Cosmoteer Official Forum

Tyaestysu

Ok, so before we get started here, it's important to remember artificial gravity is common on these ships, especially since they are military vessels and it's better for the crew's bone density and muscular system to have the artificial gravity. Consequently, this means that the interior weapons have gravity exhibited on them, meaning that the motors that turn the weapons still have to account for gravity.

My second argument against a Beam Cannon turret is that the components used for it all have to be directly attached to the Centralised Beam Charger (The middle section of the beam cannon). The crew on the left and right sides of the beam cannon are actually controlling the left and right Beam Chargers. The components which connect all the Beam Chargers have the best efficiency at that size, where all of the beam chargers are directly next to each other. If you were to mount it all on a turret, the entire thing would have to swing around, not just the beam emitter. This would not agree with the first part of the lore, with the artificial gravity.

I do have a third, less public argument against the beam cannon which is more balance than lore. Let's suppose I did allow there to be a turreted beam cannon. This would mean that they can turn to aim at targets. However, as I noticed with the small Laser Beams, this also means you can focus fire the beams, which destroys parts extremely fast. Imagine if you could do that with the Beam Cannon. It's already got double the damage of the vanilla Ion Beam Emitter (which isn't a turreted weapon) and if it could focus fire, it would completely obliterate ships.

You may not take the time to read through all of this, but good for you if you do.

Oh your mod page is over 600 comments! Are you planning on trying to get to the major mod list?

sir_potato M8, that's an actual brick with some weapons, nothing anyone slightly experienced would call 'ship'.
You've clustered reactors, spammed doors, spammed tons of crew, placed your thrusters wrong and packed your control room with explosive parts...
Guess I've got to give you some points for adding backwards thrust, varying armor and getting the fireing angles right, but that's about it already.
[Placeholder for actual ship]
[Actual ship for comparisation:]

(I'm not too happy with this design, it has too many thrusters for its size and therefore lacks some weapons, but it beats your ship and the R-UPA ships with similar prices.)

sir_potato I see two primary flaws with the design. You're still clustering reactors, which only makes a ship more vulnerable to penetrating shots.

Additionally, your fore reactors are too close to the beam cannons. A ship that successfully targets and destroys a canon now has a direct line to the respective reactor - which will detonate with enough force to damage your railgun. If your railgun launcher has already taken damage, it's possible to set off the entire railgun, which will go a long way to knocking out all of the weapons on the fore end of the ship. It also exposes and possibly destroys your cockpit.

For its cost and size, it also lacks sufficient antimissile defense. Also, since you're using axial weapons, you will want more lateral thrusters to aid in station-keeping and target tracking. Perhaps, since you've already devoted a good chunk of change to "Screw that direction in particular" axial weaponry, you might consider dropping the rocket turret and factory and use the ship only in fleets with other specialist craft? Working with specialized craft means that you can spin off your shield-breaking weapons on a ship that is actually armored for close-up weapons use and relegate this design entirely to penetration attacks when shields are down.

Now, the good. Protected kiting motors are a good idea. Even if everything else changes, keep those. Additionally, putting your fore reactors in a position that isn't directly behind the beam cannons is wise, as is putting nearby personnel between the reactor and the outer hull.

I can't tell you how well the AI would do against such a ship, but I wouldn't have a hard time wiping it out with my designs, and they're worse than yours. I would try to upload a modification of your design to illustrate, but you used a .jpeg instead of a .png, and I'm a lazy designer.

Edited to add: I am neutral about shielding. If you're going to be facing another big stick like your ship, smaller shields meant to ablate when struck work well. GCW has one of the best arrays of shielding to work with, just throwing the biggest 180's on is missing a lot of potential tricks.

sir_potato Wow, that's somehow not a brick!
That railgun could need more protection, using crew quarters instead of bunks saves space and cost, you've got no side-facing thrusters (the two small ones don't count), the entire rear seems unnecessary (long), those mine-launchers are useless, you've still clustered reactors, no missile defense, your factories are anywhere but near the things they should supply and you lack turrets.
Guess that might actually be a ship this time, but certainly no good one.

Another multirole vessel, still cheaper and stronger than your design:

This one went through your ship without the frontal shields failing even once.

Mycroftxxx I had to replace the frontal guns next to the beam cannons, as those are from a different mod, but here is the closest thing to his ship I was willing to do:
(Didn't use the hybrid parts, those are rather likely to crash your game.)

Have fun watching the explosions.