Long range primary weaponry?

[TonyEvans]

Capital ship weapons were too slow. So anything at long range (apart from the beam weapons which were extremely rare to find AND mount) was relatively useless.

I want Nexus or Freespace-style capital ship weapons, damn it! 3km/s projectiles flying from one ship to another, heavy plasma beams cutting through a ships insides!

Then play XRM?

problem with XRM (and X3) in general is that the engine for the lasers are crap. Lasers don't pinpoint and fixate on a location on a ship. They pinpoint and fixate a direction in space. If a laser was shot at a fighter there'd be, assuming it even hit, a quarter-second impact time in total because the beam didn't trace, or even attempt to trace, the target. Think like in Star Trek. They targetted a specific area of the ship and the beam was constantly adjusting. In X3 the turret doesn't adjust for a change in target's position in relation to the firing vessel until after the weapon's discharge has been completed.

[amtie]

Yeah, that bit sucks.

[kajanov]

As for the beams in XRM, try sitting in the turret, that fires them and holding the mouse button,. you'll find, that the beams stop tracking when the fire button (normally right mouse button or ctrl) is depressed(let go of), which brings us to the point of th AI issue. The AI was not meant to fire weapons, that hold a beam for about 20 seconds. the fire weapon part, that the AI does is what a player would do by just clicking, not clicking and holding when firing turret weapons. this however does not seem 100% true for weapons mounted to the "main" slot of a ship, as the AI can still fire rather nice barrages of for instance an M6's (corvette's) main guns, just turretted weapons are assumed to be shot 1 projectile at a time.

Also you will find, that the AI is very competent with the mainly split phased array laser cannon (basically a rather fast firing, short ranged pulse laser used primarily for point defense) Also, in XRM check out the "Wolf" frigate, which has slots for some 20+ of these PALCs on all the turrets (front back, left right top and bottom wih varrying ammouns for the turrets, front left and right(maybe front top and bottom, not sure) having 6, the rest having 2) but theit range is still not bigger, than the ship from front to back, so you have to get rather close to them(some fighters' weapons can hit you form further away than you can hit the fighters and the cap ships' beam weapons' range is dire. A PPC can hit you from twice as far).

With that out of the way, I would love to see the AI use these weapons properly as they are able to maintain a 20s-30s constant beam as opposed ot the 1-2 second beam that is produced when you just click the weapon, but I think that the x3 AI was not coded with these weapons in mind, that's why they were so rare in the unmodded x3 (were they sold anywhere at all? besides the kyon emitters(kaakh weapons, whic can also fire aconstant sream as opposed to the shot .5 second shot bursts, that the AI seems to do)).

Anyways, I would still like to see some faster longer ranged guns (the gauss cannon in XRM is close, with about 20 km range, good speed, but this one suffers from low DPS for balance resons in XRM(mounted on teladi ships, which I really dislike the design of))

[MobiusPizza]

...
And to think that space behemoths can shoot at just 7 km..is ...inexplicable

It's a game, and players like to see the effects of their guns and missiles. What you'd get with your 'realism' is maybe a tiny burst of light hundreds of km away, if you managed to hit something. You'd probably never even see the opposing capital ship. Realistic, maybe, but not very exciting.

Actually, talking realism, no, a giant laser would not have hundreds of KM range while still being effective, it's due to dispersion and inverse square law.

On the other hand, the longest range weapons would be missiles and normal guns, with infinite range (but would miss easily depending on targetting capability)

[kajanov]

Quote from Wikipedia:
"The inverse-square law generally applies when some force, energy, or other conserved quantity is radiated outward radially in three-dimensional space from a point source."

a perfect laser should be prefectly coherent and thus not lose focus over distance and since it is also not traveling through anything that could diffuse it, or dissipate it(no air in space) it should technically have the same power at any distance according to the law of conservation of energy and mass.

Also it should only be visible on the place it hits and not on the way there(provided it is in the visible spectrum, otherwise you would only see the effects of the beam, nit the place it hits and you would never see the beam in space, only the point of impact).

But where is the fun in that? You want to see your shots hitting the enemy.

A "perfect laser" is only achievable with a "perfect lense". Humans in the X3 universe may or may not have the technology to make a perfect lense.

If the beam is not perfectly coherent the beam is essentialy a cone, if a very long and narrow one, thus you will lose power per mm^2 with the area of the beam increasing in proportion to the square of distance(inverse square law is applicable here) and at a certain distance you would reach a point where the material you are shooting can disipate and radiate enrgy at a rate, that the laser becomes ineffective at doing anything to the area it is hitting besides maybe slightly heating it which is again taken care of by dissipation and radiation.

So you either don't have a perfect laser, or you will not lose affectiveness at any distance as far as energy is concerned, target tracking and the like are a completely different can of worms, which I will not go into, at least not in this post.

[SuperG]

Sniping make sense, its getting infantery game mechanict on a larger scale.

Like canons you got smal mortier longrange artilery but high velocity tank gun.
That 800m/s AA or AT 88mm

It just means that a sniper variant of a ship class has longrage capabilties. For game mecanics and balance it suffer in short range.

Like long recharge

A laser weapon has a effective range depending on the agility of target of
Like 90% hit probability of one third light second for agile fighters to 5 lightsecond to slow targets. Battlestar

But sniping in space is different.
On earth based warfare you got muzle energy and velocity that get less due to drag. So a projectile will start at 800m/s but take much longer to hit target at 800m.

In space you won't have that problem but what you see on sensors is in te past. So if your target is a light second away, your using laser, you look a second in the past so your target isnt there but a second further

C = 300.000km/s

So 1/100th light second is 3000km wich is with a laser like a instant hit

For a 7.62 Nato 800m/s it 8meter CQC

[Andrimner]

Well, it's been a couple of decades since 800 m/s was considered high velocity for direct-firing tank guns (modern sabots will generally leave the muzzle at between 1500-1800 m/s), but I agree that long range, high velocity guns for capital ships would be nice to see. Combine this with reduced maneuverability for capital ships (that idea was floated in another thread), and long range artillery would make sense.

[Batmaus]

i know it's totally unrealistic, but I think it would be awesome if capitals could engage in 18th century style ship of the line combat. have them exchange broadsides like that venator destroyer and the providence cruiser in the battle at the beginning of star wars episode 3. galactica also fights the base stars at relative close range with its side mounted heavy artillery guns...
does someone share my obsession with ships exchanging barrages at close range?

[shadowrunner85]

i know it's totally unrealistic, but I think it would be awesome if capitals could engage in 18th century style ship of the line combat. have them exchange broadsides like that venator destroyer and the providence cruiser in the battle at the beginning of star wars episode 3. galactica also fights the base stars at relative close range with its side mounted heavy artillery guns...
does someone share my obsession with ships exchanging barrages at close range?

battlestar and and base stars engage at relevantly long ranges, but they did a very clever camera trick to see both ships in full size at one screen. would love if ES could implement smart auto cameras to do this as-well.

I share you obsession with ships exchanging barrages, and see them tear each other apart. but not at close range, for me it just seams silly.

http://i.imgur.com/EL5so.png

edit, oh 18th century see battles, was not like in pirates of the Caribbean, engagement was normal at 1-2km

[Falcrack]

I think it would be cool if the heavy guns on destroyers and other capital ships had very long range, awesome damage potential, and supre high speed, but to keep them from being good anti-fighter weapons, make it so that turret turn speed is very slow and that fire rate is slow too, and somewhat innaccurate so that it cannot easily hit fighters from 10 km out but can hit the broadside of a destroyer. I hate seeing the super slow shots currently seen in destroyer battles of X3, with 50% or more missing their target.

[Batmaus]

edit, oh 18th century see battles, was not like in pirates of the Caribbean, engagement was normal at 1-2km

i don't know which 18th century you're referring to, but during the one i'm talking about ships would usually sail so close the crews could shoot each other with muskets, which is no more than 200-300 yards

mmh, i don't think it's that silly, it would be a hell of a lot of fun. oh and that's the scene i'm talking about:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lchA-lwq ... re=related

[Nanook]

edit, oh 18th century see battles, was not like in pirates of the Caribbean, engagement was normal at 1-2km

i don't know which 18th century you're referring to, but during the one i'm talking about ships would usually sail so close the crews could shoot each other with muskets, which is no more than 200-300 yards...

According to Wikipedia, the largest, longest-range gun used on 18th Century fighting ships was the French 36 pounder with an effective range of 650m. Typically, navies closed to a much shorter range, both to engage with their shorter range guns, and for musket fire and boarding purposes.

Though powerful, the naval demi-cannons were inaccurate except at close range so opposing warships would try to get as close as possible before firing their broadside in order to cause as much damage as possible; sometimes a single broadside was enough to cripple the enemy vessel.

Now that that's out of the way, let's get back to the topic of Rebirth, shall we?

[shadowrunner85]

Sry, I have to repply. I sad that it was normal with long range, not that it was less normal with short range combat. Like in it was a common strategy, if you had the heavyset armor and longest ranges guns to keep out of hams way from your foes. Maby I'm wrong but I don't randomly say stuff without checking first, so here's what I googled for max effective range:

- http://www.thepirateking.com/historical/cannon_deck.htm -1000-2000yards
- http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... 758AAGhGlr - half a mile
- http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ... mament.htm - max effective range 24 pounder 1200yards

If you whould like to continue debating, plz, PM me. As this has been labeled off topic.

Strange that my side comment become a topic, but all that I wrote about galactica got jumped

[Shrewd135]

I have to agree that on massive space behemoths not tracking targets well is silly. A M1 Abrams tank has automatic stablization that can track a target within a 30 degree arc up/down and 360 while driving though a severely bumpy terrain. With a rotational tracking speed of 40 degrees per second. Its rounds have a muzzle velocity of over 1750 m/s with effective ranges frm 4km to 8km. That already exists on a very portible machine within an atmosphere.

But a space ship with an extremely smooth acceleration during a turn against an enemy cannot track correctly, and cannot fire without the effects of gravity well projectile motion even as far as a modern tank?

I like the game and I understand the design decisions, but I also have modded the game locally on my machine to give gause cannons 1000 m/s bullets and captial ships finally become devistating at range.

So fo those that want longer range weapons, there are modding editors that make that part pretty easy if you choose to do it.

[Andrimner]

Are you sure that is a problem caused by poor tracking? I have never witnessed those effects, does the sight and barrels really veer off the solution in turns?

[Shrewd135]

Actually it is a problem of slow tracking.

At 40 degrees a second we are looking at a full rotation every 9 seconds. or 6.6 rpm, which by comparison is very fast when it comes to the heavy weapons on the larger ships tracking speeds.

[Andrimner]

Slow tracking by the guns or the FCS? Does turning prevent the guns from firing, or does it cause misses?

[SuperG]

A tank isn't a race car that follow the tarrain with uncomfy suspention.
Tanks have suspension to and with there mass and normal suspension rough tarrain is smoothed out so only a compensation is neccesserly using gyro's its doable.

The differenc of a F1 race car and a citroen hydra3 suspension.

Fast turn speed for turrets is more a short range problem.

As or BSG well the ranges are large but more like naval combat
Its more missile based.

Space combat leads to a arm race to get the most out of you weapons and because you see enemy vessel at AstronomicalUnits instead KM or miles.
I would call it astronomical combat range.

Before you start shooting with unguided solution its kinetic missiles wich use the distance to get high velocity.
Such missile is just a main thruster and some steering thusters ans a armor head.

These weapons are weak at short range so the armor cone coulbe replaced by a penetrator cone with a warhead.
Very long range missile with long acceleration can be smal.
So the longer the range the most kinetic yield.

Because the long distance fase is long or close range so rare. It could be close range solution are dropped for more ammo capacity for longer ranges.

A example of this is the old jetfighter called "starfighter" wich look like a missile with its minimal wings but high speed and after using it missiles isn't capable of dogfighting.
True sense of a all or nothing interception with missiles. For aircombat with limited missile capacity a risky choice. But in space where close combat like dogfighting would be rare it would make more sense.
A gatling gun would have more the peurpouse of goalkeeper solution. For shooting kenetic incoming projectiles

[Andrimner]

This depends on whether or not the lacking tracking is due to the gun or FCS. Modern tank guns do not track targets, their FCS does. The gun just goes along for the ride. Range doesn't enter into it.

Applied to X-games, this means that accuracy will not be/should not be affected by tracking speed of guns. The FCS does the tracking, and if the guns cannot keep up, the trigger is blocked.
If turning causes misses in X3, that means that the guns are doing the tracking - and that's a pretty primitive system. No modern tank does that, one could at least expect that space ships has an equally advanced system. Let the FCS do the tracking - that's pretty much instantaneous - and slave the guns to the FCS. That way, tracking problems will never cause misses, even while turning.

[Bobucles]

One thing a bit more concerning is the balance between anti capital weapons and anti-fighter weapons. A long range gun combines high power with speed+range, which becomes a big concern for small ships. For example, a rail gun with pin point accuracy can suddenly pop drones out of the sky like they're nothing.

There are some ways to help the little guys out. Slow fire rates will reduce the weapon's ability to hit multiple targets. Slow turret tracking will hurt at short range, but tracking speed isn't a concern against distant targets. Slow bullets make all combat difficult, and it will still tear through anything that can't maneuver. Probably the best solution will be to give weapons some kind of spread. A rail gun can miss by 1KM and still score a solid hit on a capital ship, but it will have no chance of hitting small targets. As distance closes, turrets can fire faster with wider spread, making capital combat more brutal up close while not hurting fighters too much.