|
|
Post by 314159 on Oct 5, 2016 15:30:32 GMT
... is, in fact, fairly easy. My original thought on fielding Stinger Drones was "They're nice, but they get killed far too easily by any laser" - targeting the radiator eliminates dozens in seconds. But what if we didn't have to do that? What if we could hide the radiator behind armour? Well, obviously that's impossible for it to radiate - but we can hide it from the front. With that thought in mind, I designed the Crusader drone, whose third or fourth iteration can be seen below:   When seen from above, it becomes clear that the radiators are protected by armour from the front ~20-30° - for all of my engagements that meant them being hidden until passing the enemy. Since using the drones, I have not lost a single one to radiator damage (excepting after turnover). Doing this is fairly simple: Use the shortest radiators available, and add a spacer before them. If you want to, use more armour in front. Also, try to increase temperature as much as possible. But, can one do so with capital spacecraft, too? I've taken millesmissiles' design. Some changes were necessary (higher-temperature reactor, which I stole from the reactor thread and increasing the laser temperature by 100K), but in the end, this was the result:  Slightly heavier and wider, and more expensive due to more amour, but it also protects its radiators against most attacks. You could also decrease armour in the back, since being attacked there is unlikely. Are there disadvantages? Sure. You're more restricted in radiator size, you need more armour, and your width increases. But at least for my drones, it's been more than worth it. Thoughts? |
|
|
|
Post by RA2lover on Oct 5, 2016 15:42:17 GMT
How does this compare to simply overengineering the radiators so as to radiate incoming laser fire away?
|
|
|
|
Post by leerooooooy on Oct 5, 2016 16:22:09 GMT
A single well placed missile with a nuclear warhead would wipe out the radiators anyways, and nukes are ridiculously cheap.
You can get a 100kt by 41 kg one for 2 kc, or go overkill and spend 93 kc for a 100 Mt one that weights less than 10 tons.
|
|
|
|
Post by tukuro on Oct 5, 2016 18:38:50 GMT
You could try diamond (High thermal conductivity) or amorphous carbon (high specific heat) covered in silver (high reflectance, low extinction coefficient). Though as you said it's easier to just hide them behind a "mushroom" armour layout. Using reflective coatings means lower temperatures and larger more expensive radiators.
I just use long radiators spread along the length of the drone, this gives me a smaller cross section than trying to hide them behind armor. It makes them a bit more vulnerable, but I make up for that with higher deltaV, smaller volume and a more shallow angle at the front (in case of my missile drones).
|
|
|
|
Post by argonbalt on Oct 5, 2016 19:37:12 GMT
A single well placed missile with a nuclear warhead would wipe out the radiators anyways, and nukes are ridiculously cheap. You can get a 100kt by 41 kg one for 2 kc, or go overkill and spend 93 kc for a 100 Mt one that weights less than 10 tons. While that is true most missiles in game are still dumber than a sack of rocks if duped properly, and if they have to be launched in close there is no shortage of super guns to tear missile ships to pieces, not to mention now thanks to the improved laser designs micro nuke rounds are also quite vulnerable. |
|
|
|
Post by nivik on Oct 5, 2016 19:52:52 GMT
On ships, I've had decent luck with boron carbide at 10cm total thickness (3.5mm radiator, 7.5mm armor), but I also run very low-power capital ships (around 1.5 MW per kiloton of ship mass), so I can afford redundant ludicrously overengineered radiators.
I will note that 10cm of boron carbide can shrug off at least a couple of direct hits from 4 gram, 9.5km/s railgun rounds. But I wouldn't recommend it for anyone who needs more radiator area than a Volkswagen.
|
|
|
|
Post by blothorn on Oct 5, 2016 20:06:23 GMT
A single well placed missile with a nuclear warhead would wipe out the radiators anyways, and nukes are ridiculously cheap. You can get a 100kt by 41 kg one for 2 kc, or go overkill and spend 93 kc for a 100 Mt one that weights less than 10 tons. While that is true most missiles in game are still dumber than a sack of rocks if duped properly, and if they have to be launched in close there is no shortage of super guns to tear missile ships to pieces, not to mention now thanks to the improved laser designs micro nuke rounds are also quite vulnerable. Nuclear missiles are hard to dupe--you do not need them to just miss, you need them to miss by 150+ meters if you want to save your radiators. That takes not only a heat decoy but a rather hard burn to get away from the decoy (or a very high-velocity decoy launcher). And my understanding is that lasers were falling behind silica aerogel. (And remember that with regard to armoring drones, you likely do not have a capital ship with a 100MW laser to provide backup.) That said, my general impression is that if your drones get into a fight with nuclear missiles they are going to lose; missiles are just too cheap. Avoiding that matchup is primarily a matter of tactical-map strategy. It is more of a concern once drones are engaged with their target, but then a long-ranged drone can get useful damage in before missiles have time to arrive. |
|
|
|
Post by argonbalt on Oct 5, 2016 20:25:31 GMT
While that is true most missiles in game are still dumber than a sack of rocks if duped properly, and if they have to be launched in close there is no shortage of super guns to tear missile ships to pieces, not to mention now thanks to the improved laser designs micro nuke rounds are also quite vulnerable. Nuclear missiles are hard to dupe--you do not need them to just miss, you need them to miss by 150+ meters if you want to save your radiators. That takes not only a heat decoy but a rather hard burn to get away from the decoy (or a very high-velocity decoy launcher). And my understanding is that lasers were falling behind silica aerogel. (And remember that with regard to armoring drones, you likely do not have a capital ship with a 100MW laser to provide backup.) That said, my general impression is that if your drones get into a fight with nuclear missiles they are going to lose; missiles are just too cheap. Avoiding that matchup is primarily a matter of tactical-map strategy. It is more of a concern once drones are engaged with their target, but then a long-ranged drone can get useful damage in before missiles have time to arrive. Well i mainly meant duping them with counter missiles, if you are letting missiles get to your fleet you are suffering a strategic failure in my books. |
|
|
|
Post by nivik on Oct 6, 2016 2:14:04 GMT
I've been working on a small countermissile and one idea I've had is to slap a launcher and internal magazine onto a drone. Any missile that seeks drones will seek other missiles, so countermissiles could have a dual benefit of both potentially killing other missiles and acting as decoys.
...heck, so far as that goes, is there anything preventing us from mounting flares on missiles? Since radiance is subject to the inverse square law, mounting a long-burning, low-intensity flare on a missile could still foul other missiles' seekers if it gets close enough.
...I'm going to take a look and see what I can do with this when I get home. If nothing else, getting the flares AWAY from your ship is worth a 50kg of fuel and a half-kilo rocket motor.
|
|
|
|
Post by argonbalt on Oct 6, 2016 3:16:36 GMT
I've been working on a small countermissile and one idea I've had is to slap a launcher and internal magazine onto a drone. Any missile that seeks drones will seek other missiles, so countermissiles could have a dual benefit of both potentially killing other missiles and acting as decoys. ...heck, so far as that goes, is there anything preventing us from mounting flares on missiles? Since radiance is subject to the inverse square law, mounting a long-burning, low-intensity flare on a missile could still foul other missiles' seekers if it gets close enough. ...I'm going to take a look and see what I can do with this when I get home. If nothing else, getting the flares AWAY from your ship is worth a 50kg of fuel and a half-kilo rocket motor. I already looked into this pretty soon after launch, basically the biggest problem is that flare fuses are auto triggering which is dumb. So as soon as you launch the missile from the launcher the flare warhead detonates. Alternatively trying to make a slow burning payload for a missile is infeasible, because missile payloads don't have a retarder mass option. Hypothetically i guess you could mount a flare launcher on a missile, but it is nowhere as efficient mass wise, like installing an entire cigarette lighter into a firework just to light it off. Attachment Deleted |
|
|
|
Post by RA2lover on Oct 6, 2016 3:23:45 GMT
Why not just use an inefficient nuclear reactor whose only purpose is powering its cooling system as a decoy?
|
|
|
|
Post by concretedonkey on Oct 6, 2016 10:23:59 GMT
I've tried firing a flare payload from a cannon but it was with mixed results... had trouble going both small enough and powerful enough to be effective. But I really like the idea of mounting both a warhead and a flare in one package  . |
|
|
|
Post by 314159 on Oct 6, 2016 13:18:25 GMT
How does this compare to simply overengineering the radiators so as to radiate incoming laser fire away? It might be possible, but this way also allows me to (potentially) reduce the required armour - a strongly-armoured "mushroom cap", and only lightly armouring the remainder of the drone. A single well placed missile with a nuclear warhead would wipe out the radiators anyways, and nukes are ridiculously cheap. You can get a 100kt by 41 kg one for 2 kc, or go overkill and spend 93 kc for a 100 Mt one that weights less than 10 tons. It will, but you can still use three symmetric radiators (which'll result in at least one of them surviving). But it's a good point, and I'd definitely like to test against those. Do you have any designs I can use for that? On ships, I've had decent luck with boron carbide at 10cm total thickness (3.5mm radiator, 7.5mm armor), but I also run very low-power capital ships (around 1.5 MW per kiloton of ship mass), so I can afford redundant ludicrously overengineered radiators. I will note that 10cm of boron carbide can shrug off at least a couple of direct hits from 4 gram, 9.5km/s railgun rounds. But I wouldn't recommend it for anyone who needs more radiator area than a Volkswagen. *Looks at the drone* ~1GW/kt. Ouch. How did your radiators fare against shrapnel? |
|
|
|
Post by nivik on Oct 6, 2016 15:30:28 GMT
On ships, I've had decent luck with boron carbide at 10cm total thickness (3.5mm radiator, 7.5mm armor), but I also run very low-power capital ships (around 1.5 MW per kiloton of ship mass), so I can afford redundant ludicrously overengineered radiators. I will note that 10cm of boron carbide can shrug off at least a couple of direct hits from 4 gram, 9.5km/s railgun rounds. But I wouldn't recommend it for anyone who needs more radiator area than a Volkswagen. *Looks at the drone* ~1GW/kt. Ouch. How did your radiators fare against shrapnel? Didn't test them versus shrapnel, but in general, I think a total shrapnel hit of under 100 kJ of kinetic energy would be shrugged off. For my drones, I'm using a multiple redundant approach with a high temperature base material a coating with a high thermal..not conductivity, the other one. I forget what it's called right now. However, they haven't been laser tested yet. My current plan for dealing with laser armed ships is including a couple of lightweight missile launchers and a small magazine of 15x180cm flak missiles in my drones for use as decoys. That will help enrich the target environment to the point where the drones can get their done. |
|
|
|
Post by leerooooooy on Oct 6, 2016 16:29:32 GMT
|
|
.