Catastrophic Success

I've been experimenting with weapons tuning.

Taking a page from the guys at Mushroom Fleet, I had created my own ballistics gel  It was 100 blocks deep.  Plenty for the sorts of test I've been doing.  So I started playing with cluster formations.  I had been very pleased when I switched from monolithic uber-guns, to horizontal stacks of clusters (5x5x3).  The shots didn't line up exactly following each other like I'd hoped, but without any significant increase in power draw, I had seriously increased my cutting  power against hull.



So I continued playing around while building the Soyuz  She has several large fixed guns, and it seemed a good opportunity.  Something about the barrel shape of the guns suggested a pattern of four longitudinal clusters, forming the barrels of the guns rather than enclosing them.  Then I thought... "What if I set each  cluster a block or two back from its neighbors so they strike in quick succession, but not simultaneously..."
The result was a "gun barel" composed from 4 clusters, each 1x1x20, and staggered on the X axis, then another 4 clusters right behind.

The results were spectacular.  Each cluster neatly removed a single non-hardened block, doing 115 points of damage.  Sure enough a single click from each double barreled 16 cluster gun removed 16 blocks from the gel.  I went ahead and rebuilt all the guns on the Soyuz in the same pattern... 88 clusters.

A 1 click shot later, 88 blocks were gone from the gel.  Awesome.  But a 1 click test doesn't tell you much about damage over time, so I went for a 5 second burn on a fresh gel.   3 seconds and change later I was looking at a hole bored fully through my 100 block gel, and an overheating core on the other end.

... well, crap, I need a new gel!

So I built myself a nice new ballistics gel.  It's 200 blocks long and exactly 458000 blocks (for ease of calculation).  Now better equipped I tried my test again.   A 5 second burn from the Soyuz with her new weapons penetrated 145 blocks deep into the block, and removed 519.6 blocks per second.  (!!? Really?)  OMG, my previous weapons systems are CRAP!  Not to mention the cost and energy savings.!

Well.. I was already rebuilding my ships with the new blocks.  I might as well retool the weapons while I'm at it..

But wait.  My turrets are also built on the "more is better" school.  How much do my turrets suck? Aww I'm going to have to rebuild them as well...

So I did, with AMC arrays built on the same spiral pattern as the larger weapons.  Instead of two arrays, each of the new smaller cannons has six arrays, each array is a 100+ damage per pulse block killer.  I repeated my ballistics gel tests with old and new turrets.  In a 5 second burn, the old turrets removed 17.6 blocks per second, and penetrated 30 blocks into the gel.  The new turrets removed 37 blocks per second, and penetrated 48 blocks into the gel.... right.  New turrets for all my ships... Wheeeee.

Old Turret

Old: 30 blocks... Respectable

New turret

New:48 Blocks - More than respectable!