +1 seconds per point of damage, which wears off after 1 hour
Yes triple sounds impresive, until you remember HPM always do 1 damage.My 2 cents:HPM do triple damage versus shields.
1) make plasma cannons more effective against shields because there isn't a dedicated anti-shield weapon yet.
1a) straight 2x damage vs shields because it's simple
1b) +1 damage at base, can be increased by +1 per level by tech. This would make different permutations possible.
1c) plasma damage increases shield recharge time by +1 seconds per point of damage, which wears off after 1 hour
Larger HPM should do more damage as a matter of principal, you use more power, you get more damage.Yes triple sounds impresive, until you remember HPM always do 1 damage.My 2 cents:HPM do triple damage versus shields.
1) make plasma cannons more effective against shields because there isn't a dedicated anti-shield weapon yet.
1a) straight 2x damage vs shields because it's simple
1b) +1 damage at base, can be increased by +1 per level by tech. This would make different permutations possible.
1c) plasma damage increases shield recharge time by +1 seconds per point of damage, which wears off after 1 hour
- Honestly, both Mesons and HPMs should have some sort of damage scaling... I wonder if that's a matter of a simple DB edit?
Make it more like old Starfire where plasma guns fired "pellets" of plasma, doing heavy damage, it was possible to intercept these "pellets" with missile defences. Make it short ranged, interceptable and powerfull as a last tech for carronades...
Or that might be a problem with SF copyright...
It's an interesting idea, however in practical terms I wonder what this actually does to make a plasma carronade a better weapon than it already is? Presently the plasma carronade essentially works like this: if your guns are in range of the target, you win. The check on it is very short range that cannot be improved with technology (although this does make them a very cheap weapon type to research). So realistically, what does making them even deadlier at that short range actually do to make them a more viable or interesting weapon? At the end of the day, if your guns are in range of the target, you still win.Actually, I did an analysis on the vanilla plasma carronade a few years ago, and came to a pretty damning conclusion; Plasma carronades are completely identical to same-size infrared-tech lasers, excepting a few differences.
It's an interesting idea, however in practical terms I wonder what this actually does to make a plasma carronade a better weapon than it already is? Presently the plasma carronade essentially works like this: if your guns are in range of the target, you win. The check on it is very short range that cannot be improved with technology (although this does make them a very cheap weapon type to research). So realistically, what does making them even deadlier at that short range actually do to make them a more viable or interesting weapon? At the end of the day, if your guns are in range of the target, you still win.Actually, I did an analysis on the vanilla plasma carronade a few years ago, and came to a pretty damning conclusion; Plasma carronades are completely identical to same-size infrared-tech lasers, excepting a few differences.
-Infrared lasers cost WAY less.
-Carronades have slightly reduced crew requirements.
-Carronades have a wide penetration profile, more like missiles, so penetrate less layers of armor in a given hit on a fresh segment.
In essence, plasma carronades in any size are 100% obsolete once you research the corresponding size laser, and entirely obsolete for single mounts once you have spinal laser mounts. The only point to researching them is to essentially have larger infrared lasers for fewer tech points, which is... not great, because you're essentially forsaking every other laser technology role in the process. I'm almost certain railguns will outperform it in all except lategame tech shock-damage roles, due to the extra capacitor and weight efficiency of the weapon system.
Hell, lasers even beat it in the point blank alpha strike department anyway because you can just build a battery of infrared lasers with reduced size tech. An incredibly cheap battery too.
I'd like to restate again that carronades are physically identical to flat stock infrared lasers of same size, including the part where they suffer damage falloff, so you necessarily have to hug in 10kkm range to actually do that damage, which entirely requires you have higher initiative than the fleet you're engaging on top of being faster.
It's not great, honestly. I was kind of hoping that carronades would've been directly re-fluffed as specialized planetary bombardment weapon with the ground combat update, so at least it's current stats could be justified as it's essentially the stat spread of an improvisation of a space-to-surface weapon, turned against ships.
The only point to researching them is to essentially have larger infrared lasers for fewer tech points, which is... not great, because you're essentially forsaking every other laser technology role in the process.