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Post by chasergrey on Oct 31, 2016 2:58:58 GMT
For that matter, I wished I had some kind of emergency heat sink in the Sandbox battle I just finished. Lost some radiators off my new design, which shut down the reactor, which left the ship helpless even though its armor was mostly intact. Sure, you can add more radiators (I did), but it would be neat to have a lower-mass option that would let you keep the ship running for a short time to finish off an opponent.
"Engage emergency cooling! Gunnery, you have thirty seconds to KILL THAT BASTARD!"
Question is, could you get rid of enough heat that way to make it worthwhile? Let's run some back-of-the-envelope numbers.
1 MW is 1,000,000 J of heat per second. For a small ship like a Marauder or Orbital Defense Craft, that's about 8.5 MW, or 8.5 million J of heat every second. Ammonia has about a 44 C range between its melting and boiling points, and a specific heat of 4700 J/kg per degree C. So if we make the very simplistic assumption that we start with just-barely-liquid ammonia, heat it to vaporization, and then release the gas, each kg of ammonia can absorb 206,800 J of heat before being vented. *But* ammonia also has a very high specific enthalpy of vaporization. That kg of ammonia is 58 mols and change, so at an enthalpy of 23.35 kJ/mol it will absorb an additional 1.35 MJ of heat in the process of vaporizing. So if we round off and add those together, each kg of ammonia can absorb 1.55 MJ of heat. So our Marauder/ODC could vent about 5.5 kg of ammonia per second and stay cool.
Okay, but is that useful? Small ships are pretty fragile, and anything that kills their radiators is probably going to kill them not long after. Take a bigger ship like a Cutter, radiating 200 MW of heat, and suddenly you're venting 133 kg of ammonia per second to break even. So...carrying a 4-ton tank will buy you another 30 seconds of operational time there.
Again, ridiculously back of the envelope, but assuming I'm in the right ballpark it could be worth further investigation. If I'm designing a multi-kt killer craft, sparing 5 tons or so for a backup system seems like something I'd consider.
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Post by Pttg on Oct 31, 2016 3:32:12 GMT
Certainly an interesting idea. One problem with a slush-storage-tank is that it is, itself, going to require cooling, and a 195.4 K radiator is going to be colossal. Still, if it's designed to only be used when your radiators have been shot off....
It would certainly be an interesting contrast to normal design: building the coldest possible radiators so you can chill the densest possible fluid.
If I needed a kilowatt of power on a drone, then what I'd do is combine my thermoelectric reactor with my drive reactor and use a cryonic propellant. flush it with ultra-cold helium. Presumably there would be non-thrusting if you need to turn off the drive but not melt your core....
Oh here's something. Single-use lasers. I wanna hit someone with an ultra-high-power laser burst from a drone. Yeah the laser will melt. So what? I'm only gonna use the drone like once anyway. Would go well with super-capacitors or some other kind of cheap power supply.
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Post by nerd1000 on Oct 31, 2016 11:37:24 GMT
Certainly an interesting idea. One problem with a slush-storage-tank is that it is, itself, going to require cooling, and a 195.4 K radiator is going to be colossal. Still, if it's designed to only be used when your radiators have been shot off.... Heat pumps would help here.
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Post by Pttg on Oct 31, 2016 23:21:42 GMT
If we get heat pumps, I'd like to hook one up to the room-temperature coolant of my life support and heat it up to a nice orange glow for my radiators.
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Post by subunit on Nov 1, 2016 17:51:04 GMT
I would kill for a "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" mod. One faction is more or less a standard CoaDE navy (Earth) and the others are a bunch of subsurface lunar colonists who are strongly limited by sensor data (must minimize time of manned sensor teams on the lunar surface during the lunar day), weapons (mostly unguided, but devastatingly huge, cargo-railgun-slung pallets of rocks), etc.
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Post by bluuetechnic on Nov 1, 2016 20:26:39 GMT
Metamaterials anyone?
"Metamaterials offer the potential to create superlenses. Such a lens could allow imaging below the diffraction limit that is the minimum resolution that can be achieved by conventional glass lenses"
"Materials four orders of magnitude stiffer than conventional aerogel, but with the same density have been created. Such materials can withstand a load of at least 160,000 times their own weight by over-constraining the materials"
"A metamaterial absorber manipulates the loss components of metamaterials' permittivity and magnetic permeability, to absorb large amounts of electromagnetic radiation."
And don't get me started on cloaking devices and wavelength immunity.
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Post by Pttg on Nov 1, 2016 20:39:03 GMT
Wavelength immunity would be a fascinating meta for multiplayer.
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Post by bluuetechnic on Nov 2, 2016 1:06:09 GMT
That's exactly what I was thinking!
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Post by dragonkid11 on Nov 2, 2016 3:48:48 GMT
Hmm.
I kinda want a Mobile Suit Gundam mod.
No, screw the giant robots. Those are pretty much impossible to mod.
I want megabeam weapon that can shoot through just about everything, I-field to protect from it and possibly radar jamming to make drone and missiles malfunction.
In short, it basically turn the game of futuristic guided weapon back to battleship shooting beam weapon at each other again. Drones and missiles are still working but the heavy jamming would require them to either be deliver in huge wave or slightly expensive.
It would be a neat game changer.
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Post by bluuetechnic on Nov 2, 2016 4:07:48 GMT
Hmm. I kinda want a Mobile Suit Gundam mod. No, screw the giant robots. Those are pretty much impossible to mod. I want megabeam weapon that can shoot through just about everything, I-field to protect from it and possibly radar jamming to make drone and missiles malfunction. In short, it basically turn the game of futuristic guided weapon back to battleship shooting beam weapon at each other again. Drones and missiles are still working but the heavy jamming would require them to either be deliver in huge wave or slightly expensive. It would be a neat game changer. So electronic warfare and EMPs to make missiles less dominant and more good old school scifi fleet battles?
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Post by dragonkid11 on Nov 2, 2016 4:13:41 GMT
Hmm. I kinda want a Mobile Suit Gundam mod. No, screw the giant robots. Those are pretty much impossible to mod. I want megabeam weapon that can shoot through just about everything, I-field to protect from it and possibly radar jamming to make drone and missiles malfunction. In short, it basically turn the game of futuristic guided weapon back to battleship shooting beam weapon at each other again. Drones and missiles are still working but the heavy jamming would require them to either be deliver in huge wave or slightly expensive. It would be a neat game changer. So electronic warfare and EMPs to make missiles less dominant and more good old school scifi fleet battles? Yup. HOWEVER. The 'Mobile Suit' of the setting will be instead replaced by super manned fighter craft armed with beam weapon. Because drones are getting unreliable with the constant EMP from Minosky particle too. So it's also going right back to 'Carrier is king of the sea' setting. It really depends on who can make better design. And despite how much I loved the gundam setting, some of the thing it's just...kinda stupid. Like the sheer amount of super prototype that never saw usage for more than a year. UC setting is still neat though. I'm also just waiting to see how many people paint their manned fighters that has 3 times the acceleration than normal model in bright red colour. EDIT: Also, one last thing. Thanks to Minosky Particle Nuclear Reactor, ships in Gundam setting has some ridiculous Delta V. Basically, it allows some really crazy maneuver to the mobile suit.
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reviire
New Member
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Post by reviire on Nov 2, 2016 8:02:52 GMT
I'd like to see a less realistic ship designer. Keep all the other realistic parts, but let us throw in some ships out of Halo or Homeworld. That's honestly the only thing I don't like about the game, it's so good, but realistic ships really suck.
Visible lasers would be great, and that would detract nothing from actual gameplay. On that note, I'm sure someone could come up with some passable equations so we could design our own sorts of sci-fi weaponry. It'd be a pain to balance, but who wouldn't love designing their own guided plasma cannons, or some fancy Tau pulse guns.
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Post by bluuetechnic on Nov 2, 2016 15:46:12 GMT
I'd like to see a less realistic ship designer. Keep all the other realistic parts, but let us throw in some ships out of Halo or Homeworld. That's honestly the only thing I don't like about the game, it's so good, but realistic ships really suck.
Visible lasers would be great, and that would detract nothing from actual gameplay. On that note, I'm sure someone could come up with some passable equations so we could design our own sorts of sci-fi weaponry. It'd be a pain to balance, but who wouldn't love designing their own guided plasma cannons, or some fancy Tau pulse guns. Speaking of halo and sci-fi weapons, one thing I'd love to see is spinal mounted weapons, like the Paris class's MAC cannons. Also, there are actually some advantages to some *slightly* more sci-fi looking designs - if you want to get an idea what I'm talking about, you should check out my old thread 'Alternative Armor Layout concepts'. I went in with some unconventional ideas for armoring ships that I thought could potentially have some advantages, and as it turns out, thanks to erin , that some of these designs actually look more like sci-fi ships - and they kind of worked too! On the subject of sci-fi weapons, this game isn't really about balance, it's more about realism. And as it turns out, that's already not too unbalanced. In particular, there are reasons we don't use more sci-fi weapons like plasma guns; they either aren't realistic (they would just not work or be entirely ineffective in real life), or they'd have some extreme constraints on them. In the area of plasma weapons though, I think that they could be implemented well rather easily, by having them cost lots of money, take tons of energy to power, and/or be relatively energy inefficient. Also, knowing how plasma works in real life (without gravity to hold it together it tends not to stick in one piece), it would probably also have pretty big range restrictions and/or damage dropoff. Finally, I also want fusion reactors with some of the same restraints, anti-matter stuff, multiple barrel guns, and maybe some form of force field?
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Post by Guest on Nov 2, 2016 17:28:38 GMT
Hmm i just think about something close to Honor Harrington Universe. Long range fight with missles, close range they use "Grasers", kind of a gamma ray laser. And mostly mounted in broadside configuration. Ok, engines there are working with changing gravity and so they have real high accelleration, but without that it should work. Warheads used are nukes or laser warheads, using some laser filament and a directed nuke to utilize the x-rays for laser pumping. Annother universe would be "The lost fleet" by Jack Cambell, Ships there are faster, up to 20% light speed. Weapons are Missles and some kind of particle accelerator. Also they use two kinds of kinetic weapons, one "shotgun style" for space combat and kinetic projectiles for planetary bombardment. in the lost fleet they use Particle beams, rail/coil-grapeshot cannons, and short-range missiles for combat and Impactors for planetary assault, One faction also has magic handwavium disintegrators that are also short-ranged
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reviire
New Member
I'm pretty great
Posts: 44
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Post by reviire on Nov 2, 2016 23:49:37 GMT
I'd like to see a less realistic ship designer. Keep all the other realistic parts, but let us throw in some ships out of Halo or Homeworld. That's honestly the only thing I don't like about the game, it's so good, but realistic ships really suck.
Visible lasers would be great, and that would detract nothing from actual gameplay. On that note, I'm sure someone could come up with some passable equations so we could design our own sorts of sci-fi weaponry. It'd be a pain to balance, but who wouldn't love designing their own guided plasma cannons, or some fancy Tau pulse guns. Speaking of halo and sci-fi weapons, one thing I'd love to see is spinal mounted weapons, like the Paris class's MAC cannons. Also, there are actually some advantages to some *slightly* more sci-fi looking designs - if you want to get an idea what I'm talking about, you should check out my old thread 'Alternative Armor Layout concepts'. I went in with some unconventional ideas for armoring ships that I thought could potentially have some advantages, and as it turns out, thanks to erin , that some of these designs actually look more like sci-fi ships - and they kind of worked too! On the subject of sci-fi weapons, this game isn't really about balance, it's more about realism. And as it turns out, that's already not too unbalanced. In particular, there are reasons we don't use more sci-fi weapons like plasma guns; they either aren't realistic (they would just not work or be entirely ineffective in real life), or they'd have some extreme constraints on them. In the area of plasma weapons though, I think that they could be implemented well rather easily, by having them cost lots of money, take tons of energy to power, and/or be relatively energy inefficient. Also, knowing how plasma works in real life (without gravity to hold it together it tends not to stick in one piece), it would probably also have pretty big range restrictions and/or damage dropoff. Finally, I also want fusion reactors with some of the same restraints, anti-matter stuff, multiple barrel guns, and maybe some form of force field? Of course, we wouldn't see those things in the main game because it's about realism, I wouldn't expect to. (Although visible lasers would still be a nice option, as it wouldn't change gameplay.) But mods on the other hand, nothing wrong with adding some more unrealistic stuff, it's a mod. As long as it's done in a way that would be "Realistic", with defined rules on how it functions, so you can make your own types of it, as with all other weapons in the game. It'd just be amazing to see ships firing plasma torpedoes at each other. I'd love to see a MAC. Although on a partially unrelated note, why are coilgun coils subject to pressure? I thought the projectile doesn't contact the coilgun, or am I just not understanding something about the physics behind it? Fusion reactors, anti-matter power storage (Or any power storage, for that matter.), and some sort of force field, would be great to see. But what would multi-barrel guns achieve, unless they were sorta separate guns, like the 20mm flak 38.
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