STO Engineering: how much armor to use?

[Ulzgoroth (OP)]

they might be hit in an artillery duel with bombardment ships.

"Might" is the critical word you use - in order for orbital bombardment to explicitly target STOs, you need to forego the bonus of having FFD support, which means that OBS hit rate is going to be worse than pathetic. The primary defense of your static STOs against OBS is not armour, ironically its evasion. High fortification combined with piss poor OBS accuracy means that your STOs are going to be getting a lot of hits while not getting hit back.

Besides, static heavy armour is not strong enough to handle the usual bombardment suspects since people should be using high caliber weapons anyways for OBS duty. Additionally light static armour is more than good enough to handle 1 damage weapons like gauss spam reliably so IMO not worth armouring.

Why should they be using high caliber weapons anyway, exactly? Beam weapons don't do splash damage against units, so lots of relatively small weapons will give better results than a few huge ones except when you happen to hit a very hard target...and when that happens, big weapons may not cut it. At Compressed Carbon Armor level heavy vehicle armor is 90 points, which would resist anything short of a 60cm (!!) laser. I'm not saying go Gauss, but numerous 10-15cm lasers or slightly larger railguns might be more helpful in clearing the board of troops than my 45cm advanced spinal deathray.

Big weapons are, of course, helpful if what you're trying to do is peck away STOs from a standoff range rather than go in close and dare their full point-blank firepower...

[Droll]

they might be hit in an artillery duel with bombardment ships.

"Might" is the critical word you use - in order for orbital bombardment to explicitly target STOs, you need to forego the bonus of having FFD support, which means that OBS hit rate is going to be worse than pathetic. The primary defense of your static STOs against OBS is not armour, ironically its evasion. High fortification combined with piss poor OBS accuracy means that your STOs are going to be getting a lot of hits while not getting hit back.

Besides, static heavy armour is not strong enough to handle the usual bombardment suspects since people should be using high caliber weapons anyways for OBS duty. Additionally light static armour is more than good enough to handle 1 damage weapons like gauss spam reliably so IMO not worth armouring.

Why should they be using high caliber weapons anyway, exactly? Beam weapons don't do splash damage against units, so lots of relatively small weapons will give better results than a few huge ones except when you happen to hit a very hard target...and when that happens, big weapons may not cut it. At Compressed Carbon Armor level heavy vehicle armor is 90 points, which would resist anything short of a 60cm (!!) laser. I'm not saying go Gauss, but numerous 10-15cm lasers or slightly larger railguns might be more helpful in clearing the board of troops than my 45cm advanced spinal deathray.

Big weapons are, of course, helpful if what you're trying to do is peck away STOs from a standoff range rather than go in close and dare their full point-blank firepower...

I am going off of practical experience - I find that my heavier ships with the big guns to more damage to ground forces than my destroyers with the smaller guns. Also ground armor is not the same as space armour. High armor simple reduces the chance of damage happening doesn't outright negate it, so although beam weapons can be resisted, bigger guns tend to kill with higher probability. Given how atrocious orbital accuracy is, I find it more important to make the few hits you have count as opposed to spray and pray.

My bombardment weapon of choice is the 50cm railgun, it is in essence a compromise between volume of fire and orbital anti-armour capability and so far it has worked well.
As for anti-infantry my fleets point defence gauss weapons actually do quite well.

[Ulzgoroth (OP)]

I am going off of practical experience - I find that my heavier ships with the big guns to more damage to ground forces than my destroyers with the smaller guns.

I'd need a lot more details to make any assessment of the significance of that.

Also ground armor is not the same as space armour. High armor simple reduces the chance of damage happening doesn't outright negate it, so although beam weapons can be resisted, bigger guns tend to kill with higher probability. Given how atrocious orbital accuracy is, I find it more important to make the few hits you have count as opposed to spray and pray.

That's poor mathematics. However good or bad your hit rate is, twice as many shots yields twice as many hits.

My bombardment weapon of choice is the 50cm railgun, it is in essence a compromise between volume of fire and orbital anti-armour capability and so far it has worked well.
As for anti-infantry my fleets point defence gauss weapons actually do quite well.

Do you know what tech level and troop quality your targets are at?

My new-model power-armor infantry have armor 22.5, which means a the 10 AP of a 1-point space weapon hit yields less than 20% odds of actually killing them. (If the armor doesn't stop it it will kill them, since they have less than 20 HP.) Heavy power armor infantry, which I didn't want to foot the bill for, would take that down to 1-in-9. Even light infantry have better than even odds of survival. Well-developed Gauss still probably dominates lasers (not sure about railguns) for clearing light infantry, but against the crunchier types it probably loses out.


Tangentially, orbital fire support bombardment is a definite use case for miniaturized lasers, since the exigencies of ground combat rounds should make everything's effective RoF be 3 hours...

[liveware]

I am going off of practical experience - I find that my heavier ships with the big guns to more damage to ground forces than my destroyers with the smaller guns.

I'd need a lot more details to make any assessment of the significance of that.

Also ground armor is not the same as space armour. High armor simple reduces the chance of damage happening doesn't outright negate it, so although beam weapons can be resisted, bigger guns tend to kill with higher probability. Given how atrocious orbital accuracy is, I find it more important to make the few hits you have count as opposed to spray and pray.

That's poor mathematics. However good or bad your hit rate is, twice as many shots yields twice as many hits.

My bombardment weapon of choice is the 50cm railgun, it is in essence a compromise between volume of fire and orbital anti-armour capability and so far it has worked well.
As for anti-infantry my fleets point defence gauss weapons actually do quite well.

Do you know what tech level and troop quality your targets are at?

My new-model power-armor infantry have armor 22.5, which means a the 10 AP of a 1-point space weapon hit yields less than 20% odds of actually killing them. (If the armor doesn't stop it it will kill them, since they have less than 20 HP.) Heavy power armor infantry, which I didn't want to foot the bill for, would take that down to 1-in-9. Even light infantry have better than even odds of survival. Well-developed Gauss still probably dominates lasers (not sure about railguns) for clearing light infantry, but against the crunchier types it probably loses out.


Tangentially, orbital fire support bombardment is a definite use case for miniaturized lasers, since the exigencies of ground combat rounds should make everything's effective RoF be 3 hours...

Not to derail this topic too much.... but my crappy 15cm calibre laser fighters have been providing consistent and continuous OBS to my marines in something like 10-15 planetary invasions thus far. Smaller calibre lasers have some utility in OBS.