Q: Does anyone use 'Silo' Batteries when building?

[scJazz]

Suicide Junkie said:
The to-hit chance really does not matter...
You will do more damage per kt per turn with a larger mount regardless of accuracy.<SNIP>

Strictly speaking yes of course you are right. However...
given the scenarios where hitting the target at all, leaky shields and armor ala your own CB mod, is likely to BreakStuff(c) then if you are having accuracy problems it is better to use lots of little guns in order to make sure that you get a chance to BreakStuff(c) every turn.

If you manage to BreakStuff(c) then the enemy ship likely has less of a chance to BreakYourStuff(c) when his chance to fire comes up. Either because he can't move, lost his targetting systems, or better still doesn't have any guns left because he went the one huge gun route and you broke it.

[Fyron]

Having more weapons also means you have more chances to miss. If you have 50 heavy mount weapons and a 25% to hit rate, you will on average hit with 12.5 weapons. If you have 100 unmounted weapons and a 25% to hit rate, you will on average hit with 25 weapons. If the first set of weapons is doing 1.5 times as much damage (as heavy weapons in stock do), you will do 37.5x damage (where x is damage from one unmounted weapon). Now compare to the 25 unmounted weapons that hit, you do 25x damage. Which is better?

If you only have 3 or 4 ships, you might occasionally see a return with the mix of weapon mounts. But when you get any size of fleet, it averages out to make the unmounted weapons less than useful.

[Suicide Junkie]

In the case of leaky shields, small damage amounts tend to do absolutely nothing.

Consider the case of the first battle in CBmod; I warped a shielded (~40 points) carrier through a warppoint into a fleet of about 10 frigates with 40mm lasers.

They managed to damage one single crew quarters (5 hp) in the whole battle (hitting for 300-500 damage overall), while my interceptor fighters picked at their unshielded hulls.


Aside from that, you will on average break more stuff first using the large mounts, thanks to the fact that they do more damage.

You would have to have a chance to hit low enough that the heavy mounted guns are unlikely to score a hit but high enough that more shots from the smaller guns will likely score a single hit.
And, you would have to be almost guaranteed that the first small hit will deal a critical hit to the enemy.

This only happens if they have very few hitpoints compared to the weapon damage (IE the heavy guns are overkill), or if the mod gives some critical components the armor ability (hit first) just to be mean.