Optimal advanced cannon design for large ships?

[Nern Guan, Master Orator]

I realize that I don't know what i'm doing, but i'm trying to find a design for my cruisers cannons, I need something that can punch a hole into the likes of an onyx ship , or at least rip through the armor, but there doesn't seem to be much I can do. Aside from building lasers, which to build a powerful laser would require a ♥♥♥♥ ton of energy. I need something on the spot however. Any compositions you go for?

[sintri]

Onyx carries a stupid amount of shields for someone that's already sporting heavy armour. You'll need something to penetrate that, cheapest way is proximity emp shells preferably on your secondary guns. Rest is just big HE shells or rail hollow points, I stick away from AP but white flayers make it work pretty well main key being high rpms.

[Nern Guan, Master Orator]

i was looking at thyr, the steel strider ship, and i'm impressed at the high rate of fire, for 500 mm guns

[rditto48801]

I usually go with 40cm or 50cm for cracking big targets.
For a Cruiser, I can think of a shell designs I use for bigger ships that might help even with smaller guage guns. Or rather, two shell designs.
Shell 1 (this for dealing with shielded targets): 10 part, 5 gunpowder, base bleeder, Inertial Fuse (minimal value), 2 warheads (such as HE Warhead and EMP Warhead), Composite Nose.
Shell 2 (for dishing out damage once shields get dropped, and ripping into targets without shields): 10 part, 5 gunpowder, base bleeder, Penetration Fuse, AoE warhead of choice, solid warhead, AP nose.
For a 20cm cannon, these will fit into a 2m autoloader.

Since Onyx Watch like metal ships (iirc), a combination of HE (or Frag set for narrow angle for 'shotgun' effect) and EMP might be handy.
If using multiple turrets, have several loaded with ammo for shielded targets, and at least one with heavy hitter penetration fuse shells for wrecking the targets once their shields are taken out or disrupted by EMP. (assuming a ship doesn't have absurd levels of EMP protection)
A shaped charge shell might also help, but I don't have much experience with them.
If your guns have a good rate of fire, maybe mix and match shells, like having every 3 autoloaders with shells for anti-shield use and a 4th autoloader with shells for anti-armor use.

Also, with the mention of cruisers...
Are torpedoes/missiles a viable option?
I like torpedoes when it comes to dealing with big, slow targets. (And ASROCs. I've torpedoed enemy ships with a hill top fort in the past...)
(Also, Macross Missile Massacre... and the torpedo variant, Arpeggio of Blue Steel/Fleet of Fog style...)

Would a single Q switch based laser be an option for a secondary weapon? Sacrifice rate of fire for hitting power, AP 20+ and just enough damage to take out a 4m metal beam in one hit. Plus some extra batteries. Shouldn't need to much energy to sustain it. Especially if you have secondary engines that rev up only when needed, or that are dedicated for battery charging.

I will sometimes dedicate a high efficiency engine to battery charging, setting its output low (e.g., 30%) and setting the battery charge % to the same, so it only ever provides power for batteries, and keeps its fuel efficiency high. A nice amount of batteries then become a nice buffer, both for providing energy to stuff, and for electric motors to pick up the slack should the main engines get taken out. Even just a few seconds of keeping stuff powered can be the difference between victory or defeat.


Something I learned from IreLAN Gaming.
How to get the efficient engines running most of the time, and so the high output fuel hogs only kick in fully with high demand. By configuring an engines Ramp Up Time, Decay and Responsiveness based on what it is intended for.

For a fuel efficient (and usually lower output) engines.
Ramp Up Time: 0.10
Decay: 0.10
Responsiveness: 1.00

For a mid range engine (for higher power needs, but not well suited for basic long term power)
Ramp Up Time: 1.00
Decay: 3.00
Responsiveness: 0.50

For high output yet fuel inefficient engines best used short term and for emergency power.
Ramp Up Time: 1.00
Decay: 10.00
Responsiveness: 0.10

It's not 100% reliable, but it works fairly well. Especially with using ACBs to turn off shields when enemies are not near and other ACBs that turn on shields when enemies are near.

[Nern Guan, Master Orator]

i'll need to post my ship up and show you what I have so far. it's alot of work needed for it, but it's getting closer by the day as far as completion. I need to figure out how to make a dual barrel gun or tri barrel, I was thinking 350-400 mm guns. the ship that inspired this sudden change was one of the ships in steel striders

[xchrisx88]

Originally posted by Nern Guan, Master Orator:

i'll need to post my ship up and show you what I have so far. it's alot of work needed for it, but it's getting closer by the day as far as completion. I need to figure out how to make a dual barrel gun or tri barrel, I was thinking 350-400 mm guns. the ship that inspired this sudden change was one of the ships in steel striders

if, by dual or tri barrels, you mean the gun pieces (aka 2 guns on 1 turret) then the dual one is way easier to do than the triple gun, for starters you just need to make a wall that splits the turret in half and build the 2 guns,
make sure the Autoloaders of the 2 different guns dont touch each other, else you end up with 1 gun having more ammo than the other.

[An Ning]

Originally posted by Nern Guan, Master Orator:

i was looking at thyr, the steel strider ship, and i'm impressed at the high rate of fire, for 500 mm guns

Thyrr gets away with it by firing 4m shells instead of 8m.
The smaller the shell, the lower the reload time.
However, it also means lower velocity and lower capability compared to an 8m shell.

[Nern Guan, Master Orator]

Originally posted by An Ning:

Originally posted by Nern Guan, Master Orator:

i was looking at thyr, the steel strider ship, and i'm impressed at the high rate of fire, for 500 mm guns

Thyrr gets away with it by firing 4m shells instead of 8m.
The smaller the shell, the lower the reload time.
However, it also means lower velocity and lower capability compared to an 8m shell.

So what would you suggest?

[pug]

I just use a crap ton of autoloaders clips and coolers.

[An Ning]

I use 6m shells, myself (8m need a barrel over 30m long to get 500 m/s... and that is just too long for me).
I find that with 1 router on an autoloader and 1 on a shell rack (and 1 rack per autoloader), The 6m shells reload at about the rate of 1 per minute. So I figure out how many shots per minute I want, and make that many autoloader/shell rack sets (typically I use between 8 and 15 of them, which is plenty, given that my 2m CRAMS fire 4x a minute).

If you want to spam shots, though, use smaller length bullets -you won't have the explosive punch of the 6 or 8m shells, so you'll be relying a lot on kinetic damage (like Thyrr's rounds), or frag pellets

[Nern Guan, Master Orator]

ah i see. So the bigger the shell, the more high explosive and or frag you want? the smaller, the more pen?

[An Ning]

HE has size and damage limits based on caliber.
Low caliber=low power explosions with a small radius
So for those you are relying on damage from impact or from making long shells with tons of frag pieces. Either way, you generally want somethign very fast for it.

Larger calibers get higher damage explosions with larger blast radii. This means that, if you have inertial fuses, the shell will detonate if it hits a shield, damaging the craft anyways.
However, damage drops quickly the farther from the center it is, so HE rounds typically need a lot of HE pieces in them (proportionally), and still need to be travelling fast enough to hit the target before they change course.

You can make an 500mm shell that is all kinetic damage -and it will be very strong -but kinetic damage means if it hits a shield, nothing happens. So most people use 500mm rounds as their HE guns, and smaller rounds as kinetic damage.
(Frag rounds can get tossed in anywhere, really, they are sort of OP at the moment, because with inertial fuses they bypass shielding, and with timed fuses they create frag walls for a vehicle to fly through... my opinion is that frag rounds should not be compatible with inertial or timed fuses.. but that is just my opinion).

EMP is similar to HE in scaling. You get bigger EMP damage from larger calibers. However, unlike HE or frag.. it doesn't benefit anything from inertial or timed fuses -and the disruptor cap drops the accuracy AND poerr so much it may as well be useless.
I recommend leaving EMP to missiles for the moment,

[Hankerfied]

design your shell first, then build a very barebones version of your gun.
1 test.
2 tweak the shell design. test.
3 start redesigning the gun.
repeat until desired results.

[AcapitalA]

Originally posted by Nern Guan, Master Orator:

i was looking at thyr, the steel strider ship, and i'm impressed at the high rate of fire, for 500 mm guns

They are indeed pretty fast, but they did it by placing a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of autoloaders everywhere. I would reccomend looking at the design of those guns since they are a good example. I made a 3-barreled gun inspired by that main cannon, turns out i made it even more awesome.

[Nern Guan, Master Orator]

I made a 402 mm tri gun turret, rate of fire is not nearly as fast,. but for 100 k resources rounded down, it's pretty devastating, at least for dwg. i'm working with 400 mm only because I find them to have a fast reload for large caliber. this and because it's roughly 80 seconds vs 130 seconds.