APS
APS (Advanced Projectile System), also known as Advanced Cannons, are a versatile ballistic weapons system that can be mounted on Vehicles, Structures, or Fortresses.
A variety of shell, acceleration, and caliber types means that APS is one of the most adaptable and complicated weapon systems in the game.
Basic Shell Components
A shell is made up of a series of components arranged front to back. Most component functionalities are self-explanatory, but some have implied functionality.
- A head is vital for most functional shells and each conveys special modifiers. Shells without heads are extremely slow and inaccurate.
- Gunpowder charges can be partially filled to fine-tune a shell's length to make it fit perfectly in a given loader.
- Shells with kinetic heads will damage blocks until their KD runs out, then detonate their payload if they have one. If they cannot destroy a single block, they may ricochet instead.
- 1 rail draw translates to 1 recoil.
- Stabiliser fin bodies normally reduce a shell's inaccuracy to 95% of its original value. Putting fins as the head of a shell turns it into a "fintip" shell, reducing its inaccuracy to 20% of its original value. This makes even guns without recoil absorbers accurate, but still entails the velocity penalty of the shell not having a "head."
| Component | Type | Functionality |
|---|---|---|
| Example | Head | |
| Example | Body | |
| Example | Base |
Types of Shells
It is generally advisable to make a shell before creating a gun. Several options are arrayed below.
| Shell Type | Functionality |
|---|---|
| Propellant | |
| Gunpowder | Using exclusively gunpowder casings to propel the shell. |
| Rail | Using exclusively rail draw to propel the shell. |
| Rail Assist | A hybrid use of gunpowder and rail. |
| Damage Type | |
| AP | Piercing through a line of components with kinetic damage. |
| Thump | Using a hollow point head to convert kinetic damage into thump damage. |
| EMP/Munition Defense/Frag/HE/Incendiary | Purely using the aforementioned damage type as the shell and head. |
| HE Special | An HE shell with the head replaced by a shaped charge (HEAT) or squash head (HESH). |
| AP-Payload (APHE, AP Frag, etc.) | A generally high-caliber shell using payload bodies combined with a kinetic damage head. Destroys target armor and then explodes. |
| APHEAT | APHE, but the forwardmost HE body is replaced by a shaped charge secondary. |
| Disruptor | An EMP Shell fitted with a disruptor conduit to interfere with shields. |
| Smoke | Applies smoke to a target. |
Aokishuba's APS Shell Optimizer
Extended Notes
Kinetic:
Shell Values: Kinetic Damage, Armour Penetration, APxKD
Deals damage based on:
KD * min(AP/AC,1) * cos(ImpactAngle * if(SabotHead,0.75,1))
Impact angle is angle from surface normal.
Pros: Linear damage profile, minimizes damage to armor, high shell speed, 2nd most consistent damage type
Cons: minimizes damage to internals, angles affect damage, chance of overpen in both armor thickness and AC
General Uses: Creating holes in the enemy, removing armor.
Notes: Sabot gets impact angle reduced by 75% for better damage against wedge armor (link this in armor pls)
Thump:
Shell Values: Thump Damage, AP, APxTD (idk the actual name)
Deals damage based on:
TD * min(AP/AC,1)
Pros: Does not waste damage, consistent damage, gains damage underwater like HE
Cons: Low damage, maximizes damage to armor
General Uses: Consistently chunking blocks
Notes: Sabot body is often used here, but using sabot body will lower shell health.
High Explosive:
Shell Values: Explosive Potential, Explosion Radius, Special Factor
Deals damage based on:
(EP * Potential Modifiers + Potential Gains) / AC
(I believe this is right)
Pros: High potential damage, high damage against internals, gains damage in confined spaces, gains damage underwater, knockback
Cons: Damage is highly situation based, deals damage over an area
Notes: HE has damage potential adjusted by a variety of factors, including: containment, depth in water, air bleed, health of the block destroyed, did we destroy the block instantly, and explosion size.
Frag:
Shell Values: Fragment Damage, Fragment Count, AP = 4, Fragment angle, Fragment elevation angle (?)
Deals kinetic damage where fragment damage is KD. Fragment damage is adjusted by fragment angle.
Pros: High consistent payload damage, no over AP, high internal damage
Cons: Can someone tell me what frag is bad against?
Note: It's a good generalist shell.
Gunpowder Vs. Rail
Gunpowder cannons only require sufficient ammunition access and cooling to fire loaded shells. Railguns, meanwhile, need a steady stream of generated energy.
Pure gunpowder (GP) guns are often more efficient in materials per firepower than railguns; the latter requires an investment into energy-generating systems (which burn additional materials themselves), while the former does not. This simple difference generally makes GP more viable in the early game, when materials are short, enemies are less capable, and the extra potential of railguns may be wasted.
On the other hand, for the same-sized autoloader, railguns can reach higher velocities compared to GP. Alternatively, railguns can fire a heavier shell at the same velocity. Railguns are also often more efficient in volume per firepower. Having a smaller gun with the same offensive power means it can be more easily fit onto a ship, and will not be as bulky to work around for considerations such as firing arcs.
The systems used to power a railgun can be placed more flexibly; although they contribute to a railgun's firepower, engines and turbines can be placed separately from a railgun turret. For instance, ships can have these systems below the waterline or in heavily armored enclosures. Guns, meanwhile, almost always have at least their turret caps out of the water, and thus require a higher placement on the ship, adversely affecting stability.
Basic Gun Components
Firing Piece - Core of each gun; each gun has only one.
Autoloaders - Hold shells to be loaded into the firing piece.
Recoil Absorbers - Absorb recoil. A shell firing without completely absorbed recoil will suffer substantial accuracy penalties. Guns should absorb all or none of their fired recoil.
Types of Guns
APS cannons by their very nature can be set up in almost any way. The following listed are merely a few somewhat optimal archetypes. Shell suggestions are based on mathematically optimized configurations from Ao Kishuba's scripts.
Sandblasters
Guns with high rpm but low damage. The focus is granular damage, in hopes to prevent overpen. Common designs may focus on raw DPS or high DPS/Area. They tend to use kinetic or thump with fins, tracers, or basebleeders as the body, but frag is a common alternative. The common pitfalls are lack of burst damage and consequential damage being concentrated on armor rather than internals. Common shell gauge is 50mm, with maxed out shell body count at 1m shell length. Kinetic is common, but APPayload is used. These shells can also avoid LAMS due to the small detection range. 1m shells with a caliber of 18-50mm work well here.
These guns often use multibarrel due to their small size and desire for a high fire rate. They may use heavy heads to take down missiles and CRAM shells, but handily double as anti-aircraft armament. Kinetic shells will generally use all 20 components and be as low caliber as possible to maximize the amount of gunpowder used. HEAT shells also work well to bypass armor despite an individual shell's lack of hitting power. Smaller targets often cannot competently implement air gaps, allowing small caliber HEAT to fish for critical hits on internal components.
Autocannons
1-3 meter shells with a caliber of 100-200mm. Autocannons fire relatively quickly and use relatively weak shells, relying on repeated impacts to deal sustained damage. They often use kinetic, frag, or HEAT rounds. Most shells are capable of removing a few metal beams.
Main Cannons
The bigger the better. For the sake of organization, this category refers to pure GP shells, traveling around 400-1000 m/s. These shells work best as payload or AP-Payload, a role in which smaller calibers cannot compare. Their AP-Payload DPS per cost and volume is often squared compared to likewise configured smaller calibers. 6-8m shells, 400-500mm work well. Craft will often use sets of 4-12 of these guns firing at once, attempting to overwhelm defenses with volley fire.
Railguns
Adding rail assist allows AP-Payload shells to penetrate significantly more armor, oftentimes passing through one or more single blocks of heavy armor and critically damaging internals. Rail-assist systems may not reach the same raw DPS as GP cannons for their resource investment, but will in exchange have greater penetrating power and better hit rates against faster-moving targets. Large rail assist rounds can fly up to 2000 m/s, while pure rods of AP-Payload max out at around 1600 m/s. 6-8m shells, 400-500mm work well.
Unorthodox Guns
The below weapons are not optimal in the conventional sense but have their own specialized advantages. It is not advised to use them unless you know what you are doing.
DIF (Direct Input Feed) Guns
Instead of using autoloaders and clips to store shells, an advanced cannon can take in shells directly from input feeders connected to a firing piece. Removing the need for autoloaders and clips naturally makes the gun much smaller and cheaper.
A firing piece can take a max of 5 direct feeders, but adding any components behind the firing piece bumps it down to four. Thus, most DIF guns can fire five times without reloading (1 for each of the 4 feeders + 1 in the chamber).
DIF guns can take advantage of five essentially free shots to load massive 10m long 500mm "rods" physically impossible to fit in any autoloader. Fighting range tends to be short due to minimal GP modules (less coolers and more payload). The focus is high burst damage, low upfront cost, and spamability. DIF has a reload penalty of 2x, resulting in reload times of up to 2 minutes.
DIF-Flak (Munition Defense) CIWS
DIF rods can stop massive bursts of CRAM shells or large and huge missiles by swapping the payload entirely to flak/munition defense. The goal is for clearing large areas of cram or missiles for as cheap and small as possible. Accuracy is of no concern due to the high explosion radius (30m), so absorbers are never needed.
Rail Burst
Optimally 1m 225mm frag fintip. Rail draw at (insert optimal rail draw here.) Railguns have no intrinsic cooldown; they only need to have enough stored rail energy to fire a shell at their desired charge level. A railgun with enough magnet fixtures can fire every single autoloader nearly instantaneously to overwhelm LAMS and deal massive alpha damage. Fintip is vital for maintaining accuracy as no recoil absorption mechanism will compensate for this fire rate.
Rail-Burst CIWS
For the same reason as DIF, Flak Burst excels at specialized CIWS duty due to the capability for massive alpha damage against incoming munitions. Accuracy does not matter for flak, as the shells have a large blast radius.
Kinetic:
Shell Values: Kinetic Damage, Armour Penetration, APxKD
Deals damage based on:
KD * min(AP/AC,1) * cos(ImpactAngle * if(SabotHead,0.75,1))
Impact angle is angle from surface normal.
Pros: Linear damage profile, minimizes damage to armor, high shell speed, 2nd most consistent damage type
Cons: minimizes damage to internals, angles affect damage, chance of overpen in both armor thickness and AC
General Uses: Creating holes in the enemy, removing armor.
Notes: Sabot gets impact angle reduced by 75% for better damage against wedge armor (link this in armor pls)
Thump:
Shell Values: Thump Damage, AP, APxTD (idk the actual name)
Deals damage based on:
TD * min(AP/AC,1)
Pros: Does not waste damage, consistent damage, gains damage underwater like HE
Cons: Low damage, maximizes damage to armor
General Uses: Consistently chunking blocks
Notes: Sabot body is often used here, but using sabot body will lower shell health.
High Explosive:
Shell Values: Explosive Potential, Explosion Radius, Special Factor
Deals damage based on:
(EP * Potential Modifiers + Potential Gains) / AC
(I believe this is right)
Pros: High potential damage, high damage against internals, gains damage in confined spaces, gains damage underwater, knockback
Cons: Damage is highly situation based, deals damage over an area
Notes: HE has damage potential adjusted by a variety of factors, including: containment, depth in water, air bleed, health of the block destroyed, did we destroy the block instantly, and explosion size.
Frag:
Shell Values: Fragment Damage, Fragment Count, AP = 4, Fragment angle, Fragment elevation angle (?)
Deals kinetic damage where fragment damage is KD. Fragment damage is adjusted by fragment angle.
Pros: High consistent payload damage, no over AP, high internal damage
Cons: Can someone tell me what frag is bad against?
Note: It's a good generalist shell.