Looking for help deciding a few things

[Vengeance42]

Panpiper would you mind explaining that, I am returning to starmade after being away awhile but your description runs completely counter to how I understand weapons to work.

It sounds to me like you are saying if you have say a turret with one barrell, and power it with a bunch of reactors, this will have more punch than 10 barrells that are powered just enough to make it function.

I thought a weapon system is either powered or it isnt. Once it is powered, adding more power doesnt change the damage, does it? Or am I completely misunderstanding?

 

[Malacodor]

It sounds to me like you are saying if you have say a turret with one barrell, and power it with a bunch of reactors, this will have more punch than 10 barrells that are powered just enough to make it function.

I thought a weapon system is either powered or it isnt. Once it is powered, adding more power doesnt change the damage, does it? Or am I completely misunderstanding?

Controlling multiple weapon groups with the same computer increases the power consumption for all groups by 10% per additional group. So weapons with multiple weapon groups/outputs are less energy efficient, they need more energy per block.

 

[Nickizzy]

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)

[1] What IS that anime! I've seen it all over and it's driving me mad!
[2] Nice Death PlanetTM

 

[Panpiper]

Panpiper would you mind explaining that, I am returning to starmade after being away awhile but your description runs completely counter to how I understand weapons to work.

When I say 'barrel' I do not mean 'block' I mean a firing aperture, a point at which something that does damage comes out. A barrel could be as simple as a single block of a weapon type attacked to a computer. If one had ten identical contiguous blocks all attached to a single computer, that too would be a barrel. If one had a weapon system that had 400 missile blocks plus 400 beam blocks plus 400 explosive blocks all contiguous and linked to three appropriate computers, a master, a slave and an effect, that too would be a single barrel.

In the description of the weapon system as I would build it if trying to get the effect the OP was looking for, I suggested using six or eight such very large missiles (6-8 barrels) plus a hundred or more single weapon module versions of such missiles (1 missile block & 1 beam block to create 1 barrel each) linked to two to four appropriate computers. By placing the big missile 'barrels' spaced one after another equidistant the length of the gun (and a bit behind the leading decoys) and the tiny missile barrels in a round sphere ahead of them plus a bit of a trail behind, you could get a long teardrop of flame that rapidly flies towards it's target. Each such firing can carve great gaping holes into a target if it's shields have been brought down.

I in fact have eight such guns on the last ship I built (on self powered turrets no less).

Sadly I do not have a screenshot of them being fired. However if you download the Outlaw ship I linked to earlier, you could see a much smaller version of the idea in action. You would probably need to set that ship to being a pirate so the AI fires it to get the proper effect, as a human would have to trigger all the shots themselves, and it would not be simultaneous. Get into a well protected ship and spawn one in as an enemy. Be inside a very well defended ship though, or in something you can afford to loose. It's a fighter sized ship that packs a destroyer sized wallop!

My reference to energy was to simply point out that ultimately the damage a weapon system does is a direct function of the energy it consumes. If you have X amount of energy feeding a weapon system, you will have a DPS of X, regardless of what weapon systems you are using. (This is not wholely the case with missiles, but they are in the same ballpark depending upon how they are used). The OP is not going to wind up with a 'devastating' weapon by fiddling with the type of weapon module blocks. The only way to get a weapon that hits harder is to get it to hit 'slower' so it's X amount of damage is accumulated for that time and then released at the slower firing rate. That or have a weapon that is bigger and uses more energy. Very little fires slower than the missile/beam setup I suggested, in effect creating the most powerful weapon shot possible given the amount of energy feeding it.

 

[Dire Venom]

[1] What IS that anime! I've seen it all over and it's driving me mad!
[2] Nice Death PlanetTM

Various scenes from Space Battleship Yamato/Starblazers (same thing).
One of this first in the Space Opera genre that was originally aired about 1980. The series was rebooted with Yamato resurrection in 2009,

THEN a live action movie

Followed by a 26 Episode anime (Yamato 2199)

in (2014 I think?) which recently followed by a sequal (Odyssey of the Celestial ark). The latest installment is due to be completed end of this year-next year (Soldiers of Love).

I would highly recomend it ^_^
I would personaly start by watching Yamato 2199, and if you like it followed by the Ark sequal (called Uchuu Senkan Yamato 2199: Hoshimeguru Hakobune) then Yamato resurection, then if you want there are pleantly of older series (I would reccomend Yamato 2520).

Links to episodes: (you can find them all be searching 'yamato' @ http://kissanime.to/

http://kissanime.to/Anime/Space-Battleship-Yamato-2199
http://kissanime.to/Anime/Uchuu-Senkan-Yamato-2199-Hoshimeguru-Hakobune
http://kissanime.to/Anime/Space-Battleship-Yamato-Resurrection

All have English subtitiles.
Heres a trailer for the 2199 series:

Sorry for the long post but I love it so much ^_^

 

[Vengeance42]

Thanks Panpiper and Malacodor, new info for me!