Anyone have good 50mm 20 component ciws shells?

[harryswinburne15]

As the Title says

[Eudaimonia]

What type of ciws? Obviously kinetic at that gauge, but there are still a lot of options here.

[The man, the myth, the leg]

heavy head
as many solid bodies as it takes to get to 20 AP
the rest gunpowder

[harryswinburne15]

Originally posted by The man, the myth, the leg:

heavy head
as many solid bodies as it takes to get to 20 AP
the rest gunpowder

I tried this but hollow point and frag actually worked better

[Slowboi]

no, god no, hollow point is bad for CIWS, frag is useless for CIWS.
there are only 2 shell types that should be used for CIWS: heavy head kinetic, and flak

[harryswinburne15]

Originally posted by Slowboi:

no, god no, hollow point is bad for CIWS, frag is useless for CIWS.
there are only 2 shell types that should be used for CIWS: heavy head kinetic, and flak

I literally just tested it, hollow point and frag combo shells did more damage for the same amount of shots for me. Granted i had to find the sweet spot for frag the best cone angle but it works better for me than the other shells.

[Slowboi]

Originally posted by harryswinburne15:

Originally posted by Slowboi:

no, god no, hollow point is bad for CIWS, frag is useless for CIWS.
there are only 2 shell types that should be used for CIWS: heavy head kinetic, and flak

I literally just tested it, hollow point and frag combo shells did more damage for the same amount of shots for me. Granted i had to find the sweet spot for frag the best cone angle but it works better for me than the other shells.

bad testing, more damage for the same amount of shots is useless considering that gunpowder counts as 1/4 of a module for reload calculations thus kinetics will always reload faster than payload, thus the dps/cost being larger for CIWS.

Testing without knowing the theory is useless as you can prove any point with testing.

There is no variation for CIWS shell types apart from heavy head kinetic and flak, these are the ones that are proven to work the best from many players experiences, math, the game mechanics, etc. And for actual munition defence highish gauge flak works the best, with kinetics being used because they can be dual purpose(aka being able to damage craft as well)

You'd also be better off asking on the discord, you'll get faster and more accurate responses there, here is the invite link: https://discord.gg/fromthedepths

[Knux Redbeard]

So, if you're going full gunpowder with your CIWS shells, I find that having heavy head, fin, fin, fin is pretty good. CIWS really benefits from high accuracy, so mixing in a little bit of tracer is even better. Cooling isn't expensive, and the way multibarrel "improves" cooling only marginally improves density but substantially goofs accuracy. Stay single barrel for accuracy purposes.

Of note is that the way beltfed loader reload bonuses are scaled makes it so that a given gun will generate the same amount of heat and recoil and output the same amount of firepower regardless of what caliber it happens to be. CIWS benefits from fire-rate massively. However big of a gun you can fit in the turret well/cap, once you have it, keep reducing the caliber until the gun can shoot at least 2000 rpm, preferably 2300+, but absolutely not more than 2400 rpm. If the gun is capable of more than 2400 rpm the loading order gets thrown out of wack and it messes up your tracer mix. Absolutely make sure that the loaders are the limiting factor and not the cooling or it'll also mess up your loading order and tracer mix.

[Slowboi]

using anything less than 50mm is a waste of loader length, beltfeds aren't good for CIWS because they cost way more and have a cooldown period, rpm doesn't matter at all, what matters is dps/cost and dps/vol

[Knux Redbeard]

As I said, beltfed scaling is interesting. A given shell will have the same firepower, same heat generation per second, and same recoil generation per second, regardless of what caliber the shell is. As the shell gets smaller, the firerate bonus becomes progressively more extreme, so a given 20-module shell will have the same firepower per volume and take up the same percentage of the gun no matter what caliber it is.

It's also possible to build belt-feds for continuous firerate. You just have to get the reload time slower than 2 seconds and set the idle reload interval to 2 seconds and use twice as many belt-feds as needed. Even when doing this, so long as you get the reload bonus higher than 3x (or lower than .33 time multiplier), the belt-feds have the advantage for firepower density. You can make a gunpowder CIWS shell at 59mm that meets the 2.05 second requirement and gives a multiplier of 4.76 . So more than 50% better on the loader front. 20 module shells give a .19 multiplier, and you can get the reload times on those to go where you need them if you convert the CIWS to pure rail. Railguns are incredibly firepower dense. Not the most cost efficient, but for how much of a massive gain in density they give the cost penalty is not bad.

If you go 25mm or lower (theoretically. The reload time cannot be made slow enough until 38mm), the 7x multiplier to firerate makes it more cost effective than attempting the equivalent with regular loaders would be even if you quad-clipped them. Not that it would be a useful use-case for regular 1m loaders, but belt-fed scaling is funny so belt-feds lose nothing by going small. Really, any 20-module shell fired out of a belt-loader is "apples to apples" with a 50mm 1m loader but at a 5.25 firerate advantage.

(that's not even taking into consideration that the CIWS work cycle is incredibly bursty and that 50% uptime is usually far more than enough unless you're trying to defend from something truly extreme. Just set the idle time auto reload on the belt feds nice and short so they can refill before the next incoming cram shell)

So if you've got a task where you need burst really badly and the gun is going to get substantial downtime, any multiplier better than .28 makes beltfeds more cost effective than regular loaders as well. The crossover point for that is at around 110mm. Which is already comically, uselessly oversized for a belt-fed. So long as the task is markedly bursty, belt-feds are always denser than regular loaders. Even if the task calls for constant dps, anything smaller than 150mm beltfeds are denser than 1m loaders even when you double up on beltfeds to achieve continuous fire. It's no longer worth it from a cost perspective at that point, but that's not where belt feds shine anyways.

Belt feds aren't absolutely perfect when it comes to dps/cost, but they're so overwhelmingly dominant (when done at 16 modules or more) at dps/volume that they're basically optimal for CIWS.

As to smaller shells and higher rpms. The higher RPM helps a wee bit but you run into diminishing returns early and hard, but that's not the main point. Mostly I'm chasing accuracy. Belt feds lose nothing by going small, but shorter shells get better accuracy out of a given barrel length and CIWS requires very good accuracy, and appreciates every bit of accuracy you can snag for it. Hence why fin-shell with tracer mix actually kinda slaps. And yes you lose effective range when you go small, but that doesn't hardly matter for CIWS.