Triangle Firing Port Experiments.

DraconisTheWyvern

Lately I have experimented with triangle firing. my first triangle firing experiment was the cutter.
image https://i.imgur.com/ciK5pjP.png <--Cutter

I say first because the pill bug was not designed with triangle firing in mind and was meant to be a anti-fighter/shuttle craft.

The Cutter (which I posted to the contest inspite of its flaws) has a almost inverted an incomplete triangle firing ports.

I began to wonder about triangle firing ports because I began thinking of other ways to get guns onto my craft.

Anyways to the experiments (they don't have control rooms btw)

Experiment 1:
image https://i.imgur.com/ThYjRmq.png <--This experiment proved satisfactory when it came to sustained fire and proved adequate in terms of damage which should be expected because light lasers.

Experiment 2:
image https://i.imgur.com/TO5rHN5.png <-- I used full electro-bolts for this experiment to test possible strain/upkeep with power due to electro-bolts being fairly power hungry devices. an inspite of sub-optimal routing the crew for the most part managed to keep up with the demand for a short while.

Experiment 3:
image https://i.imgur.com/1P7MJ7x.png <--while not a full triangle it still keeps in touch with the theme. Experiment 3 was conducted using heavy laser blasters as a substitute for light laser blasters. The heavy laser blusters proved they are much better in damage but do suffer from a lack of turret arc/mobility.

How Was The Experiment Conducted: I conducted this experiment using the same chasis and power/crew set up. I tested these firing ports against the built in Archangle.

Possible Flaws: the cannon on the Archangle did push the experimental ports around and therefore may have impacted certain results.

Triangle Theory Conclusion: more testing needs to be conducted. However that said given the range of the shield generators in vanilla it may be possible to fit more guns on a ship using a triangle/chevron set up by having the guns dip down and back up in a regular manner.

Phenomenon: this setup however can cause a phenomenon that I like to call the Cheated Range. the Cheated Range is a natural occurrence due to the different positions of the guns where other guns will start firing before the rest do and as the distance/difference increases so does the effect of the Cheated Range which leads to a ship needing to move closer to have all guns firing. this affect can be observed on my AHF in my Spiverian faction.

@Walt
@Tson
@G4L4XY
your thoughts?

RedAndCosmoteer

DraconisTheWyvern

DraconisTheWyvern

Eyes melt because of reactor spam

DraconisTheWyvern

RedAndCosmoteer lol

DraconisTheWyvern

for clarification of testing the Archeangle was not given an AI in the experiments but both were placed directly in front of each other and one had an allegiance switch after being loaded fully. It was purely a test on triangular emplacement.

G4L4XY

(I rarely play vanilla. Did you ping me to like this?)

DraconisTheWyvern

G4L4XY vanilla or not the principle remains the same (granted ive not played around with the mods that have roof/wall guns.

DraconisTheWyvern

G4L4XY
image https://i.imgur.com/mZ1kfDh.png <--this ship is a proof of concept. weapon capacity is not lost; the general idea here is to limit the amount of weapon interference caused by weapons being right next to each other. so angling the weapons in a semi-triangle fashion should in theory help prevent this weapon interference by allowing the weapons to sorta fire over each other. of course there is still a degree of weapon interference and is still better to take the enemy head on with the broad side but the angling does help some of the weapons get off shots during the approach.

DraconisTheWyvern

Correction: Testing was done with Argonaut not the Archeangle my bad 😛

Guy

You think that's cool? Take a ship with flat sides and turn it 45 degrees.

DraconisTheWyvern

Guy I did not say it was cool and yes I am aware of ships that are built like triangles but the point of this is to do it without a triangle ship.

Lafiel

This ancient (2 years) ship is the answer to all your recent design quests:

Abh defense platform 1
can be found in the community ships mod
image https://i.imgur.com/Z2QWieT.png

Btw. it's called arc and range coverage not this noob rubbish of "cheated range".

DraconisTheWyvern

Lafiel aye aye; btw I did not have design questions just experimenting and posting my experiments.

Lafiel

DraconisTheWyvern btw I did not have design questions just experimenting and posting my experiments.

You are doing tests to get answers to design.

Dibs Trying to get more surface is mostly pointless with the way things are all rectangle builds. The only additional surface you can get are side walls meaning things have to be deeply staggered. This diminishes arcs, range and require turrets. You basically always end up with spiky pyramids or inner walls. Diagonals aren't any better in this regard. They only allow better density via diagonal silhouette / facing.

The gains are largest at small scale. So yeah it's too little to make much of a difference to a wall.

Dibs

I can see the benefit of staggered firing positions making energy consumption smoother (minimally), but i don't think it adds too much advantage to a flat wall design unless you can somehow create a discernible defensive advantage over them with shield, armor and PD placement. It does look like it protects the guns better from multiple ships though. the greater benefit for these sort of experiments would be in trying to create more surface area to fire from without hindering your firing angles as much, DPS usually trumps defensive plays. L shaped ships do this quite well, as to U shaped missile ships a la "Terror"

Dibs

Lafiel You never know, no one tried diagonal ships until someone experimented and got them working decently. The more people playing around like this, the greater the chance of innovation coming to the way we all design.

Lafiel

Dibs That some one was yours truely 😉 Before V, U shape, and yes rotators where viable against walls.

DeletedAccount

TBH the only weapon i could think of that benefits this are missiles,take a look at @Equalizer's U Missile Ship,Via the triangular shape,he was able to fit more missile launchers,BTW i'm talking about this thing:
image https://i.imgur.com/2Q49Gmb.png
although i could be proven wrong
Edit:Maybe ions too

CATMASTER

Since still no one have anwsered this question with ions,so im here to do that.
image https://i.imgur.com/YLyrMHa.jpg
this is one of my ship

Bevan

CATMASTER destiny you might wanna make a cannon/laser version

Bevan

CATMASTER btw free real estate

CATMASTER

Bevan normaly only missile and ion works well for this since they dont really have a firing arc problem