Unscientific Armor Comparison

boersgard
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Posts: 37

Unscientific Armor Comparison Aug 20, 2018 10:30:20 GMT apophys, Echo, and 1 more like this

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Post by boersgard on Aug 20, 2018 10:30:20 GMT

I did some general testing of various types of armor to see what stood up the best to railgun rounds and figured I may as well leave what results I have here.

Test conditions:

Weapon: 20x 100MW Railgun "Sidewinder", 15g, 10km/s [attached file]

Target: Nose-on, 80 degree angled armor, 1 test generally but the high-scoring ones got 5+ tests

Armor: 10cm thickness unless otherwise stated, single layer

Closing velocity: 100m/s - 1km/s

What follows are general observations and grading, nothing particularly scientific. Judgements were made on how quickly and easily armor was penetrated and the general ratio of orange:black:green armor tiles.

Below are examples of what each grade looks like in practice:

A - i.imgur.com/MxJ9aHQ.png [Amorphous Carbon] | i.imgur.com/jK4HRY3.png [Aramid Fiber]

B - i.imgur.com/Gaot7v6.png [Reinforced Carbon Carbon]

C - i.imgur.com/QQaOxvN.png [Osmium]

F - i.imgur.com/NeuHbfH.png [Nitrile Rubber]

Graphite Aerogel [10m] : A++ : Low Spalling : This gets special mention because even at 10m thick my rocket had 11km/s delta-v (without any armor it has 21.5km/s); the next lowest density material (nickel phosphorous microlattice) at 10m thickness brought that down to ~4.5km/s dv and it's not really worth a bother with any materials past that. I think monolithic graphgel might be the best armor in the game simply because you can pack on so much of it that the actual material properties don't really matter. 10m of graphgel massively outperformed 10cm of any other armor tested and in every case massed less. (My hunch for graphgel's performance is the low mass of the projectiles)

Amorphous Carbon: A+ : Moderate spalling

Aramid Fiber: A+ : Low spalling

Boron Filament : A : Low Spalling

Ceramic Oxide Fiber: A- : Low spalling

S-Glass Composite: A- : Low spalling

Amorphous Zirconium Steel: B- : Moderate spalling

Alpha-2 Titanium Aluminide: B : High spalling

Calcium: B- : Moderate spalling

Diamond: B : High spalling

Liquid Crystal Polymer Fiber: B- : Moderate spalling

Magnesium Aluminium Zinc: B+ : Moderate spalling

Para-Aramid Fiber: B : Low spalling

PBO Fiber: B- : Moderate spalling

Reinforced Carbon Carbon: B : High spalling

Selenium: B- : Moderate spalling

Tantalum Hafnium Carbide: B- : High spalling

Vanadium Chromium Steel: B- : High spalling

Austenitic Stainless Steel: C+ : High spalling

Basalt Fiber Composite: C- : High spalling

Beryllium: C- : High spalling

Carbon Steel: C : High spalling

Depleted Uranium: C+ : High spalling

Hafnium Carbide: C- : High spalling

Iridium: C- : High spalling

Osmium: C+ : High spalling

Spider Silk: C- : Low spalling

Aluminium Oxide: F : High spalling

Beta Titanium: F : High spalling

Boron Nitride: F : High spalling

Ceramic Matrix Composite: F : High spalling

Ferritic Stainless Steel: F : High spalling

Graphite: F : High spalling

Lead: F: High spalling

Lithium-6: F : High spalling

Magnesium: F : High spalling

Maraging Steel: F : High spalling

Nickel Chromium Iron: F : High spalling

Nickel Phosphorous Microlattice: F : Moderate spalling

Nitrile Rubber: F : Moderate spalling

NP-237 Dioxide: F : High spalling

Polyethylene: F : High spalling

PTFE: F : Moderate spalling

Sapphire: F : High spalling

Silica Aerogel: F- : Moderate spalling

Silver: F : High spalling

Tin: F : High spalling

Titanium Diboride: F : High spalling

Titanium Nitride: F : High spalling

Tungsten Rhenium: F : High spalling

I didn't test everything but I think it might be useful for people looking for a start with their top layer armor.

As far as the test weapon goes, I've yet to find a railgun or coilgun that outperforms it. 20 of them are like a laser cutting through butter, which is probably a combination of the RPM + projectile energy. Nothing really stands up to it. Night and day difference compared to every other railgun I tested.

Attachments:

100 MW Railgun Sidewinder S.txt (930 B)

Last Edit: Aug 20, 2018 12:53:00 GMT by boersgard

apophys God The gigawatt reactor guy. Posts: 820	Unscientific Armor Comparison Aug 20, 2018 11:38:41 GMT bigbombr likes this Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by apophys on Aug 20, 2018 11:38:41 GMT Things I'd like to see tested: amorphous carbon (really, you didn't test that?), selenium, calcium, osmium, ~~nitrile rubber,~~ PTFE
	Last Edit: Aug 20, 2018 11:50:02 GMT by apophys CoaDE discord. Standardized modules. Vanilla modules updated 10/2/18. Modded modules updated 8/22/18.

boersgard
New Member

Posts: 37

Unscientific Armor Comparison Aug 20, 2018 11:42:00 GMT apophys likes this

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Post by boersgard on Aug 20, 2018 11:42:00 GMT

I did test nitrile rubber, it's definitely one of the worst. Railgun projectiles basically go straight through like it's not even there.

I'll test out these others though.

Okay, I've gone through them:

Amorphous Carbon: A+ : Moderate spalling (seems to be the best so far at 10cm thickness)

Calcium: B- : Moderate spalling

Selenium: B- : Moderate spalling

Osmium: C : High spalling

PTFE: F : Moderate spalling

Nitrile Rubber: F : Moderate spalling

Edit: I've been retesting a few materials and Aramid fiber looks like it's doing about as well as Amorphous carbon is.

Last Edit: Aug 20, 2018 12:38:39 GMT by boersgard

boersgard
New Member

Posts: 37

Unscientific Armor Comparison Aug 20, 2018 22:53:51 GMT

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Post by boersgard on Aug 20, 2018 22:53:51 GMT

Okay, so I've started unscientifically combining layers using intuition and hunches.

Right now by far the best performing armor layer has been the following:

Innermost
Boron Filament 5mm
Graphite Aerogel 1000mm
Aramid Fiber 10mm
Amorphous Carbon 10mm
Graphite Aerogel 2000mm [Front arc (27.5%) only]
Boron Filament 10mm (Front arc (27.5%) only]
Outermost

Ship Cross Section: 6370m^3
Armor Mass: 1.5kt
Dry Mass: 746t

Dry Mass to Armor Mass ratio: 0.5 (I have 2x as much armor as dry mass)

Octagonal armor

This still doesn't completely stop armor penetration, but where every monolithic armor is instantly perforated this will usually last about 2-5 seconds in one spot.

If anyone has uberweapons they'd like me to test against, post them here. I'd prefer stuff that doesn't freeze up/crash the game. I can't use Apophys' railguns that fire flak rounds for example. They fire for 10 seconds and then my game is a slideshow.

Last Edit: Aug 20, 2018 22:59:33 GMT by boersgard

jtyotjotjipaefvj
Senior Member

Posts: 448

Unscientific Armor Comparison Aug 21, 2018 0:09:13 GMT apophys likes this

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Post by jtyotjotjipaefvj on Aug 21, 2018 0:09:13 GMT

Aug 20, 2018 22:53:51 GMT boersgard said:

If anyone has uberweapons they'd like me to test against, post them here. I'd prefer stuff that doesn't freeze up/crash the game. I can't use Apophys' railguns that fire flak rounds for example. They fire for 10 seconds and then my game is a slideshow.

Here's two copies of AE railguns but lagfree due to not using payloads, and a third one that has a projectile that's bigger than a grain of sand.

100 MW 50 km s 1g Railgun.txt (960 B)

SPOILER: Click to show

1.0 GW 200 km s 1g Railgun.txt (959 B)

SPOILER: Click to show

400 MW 20 km s 25g Railgun.txt (939 B)

SPOILER: Click to show

The bigger guns have some spread so you might want to add more graphogel on the barrels if you need accurate fire.

apophys
God

The gigawatt reactor guy.

Posts: 820

Unscientific Armor Comparison Aug 21, 2018 2:36:29 GMT

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Post by apophys on Aug 21, 2018 2:36:29 GMT

Aug 20, 2018 22:53:51 GMT boersgard said:

If anyone has uberweapons they'd like me to test against, post them here. I'd prefer stuff that doesn't freeze up/crash the game. I can't use Apophys' railguns that fire flak rounds for example. They fire for 10 seconds and then my game is a slideshow.

If the flak is the problem, you can directly swap out the flak payload for the needle payload that is also in my module collection. The guns will still work, with exactly the same characteristics (and probably better penetration at the target). I'm getting enough complaints about my guns nowadays that I'm probably going to make the needle payload the standard one (somehow, I didn't get complaints for quite a while; something probably changed in the game).

If the fire rate is the problem, you can reduce the power fed to the gun, or reduce the loader power. Either one reduces the fire rate.

jtyot's guns are fine replacements if you don't feel like doing minor edits to my stuff.

CoaDE discord. Standardized modules. Vanilla modules updated 10/2/18. Modded modules updated 8/22/18.

treptoplax
Senior Member

Posts: 280

Unscientific Armor Comparison Aug 21, 2018 2:37:26 GMT via mobile

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Post by treptoplax on Aug 21, 2018 2:37:26 GMT

As I understand it though, monolithic armor isn't at all optimal against high-speed (greater than speed of sound through the armor, roughly) projectiles like railguns. I would expect adding a thin layer of tin/Al/Si/whatever with a 1M airgap to hugely improve performance and maybe not uniformly.

Although the "f#-$ it let's just put meters of graphogel around everything" approach does intregue me...

Post by boersgard on Aug 20, 2018 10:30:20 GMT

Post by apophys on Aug 20, 2018 11:38:41 GMT

Post by boersgard on Aug 20, 2018 11:42:00 GMT

Post by boersgard on Aug 20, 2018 22:53:51 GMT

Post by jtyotjotjipaefvj on Aug 21, 2018 0:09:13 GMT

Post by apophys on Aug 21, 2018 2:36:29 GMT

Post by treptoplax on Aug 21, 2018 2:37:26 GMT