Railgun Designs? Small Railgun AA

[darkAco]

Hey folks,
I was creating some silly stuff in sandbox as usual, when I stumbled upon a certain combination for adv. cannons/railguns that seemed to work out suprisingly well.
The concept here is to get a tiny/small adv cannon (turreted) as AA Gun, without using fuses.
So firing shells at high speed seemed a good idea to me.

I created a hybrid shell using 1 gunpowder 2 railgun casing 1 solid body 1 he and 1 head of your choosing (hoolow point seems great atm).

I designed the gun with 4 90mm barrels, 2 belt autoloaders and 4 barrel magnets.
I covered the remaining gun in rail chargers and am still tweaking the firerate/chargin settings, but it is already pretty effective at taking out air targets, since the shells fly out at ~1000m/s with roughly 850 kinetic damage. This doesnt sound like that much, but it likes hitting the same point over and over again until e.g. the AI is destroyed in quite a good time.

What do you guys think of this desing? Is this a feasable desing?
Are there any obvious flaws or things to improve?

[Sabertoothproton]

Low gauge HE is very poor because HE scales quadratically. And the shell won’t do much kinetic damage if it vaporizes on impact.

My suggestion is to add frag warheads and a frag head as well. If you want you could add a timed fuse so even when the shells miss they spray frags near the target

[FourGreenFields]

As sabertooth said. It obviously works, but it's very inefficient for several reasons.

TL;DR/most important stuff: HE < frag at that calibre;
swap AP-body for another warhead (or fuse) or go full AP without warheads;
add inertial fuse to not be hardountered by shields (if using warheads);
use full length of the loaders.



For starters, HE only really gets good beyond 20cm calibre. Below that you want frag instead.

Then it sounded like you were using "Solid-HE-Head" which would reduce efficiency, compared to "HE-Solid-Head", due to the AP-, and speed-modifiers mattering more when near the nose.

Depending on the strength of your railgun, it may be better to use more powder, and possibly even no railgun casings at all. That depends on your exact setup though.

You're using just about half of your (1m) loaders. 90% of the time, lengthening shells until they just barely fit the loader is the way to go.

The lack of fuses will make it completely useless vs shielded stuff. Even strength 1 shields will reliably bounce the shells at that speed - and that kind of shielding is def. possible even for fast fliers (allthough probably not for microjets, due to size).

The mix of AP and HE will greatly reduce efficiency (and the same applies to AP + frag). The shell won't pierce armour, and the warhead will greatly reduce the AP-value. That's also why HP seemed so good - it ignores the shell's AP, and uses a fixed AP of 10. But swapping the AP-body for another warhead will increase payload without reducing kinetic damage much, increasing total damage with HP.



Allright, probably last thing I post before going off; please excuse typos and/or brainfarts.

[XIII]

In my experience frag is always superior to HE. We had discussions here, and I experimented a lot with large APS cannons, and the amount of damage you get from frag (spawn limited or not) is just far beyond what HE does. If heavy armor comes into play, then HE is just completely neutered.

Only advantage of HE is that you can't block it with dual layer shields, but an HE explosion >3m above armor doesn't do much damage.

Besides frag, I'd also recommend to just give pure sabot/AP a try. Above 1.000m/s, it becomes pretty powerful.

[FourGreenFields]

Originally posted by XIII:

I experimented a lot with large APS cannons, and the amount of damage you get from frag (spawn limited or not) is just far beyond what HE does.

I have my doubts about that. Just tested 50cm shells with 3 warheads. 180° frag did get through 3m metal a good bit faster (4.1 hits average, vs 6.4), but only if you keep hitting the same spot. If the hits are spread out more, the total damage matters more, and HE beats frag quite easily at that, at that shell-size. Also makes use of weakspots, even if not hitting them directly.

50cm frag might not be useless, but HE definitely does have advantages, and ones that matter too.

[XIII]

Originally posted by FourGreenFields:

Originally posted by XIII:

I experimented a lot with large APS cannons, and the amount of damage you get from frag (spawn limited or not) is just far beyond what HE does.

I have my doubts about that. Just tested 50cm shells with 3 warheads. 180° frag did get through 3m metal a good bit faster (4.1 hits average, vs 6.4), but only if you keep hitting the same spot. If the hits are spread out more, the total damage matters more, and HE beats frag quite easily at that, at that shell-size. Also makes use of weakspots, even if not hitting them directly.

50cm frag might not be useless, but HE definitely does have advantages, and ones that matter too.

If you got multiple turrets shooting at a target, they generally tend to hit in similar places; and as said, heavy armor is extremly hard to damage with HE at all. Maybe it works better with your designs, but at least against Nether stuff, Frag always worked better for me.

Besides that, I even started using 360 degree frag; if those shells get into the enemy ship and explode internally, they do an unreal amount of damage.

[darkAco]

Thank you guys for your input!
sabretooth, fourgreenfields, you are surely right. I made some tests in the meantime and already took out the HE part (it actually was he-solid not solid-he ;)). I wasn't using more loaders for space reasons and bc they did their job quite fine, in favor of some more rail chargers.
I will try to switch 2 chargers for another loader (I'm using 6/7 feeders per loader+magazine combo).

I already tweaked the shell to exactly 1m size before which resultet in less velo, I felt like the loss in velocity resulted in a loss of accuracy, range and even damage (hollow point head) so I went back to a lower shell size.

I primarily went railgun to use my spare engine power (overcharge loading + fire when not fully charged) to archieve a high rate of fire with using few gauge coolers, which was also a reason for the lower shell size (since I'm also using gunpowder).

XIII I will try out your suggested configuration using a sabot head, this seems like what I searched for when building the gun/ammo.

Regarding your discussion if he/frag or none is better in all cases, I can imagine situations where specialized guns are still a bonus to just e.g. 4x high dmg frag guns.
And how about kinetic/he or large pure he shells with depth penetration fuse? HE should do tons of damage if it manages to detonate inside the ship/multi-layered armor if I'm not mistaken?

[darkAco]

PS XIII yeah 360 frags are quite nice. I use them in combination with a fuse/targeter on my proper (forward facing) Flak cannon instead of normal flag heads.

When going for multiple frags, layering them like 30/90/150/180/360 seems to be quite effective aswell.

[XIII]

I always liked the Sabot/AP combo, because it doesn't just got very high speed modifiers, but truly rewards you for going for insane speeds. Makes it a very reliable gun; even if it of course lacks any AOE.

Originally posted by darkAco:

And how about kinetic/he or large pure he shells with depth penetration fuse? HE should do tons of damage if it manages to detonate inside the ship/multi-layered armor if I'm not mistaken?

Depends, do we still talk about beltfeds?

The problem is that penetrating armor with APS guns, when you got HE segments, is just extremly hard. 2.0 update massively buffed armor, and even 500mm cannons with 8m loaders struggle to make APHE work against strong armor. (edit: ok, that is an overstatement, but you gotta limit your damage HARD in order to do so)

As said somewhere else, going through 2m of metal armor takes (with 15 armor penetration) 12.600 kinetic damage. You'll never get that level of damage with small caliber, 1m beltfeds.

[FourGreenFields]

Originally posted by darkAco:

And how about kinetic/he or large pure he shells with depth penetration fuse? HE should do tons of damage if it manages to detonate inside the ship/multi-layered armor if I'm not mistaken?

Large shells can work, but APHE is probably the least reliable shell-type. Gets countered by thick armour, and by even the weakest shields, and it may have trouble exploding at the right spot (due to 40fps physics-calculations, and lack of interpolation).

That said, APHE exploding at the right spot is absolutely devestating, and very fun. HESH and HEAT don't even get close to the same damage.


Also, as for armour strengths (one of the main issues with APHE):

Metal health = 2100   Weigth = 160   Cost = 20
       layer |   AC    |  2 * AC * health   |    Sum    |  Cost Sum | Weight Sum |
Metal   5m:  |  61.50  |      258,300       |  850,500  |    100    |     800    |
Metal   4m:  |  53.25  |      223,650       |  592,200  |     80    |     640    |
Metal   3m:  |  42.75  |      179,550       |  368,550  |     60    |     480    |
Metal   2m:  |  30.00  |      126,000       |  189,000  |     40    |     320    |
Metal   1m:  |  15.00  |       63,000       |   63,000  |     20    |     160    |

Sum is the AP * kinetic_damage you need to pierce (only applies at up to 30AP, and only at perfect angle). You get those numbers due to the effective damage multiplier min{1, AP/(2 * EffectiveAC)} (hence why it only works up to 30AP - at that point, the "min" does its job)

As a matter of experience, 40-50cm shells at 4m loader-length can deliver one warhead through 3m metal (without an inertial fuse, so completely and entirely useless vs shields). You can increase that using rail-assist though.

[XIII]

Originally posted by FourGreenFields:

As a matter of experience, 40-50cm shells at 4m loader-length can deliver one warhead through 3m metal (without an inertial fuse, so completely and entirely useless vs shields). You can increase that using rail-assist though.

Yes, I'm actualy trying that right now. My variant with 500mm/4m plus 5000 energy per shot gives me 13 AP at 50.000 damage, which is pretty good.

That is using 4xGP/Bleeder/HE/Solid/AP, though. Would have to check how destructive that combo actually is.

edit: It is pretty good against things that aren't armor. Destroyed basic equipment in full 10m range.

Also, it always feels so good to use shells that reward high speeds.

[FourGreenFields]

Originally posted by XIII:

4xGP/Bleeder/HE/Solid/AP

Something tells me you forgot the pendepth somewhere in there. Assuming you put it between the solid and the HE, you have found the same optimal shell I just did checking 50cm 4m 5k rail draw APHE.
671,200.8 AP * kinetic. Enough for 4m metal.

Alternatively 5 x powder - warhead - pendepth - AP-head. Slightly shorter reload, and still 656,012 AP * kinetic. And lower detection-range for LAMS, allthough still >100m, so it won't matter that much.

[XIII]

Originally posted by FourGreenFields:

Originally posted by XIII:

4xGP/Bleeder/HE/Solid/AP

Something tells me you forgot the pendepth somewhere in there. Assuming you put it between the solid and the HE, you have found the same optimal shell I just did checking 50cm 4m 5k rail draw APHE.
671,200.8 AP * kinetic. Enough for 4m metal.

Alternatively 5 x powder - warhead - pendepth - AP-head. Slightly shorter reload, and still 656,012 AP * kinetic. And lower detection-range for LAMS, allthough still >100m, so it won't matter that much.

Yeah, of course there is a pen depth inbetween, forgot to list it.^^

Played a bit around; equipped an APS-cruiser with pure APHE, and it actually seems to work pretty well against many of the Nether enemies. I think the biggest weakness is, not dissimilar to HESH, that you lack the AOE, and thus the ability for mass destruction. It's quite good at gutting an enemy ship, but not necessarily at actually destroying it. Leaves a lot of the enemy hull untouched, so there isn't too much synergy with other weapon systems either.

Still, quite fun to have your shots pierce the enemy armor and explode inside, with the new explosion effects. I imagine this could be very useful for boarding; particuarly stuff like (not super fast) air ships.