Post by uberdude9001 on Mar 24, 2017 23:23:10 GMT
I've seen many people here claim it was impractical (both cost and mass wise) to armor ships against kinetic attacks. For a long time I agreed with them since I was unable to do so with any of my designs. Even relatively weak weapons like the 33mm cannon mounted on stinger drones could poke holes straight through my ships, even if I put so much armor on them they could barely move.
I then realized that it was my design philosophy causing this, and that it would have to change if I wanted ships with armor.
The first issue was my use of Hydrogen Deuteride as fuel for my NTRs. My rationale for carrying it was to maximize delta V. Sadly, its low density makes it impossible to armor adequately while maintaining this advantage.
The second was my insistence on broadside engagements. In theory a ship that has its engines perpendicular to incoming fire will be able to evade more easily, but even with massive thrust-weight ratios these ships would still be hit and easily penetrated and disabled by incoming fire. These designs also require much more surface area to armor and cannot be as heavily sloped as the nose of the craft.
The third was my use of 1GW lasers with 4m radius apertures. These these are huge and result in a massive ship profile that must be armored. They also require a reactor of similar size. The worst thing about these are the massive radiators both the reactor and laser itself require which simply cannot be armored in any way. Even if you place them on the opposite side of the ship that is expected to be shot at, they will still be blown off by nearby nuclear detonations.
I also had other issues, such as my excessive use of boron in some places UHMWPE, that made the ships vulnerable to thermal damage, their hulls could even be cut through by lasers. My ships also mounted a large number of weapons, such as missiles and railguns in addition to their laser armaments, these increased the crew requirements and tended to increase the surface area of the ship.
My solution was to switch to decane, it is very dense so allows for high mass fractions even with thick armor. My new ship would also be designed for frontal engagements, minimizing the profile that was required to be armored. I also dropped the laser armament entirely, favoring accurate and high velocity railguns designed for dual purpose point defense and anti-ship use.
The resulting ship is below:
So far it is limited only by the inability to mount composite armor on the turrets. The hull is immune to pretty much every stock gun I've fired at it from the front and even my KKVs have proven ineffective against it (441kgs at 9.31km/s). The radiators can take a rather shocking amount of nuclear detonations to remove.
I've only been able to kill it by blasting through the relatively less armored turrets and hitting the radiators and killing the crew with acceleration from near-contact nuclear detonations.
Does anyone have something that can penetrate the frontal armor? Also, can anyone spot anything physics breaking about this? Resisting half-ton penetrators at almost 10km/s seems somewhat suspect to me, even with the 80 degree slope of the frontal armor.
I then realized that it was my design philosophy causing this, and that it would have to change if I wanted ships with armor.
The first issue was my use of Hydrogen Deuteride as fuel for my NTRs. My rationale for carrying it was to maximize delta V. Sadly, its low density makes it impossible to armor adequately while maintaining this advantage.
The second was my insistence on broadside engagements. In theory a ship that has its engines perpendicular to incoming fire will be able to evade more easily, but even with massive thrust-weight ratios these ships would still be hit and easily penetrated and disabled by incoming fire. These designs also require much more surface area to armor and cannot be as heavily sloped as the nose of the craft.
The third was my use of 1GW lasers with 4m radius apertures. These these are huge and result in a massive ship profile that must be armored. They also require a reactor of similar size. The worst thing about these are the massive radiators both the reactor and laser itself require which simply cannot be armored in any way. Even if you place them on the opposite side of the ship that is expected to be shot at, they will still be blown off by nearby nuclear detonations.
I also had other issues, such as my excessive use of boron in some places UHMWPE, that made the ships vulnerable to thermal damage, their hulls could even be cut through by lasers. My ships also mounted a large number of weapons, such as missiles and railguns in addition to their laser armaments, these increased the crew requirements and tended to increase the surface area of the ship.
My solution was to switch to decane, it is very dense so allows for high mass fractions even with thick armor. My new ship would also be designed for frontal engagements, minimizing the profile that was required to be armored. I also dropped the laser armament entirely, favoring accurate and high velocity railguns designed for dual purpose point defense and anti-ship use.
The resulting ship is below:
So far it is limited only by the inability to mount composite armor on the turrets. The hull is immune to pretty much every stock gun I've fired at it from the front and even my KKVs have proven ineffective against it (441kgs at 9.31km/s). The radiators can take a rather shocking amount of nuclear detonations to remove.
I've only been able to kill it by blasting through the relatively less armored turrets and hitting the radiators and killing the crew with acceleration from near-contact nuclear detonations.
Does anyone have something that can penetrate the frontal armor? Also, can anyone spot anything physics breaking about this? Resisting half-ton penetrators at almost 10km/s seems somewhat suspect to me, even with the 80 degree slope of the frontal armor.
