True. Sigroth is being a bit too theoretical and simplistic here. His examples are isolated ships in clean space with no blast markers. Also, he is dealing in fractions of a hit, which don't exist in game.
Sigi, your list of advantages to the Carnage make no sense.What on earth do you mean by Carnages get more powerful as the game goes on? Do yours get more guns for being cripples or shooting through a zillion blast markers? Or do they form into Voltron? Same goes for 'greater focusable fire'. How are you 'focusing' the fire in a way the Murder cant? Both ships are deadly at abeam and primarily used as such. The Murder is better at closing 6+ armor whether the Carnage is LO or not.
Heres something to think about Sigi. Youre calculating the median average result from fire, but ignoring the rest of the bell curve. Because you only acheive success 1/3 of the time, the curve is weighted towards the failure side. Since fractions of hits don't happen, you cant save up two .5 hits to make 1 whole over 2 turns. Those 2 half hits make zero hits. Also, with each dice you are more likely to miss than hit. This means that you are more likely to roll worse than the median than to roll better. Its still possible to get 2 hits rather than 1 but it is much more likely the result will be zero than 2. This means that the Carnage can easily underperform from Sigi's expectations.
Thats the theory never seems to pan out, especially when locked on.
Don't get me wrong. Carnages are fun and have their uses. But the side lance variant Murder has a much more even bell curve distribution and so is much more reliable and more likely to score more hits at long range, and distance and blast markers arent a factor. Also, when facing a fleet of larger than one ship, you can manouvre so you can fire forward lancez as well as your side weaponry to greater effect than one carnage at one target.
Ultimately it comes down to playing style. Murders are better against 6+ armor and at range. If you like to stay out of range and shoot, take the Murder variant. If you like to get in close and scrap, Carnages are better than murders if you squadron them, but Slaughters would perform better with that style.