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Post by michalo on Dec 29, 2016 11:08:41 GMT
Does anyone have very cost effective designs for drone lasers (~100kw - 1 MW), point defense lasers (~10-100 MW), main battle lasers (~100-500 MW), and then mega death lasers (~500+ MW)? A lot of what I am seeing are just the most crazy and no-expense-spared designs, which are cool, but I find those sorts of designs impractical. If I can't afford to equip a fleet with something, then it's just a novelty. (Like building a multi million dollar infantry rifle that is the best rifle ever made... and then only able to equip one soldier with it.) I mean, I could completely understand a planet having an orbital defense laser that is truly insane, but not a fleet that is expected to move about in any reasonable fashion. I would like to point out, actual thermal damage model in this game is terrible (If you can armor ship with ultra-high-quality glass against lasers and it is working fine, you know that something is quite wrong, as I discussed in this thread). We don't actually know how effective lasers would be if the model was correct, but if you could create a ship which kills (or at least disarms) anything immediately in 1000 km radius if something doesn't kill him first, I think immortal laser battleships might be cost effective (obviously there can be many counters to them, but probably not the ones we have in game now).
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Post by inbrainsane on Dec 29, 2016 16:53:53 GMT
Does anyone have very cost effective designs for drone lasers (~100kw - 1 MW), point defense lasers (~10-100 MW), main battle lasers (~100-500 MW), and then mega death lasers (~500+ MW)? A lot of what I am seeing are just the most crazy and no-expense-spared designs, which are cool, but I find those sorts of designs impractical. If I can't afford to equip a fleet with something, then it's just a novelty. (Like building a multi million dollar infantry rifle that is the best rifle ever made... and then only able to equip one soldier with it.) I mean, I could completely understand a planet having an orbital defense laser that is truly insane, but not a fleet that is expected to move about in any reasonable fashion. Scaling for Laser is a bit tricky. You need decent Intensity to be effective. Opinions about best intensity vary a bit. But please have a look at this from a perspective where you consider Laser, Power Supply and Cooling. So lets look at our budget. 5x 2GW Laser | 8.55t | 0.15Mc | 1x 10GW Power Plant | 98.6t | 1.98Mc | Cooling for Power Plant | 83.7t | 1.76Mc | Cooling for Laser | 178t | 1.04Mc |
So we have a total of 369t and 4.93Mc for the entire system. The reactor allows fitting an auxiliary MPD drive because you need only power when you fire. That is a quite small and affordable system. You can even justify fitting it on a drone. The biggest parts are the radiators. Compared to them, the rest is tiny. The reactor is from apophys. Look at the standards thread. The radiators are not fully optimized, you can even cut down a little there. The laser is my current favourite. See below. The system is tested. You want to add armor on the laser but its dimensions are tiny, so shouldnt be a problem. pastebin.com/7VdrEmz0Attachment Deleted
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Post by newageofpower on Dec 29, 2016 20:03:47 GMT
Does anyone have very cost effective designs for drone lasers (~100kw - 1 MW), point defense lasers (~10-100 MW), main battle lasers (~100-500 MW), and then mega death lasers (~500+ MW)? A lot of what I am seeing are just the most crazy and no-expense-spared designs, which are cool, but I find those sorts of designs impractical. If I can't afford to equip a fleet with something, then it's just a novelty. (Like building a multi million dollar infantry rifle that is the best rifle ever made... and then only able to equip one soldier with it.) I mean, I could completely understand a planet having an orbital defense laser that is truly insane, but not a fleet that is expected to move about in any reasonable fashion. Highly Affordable What? Too expensive for you? Need something that can track and hit a target at less than 10MM? Tired of overcorrecting Drone AI?
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Lasers
Dec 29, 2016 22:11:19 GMT
Post by caiaphas on Dec 29, 2016 22:11:19 GMT
I personally think this is a decent mega death laser, if you're willing to put up with the cost of radiators and reactors. I mount twenty of them on my prototype laser death star, and working simultaneously they can wipe out all the weapons modules on a four-gunship squadron (stock) within about two minutes or so? at 1 Mm. The pricetag comes in at just over 13 Mc.
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Post by inbrainsane on Dec 29, 2016 22:36:22 GMT
caiaphas Your laser is quite inefficient and super expensive. Sorry.
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Lasers
Dec 29, 2016 23:25:16 GMT
via mobile
oprean likes this
Post by Dhan on Dec 29, 2016 23:25:16 GMT
caiaphas Your laser is quite inefficient and super expensive. Sorry. What is there to be sorry of? The guy is just posting his design. If you are going to rain on his parade at least tell him what you are comparing his design to that made you draw this conclusion.
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Post by inbrainsane on Dec 29, 2016 23:40:25 GMT
caiaphas Your laser is quite inefficient and super expensive. Sorry. What is there to be sorry of? The guy is just posting his design. If you are going to rain on his parade at least tell him what you are comparing his design to that made you draw this conclusion. Posting a design without skimming through some threads before you do so is risky. I made the same mistake in the past. I am sorry for him because his "mega death laser" is not that good. At 10GW input, it should have > 430MW output power. And it should not cost 13Mc but rather <100kc. And because it is so expensive, I also know that it is likely to heavy. By an order of magnitude.
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Lasers
Dec 30, 2016 0:07:54 GMT
via mobile
Post by Dhan on Dec 30, 2016 0:07:54 GMT
What is there to be sorry of? The guy is just posting his design. If you are going to rain on his parade at least tell him what you are comparing his design to that made you draw this conclusion. Posting a design without skimming through some threads before you do so is risky. I made the same mistake in the past. I am sorry for him because his "mega death laser" is not that good. At 10GW input, it should have > 430MW output power. And it should not cost 13Mc but rather <100kc. And because it is so expensive, I also know that it is likely to heavy. By an order of magnitude. The guy shared something he came up with that he thought was good. He didn't claim that it was the best laser nor was it a submission into a competition. I don't see how your response makes sense here. It just looks like you are being condescending for no reason.
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Post by newageofpower on Dec 30, 2016 0:09:26 GMT
At 10GW input, it should have > 430MW output power. And it should not cost 13Mc but rather <100kc. And because it is so expensive, I also know that it is likely to heavy. By an order of magnitude. Well, depending on how many optical nodes he is using, ~410 MW output power is fine too (form factor considerations). The mass is most likely due to armor and mirror, although the low intensity at range indicates an average mirror.
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Post by caiaphas on Dec 30, 2016 0:57:59 GMT
At 10GW input, it should have > 430MW output power. And it should not cost 13Mc but rather <100kc. And because it is so expensive, I also know that it is likely to heavy. By an order of magnitude. Well, depending on how many optical nodes he is using, ~410 MW output power is fine too (form factor considerations). The mass is most likely due to armor and mirror, although the low intensity at range indicates an average mirror. I'm working on a slightly more efficient version that uses Krypton and Nd:YAG (420MW output so far, which is nice), but most of what I'm trying to optimize for is size more than anything, which limits the aperture a bit too much, but oh well (unless you're talking about the focusing mirror, in which case how the bloody hell do you get the efficiency on that stupid thing over 92%? it's driving me nuts). As it turns out, a turret of that radius lets me stack twenty of the suckers almost perfectly atop one of apophys's beautiful little 25.1 GW reactors. The aesthetics are pleasing.
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Lasers
Dec 30, 2016 4:52:27 GMT
Post by midnightdreary on Dec 30, 2016 4:52:27 GMT
Does anyone have very cost effective designs for drone lasers (~100kw - 1 MW), point defense lasers (~10-100 MW), main battle lasers (~100-500 MW), and then mega death lasers (~500+ MW)? A lot of what I am seeing are just the most crazy and no-expense-spared designs, which are cool, but I find those sorts of designs impractical. If I can't afford to equip a fleet with something, then it's just a novelty. (Like building a multi million dollar infantry rifle that is the best rifle ever made... and then only able to equip one soldier with it.) I mean, I could completely understand a planet having an orbital defense laser that is truly insane, but not a fleet that is expected to move about in any reasonable fashion. Scaling for Laser is a bit tricky. You need decent Intensity to be effective. Opinions about best intensity vary a bit. But please have a look at this from a perspective where you consider Laser, Power Supply and Cooling. So lets look at our budget. 5x 2GW Laser | 8.55t | 0.15Mc | 1x 10GW Power Plant | 98.6t | 1.98Mc | Cooling for Power Plant | 83.7t | 1.76Mc | Cooling for Laser | 178t | 1.04Mc |
So we have a total of 369t and 4.93Mc for the entire system. The reactor allows fitting an auxiliary MPD drive because you need only power when you fire. That is a quite small and affordable system. You can even justify fitting it on a drone. The biggest parts are the radiators. Compared to them, the rest is tiny. The reactor is from apophys. Look at the standards thread. The radiators are not fully optimized, you can even cut down a little there. The laser is my current favourite. See below. The system is tested. You want to add armor on the laser but its dimensions are tiny, so shouldnt be a problem. Hmmm... I would really like to see an "Arena" style setting for user designs. From all that I have read it seems that mega lasers reign supreme, since we cant decently layer armor on weapons or have alternatives to articulate weapon systems (and also reduce surface area). I do appreciate the input though. I enjoy learning from the experience of others. I've already made some great progress in rail and coil designs because of community feedback.
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Lasers
Dec 30, 2016 4:53:35 GMT
Post by midnightdreary on Dec 30, 2016 4:53:35 GMT
Does anyone have very cost effective designs for drone lasers (~100kw - 1 MW), point defense lasers (~10-100 MW), main battle lasers (~100-500 MW), and then mega death lasers (~500+ MW)? A lot of what I am seeing are just the most crazy and no-expense-spared designs, which are cool, but I find those sorts of designs impractical. If I can't afford to equip a fleet with something, then it's just a novelty. (Like building a multi million dollar infantry rifle that is the best rifle ever made... and then only able to equip one soldier with it.) I mean, I could completely understand a planet having an orbital defense laser that is truly insane, but not a fleet that is expected to move about in any reasonable fashion. Highly Affordable <snip> What? Too expensive for you? Need something that can track and hit a target at less than 10MM? Tired of overcorrecting Drone AI? <snip>
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