Looking for help deciding a few things

[rhenoplos]

So, I am working on a massive weapon for a titan ship, ( A massive circle with a diameter of 35, and is aprox. 300 blocks long just to get the look and detail in, may become larger) this may be a ship all of its own that is implanted in the titan's hull or something I design on one ship and then later copy onto the titan, the weapon is going to be called the Atlas Flame. That part is not the hardest part, and I have an idea for the titan I will be building in the way of looks and other firepower, as well as defenses and such. Here is the hard part... Should the Atlas Flame be a beam-beam-overdrive, or a missile-pulse-overdrive. Keep in mind this is going to be either a single missile or a single beam, and is going to be meant to be a single fire weapon that takes a rather long time to recover from firing. So here is the question, when you hear someone say "prepare the Atlas Flame" while they are looking at an enemy ship, station, or planet, (or just a single little astronaut lost in space who is about to be very much over-killed just because the captain is having a bad day, or maybe said person was a traitor on the ship, who knows why they are outside the ship with this large weapon pointed at them with a few moving bits and pieces as it 'charges up') which one of these do you think of, a massive nuclear missile, or a massive long range beam? Or if you have any other ideas for the weapon system let me know. Also if you have any name suggestions for the titan itself, go ahead and leave them here too! Thanks for all the help!

 

[Jaaskinal]

Overdrive is a terrible effect for large weapons. It needs six times the power for three times the damage, just build a bigger gun. In addition, single output weapons are terrible for block damage, so regardless of whether it's a missile or a beam, it's not actually going to kill a ship.

As for a replacement, I could go on for quite a while about all of the different weapon combos and set ups which are good, but I have no clue what the ship is even meant to be, so hopefully you can find something you like.

 

[Gasboy]

As for a replacement, I could go on for quite a while about all of the different weapon combos and set ups which are good, but I have no clue what the ship is even meant to be, so hopefully you can find something you like.

I'd be interested in hearing about which weapon combos are good. If you could be convinced to speak about it.
[doublepost=1474195592,1474195512][/doublepost]As for the weapon itself, I think the name sounds better on a direct fire weapon than a missile.

 

[Madman198237]

A single missile is a terrible choice. Ever heard of point defense? While many people overestimate the powers of their shields, any decent player will have PDTs crawling out of everywhere just to wreck your missiles.

Go with a waffled beam array. Or, if it's separate, a logic-fired non-waffled array with dozens of CPUs to reduce extra power costs. An unexpected bonus of this is that this gives your beam a better look (Much bigger) than the .5m-wide little thing that a single output will fire.

No overdrive---go with pulse support to make it an alpha weapon, cannon for near-continuous firing. Tertiary effect could be ion (Beams don't work well against armor, so a massive shield-stripping beam array is probably the best use of a beam setup) or perhaps just nothing, to reduce overall size and power consumption.

 

[rhenoplos]

If I do go with a missile this would not be the only missile, the ship itself would have several other swarm missiles just as a distraction, but if I do go for a beam-pulse, I may add a punch effect for the tertiary, and just make sure it is powerful enough to do the damage, and if I do choose to go beam I might add some logic fired stop, power drain, and shield drain beams that will fire along side it so that there is little to no chance of getting out of the fight, of course the titan would also have jump inhibitors

 

[terra mining corp.]

swarm missiles , aka indiscriminate killer of all! allies/enemies/astronauts/space whales all beware.

 

[Malacodor]

swarm missiles , aka indiscriminate killer of all! allies/enemies/astronauts/space whales all beware.

Where wood is chopped, splinters must fall.

 

[jayman38]

When I think of the Atlas Flame, I am thinking of a massive weapon that can be fired fairly often (like a flamethrower, but not as continuous).
If I were to build it, it would be almost all primary beam weapon (no secondary or maybe up to 50% cannon slave) plus 10% explosive effect. I would build it with two separate system set up in a dual (side-by-side) checkerboard output layout, with the two systems connected with logic. So no aiming. Just one, massive 35-m wide beam. Of course, such a weapon with all those outputs is going to be a massive energy hog, so most of the weapon will actually be a massive power storage tank, and the actual weapon will be relatively short, to keep power demands under control.
Example Lengths for each 300-block row: 2-3 blocks front decoration, 6-7 blocks alternating front armor and glowy bits, 32 blocks primary weapon, 16 blocks cannon secondary, 3 blocks explosive effect, 240 blocks of power storage.

If my math is correct, such a massively wide weapon will use 35,742 (35m * pi = ~110; 1.1 ^ 110 = 35,743) times more power than a single-block-wide output weapon of equivalent mass. 51 length weapon * 110 rows = 5,610 * 10 = 56,100 e/s * 35,743 = ~2 billion e per second of fire.

 

[rhenoplos]

That actually sounds interesting, right now I have made a few copies of the weapon hull for testing, I have the front designed by adding an extra 10 blocks of space for designing as well as defensive purpose, plus room for rails for any moving parts I choose to add, and with primary beam, secondary pulse, and no tertiary, the beam and pulse running full length, it took 4 massive power blocks that were atleast 2x as long as the weapon itself and very massive, so, it might be time to make a much longer weapon barrel for the titan and do like you said, beam, cannon, explosive, and see how that works, but I will leave it at its current size for testing purposes, until I find a weapon system I am happy with. And these suggestions are sparking some interesting thoughts on what kind of weapon it could be, maybe at some point I will make a massive hangar in the station for the titan, and have the same weapon with different systems that can be swapped out via rails, so that the weapon fits the job, like taking down a station would maybe be a massive nuke since pirate stations don't have much AMS, and then beams for players, maybe a cannon variant for some random reason

 

[Panpiper]

Absolutely no overdrive. That would be bad, very bad.

If I was building a weapon such as you describe, I would build a much larger version of the weapons this ship fires. Download it and give it a look. I think you will agree it will give you the effect you want. Note the ones in this example ship are not full ratio missile/beams and so they travel slower and have a shorter range than what yours would. They are the way they are because the sample ship is basically a fighter class ship that will close quickly and needs to keep up a high volume of fire.

Basically you want several missile/beam/explosive (equal block quantities) weapons with very large damage potential. Make them each at least a thousand blocks. Stagger their launch points so they trail one another so the ones behind can fly into the hole punched by the one(s) in front. At the very front of the big damage dealing missiles however, you have a double checkerboard of a hundred or so double block missile/beam missiles. You can set up the firing points of these so they form either a wall, a semi circle or a full circular ball, depending on what look you prefer. Those hundred or so tiny missiles will make for a fine decoy to distract point defense allowing most if not all of the big ones to penetrate.

It should go without saying that you will need a lot of power generation and even more battery power. Make sure you have enough of both. You can set up the hundred decoy missiles using just a couple of missile computer sets, and have the much bigger missiles one or two to a computer set, to keep energy costs from escalating too much. The 1/1 missile/beam missiles don't matter too much if their energy costs each skyrocket, because they aren't much to begin with.

 

[rhenoplos]

While missile/beam does sound nice, I am not looking for a long range weapon, due to the fact that while this will be a titan I want it to be a bit more up close and personal, I want the Atlas Flame to be a weapon that is meant to end a fight before it really starts, without the titan hiding in the back. I am mostly looking for a hard hitting weapon that fires once with a slight recharge time and does a massive amount of damage in that one shot, and the way you describe this, it feels more like it would be "fire the forward missiles" not "prepare the Atlas Flame" though I may add this idea to the titan's other armarments, or make a variant of the Atlas Flame that is in this style for use against stations or if it will be a massive battle between fleets where a large number of fighters will be in the mix and I feel like the titan should sit back and fire from afar, though instead of the decoys being at the front they will be in a side panel that will be hidden and then open to face forward with the missiles but is behind them slightly for astetic reasons, and begins to fire a few seconds before the main missiles fire, though they might use missile/cannon just so they are more continuous of a decoy stream and will be more likely to allow the main missiles to reach their target

 

[Madman198237]

Be careful with your design. Titans are not maneuverable, and a close approach to a well-defended station might be the last thing you ever do. Unless all your enemies use titans, you will always be outmaneuvered, making forwards-firing weaponry nearly useless.

 

[Dire Venom]

Direct Fire Flame cannon or something:? Wave-motion gun:?

Depends on what you are looking for.
One good option for absolutly ahnihiltating ships is wireless grouped weaponary, it does require you to aim the whole ship at the target, or aim the seperate component with the weapon array at the target. You can do this as follows:

Took ages to make but it pretty much chews a giant hole through anything and isn't super power hungry.
You can also make very impressive ones with missiles-cannons, which require lead but can devastate a ship and look pretty awesome.

If you are worried about having to turn the whole ship I would suggest mounting it all on a giant turret and taking manual control of the turret to fire it (thus giving you much faster turning rates and better aim)

 

[rhenoplos]

The Atlas Flame will not be its only weapon, there are going to be some heavy hitting side guns docked to it as well, with many different variants in weapons, such as cannon, beam, missiles, maybe even some draining and stop weapons on them to make things a little easier. Plus if the titan is in space, it is bound to have a few destroyers and frigates with it, as well as a handful of fighters, and possibly even some fighters that are docked to it for large battles, not to mention all my ships with any sort of slow turn rate tend to have multiple jump drives and some escape pods if all else fails. Plus if I do go with a docked main weapon, it is going to have thrust, just like all my docked entities tend to have, for moving purposes, and the titan will inherit all the docked thrust as well which may help, not to mention if the I move the thrust balance in the menu I can easily change it from a slow turning ship to one that turns fast but does not move forward very fast.

And yes I have used logic activated weapons before, for a few purposes, one of my salvage carries even has a weapon of that sort on it, it is armed with power drain, shield drain, and stop effect beams, on either side of a beam/cannon system that is designed to be aimed at the enemy and force their ship into submission while the main laser cuts their ship in half, its a mean ship for a salvage carrier, but, it does more than its job. And nice gifs

 

[EricBlank]

I can confirm a weapon composed of multiple waffle-pattern beam-beam components will do phenomenal damage to anything you point it at. I've put one on the battleship I'm starting work on, and even though the output is only 7m in diameter it makes up for it by being able to penetrate up to 100m into a solid target.

If you go with logic, you can use two different weapons groups and then a third with a single much larger output to provide ion support. Then use a second set of single-block beams outlining the circumference of the main weapon to test your aim before firing.

 

[jayman38]

Another alternative to creating a solid beam is to create a waffle pattern only at the outer edge of the weapon's diameter. There are far fewer outputs, depending on the thickness of the beam ring. That's one way to reduce the power draw per shot, while still making it look more-or-less like a solid beam.

Problem with my original math: I think I used the wrong formula for the number of outputs. The formula for circular area should be r^2 * pi.

r*2 * pi is only the circumference, so there are 110 outputs just on the outer ring of a 35-diameter weapon.

By comparison, using the r^2 * pi formula, I find that there is a whopping ~908 outputs (probably more like 907) or so across the entire area of a 35-m circle. So a solid beam that is 35-m across would use an unbelievable amount of energy. (The energy multiplier for 907 outputs comes out to about 3.5 x 10^37 or so! Basically, more energy than exists in the entire universe. LOL So you'll probably want to stick with a ring-beam if you go that route.)

 

[Madman198237]

OR just be smart about it and use many computers. If it's gonna be logic-fired, make it the best weapon possible.

 

[rhenoplos]

Doing a full checker pattern with just one computer, it is 484 outputs, so, doing a double layer, would be around 968 outputs in the checker pattern, give or take a few, so, it may need to be longer and use more power blocks, but I will be doing some testing on that idea later today, while I am testing a few other ideas as well, and if this weapon is not able to be made, well, then I will have to dumb down the amount of damage I want and make it something that just sounds awesome but is meant for just the finishing blow or something that will be a start to the fight, or maybe I will just name the titan the Atlas Flame, though I wouldn't mind having it be the name of just a weapon

 

[Panpiper]

The damage has little to do with quantity of barrels, and everything to do with how much power you can put into the system. 100 barrels using one million power will be substantially less powerful than a single barrel using two million power. That said, there is little reason to not make a fun weapon with lots of barrels. Just know that the damage of the system ultimately will depend how much power you have to play with for that system.

Do be aware however that multiple barrels on a single computer will cause the energy usage of those barrels to go up, a lot. So you could wind up actually loosing a lot of damage potential if you build it unwisely. Generally the way to do it is to have lots of barrels working off a couple of computers, but make them the tiniest of weapons, and stick in among them a few barrels that each work off a separate computer and make only those barrels the real damage dealers.

Read again my suggestion above about the missile/beam system. Even if you don't use my suggestion (you should, it is clearly the best way to get a massively powerful weapon effect that actually IS powerful), if you use different weapon blocks, the advice as to how to create multiple barrel effects still stands.

 

[Malacodor]

Doing a full checker pattern with just one computer, it is 484 outputs, so, doing a double layer, would be around 968 outputs in the checker pattern, give or take a few, so, it may need to be longer and use more power blocks, but I will be doing some testing on that idea later today, while I am testing a few other ideas as well, and if this weapon is not able to be made, well, then I will have to dumb down the amount of damage I want and make it something that just sounds awesome but is meant for just the finishing blow or something that will be a start to the fight, or maybe I will just name the titan the Atlas Flame, though I wouldn't mind having it be the name of just a weapon

There's a power penalty of 10% per additional weapon group. With 968 single block groups that would be 9 360 560 e/s for 9680 DPS (unless there's a cap I'm not aware of). Good luck powering that.