|
Post by The Astronomer on Jun 13, 2017 1:48:59 GMT
The best Q-ships are the ones from other factions (or "independents") who don't know they are Q-ships. "This is a... refined boron container. Yeah. Just pure, harmless boron. Not a concealed missile at all, and especially not with a mechanism to tear the hull and launch it once you are at destination." what is a Q-ship? A military spacecraft in disguise as a civilian ship.
|
|
|
Post by 𝕭𝖔𝖔𝖒𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖈𝖑𝖊 on Jun 13, 2017 3:31:26 GMT
A military spacecraft in disguise as a civilian ship. ah that could be bad... hey guys look at my crewed cargo vessel... its not loaded with 5 metric tons of Smallpox virus or anything.
|
|
|
Post by Easy on Jun 13, 2017 4:04:26 GMT
Since 1.10, giant lasers are exceedingly fragile to counterlasers. A measly 10 W/m² intensity (available at 1 Mm with a small 100 kW UV laser) will instantly destroy a 10 m aperture superlaser. has this been determined to be a bug or feature in that redlined lasers don't have a spare 10W/m2 before melting?
|
|
|
Post by apophys on Jun 13, 2017 4:18:57 GMT
Since 1.10, giant lasers are exceedingly fragile to counterlasers. A measly 10 W/m² intensity (available at 1 Mm with a small 100 kW UV laser) will instantly destroy a 10 m aperture superlaser. has this been determined to be a bug or feature in that redlined lasers don't have a spare 10W/m2 before melting? That was of course a bug, and was fixed in the last patch (1.1.1). It was incredibly annoying.
|
|
|
Post by cuddlefish on Jun 21, 2017 21:51:59 GMT
A military spacecraft in disguise as a civilian ship. ah that could be bad... hey guys look at my crewed cargo vessel... its not loaded with 5 metric tons of Smallpox virus or anything. The big purpose historically was more commerce raiding, on both sides of that equation. As an attacker, it can slip in amongst target civilian traffic, then run out the guns and send the "get to your lifeboats" warnings before anyone knows what's going on. As a defender, it's a bait ship for other commerce raiders - the opponent thinks they've got another tasty merchantman, only to discover too late that you have some heavy ordinance and a battle-hardened crew.
|
|
|
Post by princesskibble on Jun 30, 2017 16:41:15 GMT
I was looking at the steam workshop compilation thread and saw somebody posted a modest but good and optimized laserstar. So I tried to blow it up! I fired 300 Sidewinder-like ASATs at it flying in at Mach 5, and everything was going fine, the enemy ship was slowly eating up one tiny ASAT at a time, up until they crossed within 200 km of the laserstar I guess suddenly i was within kill range, and it burned up every single one of the 300 in like 2 seconds!
It was only a tiny fraction of the 8000 I carried into battle, but it made me think, even if I fired every single one, if that would be enough to wreck the laserstar! What am I doing wrong? Do the missiles need more armor (2mm nitrile rubber currently), bigger and more delta-v (2.2 km/s), or just more of them? Or are lasers more effective than missiles for mass? I think I'm just bad at the game but...I really am convinced that in real life missiles will be the dominant weapon of outer space!
I posted here cause I basically have the same question - are missiles viable with all the lasers? And why aren't mine D:
|
|
|
Post by lennson on Jun 30, 2017 17:15:20 GMT
I was looking at the steam workshop compilation thread and saw somebody posted a modest but good and optimized laserstar. So I tried to blow it up! I fired 300 Sidewinder-like ASATs at it flying in at Mach 5, and everything was going fine, the enemy ship was slowly eating up one tiny ASAT at a time, up until they crossed within 200 km of the laserstar I guess suddenly i was within kill range, and it burned up every single one of the 300 in like 2 seconds! It was only a tiny fraction of the 8000 I carried into battle, but it made me think, even if I fired every single one, if that would be enough to wreck the laserstar! What am I doing wrong? Do the missiles need more armor (2mm nitrile rubber currently), bigger and more delta-v (2.2 km/s), or just more of them? Or are lasers more effective than missiles for mass? I think I'm just bad at the game but...I really am convinced that in real life missiles will be the dominant weapon of outer space! I posted here cause I basically have the same question - are missiles viable with all the lasers? And why aren't mine D: My experience against lasers so far has been instead of of going for many small missiles it appears to be more effective to go for a small number of relatively large, fast and heavily armored missiles. You need very little fire power to cripple a laser star, due to them normally being gigantic targets with minimal armor, so most of the missile's non-propellant mass should be armor in my opinion. My standard missile design aims for around 8 km/s of delta-v and several centimeters of armor. Using large numbers of small missiles is effective against kinetic point defenses but against purely laser point defense I suspect a single big missile would be most likely to get through.
|
|
|
Post by Enderminion on Jun 30, 2017 17:23:19 GMT
lasers love a stream of targets, kinetics love a wave of targets, my standard attack missile has a CM of laser armor and 30mm of armor total, heavily sloped
|
|
|
Post by treptoplax on Jun 30, 2017 18:16:20 GMT
I was looking at the steam workshop compilation thread and saw somebody posted a modest but good and optimized laserstar. So I tried to blow it up! I fired 300 Sidewinder-like ASATs at it flying in at Mach 5, and everything was going fine, the enemy ship was slowly eating up one tiny ASAT at a time, up until they crossed within 200 km of the laserstar I guess suddenly i was within kill range, and it burned up every single one of the 300 in like 2 seconds! It was only a tiny fraction of the 8000 I carried into battle, but it made me think, even if I fired every single one, if that would be enough to wreck the laserstar! What am I doing wrong? Do the missiles need more armor (2mm nitrile rubber currently), bigger and more delta-v (2.2 km/s), or just more of them? Or are lasers more effective than missiles for mass? I think I'm just bad at the game but...I really am convinced that in real life missiles will be the dominant weapon of outer space! I posted here cause I basically have the same question - are missiles viable with all the lasers? And why aren't mine D: My experience against lasers so far has been instead of of going for many small missiles it appears to be more effective to go for a small number of relatively large, fast and heavily armored missiles. You need very little fire power to cripple a laser star, due to them normally being gigantic targets with minimal armor, so most of the missile's non-propellant mass should be armor in my opinion. My standard missile design aims for around 8 km/s of delta-v and several centimeters of armor. Using large numbers of small missiles is effective against kinetic point defenses but against purely laser point defense I suspect a single big missile would be most likely to get through. So, I've been looking at this... I believe the key thing here is that there's a hard cap on weapon accuracy; I don't have exact details (search the board for "weapon wobble", I think). As I understand it the inaccuracy at that cap is about .25cm/Km. If I understand everything right (not sure, but it mostly fits my experiments) that means that (assuming a narrow beam or railgun pellet, not a wide beam laser) at 400Km that's 100 cm possible error. With a 10cm radius missile, that means 99% misses! At 200Km it's now only 96%. At 100Km 84%. I'm thinking Lennson is right: Swarming railgun with small missiles is viable, lasers, especially if they're well-tuned to have some spread, maybe not so much. Massive armor can maybe work against lasers - I think there's a maximum effective power they can have? - but I'm not sure that can get you close enough. Personally I'm looking into a heavily-armored missile with something like a long range flak warhead (gun? blast launcher? trick is the correct range and aiming a bit).
|
|
|
Post by apophys on Jun 30, 2017 19:56:51 GMT
I also agree with lennson here. To take down a laserstar with missiles, you need centimeters of armor, which makes the missiles large. The question then becomes: is the armor of the missile fleet cheaper than the collection of lasers it is designed to survive? My experience says no. Also large missiles are easier to take down with kinetic point defense, thus my fleet composition of 90% laser and 10% railgun.
|
|
|
Post by ross128 on Jul 1, 2017 3:21:41 GMT
One thing that I've discovered can cut down on armor requirements is having several layers with thin spacing. The vacuum in between insulates each layer from the layer above it, so the laser has to heat up each layer starting at ambient temperature. The outermost layers also don't need to cover the whole missile, they can just cover the nose and protect the rest of the missile simply by shading it. This reduces the necessary weight significantly.
With about three or four 2mm layers of nitrile rubber with a 1-2mm between each layer, if combined with a terminal approach of 12km/s or higher, can make small missiles just survivable enough to take out most laserstars with "just" a few hundred. And by using shading techniques, the innermost layer is the only full-coverage layer and contains over 80% of the armor's weight. Of course, you do have to be very careful when setting up such a high-speed intercept. Few missiles can meaningfully maneuver at such a velocity.
Of course, laserstars have probably only gotten more powerful and longer ranged since I designed those missiles. But the weight-reducing techniques should still apply, and since we have much more layers to work with we can probably manage to get a lot out of very little armor.
|
|
|
Post by Argopeilacos on Jul 1, 2017 8:22:32 GMT
I don't use partial armour for fear that the missile will get destroyed when maneuvering: they often turn 90° to adjust trajectory and expose their soft sides. I suppose it is valid against 10mg acceleration MPDT laserstars where final approach maneuvering is very limited.
|
|
|
Post by concretedonkey on Jul 1, 2017 9:42:54 GMT
I kind of aim for higher delta V, build up a lot of speed and cut the time in the "danger zone" to mere seconds. Also my missiles are smaller 20-40kg without the droptanks. I'm finding that approach more economical than large missiles with multiple cm of anti laser armor. Those large missiles are still vulnerable to missile interceptors, kinetics and lasers firing from the sides and the back so its better to aim to lower prices and smaller missiles and overwhelm with numbers.
|
|
|
Post by newageofpower on Jul 1, 2017 22:39:33 GMT
2.2 km/s dV is trash. Even my sub 5kg chemical micromissiles (disclosure: pre Death of Boron) have >5km/s dV. Between MPD motherships and MPD delivery drones, practical intercepts of over 80km/s are plausible, before terminal high thrust propulsion comes online. Of course, the game's missile guidance has problems hitting targets (note: tested against immobile multimegaton osmoiridium asteroid) when relative velocity exceeds 10km/s, but that's a function of game AI that wouldn't be a significant problem for IRL missiles. However, a mass fraction in the same order of magnitude equipped to jasonvance/ apophys style superlasers could fry the missiles far before intercept; lasers scale faster than missiles after a certain point.
|
|
|
Post by treptoplax on Jul 5, 2017 15:18:06 GMT
I also agree with lennson here. To take down a laserstar with missiles, you need centimeters of armor, which makes the missiles large. The question then becomes: is the armor of the missile fleet cheaper than the collection of lasers it is designed to survive? My experience says no. Also large missiles are easier to take down with kinetic point defense, thus my fleet composition of 90% laser and 10% railgun. I've had decent luck against laserstars (at least the low acceleration ones) with small gun drones (like, 10cm diameter, 3m length). Presumably defocussed lasers would counter, but that's a cost inflicted on them (at least until we get variable-focus mirrors). AI doesn't use them very well (opens fire too early for ignore-range and too late with the remaining ammo if any). Really skinny railgun (flack?) drones seem like they might be a valid option, too. Currently I'm working on a hybrid; a high delta-V, heavily armored missile that blast launches a couple dozen tiny (5Kg!) gun drones. Half the launchers start with a launch cap of 10 at 950Km (just enough time to build up a bit of speed), and the other half all release at 500Km (at that point there's enough closing velocity even for the pathetic 10mm gun on the subdrones to be effective). Haven't been able to optimize subdrones to my liking yet but it's already working OK. Main problem with this is that it's actually relatively ineffective against anything that can dodge at all (the subdrones are nearly useless then, and that leaves it as an overpriced 10Kt nuclear missile). I'm not expecting this to obsolete the laserstars by any means, but maybe we can shift the meta a bit by forcing them to have decent resistojets...
|
|