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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Dec 27, 2018 15:22:31 GMT
This is a thread for all sorts of non-obvious tricks to make your life easier in the lonely void of CDE. Things like designing your stuff to not impact performance much or working around various limitations of the editor. - Turret/Gimbal momentum wheels try to fit outside of cylinder circumscribed around whatever is mounted on the gimbal (for whatever reason). Even though you can't manipulate their shape and size directly, you can make them thinner and thus lighter by, for example, increasing the thickness of your barrel armour (which is effectively free if it's graphogel).
- Non-capacitor EM guns can be continuously fired simultaneously despite exceeding powerplant's output IF their firing time is short enough to allow them fire in turns. It will work even at high rates of fire, with firing times much shorter than engine's tick. So, for example, you can put a huge battery of 60MW coilguns on a single 60.4MW TEFR and have them all (sand)blast away.
- When using payload or anything else with limited useful duration that doesn't mount ordnances, you can mount a tiny flare on it with burn time adjusted to your expected expiry date. When the flare burns out the object gets deleted preventing your computer from getting clogged with thousands of spent munitions hurtling aimplessly through the void. You also get payload tracers of sort. You can also dispose of unwanted stuff by putting fuses (and self
destruct charges) on it or setting override timer on ordnances if it has any. - Putting fuses on flares prevents them from confusing your own missiles/ordnances.
- If using blast launchers for high velocity launches, you can make staged/telescoping ones to achieve noticeably better mass efficiency (do mind the cost of that UHMWPE fiber, which happens to yield the lightest blast launchers of all vanilla materials) or to prevent multiple barrel blast launcher from destroying itself via recoil on first launch. Telescoping launcher means simply creating an intermediate payload consisting of a launcher and remote control.
- Combining multiple types of missiles on a single intermediate launch platform may be advantageous in terms of personnel required.
- You can combine multiple telescoping launchers with the same exit velocity without collisions by putting launch cap of 1 on any but last stage launcher - intermediate launchers will clear themselves on launching (via recoil) so they will act as mutex. Note that this will reduce rate of fire with multiple parallel launches.
- Lightweight ephemeral launch platform can be very effective way to emulate parallel mounted MLRS in gun-range combat without exposing flattened face with explosive launchers directly to enemy fire. To prevent it from falling behind launching ship equip it with short burn rocket motor, to prevent it from recoiling back into launching ship (you can skip this with single launchers), you can mount additional blast launcher on its back firing heavy, ms range fused flares (also creating cool visual "backblast" effect) with limited velocity (think <200m/s) and triggered exactly the same as the main one. Aiming launch platform can be achieved by mounting spinal weapon on the launching ship with similar exit velocity to the effective velocity of the launcher (it might take some practice but you should be able to achieve almost uncorrected trajectories and hits even with lateral velocities exceeding 1-2km/s, do note that the gun needs to have the highest effective range on the ship). You can dispose of spent launcher with timed self destruct charge.
- (No Trigger) fuses can be used to fine tune missile armour shape. They are light enough to not matter, but unlike spacers can be easily manipulated manually. This probably exploits discrete nature of the armour model, but you can both minimize the mass and maximize the sturdiness of the armour.
- Polygonal armour can be used to implement ungimballed roll thrusters. Just put overlapping rings of thrusters near the edges, generating opposite torques each. Alternatively you might try experimenting with flattened armour or different symmetry of armour polygon and thruster group.
- Radially offset long spacer can be used to make pointy nose while using spinal weapons. Length and positioning of the spacer might need to be fine-tuned, you might also need some radially offset wide spacers or small components to further adjust the shape.
- Low velocity weapons can fire from behind armour bulge if the lateral velocity is high enough.
- You can aim blast launchers with reasonable accuracy by mounting them in parallel with fixed gun with same exit velocity.
- "Drone" with aimed (see above) blast launcher makes a good, non-spoofable alternative to a missile and may use more interesting payloads (see below). It is also less susceptible to kinetic PD due to its trajectory. It might need some initial kick towards the target, though, and will try to avoid direct collision.
- Long, thin, dense radiators make good kinetic projectiles approximating continuous rod warheads, and creating widespread hull damage.
- You can hide ordnances in blast launchers to avoid premature detonation.
- Curium 242 makes a good, energy dense (if somewhat expensive) RTG fuel if you don't want to make horribly radioactive cobalt bombs for whatever reason. It is well suited for backup RTGs and stuff like that. Note that realistically it wouldn't work for long-term application due to limited half life.
- Backup RTGs are a good way to prevent your ships from being killed by total power loss. they can cluster around CMs and mount multiple small, redundant radiators, while being able to provide enough power for CMs and possibly conventional gun CIWS, without requiring any dedicated personnel.
- Backup power source can allow high powered designs to use low powered (and thus lightweight) flares effectively. You just need to scram the reactors, fold their radiators and avoid firing engines.
- Multiple spinal guns can create quite effective shotgun effect.
- Even though they are seen as disposable munitions, drones are well suited for hardening through multiple redundancy, as they don't really have bulky obvious single points of failure like CMs or warheads.
- Putting a nuke and flak warheads on a single missile, then detonating the nuke with camera centred on the missile cause flak explosion to be teleported inside enemy ship. Seriously, don't do it, it's a bug. If you want flak and nuke in a single package, consider blast launched submunitions.
- Short or delayed detonation can make your nuclear missile a KKV as well. Well guided swarm of small nuclear missiles can achieve penetration first and then nuclear detonations inside the hull.
- Orienting broadside can be valuable if you cannot prevent penetrations anyway, for example by missiles, as it reduces the risk of your ship being gutted.
- Reactors can be split into multiple group, reducing the risk of reactor kill by missiles.
- On the contrary, CMs should be kept as close as possible to the centre of mass if you want to achieve any sort of manoeuvrability.
- Large propellant tanks WILL kill your crew if penetrated, especially if the CMs are located in the heavily armoured nose-cone, far away from ship's centre of mass.
- Payload based heavy railguns can achieve gentler accelerations heavier feasible projectiles by weighing down the armature with non-conductive payload.
- If you want to make a heavy (think kg range) monolithic armature railgun, consider using worse conductor with good mechanical properties for your armature - amorphous carbon should do. This will have similar effect as weighing down your highly conductive armature with a payload.
- Around anything heavier than a belt rock, remember your orbital mechanics - especially generalized bi-elliptic transfer.
- Retrograde intercepts can be surprisingly fun and effective. Note that many designs, especially all the stock ones, don't deal with high velocity intercepts well, and high velocity intercept makes weapon exit velocity secondary to projectile mass and rate of fire - it is part of what makes drones effective.
- Consider making composite whipple shields - superhard coating on top of ductile metal can be quite effective at bouncing off hypervelocity sand and most superhard materials also happen to be refractory ceramics, so they will allow your whipple shield to tank nukes quite well. If z-fighting puts you off, consider adding 1cm spacing in between.
- In addition to possibility of forcing verniers to mount on the outside of the hull by using partial armour and forcing thrusters in general outside by using high gimbal angle, you can force main thrusters to be mounted outside the hull by radially offseting them. You can also combine external and internal mounting of engines.
- required hull width when mounting weapons/engines at either end of the ship is determined by the size of individual cluster, not total number of mounts. This allows much narrower hull shapes by splitting up radially offset weapon/engine clusters, although it may end up with some protruding outside and being exposed to enemy fire. Mostly external blast launchers might reduce damage from ammo explosion somewhat.
- Radially offset weapons and engines reduce the risk of coring by not providing handy targets in ship's axis.
- For railgun armatures more conductive is not always better - if you want to make a heavy, non-payload railgun (think kg range), mediocre conductor (such as amorphous carbon) can make such design work at semi-reasonable mass and cost, while an excellent one will tear itself apart as all the capacitor's charge passes through it.
- Similarly, long spinal, non-capacitor coilguns (remember that you can arrange most of your modules around possibly >100m coilgun/bundle of coilguns) can benefit from light, yet stiff amorphous carbon coil and can be made very light (basically just long, thin coil with thick layer of graphite aerogel around it to deal with beam deflection).
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Post by bigbombr on Dec 27, 2018 17:28:35 GMT
Polonium-210 is a low performance, low cost alternative to Curium-242. If radiation isn't an issue (such as on low powered drones with conventional cannons), germanium-68 is a much more cost-effective solution than curium-242.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Dec 27, 2018 17:49:29 GMT
Polonium-210 is a low performance, low cost alternative to Curium-242. If radiation isn't an issue (such as on low powered drones with conventional cannons), germanium-68 is a much more cost-effective solution than curium-242. Polonium has low melting point that makes it unusable (just for fun try cooling stock 103kW polonium RTG and see what it takes), AFAIK germanium-68 is non-vanilla.
If radiation is not an issue, you can just use cobalt-60, but realistically speaking, where will you keep your drones with cobalt RTGs and how will you service them? That the radiation magically disappears in game once you put your drones in even a flimsy 1mm graphogel bin doesn't mean that it would actually work this way IRL - this would give an entire new meaning to your crew of hard-boiled spacemen.
OTOH curium-242 is reasonably safe, has high melting point and wonderful power density.
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Post by bigbombr on Dec 27, 2018 18:09:14 GMT
Polonium has low melting point that makes it unusable (just for fun try cooling stock 103kW polonium RTG and see what it takes), AFAIK germanium-68 is non-vanilla. If radiation is not an issue, you can just use cobalt-60, but realistically speaking, where will you keep your drones with cobalt RTGs and how will you service them? That the radiation magically disappears in game once you put your drones in even a flimsy 1mm graphogel bin doesn't mean that it would actually work this way IRL - this would give an entire new meaning to your crew of hard-boiled spacemen.
OTOH curium-242 is reasonably safe, has high melting point and wonderful power density.
Curium is very expensive though. And if we're discussing realism, a nuclear reactor that's only expected to run for a few minutes of combat doesn't really need maintenance. Nuclear reactors might be less hassle than RTGs as they don't have a pressing expiry date. Really makes me wish for solar panels.
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Post by newageofpower on Dec 27, 2018 22:02:25 GMT
Really makes me wish for flywheel energy storage. There, I fixed that for you.
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Post by airc777 on Dec 27, 2018 23:11:24 GMT
Really makes me wish for flywheel energy storage. There, I fixed that for you. Really makes me wish for beamed power? I mean we all already build giant laser installations.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Dec 29, 2018 11:07:47 GMT
Bumpdate: Added some stuff about radially offsetting everything for fun and profit and reasonably sized ultra-heavy railguns.
Also a bit about lightweight and efficient long, spinal coilguns.
Carbon is truly the element of gods.
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Post by doctorsquared on Dec 30, 2018 3:26:52 GMT
Polonium-210 is a low performance, low cost alternative to Curium-242. If radiation isn't an issue (such as on low powered drones with conventional cannons), germanium-68 is a much more cost-effective solution than curium-242. Polonium has low melting point that makes it unusable (just for fun try cooling stock 103kW polonium RTG and see what it takes), AFAIK germanium-68 is non-vanilla.
If radiation is not an issue, you can just use cobalt-60, but realistically speaking, where will you keep your drones with cobalt RTGs and how will you service them? That the radiation magically disappears in game once you put your drones in even a flimsy 1mm graphogel bin doesn't mean that it would actually work this way IRL - this would give an entire new meaning to your crew of hard-boiled spacemen.
OTOH curium-242 is reasonably safe, has high melting point and wonderful power density.
I wonder if it would be feasible to have the cobalt-60 fuel pellets for a drone RTG stored separately in a radiation-hardened autoloader so that the RTG could be fueled and started right when the drone was readying itself for launch. Either that or for autocannon drones with lower power requirements you could rig up a miniature gas turbine that ran off of the same oxidizer and propellant combination as the drone to generate power. Or have a supercapacitor bank inside the vehicle and just passively charge the drones via induction.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Dec 30, 2018 11:30:42 GMT
Polonium has low melting point that makes it unusable (just for fun try cooling stock 103kW polonium RTG and see what it takes), AFAIK germanium-68 is non-vanilla.
If radiation is not an issue, you can just use cobalt-60, but realistically speaking, where will you keep your drones with cobalt RTGs and how will you service them? That the radiation magically disappears in game once you put your drones in even a flimsy 1mm graphogel bin doesn't mean that it would actually work this way IRL - this would give an entire new meaning to your crew of hard-boiled spacemen.
OTOH curium-242 is reasonably safe, has high melting point and wonderful power density.
I wonder if it would be feasible to have the cobalt-60 fuel pellets for a drone RTG stored separately in a radiation-hardened autoloader so that the RTG could be fueled and started right when the drone was readying itself for launch. Either that or for autocannon drones with lower power requirements you could rig up a miniature gas turbine that ran off of the same oxidizer and propellant combination as the drone to generate power. Or have a supercapacitor bank inside the vehicle and just passively charge the drones via induction. RTG is not a reactor and cannot be started/stopped. It just sits there decaying and producing heat/radiation.
That's the main issue with them, you can't just mothball them in an inert state, like you can unused reactors - they keep radiating, keep producing heat and keep decaying (OTOH being just a stupid lump of radioactive with thermocouple and coolant loop attached should really be reflected in the cost as they don't really require precision engineering). Launchers for anything with RTG in it should really require you to provide cooling for all the RTGs inside - likely actively heat pumped as radiating from a hundred or so drones at their RTG temperatures seems to be a non-starter, even with the cost of extra waste heat and energy for pumping.
Realistically, Cm242 powered fleets would likely require a tender with a small scale isotopic lab/isotope reprocessing lab + spare isotope for extended operations.
Fuel cells/generators seem like a good idea for low-powered applications, OTOH they will eat up your fuel fast, and you can make some really tiny RTGs.
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Post by dragonkid11 on Dec 31, 2018 0:50:44 GMT
Using amouphous carbon for heavy railgun seems interesting, I will try that out later.
Though I'm not sure in what situation will you use a long spinal coilgun since long range tends to not be a best friend with spinal weapon.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Dec 31, 2018 11:20:44 GMT
Using amouphous carbon for heavy railgun seems interesting, I will try that out later. Though I'm not sure in what situation will you use a long spinal coilgun since long range tends to not be a best friend with spinal weapon. How about 1kg MMG slug at >7.4km/s 30 times per second in less than 50t and 4x4x125m bounding cylinder (for 1GW weapon)?
Also, I have recently came to a realization regarding attitude control - with spinal weapons or homing for collision, front mounted verniers are your friend.
When trying to point at specific target gimbals or rear verniers push you sideways and away causing the new orientation vector to miss the intercept and forcing you to turn more.
Front mounted verniers push you towards the target making your orientation vector intercept the target earlier.
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Post by cipherpunks on Dec 31, 2018 13:22:03 GMT
Dividing that one fat tank to multiple skinnier tanks of same length may be beneficial for tankage mass (due to lower tank pressure and hence lower wall mass needed), fuel reserve survivability in combat, and sometimes hull diameter (due to ability to rotate turrets so that their bottoms will fit somewhat between the tanks). Also, in case of breach, smaller tanks impose lower sideways acceleration jerks, and so they're - in theory - aren't as likely to mash your crew into a jelly. Here's the sorted table of relative tank volume depending on tanks count in bundle, with some added data (namely 37, 55 and 85 tank cells) that is unsupported by game (which is too bad; we really need a Limits.txt tweakable for that):
Tanks Volume fraction rel. to cylinder 2 0.500000000000000000000000000000 3 0.646170927520417433011931705789 6 0.666666666666666666666666666667 5 0.685210244331082483838548913229 4 0.686291501015239609586490206323 10 0.687797433173831611140030771305 9 0.689407990105080826889492036316 11 0.714460108860706377135717039657 13 0.724465170010935786722969225972 8 0.732502069378347956850484529036 15 0.733759380688816903352108642740 12 0.739021297514213772343815403033 17 0.740302447984465470514666718304 14 0.747252761735398705778039925469 16 0.751097773224096888786106263744 18 0.760918873844282912617123749834 7 0.777777777777777777777777777778 19 0.803192144613409741095852847046 37 0.809965137798197658247408439273 55 0.815754986312157768363618347236 85 0.822935027521122179578619213372 1 1.000000000000000000000000000000 I'm using either 6 (for armored tanks), 7 or 19. Central hole in 6 tank arrangement can be filled with something you want to shield by propellant and its walls. But we need moar; @qswitched, add a limit please! Also see Packomania
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Post by cipherpunks on Dec 31, 2018 15:13:13 GMT
When offsetting something with mouse to avoid intersecting something other, pay attention to the icon of what you're offsetting, which is on the right panel. It updates from red to whatever as soon as you move the module sufficiently to clear obstacle (otherwise you won't know until you release the module). The best mice for such tasks are those with "shift" that could be held for slowing the cursor speed temporarily, e.g. Logitech G502 and the like.
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Post by cipherpunks on Dec 31, 2018 15:42:59 GMT
- Radially offset long spacer can be used to make pointy nose while using spinal weapons. Length and positioning of the spacer [...] fine-tuned, you might also need some radially offset wide spacers [...] to further adjust the shape.
It may be better to have two such spacers handy: one (temporary placeholder) with some width to facilitate grabbing with cursor, and the other (final) - without width at all. Also, it is wiser to make such adjustments as a very final step in craft building, as changing dimensions/positions of any internal modules will throw pointy nose spacer out of balance again, and again, and again.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Dec 31, 2018 18:48:56 GMT
Using amouphous carbon for heavy railgun seems interesting, I will try that out later. Though I'm not sure in what situation will you use a long spinal coilgun since long range tends to not be a best friend with spinal weapon. How about 1kg MMG slug at >7.4km/s 30 times per second in less than 50t and 4x4x125m bounding cylinder (for 1GW weapon)? Performed some further exploration of this subject. If you merely want a working spinal coilgun, you can in fact make a lighter and thinner one using VCS or even Os for the coil - AC is much lighter than either, but not as strong and required graphogel bracing adds up.
However, if you intend to actually be hitting your target, VCS is disappointing because it is just going to be springing around, while Os with minimal bracing still doesn't exactly shine. Once you layer enough graphogel to keep your fire focused, it can also support AC coil against beam deflection - AC which is stiff AND much lighter than either VCS or Os.
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