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Post by bluuetechnic on Oct 14, 2016 2:48:13 GMT
Hey there! I'm still relatively new to this game, having not even unlock module design yet, but I've already spent a significant amount of time learning in the ship builder, browsing the forums, and theorycrafting. This post is mainly about three alternative methods I've theorycrafted for armoring ships, but have yet to test. These break down into three main categories: 1.) Frontal Armor This is fairly self explanatory, and have seen some people mention this in the threads already by various different names for various different purposes, but the gist always remains the same; create a wider cross section at the front of the craft and armor it very heavily, then approach enemies head on as opposed to broad side Pros: Can armor a smaller cross section to defend more of the ship; can add more armor for same weight; can hide most radiators, potentially greatly reducing the threat of missiles and increasing the effectiveness of flares; can either minimize or completely remove all armor on the rear section Cons: Most weapons are ineffective or entirely unusable in this configuration unless placed directly on front, in which case they tend to be eliminated immediately; In order to gain maximum benefits, back half shouldn't be armored significantly/at all, leaving it highly vulnerable to attacks from rear, or if enemy survives first attack pass; Partial armor inherently weaker in some ways Potential Solutions: Use primarily missile systems hidden behind frontal armor bulge, mixed fleet comp, and drones and flares 2.) Broadside-Only Armor Similar to the last configuration, but this time with all of the armor and weapons on ~180 of the hull, and none on the other half Pros: Larger cross section means weapons can be spread out along the side, and won't always be destroyed; Also means it can fit more weapons than frontal armor; No need to put weapons on both sides so all firepower can be focused on one side; Radiators can be hidden/protected behind the main body of the craft; Allows more heavy armor than standard configs for same weight (but less than frontal only); large area covered means successful penetrations will be less devestating. Cons: Still Vulnerable in areas not covered; Also only partial armor which is inherently less reliable; front or rear still usually exposed to some degree; large cross section compared to frontal armor; asymmetrical mass distribution makes controlling ship far more difficult/less efficient Potential Solutions: Placing engines behind armor may change direction of control?; add in more empty space to increase total area while decreasing the percentage of area that protects vitals 3.) Rotating Ships I may be incorrect about this (haven't checked/tested) but I believe there is a command to have ships rotate about a central axis. Having them do so along the longest axis could have benefits Pros: Makes laser weaponry less effective (due to rotation, lasers can't effectively concentrate on one spot/area); Allows for minimal/no anti-laser armor; could cause armor to be proportionally more effective against other weapons due to the effects of a rotating body on ballistics; could generally allow for more protection for less weight Cons: Impacts could throw off spin; Spin velocity must stay low to keep g-forces from killing crew/destroying certain parts of the ship (radiators?); Spinning means weapons won't have as much time to fire/will be less accurate; some weapons may be entirely unable to hit (also makes lasers almost unusable in most roles); hard to control ship Potential solutions: Increase turret tracking speed; use missiles/drones; Make weapons more powerful but slower firing; sync RoF to rotation These are just some ideas I had floating around for a while; let me know what you think  Haven't been able to test them myself largely due to school stuff; feel free to try them out yourself, I'm very interested in the results; also haven't really browsed the forumns since I started on this at the beginning of the week, so if anyone else has come up with any of these concepts before me, I wasn't trying to copy them Thanks - Bluue |
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erin
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Post by erin on Oct 14, 2016 4:54:16 GMT
I've already seen a couple of slick looking full broadside capships that appear to mount engines opposite their armor plates; durandal's and argonbalt's spring to mind immediately. I'm personally a fan of the idea of flattened spacecraft that can use their flat-armored side to bring more weapons to bear in a careful broadside, but unless qswitched decides to implement non-cylindrical vessel bodyplans (if broadside thrusting can work, why not?) or allow modders to do their magic on it then I guess we won't get to see flat spaceships tested proper.  I wonder how well saucers can be pushed to work... I've seen one half-saucer design so far, but haven't found the time to play with shipbuilding lately. Maybe something like this, with wide flat propellant tanks  |
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Post by bluuetechnic on Oct 14, 2016 5:29:17 GMT
Ah, so you can utilize broadside mounted thrusters. I knew you could place thrusters there, but I wasn't sure if you could use them for anything but thrusting. Other than that, both concepts you brought up were interesting too. And while we can't really do the flat ship as you said, I'm interested in looking into the saucer idea; in particular, I think it could be a quite effective design to utilize in drones. *Side note: did you do all of those sketches? They're really good - It would've been really useful for this post if I had done something similar, but I kind of suck at sketches. Also I'd already spent the better part of a week procrastinating on this post, so I didn't need another delay  Edit: Also, looking at the wide ship design makes me really want to have those in the game; it looks way more sci-fi, and it may have a practical application. It just generally looks better tbh, and the bland circular designs of every ship currently is one of my biggest problems with the game |
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Post by nerd1000 on Oct 14, 2016 5:54:24 GMT
I think the main problem with half-armoured layouts is their vulnerability to nukes. All it takes is one bomb going off beside or behind you to fry everything, so what you really need is a 'compromise' design with thermal armour all around but the ballistic armour concentrated on one side.
Aside from that concern, I really like your half-saucer concept. it combines extreme sloping of the armour with plenty of surface area for mounting weapons, without compromising the safety of the radiators like my saucer design does (though I should note that the purpose of that design was to look like a stereotypical UFO, not be super combat effective). I think the saucer layout especially lends itself to fixed weapons- being short and wide helps your turn rate, so you can get your weapons on target more efficiently than a long skinny ship, and the saucer armour shape is most effective if you point the edge of the saucer at the enemy.
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Post by morrigi on Oct 14, 2016 16:55:40 GMT
The other problem with half-armored layouts is drones. Even an 8mm machine gun can shred those designs if the drones can complete a pass and shoot it in the back.
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 14, 2016 18:26:49 GMT
Honestly the biggest issue with all of these designs is what happens when some nukes get around the side of the armor. Now sure you can protect your hull against nuclear blasts even into the 100s of gigatons if you do it right but radiators just die almost no matter what you do to nuclear warheads. Same goes for engines. They also get knocked out by even a small nuke going off remotely close to them. In all honesty with a nuclear attack you don't actually want precision. You want nukes blowing up all around your target as that is what's going to knock them out. Not by getting through the armor but by killing engines and radiators. So far I have yet to find any sort of way to protect my engines or radiators from massed nuclear attack. Turrets sure! The hull definitely! But a shot gun of nukes will almost always kill the ship from knocking out engines and radiators. So if anyone has any idea for protecting against this I would love to hear them!
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Post by rathos on Oct 14, 2016 18:54:45 GMT
Intercept the nukes before they get in combat range of your capital ship. They will waste all their delta-v chasing whatever you intercepted them with, be it a drone or a flak missile.
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 14, 2016 19:02:11 GMT
Intercept the nukes before they get in combat range of your capital ship. They will waste all their delta-v chasing whatever you intercepted them with, be it a drone or a flak missile. That actually isn't a solution to what I am talking about. If the nukes are on a missile (I assume I am controlling them and testing my weapons against the ai instead of the other way around (the ai is so stupid :/)) I just send them straight at the enemy fleet. The goal with this sort of attack is just to have a cloud of nuclear weapons going off around the target ship. A great weapon for this is coil gun launching nukes. Mounted either on a drone or a ship and firing at well beyond normal maximum range to just get nukes all around the enemy fleet. The truth is this type of attack is much more just a drone flying straight at an enemy fleet and spewing out a cloud of unguided nukes. As the goal is just to get nukes all around the enemy fleet. That's when they are most destructive and as they are unguided you can't fool them and if you do fool them just command detonate them when they are infront and behind of the enemy ship and you'll kill it. So I'm looking for a way for armor to fend this off as counter weapons cannot always be counted on. |
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erin
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Post by erin on Oct 14, 2016 19:11:23 GMT
I mean, I don't think broadside-armoring has to rule out the possibility of having thermal armor extend around the engine side, as Nerd1000 suggests. As for armoring radiators, that's entirely true, and something a friend brought up with me as well. I've seen people using clusters of smaller radiators around the circumference of the ship, which is neat. But why not have radiators integrated with the ship's armor as well? It'd certainly be less efficient, sure -- half of the heat will be going back into the ship -- but you can armor the radiators at no extra cost of mass, and they don't stick out prominently into space.  I dunno how to solve the engine problem without better materials or having an armor wall that constricts one's gimbaling though. Heck, maybe we could use combat heatsinks in the midst of battle. Now if only we had heatsink parts... |
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 14, 2016 19:25:20 GMT
Honestly I don't think integrated radiators would help all that much. They would still need to be able to radiate to space and that means they can still be irradiated from space so nukes would still kill them. Also the shear surface area you would need for high power power plants would render this approach fairly impractical. As for heat sinks. Well I mean that would be a great idea as combat is short and devastating but I would think the mass penalty for caring a big enough heat sink to soak up the heat from multi GW power plants would be prohibitive as I don't think you'll want to be using your fuel as the heat sink. For smaller craft it might work but again that's going to be a substantial amount of mass you would be carrying even for smaller power plants due to how hot nuclear plants tend to run.
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erin
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Post by erin on Oct 14, 2016 19:31:28 GMT
Well, we won't know until we try, eh? I don't think it's necessarily going to be a mission-killing weight. I mean, if radiator coolant can store all that heat for as long as it takes to reach the radiators, I don't see why a light-enough tank of coolant couldn't store enough heat for a few precious seconds of combat encounter. Maybe I'll try and cook up some numbers in a bit.
As for the integrated radiators, fair point, but this approach does allow the backside of the ship to still be armored while secluding the radiators away from gunfire, and you could make the frontal broadside section bigger than the rest of the ship to give the rear a "gunfire shadow".
EDIT: Aaand radiator extension is already a thing, of course. Oops. Edited last post.
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Post by argonbalt on Oct 14, 2016 23:37:33 GMT
Honestly I don't think integrated radiators would help all that much. They would still need to be able to radiate to space and that means they can still be irradiated from space so nukes would still kill them. Also the shear surface area you would need for high power power plants would render this approach fairly impractical. As for heat sinks. Well I mean that would be a great idea as combat is short and devastating but I would think the mass penalty for caring a big enough heat sink to soak up the heat from multi GW power plants would be prohibitive as I don't think you'll want to be using your fuel as the heat sink. For smaller craft it might work but again that's going to be a substantial amount of mass you would be carrying even for smaller power plants due to how hot nuclear plants tend to run. I think you are vastly over exaggerating the effectiveness of your coil-nukes. Let's get the obvious out of the way, coils AND nukes are vastly overpowered at the moment, so already the technical specifics are iffy at best. You are overly confident (I think) in this coil-nuke strategy. Yes the A.I. will undoubtedly get fucked by any number of designs, it obviously lacks the proficiency that a viable human player could use. But if we brake down the concept i think you will find it has more than enough flaws as is. Now i have no doubt that you are using a very long range coil gun, and a very small and powerful nuke, that being said as i mentioned earlier both of those things are sketchy right now. As some one who utilises half armouring i have already considered many of these scenarios. Here is a list of issues with the coil-nuke vs half armour scenario. A:It's not delivery it's delisio, 1:Most missiles are laughably dupable, even without a good system of missile based flares it is only a matter of time until we get the detonator issue fixed. And this is without hard kill systems like death fans and shrapnel nets. There is also the very feasible nuke v nuke neutralisation tactic i have done a bit of work on. Point is spammable nukes missiles are great but if you can spam, then a more realistic opponent can counter spam. My #1 anti missile system is a long range super shrapnel missile that works 99% of the time. Point is don't bet on the spam to finish your plan. 2:missiles v Coil nuke ship. This has a very simple and serious threat right of the bat, assuming you have a coil-nuke type vessel as your delivery system then missile spam is now a threat to you as well, flak warheads cannot be neutralised so easily and the same aerogel that makes missiles good against lasers makes missiles good against nuke spam. SO already you have to front a secondary option in terms of defence before you approach the enemy vessel. 3:Coil nuke v drone, sure drones large sensitive radiators can be taken out, but a drone only has to be active long enough to dispense it's payload and peel off. I have seen some of my better drones cut through fancy armour with enough shots in only 3 or four seconds, and while i have no doubt your coil-nukes shoot fast, i doubt they can out speed a non payload encumbered projectile. 4:coil nuke v ship, this only gets worse for the coil-nuke as once again the issue with a pure coil lancer vs a nuke coil is considered, even if you fully miniaturise the payload to the extreme, a fully metallic-magnetic projectile has every par of it being accelerated by the gun, as opposed to only the armature mounting the payload in a coil-nuke configuration. Add in lasers and it only gets worse, i have seen some laser designs cook off and destroy super coilguns numerous times, giving you a window of maybe ten to thirty seconds of foot ball nuke spam, anti missile ships will also likely mount last defence railguns to pick off any remaining warheads. B:Money money money moneyyyyyyyyyyy money: 1:Half armour is way cheaper money wise, by actually 50%. It's pretty straight forward. 2:A GOLD GUN THAT SHOOTS DIAMONDS! Coilguns are already pretty expensive when you get to the super gun range, as further updates occur i can see us spending more and more to keep those exit velocities in the green, add on to that the expense of nuclear payloads and abracadabrah you have a gun that pisses money, my best coil-nukes usually cost twice as much as my normal coil super guns, at only a tenth of the ammunition. C: He aint heavy, wait yes he is. Half armour shaves of a tone of weight, by actually 50%, it's pretty straight forward. Ditto for payload heft and range. Point is it is not looking so great as a trump card, where half armouring is tactically pretty great. |
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 14, 2016 23:55:54 GMT
Honestly I don't think integrated radiators would help all that much. They would still need to be able to radiate to space and that means they can still be irradiated from space so nukes would still kill them. Also the shear surface area you would need for high power power plants would render this approach fairly impractical. As for heat sinks. Well I mean that would be a great idea as combat is short and devastating but I would think the mass penalty for caring a big enough heat sink to soak up the heat from multi GW power plants would be prohibitive as I don't think you'll want to be using your fuel as the heat sink. For smaller craft it might work but again that's going to be a substantial amount of mass you would be carrying even for smaller power plants due to how hot nuclear plants tend to run. I think you are vastly over exaggerating the effectiveness of your coil-nukes. Let's get the obvious out of the way, coils AND nukes are vastly overpowered at the moment, so already the technical specifics are iffy at best. You are overly confident (I think) in this coil-nuke strategy. Yes the A.I. will undoubtedly get fucked by any number of designs, it obviously lacks the proficiency that a viable human player could use. But if we brake down the concept i think you will find it has more than enough flaws as is. Now i have no doubt that you are using a very long range coil gun, and a very small and powerful nuke, that being said as i mentioned earlier both of those things are sketchy right now. As some one who utilises half armouring i have already considered many of these scenarios. Here is a list of issues with the coil-nuke vs half armour scenario. A:It's not delivery it's delisio, 1:Most missiles are laughably dupable, even without a good system of missile based flares it is only a matter of time until we get the detonator issue fixed. And this is without hard kill systems like death fans and shrapnel nets. There is also the very feasible nuke v nuke neutralisation tactic i have done a bit of work on. Point is spammable nukes missiles are great but if you can spam, then a more realistic opponent can counter spam. My #1 anti missile system is a long range super shrapnel missile that works 99% of the time. Point is don't bet on the spam to finish your plan. 2:missiles v Coil nuke ship. This has a very simple and serious threat right of the bat, assuming you have a coil-nuke type vessel as your delivery system then missile spam is now a threat to you as well, flak warheads cannot be neutralised so easily and the same aerogel that makes missiles good against lasers makes missiles good against nuke spam. SO already you have to front a secondary option in terms of defence before you approach the enemy vessel. 3:Coil nuke v drone, sure drones large sensitive radiators can be taken out, but a drone only has to be active long enough to dispense it's payload and peel off. I have seen some of my better drones cut through fancy armour with enough shots in only 3 or four seconds, and while i have no doubt your coil-nukes shoot fast, i doubt they can out speed a non payload encumbered projectile. 4:coil nuke v ship, this only gets worse for the coil-nuke as once again the issue with a pure coil lancer vs a nuke coil is considered, even if you fully miniaturise the payload to the extreme, a fully metallic-magnetic projectile has every par of it being accelerated by the gun, as opposed to only the armature mounting the payload in a coil-nuke configuration. Add in lasers and it only gets worse, i have seen some laser designs cook off and destroy super coilguns numerous times, giving you a window of maybe ten to thirty seconds of foot ball nuke spam, anti missile ships will also likely mount last defence railguns to pick off any remaining warheads. B:Money money money moneyyyyyyyyyyy money: 1:Half armour is way cheaper money wise, by actually 50%. It's pretty straight forward. 2:A GOLD GUN THAT SHOOTS DIAMONDS! Coilguns are already pretty expensive when you get to the super gun range, as further updates occur i can see us spending more and more to keep those exit velocities in the green, add on to that the expense of nuclear payloads and abracadabrah you have a gun that pisses money, my best coil-nukes usually cost twice as much as my normal coil super guns, at only a tenth of the ammunition. C: He aint heavy, wait yes he is. Half armour shaves of a tone of weight, by actually 50%, it's pretty straight forward. Ditto for payload heft and range. Point is it is not looking so great as a trump card, where half armouring is tactically pretty great. Ok 1. Simply send in the missiles with a move order not a seeking order you just want to get nukes on all side of the ship. 2. I see nothing wrong with that view point 3. Again pure nuke coil guns are not that good 4. High velocity nukes tend to get through no matter the point defence. I have had a miniscule number of my coil nukes get shot down by point defence from rail guns to lasers. This is against the same ship I use which has formidable CWIS railguns and lasers. 5. Again nukes are costly and very expensive. The cost is quite a lot for darn sure! So far I agree with you on more or less all points. With a couple of exceptions. Nuke coil guns are great ship killers but you need more than just nuke coil guns or else you are as you said royally screwed. Most of the issues you rightly pointed out can be countered with the inclusion of high power lasers on either the same ship or a different ship. As for missile spam. Well yeah counter munitions are great! And only armouring half your ship is also really good. Much cheaper and affordable in all accounts. If for some reason it has appeared I think one side only ship armor is a bad idea I apologize. I think it's a rather great idea for all of the reasons that you have said. Mostly I was bringing up this scenario as the most dangerous situation I can conceive of and the most difficult to protect against as it knocks out radiators and engines. Both of which I have yet to find a good way to protect against massed nuclear detonation. By all counts if at all possible you should prevent the situation from happening. Either by dodging or with counter munitions before they close the range. Both of those are definitely the best option but I was bring up the scenario of a massed nuclear detonations as a worst case scenario that I'm honestly curious about armoring against if it is even possible. It's definitely something that should be avoided at all costs though. |
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Post by argonbalt on Oct 15, 2016 0:08:06 GMT
Ah okay then we are in agreement then, sorry if i was a bit argumentative, coil-nukes are definitely a cool concept, and very much an anti capital weapon.
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 15, 2016 0:15:59 GMT
Ah okay then we are in agreement then, sorry if i was a bit argumentative, coil-nukes are definitely a cool concept, and very much an anti capital weapon. Yeah they are a great weapon against anything you can shoot them at. So if you can get them firing before the enemy fires their weapons you'll take em out. Such as drones versus a fleet with 250km lasers and coil nukes. The coil nukes will wreck the drones but if the drones open fire the nukes wont shut them down as fast as a laser battery but will definitely finish the leftovers. This is just based off of my experience so far with my coil nukes but yeah they are not a mono weapon. Great against anything you can fire them at but if the enemy is shooting back then you want lasers for sniping |
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