Aurora 4x
New Players => The Academy => Topic started by: non sequitur on December 09, 2015, 03:05:26 PM
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So ok. . . I'm new to this game, but I think I have a grasp of the basics. I can design ships, research, create and maintain colonies, etc. . . So I'm exploring the universe and it seems wise that I should get a military going. So here are basic questions
1. What weapon systems do you mainly use? Looking around the forums it seems like most people have missile dominated navies. Is a beam only fleet even feasible (missiles used for point defense not withstanding)?
2. what kind of capital ships form the core of your fleet? Carriers? huge battleship/dreadnoughts? or do you simply just building a lot of missile cruisers?
I understand that there isn't a necessarily right way to do this, but what are you thoughts?
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Chances are the NPRs will have missile ships. So your beam only ships need to be able to withstand the pummeling they will receive while closing to beam ranges. It won't be pretty.
As for composition... That's personal taste. My carriers are separate from my battleship fleets. Both are attended by escorts.
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Missile ranges in Aurora tend to be enormously larger than beam ranges. To the point where it's virtually impossible for a beam armed fleet to close to beam range against a missile fleet before the missile fleet can burn through every missile in its magazines. Forget bringing a knife to a funfight, it's bringing a knife to an artillery duel.
On the other hand, the knife can totally win that if the artillery piece runs out of ammo. And there you come to the crux of beam fleet design; still being around when your opponent runs out of missiles. It's not easy, but it's possible. However, if you're new to the game I'd recommend you try a missile based fleet (maybe with some beam armed escorts, or secondary beam weapons on your capital ships) first; the missile combat in this game tends to be a bit more straightforward than the more specialist tactics and designs you need for a pure beam fleet.
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1. I rely exclusively on missiles.
2. Lots of missile cruisers. My typical fleet has four 16,000-ton ships armed with size-5 antiship missiles, two or three 16,000-ton ships armed with size-1 antimissiles, and one 16,000-ton ship with token armament and a jump drive. The leader ship has big far-reaching search radars. The other ships all carry tiny sensors for use in desperate circumstances where the leader ship has been lost.
If I were to boil my fleet doctrine advice down to a few points:
1. Make all your fighting ships exactly the same size, with exactly the same engines.
2. Put only one jump drive in each fleet.
3. Make six search radars. 50-ton and 200-ton versions at resolutions 1, 20, and 200 (for detecting missiles, FACs, and large ships, respectively). Put the 50-ton versions on most of your ships. Put one set of the 200-ton jumbos with each fleet. Ships all need their own fire controls, but they can share one another's search results, so you only need one set of monster search radars.
4. Don't go nuts on fuel. 30-40b km is plenty. I take a more radical view, putting only 20b km on my warships, but this is generally viewed as eccentric behavior.
5. Always use max-size (2500-ton) engines. They're more fuel-efficient.
6. 16,000 tons is a nice size for an early-game ship.
7. Go with reduced-ROF launchers. Your enemy will have high-ROF missile defenses that are optimized for dealing with a steady stream of missiles. Such defenses can be more easily overwhelmed by an enemy that employs infrequent but extremely large volleys. Be such an enemy.
8. It's good to have better reach than your enemy. It's even better to be faster. You MUST be one or the other. Both is nice.
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My two cents, my doctrine is almost completely different from Jumpps in every way.
I tend toward size 4 anti-ship missiles but 4-6 should be the range you aim for. Anything smaller than 4 and its hard, especially early on, to make a good anti-ship missile, anything larger than 6 and its going to be seen sooner (resolution 1 sensors see size 1-6 at the same time with larger missiles being seen farther out).
Most of my fleet uses the same engine, a 5 HS one but that is completely personal preference. It allows me to have several engines, especially on my larger ships, so as my ship gets damaged its a smaller reduction in speed per engine destroyed, which will happen. The downside of this is fuel economy (each HS of your engine saves you 1% fuel), and 5 damage will destroy my engine whereas Jumpp's engines will take 50 points of damage before being destroyed.
I don't make my ships exactly the same size, I use several different designations of ship and almost all of them are under 16,000 tons. My cruisers tend to be in the 5,000 to 10,000 range depending on what I am feeling, and generally I have at least one class smaller than that at about the 3,000 range and a battleship 15,000-25,000 with a carrier 20,000-30,000. Each ship class and to a lesser degree each designation has a specialized role to play. Again this is mostly personal preference, but that is something you will develop as you play the game.
I mostly agree with Jumpp on sensors, but again we differ. In the past you could get away pretty well with sensors with resolutions 1, 20, and 200 though putting a sensor at resolution 100 was good and larger also didn't hurt, but I have found that those are good base sensors with others being added to defeat specific enemies. With the addition of fighters for NPRs in version 7.00 you want a sensor resolution 10 for fighters. As for size you want your standard ships to have size 1 or 2 of at least your larger one if its a ASM ship or your smaller one if its an AMM ship (or both if its a mixed role ship). Generally I also make a size 5 or higher for an AWACS type ship.
As for range, that is based on the size of the systems you are finding (although 20 billion km is plenty for Sol) and how long your ships endurance is. 30-40 billion km is generally fine but there is always exceptions.
I don't go with reduced rate of fire (ROF) launchers and am of the school that you should get as many salvos out as quickly as possible. You should get rate of fire 6 as fast as you can because that puts your size one launchers (your AMMs) at firing every 5 seconds, which is the quickest it can. Now this is also one of the reasons behind my size 4 ASMs. At rate of fire 6 a size 6 launcher fires every 30 seconds, a size 5 fires every 25 seconds and a size 4 fires every 20 seconds. Now going on to the next tech size 4 and 5 stay at 20 and 25 seconds while size 6 drops down to 25 seconds so at this tech there is no point to have a size 5 missile since size 6 will have more stuff and fire just as fast. The next tech level sees size 4 launchers drop to 15 seconds, size 5 goes to 20 and I don't remember if size 6 goes to 20 or stays at 25. Either way, starting at the size 6 tech level the tech starts costing a lot more and not every level brings your launcher fire rates down but size 4 is at a respectable fire at this point.
Another thing to consider with size, beyond speed of missile, chance to hit, damage, and as we just talked about rate of fire, is magazine size. If we have a magazine that can hold 20 MSP, Jumpp can only hold 4 missiles while I can hold 5. This keeps up through the size of the missiles with my size 4 getting 5 for his every 4. As long as my speed and to-hit chance is good my higher number of missiles and greater numbers of salvos in a given time I should be able to get more damage than him. This boils down to the age old argument of is it better to hit more often for less or less often for more?
As for speed of your ships and range of your weapons, I have this to say. If you have a longer range of your weapons but your sensors and fire controls can't match that range its worthless. If you have a longer range with fire controls and sensors to match then you fire first. If you have greater speed you dictate the range in which the battle takes place. If you have a greater range and greater speed then you can keep out of their range but within your range and fire on them with impunity. The larger the difference in speed and range you have over them the bigger mistakes you can make before it starts costing you.
The biggest problem with beam weapons is your enemy WILL have greater range than you, there is no way to change that. So to even have a chance you must either surprise him, take away his range, or be able to close to the range in which your weapons work without dying. Surprise can happen either with extremely high stealth levels (pretty close to not worth it) or from jump points. Jump point defense and offense also takes away the enemy's range as most jump point battles start within 200k km which a fairly low level beam can do. Another thing that takes away his range is electronic warfare, ECMs to be exact. You must have a speed advantage or no matter how close he must be to attack you he will be able to get out of your range and stay within his. The last major problem with beams is you are going to have to weather a large number of salvos while closing the distance but you can use your offensive weapons as anti-missile weapons while you close.
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Take note of the different doctrines the various people here use, they are all acceptable in the eyes of the great space wizard. As for component design ratios, try to aim for something like this for size percentages;
Engine; 30%
Fuel; 10%
Weaponry 30%
Engineering ~10%
Defenses (armor, shields, pd); 15%
This is not a final end-all-be-all but rather it is a general average. Get your design to something like this then tweek it for the greatest affect.
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For every player of Aurora, there are 3 different doctrines ;)
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Beam only fleets are feasible for fleet combat, but require overkill point defenses. If you can shoot down every missile your enemy fires you can tank missile waves all day until their magazines run dry. I have had good results using railgun cruisers to destroy numerically superior but technologically inferior NPRs.
The biggest problem with beam fleets appears when you attempt to assault an NPR homeworld. Short ranged anti-missile fire will still outrange your weapons by several orders of magnitude, and NPRs often have orbital defenses that fire stupidly large quantities of little missiles backed by massive planetary stockpiles. Assaulting homeworlds almost always requires missiles, and while you could use specialty bombardment cruisers for the job it is usually simpler and safer to just arm your primary warships with missiles in the first place.
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Personally missiles are my mainstay like most, though it doesnt stop me from keeping a few beam ships around for role specific jobs.
I usually stick to only a few sizes of ship, and often the distinction between battleship and cruiser isnt 1 of size, but of role.
Eg.
Battleship sually means a 16-32kt warship armed with missile launchers, armor, magazines for a couple reloads, and just enough fuel to move around.
Meant for the line of battle, supported by armored colliers, tankers, and a similarly sized and protected scanning ship.
Cruisers are usually of similar size, but with fewer launchers (perhaps even a mix of systems, ie both offensive missiles and amms) fuel to travel alone a ways, and for spotting, often a couple of fighters with actives, or active homing missiles fired at waypoints.
Mainly for harassing, adding a presence to systems.
Carriers are same size too, and are just engines strapped to boxes of ammo, fuel, and hangars and jumping. They usually use fighters and FACs for everything else.
My destroyers are smaller ships, often with higher speed, and often the hardest hitters of my fleets as I do moronic things like load them up with tons of size 6 box launchers, extremely large single beam weapons, or tons and tons of gauss turrets to add to fleet defense, before theyre detached to go chase things down and whatnot.
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What doctrine you end up with is a combination of:
1. Strategic choice on the part of the player.
2. Limitations of your production system.
3. Goals/Mission profile of your navy.
4. Limitations of your technology.
5. Expected opposition.
In practical terms you can make any design; however bizzarre, work. No design, no matter how optimized, works all the time. The more a design is optimized the worse it works when the situation is different then it was optimized around.
Fundamentally, Erik has summarized it up best.
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My doctrine usually ends up being; build what I can, then throw it at the enemy to see what happens. Incrementally improve designs as new tech is available, or as deficiency is detected.
It's good to have superior ships, but by the time you've finished researching all your new tech into every component a ship needs you'll find that something newer is ready to go and your new ship is already obsolete.
In the later years of ww2 the us knew the Sherman was somewhat obsolete but they kept using it because it was "good enough" especially after adding a bigger gun, it wasn't impervious but it still had enough firepower and speed / maneuverability. But most importantly it was cheap to build enmass, and to transport, and was damn reliable.
Battles can be won by having better equipment, but wars are won by logistics. Don't throw out a perfectly good ship unless it's just a death trap, the good thing about missile ships is they retain utility after installing new missiles, though poor fire control range and ship speed is something to consider.
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The NCN has been improving things based on combat experience, but they have been using the same launchers and fire controls through a lot of missile iterations. That is the huge advantage of a missile ship, especially with higher technology. So what MarcAFK says is the usual way you go.
With each splattering by the Wolvers the NCN ships have evolved in the direction of fighting them, the problem is usually they don't survive finding out there is something they didn't know.
"Quantity has a quality of its own." Is also relevant.
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The key to reusing fire controls and launchers is to build slightly outsized fire controls (so they can accommodate the longer range of your next missiles) and standard missile sizes. In my next game, I'm going to try for size 1 and 4. I did size 1, 6, and 10 this game. But I'm waiting to start again until 7.01 comes out, no sense starting a new 6.43 game with 7 here but no sense starting a new 7.0 game of a bug shows up that breaks dB compatibility
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For every player of Aurora, there are 3 different doctrines ;)
Bah, I only have one
pity it doesn't work :(
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Thanks everyone for the help and advice. So I guess I have to play around with missile design for a bit.
so one last question and this changes topics a bit. I have no idea how to gauge a good missile design for anti-ship. how does this look? I'm messing around with Ion technology
Missile Size: 8 MSP (0. 4 HS) Warhead: 4 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 30
Speed: 16900 km/s Engine Endurance: 27 minutes Range: 27. 0m km
Cost Per Missile: 5. 8875
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 507% 3k km/s 150% 5k km/s 101. 4% 10k km/s 50. 7%
Materials Required: 1x Tritanium 4. 8875x Gallicite Fuel x500
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I have no idea how to gauge a good missile design for anti-ship. how does this look? I'm messing around with Ion technology
Missile Size: 8 MSP (0. 4 HS) Warhead: 4 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 30
Speed: 16900 km/s Engine Endurance: 27 minutes Range: 27. 0m km
Cost Per Missile: 5. 8875
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 507% 3k km/s 150% 5k km/s 101. 4% 10k km/s 50. 7%
Materials Required: 1x Tritanium 4. 8875x Gallicite Fuel x500
Honestly? Slow, fat, underpowered, and short-ranged.
However underpowered is the only deal-breaker. Not bad for a first attempt. A size-8 missile at Ion-tech should have probably have a str-9 or str-12 warhead. I usually assume any anti-ship missile will be 30-50% payload (warhead/sensors/armor).
I usually consider 21,000 km/s par for anti-ship missiles in the Ion age*, and recommend that that any missile size-7 or larger carry a layer of armor. If you want to reliably penetrate opposing anti missile defenses you either need armored missiles, supper fast missiles, or many smallish missiles. Also with that range your opponent will almost certainly fire their anti-ship missiles first if they have any. Short range isn't a problem if you have good missile defenses yourself, but if this is supposed to be a long-range strike then your missile range should be at least doubled.
Agility is the one thing this missile has too much of. Manuver-30 is usually higher than anti-missiles can manage at the ion tech level. You can safely cut agility in half and use the space for a bigger warhead, armor, bigger engines, etc and come out ahead.
*50% engine with 1.75x engine power modifier tech
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thanks. I guess my question is what am I exactly aiming for, at this point with those chance to hit figures?
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Ignore change-to-hit for the moment. That is only critical when designing an anti-missile missile or anti-fighter missile. An anti-ship missile with zero agility, while not optimal, is certainly viable. Some players here will even argue that maximizing Anti-Ship-Missile speed is more important than hitting some particular accuracy level.
If you still want a number? Try for whatever gives you 100% hit-rate against your own ship designs. If your ships move at 3000 km/s then 100% at 3k km/s is all you need. Just remember, hitting twice as hard at 75% accuracy is an improvement and that any missile shot down is as good as a miss.
Me? I like to first design a 0.1 MSP placeholder engine with the same fuel economy as a maximum power missile would have if it was half the size of the intended missile. Next I use multiples of the placeholder engine to figure out what agility:engine ratio will maximize my chance-to-hit with the intended payload and range. Finally I only use half of that agility and put everything left into the final engine. Tip: pay attention to agility->Maneuver rounding. That can save you a little extra space for more fuel or a bigger engine.
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The easiest way of getting a nicely balanced missile without complicated formula and analysis is the method I use.
Design a max power multiplier .1 size engine.
Decide how big to make the missile, just go with 4-6 for a basic ASM.
Add 50% engines, 50% warhead.
Incrementally add to agility untill it's as you want, keep in mind that you'll be losing warhead or speed as you increase agility. At low techs I usually increase it to 11 or 12 then stop.
Now incrementally tweak fuel untill it's about a tenth the range you want, why a tenth ?
Because Size 3 or more engines are around 10 times more fuel efficient as those .1 you started designing the missile with. Range usually should be limited by the fire control or sensor range you have available , add a little extra so the missile doesn't run out if you fire at max range at fleeing enemies.
Now pare down either warhead, engine or both untill the missile is back at the desired size.
You'll find agility and range have gone up slightly too, you could then lower those and cram in more engine if desired. Depending on how OCD you are.
Now this is very important, screenshot your design so you don't forget it, you can't make the missile untill the engine is ready to go.
Finally design a missile engine the same size as your final engine quantity and research it.
Then go back to missile design and add everything again with the new engine. If you're satisfied research it and go blow up some NPRs.
Or to simplify it further just design a max power engine 50% the size of your missile, add warhead untill you can't fit anymore, then put the rest of the size into fuel and agility.
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MarcAKF and I have pretty much the exact same philosophy when it comes to making ASMs. I do pretty much the exact same thing he just described but I do a lot of fiddling around with agility vs engine size, especially at lower levels because once you have the speed in the ballpark you want it to be in you will find that trading agility and speed back and forth on a 0.1 MSP basis you will find the best to hit range. If you want some numbers to play around with for a size four missile what I would suggest is put either 1 MSP into warhead or enough warhead to make 4 damage whichever is greater, then put 1.8 MSP into engines, look at fuel range and going off MarcAFK's suggestion of seeing a range of just over 10% of the max range of your fire control, put the rest into agility. Then in 0.1 MSP increments trade engines for agility and look at your to hit chance, if it goes up keep going until you hit the point where it starts going down, if it goes down then start trading agility for engines which should make it go up and then keep doing that until either you can't anymore or until it starts going down. That should give you a decent ASM.
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The range seems a bit short. My shortest ones are 87.5 million kilometers, and that's too short. You really want to be into the hundreds of millions of kilometers of you can. And size 8 will give your enemies more time to detect and shoot down your missiles, which could be a problem.
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You can make a size six missile with one point of Armour and slower which will make the missile roughly as durable against AMM and Point Defense but substantially cheaper in resources.
In regard to naval doctrine I really think it all come down to what rules you impose on yourself on the game as a whole. If you just go at what is most efficient from a game mechanic side there are a few obvious ways you would design your ships and missiles.
I have played in several multi-national campaigns where I have simultaneously controlled several human factions. One thing that this has taught me is that you need the ships now and not later which always means you need to compromise on efficiency and quantity all the time. There are no such thing as a perfect ship class or even size of ship, everyone are constantly evolving and on varying stages of modernizing and building and/or expanding their navies. Even spending a few months extra to develop that new sensor type can and will affect the overall power balance.
You should also find that naval doctrines will change over time as new technologies shift the usage of different types of weapons and ships.
Also remember that using a wide variety of weapon types will make you use more and different resources and thus use your mining output more efficiently. If you build large naval forces of only a certain type of weapons you will tend to overuse a certain type of resource and have overly large stacks of other resources.
When it comes to engine size I have found that large military engines are very expensive to research so most factions tend to research overall fuel efficiency rather than very large engines. The smaller engines also fit into more numerous ship sizes and types and it is easier to develop different types of engines to suit the need of the ships.
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I have been rolling around with these guys
Broadsword - MKV class Command Cruiser 25 200 tons 605 Crew 5735. 52 BP TCS 504 TH 1500 EM 3000
2976 km/s JR 5-50 Armour 6-76 Shields 100-375 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 14 PPV 24
Maint Life 2. 3 Years MSP 5991 AFR 362% IFR 5% 1YR 1538 5YR 23072 Max Repair 1400 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 18 months Spare Berths 1
Magazine 884
J25200(5-50) Military Jump Drive Max Ship Size 25200 tons Distance 50k km Squadron Size 5
750 EP Magnetic Fusion Drive (2) Power 750 Fuel Use 21% Signature 750 Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 2 150 000 Litres Range 73. 1 billion km (284 days at full power)
Delta R375/300 Shields (40) Total Fuel Cost 500 Litres per hour (12 000 per day)
Size 1 Missile Launcher (24) Missile Size 1 Rate of Fire 10
Missile Fire Control FC36-R1 (70%) (1) Range 37. 0m km Resolution 1
AMM-2 (460) Speed: 30 100 km/s End: 2. 4m Range: 4. 3m km WH: 1 Size: 1 TH: 311/186/93
Active Search Sensor MR61-R1 (70%) (1) GPS 560 Range 61. 6m km MCR 6. 7m km Resolution 1
Active Search Sensor MR1030-R70 (70%) (1) GPS 78400 Range 1 030. 8m km Resolution 70
ECCM-1 (4) Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
Invincible - MKV class Cruiser 25 100 tons 599 Crew 4393. 52 BP TCS 502 TH 1500 EM 1500
2988 km/s Armour 8-76 Shields 50-375 Sensors 110/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 20 PPV 164. 4
Maint Life 2. 72 Years MSP 3094 AFR 504% IFR 7% 1YR 598 5YR 8976 Max Repair 450 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 18 months Spare Berths 0
Magazine 944 Cryogenic Berths 200
750 EP Magnetic Fusion Drive (2) Power 750 Fuel Use 21% Signature 750 Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 2 100 000 Litres Range 71. 7 billion km (277 days at full power)
Delta R375/300 Shields (20) Total Fuel Cost 250 Litres per hour (6 000 per day)
Quad 10cm C3 Ultraviolet Laser Turret (2x4) Range 120 000km TS: 40000 km/s Power 12-12 RM 4 ROF 5 3 3 3 3 2 2 1 1 1 1
Quad Gauss Cannon R2-100 Turret (1x8) Range 20 000km TS: 35000 km/s Power 0-0 RM 2 ROF 5 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Fire Control S02 40-20000 H70 (1) Max Range: 80 000 km TS: 20000 km/s 88 75 62 50 38 25 12 0 0 0
Fire Control S06 120-20000 H70 (1) Max Range: 240 000 km TS: 20000 km/s 96 92 88 83 79 75 71 67 62 58
Magnetic Confinement Fusion Reactor S3 (1) Total Power Output 30 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Size 6 Missile Launcher (14) Missile Size 6 Rate of Fire 60
Missile Fire Control FC115-R80 (70%) (1) Range 115. 7m km Resolution 80
ASM6-3 (157) Speed: 24 000 km/s End: 46. 7m Range: 67. 2m km WH: 9 Size: 6 TH: 224/134/67
Thermal Sensor TH10-110 (1) Sensitivity 110 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 110m km
Missile to hit chances are vs targets moving at 3000 km/s, 5000 km/s and 10,000 km/s
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
I usually set them in "packs" with one Broadsword and 4 Invincibles, as I am also a new guy, I would like to know how hard would it be for a NPR or spoiler race to obliterate my 2 pack exploration group
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My fleet doctrine tens to evolve over time. Not always the same way, but a typical progression would be
Stage 1: "All I can build is cannon fodder, so I'll design them to be efficient cannon fodder".
Low-power engines, low-tech railguns, slow and only moderately armoured. Cheap to build, cheap to run, useful against higher-tech enemies by literally being cheaper than the missiles needed to shoot them down.
Stage 2: "I need any edge I can get to overwhelm my enemy".
Trying to win before the opponent can shoot back. Overwhelming salvos from reduced-size launchers, fighter strikes hopefully delivered from outside their range, various dirty tricks to get through point defence that would otherwise be troublesome.
Stage 3: "OK, I'm confident I can win. Time to make the victories cheaper/more decisive"
Specialised solutions tailored to current or likely threats. Often features fast beam combatants that aim to outrange and outrun their equivalents with enough PD to deal with missile boats, and boarding specialists. Remnants from stage 1 and 2 may form the core of separate fleets. Some low-tech (cheap to operate, able to project power with minimal logistics dragin), some high-tech (fast, hopefully able to control the engagement and score flawless or nearflawless victories)
Stage 4: "Economies of scale"
As I can build larger ships without sacrificing too much tactical flexibility, optional systems like ECM and passive protection, especially shields, become more attractive. May be split into two stages - fast battlecruisers that can outrun what they don't outgun transitioning into true capital ships that don't intend to run from anyone.
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I wish there was someway to disable all missile tech when you started a game, because the fun is designing beam ship based fleets and getting into slugfests...but the fact is missile based doctrine is almost always superior and most battles are fought and won ten or hundreds of million klicks away.
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I strongly disagree with most of this.
Beams are my preferred choice by far, with missiles playing more of a supporting role and I often don't use them at all for some time.
Also, without the threat of missiles, beam combat may become rather boring - aim to outrange and outspeed your opponent, win unopposed.
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1. What weapon systems do you mainly use? Looking around the forums it seems like most people have missile dominated navies. Is a beam only fleet even feasible (missiles used for point defense not withstanding)?
Missiles are generally the easiest to use, especially against the AI. Although, I doubt that would be the case against a human player over a long campaign.
As for Beam weapons, they are more specialized types of weapons, unfortunately I don't understand what are the most effective ways to utilize each type. For example, in the tutorial I read, Railguns are mostly dismissed as early tech PD, while some people praise them as the best option at higher techs with good pilots.
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Depends on details. I'm of the minority who far prefers railguns for PD.
Fast ships: When twice as fast as the basic fire control rating, you'd need RoF 5 for Gauss turrets to be ahead for point defence.
Slow ships: Commercial engines and base-tech railguns make a cheap disposable package.
Railguns give me options that suit me just fine for very little research investment compared to practical Gauss weapons.
Gauss turrets are the way to go when you don't get considerable bonuses from tracking speed anyway, and aren't pinching pennies.
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So basically you are saying its a cheap, early tech PD ? Other than that, my understanding comes down to:
* Gauss is short range, low damage weapon, but eventually it offers highest rate of fire and hit chance (can be turreted). You can also trade accuracy for size for fighters (although the suggestion that small gauss can be deadly with good officers, seems silly to me due to fighter officer life span)
* Railguns are longer range, higher damage variant of that niche, that cannot be turreted. ( I am not sure why would anyone invest in Railguns, instead of focusing on lasers making use of the same tech to create large\small variants, for example)
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I am not sure why would anyone invest in Railguns, instead of focusing on lasers making use of the same tech to create large\small variants, for example
Because railguns can function as both anti-ship and anti-missile using the same fire control, plus they out-damage lasers at closer ranges. Also, you may have a kinetic scientist but not an energy one.
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The secondary point defence use has some merit... but I still think railguns over 10cm have little use on account of being limited by capacitors.
2 10cm/C3 lasers are a very good substitute for a 15cm/C5 railgun on a much lower RP budget.
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Railguns are great if you work to their strengths, namely high ship speed. A railgun is already almost as good as a turreted laser at PD, but when you increase ship speeds they rapidly become superior - without having too worry as much about 4x tracking speed. Additionally, higher speeds work to offset their range disadvantage.
10cm railguns are a little exploitable too, you can make truckloads of them for very low cost while still being effective point defense. YMMV, of course.