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Lasers
Oct 12, 2016 15:16:30 GMT
Post by ross128 on Oct 12, 2016 15:16:30 GMT
Well, the goal isn't to make them balanced. The goal in this game is to make everything realistic, and then push it to the limits and see what ends up becoming the dominant strategy. A fairly balanced system of counterplay is theoretically a possible result, but not guaranteed.
That said, lasers could certainly use some expanding on if only because they have a somewhat smaller possibility space than our other options right now. It would be interesting to see other lasing media, such as gas lasers, semiconductor lasers, and dye lasers. It would also be interesting to see pumping options other than flash lamps, such as chemical lasers or multi-stage lasers (where you use a laser to pump another laser, which is probably what we'd use semiconductor lasers for since they're not very powerful on their own).
Pulse-width modulation would also be an interesting thing to play with. Chemical lasers in particular stand out though, as they have a reputation for being very powerful. The downside is that they'd require ammo, in the form of the chemicals that you react to pump them.
Of course, all that would be quite a lot of work.
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Lasers
Oct 12, 2016 18:41:57 GMT
Post by blothorn on Oct 12, 2016 18:41:57 GMT
How does one actually armor drones against laser? I tried to armor my drone in cms of silicon aerogel and boron but they melted away pretty fast. ...Or maybe it's because my drones are going up against 100 megawatt laser. Either way, still needs to improve them. Are they punching through the drone's armor or sniping the weapons (which for conventional guns is a near-guaranteed total kill)? If the latter: + Put the weapon on a turret. In my experience, no barrel material lasts more than a few seconds against a high-powered laser. + Use a good thermal armor on the turret. In my tests, it took a 500MW laser with a 3.7m aparture (2290MW/m^2 at 240km) 220 seconds to burn through a turret with 10cm silica aerogel. The downside of silica aerogel on turrets is that you cannot back it with a kinetic armor like you can for hull armor, but if the drones are close enough to take kinetic fire they should be well within their own effective range. (Aramid fiber also has excellent thermal performance, but to me the cost is prohibitive.) And yes, I think that drones vs. laser capships strongly favors the drones. It makes sense: when weapon/armor balance favors armor, the optimal ship is large, as larger ships have a better surface area:volume ratio and can afford heavier armor. When effective armor is impractical, balance tends to favor redundancy, and little is more redundant than a swarm of drones. My testing on armor suggests that this game is strongly in the latter category. That said, most of the weapon/armor imbalance comes from nukes, kinetic weapons, and turret sniping. As cuddlefish notes, nuke and kinetic physics are severely broken, and turret sniping is so effective mostly because of the lack of composite turret armor.
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Lasers
Oct 12, 2016 18:44:51 GMT
Post by concretedonkey on Oct 12, 2016 18:44:51 GMT
Managed to shave off half the price and weight and decided to post it anyway... I don't think its a practical bird , even if its pretty. Normalitybytes, I had to design a lot of custom stuff for it , quite a lot of radiators , its going to be a pain to separate everything. I can send you the whole user fire , but it will not be competitive to yours I think , you have the same apperature and more MWs ... and this drone is quite fragile now. I don't think it will be a competition.
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Lasers
Oct 13, 2016 4:26:17 GMT
Post by dragonkid11 on Oct 13, 2016 4:26:17 GMT
How does one actually armor drones against laser? I tried to armor my drone in cms of silicon aerogel and boron but they melted away pretty fast. ...Or maybe it's because my drones are going up against 100 megawatt laser. Either way, still needs to improve them. Are they punching through the drone's armor or sniping the weapons (which for conventional guns is a near-guaranteed total kill)? If the latter: + Put the weapon on a turret. In my experience, no barrel material lasts more than a few seconds against a high-powered laser. + Use a good thermal armor on the turret. In my tests, it took a 500MW laser with a 3.7m aparture (2290MW/m^2 at 240km) 220 seconds to burn through a turret with 10cm silica aerogel. The downside of silica aerogel on turrets is that you cannot back it with a kinetic armor like you can for hull armor, but if the drones are close enough to take kinetic fire they should be well within their own effective range. (Aramid fiber also has excellent thermal performance, but to me the cost is prohibitive.) And yes, I think that drones vs. laser capships strongly favors the drones. It makes sense: when weapon/armor balance favors armor, the optimal ship is large, as larger ships have a better surface area:volume ratio and can afford heavier armor. When effective armor is impractical, balance tends to favor redundancy, and little is more redundant than a swarm of drones. My testing on armor suggests that this game is strongly in the latter category. That said, most of the weapon/armor imbalance comes from nukes, kinetic weapons, and turret sniping. As cuddlefish notes, nuke and kinetic physics are severely broken, and turret sniping is so effective mostly because of the lack of composite turret armor. Well, something might be bugged because I can't use aerogel for turret armor for some reasons.
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Lasers
Oct 13, 2016 4:30:15 GMT
Post by concretedonkey on Oct 13, 2016 4:30:15 GMT
Might be that your version is older , this became possible with an update. The drone above actually uses exactly aerogel for the turret armor.
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Lasers
Oct 15, 2016 6:06:50 GMT
Post by redparadize on Oct 15, 2016 6:06:50 GMT
I am kinda bad at designing laser. Anyone have a +-2m lightweight laser for drone? Another question, what is the best frequency to defeat Silica aerogel?
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Lasers
Oct 15, 2016 7:01:53 GMT
Post by blothorn on Oct 15, 2016 7:01:53 GMT
Silica aerogel has negligible reflectance at all wavelengths, at least in-game (unless the Refractive Index Spectrum listings are lying). Offhand I would go for the frequency with the best luminance if you expect to hold a steady aimpoint (turret sniping) and best output power if not. (Against armor with a high thermal conductivity you probably want best output power, but I have yet to find such an arrangement that really requires worry.)
The only big frequency/armor surprise I know of is that silver has terrible reflectance in UV, so you can hard-counter silver/diamond armor that way. But better would probably be rhenium (excellent melting point and decent broadband reflectance) or magnesium (excellent reflectance without the holes of aluminum and silver).
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foof
New Member
Posts: 31
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Lasers
Oct 15, 2016 10:04:30 GMT
Post by foof on Oct 15, 2016 10:04:30 GMT
Silica aerogel has negligible reflectance at all wavelengths, at least in-game (unless the Refractive Index Spectrum listings are lying). Offhand I would go for the frequency with the best luminance if you expect to hold a steady aimpoint (turret sniping) and best output power if not. (Against armor with a high thermal conductivity you probably want best output power, but I have yet to find such an arrangement that really requires worry.) The only big frequency/armor surprise I know of is that silver has terrible reflectance in UV, so you can hard-counter silver/diamond armor that way. But better would probably be rhenium (excellent melting point and decent broadband reflectance) or magnesium (excellent reflectance without the holes of aluminum and silver). Are you talking about the RefractionIndices.txt \Children of a Dead Earth\Resources\Data, do you by any chance know how to read them? Here is Tin as example: SPECTRA Tin n .6328 2.384 k .6328 4.727
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Post by blothorn on Oct 15, 2016 11:03:57 GMT
You can get a more readable version in the in-game material properties section. N and K are the index of refraction and extinction coefficient; together they determine reflectance (along with some other derivative properties (see www.photonics.com/EDU/Handbook.aspx?AID=25501 for a more detailed explanation).
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Lasers
Oct 19, 2016 4:26:13 GMT
Post by lawson on Oct 19, 2016 4:26:13 GMT
So I made a thing. Attachment DeletedI think I'll try to make a <100 ton drone with it and some MPD thrusters More seriously, the laser rod is way too small diameter for 42.6 MW of 1064nm, 112GW/m^2 . (oh and the end mirrors won't take it either, dielectric mirrors please!) The thermal stress in the rod will probably shatter it as well. ("just" 11.6MW of volumetric heating to deal with.) Finally, can we have an incandescent lamp pump source please? (i.e. a black body) I think it'll make Erbium and Ytterbium doped lasers more viable. It also opens up the possibility of using a nuclear reactor's fuel rods as the black body pump source. I'd LOVE a nuclear pumped Nd:Diamond laser (A black body pumped laser is a common concept explored by the few researchers looking at solar powered lasers)
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Lasers
Oct 19, 2016 4:34:10 GMT
Post by dragonkid11 on Oct 19, 2016 4:34:10 GMT
Man, everyone is trying to build mega-laser while I'm struggling to make a 300 kilowatt and 1 megawatt laser light enough to be put on drones cheaply.....
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Lasers
Oct 19, 2016 5:04:20 GMT
via mobile
Post by Durandal on Oct 19, 2016 5:04:20 GMT
Man, everyone is trying to build mega-laser while I'm struggling to make a 300 kilowatt and 1 megawatt laser light enough to be put on drones cheaply..... Riiiiiight?
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Post by nerd1000 on Oct 19, 2016 6:06:11 GMT
So I made a thing. I think I'll try to make a <100 ton drone with it and some MPD thrusters More seriously, the laser rod is way too small diameter for 42.6 MW of 1064nm, 112GW/m^2 . (oh and the end mirrors won't take it either, dielectric mirrors please!) The thermal stress in the rod will probably shatter it as well. ("just" 11.6MW of volumetric heating to deal with.) Finally, can we have an incandescent lamp pump source please? (i.e. a black body) I think it'll make Erbium and Ytterbium doped lasers more viable. It also opens up the possibility of using a nuclear reactor's fuel rods as the black body pump source. I'd LOVE a nuclear pumped Nd:Diamond laser (A black body pumped laser is a common concept explored by the few researchers looking at solar powered lasers) I'd like to have a CO2 laser. They're significantly more efficient than the solid state types we use in the game currently (according to wikipeida they can reach inefficiencies of 20%!), so output powers could be much higher than what we get currently. Edit: That said, I did experiment with a 100% efficient 300MW black box laser. It wasn't as awesome as I'd hoped.
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Post by lawson on Nov 2, 2016 14:41:51 GMT
While testing lasers at ranges over 250Km, I managed to make a relatively light laser with a 16M aperture radius. 382 tons and 2.93 Mc and deadly out to at least 1000Km. (used a rail gun from the 'Speed Record!' thread to start the battle.) Intensity at 250Km is a gentle 50800 MW/m^2 Attachment Deleted
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Lasers
Nov 2, 2016 16:05:29 GMT
Post by bluuetechnic on Nov 2, 2016 16:05:29 GMT
While testing lasers at ranges over 250Km, I managed to make a relatively light laser with a 16M aperture radius. 382 tons and 2.93 Mc and deadly out to at least 1000Km. (used a rail gun from the 'Speed Record!' thread to start the battle.) Intensity at 250Km is a gentle 50800 MW/m^2 Thanks for testing this, and I suppose you're welcome for the thread! In any case, the main reason I came to this thread is to ask the following: Are there any wavelengths that are particularly common, useful, or powerful? I ask because if there were, then it would be interesting to implement metamaterial cloaking as a counter; because they currently exist, but can only really affect a handful of wavelengths at the same time; not all wavelengths at once (full true invisibility).
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