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[tryrar]

what that really means is your laser's range is far outstripping your fire control's ability to hit at range.. So yeah, you need to seriously invest in better beam control range. While you are at it, better fire control speed wouldn't hurt either

[iceball3]

what that really means is your laser's range is far outstripping your fire control's ability to hit at range.. So yeah, you need to seriously invest in better beam control range. While you are at it, better fire control speed wouldn't hurt either

Ahh. Seriously though, a 40,000 k increment at 4x is supposed to be breaking even with my current tech based on research cost, so it seems that i'll have to stop researching long range lasers for a while and emphasise on my sensors and fire control. I've been neglecting it a bit much if i'll be honest.
Would be rather wicked if i could have these lasers be useful for orbital bombardment though. Shame that atmospheres are anti-everything besides missiles.

[iceball3]

Update: Oh now this is disappointing. Look like the absolute best beam fire control range tech i can research is around 175,000 kilometers, which even multiplied by four (700,000 km) i'm still outstripping beam fire control range by far. Any suggestions or is any range increase on my lasers going to be practically redundant?
I mean, i get getting more damage throughout your range is a bonus to more range, but otherwise, it's kind of futile...

[Kanil]

700,000 is 50% accuracy range, giving a max range of 1,400,000km, and yes, it's quite easy to make a weapon that has more range than you'll ever be able to fire it at.

Having longer ranged fire controls would result in projectiles either traveling faster than the speed of light, or require them to be actual objects on the map -- like missiles -- and travel over multiple 5 second segments.

I think it's a little silly to so severely limit direct fire weapons for the sake of respecting c, while simultaneously allowing you to terraform a planet to below absolute zero... but hey, not my game.

[iceball3]

700,000 is 50% accuracy range, giving a max range of 1,400,000km, and yes, it's quite easy to make a weapon that has more range than you'll ever be able to fire it at.

Having longer ranged fire controls would result in projectiles either traveling faster than the speed of light, or require them to be actual objects on the map -- like missiles -- and travel over multiple 5 second segments.

I think it's a little silly to so severely limit direct fire weapons for the sake of respecting c, while simultaneously allowing you to terraform a planet to below absolute zero... but hey, not my game.

if anything, i'd be okay with fire controls limited to 50% accuracy AT c and have the travel time abstracted with the unavoiable innaccuracy, considering that we recognize all contacts at ftl speeds anyway

[Metalax]

The thing with lasers range vastly exceeding the firecontrol range cap, is that it causes an increase in damage done at the capped range, as well as throughout that range.

One of the reasons for limiting beam range to 1,400,000 km is the ftl nature of the sensors in the game coupled with the fact that even ships without engines can move one km in 5 seconds. As such anything can simply move out of the way if the shots take longer than that to travel. Planets and PDC's as targets should be excluded from this as their motion is entirely predictable, but that is disregarded as making the system to clunky for use.

[Ansopedi]

The thing with lasers range vastly exceeding the firecontrol range cap, is that it causes an increase in damage done at the capped range, as well as throughout that range.

It needs to be noted though, that only the "Range Modifier" (given by Wavelength Tech) has any effect on the damage-dropoff, not the total range given.
A 120cm Laser and a 10cm Laser with the same Wavelength-Tech do exactly (excludung rounding of damage) the same percentage of their damage at the same range.
The actual damage is given by Damage*((Range-Modifier*10000km)/Distance-Of-Target) with a max of Damage, and a min of 1.
This is what makes Lasers (and similar working Beam-Weapons) pretty useless at high ranges even with good Firecontrols, since they do at most 1/5 of their damage at 600000km, and even less at higher ranges (or at lower Wavelength-Techs).
Since the minimum of the damage calculation is 1, the best Beam-Weapon for long-Range engagements (above a few 100k kilometers) is actually the Meson-Cannon, because it doesn't lose any of its damage due to range and is much much cheaper to produce than Lasers at high tech levels.

[Flying Dice]

The thing with lasers range vastly exceeding the firecontrol range cap, is that it causes an increase in damage done at the capped range, as well as throughout that range.

It needs to be noted though, that only the "Range Modifier" (given by Wavelength Tech) has any effect on the damage-dropoff, not the total range given.
A 120cm Laser and a 10cm Laser with the same Wavelength-Tech do exactly (excludung rounding of damage) the same percentage of their damage at the same range.
The actual damage is given by Damage*((Range-Modifier*10000km)/Distance-Of-Target) with a max of Damage, and a min of 1.
This is what makes Lasers (and similar working Beam-Weapons) pretty useless at high ranges even with good Firecontrols, since they do at most 1/5 of their damage at 600000km, and even less at higher ranges (or at lower Wavelength-Techs).
Since the minimum of the damage calculation is 1, the best Beam-Weapon for long-Range engagements (above a few 100k kilometers) is actually the Meson-Cannon, because it doesn't lose any of its damage due to range and is much much cheaper to produce than Lasers at high tech levels.

*Particle beams. But nobody loves particle beams, partially because of the hard cap on range. Mesons are generally only optimal for engaging targets on planets with atmosphere and heavily shielded ships, but the nice part about them is that their effectiveness can only be reduced by one thing: ships being so large that a single point of component damage is trivial (unless it pops a drive/magazine which then has its safeties fail).

[Ansopedi]

The thing with lasers range vastly exceeding the firecontrol range cap, is that it causes an increase in damage done at the capped range, as well as throughout that range.

It needs to be noted though, that only the "Range Modifier" (given by Wavelength Tech) has any effect on the damage-dropoff, not the total range given.
A 120cm Laser and a 10cm Laser with the same Wavelength-Tech do exactly (excludung rounding of damage) the same percentage of their damage at the same range.
The actual damage is given by Damage*((Range-Modifier*10000km)/Distance-Of-Target) with a max of Damage, and a min of 1.
This is what makes Lasers (and similar working Beam-Weapons) pretty useless at high ranges even with good Firecontrols, since they do at most 1/5 of their damage at 600000km, and even less at higher ranges (or at lower Wavelength-Techs).
Since the minimum of the damage calculation is 1, the best Beam-Weapon for long-Range engagements (above a few 100k kilometers) is actually the Meson-Cannon, because it doesn't lose any of its damage due to range and is much much cheaper to produce than Lasers at high tech levels.

*Particle beams. But nobody loves particle beams, partially because of the hard cap on range. Mesons are generally only optimal for engaging targets on planets with atmosphere and heavily shielded ships, but the nice part about them is that their effectiveness can only be reduced by one thing: ships being so large that a single point of component damage is trivial (unless it pops a drive/magazine which then has its safeties fail).

The thing to keep in mind when comparing different beam weapons though, is the constrains under which they are to be used. Beam Ships generally have to be faster than their targets in order to actually reach them, which means that once they're in beam-engagement range, they can usually dictate the distance between them and their target. Since higher engagement ranges are usually preferable (especially due to missiles not being shot at by pointdefense if the distance is below the range the missile travels in 5 secs) and you're usually able to dictate the distance you fight at, the most practical comparison of beam weapons is their cost/size to damage-at-high-range-ratio.
And even with Shock-Damage, at high ranges the same HS of mesons (which are much cheaper) will outdamage High-Calibre Lasers or Particle Cannons, despite them being more than 10x as expensive per HS at high tech.

An example (600k engagement range):

60 cm Advanced Spinal Mount Laser(90cm total) with a Range Modifier of 8 and a Recharge of 12:
Size: 29HS
Cost: 1397
Damage(Max):212
Recharge time:90 seconds
Damage(Max) per second: 2,355
Damage(Max) per second per hs: 0,0812
Damage(range 600k) per second per hs: 0,0108
-with added Shock damage (which at most is 1/6 of the damage, but will probably be much less here, but 1/6 is assumed): 0,0126

25cm Meson with Focusing Tech of 8 and Recharge of 12:
Size:8HS
Cost:45
Damage:1
Recharge time:10 seconds
Damage per second: 0,1
Damage per second per hs: 0,0125
Damage(range 600k) per second per hs: 0,0125


So not only does the Meson do more damage per HS, it also costs 1/10 of the Laser AND ignores Shields and Armor.

edit: Ive just run the calculations for Particle Beams and they perform much better than I've expected, so they might actually be another valid choice for Beam Weapons, though Laser remain invalid imo (though Particle Beams still have the same issue of being expensive as fuck, which makes Mesons the most economically viable).

[Flying Dice]

Actually, save for very specific circumstances (for example, kiting Swarm Queens), you want to get as close as possible with energy weapons. Set your PD weapons to Final Defensive Fire; the missile speed issue only comes up if you're trying to use them as interdiction weapons (which you shouldn't be doing anyways if you're being sensible and using Gauss turrets as PD). Yes, mesons perform well at extreme ranges, but the thing is that outside of the tiny range interval where railguns of a given TL can't reach and lasers are at their minimum damage, they're lackluster against anything without thick armor or good shields. At "closer" ranges any other E/K weapon is going to deliver much higher damage output, and more importantly, will put enemy ships out of commission much more quickly, which in the long term will substantially reduce your repair/replacement costs.

On another point, you actually want a mix of lasers and mesons when dealing with Invaders; mesons to pierce their shields, and lasers because those are the most effective PD weapon against their plasma torpedoes.

[Ansopedi]

Actually, save for very specific circumstances (for example, kiting Swarm Queens), you want to get as close as possible with energy weapons. Set your PD weapons to Final Defensive Fire; the missile speed issue only comes up if you're trying to use them as interdiction weapons (which you shouldn't be doing anyways if you're being sensible and using Gauss turrets as PD). Yes, mesons perform well at extreme ranges, but the thing is that outside of the tiny range interval where railguns of a given TL can't reach and lasers are at their minimum damage, they're lackluster against anything without thick armor or good shields. At "closer" ranges any other E/K weapon is going to deliver much higher damage output, and more importantly, will put enemy ships out of commission much more quickly, which in the long term will substantially reduce your repair/replacement costs.

On another point, you actually want a mix of lasers and mesons when dealing with Invaders; mesons to pierce their shields, and lasers because those are the most effective PD weapon against their plasma torpedoes.

I just tested the Point Defense against Missiles again, and even with Final Defensive Fire (which I use anyway), missiles less than 5 seconds away hit without being shot at.
Afaik this is due the detection cycle being after the movement cycle, which means that the missiles (which are shot after the last detection cycle) move and hit before they are being detected, which is a prerequisite for pointdefense working.

I would also disagree on low-range engagements being preferable, because if the enemy has stuff that goes through your pointdefense you're dead before you reach them anyway, and if you can stop all his missiles, staying at a range at which he can't engage (or does so little damage that your shields can catch it) while doing permanent damage (thus mesons) yourself results in taking pretty much no damage at all.

[iceball3]

One of the reasons for limiting beam range to 1,400,000 km is the ftl nature of the sensors in the game coupled with the fact that even ships without engines can move one km in 5 seconds. As such anything can simply move out of the way if the shots take longer than that to travel. Planets and PDC's as targets should be excluded from this as their motion is entirely predictable, but that is disregarded as making the system to clunky for use.

Couldn't the same be said about missiles? It seems more like the laser would just become more likely to miss due to bad tracking than being dodged, considering that it seems that vessels don't really actively dodge even slow rockets: it depends a lot more on passive evasion (just going fast enough that the rocket has a hard time keeping up with your movement, hence the accuracy decrease against faster targets).

But really though, how exactly is c a spectacularly important thing to adhere to in this game at this point? I mean considering that EM and thermal contacts both recognize faster than light already, might as well figure we're capable of firing non newtonian lasers...

[iceball3]

Doublepost because why not.
Accidentally left aurora on auto-turn and i guess for some reason it decided it should auto turn for over one month
Specifically, thirty years.
In that time, one of my research outposts was taken over by guerrilas, and my entire gravsurvey fleet blew up due to maint time.
*sigh* this is going to be hell to deal with what with all the other stuff i'm probably missing.
Also... does anyone know why my ungrouped fighters on earth are gaining maint clock time? I have maintence facilities and resources available...

[Ansopedi]

Doublepost because why not.
Accidentally left aurora on auto-turn and i guess for some reason it decided it should auto turn for over one month
Specifically, thirty years.
In that time, one of my research outposts was taken over by guerrilas, and my entire gravsurvey fleet blew up due to maint time.
*sigh* this is going to be hell to deal with what with all the other stuff i'm probably missing.
Also... does anyone know why my ungrouped fighters on earth are gaining maint clock time? I have maintence facilities and resources available...

Afaik maintenance facilities don't work for fighters, you need to put them into a pdc or ship in order to not accrue maintenance.

[Girlinhat]

But really though, how exactly is c a spectacularly important thing to adhere to in this game at this point? I mean considering that EM and thermal contacts both recognize faster than light already, might as well figure we're capable of firing non newtonian lasers...

It's been historically possible to get missiles or fighters traveling well above c.