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Post by samchiu2000 on Jul 7, 2017 7:54:41 GMT
First read this post. If this post is telling the truth, then the mass and cost of reactors, which power our rail or coil guns and lasers, will be increased by more than 2 orders of magnitude... So... the age of conventional guns and missiles?  |
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Post by dragonkid11 on Jul 7, 2017 8:08:30 GMT
Not really.
You misread the whole thing. The fissile material actually required is 100 times of what we used in game.
Which when compared to the weight of the nuclear reactor, is practically nothing.
Small nuclear reactor would be more affected but that's what RTG is for then.
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Post by samchiu2000 on Jul 7, 2017 8:12:38 GMT
Not really. You misread the whole thing. The fissile material actually required is 100 times of what we used in game. Which when compared to the weight of the nuclear reactor, is practically nothing. Small nuclear reactor would be more affected but that's what RTG is for then. Alright my fault... |
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Post by Enderminion on Jul 7, 2017 14:50:12 GMT
also the widespread use of capacitors would mean that lasers would be more affected then kinetics
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Post by Durandal on Jul 7, 2017 16:40:03 GMT
Darn, guess we'll have to have pulse lasers to make up for (slighty) lowered generator specs.  |
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Post by treptoplax on Jul 7, 2017 16:57:01 GMT
Not really. You misread the whole thing. The fissile material actually required is 100 times of what we used in game. Which when compared to the weight of the nuclear reactor, is practically nothing. Small nuclear reactor would be more affected but that's what RTG is for then. Cost is more of an issue than weight, I think - don't have game on computer in front of me but I wouldn't be surprised to see reactor costs double on the best designs. OTOH it won't affect radiators and once you factor those in too the overall system cost increase probably isn't that bad. Just watch, we'll all be waiting for the Great Laser Nerf and it'll turn out that the one thing that gets hosed is small conventional gun drones.  |
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Post by Pttg on Jul 7, 2017 19:45:29 GMT
Yeah, the mass won't be increased much, but the cost will definitely increase about 50-100 fold.
I just hope that the patch to fix that also decreases the minimum operating time to something more nuanced. Drone powerplants could conceivably function with operating lifespans of hours and standby shelf-lives of at least a year.
And if we have lithium-ion batteries and/or ship system capacitors, then that's another useful option.
But yeah, definitely the fall of picomissiles and nanolaserdrones. And with that, we might get a step back to crewed warships with large-scale reactors and laser banks.
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Post by apophys on Jul 7, 2017 20:31:45 GMT
Increasing the fuel by 200 times, total mass will only go up about 20%. Total cost will go up about 6 times. That's not enough to completely change the meta.
The great majority of the cost of a reactor is currently the thermocouple, not fuel.
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Post by bigbombr on Jul 7, 2017 22:52:54 GMT
Cost is more of an issue than weight, I think - don't have game on computer in front of me but I wouldn't be surprised to see reactor costs double on the best designs. OTOH it won't affect radiators and once you factor those in too the overall system cost increase probably isn't that bad. Just watch, we'll all be waiting for the Great Laser Nerf and it'll turn out that the one thing that gets hosed is small conventional gun drones. More detailed radiator modeling (taking into account coolant pressure and structural integrity under acceleration) would be a much bigger nerf to lasers I'm afraid. |
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Post by Enderminion on Jul 7, 2017 23:18:38 GMT
again, pulse lasers
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Post by vegemeister on Jul 8, 2017 6:12:26 GMT
Cost is more of an issue than weight, I think - don't have game on computer in front of me but I wouldn't be surprised to see reactor costs double on the best designs. OTOH it won't affect radiators and once you factor those in too the overall system cost increase probably isn't that bad. Just watch, we'll all be waiting for the Great Laser Nerf and it'll turn out that the one thing that gets hosed is small conventional gun drones. More detailed radiator modeling (taking into account coolant pressure and structural integrity under acceleration) would be a much bigger nerf to lasers I'm afraid.
Also, radiators somehow manage to cool sodium down to 371 K while keeping their entire surface at 2630 K. If radiator temperature gradients were modeled, you'd either have to accept much larger radiators, or greatly increase coolant volume and flow rate in the cold side loop.
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Post by Pttg on Jul 9, 2017 3:35:28 GMT
More accurate radiator modeling would also buff lasers, though, since laser cooking could be used to slag them from different orbits.
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Post by bigbombr on Jul 9, 2017 10:02:46 GMT
More accurate radiator modeling would also buff lasers, though, since laser cooking could be used to slag them from different orbits. If they're perpendicular, sure. If they're edge on? Doubtful. I expect more detailed radiators to nerf lasers, and more detailed sensors to buff them (more accurate long range fire with massive custom sensor arrays, burning out enemy sensors beyond the range armour get's ablated, ...). And then we're not even talking about mirror drones. |
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