kind of off-topic but i love CRAMs as a sci-fi weapon concept. it functions in a way that sort of reminds me of a lot of speculative sci-fi weapons, but has the vibes of an age-of-sail cannon, which means it can do either end of FtD's natural anachronism, while also working in a way that's just kind of fun and intuitive to visualize. you're basically packing and throwing snowballs at the other guy, but the snow is metal at sintering temperature with the odd bit of pyrotechnic or explosive mixed in- it all comes together to make it sort of self-explanatory. you, in building the gun literally called a "CRAM," are just trying to cram as many of the Funny Pellets into the allotted volume as you reasonably can to make a weapon that instantly gives the enemy every illness and several new orifices.
@carius2221 The thing that it reminds me of is a Macron gun, which Spacedock has a video on. They basically shoot bursts of microscopic, statically charged projectiles. To maximize surface area for holding a charge, they'd be tiny tubes, which could contain miniaturized payloads- Spacedock notably points out the possibility of loading them with fissile material, which after many hits could collectively form a supercritical assembly on the target and essentially act as a nuke, but they'd be kinetic by default and could carry all sorts of payloads. It's basically like if a CRAM had millions of tiny pellets and didn't bother to mash them into a single projectile first.
Wonderful timing! I got this game around christmas and couldn't find a modern tutorial for anything! Ended up using advanced cannons because, despite the name, they're weirdly easer to understand for me :P
Man I started playing a week ago and I've been watching your like 5 year old tutorials and suddenly there's brand new ones. Neat! Would love an updated detection one
I was just looking at your other video from a year ago building a ship from the ground up and I've had to improvise a lot, made the ship too thin, having to settle for a 7x7 CRAM turret and wasnt sure how to do the tetris so this is a life saver! even if it is bad tetris, its better than nothing (just bought this game yesterday and hoping to go through the whole tutorial, can't wait to see more of your remastered tutorials! :D)😅
Thank you for these videos. I’m new to this game and the struggle is real 😂. So I look forward to researching all the aspects of designing ships and such with your videos. I watched a video of yours about spacecraft and managed to make a decent spy satellite from the advice given by you. Thanks again
I would like to correct you on Penetration Depth fuses, they are actually very good against craft with empty space in them when set properly, provided you don't mind shells failing to detonate if they don't go through anything important. This is because the fuse only counts distance traveled through material, not air. Good if you can correctly estimate the approximate thickness of internal systems and the armor protecting them, wasteful if you set them with too long or short of a fuse. Also, I have been conducting extensive trials of multi-barrel CRAM cannons recently using variants of GMODISM's Gimle-class battleship, and I've found that having multiple barrels can be similarly effective to single barrels if they're staggered properly and have appropriate payloads and fuses.
You 'ain't wrong, but that's the problem: pen-depth is good for spaced armor, or thick armor, but not both. I find that time after impact is just generally more reliable against unknown values of armor. 🤷
@@BorderWise12 one specific use case for pen-depth is incendiary CRAMs - for when you want to be certain that the shell is exploding in material instead of empty space (which can sometimes mean no fires start)
I enjoy cram cannons, but I could never find a use for them beyond bombardment on structures and slow surface ships and rarely, doom frag AA. They are indeed really powerful but are hindered so much by their lack of versatility below doom cram level damage. But it is still enjoyable to watch a frag cram barrage one hit a Singularity. Still appreciate the tutorial tho! And another note, I wish they increase its projectile speed at lower gauges
22:00 I think the bomb chute is basically a noob trap. If you want to make a CRAM bomber, my advice is to just have a normal CRAM cannon fully inside the bomber, with enough elevation to be able to poke the barrel out through the bottom, and then shoot down at like a 60 degree angle or so. And I am not sure how they could make the bomb chute better than that, because it simply utterly sucks at hitting things with the low velocity.
the high altitude and low altitude fuses are used for the incredibly rare AA CRAM flak cannon, because the amount of flak you can fit inside a cram is very very silly that said, a low depth one is better used for naval ship bombers that miss and hit the water at 0m to 5m, detonating early to still hit the target
Quick question on incendiary cram. If you have a mix of hardeners and incendiary with time from impact fuse and the shell explodes mid air inside the enemy canoe what block does the fire attach too or is it wasted?
The cram prefabs are in fact very optimized. They are all built using extensively tested patterns and layering techniques. I would strongly recommend people to use them because they are likely better than what 99.9% of players will be able to create in that space!
APS can have much higher velocity and thus improved hit rate at long range or against fast or evasive targets, but CRAM is more resource efficient for close-range brawls.
I'm still learning and CRAMs are the last weapon I got around to trying. I didn't want to just copy the 2D/3D pattern, I wanted to learn how it went together and make my own pattern. I spent about 8 hours over 3 days learning and playing around with CRAMs, and I came up with my own pattern that I was sure was more efficient than the 2D/3D pattern. Eventually, I looked up and built the 2D/3D CRAMs to compare to mine and it turned out to be ####### 3D CRAM ON ITS ####### SIDE!
i cant decide how i want to build my craft. i kinda want "realistic" weapons... so for the heavy cruiser thats following the idea of the german admiral-hipper-class i kinda want a 205mm main armament but it fires to fast in game with the space available and i dont want to make the armament intentionally bad. so im thinking of having crams instead as they come closer to the real reload time but they only start at 1000mm which is just way larger then the historical weapons of the class with its 205mm. decisions over decisions... but enough babling around great video. didnt even realise that 40 mins passed again.
Cram is inanely powerfull if you do it right, the problem is that the campaign doesnt have a single vehicle that does cram properly (single barrel large system with strong shells)
25:30 "40000 health already, and it's not that large or optimized at all", dude has magic CRAM skillz.
Oops, my bad, I should've said 4000. 😅
Me upon figuring out I can change my UA-cam name to not my real name😮*shocked*
kind of off-topic but i love CRAMs as a sci-fi weapon concept. it functions in a way that sort of reminds me of a lot of speculative sci-fi weapons, but has the vibes of an age-of-sail cannon, which means it can do either end of FtD's natural anachronism, while also working in a way that's just kind of fun and intuitive to visualize. you're basically packing and throwing snowballs at the other guy, but the snow is metal at sintering temperature with the odd bit of pyrotechnic or explosive mixed in- it all comes together to make it sort of self-explanatory. you, in building the gun literally called a "CRAM," are just trying to cram as many of the Funny Pellets into the allotted volume as you reasonably can to make a weapon that instantly gives the enemy every illness and several new orifices.
Now I'm imagining an extreme version of a CRAM cannon that packs material so densely that it shoots black holes.
@carius2221 The thing that it reminds me of is a Macron gun, which Spacedock has a video on. They basically shoot bursts of microscopic, statically charged projectiles. To maximize surface area for holding a charge, they'd be tiny tubes, which could contain miniaturized payloads- Spacedock notably points out the possibility of loading them with fissile material, which after many hits could collectively form a supercritical assembly on the target and essentially act as a nuke, but they'd be kinetic by default and could carry all sorts of payloads. It's basically like if a CRAM had millions of tiny pellets and didn't bother to mash them into a single projectile first.
@@carius2221 get this man on the dev team
@@northropi2027 I Call CRAM Cannons Neutron star launchers because you CRAM 200,000 m^3 into that tiny (in comparison) shell.
@@RocketInator Doctor Who when i take his stupid phone box and turn it into a projectile containing an obscene amount of tritonal explosives
Wonderful timing! I got this game around christmas and couldn't find a modern tutorial for anything!
Ended up using advanced cannons because, despite the name, they're weirdly easer to understand for me :P
I have used the "explode above" fuse on a mortar-armed sub, it had enough accuracy to take out some flying targets.
@СашаВолков-ф5н Oooh, that's two interesting things in one! Nice! 👍
Man I started playing a week ago and I've been watching your like 5 year old tutorials and suddenly there's brand new ones. Neat!
Would love an updated detection one
Oh thank goodness I've been trying to figure these out for like two weeks now
Always great to see you update your old guides BorderWise ^-^
19:54 “if you know you’re gonna be shooting at stuffing”🗣️🔥🦃
I was just looking at your other video from a year ago building a ship from the ground up and I've had to improvise a lot, made the ship too thin, having to settle for a 7x7 CRAM turret and wasnt sure how to do the tetris so this is a life saver! even if it is bad tetris, its better than nothing (just bought this game yesterday and hoping to go through the whole tutorial, can't wait to see more of your remastered tutorials! :D)😅
Cheers! Next tutorial will cover tetris, that should be up within a week or so. 😁
As someone who used to play this game and is now nothing but confused by the changes, I am so happy to see this series. Thank you Borderwise.
Thanks for the video macaroni man
Thank you for these videos. I’m new to this game and the struggle is real 😂. So I look forward to researching all the aspects of designing ships and such with your videos. I watched a video of yours about spacecraft and managed to make a decent spy satellite from the advice given by you. Thanks again
You're welcome! :D
I would like to correct you on Penetration Depth fuses, they are actually very good against craft with empty space in them when set properly, provided you don't mind shells failing to detonate if they don't go through anything important. This is because the fuse only counts distance traveled through material, not air. Good if you can correctly estimate the approximate thickness of internal systems and the armor protecting them, wasteful if you set them with too long or short of a fuse.
Also, I have been conducting extensive trials of multi-barrel CRAM cannons recently using variants of GMODISM's Gimle-class battleship, and I've found that having multiple barrels can be similarly effective to single barrels if they're staggered properly and have appropriate payloads and fuses.
You 'ain't wrong, but that's the problem: pen-depth is good for spaced armor, or thick armor, but not both. I find that time after impact is just generally more reliable against unknown values of armor. 🤷
@@BorderWise12 one specific use case for pen-depth is incendiary CRAMs - for when you want to be certain that the shell is exploding in material instead of empty space (which can sometimes mean no fires start)
Crossing my fingers for a bomb mortar build, I’ve never seen anyone trying them.
I will certainly will be trying that! :D
@@BorderWise12Give it to wark-wark, I think he'll like it
YES FINALLY! I've been wanting an updated FTD tutorial series!
I enjoy cram cannons, but I could never find a use for them beyond bombardment on structures and slow surface ships and rarely, doom frag AA. They are indeed really powerful but are hindered so much by their lack of versatility below doom cram level damage. But it is still enjoyable to watch a frag cram barrage one hit a Singularity. Still appreciate the tutorial tho! And another note, I wish they increase its projectile speed at lower gauges
For high altitude could make an anti air flack and have breadboard set the high altitude limit to a little above the current altitude of flyer
Thanks for explaining the fundamentals of cram to me
Making a cram cannon - early game level knowledge.
Making a cram cannon hit anything that isn't a fortress - one of the hardest things in the game.
22:00 I think the bomb chute is basically a noob trap. If you want to make a CRAM bomber, my advice is to just have a normal CRAM cannon fully inside the bomber, with enough elevation to be able to poke the barrel out through the bottom, and then shoot down at like a 60 degree angle or so. And I am not sure how they could make the bomb chute better than that, because it simply utterly sucks at hitting things with the low velocity.
@@zuthalsoraniz6764 Apparently the trick is to use it as a high altitude mortar, but I haven't tested that with the new mortar homing. 🤔
thank god, a new one
the high altitude and low altitude fuses are used for the incredibly rare AA CRAM flak cannon, because the amount of flak you can fit inside a cram is very very silly
that said, a low depth one is better used for naval ship bombers that miss and hit the water at 0m to 5m, detonating early to still hit the target
finally another crammed tutorial
Quick question on incendiary cram. If you have a mix of hardeners and incendiary with time from impact fuse and the shell explodes mid air inside the enemy canoe what block does the fire attach too or is it wasted?
I believe fire is like EMP and it will jump to the nearest surface when triggered by a pen-depth/TOI fuse. I should test that to be sure, though.
@@BorderWise12 Thank you
thank you can you build a multi barrel turret from the ground up
Yes. that comes next! :D
@@BorderWise12 whoo hooo!
Thanks for the great video
The cram prefabs are in fact very optimized. They are all built using extensively tested patterns and layering techniques. I would strongly recommend people to use them because they are likely better than what 99.9% of players will be able to create in that space!
Could you use a frag cram cannon for C.I.W.S
No unfortunately, frags can't hit projectiles.
I was just thinking about learning to use cram since I've always used aps
Is it worth using APS as a CRAM style cannon? Ex. Slow firing, high damage rounds? Or is it best to just use CRAMs?
@@connor1424 If it's a very high velocity shell it can be worth it, yes!
@ how high is “very high”? 600 m/s +?
@@connor14241000m/s and above would be “high velocity” imo
APS can have much higher velocity and thus improved hit rate at long range or against fast or evasive targets, but CRAM is more resource efficient for close-range brawls.
I'm still learning and CRAMs are the last weapon I got around to trying. I didn't want to just copy the 2D/3D pattern, I wanted to learn how it went together and make my own pattern. I spent about 8 hours over 3 days learning and playing around with CRAMs, and I came up with my own pattern that I was sure was more efficient than the 2D/3D pattern. Eventually, I looked up and built the 2D/3D CRAMs to compare to mine and it turned out to be ####### 3D CRAM ON ITS ####### SIDE!
That's an FtD engineering moment if I've ever heard one. XD
BIG BOOM TIME. Maybe I’ll finally actually finish a boat I start
i cant decide how i want to build my craft. i kinda want "realistic" weapons... so for the heavy cruiser thats following the idea of the german admiral-hipper-class i kinda want a 205mm main armament but it fires to fast in game with the space available and i dont want to make the armament intentionally bad. so im thinking of having crams instead as they come closer to the real reload time but they only start at 1000mm which is just way larger then the historical weapons of the class with its 205mm. decisions over decisions...
but enough babling around great video. didnt even realise that 40 mins passed again.
It'd be nice if they made "big" cram components, 2x2x2 to cut down on block count for big crams.
@@sirgaz8699 I know right, I would love 8m connector blocks...
Can you do a ciws tutorial?
Already did! Hopefully it's still up to date, let me know if it isn't: ua-cam.com/video/lEqmFJuUXbY/v-deo.html
Ram bot is the most OP weapon in the game, even after the nerf
Cram cannon is the best cannon : change my mind
That's okay. The campaign will do that for me.😂 I love crime cannons but man are they just bad to use as a primary weapon.
"Speed. I am speed."
-Lightning Mchoods
LAMS T-T
Cram is inanely powerfull if you do it right, the problem is that the campaign doesnt have a single vehicle that does cram properly (single barrel large system with strong shells)
"Space time! :D"
- Scarlet Dawn
Does this cover mortars?
No i have not finished watching this, but i'm also just curious.
Excellent. I just got into cram cannons... how convenient
I actually had to re-watch your video again... because im dog tired and i may have accidentally fell asleep halfway through