Best advanced cannon shell setups for each faction?

[lanz]

(Quest for Neter)
Would also like to know what CRAM cannons are most usefull for.

[Rampant Rabbit]

Best advanced? Good question

So I like advanced cannons. But they don't like shields, ie can be easily deflected.
CRAM cannons are most useful for explosions. Big explosions. Slow, lumbering barrels of <ouch>

But can also be easily deflected, shot down, or just miss on account of being sloooow.

Advanced cannons on the other hand can be fast and accurate, especially with added rails. I LIKE railguns. But it can be.. depressing watching your 500mm shell <ping> off a shield at 2,500m/s. If there are no shields, then it's a nail gun for removing enemy AIs, leaving more salvage.

The initial faction isn't much of a challenge being made of splinters.. I mean wood. Then pretty much all the other factions bring moar metal, moar shields, and moar speed. So need to counter those.

Advanced seem better for fast craft, CRAMs for slow. CRAMs can be packed with AP, HE and EMP, Advanced has more constraints. Both can use intertial or proximity fuzing to detonate on shield deflection. CRAM's make the bigger <bang> if they hit.

So I tend to end up with a mix of shell types and calibres, usually Advanced to handle fliers/fast craft and nailguns. Plus missiles and torpedos. I think EMP gets more useful late game though because the enemies tend to be better armoured and shielded. CRAM also seems less effective as enemies get more agile. I'm currently experimenting with different weapon types slaved to different AIs to vary priority, ie if Advanced cannons take out propulsion, then CRAM has a better chance of hitting.

[lanz]

I'm talking about shell setups, how many shell customizers and what order of shells. And which shell setups are the best for each faction.

[xchrisx88]

Originally posted by Kelt:

I'm talking about shell setups, how many shell customizers and what order of shells. And which shell setups are the best for each faction.

try them out for yourself, my most used round for medium sized guns is a simple HE Frag round with Inertial Fuse
set the Frag cone to 1 and the Inertial Fuse to 5 and you have a nice round that works against simple shields does AoE damage and shoots a stream of frags deep into the enemy craft

[Rampant Rabbit]

What xchrisx88 said.
For advanced cannons, shell size and length affect loader/magazine size, which then affects turret size, recoil and cool-down. Then with customisers, more charges gives more speed but increases length, and barrel length for optimum burn.

So it gets.. fun to balance ROF with size, DPS etc. Then daamge types also factor in, ie for kinetic rounds like sabot, AP, hollowpoint, the velocity gives the damage. So to get that, you generally need more charges, which can mean a very long barrel, or using rails to add velocity. For HE and EMP, the bigger the shell, the bigger the bang.

But experiment with the gauge sliders on the ammo customisers to see what changes for loader/barrel length, velocity and damage.

Then it's not so much best per faction, but having something that can counter fast, small ships and flyers.. And shields. So as above, HE+Frag with intertial fuze will detonate when it hits a shield. If the shield's far enough away from the target, HE radius might not do damage, but frags will.

But experimenting is all part of the fun. Use the vehicle designer to spawn in different enemy types and see what happens.

[lanz]

Originally posted by Rampant Rabbit:

What xchrisx88 said.
For advanced cannons, shell size and length affect loader/magazine size, which then affects turret size, recoil and cool-down. Then with customisers, more charges gives more speed but increases length, and barrel length for optimum burn.

So it gets.. fun to balance ROF with size, DPS etc. Then daamge types also factor in, ie for kinetic rounds like sabot, AP, hollowpoint, the velocity gives the damage. So to get that, you generally need more charges, which can mean a very long barrel, or using rails to add velocity. For HE and EMP, the bigger the shell, the bigger the bang.

But experiment with the gauge sliders on the ammo customisers to see what changes for loader/barrel length, velocity and damage.

Then it's not so much best per faction, but having something that can counter fast, small ships and flyers.. And shields. So as above, HE+Frag with intertial fuze will detonate when it hits a shield. If the shield's far enough away from the target, HE radius might not do damage, but frags will.

But experimenting is all part of the fun. Use the vehicle designer to spawn in different enemy types and see what happens.

I've been using a prefab shell setup it's Hollow point 2x HE inertial fuse and base bleeder then 3x Gunpower casings. It seems to be doing decent on my 228mm cannons. But i dont think a double barrel 228mm is supposed to shoot at a 8second cooldown, nor are they firing at the same time and doesn't shoot quite fast. I've got a 2m shell autoloader with 3 clips. About 4 gauge cooling units.

[Rampant Rabbit]

Yey for hollowpoints! They can be.. fun, but a bit situational. Even more fun with railguns. If you stick it on the workshop, I'll have a look :)

(distracts me from my sub design. It does the sub thing, ie sinks, but the rest.. isn't co-operating)

[An Ning]

Hollow point is kinetic damage, so you do your best damage for that tip with solid rounds behind it.

[lanz]

Originally posted by Rampant Rabbit:

Yey for hollowpoints! They can be.. fun, but a bit situational. Even more fun with railguns. If you stick it on the workshop, I'll have a look :)

(distracts me from my sub design. It does the sub thing, ie sinks, but the rest.. isn't co-operating)

I have no idea how to upload my design. i can't find it in the blueprint workshop stuff in the main menu. Yet i do have it saved as a blueprint.

[Rampant Rabbit]

Ah.. save the turret on a vehicle. Then go to the main menu, workshop/editor/mods button on the right. Then vehicle workshop and upload it there.

Oh, and good thing about submarines.. You have an easy answer for when people ask 'why's it sinking?'

[lanz]

Originally posted by Rampant Rabbit:

Ah.. save the turret on a vehicle. Then go to the main menu, workshop/editor/mods button on the right. Then vehicle workshop and upload it there.

Oh, and good thing about submarines.. You have an easy answer for when people ask 'why's it sinking?'

I saved the platform as a prefab, but the cannon isn't on the prefab???

[Rampant Rabbit]

Ah, you need to save the turret on a vehicle, then it can be uploaded. Prefabs and objects AFAIK can't be uploaded to the workshop.

Oh.. and hull shaping. Shows you why 2m into 1m won't go.. or not always neatly..

[lanz]

Originally posted by Rampant Rabbit:

Ah, you need to save the turret on a vehicle, then it can be uploaded. Prefabs and objects AFAIK can't be uploaded to the workshop.

Oh.. and hull shaping. Shows you why 2m into 1m won't go.. or not always neatly..

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=902473279 There you go. Fully functional platform for it.

[Ninjaneer]

Originally posted by xchrisx88:

Originally posted by Kelt:

I'm talking about shell setups, how many shell customizers and what order of shells. And which shell setups are the best for each faction.

try them out for yourself, my most used round for medium sized guns is a simple HE Frag round with Inertial Fuse
set the Frag cone to 1 and the Inertial Fuse to 5 and you have a nice round that works against simple shields does AoE damage and shoots a stream of frags deep into the enemy craft

the best shell i would use is a frag with a inertla fuse becuase it can counter sheilds but also do a lot of damage if you set it up correctly

[Rampant Rabbit]

Soo.. tweaked it a lil and added a cannon I'm playing with

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=903060261

Your's was working as expected. Cooldowns are just due to the shell size you're using and the only way to reduce that is really to add more cooling parts. So did that to show the effect. Adding quite a few more dropped it down to 5s

Then RoF can get bumped up by adding more autoloaders. So did that as well. If you fire it, it gets off a few more shots, but then it'll say 'reloading'. So to bump that up, you need to add more autoloaders

But that means more space (see my version..). Going to a thru-deck design means you can add more vents, autoloaders etc in a turret well and also keep the above-deck turret a bit more compact and sleek.. And also the gubbins below decks more protected because enemy AIs love to target weapons.

Another fun factor is big (or heavily armoured) turrets weigh more. So your gun rotates a lot faster than mine. That gets important when trying to shoot at small/fast/flying things. Next patch I think includes motorised turrets so they can rotate faster, and some other fun stuff.

But basically.. Experiment! The vehicle designer lets you spawn in enemys to test against, and you can turn off their AI so they don't shoot back. There's also some good YT vids like Lathrix/Lathland covering designs to get ideas from.

Like others have said, frag and intertial are probably the most effectve shells at the moment because the fragments go through shields.

[lanz]

Originally posted by Rampant Rabbit:

Soo.. tweaked it a lil and added a cannon I'm playing with

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=903060261

Your's was working as expected. Cooldowns are just due to the shell size you're using and the only way to reduce that is really to add more cooling parts. So did that to show the effect. Adding quite a few more dropped it down to 5s

Then RoF can get bumped up by adding more autoloaders. So did that as well. If you fire it, it gets off a few more shots, but then it'll say 'reloading'. So to bump that up, you need to add more autoloaders

But that means more space (see my version..). Going to a thru-deck design means you can add more vents, autoloaders etc in a turret well and also keep the above-deck turret a bit more compact and sleek.. And also the gubbins below decks more protected because enemy AIs love to target weapons.

Another fun factor is big (or heavily armoured) turrets weigh more. So your gun rotates a lot faster than mine. That gets important when trying to shoot at small/fast/flying things. Next patch I think includes motorised turrets so they can rotate faster, and some other fun stuff.

But basically.. Experiment! The vehicle designer lets you spawn in enemys to test against, and you can turn off their AI so they don't shoot back. There's also some good YT vids like Lathrix/Lathland covering designs to get ideas from.

Like others have said, frag and intertial are probably the most effectve shells at the moment because the fragments go through shields.

Thanks. This definetly is gonna help me on building guns now. I'm also assuming you need more than 1 auto loader for more barreled guns?