Artillery in Capital Command comes in two flavors. The main battery is for killing ships. Secondary batteries are mostly for staying alive, although they have other uses as well.
Both types are similar in that they use guns to shoot unguided projectiles. They differ in almost every other respect: ordnance, physical placement, fire control, ammunition storage and handling procedures are all almost completely unrelated.
The Main Battery
Main battery guns are giant beasts that fire huge payloads at high velocity. They are big, heavy and complex. Only large ships can mount them, and each main battery turret or casemate is an important part of the ship's structure.
The main battery is usually positioned near the ship's center of mass, so the recoil doesn't set the ship spinning, with the guns grouped together so they can all attack the same target. They are usually housed in armored turrets that provide protection and allow wide arcs of fire. Casemates, where the guns are positioned inside the ship and fire through openings in the hull, are simpler to build and provide increased protection, but the guns are far less maneuverable.
Main battery reload cycles are notoriously slow, as the guns need time to prepare to fire and giant elevators deliver the shells from the ship's magazine. One minute between shots is a normal cadence, with heavier guns taking even longer. Aiming is also a challenge, especially at longer ranges, but when properly aimed, the main battery is surprisingly accurate.
Secondary Batteries
Secondary batteries consist of a number of light guns mounted together somewhere on the hull. They shoot light ordnance at high rates of fire, and their primary use is to destroy incoming main-battery shells and missiles.
While secondaries are optimized for point defense, they can be used to attack ships, especially at short range. Using the appropriate ammo type, they are effective against small, light ships, or to disable particular systems on larger targets. As an added advantage, the small secondary projectiles are very difficult to track accurately, and therefore largely immune to point defense. This is offset by their low damage and relatively short effective range.
Because of the high rate of fire, each secondary battery has an internal ammunition magazine which feeds all its guns. When the battery magazine is empty, the battery ceases fire while it refills from the ship's primary magazine. Captains must be aware of their secondary ammo status, or risk finding themselves defenseless just as the enemy sends a salvo their way!
Overall, compared to missiles, artillery projectiles are much cheaper: all the propulsion and guidance hardware stays ship-side, instead of being attached to the payload and smashing into the target. The smaller, less complex ordnance also means that reloading a gun is generally easier and quicker than readying a missile for launch.
The down side is that the gun itself is a large, cumbersome, complex piece of machinery that takes far more effort to fit onto a ship. The main battery is a major design element on any warship, and even secondary batteries require significant internal space and must be positioned to cover the expected angles of incoming attacks.
This means that there will usually be fewer guns on the ship, than missiles in its tubes. While artillery can inflict very high damage, it cannot deliver the burst of destruction of a full missile volley. Instead, the main battery is best used to deliver sustained damage with repeated hammer blows, while secondaries disable systems on the enemy ship and neutralize incoming attacks.
That's all for this Tactical Analysis. For next time, I'm planning an unglamorous but vital subject: Damage Control!
As always, thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this, add the game to your wishlist, leave a comment and tell your friends!
Take care
The dev