What is the best Outer Whipple Shield Armor?

Ye gads it is infuriating trying to test this.

Had to take the accuracy down to stop the gun hitting the same spot, because this is a significant weakness of whipple shields. The way the game treats armour in plates appears to treat each hole as large as the plate it went through, regardless of the visible hole. Then there's the issue having to restart up to 5 or 6 times but usually averaging 2 or 3 times before starting the test to have lighting conditions suitable to see what is going on.

10mm of silicon carbide is punctured with every hit, but there doesn't appear to be any penetration, so that inner bulk layer destroys the projectile before it hits internals. Tried with 10mm amorphous carbon, no difference. until just like a whipple a projectile hits the same plate as a previous one. then instakill. I can take the thickness down to 2.5mm - same result. a neat hole appears, but no penetrating projectile goes through. Which is just annoying since I would like the kill to register on the first puncture. (as long as it hits internal obvs) nevermind

Anyway, on to first tests for the whipple.

Basically, 5mm aluminium at 1 meter spacing, on a nose cone with roughly 30% slope will vaporise every bullet 11.8g (7.62x11.43mm) @ 29.5 km/s until you hit the same plate a second time. just the one shield results in a small heat damaged spot on the inner bulk layer. That is pre-initial control. to start to find a good base control configuration for proper testing.

At 2 meter spacing, the hot spot is roughly 1.5-2x the diameter.
At 50cm Spacing the hot spot is roughly half the diameter.

So diminishing returns after roughly 1 meter spacing. As people seem to already predict or state from experience.

2 Whipples of 5mm @ 1 meter spacing, the hot spot is about 4-5x in diameter - this looks like it's doing a really good job of spreading the plasma out.
2 whipples of 5mm @ 50cm spacing, the hot spot is about 2-2.5x diameter.

3x Whipples of 5mm @ 1 meter spacing almost completely prevent the plasma damaging the inner layer - this is a problem because I can't see what is going on. doesn't appear to increase survivability much, if at all. Perhaps need 3 hits on same plate not 2? and that would become clear in larger sample sizes.

But here's another issue. A bigger spot, is a bigger damaged area. So it actually seems to increases the likelhood of the kill, because it appears that there is more area considered to have already been hit once. So the most survivable configuration that takes the most hits is 1 whipple at 50cm, seems to take 15-20 hits, only that's not quite what is happening, I can't tell why, but the least survivable by far is the 2x 5mm whipples at 50cm spacing each. seems to get killed after 4 or 5 hits invariably, worse than no whipple at all which seems to take about 9-10

I am not doing exhaustive tests at the minute, just trying to get to that reliable control, but it seems I am running into the fact that I need the inner layer to be damaged all the way through to be able to observe the effect, since I can't rely on when the kill happens and I can't just pause and peel a layer back to look at the surface of it under the whipple. so it still only takes 2 hits on the same plate, the same as no whipple where the puncture appears to destroy the projectile. The heat damaged layer, doesn't appear to destroy the projectile when it punctures. Or something.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

So yeah, that's always been one of the problems with this game for me. It's really hard to set up good tests for a lot of things because you just can't really see what is going on. Armour especially. On my warship designs I use a composite scheme for bulk armour sort of based on modern tank armour just because I know it should be somewhat effective, and after much fiddling around it seems to hold up well. Something like;

Inner spall liner - Spider Silk 5mm
Inner hard bulk - Austenitic Nickel Titanium 10mm
Lightweight bulk - UHMWPE Fiber 20mm
Hard bulk surface - Titanium Carbide 5mm (also nuclear flash protection)

The inner bulk layers only extend about 2/3rds total length from the front - in my designs that covers all important internal modules, reactors, CCMs, weapons, ammo, etc. Same for the outer whipple and anti laser.

Inner Whipple - Aluminium 5mm @ 50cm spacing (this appears to just by luck the best from my preliminary tests - except I have 2 layers so ahhh maybe not >< )
Stuffing - Graphite Aerogel 25cm
Outer Whipple - Tempered Aluminium 5mm
Anti laser - Aramid Fiber 5mm (also fairly tough outer layer)

Before I was using Titanium Carbide with the Outer Whipple and a different ceramic hard bulk surface, and also a nitrile rubber layer between the lightweight bulk and inner hard bulk - but I don't think the ability of the different layers to move or flex independently (or at all in fact) is modelled so the rubber layer was useless, the ceramic hard bulk surface would attempt to defeat HEAT type weapons which don't exist in game, and would probably be defeated by the whipples anyway, so I just made it Titanium Carbide for nuke flash and a nice hard surface.

Was also using Cr-V Steel as the hard inner bulk, but it's just too heavy and seems to be prone to really bad spalling. So yeah after a couple thousand hours, that scheme currently seems to be the best I've come up with although it's completely just by semi educated guess and feeling...

That leaves me 2 layers for non effective aesthetic, which is nice to give the ships a little something in the looks department

Echo new warship use two Whipple shields instead of one. They are both 50cm of graphite Aerogel, instead of spacing thought.

I've been watching this site from the start, though there have been long breaks between looking in. I think I still have an actual account but can't remember when I used it last. It's always uplifting for me to see continued interest in this game. It's by far one of my favourites, ever.

Yeah I have alternated PBO fiber and Spider Silk and from playing (not testing) found no discernable difference. PBO fiber probably has better cost to weight ratio, just a little heavier. Echos upgraded 30mm heavy coil slow 5kg slugs appear to be excellent at causing catastrophic spalling on hard bulk layers, and making massive holes in anything else. The hard bulk layer is obviously a mass concern so making it much thicker isn't really viable, but I think that would be the only way to really protect against heavy slow projectiles. Perhaps the spall liner should be a lot thicker?

I use the UHWMPE fiber light bulk because of an assumption it's roughly analagous to contemporary body armour against small arms. As good as a much thinner steel plate but a lot lighter. I might well be wrong, in body armour the fiber is probably a substrate with some sort of resin filler? I don't really know - but the high yield and ultimate tensile 3.9 GPa seems to suggest it is similar. I do struggle to intuitively visualise what the various structural properties mean when combined. Nickel Phosphorous Micro Lattice is an intriguing material. The very low density worries me for bulk armour, but it may work better than my UHMWPE fiber. The mass saving would be very significant.

The intention of having 2 main bulk layers is somewhat of a combination of having a gradient of hardness at the front through to ductility at the back, and a throwback from having them separated by an elastic layer of nitrile Rubber, the idea being that the 2 layers can deform or move independently from each other, which attempts to protect against multiple hits on the same spot by shifting the impact point between the layers, as the elastic layer expands and pushes the layers apart slightly during impact. I stopped doing this as it is almost definitely not simulated.

I likewise stopped using Amorphous Carbon it seems like a bit of a magic material, I can't get the idea of blocks of compressed soot out of my mind. I think it would be a great material for heat shielding atmospheric entry but structurally it seems that what we have in game is just way too good. Again from my side of things this is all just semi-educated intuition and speculation.

I did look at Tin for a whipple, Echo disables it in his materials mod due to fact at low temperatures pure Tin will basically turn to dust pretty quickly? I'm on the fence about that since in game it would be reasonable I think to imagine it being mildly heated by fine electric resistance wires like a car windshield. I made it useable again in my setup but haven't really tested it yet since 5mm aluminium appears to do the job it's meant to just fine and is lighter. It's just the way the game models damage to the bulk layers that gives me trouble.

I also experimented with Zirconium Carbide and other ceramics for hardened surfaces, I ended up settling for Titanium Carbide for the best balance of hardness and lower density/mass, plus the high heat resistance combined nuclear flash protection. Using Carbon Fiber for a tough surface is also very good but way, way too expensive. Also I'm not sure it would behave like a ceramic, where the complex granular structure and chaotic failure modes disrupts shaped superheated plasma jets. But again, this is probably getting well beyond what is simulated in game. I only say nuclear flash protection because I read it on the forum years ago. Don't think gamma or neutron radiation is simulated to be honest. Just heat? Anyway my ships practically never have to face it.

It is interesting, how we've all seemed to come up with similar designs mostly on our own, with our own individual reasoning. I like the idea of Magnesium Aluminium Zinc outer. Not too sure about using brittle ceramics on top of whipples though.

The thing is, due to the relative ease of designing highly effective micro missiles either coilgun launched or bus delivered, and highly efficient low temp low power lasers, means kinetic weapons and armour become nearly redundant apart from point defense against missiles (my small calibre rails are insanely good at defeating swarms of missiles close in)and providing some extra seconds against kintetic hailstorms.

When I get the time to do a good number of ordered tests I will update here, it's nice to have some feedback and ideas bounced around at the very least.

Cheers!

So should I do more samples, or start a new set with alloys / ceramics, or change the whipple configuration (spacing, number) ?

And yes, this is the reason that I bought the game and posted on this site. As we can use crowd solving to produce what realistic space warfare would be like. I would like to know if you got the same laser as I do. As my laser are also highly efficient low temp low power lasers. My laser are 1MW or less, have efficiency from 30% to about 40%, outlet temperature form 880K to 1120K, and are all Ultraviolet. I would also like to know if you have posted your point defense on steam before.

Happy to see another person here. It was just me till you and Sam showed up. I hope that we can all talk more.