The Comprehensive Guide To CRAM Cannons

The complete guide to CRAM cannons.

Introduction

What are CRAM cannons?

CRAM cannons are the replacement for Custom Cannons. They have a slow rate of fire, a slow shell speed, and they do a large amount of damage.

When would I use a CRAM cannon?

CRAM canons are useful primarily as anti slow craft weapons. Their large damage and slow rate of fire makes them perfect for the main guns on a battleship. They work best at close range, due to the slow shell speed.

When would I not use a CRAM cannon?

CRAM cannons do not work well as anti air guns due to their slow shell speed.
The slow shell speed also makes them lackluster at long ranges.
For specialized shells, Advanced Custom Cannons(ACC or APS) are the way to go. CRAM cannons work best as general purpose main guns, with APS fulfilling special roles.

The Core of a CRAM

The Firing Piece

The firing piece is the heart of your gun/CRAM. Without it, the gun is useless. Barrels are attached to the front side, with the small black circle(More on barrels later). It has connection pints on all sides except the front(Where the barrels attach), and the bottom. Six way connectors and gauge increases are attached to these connection points.

Six Way Connectors

The six way connectors are like the pipes of the cannon. They allow the transfer of ammunition from autoloaders and ammo components to the firing piece. Gauge increases can also be connected to them.

Gauge Increasers

These blocks control the size of the shell that will be fired. All pieces give the same bonus. These connect to the firing piece, other gauge increasers, and six way connectors. While a gauge increaser can attach to a six way, a six way cannot attach to a gauge increaser.
Here are the values of the relationship between number of gauge increasers and the resulting gauge on the gun.

Number of Gauge Increasers	Gauge(mm)
0	200
1	300
2	395
3	485
4	571
5	652
6	730
7	803
8	873
9	940
10	1003
11	1062
12	1119
13	1173
14	1225
15	1273
16	1320
17	1364
18	1406
19	1445
20	1483

This goes all the way up to 45 gauge increasers yielding a maximum gauge of 2000mm.

CRAM Barrels

Barrels attach to the front side of the firing piece, like this:


There are 5 types of barrels. They all affect the firing arc of the gun, which can be viewed by placing the selection square or camera on nearly any part of the gun. It is listed as "x° Azimuth(Right and Left) and y° Elevation(Up and Down)." The angle is per side, meaning if a gun has 45° azimuth, it can aim 45° to either side.

The Regular Barrel

The regular barrel is fairly average. It increases accuracy and shell speed. It also reduces the firing arc of the gun, meaning that more barrels result in a gun that can't aim as far to the side, up, and down. This can be counteracted by motor driven and elevation barrels. This barrel and the recoil suppression barrel provide the highest accuracy.

The Motor Driven Barrel

The motor driven barrel(Often referred to as a motorized barrel) increases accuracy and increases recoil. It increases the firing arc of a gun. The motorized barrel also moves the fastest of any barrel type(meaning it can aim at a target faster than the other barrels/increases the barrel movement speed of the gun). The exact mechanics of this will be explained later down.

The Elevation Barrel

The elevation barrel functions similarly to the motorized barrel, but it only increases the vertical(elevation) firing arc, while decreasing the horizontal(Azimuth) firing arc. It increases accuracy and recoil. It increases the accuracy more than the motor driven barrel, but doesn't increase the recoil as much as the motor driven barrel.

The Recoil Suppression Barrel

The recoil suppression barrel, as the name suggests, reduces recoil. It also decreases the speed of the shell, while increasing accuracy.

The Flash Suppression Barrel

The flash supression barrel does nothing except look cool, slightly decrease recoil, and slow the shell down. Basically it's useless except for looking interesting.

The Optimal Fixed Gun Barrel

The best fixed gun barrel for most scenarios is a barrel comprised of 1/2 motor driven barrels, and the rest should be a combination of the other types of barrels except for elevation barrels, and (probably) flash suppression barrels. This provides the gun with 45° azimuth and 45° elevation.

The Optimal Turreted Gun Barrel

The best barrel for a gun to be used on a turret is the same as the above, with the exception of a single elevation barrel directly in front of the firing piece. This provides the gun with ~20° azimuth and 80° elevation. We don't care about the azimuth because it is on a turret.

CRAM Ammunition

The Auto Loader

The Auto Loader connects to six way connectors only. It has several functions:
When connected to an ammo box, it decreases the time needed to reload, increasing the rate of fire.
When connected to a pellet, it provides the full bonus of the pellet, as opposed to the .5 bonus recieved when connecting pellets to six way connectors. This effect stacks, meaning that 4 autoloaders using the same pellet will provide four times the bonus of a single autoloader with a single pellet.
There are two type of autoloaders, manual orientation and automatic orientation. The automatic one orients based on what the game thinks is best. The manual one stays the way you place it.
The manual autoloader can be placed correctly by paying attention to the input and output pegs seen on the block:

The pointy/tip ends are where ammo boxes and pellets can connect to. The funnel/cone/open ends are where the autoloader can connect to six way connectors.

The Ammo Box

The ammo box provides 200 ammunition to the gun when correctly attached, whether it's via a six way connector or autoloader. When correctly connected to an autoloader, it provides an increase in the rate of fire of the gun. These are needed for the gun to fire, and are depleted each shot. The amount of ammo used per shot can be seen by hovering over any part of the gun. They slowly regenerate their ammo over time, so for sustained firing, it is best to have a fair amount of these.

The High Explosive Pellets

These pellets provide explosive damage to the shell. It is important to note that the radius for explosive damage is capped at 11 meters. The more of them you have, the more explosive the shells will be. The mechanics of this will be explained later down.

The Hardener Pellets

These pellets provide armor piercing to the shell. The more of them you have, the more layers of armor the shells will be able to pierce. A higher AP value also increases the chance of piercing a shield. The mechanics of this will be explained later down.

The Fragmentation Pellets

These pellets provide fragmentation damage to the shell. The more of them you have, the higher the amount of fragments will be. The amount of fragments is capped at 60(?). Past this point, the fragments will just become more damaging, but the amount of them will remain the same. The mechanics of this will be explained later down.

The EMP Pellets

These pellets provide EMP(Damages electronics) damage to the shell. The more of them you have, the stronger the EMP spike/snake will be, allowing it to do more damage and reach farther. The mechanics of this will be explained later down.

The Mechanics of CRAM Shells

CRAM cannons work by compressing the ammo into a shell. The longer you let it compress, the more damaging the shell will be. So you can fire frequently, and do less damage, or fire less often, and do a ton of damage. This allows shells to have multipe types of warheads, and still be very damaging. The more pellets you add, the higher the amount of the shell taken up by that pellet type. This results in higher damage values being achieved faster.
This means that more explosive pellets on a gun means that more explosives are packed into the shell, and so the shell has higher explosive damage stats.

Advanced CRAM Configuration

Minimum Pack Time

When you press 'q' while hovering over/looking at your CRAM cannon, you'll see an interface that looks like this:
There are two options here(duh):

The first one is the most important. It allows you to tell the cannon to pack/compress the ammo in the shell for x amounts of seconds before firing. This allows you to make sure that when the cannon does fire, it fires with enough damage to be worthwhile. The best way to determine what this amount of seconds is, is by firing the cannon, and hovering over/looking at the cannon, and watching the damage values. Once it has reached a value that you like within a reasonable time frame, look at the number after the density level to see how long it took to pack/compress the shell to those values. Use that amount of time as the minimum pack time.

The second option allows you to manually set the gauge to a lower value. This would be useful if you wanted to use a gauge size that was like 600mm. With 4 gauge increasers, the gauge is at 571mm, and with 5 it is at 652mm. You could use this setting to decrease it to 600mm with 5 gauge increasers.

The Predictor

This block shows you where the shell would hit if it was fired from the predictor block. It is only recommended to use these for testing or manually piloted craft.

The Interface Screen

This is useless block. Back when there were custom cannons instead of CRAMs, all of the important info would only be shown on the firing piece, and this block would display that information. With CRAMs, all the important info is displayed on all the blocks except for ammunition blocks.

The Fusing Block

This block is where CRAMs really start to shine. The fusing block attaches to six way connectors and gauge increasers. When you press 'q' while hovering over/looking at the fusing block, you are shown 6 different fuse options:

Low Altitude Fuse: When below a certain altitude, detonate.

High Altitude Fuse: When above a certain altitude, detonate.

Time From Launch Fuse: Detonate the shell x second(s) after firing.

Inertial Fuse: This fuse detonates the shell whenever the angle changes past the setting. This is useful for detonating a shell right as it gets reflected by a shield, allowing the shell to damage the craft through the shield.

Penetration Depth Fuse: Detonates the shell after x meters of material have been passed through. Useful for making shells explode in the middle of targets.

Time From First Impact Fuse: Detonate the shell x second(s) after hitting something.

Multiple fuses can be used together, allowing for very useful combinations, like an interial fuse with a penetration depth fuse, which would allow for damaging shields and piercing deep into a ship.

Fuses take up space that could be used to increase damage. This space, and the total space of the shell, are shown in the fusing box interface that is accessed by pressing 'q' while hovering over/looking at the fusing box.

The Laser Targeter

The laser targeter allows you to adjust some fuses on the fly based on enemy info. It connects to gauge increasers and six way connectors.
It allows you to:

Set an 'offset time', which allows you to make your shell detonate before (- seconds) or after(+ seconds) the target. It over-rides the settings in the fuse box.

Set an 'offset [altitude]', which allows you to make the shells detonate under the target's altitude(- value) or above it (positive value).

Set a 'safety distance', which allows you to make sure that an altitude fuse won't detonate within x meters of your vehicle, to prevent ships and other low altitude craft from triggering it right next to your craft.

Example Of Each Section

CRAM Core

CRAM Barrel

(This barrel is optimized for use on a turret on a large ship)

CRAM Ammunition

Autoloaders without pellets and ammo boxes:


Autoloaders with pellets and ammo boxes:

CRAM Fuses

FInished Product

This is a very high gauge gun. The intertial fuse will allow it to do heavy damage to shielded targets, and the penetration depth fuse allows it to reach the internals of a craft before exploding, dealing heavy damage.

Wrapping Up

If you've made it this far, congrats! You've reached the end of the guide, and hopefully now know how to effectively use CRAM cannons. Feel free to ask questions below.

All comments, suggestions, and corrections(Grammar, spelling, etc.) are welcome. Good luck with CRAMs!

[Name goes here]

This is cool and all, but is anyone here able to tell me how to make an efficient boat in this game? Most of the time my boats are awful and it really isn't fun. any suggestions?

[Sweet Man]

I've had success using CRAM as AA. 2m barrel, HE, fuse box and laser targeter do the trick quite well.

[BisaBoresa]

This guide is so old, the game still had cell shaded graphics back then :flushed:

[Avi8]

Whoops, I was wrong. It's still outdated though, as you actually need 50 gauge increasers to reach maximum gauge.

[Avi8]

Outdated. It now only takes 20 gauge increasers to reach maximum gauge.

[Resetium]

Could you update this article with new info? For example, Flash Supression barrels only work once, but quarter the detection range of the shell, along with removing the explosion from firing it.

[Sixshooter116]

lol I
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[John]

Most efficient my CRAMs went so far was APHE medium gauge


Well, and extremely long motor driven barrels put on the bottom of the ship facing backwards used as propulsion. But I wouldn't call that a weapon.

[John]

How do I make CRAMs remotely as cost efficient as APS? I've always found that for any purpose but APHE there's an APS solution that is much better due to it's high customizability.
I've read most of this guide yet couldn't find anything that would make CRAM actually viable

[[They/She] A Wet Duck]

@gangster|gandalf you need to create a new subobject, a turret base, specifically. and build on that