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Post by nivik on Oct 28, 2016 18:41:14 GMT
If you really want to look at high efficieny propellants, and OSHA isn't a concern, the highest specific impulse ever achieved from a chemical rocket was a Lithium-Fluorine-Hydrogen tripropellant system. Apparently the exhaust is so ionized that it would interfere with communications. I suspect both OSHA and the communications systems would be more concerned with the magazine full of milk jug sized nuclear warheads. At least, I'd hope so. I do wish I could get more I sp out of my fluorine/hydrogen rocket by consuming the injector like a slug of hybrid fuel. Alas...maybe someday.
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Post by illectro on Oct 28, 2016 19:22:01 GMT
While we're on teh subject of missile guidance, is there any details on how the proximity fuses are supposed to work, I suspect if missile navigation and missile guidance were fixed then their efficacy might need limiting in some other way, and all those pocket nukes need triggers of some sort.
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 28, 2016 19:25:17 GMT
While we're on teh subject of missile guidance, is there any details on how the proximity fuses are supposed to work, I suspect if missile navigation and missile guidance were fixed then their efficacy might need limiting in some other way, and all those pocket nukes need triggers of some sort. One thing to keep in mind is that this is a simulation so if once better algorithms and fuses come in missiles reign supreme then that is the way it is and unless you can bring up a real life method to defeat the missiles backed up by hard science and equations and it will be introduced. Other wise as this is a simulation above all else if missiles prove the ultimate weapon and no CWIS can defeat them then that is the way things are and the way they will be.
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Post by michalo on Oct 28, 2016 19:55:33 GMT
While we're on teh subject of missile guidance, is there any details on how the proximity fuses are supposed to work, I suspect if missile navigation and missile guidance were fixed then their efficacy might need limiting in some other way, and all those pocket nukes need triggers of some sort. One thing to keep in mind is that this is a simulation so if once better algorithms and fuses come in missiles reign supreme then that is the way it is and unless you can bring up a real life method to defeat the missiles backed up by hard science and equations and it will be introduced. Other wise as this is a simulation above all else if missiles prove the ultimate weapon and no CWIS can defeat them then that is the way things are and the way they will be. I think we should remember that there might be other counters to missiles than plain CIWS. For example, my drone-fighters with 12km/s coilguns can easily take out a missile salvo, even without any losses (probably because game puts missiles few kilometers away from drones, and they don't have time to gain speed). I often use them as a vanguard of their carrier. In my opinion fixing missiles would be a great thing and it can even make game more balanced (because missiles can be fooled, but drones can't be, and barrage of 20 coilguns hitting your capital ships from 150 km, which don't even have posibillity to fire back, is quite hard to counter).
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Post by ross128 on Oct 28, 2016 20:01:08 GMT
A big part of the fun in my opinion is watching the short arms-races that take off on the forums whenever some useful but undocumented behavior in the simulation is uncovered. It'll be interesting to see it all happen again whenever some new feature or module type is introduced.
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Post by Random Joe on Oct 28, 2016 20:23:01 GMT
Missile guidance doesn't have to be hard or complex. Find the greatest heat source. Mark its X,Y. Timestep. Mark X,Y. If the position is identical, it's on a collision course, keep on course. If it's moving, timestep. Check position, make best guess course correction (example: best guess most attacks are head-on, if target is moving away to left of center, pivot missile left). Timetep. If rate increases, you were wrong, reverse direction. The goal is to bring all movement in that seeker to zero.
This leads to a lot of issues with excessive accelerations tricking the missiles, confusion when the targets switch, and other defeat mechanisms. It's also fast and requires no look-ahead pathfinding. Just disable it prior to intercept velocity/range, and use it only for terminal corrections. Or keep it on at all times and see if the burn works, it's hard to use atmospheric designs in space.
Re: CIWS, current lasers and/or flak work rather well, but the issue is time over target. At 2 kps there's next to no intercept time. Anti-missile nukes, multiple high cyclic rate high rotation cannons with poor accuracy, or similar systems can work. Of course you can always hook up a mirror to a laser and use it like a DLP. If it's 99.9% reflective and you have a MegaWatt laser, just be ready to vent a kiloWatt of heat from the mirror. Or use a fiber-optic system, which needs quite a bit of cooling, but total internal reflection will keep the losses down.
But really, the only thing I'm really sure on is that people seem to be overthinking missile guidance. Get a remote system for real drones and get a dumb heat-seeker for missiles. If you want a smarter missile, use the drone package. Win/win.
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Post by illectro on Oct 28, 2016 20:31:24 GMT
That's exactly my point, the simulation has magic missile sensors and proximilty fuses which aren't subject to countermeasures at this time. Missile guidance is dumb enough to go for the brightest heat source, but smart enough to somehow know the distance to target and infer when it's close enough to a target to be effective. Is it a radar pulse, if so why can it only target heat sources? Or it is just triggering the moment that the angular velocity of the tracked target peaks (signifying a closest approach). So if the simulation devolves into missile supremacy then simulating potential weaknesses in this model would be an absolutely viable way to restore diversity to space warfare.
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aiyel
Junior Member
Posts: 83
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Post by aiyel on Oct 29, 2016 3:52:08 GMT
yeah. I find it hard to believe that our magic IR sensors are both sensitive enough to see missiles during coast phase but resilient enough that they can't be flash-blinded by lasers or nukes well beyond ranges thta said weapons should have destructive effects on the hull.
Obviously if we get proper guidance algorithms we'll need better sensor modeling for missiles and drones, and probably more sensors than JUST effectively single-pixel thermals.
I'd like to see, at the very least, imaging infrared for its anti-decoy use, (perhaps by making it more susceptible to dazzle and flash blinding and thus probably kept covered until terminal phase where a sensor cover gets blown away) active radar (thermal decoys won't do jack, but clouds of chaff might make it harder on their terminal guidance) and command guided (where the firing ship does all the work, but only useable if the launching ship is also in the tactical engagement (useful for counter-missiles, especially) and which relies on OWNSHIP's sensors.
Of course, I'd like to see a "is CIWS yes/no" button in weapon design which has some alternative rules for targeting missiles and drones. That is, a CIWS should figure its hit probability and spray just enough rounds to achieve a desired kill chance before engaging another target, and CIWS mounts should always strive to engage different targets from each other until there's more turrets than targets. This desired kill probability should of course be tuneable, and probably tuneable by range band. If I decide I want my CIWS to fire at 100km, there's nothing stopping me. If I declare that at less than 50km, CIWS engage to 75% probability of kill, then it should fire enough rounds to achieve 75% then move to the next target on its own list, only coming back to the first after it's engaged or destroyed all others.
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Post by nivik on Oct 29, 2016 16:33:48 GMT
Missile guidance doesn't have to be hard or complex. Find the greatest heat source. Mark its X,Y. Timestep. Mark X,Y. If the position is identical, it's on a collision course, keep on course. If it's moving, timestep. Check position, make best guess course correction (example: best guess most attacks are head-on, if target is moving away to left of center, pivot missile left). Timetep. If rate increases, you were wrong, reverse direction. The goal is to bring all movement in that seeker to zero. You just invented Proportional Navigation.
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Post by jonen on Oct 30, 2016 8:48:15 GMT
I just had an epiphany about what the whole Missile Guidance debacle reminded me of.
Possibly apocryphal story time:
... So the moral of the story is at least missile targeting in CoaDE ought to be a relatively easy fix?
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Post by ross128 on Oct 30, 2016 14:25:15 GMT
Hmm, I wonder if those "flawed assumptions" had to do with miles vs nautical miles. "And so the engineers returned to their workstations, loudly cursing the British and their insane measurement system."
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Post by jonen on Oct 30, 2016 14:45:33 GMT
Hmm, I wonder if those "flawed assumptions" had to do with miles vs nautical miles. "And so the engineers returned to their workstations, loudly cursing the British and their insane measurement system." Kilometers, since Sweden uses SI. One Swedish "mil" is 10 km.
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Post by calvin on Nov 1, 2016 3:36:07 GMT
Honestly, I'd be happy if there was a way to use missiles without needing to play a multi hour mission with 10min time steps because the AI keeps making minor course corrections. It's not like they burn a bunch of dV and now the missiles are clearly useless. Instead they make a very slight adjustment, and then I get to make a very slight adjudtment of my own on every missile salvo I've sent. And then I run the turn and we do it all again.
It's even worse if, like me, you use drones and missiles to counter incoming AI drones. So I'm not just adjusting 4 salvos for each enemy fleet, it's 4 per fleet and then another fleet per incoming enemy drone/missile wave.
The AI can do this all day but I can't. It also makes the lack of an in-mission save really annoying. I was a couple hours into a mission and had to quit and restart the entire thing over again because I had real life to do. Sometimes you can just leave it running but a quicksave would actually solve the problem.
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