Talk:Gauss Cannon

Profitability

This weapon is outrageously profitable to manufacture, paying back your entire investment in about 33 days and then proceeding to return 1100% return on investment - basically doubling your money every month if you re-invest in Gauss Cannon manufacture. So describing it in the main article as "quite profitable if you have some idle time" is a bit of an understatement!

Ammo Manufacturing

Interesting point about submarine Gauss Cannon ammo: Clearly there is huge demand for this weapon, with the world's navies queuing round the block to pay through the nose for them. And yet the absolute maximum world production of ammo for this weapon - that everyone is buying - is less that 200 rounds per day (due to the manufacturing limit of only one item of each type per hour per base). Given all the Gauss Cannons the world's governments are buying, the laws of supply and demand would dictate that Gauss Cannon ammo is the most profitable item in the game! Sadly not, of course, the ammo changes hands for no more that the price of its raw parts, without any return for labour or investment. Not only are the governments not interested in actually firing these weapons, they don't even seem to want to load their magazines!

By the way, because of this manufacturing limit, if you ever contemplate using Gauss Cannon yourself on aircraft or in tanks it's wise to assign 5 technicians - no more - in each base to be permanently making Gauss Cannon ammo. Each base will manufacture 24 rounds a day, which hopefully will be enough for your needs.

Combat Effectiveness and Cost Effectiveness

I think this weapon is perhaps under-rated. It actually has twice the firepower (average damage per second) as the DUP Torpedo, with about 5 times the total payload (total damage dealt). Let me say that again: twice the firepower, five times the payload. That's worth thinking about.

Obviously the lower range is a serious disadvantage, but if you absolutely wanted to down a Large USO, on a potentially one-way mission (with multiple craft hopefully), dual Gauss Cannon could actually be much better than dual DUPs. And it does have stand-off advantage on 2 USO, the Escort (Small) and Hunter (Medium). So it might be worth keeping one around.

The XcomUtil version is probably more useful. With the increased range of 36km, it can stand-off against all Small and Medium USOs. To compensate, the damage (and payload) is halved, but this still makes the firepower (damage per second) roughly the same (94%) as the DUP Torpedo.

The higher payload means the craft armed with Gauss Cannon can perform multiple successful engagements before re-arming - as much as five times as many intercepts, if there are targets available. Also, the arming rate is at least 3 times higher than missile-armed craft, thus it returns to alert status up to 2 hours earlier than a missile-armed craft. (By the way, can anyone confirm the actual reload rate, I'm assuming it's either 50 or 100?).

As the main article states, the main drawback is the ammunition production. Given the performance characteristics above, you would think it might be worthwhile to allocate 5 technicians per base to manufacturing Gauss Cannon ammo full time, to have a reasonable amount of ammo in stores. To get the true costs you must consider the opportunity cost of manufacturing Gauss Cannon ammo. If you can make Gauss Cannon ammo, you can make Gauss Cannon. Technicians who are making Gauss Cannon will gross you nearly $100/hr. Therefore Technicians who are diverted to making Gauss Cannon ammo costs you $100/hr in foregone cash. This pushes the cost per round from $200, to about $380 including labour, to around $877/rd (including Gauss Cannon lost from the extra 2 Workshop spaces used for ammo).

However, even taking into account opportunity costs, the Gauss Cannon is about 4 times cheaper in ammo consumption per point of damage delivered. The Gauss Cannon also delivers its damage more continuously and more predictable (with less random variation) than the DUP Torpedo.

In conclusion I would definitely recommend considering arming some of your craft with Gauss Cannon, whether you use XComUtil or the standard game. If you use XComUtil, use Gauss-armed craft against all Small or Medium USOs. If you do not need XcomUtil, you need to be able to identify the craft (Escort or Hunter) before attacking. If it is not one of these craft, break off, or do an Aggressive attack and be prepared to take damage.

Of course a single standard craft weapon load across the fleet is more cost effective than maintaining a mixed fleet. So since the Gauss Cannon can't tackle the larger USOs, it might not be too practical. Due to the long delays in arming craft, it's not usually feasible to rearm a craft after the threat is detected. Non-stand off attacks are very costly to make in terms of repair time, during which time your interceptor craft are not available, not to mention total loss of the craft and weapons. Large craft do tend to linger, so you might have time to arm up with DUPs (4 hrs plus?). If they are Battleships or Dreadnoughts and you really have to attack them, Gauss Cannon and Aggressive attack might be the better option anyway. But in order to avoid having to match interceptor craft to targets, and to avoid maintaing a mixed fleet or rearming on the fly, you might want to stick with DUP Torpedos after all, until Sonic Oscillators are available. These are the clear winner overall in craft armamament, no question about that.

Last thought - if you do use Gauss Cannon on your subs, be careful having any Coelacanth/Gauss tanks in the same base, or they will steal your precious ammo!

Spike 09:00, 11 October 2008 (CDT)