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Post by blothorn on Oct 2, 2016 10:36:48 GMT
Some more scattered results on turrets: unturreted guns use the barrel (naturally). Turreted guns seem to use the turret armor, *not* the gun---I got about the same time from an amorphous carbon barrel and bismuth barrel on a turreted gun (and other experiments rejected the hypothesis that both runs were turret-capped).
Testing on a fairly large turret (2.3m, weight equivalent of 10cm of amorphous carbon armor) and the stock 300MW laser: thermal conductivity is still bad---diamond went as fast as anything else in the test and the best results thus far were from polytetrafluoroethylene, by a fair margin. But there are still some oddities; silicon dioxide did quite badly, despite having quite low conductivity and decent heat capacity. Best armor tested thus far that can make a pretence of kinetic resistance is amorphous carbon, as expected, but polytetrafluoroethylene may be an interesting choice for drones (if my drones survive lasers long enough to be hit by kinetics, I am overjoyed).
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Post by kelarkir on Oct 3, 2016 14:22:21 GMT
Have you tried reflective armor yet? Since we dont have phase change enthalpy to work with, thats would be a good way to mitigate the damage in the first place. Overall stats, one of the goto materials would be copper then
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Post by blothorn on Oct 8, 2016 8:15:09 GMT
Given the rise of superlasers, I ran some formal tests on drone laser turrets against a decently high-power laser of my own (500MW violet laser putting out 19.2MW with a 3.7m aperture; 2290MW/m^2 at 240km). The drone's body armor was 1mm boron so that it went quickly after the turret went down. All engagements started at 250km, with a closing speed of 500m/s. Reference areal density was 11,000 kg/m^2 (that of my previously standard drone turret armor). The target turret was a 68cm inner radius laser turret (my Solar Flare drone). Armor | Time (5 drones) | Comments | 5cm polytetraflouroethelyne | 81s | | 5cm silica aerogel | 105s | (1/22 reference density) | 10cm silica aerogel | 221s | (1/11 area density) | 5.2cm amorphous carbon | 1s | Ouch. | 4.1cm aluminum | 0s | Results inaccurate because I cannot double-tap my stopwatch fast enough. | 2.6cm alpha-2 titanium aluminide | 9s | Best specific heat of anything with a decent melting point. | 4.4cm s-glass composite | 24s | | 4.2cm silicon dioxide | 22s | The quest for a cheap hybrid armor continues to fail. | 3.9cm basalt fiber | 139s | | 7.8cm aramid fiber | 375s | Quite impressive vs. the basalt. |
Conclusions: superlasers certainly do not confer immunity from drones (at least by turret sniping; radiator sniping is its own can of worms, which I may visit later.) Silica aerogel really reigns supreme; the other compound of note is aramid fiber (best combination kinetic+thermal, and best performance by thickness). I included aluminum (and titanium aluminide) because people keep pushing for reflective materials its heat capacity suggests it is better than silver (and copper/gold do not reflect violet light well); that strategy failed miserably, but is likely to do better on larger scales. (This test proved to favor low conductivity far more than the missile test.) Also note that while I was running this setup, I pushed about half of a flight of 20 150kg nukes with 1cm aerogel armor through the laser and obliterated the test ship. Ridiculous lasers may be able to beat laserless capital ships by turret sniping, but I am really not convinced that they change anything about the seeming superiority of ordnance. Also, before I switched to the 1mm boron armor I was using my standard 1cm silica aerogel/1cm boron; the laser failed to destroy 5 drones in 6 minutes, by which time the drones had entered easy railgun range (100km) at the leisurely pace of 500m/s. I would strongly suggest against not armoring your turrets because you think you can kill the enemy's lasers first; six minutes is plenty of time for a squadron of 2.5MW laser drones to work through 3cm of boron.
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Post by blothorn on Oct 8, 2016 22:21:04 GMT
Same setup, but now a somewhat larger turret--a 7.9m inner radius laser (the laser I was running these tests against, actually). Standard areal density is 210kg/m^2. Material | Time (1 turret) | Notes | 10cm amorphous carbon | 2s | I was expecting a bit more. | 1cm rhenium | 0s | Fairly reflective material with a much higher melting point than aluminum/silver. | 10cm boron | 0s | | 10cm aramid fiber | 65s | Only using 2/3 normal density because it is already ~10x the price of most of the others. | 20cm silica aerogel | 84s | | 5cm alpha-2 titanium aluminide | 3s | | 8.1cm silicon dioxide | 8s |
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It certainly is feasible to give even huge targets protection from even very large lasers, and I expect that a laser ship with 10-20cm of silica aerogel would thrash a ship that did not, even accounting for the latter being able to afford more power or redundancy. However, there is a decision to be made: silica aerogel provides negligible kinetic protection, and aramid fiber is exorbitantly expensive in these quantities (the 10cm armor used here cost around 30 Mc on its own). I am increasingly of the opinion that not being able to put composite armor on turrets is substantially compromising the fidelity of the game balance--it forces a much harsher tradeoff between thermal and kinetic protection than I think justified.
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Post by leerooooooy on Oct 9, 2016 16:30:42 GMT
Same setup, but now a somewhat larger turret--a 7.9m inner radius laser (the laser I was running these tests against, actually). Standard areal density is 210kg/m^2. Material | Time (1 turret) | Notes | 10cm amorphous carbon | 2s | I was expecting a bit more. | 1cm rhenium | 0s | Fairly reflective material with a much higher melting point than aluminum/silver. | 10cm boron | 0s |
| 10cm aramid fiber | 65s | Only using 2/3 normal density because it is already ~10x the price of most of the others. | 20cm silica aerogel | 84s |
| 5cm alpha-2 titanium aluminide | 3s |
| 8.1cm silicon dioxide | 8s |
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It certainly is feasible to give even huge targets protection from even very large lasers, and I expect that a laser ship with 10-20cm of silica aerogel would thrash a ship that did not, even accounting for the latter being able to afford more power or redundancy. However, there is a decision to be made: silica aerogel provides negligible kinetic protection, and aramid fiber is exorbitantly expensive in these quantities (the 10cm armor used here cost around 30 Mc on its own). I am increasingly of the opinion that not being able to put composite armor on turrets is substantially compromising the fidelity of the game balance--it forces a much harsher tradeoff between thermal and kinetic protection than I think justified. I'm not sure how much 20 cm of aerogel can be considered feasible. It can be a fairly huge cost and volume investment, and might not last enough against a bigger laser setup
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Post by blothorn on Oct 9, 2016 19:18:48 GMT
I'm not sure how much 20 cm of aerogel can be considered feasible. It can be a fairly huge cost and volume investment, and might not last enough against a bigger laser setup That is actually the cheapest armor tested---aerogel is 5x the cost per unit mass of the boron, but this is 2/21 the mass of the other armors (aside from the ridiculously expensive aramid fiber). The volume is high, but still only adds 5% to the total radius of the turret. On this particular turret, it also adds 30% to the mass and doubles the cost. Otherwise--the laser I tested against is more powerful than almost all the lasers I have seen on the "laser" thread. The main point of these experiments was to test the hypothesis that it was optimal to leave lasers unarmored--one silica aerogel-armored laser lasting 40 seconds will easily survive long enough to destroy two lasers with negligible armor, while (in my case) costing the same, having 35% lower mass, and requiring half the power generation and radiators.
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Post by bigbombr on Nov 8, 2016 18:43:00 GMT
So, can we presume that after the most recent update, Si-airogel is the best anti-laser armour by cost, and aramid fiber the best by weight and thickness?
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Post by Drahkan on Nov 9, 2016 0:12:35 GMT
So, can we presume that after the most recent update, Si-airogel is the best anti-laser armour by cost, and aramid fiber the best by weight and thickness? Probably, although with this change my initial guesstimate is that the best bang-for-your-buck will be Basalt Fiber over-top of a silica aerogel, as a spacer (instead of a wipple shield airgap) if you're then slapping it onto heavier armor. But if you like to light cigars with hundred spacebuck bills, then yeah...I don't think any patches are liable to knock Aramid out as the raining champ.
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Post by Drahkan on Nov 9, 2016 1:45:28 GMT
(EDIT: I spoke too soon...sorta. I also confused my units of measurement, but I do that a lot. In any case, edits are just being inserted into my post below) WOW okay, so I take that back! I just did a really fast-and-dirty test, and silica aerogel seems to STILL beat BOTH aramid fiber and basalt fiber. And by that I mean I sent 10 drones with 1mm of basalt+1mm aerogel, 2mm basalt, and 2mm aramid, against a laser station (...with resistojets on it so it could actually turn and aim, heh), and with a few test runs with each, 2mm of basalt armor lasted 20 seconds tops, aramid came in second at 35ish seconds, and aerogel either ran out of fuel (I forgot that the drones actually counted as missiles, since I didn't put a gun on them. Whoops) before being destroyed. So, we're still left with aerogel>aramid>basalt fiber. HOWEVER, is it just me or has basalt fiber been made more expensive than it was previously? It now costs more to put 2mm of basalt fiber onto a drone than it does aramid, which seems kinda weird if in fact aramid is still better than basalt. I'm confused by this, but whatever; someone will figure it out sooner or later and I'll just soak up their knowledge. So, seems like aerogel is still the king of laser-defense, although it sure doesn't seem to be as good as pre-1.0.7. But hey, that's progress for you!
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Post by dragonkid11 on Nov 9, 2016 4:17:07 GMT
Well, that's some good news for silica gel.
Because I don't want to change them for all 100 of my designs.
What's the power of that laser station, by the way?
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Post by Drahkan on Nov 9, 2016 6:20:35 GMT
What's the power of that laser station, by the way? It's the 1GW vanilla laser on the vanilla "laser station". (In other words, "an un-optimized 10MW laser" ;P )
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Post by Drahkan on Nov 10, 2016 0:30:05 GMT
Um...so I'm not sure why I didn't test it yesterday, but apparently basalt fiber and silica aerogel - when used solely by themselves, without any other armor behind them - suddenly are fractionally as good as Aramid Fiber is versus lasers. And more so, 1.0.7 has apparently changed costs, as Aramid Fiber now costs and weighs half as much as basalt fiber! ...or at least, that's what I get out of the current testing I'm doing. 10-unit waves of drones (missiles, really) with 5mm of aramid on them are almost impossible to destroy with the stock 1GW laser, while 5mm of either Basalt OR aerogel barely lasts a few seconds against that same laser. Even with only 2mm, results are proportionally the same (as in, I barely hit my stopwatch before the aerogel and basalt drones are destroyed, while I can go 40+ seconds with 10 aramid drone/missiles, after which time some of them tend to hit the target before being destroyed.) If you really lather on the aerogel you can get it to work, but at that point it only makes sense to do so if you're using it as a second layer of armor because (based on the last 30 minutes of testing): 1) On a cost basis, unless you stick a lot of aerogel on something OR don't put more than a couple mm of aramid fiber on it, the aramid fiber now seems to be equivalent to the aerogel in anti-laser defense...but with the benefit of not being super-thick and of course having great anti-kinetic applications as well. 2) On a weight basis, aramid actually appears to be slightly better than aerogel as anti-laser. (...and basalt fiber no longer seems to be in the running for anything. Unless there's a bug with the new/current material data and/or the laser code was modified to incorporate material data in a way that would be considered a bug, the only thing basalt fiber is likely to be better at is pure anti-kinetic, or perhaps when layered with either aramid or aerogel.) If Aramid still cost as much as pure money that would make sense, but no matter what ship/drone/missile I modify, if I swap from Basalt over to the same amount of Aramid, both cost and weight drop substantially. And even just 2mm of aramid lasts so long against a laser defense (albeit a single 1GW laser, but still...) that I don't see why you would ever use aerogel on a turret anymore, and although you might want to layer it on a ship, if you can afford 1cm of aramid there's absolutely no reason to even bother layering it over anything "softer" than boron, as you might as well just spend the money and weight on increasing your aramid and/or heavy armor instead of bulking up with aerogel. (At least, based on the results I just got; I wouldn't be surprised if someone tests all sorts of combos and finds a few layering setups that would be worthwhile.) Given all of the testing we did yesterday, could someone please confirm and/or deny this? As of right now I'm thinking that we all just assumed that 1.0.7 hadn't changed things enough to warrant revisiting established thoughts on "the best" ways to handle armor on modules and missiles/drones, but I'm now thinking that was just because we didn't want to have to rethink everything from scratch.
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Post by dragonkid11 on Nov 10, 2016 3:39:44 GMT
I honestly found this kinda funny.
Before the discovery of pre-corrected Silica gel, people often use laser weapon to deal with drones and missiles because everything just doesn't work against laser without a huge sacrifice in cost and weight.
Then silica gel get discovered and everyone try to counter this with more laser or super miniaturized 1GW laser.
Now not only we can make TEN GIGAWATT laser, but also that silica gel is no longer OP against laser.
Now everyone is just panicking for a better laser armor because now DOOM GIGAWATT LASER is too much for normal craft to handle.
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Post by Drahkan on Nov 10, 2016 5:40:05 GMT
Now everyone is just panicking for a better laser armor because now DOOM GIGAWATT LASER is too much for normal craft to handle. Nah, no panic; this isn't a MMO after all. ;P ...plus I think the idea of slathering down my ships with gel is kinda gross anyway. But getting involved in long-winded, unusually-technical-and-over-tested-for-no-real-reason-other-than-self-entertainment forum threads? Now THAT is the sort of stuff that keeps me up late at night.
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Post by concretedonkey on Nov 10, 2016 6:48:36 GMT
Have you tested boron nitride ? I'm getting way better results for the same weight than silica... I have to test it properly however, the tests I do now a not very representative...
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