Mass Drivers and HMA

[beachhead1985]

Anyone have a stable workaround for this?

Clearly I had it working once, as I have older mass driver designs. Now though, all a full, by-the-guides reinstall of HMA gets me is one viewing of an old design.

When I try to add a mass driver to a new design it instead adds dozens of empty weapons bays i can't delete. When I try to look at an old design again, it no longer shows a mass driver.

Please don't send me to the HM boards, those guys are so bitter it's toxic.

[Vition2]

I cheat, I'll make a standard custom capital weapon then when I place it into the warship, I dump an additional 9x small laser bay - which I delete when I'm done messing with weapons.

Not really what you asked for, but this works well enough for me.

[beachhead1985]

Whats the 9x SL bay for?

[Vition2]

Each railgun takes up 10 weapon slots, so I use them to make up the other nine as place holders.  The weapon itself I use a naval gauss template, modifying the stats as appropriate.

[beachhead1985]

But doesn't deleting them later mess things up?

[Hptm. Streiger]

Only if you add new weapons.
When you modify your weapons, you need to keep in mind that you need to add 9SL first.

[Vition2]

But doesn't deleting them later mess things up?

Only if there is more than 20 weapons in the arc, otherwise it doesn't have a noticeable effect.  If there are more than 20 weapons in the arc, then I remove them when I post/message a design.  The 4.5 tons goes into cargo, or I simply ignore the loss, because on warship mounting a mass drive, what's 4.5 tons to it.

[beachhead1985]

Only if there is more than 20 weapons in the arc, otherwise it doesn't have a noticeable effect.  If there are more than 20 weapons in the arc, then I remove them when I post/message a design.  The 4.5 tons goes into cargo, or I simply ignore the loss, because on warship mounting a mass drive, what's 4.5 tons to it.

But the fire control is calculated differently for mass drivers, no?

[Vition2]

But the fire control is calculated differently for mass drivers, no?

They take up 10 "weapon slots," and require 10 gunners to operate, otherwise no.  I hope you don't think I'm speaking down to you, but I'm going to try to break down my methodology for you.

Step 1: Building the Weapon
I build the small mass driver as a single capital-sized weapon.

Step 2: Placing the Weapon on the Warship
I put the custom-built mass driver on an arc in the warship.  I know the mass driver takes up a total of 10 weapons so I add 9 small, relatively mass-less, weapons in a single bay as placeholders. (example: 9 small lasers)

Step 3: Add the rest of the weapons
I add the rest of the weapons I want to mount on the warship.  HMA will at this point automatically calculate the additional fire control needed if there are more than 20 "weapons" mounted. 

Step 4: Making sure I have proper crewing
I add 9 crew over the minimum required.  In some cases I could have gotten away with 8, but it is easier to just add nine and have an additional 1 crew than to calculate it by hand.  The minimum gunners needed number is already being calculated with 10 weapons in mind, so this is to make sure I am properly crewed.

Step 5: Removal of the placeholders
a) If there are less than 20 "weapons" in the arc the mass driver is located in, I can just delete the 9 small lasers.  As there is no additional fire control tonnage to worry about, they are a non-issue.

b) If there are more than 20 "weapons" in the arc the mass driver is located in, then I keep the 9 small lasers until I finish the warship.  Once I have finished the warship, I will click on the "View text Tech Readout" button, then "Copy to Clipboard" and will paste it to my preferred document editor (I use Google Docs, but Microsoft Word, text documents, or pretty much any other document editor will work).  At this point I find the bay of 9 small lasers, select it and delete it.  I will usually ignore the lost tonnage, hand-waving it away, because it is only 4.5 tons, I would need to have more than a thousand weapons on the arc for me to consider worrying about the fire control tonnage these weapons take up (example, if there are 1000 weapons on the arc, the total tonnage of the 9 small lasers and their associated fire control is 225 tons, that's 4.5 tons for the lasers and 220.5 tons for the fire control - when it comes to the mass of most warships, this is an insignificant number).

I hate to say it, but if you are unable to follow the above, then I don't know if I have the capability to explain it in a way you will understand.

[beachhead1985]

This is much clearer to me now and based on what I understand about HMA, there should be no problems with the ammo.

But there is a 70-pt damage limit per bay, right? How do you get around that? Do you build two weapons for the larger mass drivers or does HMA somehow take care of that itself?

[Vition2]

This is much clearer to me now and based on what I understand about HMA, there should be no problems with the ammo.

But there is a 70-pt damage limit per bay, right? How do you get around that? Do you build two weapons for the larger mass drivers or does HMA somehow take care of that itself?

Actually it's not even an issue.  The 70-pt damage limit per bay only comes into effect if you have more than one weapon in the bay and each of them are less the 70 damage.  A single weapon at, say 140 damage, would show up as 140 damage.  Examples attached (PS, first attempt at attachments, lets see how it works).

First attachment includes the parameters of how I built the custom weapon.

The second is how it appears on entry into the weapon arc.