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Ok, so I was fiddling with geometry and here is what I think we can get away with for a phasor design.

With the gimballed design we can get pretty close to 100% 12 damage coverage with 10 phasors. You have a ring of 6 phasors that cover the belt of the ship with 2 set above and bellow to cover the remaining angle. Every angle of the ship would have 2 phasors. 100% coverage at 6 damage would be obtainable with 5 phasors and a single additional phasor on the bow would give a ship 8 damage on the entire front 3rd of angles.

No, modeled it out. We should be able to get damned close to 100% double coverage with just 6 phasors equidistant around the ship. There is a hole directly top and bottom, but it's a narrow hole. True 100% coverage should be obtainable with at max 8 by tilting the band of phasors forward and putting a single pair of phasors on the aft.

With the focused array I honestly don't think we can field dreadnaughts. Getting 100% coverage is going to be practically impossible to afford. You need 10 phasors JUST to get 100% coverage of a circular cross section. Worse you can't just accept 2 phasors top and bottom to fill the gaps. You would be stuck with something like 6 phasors top and 6 phasors bottom to get 100% coverage. Quite frankly we cannot afford 22 phasors for a ship and so can't really afford to field anything so large it has low maneuverability.

Ok so I actually modeled this and you can get 100% coverage with 20 phasors with an interesting half overlap pattern. That's 100% coverage of 16 damage for 120 cost, but it has a lot of odd phasor placements that are likely to run into problems being implemented on a real ship.
 
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Ok, this is going to be a tricky one. I agree that the Focused emitter is a great choice against targets that we can keep within it's field of fire. But the 150% cost is significant - 300% if we want to cover the same area as the gimballed emitter. However against a faster, more manouravable enemy the gimballed emitter is the obvious choice.

I also worked out the DOT each choice can do (DOT=firing arc * output):
Gimballed: 135' * 6 = 810 @ 4 cost
Focused: 75' * 9 = 675 @ 6 cost

So if an enemy craft was travelling through a firing arc, the gimballed extra travel distance would allow it to do more Damage Over Time.
However if we are willing to eat the increased cost and have 2 focused emitters for the same coverage
Gimballed: 135' * 6 = 810 @ 4 cost
2 * Focused: 75' * 9 *2 = 1350 @ 12 cost

So based on this, what would the numbers be for a full 360' arc?
Gimballed: 360/135 = 2.6 (round up to 3)
810 * 3 = 2430 DOT @ 12 cost
Focused: 360/75 = 4.8 (round up to 5)
675 * 5 = 3375 DOT @ 30 cost

This works out that the focused "array" can:
output = 3375/2430 = 25/18 = 1.38 recurring = 139% the damage of the Gimballed
cost = 30/12 = 5/2 = 2.5 = 250% the cost

Final thought - what if we were willing to take the 30 cost the focused would require and use it on extra gimballed to allow overlapping fields of fire?
30 total/4 cost each = 7.5 (round down to 7 for 28 cost)
810 DOT * 7 = 5670 @ 28 cost

So ther final comparisons for a full 360' firing arc look like this:

Gimballed (3) = 2430 DOT @ 12 costwith 45' overlap
Gimballed (4) = 3360 DOT @ 16 cost with 180' overlap
Gimballed (5) = 4200 DOT @ 20 cost with 315' overlap
Gimballed (6) = 5040 DOT @ 24 cost with 450' overlap
Gimballed (7) = 5670 DOT @ 28 cost with 585' overlap
Focused (5) = 3375 @ 30 cost

Please remember that this is only for 1 side of the ship. all costs would have to be doubled for coverage on both the Ventral AND Dorsal sides. Also the Focused emitters would have a blind spot of at least 30' on their respective vertical angles (increases if their horizontal line is tilted to ensure there isnt a blind spot between the V and D). A dedicated emitter to cover this would only add more costs:

Gimballed (3) = 2430 DOT @ 12 cost with 45' overlap
Gimballed (4) = 3360 DOT @ 16 cost with 180' overlap
Gimballed (5) = 4200 DOT @ 20 cost with 315' overlap
Gimballed (6) = 5040 DOT @ 24 cost with 450' overlap
Focused (5) = 3375 DOT @ 30 cost
Focused (10) = 6750 DOT @ 60 cost with 360' overlap (just to see what it would cost with focused)
Focused (5+1 vertical) = 3375 DOT @ 36 cost

So thats the damage/cost breakdown for full coverage on 1 side - primairly aimed at ensuring that no matter where the enemy is, they can always be targeted. However as @Sayle said, "only 2 can fire at once" which means the ship would need 6 gimballed per side to ensure 2 can always fire at once, as any more is unnecessary. The question is, are we likely to want full/near full coverage on our ships in the future and are we willing to pay the massive cost to do it with focused emitters. Or are we going to cut the cost and accept that the gimballed cannon could potentially be targeted to disable/destroy them?

I think I'm going to go for the gimballed, as the rapid cost increases for the focused emitter rapidly outpaces the increased damage output.
 
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Fouredged Sword said:
Ok, so I was fiddling with geometry and here is what I think we can get away with for a phasor design.

With the gimballed design we can get pretty close to 100% 12 damage coverage with 10 phasors. You have a ring of 6 phasors that cover the belt of the ship with 2 set above and bellow to cover the remaining angle. Every angle of the ship would have 2 phasors. 100% coverage at 6 damage would be obtainable with 5 phasors and a single additional phasor on the bow would give a ship 8 damage on the entire front 3rd of angles.

No, modeled it out. We should be able to get damned close to 100% double coverage with just 6 phasors equidistant around the ship. There is a very narrow hole directly top and bottom, but it's a narrow hole. True 100% coverage should be obtainable with at max 8 by tilting the band of phasors down and putting a single pair of phasors on the top.

With the focused array I honestly don't think we can field dreadnaughts. Getting 100% coverage is going to be practically impossible to afford. You need 10 phasors JUST to get 100% coverage of a circular cross section. Worse you can't just accept 2 phasors top and bottom to fill the gaps. You would be stuck with something like 6 phasors top and 6 phasors bottom to get 100% coverage. Quite frankly we cannot afford 22 phasors for a ship and so can't really afford to field anything so large it has low maneuverability.
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Especially when you consider the 50% price spike as well. Those 22 focused phasers cost as much as 33 gimballed ones. With those kinds of savings you could probably build an entire second ship.
TheShadowDeamon said:
Ok, this is going to be a tricky one. I agree that the Focused emitter is a great choice against targets that we can keep within it's field of fire. But the 150% cost is significant - 300% if we want to cover the same area as the gimballed emitter.
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Closer to 600%. Remember, square cube law.
 
Furthermore we need to understand that Focused is uniquely bad for a Non Combat focused craft where you really want the fewest phasers you could get decent coverage with. The Phaser type choice is fleet wide not just for only combat focused ships
 
BeepSmile said:
I... keep seeing the advantages of gimballed, despite wanting us to have more reasons to go for excellent maneuverability.

Assuming a large ship against smaller ones, gimballed will allow for more zones where two phasers can focus on one target, and be firing more of the time, and more emitters placed on a ship will allow the ship to continue to fire as emitters are disabled or the ship accrues damages in one area.

And this is only about phaser damage. Against big enemy ships we still do have torps.
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Yeah. In the context of the kzin war, we seem to be facing a bunch of crazy pilots our big ships could use high coverage weapons against. We've only had smaller engagements so far but if it escalates to a big fleet engagement, a dreadnought with very high coverage going through their fleet formation could be very useful in creating an opportunity for our frigates to clean them up

And the same logic will probably still apply against a lot of our future enemies.

Sure, this might be slightly less optimized for our next small killer frigate but we're also known for our crazy big ships and it'll be a boon for those.
 
Nyvis said:
Yeah. In the context of the kzin war, we seem to be facing a bunch of crazy pilots our big ships could use high coverage weapons against. We've only had smaller engagements so far but if it escalates to a big fleet engagement, a dreadnought with very high coverage going through their fleet formation could be very useful in creating an opportunity for our frigates to clean them up

And the same logic will probably still apply against a lot of our future enemies.

Sure, this might be slightly less optimized for our next small killer frigate but we're also known for our crazy big ships and it'll be a boon for those.
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That, and I really like TNG's penchant for oblique firing angles. The drive-by shootings that TNG ships get up to is just... I don't know what it is, but I really like it.
 
Having thought about it more, 3 gimball phasers output the same damage as 2 focused phasers, for the same cost and superior coverage. The tradeoff here isn't really coverage versus damage, it's coverage versus space taken up, and I don't think phasers take up all that much space.
 
Deathbybunnies said:
Having thought about it more, 3 gimball phasers output the same damage as 2 focused phasers, for the same cost and superior coverage. The tradeoff here isn't really coverage versus damage, it's coverage versus space taken up, and I don't think phasers take up all that much space.
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I think space is a genuine concern in that we've usually had a fixed amount of phaser emplacement options.

But on the other hand the better firing arcs mean you can probably get 3 on targets instead of 2 out of the same total amount of phasers on most designs.
 
Deathbybunnies said:
Having thought about it more, 3 gimball phasers output the same damage as 2 focused phasers, for the same cost and superior coverage. The tradeoff here isn't really coverage versus damage, it's coverage versus space taken up, and I don't think phasers take up all that much space.
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They don't, they're some of the smallest components we have. They're big enough that it is a concern but not a huge one.

[X] Type-2 Gimballed Cannon
 
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Deathbybunnies said:
Having thought about it more, 3 gimball phasers output the same damage as 2 focused phasers, for the same cost and superior coverage. The tradeoff here isn't really coverage versus damage, it's coverage versus space taken up, and I don't think phasers take up all that much space.
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Not exactly, since we can still only fire two phasers at once. There's thus not really such a thing as having three phasers of damage output at this time.
 
I like this vote! The idea that if we roll well or make some slightly different R&D choices we could have a slightly different tech tree is nice. Maybe we'll get a EMP/Ionic torpedoes option so we'll have a better shot at capturing enemy ships for intel.

I'm voting gimballed here. I don't like the fragility but I think it'd give us better amounts of overlap and we'd be able to afford to put more on per ship (when we want to). Our "max everything" firepower is lowered but we'd never afford that so our designed max damage would be about the same. Since either design only can fire 2 at a time having a phaser design with a lot of overlap should mean more continuous damage (and hopefully more damage overall) in a fight. More phasers in general gets us some of that redundancy back and might offer better cooldown options with different emplacements handing off fire to another that can hit the target. Plus it lets us get away with fewer if we want to and we have a bit more control (in theory). Situations when we could afford another gimballed mount but not a focused one or when we could afford 2 focused or 3 gimballed so the 3 mounts give us more placement options. On larger designs there's more potential hardpoints for us to play with and size creep will be real as industrial bases support it.
 
The more i see it more the gimbal is a trap with our design philosophy the only ships that require complete coverage are solo operating outside the federation (explorers) or dedicated targets (Dreadnought).

It give procurement the temptation of skimping on phasers due the excuse of increased coverage.

We are still behind on shield and weapon tech so we can't afford to sacrifice punch for utility.

Only in very niche cases we have not been able to keep phasers on target.

The text gives the impression that gimbal are easier to knockout, the impact for ship effectiveness would be massive, specifically if we are pushed for less phasers due to coverage.

It is the same cost per damage that means if we need a damage threshold it may just be impossible with gimbal due to limited slots or it will require an equal cost to focused.

Also its more expensive now but cost concern will be less with industry capacity increase.

On an ideal world would want both designs.
 
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Going gimballed also may open the door to much larger phaser turrets down the line - full "space battleship"/Battlestar Galactica style.
 
Yeah, so it turns out doing the math is really hard for this one. Just calculating the surface area covered by each phasor and dividing that by the area needed to be covered isn't enough. The problem is phasors have fixed surface area shapes and this means coverage gets complex. You cannot just fill in gaps with overflow.

So, doing a bunch of modeling.

With a gimballed phasor we can get 100% coverage of 12 damage with 8 phasors for a cost of 32. There are some tiny gaps, but I think if the ship needs to turn a handful of degrees to put a ship into a firing line then it is close enough to call it 100% coverage.

With a focused phasor array we can get 100% coverage of 16 damage with 20 phasors for a cost of 120. The gaps are even larger, with some sections only having a single phasor coverage, but the gaps are small enough that I think they fall under the level of abstraction.

That's a huge difference. To get 50% more damage at the same coverage the focused array costs almost 4 times as much.
 
Frankly speaking the goal of 100% coverage with acceptable damage with the current tech base is a trap and unfeasible no matter which design is chosen imo. We are going to have to accept blind spots.
 
Hmm, while i really like that damage boost for the focused emitter, the big drop in firing arc and the big increase in cost make it not worth it imo, so I'll vote for the gimballed cannon.
 
Though thinking it through I think there are some design options that make sense for both designs.

First, you have 2 phasor designs. These are designs that have just 2 phasors and do something useful with them.

A frigate with 2 gimballed phasors can basically stick them on the nose and call it a day. It can shoot anything in the forward 3rd of it's arcs and deal 8 damage pretty consistently.

A frigate with 2 focused phasors can ALSO basically stick them on the nose and call it a day. 70 degrees of coverage is small, but it's a small fast ship anyway and so it has a punch. This makes a very small ship with 2 phasors and zero photon torpedoes actually viable, but such a ship would 100% die to anything faster than it.

Then you have the options for "100%" coverage. This is coverage that I feel is the maximum plausible for each phasor.

For gimballed phasors you go with 8 phasors and actually get 100% coverage of 12 damage. 6 phasors in an equidistant ring around the front of the ship ensures total coverage when paired with a pair of aft phasors. 100% coverage of 12 damage at cost 32.

For a focused phasor array I would instead simply sacrifice the top and bottom arc. You do not attempt to put a phasor in those arcs. To fire into those arcs the ship simply rolls. As the ship CAN roll these arcs are extremely hard for an enemy to deliberately stay in. This allows you to get a circular band of coverage around the ship, front to back, using only 10 phasors. This gives a reasonable approximation of 100% coverage for a significantly lower cost of 60 compared to attempting 100% coverage. Ships can make an attack pass where the ship cannot fire upon approach, but you cannot escape before you can be brought into a field of fire.

landcollector said:
Frankly speaking the goal of 100% coverage with acceptable damage with the current tech base is a trap and unfeasible no matter which design is chosen imo. We are going to have to accept blind spots.
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It would literally cost exactly amount we spent on the Sagramatha's phasors, but deal 50% more damage. We can get 100% coverage with 8 6 cost phasors. The Sagramathas have 12 cost 4 phasors. 8x6 = 12x4.
 
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Worth noting on fragility concerns.

More mounts total means more work for the enemy to disable significant parts of a given arc.

The mounts wont be taking direct damage until and unless shields are penetrated, at which point one has bigger problems.

And the wider cones means that there are more likely spots where you can have THREE phasors able to target a single point in space, so even losing one mount wont actually decrease damage output to the same extent as the focused emitters.

I would LOVE to be able to use both, with focused emitters as main guns and the gimbals as secondaries, but that's not an option here.
 
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so one big thing that does not seem to be covered in the stats is the size of the emplacements.

each of the gimablled emitters is 10 meters long. the sagarmatha is 227 meters long total. including nacelles. the Selachii is only 127 meters long.

these things are huge. we will not be able to mount a significant number of them on ships without major compromises on other systems.

there is also a major question of what they lead to for Phasers V3 and onwards. The focused ones still seem to lead towards phaser strips ala TNG. but the gimballed emitters seem to be on a completely new path.

while the focused emitters definitely have some issues, i think they are the better choice between their damage output and durability
 
4 edged sword makes a good point about rolling for vertical coverage.
 
It's worth considering that phasers can't just be stuck anywhere willy-nilly, the EPS conduits have to be accounted for, so there's limitations on where they can go.

[X] Type-2 Gimballed Cannon
 
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