Railguns as a Main Weapon

[83athom]

Found the graph I was talking about. Although this was made back in v5.54, there weren't any changes to the damages of weapons. And this was made to represent mid level tech where all have equal techs (rof, range, etc).

[Iranon]

@ Thanatos: You raise some interesting point with regard to armour penetration.
My experience and understanding point towards narrow, deep penetration being preferable to sandpapering, with a mix being better still (if a few lasers carve deep gashes, a spray of railgun fire will find soft spots while the armour is still thick in most places). This does not seem to match your experimental result.

I have no major qualm with your 6000t ships for a general comparison; the laser ship is more expensive but also works as a long-range combatant if desired, seems fair. The concerns I do have:
1) How did you model the fight? We obviously don't want the laser ship to keep the range open and fire unopposed... but did it get a free salvo? Maximum closing rate is 250k per tick, the laser ship has a range band of 240k in which the railgun ship can't respond.
2) Chance will play a big part in a single duel.
3) Exact depth of armour belt may favour one weapon or the other, especially in small ships whether the first few hits to reach the internals can be decisive.
I'd be curious to see this repeated a few times with varying armour thicknesses in a realistic range.

As an aside, I'm happily fielding 15cm/c10 railguns in my current game. They don't displace 15cm lasers as my main offensive and 10cm railguns as my main defensive weapons, but they allow excellent area defence combined with serious short-range firepower.
Nice, but were the new toys (also: fast-firing 20cm lasers) worth the heavy investment into capacitor research? Seems dubious, they're expensive and not clearly better than my previous mainline weapons... and with twice the bulk for the same output, they wouldn't be competitive.

@ 83athom: Do you recall what weapons exactly were used for this? I recall being a little disappointed that a lot of effort was spent on making nice graphs about some rather impractical weapons.

[Thanatos]

@Iranon: I tested it by creating two ships, one of each class, dividing them, and setting one to follow the other at 80k distance. One on one, due to the tracking speed, some of the crucial salvos of the laser ship miss, while the railguns, due to their multitude of pellets, have more chances to hit. In general, I saw an almost 50% higher effective DPS from the railgun than the laser.

It was simultaneous. They both fired at each other on the same tick one I gave one fleet to the AI.

However, just a few moments ago, I tried the same setup but this time used 2 and 3 ships per fleet, and the lasers won every time. I think in hindsight, one on one, if I had matched the tracking speed with the actual speed of the ship, the laser would've won. But then again, the railgun might've had a damage advantage, if I tried to force the laser ship to be 6000 tons.

So I made a 7000 ton laser ship, and put it up against the railgun boat II, as is. The railgun won. Even two on two. I think that extra layer of armor really messes those 6 damage lasers up. I think it's a matter of 'sweet spot' for both of the weapons. Personally, if I roll out railgun boats, I always do it at biphaside carbide armor, which is being used in this testing-- but, I always use 8 layers of armor.

It takes about 6 to 7 salvos for the railguns to kill the laser boats, but only 3 or 4, for the lasers to kill the railguns. Honestly, I am a railgun fan, but even I can see that when lasers are done right, they can be amazingly powerful. So long as you are not chasing a ship that is faster than you or your tracking speed. It's expensive, RP-wise, but worth it. In the same vein, once you get to 30cm railguns, it won't matter how often you shoot, because when you fire 4 or 5 of those babies, from 2 or 3 ships, you will kill with shock damage alone.

Against AI, I actually think railguns perform better, because the AI tends to build massive ships, and some of them, have a lot of armor. Like, we are talking 8-60. It is so hard to penetrate the same spot twice against those ships, with a low volume of fire. A railgun doesn't really bother with that. Like, it literally doesn't care. On one hand, shock damage will theoretically do the job, but on the other hand, the volume of fire is so high, that it will carve up the armor almost like a missile does, making each subsequent shot all the more effective.

Before I used railguns, I did use lasers and gauss turrets. When I came up against ships like these, I would actually use my gauss PD turrets to chew up the armor before I used the lasers. 20 seconds of that, and I was good to go for lasers. I actually made the change to railguns because of this, because 'if I am close enough to fire the gauss, I should just switch to railguns'- and the combo is amazingly effective. In the off rounds when your railgun is recharging, if your capacitor tech is too low, your gauss are just setting the stage for the end game. But the same applies to lasers, but you really feel the pain when you use that as a main tactic, while having sun so much RP into range.

[Iranon]

Tracking speed, if the same for both ships, shouldn't change which weapon is favoured.
Accuracy  being a concern adds a major random element though, I'd match fire control speed to ship speed for testing purposes.

Regarding 30cm railguns: Those should outperform 15cm lasers once they get their fire rate to 10 seconds.
As usual, same number of shots per tick  as a pair of lasers... with 7 damage instead of 6, on 9 HS instead of 8, same power requirement. Adjusted for size, we get a 4% increase in firepower for a a 66% increase in cost, because the required capacitor tech drives the price up.
Expensive, but worth considering.

This requires capacitor-12 though, which adds an option I find more appealing. 20cm railguns that fire every tick are excellent for brawling and area defence, range isn't extreme but still respectable. I could definitely get behind this as my main weapon. There is nothing wrong with mixing in the 30cm version to extend maximum range, no need to invest in laser/particle beam tech if we haven't already.

*

Of the regular damage dealers, only lasers don't seem unreasonably limited by capacitor tech. Efficient with varied builds for different purposes, fast-firing 15cm may be first among equals but definitely not the only good option. Some weird builds work splendidly in the right situation. Yay!

Railguns with a 5s reload period are great, at 10s they're comparable to small lasers but more expensive at a higher tech investment.

Particle beams-2 get us range at at a reasonable cost. Larger ones need to fire every 5s to do more against ships - expensive even if we have the tech, and less effective as area defence. The upcoming lances may make large sizes appealing, maybe even at low range tech to save costs... looking forward to them.

Carronades are twice as expensive as infrared lasers of the same size, only attractive when we build for devastating single volleys over continuous output. Problem: Spinal/reduced lasers do this just as well or better, and the line is more flexible.

[Thanatos]

Indeed, I think personally, you can basically disregard railgun tech between the 20 to 30cm range. 35 cm railguns, no matter how fast they reload, have a massive chance to do shock damage PER shot. That's pretty massive.

[Borealis4x (OP)]

I don't get why the options for your rail-guns are so limited. Like why can lasers be spinal and turret mounted but not rails? Is there some scientific reason to it? Cause I doubt the dev cares much for balance.

[83athom]

I don't get why the options for your rail-guns are so limited. Like why can lasers be spinal and turret mounted but not rails? Is there some scientific reason to it? Cause I doubt the dev cares much for balance.

Rails are not turreted because of balance reasons comparing to gauss cannons. However Steve is working on Spinal versions for some of the other beam weapons (rails, etc).

[Iranon]

Would be nice if other weapon lines got meaningful additions, as the particle beams do in the next version.
 

Indeed, I think personally, you can basically disregard railgun tech between the 20 to 30cm range. 35 cm railguns, no matter how fast they reload, have a massive chance to do shock damage PER shot. That's pretty massive.

Quite the opposite imo. There is hope for railguns up to 30cm at high tech levels under some circumstances... but little for 35cm and above. You're hung up that some specific output is massive and enough to cause the enemy some grief. Sure, it may be... but all comparable outpus are. If there are alternative methods that do the same thing better, the fact that it's sufficient doesn't validate the weaker one.

I still think you're hung up on a metric that's not very relevant in context - power of a single salvo.
Do you expect your first salvo fired from maximum weapon range to largely decide the battle? This may be realistic with microwaves or ridiculous spinal lasers. With railguns and railgun-equivalents, this assumption implies pitting the punch of a battleship against the jaw of a gunboat.

With realistically matched offensive and defensive capabilities, we have to take RoF into account.
One strong salvo every few ticks may give you a head start in artificial tests, in practice it's mitigated by an effective range disadvantage: The ship with the strong salvo is encouraged to hold fire until it can deal meaningful damage, the fast-firing ship can open fire the instant it has a non-zero chance to hit.

35cm Railguns vs. 20cm lasers on realistic capacitor tech (10 is a good match for both):
Adjusted for space, the laser ship will fire ~42% as many shots per salvo... with damage increased to 10 and at three times the rate of fire.
If you object that capacitor-10 is an expensive tech at 125k, consider that the railgun option spent 70k more on calibre.

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Specific examples are always problematic because one can always argue they don't apply in this or that case... but the comparison of equal-damage weapon can be broken down to simple principles:

1) For the same damage per shot, railguns and supporting crew/power typically need slightly less than 2x as much space as lasers.
2) Since railguns get 4 shots per weapon, a railgun loadout will have slightly more than twice as many shots per salvo.
3) Railguns require 3x the capacitor tech for the same rate of fire.

4) If railguns have a third of the fire rate, they have slightly more than 2/3 the output over time. Cost is comparable (same capacitor tech used).
5) If railguns have half the fire rate, they have slightly higher output over time than lasers. Cost is approaximately 50% higher (higher capacitor tech).
6) If railguns have the same fire rate, they have slightly mor than twice the output over time than the lasers. They cost approximately 3 times as much.
Lasers at the relevant sizes have exact capacitor matches, railguns not always. Resulting inefficiencies can reduce performance or increase cost.

[Thanatos]

Actually, it is in tests where this sort of thing doesn't stand up to it's name. Once you go up to 35cm and above, in tests, they just perform poorly. I actually once tested ton for ton, Gauss Cannon vs Railgun. And at 35 cm and above, which means a hell of a lot more Gauss Cannons, GC wins. Hands down. It absolutely obliterates the railguns (And everything else, pretty much).

I seriously thought the GC ship drove up to the rail ship and was like 'I will do to you what China did to Pearl Harbor.' And the rails go: 'But that was not Chin-- AAARGH'

HOWEVER, it is in gameplay, when you have a proper fleet supporting these ships, which are not just a 35 cm slugger, but they have other weapons, that you can truly see the power of the railgun, and nothing else seems to be able to compare. In one of my games where I played 3 races, we all went down different tech paths, one was lasers, one was missiles, and one was pure rails.

So, I don't actually know. The only way I can make 35cm work, is in actual gameplay, in mixed fleets. It is difficult to test that and prove it works. If you are curious, you'll just have to try it, there is no other way.

[Iranon]

Railguns performing poorly in tests is quite expected. All weapons lose DPS when they get too large for their capacitors, and large railguns don't do anything unique to compensate. Large lasers at least have penetration and shock damage that can't be mirrored by more efficient smaller weapons (maximum RoF is usually better overall, but it's not strictly better.).

What about 10cm railguns? Those have higher output than Gauss weapons per ton, unless we've researched all Gauss RoF techs (last one for 750k, eek!).
And if we do have high tech,  the largest railgun that can fire every 5s should do better in a brawl.

Actual gameplay contains many uncontrollable variables, and anything that isn't outright silly can work. I have no doubt that ships with 35cm railguns can win battles, but I can say with near-perfect confidence that they are decidedly suboptimal, without the need for field testing.
When comparing the expected value of 5d6+2 vs. 6d6, we don't do empirical research and roll a lot of dice... we can isolate and compare what's different, and know that the former will score 1.5 higher on average.

[Thanatos]

Strictly, speaking, you are right. But in the field, and ironically, I can with absolute perfect confidence tell you that 35cm and up railguns, no matter the ROF, are devastating and they have no comparable peer.

The problem is, after you fire those railguns once and they go into cooldown, you start relying on your secondary weapons, which soften the target up, and when the railguns fire again, I can outright tell you, unless the ship has 8 layers of armor or more, it is dead. Straight up dead. And even if it survives, the fact that it fires 4 pellets-- some of those are gonna hit what you want to be hit, and in general, it will tend to go towards inflicting higher internal damage than pure lasers or any other weapons.

And if that _doesn't_ kill the target... well, those secondary weapons will go to work again... probably for the last time.

As I've said before, I used to play with only laser ships, mesons, particles, carronades, normal lasers. And I've never seen anything kill stuff as quickly as a railgun at the 35cm+ level.

10cm railguns aren't really that good. They're basically a ROF4 gauss cannon. I mean, it's not useless- but it's not good. Lasers are a billion times better at this level. 15cm vs 15cm laser, I have to go with laser again- but railguns are also nice, cause at this level they are basically PD and anti-ship weapons. But beyond that, without matching capacitor tech which gets stupidly expensive? Forget it. Not worth it. The damage pattern becomes useless.

[Iranon]

I tried to formalise damage being frontloaded in the case of railguns, which is what your point seems to hinge on.
Using the weapons from my last post for 35cm railguns/20cm lasers, standardising for the output of a railgun salvo, there seems to be some support for it:

Turn - total Railgun damage dealt - total Laser damage dealt - Difference - Cumulative Difference - Average difference (CD/T)

Code: [Select]

T    R   L       D       CD      A
1    1   0.47   -0.53   -0.53   -0.53
2    1   0.93   -0.07   -0.60   -0.3
3    1   1.40    0.40   -0.20   -0.07
4    2   1.87   -0.13   -0.33   -0.08
5    2   2.33    0.33    0       0
6    2   2.80    0.80    0.8     0.13
7    3   3.27    0.27    1.27    0.18
D expresses who's ahead, A  "who was ahead on average so far", which we may care about as earlier damage may degrade enemy combat ability. A positive number means an advantage for lasers.
Although railguns fall behind forever after... they're ahead the turn their second salvo hits, which matches your experience.

However, this assumes all salvos are fired at decisive battle range. In practice, there will be some fire exchanged before, and  the railgun fire at turn -2 is more heavily degraded than laser fire from turns -2 to 0.
Looking at a closing rate of 20000km/s, 600k fire control range and 450/500k weapon range, this would increase all values in column D by roughly 0.25 (best case for railguns, turn 1 is the exact turn decisive range with full damage is reached) to 0.8 (worst case for railguns, decisive battle range was reached at turn -1 and lasers already got off 2 salvos at full damage and accuracy).

The following assumes the best-case scenario for railguns, which isn't much different from the safe option (the salvo 3 ticks before is only worth about 0.05, we could just hold fire).
R now denotes the number of number of railgun salvos fired at decisive range, not total damage. A is calculated for turns at decisive range.

Code: [Select]

T    R    D        CD       A
1    1   -0.28    -0.28    -0.28   
2    1    0.18    -0.10    -0.05   
3    1    0.65     0.55     0.183
4    2    0.12     0.62     0.16
5    2    0.58     1.20     0.24
6    2    1.05     2.25     0.38
7    3    0.52     2.77     0.40

[Thanatos]

Like I said before, there really is no point to compare a large caliber railgun, with a small focal size laser. Also, ECM would ruin laser's day, and only be a mild annoyance for a railgun.

And in your example, the shock damage would disable the laser before it got it's second shot off.

[Iranon]

I don't see how ECM would ruin a small laser but not a large railgun with comparable range, damage per shot, accompanied by the same fire control.

It's strange that you would claim Gauss cannons "obliterate pretty much anything"... then dismiss 10cm railguns as not very good because they are "basically RoF4 Gauss Cannons".
Never mind that their size makes them more comparable to RoF7 Gauss Cannons ton for ton,

You keep bringing up red herrings. "While my railguns are silent, other weaponry continues the job"... as it would when supporting any other kind of weapon. You have not given a reason why your other unspecified weaponry would interact more favourably with intermittently firing railguns than anything else. Hyperbole and gushing anecdotes are also no arguments.

Your last claim is unsubstantiated, and absurd it the certainty with which it is stated.
I've tried to decipher what you might actually mean, formalise the reasoning behind the claims, and make it open to analysis.
I probably should have realised earlier that this was futile.

[Thanatos]

I don't know why you are attacking my points at face value when it's pretty clear what I am saying. Your evidence that doesn't need no empirical research, is comparing large railguns with small lasers. I did that too, the other way around, and you didn't accept my proof.

So here it is one more time, very clear so you can understand without a doubt:

ROF8 Gauss Cannon x4 = Kill everything. Ok? Doesn't get simpler than that. You put a ship with two of these, next to another hostile ship, and in 30 seconds, no more hostile ship. Now imagine this: Imagine the hostile ship was hit twice by a laser, that removed some of the armor. Now you don't need 30 seconds, now you need 15. Why? Because the GC, with it's huge volume of fire, will hit internals very very often now.

Now, if you are still following, here is why this also works with railguns, especially big ones. 4x9 damage railgun? Very good. Why? Because, you hit hole in armor, ship explode. 35cm laser? Very good. You hit ship, ship dead. You hit ship in hole in armor, ship also dead. But. If ship too much armor? Take 35cm laser, and delete.

Here is the difference: Laser, 1 shot. Railgun, 4 shots. Laser does shock damage once, Railguns do shock damage 4 times. Laser has one chance to hit. Railguns have 4 chances to hit.

Now you plug ECM into a ship, say ECM 80, and the laser has a 20 percent chance to hit. Railguns have 4 shots, at 20 percent.

It is not rate of fire, or damage of any of the components that in the end wins the day. It is volume of fire. Now this is true in the real world as much as it is in Aurora. US military doctrine, for infantry and navy, will both state two things: Movement is life, and Volume of Fire is currency. And with currency you pay your ticket to go back home in one piece.

If there is even a 1% chance to miss your target, the ship with the higher volume of fire has a more favorable matchup. If you take into account the fact that armor does not need to be penetrated for you to deal internal damage, volume of fire also gives you a very large edge.

If lasers are the embodiment of one-shot kills, then railguns are the avatars of annihilation. That is not bias, that is simply the truth, fact, observational evidence, etc, etc, etc. If you put two ships, one laser, one railgun, next to each other, and they both field caliber 30+, if the laser does not kill the railgun in the first salvo, it is game over for the laser ship, end of story.