Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: January 15, 2021, 05:38:51 PM »Rail-guns is a good choice if you don't intend to spend research into any other point defence oriented weapons. The main negative is that they require high speed ships to be good and that can also be expensive... to expensive for really effective PD in my opinion. But on a beam fleet where you concentrate on Railguns only it is a very good choice.
The other very major drawback with any weapons (such as rail-guns) that can't be mounted in a turret is high vulnerability to ECM differences. ECM can sometimes render non turreted weapons completely inert and useless.
Rail-guns also can become a sub optimal planetary point defence weapon as technology is advanced as they never track faster than the racial technology.
The main benefit with lasers is that they can be turreted and thus don't care what the speed of the ship it is mounted on. They also are much less susceptible to ECM penalties. The other advantage is that even small calibre lasers have a decent range and thus is allot more useful in beam combat too.
Even if lasers have a lower PD effect than rail-guns from a mass perspective the practical result can rapidly shift in lasers favour depending on situations and other uses so you should not dismiss their capabilities as a long term investment. For lasers I would turret all lasers at 15cm and below most of the time, 15cm lasers become really good once you can shoot every 5sec with them but even before that they work great at any ASM attacks. Turreted lasers also make any small craft beam attacks a pretty big fat no go as well.
If I already put effort into laser I would stick with that choice, if I put effort into rail-guns I would stick to that solution.
Gauss PD is best combined with the use of other Beam weapon types such as Carronades and Particle Beams. But can also be used with lasers if you feel you can afford the somewhat redundant use from Gauss versus laser from just putting the research someplace else. Gauss is also a very good option if you just use missiles and no other beam weapons at all, it will save allot of cost in missiles from defending yourself against other missiles.
The other very major drawback with any weapons (such as rail-guns) that can't be mounted in a turret is high vulnerability to ECM differences. ECM can sometimes render non turreted weapons completely inert and useless.
Rail-guns also can become a sub optimal planetary point defence weapon as technology is advanced as they never track faster than the racial technology.
The main benefit with lasers is that they can be turreted and thus don't care what the speed of the ship it is mounted on. They also are much less susceptible to ECM penalties. The other advantage is that even small calibre lasers have a decent range and thus is allot more useful in beam combat too.
Even if lasers have a lower PD effect than rail-guns from a mass perspective the practical result can rapidly shift in lasers favour depending on situations and other uses so you should not dismiss their capabilities as a long term investment. For lasers I would turret all lasers at 15cm and below most of the time, 15cm lasers become really good once you can shoot every 5sec with them but even before that they work great at any ASM attacks. Turreted lasers also make any small craft beam attacks a pretty big fat no go as well.
If I already put effort into laser I would stick with that choice, if I put effort into rail-guns I would stick to that solution.
Gauss PD is best combined with the use of other Beam weapon types such as Carronades and Particle Beams. But can also be used with lasers if you feel you can afford the somewhat redundant use from Gauss versus laser from just putting the research someplace else. Gauss is also a very good option if you just use missiles and no other beam weapons at all, it will save allot of cost in missiles from defending yourself against other missiles.