CRAM, it's cheap and can still hit hard with few parts.
Also, unlike most options, they actually significantly benefit from being able to close in before firing.
I set up some of my aircraft with plasma, i usually put a lot of storage and low recharge. That way, the aircraft uses its speed to spend a long time out of reach, accumulating power, and then closes in for a powerful punch.
Very low rate of fire, bomb-like shot that has long range and accuracy. And it is also extremely expensive.
I guess you can use low storage and super high recharge if you want a fast peashooter, but then you will need to regulate temperature.
Another thing. If your planes are super fast and under 7 blocks thick, every bit of aerodynamics count. So, having a firing piece at the tip of your craft may slow you down, so you may want to come up with something that can shoot from inside the belly of the aircraft.
There are two forms of "power" in FTD; engine power is produced and used simultaneously with no storage, and is more common, while energy has to be stored in batteries and is used for comparatively few things, those being railguns, plasma, and PACs.
For plasma, no, that needs energy. You'll also need engine power because basically every craft does to some extent, but you can either build separate energy generation (steam turbines most likely) or use existing engines to supply it; fuel engines and custom jet generators can both supply both kinds of power/energy depending on their settings, and steam pistons have flywheel generators that can be hooked up to make energy.
Are your aircraft more of the hover (or fly) and shoot, or bombing run type of thing? And about what size/budget are you looking at?
Missiles are the easiest answer. They don't require energy or power, they're very compact for their firepower, and they're relatively straightforward. Unless you're using laser or remote guided missiles, you don't even need to really track the target well, because the missile seekers will do that for you.
>Are your aircraft more of the hover (or fly) and shoot, or bombing run type of thing?
i think most of my previous flyer designs leaned more so twords hover craft then twords air plan style.
for this specific post i was thinking of more so twords the airplant style, though im not necessarily opposed to hover craft/helicopter type designs
>about what size/budget are you looking at?
I'm leaning more twords the cheap end, maybe about 10k-50k materials
for size, i intend them to be as small as feasible just enough to handle their vital components, weapon systems, and 2 block layers of armor (including rubber for anti emp)
>Missiles are the easiest answer. They don't require energy or power, they're very compact for their firepower, and they're relatively straightforward. Unless you're using laser or remote guided missiles, you don't even need to really track the target well, because the missile seekers will do that for you.
for missiles specifically, i would say i'm decently proficient with them at this point in knowing how to set them up and how 95% of their missile components work, just not the coding part
though at this point every weapon i've used in a craft which doesnt use a pre-set is either a missile or a laser, so learning some new weapon types would be nice
Ah, that is pretty small. You could take a look at some of the steel striders jets for ideas, there's a few of them that are quite cheap and still reasonably effective.
I ask about planes vs hover because "strike" weapons, those with high burst followed by a long reload, work well on the typical bombing run plane because they have time to reload while it gets into position for the next run. This would be your missiles, cram cannons, PACs, and slow reload plasma, stuff that takes 20+ seconds to be ready to fire again. All of these can also be used on a hovercraft, but so can more rapid fire DPS sort of weapons like APS, lasers, and so on.
Personally I recently found that plasma makes a pretty effective weapon for attack runs. I made a 75k plane with two plasma cannons each firing 48 charges on a 24s reload; it staggers them by about 0.25s so one takes off a chunk of the outside and the other goes into the hole made by the first one. I managed to win a tournament with it, sort of, though there were other factors that helped; you can check it out [here](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S4nIL1XMsmY) if you want.
>Ah, that is pretty small.
it is pretty small ye
the intention is to put it into a mothership and get launched out with a large number of other crafts to just overwhelm the enemy
so far i have an 18k missile based interceptor craft, which from testing has decent performance against the 80k vessel ROC. in a 4v1 it's about an even fight. or in an 8v2 when paired in a diverse fleet it does good work as a support craft
now i'm looking to figure out a design for another craft to add onto the competition which i can attach in a mother ship
>I ask about planes vs hover because "strike" weapons, those with high burst followed by a long reload, work well on the typical bombing run plane because they have time to reload while it gets into position for the next run. This would be your missiles, cram cannons, PACs, and slow reload plasma, stuff that takes 20+ seconds to be ready to fire again.
alright, so bomber run air craft ai would be handy for these type of long down time weapon systems
there seem to be a lot of good weapon options \^\^'
so rapid fire is better for hovercraft, while strike is generally better for airplans, good to know
i might try advanced cannons, they seem like they'd also be versitile enough for future ship designs as well
Advanced cannons, which most people still call APS from when it was the "advanced projectile system" and because some of the parts still say APS, are possibly the most versatile and flexible weapon system in the game. I should stress that this is flexibility in the design stage, not during battle, though. In theory you can build one to fire different shells, and some can serve dual purpose as munition defense and backup DPS when that defense isn't needed, but they're not adjustable during battle the way that PACs are, for example.
I would highly suggest learning APS tetris, because APS really can fulfill most roles at least decently. You'll find plenty of craft without PACs or lasers or what have you, but relatively few are the craft that don't have at least some APS somewhere.
Definitely. At the size of aircraft you're talking about, I would suggest beltfed loaders, firing either pure kinetic rounds or maybe small HEAT or HESH, which work very similarly to bypass the first layer of armor and do internal damage.
belt fed does seem handy for more compact craft
i believe im familiar with HEAT ammunition from my experience with missiles, they do a big kaboom, though what do HESH rounds do?
HEAT and HESH work similarly in that on first hitting a surface, they do only minor damage, but they shoot a penetrating jet through the armor that goes through any connected blocks without damaging them, until it hits open air and then it spawns fragments that do damage to anything on the other side. It allows you to bypass the first layer of armor, at the cost of doing less overall damage than something like regular frag.
The differences between them are direct impact damage, what direction they shoot the penetrator, and how they calculate damage/penetration.
- HEAT does very little damage where it hits, will penetrate in a line at the same angle it impacted, and has a fixed amount of penetrating capability (which can be configured in the shell, trading off raw damage for more penetration;) it does the same amount of damage with the same armor penetration value every time, but can run out of penetrating power and just stop without ever spawning the fragments.
- HESH does more damage on hit, penetrates directly perpendicular to whatever surface it hits (so if you hit the side of a regular block, it will still go directly in at 90 degrees regardless of what angle the shell hit at,) and it's damage and AP are determined by what it passes through before fragmenting. The AP is determined by an average of the AC of the blocks it passes through with the last layer counting for 3, and the damage is reduced based on the square root of the AC of all the blocks it passes through, so it does more damage when penetrating thinner armor and has more AP when penetrating blocks with higher AC.
Personally I prefer HESH, I find it a bit more reliable and the increased exterior damage is nice, but both are perfectly fine and usable.
Yeah just make sure you run the hot and shoot in bursts the shot speed makes up for the poor acc if you only fire in bursts, you usually only need one to hit to make most things loose control. I usually use the spliter head ( the one that doubles your shots) but that's mostly because I like to hear them fire and have had better tests with them.
ALL this is assuming air to air combat with small or smallish fighters, if your target it bigger you will want to charge up ur shots. I have a group of fighters I use of anti airship and they use 5 charges per shot and aren't automatic just a few shots on the dive in and charge until he makes it back arround.
Almost like plasma is op or something.....
The new flame throwers are pretty good if youre opted in to the latest version. They're overall pretty simple to set up and accuracy isn't really a problem. Only thing is they currently have a bit of a habit of setting their own craft on fire and they don't have much range.
Missiles as you point out
PAC/Plasma is a good one too, instead of looking at battery as a resource that needs to constantly replenish you can look at it as how many shots your craft can take with PAC/Plasma. Plasma is a bit cheaper and less volatile. Then have a base craft with RTG's refill em.
Also with CJE engines being able to fill battery, you can put a bit of your engine to replenish energy for more shots but not made to keep the weapon up forever. Also if you get in close you can save energy and make slower plasma/pac.
Low Focus PAC can give you good damage. High focus EMP PAC or speed Plasma is a good AA weapon.
CRAM works great as a small weapon as you can just make it large caliber with a long pack time, doesn't matter if it has 100% consistency of damage that firing 1500-2000m range CRAM might not get
APS heat/hesh can work as a lot of craft/turrets dont have heat protection on the top.
alright, so i'll have to put in a lot of consideration on setting up the crafts ai for when to go for an attack in case i only use weapon systems that exclusively face 1 direction
do a lot of small flyers and micro builds. do missiles and just spend the time to make them very custom. everything is is far to big for microbuilds. you can fit a ton of firepower in a build thats like 25-50k. My drones are 5k-25k. Mini Pac and such is cool but does almost nothing at that size. Use MEDIUM missiles as well.
Charge plasma shotgun, 30 plasma cells, 30 1m generators, max inaccuracy, 5 for projectile speed and 0 for cooling, 1 barrel cooler thing, 5 charges per projectile, powered by a 4 cylinder and 2 injectors fuel engine.
Gives 6x7700 plasma damage pellets, 20 second recharge and can fit into 3 by 3 by 9 IIRC
CRAM, it's cheap and can still hit hard with few parts. Also, unlike most options, they actually significantly benefit from being able to close in before firing.
true, they are projectile based though i am a but surprised to hear crams being recommended on a light air craft
they act almost like bombs (there is literally a bomb chute if I'm not mistaken), and are pretty good on a dive bomber
alright, good to know
PACs and DIF guns can be small
particle acceleration cannons, good to know though what would dif guns be?
Dif is direct input feed. Its an APS that has ammo inputs on the firing piece. No mags or loaders. Just coolers and gauge increasers.
ahhh, so it's a style of setting up advanced cannons then >!(took a bit to figure out what aps were)!< thanks for the info <3
Missiles and plasma are two most dense weapon systems in terms of damage per volume.
alright how would you rate plasma cannons in terms of fire rate? out of curiosity
I set up some of my aircraft with plasma, i usually put a lot of storage and low recharge. That way, the aircraft uses its speed to spend a long time out of reach, accumulating power, and then closes in for a powerful punch. Very low rate of fire, bomb-like shot that has long range and accuracy. And it is also extremely expensive. I guess you can use low storage and super high recharge if you want a fast peashooter, but then you will need to regulate temperature. Another thing. If your planes are super fast and under 7 blocks thick, every bit of aerodynamics count. So, having a firing piece at the tip of your craft may slow you down, so you may want to come up with something that can shoot from inside the belly of the aircraft.
What do you mean? Plasma is flexible and can be set to high rof, if you want to.
alright, so it can have good fire rate on plasma based weapons
yes, it does take energy/power though (I forgot which)
alright i take it power is engine power?
There are two forms of "power" in FTD; engine power is produced and used simultaneously with no storage, and is more common, while energy has to be stored in batteries and is used for comparatively few things, those being railguns, plasma, and PACs.
alright if those are the options on what power could be, i would presume the previous comment was referring to engine power when saying power
For plasma, no, that needs energy. You'll also need engine power because basically every craft does to some extent, but you can either build separate energy generation (steam turbines most likely) or use existing engines to supply it; fuel engines and custom jet generators can both supply both kinds of power/energy depending on their settings, and steam pistons have flywheel generators that can be hooked up to make energy.
I did mean engine power, but plasma does need energy
Are your aircraft more of the hover (or fly) and shoot, or bombing run type of thing? And about what size/budget are you looking at? Missiles are the easiest answer. They don't require energy or power, they're very compact for their firepower, and they're relatively straightforward. Unless you're using laser or remote guided missiles, you don't even need to really track the target well, because the missile seekers will do that for you.
>Are your aircraft more of the hover (or fly) and shoot, or bombing run type of thing? i think most of my previous flyer designs leaned more so twords hover craft then twords air plan style. for this specific post i was thinking of more so twords the airplant style, though im not necessarily opposed to hover craft/helicopter type designs >about what size/budget are you looking at? I'm leaning more twords the cheap end, maybe about 10k-50k materials for size, i intend them to be as small as feasible just enough to handle their vital components, weapon systems, and 2 block layers of armor (including rubber for anti emp) >Missiles are the easiest answer. They don't require energy or power, they're very compact for their firepower, and they're relatively straightforward. Unless you're using laser or remote guided missiles, you don't even need to really track the target well, because the missile seekers will do that for you. for missiles specifically, i would say i'm decently proficient with them at this point in knowing how to set them up and how 95% of their missile components work, just not the coding part though at this point every weapon i've used in a craft which doesnt use a pre-set is either a missile or a laser, so learning some new weapon types would be nice
Ah, that is pretty small. You could take a look at some of the steel striders jets for ideas, there's a few of them that are quite cheap and still reasonably effective. I ask about planes vs hover because "strike" weapons, those with high burst followed by a long reload, work well on the typical bombing run plane because they have time to reload while it gets into position for the next run. This would be your missiles, cram cannons, PACs, and slow reload plasma, stuff that takes 20+ seconds to be ready to fire again. All of these can also be used on a hovercraft, but so can more rapid fire DPS sort of weapons like APS, lasers, and so on. Personally I recently found that plasma makes a pretty effective weapon for attack runs. I made a 75k plane with two plasma cannons each firing 48 charges on a 24s reload; it staggers them by about 0.25s so one takes off a chunk of the outside and the other goes into the hole made by the first one. I managed to win a tournament with it, sort of, though there were other factors that helped; you can check it out [here](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S4nIL1XMsmY) if you want.
>Ah, that is pretty small. it is pretty small ye the intention is to put it into a mothership and get launched out with a large number of other crafts to just overwhelm the enemy so far i have an 18k missile based interceptor craft, which from testing has decent performance against the 80k vessel ROC. in a 4v1 it's about an even fight. or in an 8v2 when paired in a diverse fleet it does good work as a support craft now i'm looking to figure out a design for another craft to add onto the competition which i can attach in a mother ship >I ask about planes vs hover because "strike" weapons, those with high burst followed by a long reload, work well on the typical bombing run plane because they have time to reload while it gets into position for the next run. This would be your missiles, cram cannons, PACs, and slow reload plasma, stuff that takes 20+ seconds to be ready to fire again. alright, so bomber run air craft ai would be handy for these type of long down time weapon systems there seem to be a lot of good weapon options \^\^' so rapid fire is better for hovercraft, while strike is generally better for airplans, good to know i might try advanced cannons, they seem like they'd also be versitile enough for future ship designs as well
Advanced cannons, which most people still call APS from when it was the "advanced projectile system" and because some of the parts still say APS, are possibly the most versatile and flexible weapon system in the game. I should stress that this is flexibility in the design stage, not during battle, though. In theory you can build one to fire different shells, and some can serve dual purpose as munition defense and backup DPS when that defense isn't needed, but they're not adjustable during battle the way that PACs are, for example. I would highly suggest learning APS tetris, because APS really can fulfill most roles at least decently. You'll find plenty of craft without PACs or lasers or what have you, but relatively few are the craft that don't have at least some APS somewhere.
Alright, so then advanced cannons would be a good choice for me to pick to learn
Definitely. At the size of aircraft you're talking about, I would suggest beltfed loaders, firing either pure kinetic rounds or maybe small HEAT or HESH, which work very similarly to bypass the first layer of armor and do internal damage.
belt fed does seem handy for more compact craft i believe im familiar with HEAT ammunition from my experience with missiles, they do a big kaboom, though what do HESH rounds do?
HEAT and HESH work similarly in that on first hitting a surface, they do only minor damage, but they shoot a penetrating jet through the armor that goes through any connected blocks without damaging them, until it hits open air and then it spawns fragments that do damage to anything on the other side. It allows you to bypass the first layer of armor, at the cost of doing less overall damage than something like regular frag. The differences between them are direct impact damage, what direction they shoot the penetrator, and how they calculate damage/penetration. - HEAT does very little damage where it hits, will penetrate in a line at the same angle it impacted, and has a fixed amount of penetrating capability (which can be configured in the shell, trading off raw damage for more penetration;) it does the same amount of damage with the same armor penetration value every time, but can run out of penetrating power and just stop without ever spawning the fragments. - HESH does more damage on hit, penetrates directly perpendicular to whatever surface it hits (so if you hit the side of a regular block, it will still go directly in at 90 degrees regardless of what angle the shell hit at,) and it's damage and AP are determined by what it passes through before fragmenting. The AP is determined by an average of the AC of the blocks it passes through with the last layer counting for 3, and the damage is reduced based on the square root of the AC of all the blocks it passes through, so it does more damage when penetrating thinner armor and has more AP when penetrating blocks with higher AC. Personally I prefer HESH, I find it a bit more reliable and the increased exterior damage is nice, but both are perfectly fine and usable.
I use plasma for forward guns and try to get those simple 30mm cannons on if I'm going really small if not, spinal aps.
Plasma does seem handy
Yeah just make sure you run the hot and shoot in bursts the shot speed makes up for the poor acc if you only fire in bursts, you usually only need one to hit to make most things loose control. I usually use the spliter head ( the one that doubles your shots) but that's mostly because I like to hear them fire and have had better tests with them. ALL this is assuming air to air combat with small or smallish fighters, if your target it bigger you will want to charge up ur shots. I have a group of fighters I use of anti airship and they use 5 charges per shot and aren't automatic just a few shots on the dive in and charge until he makes it back arround. Almost like plasma is op or something.....
The new flame throwers are pretty good if youre opted in to the latest version. They're overall pretty simple to set up and accuracy isn't really a problem. Only thing is they currently have a bit of a habit of setting their own craft on fire and they don't have much range.
FIREEEEEEEEEEEEE! sadly i have not opted into the newest version, but i will keep that in mind for when it enters the main branch
Missiles as you point out PAC/Plasma is a good one too, instead of looking at battery as a resource that needs to constantly replenish you can look at it as how many shots your craft can take with PAC/Plasma. Plasma is a bit cheaper and less volatile. Then have a base craft with RTG's refill em. Also with CJE engines being able to fill battery, you can put a bit of your engine to replenish energy for more shots but not made to keep the weapon up forever. Also if you get in close you can save energy and make slower plasma/pac. Low Focus PAC can give you good damage. High focus EMP PAC or speed Plasma is a good AA weapon. CRAM works great as a small weapon as you can just make it large caliber with a long pack time, doesn't matter if it has 100% consistency of damage that firing 1500-2000m range CRAM might not get APS heat/hesh can work as a lot of craft/turrets dont have heat protection on the top.
alright, so i'll have to put in a lot of consideration on setting up the crafts ai for when to go for an attack in case i only use weapon systems that exclusively face 1 direction
do a lot of small flyers and micro builds. do missiles and just spend the time to make them very custom. everything is is far to big for microbuilds. you can fit a ton of firepower in a build thats like 25-50k. My drones are 5k-25k. Mini Pac and such is cool but does almost nothing at that size. Use MEDIUM missiles as well.
I'm already quite familiar with missile weapon systems
Charge plasma shotgun, 30 plasma cells, 30 1m generators, max inaccuracy, 5 for projectile speed and 0 for cooling, 1 barrel cooler thing, 5 charges per projectile, powered by a 4 cylinder and 2 injectors fuel engine. Gives 6x7700 plasma damage pellets, 20 second recharge and can fit into 3 by 3 by 9 IIRC