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Post by kpatwin on Dec 31, 2017 17:21:09 GMT
I was wondering if anyone could give me tips on railgun design. My computer is old and heats up rapidly when I play the game, so I can't spend too long toying with and experimenting with the module design before it overheats. Any design tips would be greatly appreciated.
Specifically I need a railgun design that fires a 12mm, 50 gram van-chro-steel projectile up to 4km/s using the least amount of power. .
This is for a hard-sci-fi world building project and these are the values I've been asked to work with but I'm willing to modify them if necessary.
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Post by AdmiralObvious on Dec 31, 2017 20:53:51 GMT
I know I have a 15mm that can work. Though I'll need a bit of time to head home and upload it.
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Post by Rocket Witch on Dec 31, 2017 21:49:54 GMT
What is the desired rate of fire? You could use 1W to fire anything at any velocity, given time.
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Post by AdmiralObvious on Jan 1, 2018 2:13:33 GMT
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Post by kpatwin on Jan 1, 2018 2:14:44 GMT
What is the desired rate of fire? You could use 1W to fire anything at any velocity, given time. My world I'm constructing is based on premise of the space race never ending so that the US and a reformed USSR now divide up the solar system between themselves, roughly in 2020 AD. So I'm looking to make things as close to real world as possible. No GW level reactors or trillion credit designs. I want to make it as feasible as possible. With that In mind, a rate of fire of around 30 or so rounds per minute, to take into account rail erosion issues |
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Post by kpatwin on Jan 1, 2018 2:18:46 GMT
I will check that out once I get home, but thank you in advance!! I'm not too worried about efficiency. My world is set in an future alternate 2020 where the Cold War never ended and the space race overtook the arms race, so you have US and Soviet ships occupying the solar system. Technology is going to be more advanced than now, but still within realm of what could be expected in a real world setting. |
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Post by AdmiralObvious on Jan 1, 2018 2:21:46 GMT
I will check that out once I get home, but thank you in advance!! I'm not too worried about efficiency. My world is set in an future alternate 2020 where the Cold War never ended and the space race overtook the arms race, so you have US and Soviet ships occupying the solar system. Technology is going to be more advanced than now, but still within realm of what could be expected in a real world setting. The design as it currently stands shoots a shot every 7 seconds, so that turned out supprisingly well. Crank up the power a tad for the capacitor and you'd be fine. If you want to save on mass, use a different reaction wheel (it's currently Osmium). Half of the mass and cost is currently going into the wheel. Edit: I tweaked it a lot, and made it much more sensible, so now it's actually significantly overboard on the fire rate on the version I uploaded. |
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Post by kpatwin on Jan 1, 2018 2:58:59 GMT
I will check that out once I get home, but thank you in advance!! I'm not too worried about efficiency. My world is set in an future alternate 2020 where the Cold War never ended and the space race overtook the arms race, so you have US and Soviet ships occupying the solar system. Technology is going to be more advanced than now, but still within realm of what could be expected in a real world setting. The design as it currently stands shoots a shot every 7 seconds, so that turned out supprisingly well. Crank up the power a tad for the capacitor and you'd be fine. If you want to save on mass, use a different reaction wheel (it's currently Osmium). Half of the mass and cost is currently going into the wheel. Edit: I tweaked it a lot, and made it much more sensible, so now it's actually significantly overboard on the fire rate on the version I uploaded. Thank you! I'm having trouble getting the file actually downloaded, partially on account of me being a functional moron when it comes to computers. Until I resolve my stupidity, do you have any basic design tips for if I wanted to design additional railguns on my own? I know VCS and zirconium copper are the two main materials with regards to rails and armature. Any other helpful tips? |
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Post by apophys on Jan 1, 2018 4:01:19 GMT
kpatwin Here's a railgun that should work for you. It's based on my standard 100 MW 50 km/s flak railgun, so it'll be pretty decent, but I haven't optimized this gun nearly as much as my standard, so there should be room for improvement. I hope you don't mind the extra muzzle velocity. Fire rate is 37.7 rounds per minute; count half the listed reload time.  Code: AE 2 MW Heavy Railgun.txt (985 B) My world I'm constructing is based on premise of the space race never ending so that the US and a reformed USSR now divide up the solar system between themselves, roughly in 2020 AD. So I'm looking to make things as close to real world as possible. No GW level reactors or trillion credit designs. I want to make it as feasible as possible. GW level reactors are completely feasible, though. In fact, they exist today, on the ground. For space use, there would be some differences in design, such as increased operational and heat rejection temperature, but these are not insurmountable difficulties.
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Post by kpatwin on Jan 1, 2018 4:54:30 GMT
apophys thank you for the assistance! I guess with the whole GW statement, I didn't realize that GW levels had been achieved yet. I guess what I was trying to say was that I'd like to keep size and cost down as much as possible to try and make it feasible for nations to field space warships, so its more an arbitrary limit for the purposes of story telling. Anyways, thank you very much for the help!!!!
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Post by RiftandRend on Jan 1, 2018 6:32:00 GMT
This should work. It's as realistic as I can make it and fires at ~40 rpm. |
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Post by AdmiralObvious on Jan 1, 2018 7:52:29 GMT
The design as it currently stands shoots a shot every 7 seconds, so that turned out supprisingly well. Crank up the power a tad for the capacitor and you'd be fine. If you want to save on mass, use a different reaction wheel (it's currently Osmium). Half of the mass and cost is currently going into the wheel. Edit: I tweaked it a lot, and made it much more sensible, so now it's actually significantly overboard on the fire rate on the version I uploaded. Thank you! I'm having trouble getting the file actually downloaded, partially on account of me being a functional moron when it comes to computers. Until I resolve my stupidity, do you have any basic design tips for if I wanted to design additional railguns on my own? I know VCS and zirconium copper are the two main materials with regards to rails and armature. Any other helpful tips? If you're still interested in my railgun (and you subscribed to it), im, like 60% sure workshop stuff gets downloaded, and then added to your game under the "core" designs. |
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Post by kpatwin on Jan 1, 2018 17:03:01 GMT
AdmiralObvious I just figured out that I susbscribed under an old account name. Resubscribed using my current account and it was right there in the core designs. Thank you very much!
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