I recently finished researching Advanced Spinal Weapons and Reduced Size Laser (0.5) techs to support a design I want to try out for a 1000 ton fast-attack craft (FAC) with a single 38cm spinal laser. It has a super low rate of fire (basically a 1 hour long recharge time) but the weapon is dirt cheap, only 15 build points, has massive damage for the tech level (37 damage at point blank range), high penetration due to being a laser (37 damage would pierce 10 layers of armor and still have damage left over to do internal damage), etc. The idea is to fly a group of high-speed FACs into range, shoot, and fly away to recharge. Kind of like doing a bombing run. Got this idea from another player who did it with carronades, which are similarly high damage but worse penetration, range, and cost.
Then I thought to myself… can spinal weapons be used to build STO units? Yes, yes they can. And thus, a new, super cheap STO was born, for when you need to put a bunch of giant holes in something once per encounter with the enemy:
STO - Last Sunrise
Transport Size (tons) 372, Cost 57, Armour 12, Hit Points 36
Annual Maintenance Cost 7.1 Resupply Cost 0
Laser, 38cm, 01h, 1800km
Range 320,000 km Tracking 5,000 km/s Damage 37 / 5 Shots 1 Rate of Fire 3700
Maximum Fire Control Range 320,000km Chance to Hit at Max Range 0%
Maximum Sensor Range 2,711,630km Max Range vs Missile 244,047 km
ECCM-2
Non-Combat Class
Duranium 3 Corbomite 6.82 Boronide 3.8 Vendarite 0.24 Uridium 34.1 Corundium 9.1
Development Cost 534
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This kills the Raider. 
I’m curious how this would perform as a ground-based defense against Advanced Precursors. If you have the right mass of fire, the rate of fire probably doesn’t matter nearly as much. That could help avoid the problem Steve showed in his recent AAR with the ground forces repeatedly getting wiped out.
My STO batterries always include some Maximal spinal weapons for long range and big hits as well as the biggest weapon with a 5 sec recharge time, usually a mix of laser and Plasma . Several of these batterries wiped out a large precursor fleet which had forced my fleet to flee after killing 5 of my 40,000 ton cruisers. They were weak in a beam engagement and hung around the planet to die, they took most of the guns with them but it was a victroy my fleet could not win against faster ships with lots of better missiles
It does, but given you have to research Spinal and Advanced Spinal first, Raiders probably aren’t that big a threat by the time you can start manufacturing these since you’ll already have encountered them and optimized ship designs to protect against them.
Which other player was that, do you remember? Were they handsome? They sound handsome.
And are you sure about the lasers being cheaper? In my cursory research, a plasma carronade with the same damage output of 37 (which does range reduced to 370,000 km) and the same capacitor recharge rate of 1 produces a marginally cheaper weapon at 12.2 BP, but crucially, its rate of fire is only 185 seconds - so you could have three minute dive volleys instead of hour-long laser volleys. I suppose it depends on doctrine and the ship mounting it. Both components also happen to be the same size, coincidentally.
The equivalent advanced spinal plasma carronade:
Advanced Spinal 25cm (37.5cm) Carronade
Damage Output 37 Rate of Fire 185 seconds Range Modifier 10,000
Max Range 370,000 km Carronade Size 6 HS (300 tons) Laser HTK 3
Power Requirement 37 Recharge Rate 1
Cost 12.2 Crew 18
Spinal Weapon Only
Development Cost 246 RP
Materials Required
Duranium 2.4
Boronide 2.4
Corundium 7.3
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Whoever he was, he was devastatingly handsome.
You’re right, the laser is slightly more expensive (15 vs 12), and the recharge rate is much better on the carronade. Downside is you have to get to 10k km to get full damage, so you’re now exposed to gauss and small railgun fire, which you’re not if you use the laser at 50k km.
The laser also penetrates 10 layers of armor with leftover for internal damage, whereas the carronade penetrates 6 layers with one damage left over for internal (albeit with a much wider hole in the armor, so higher likelihood of overlapping with another shot).
Pros and cons to either approach. Personally I’m excited about the potential for the weapon to also be used as a cheap STO (per my other thread on that topic), where the range matters, so I’m leaning toward the lasers. Will let you know how that works out for me in my game as I playtest.
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