A Study on Nuclear Penetrator Warheads
Nov 17, 2016 2:21:09 GMT
Crazy Tom, goduranus, and 4 more like this
Post by themohawkninja on Nov 17, 2016 2:21:09 GMT
To start, I would like to point out that this was originally going to be a much larger study over other types of payloads for weapons, however due to the fact that findings in this experiment forced me to expand the experiment for this particular type of warhead, I decided to break the study into a nuclear penetrator part, a high explosive penetrator part, and a flak portion, along with a study of the effectiveness of an absolute control (no warhead).
Each round is a identically made (save for the warhead, of course) rocket-assisted payload for a coilgun. Each coilgun is identical in composition save for the varying payloads. Each coilgun is mounted on an identical ship (save for the ammo storage, which is 1000 of whatever round the coilgun fires).
Each trial took place in the "Predatory Opportunism" preset, with one of the experimental ships versus one stock corvette. Trials successfully ended upon either the death of the target corvette, or when the two ships fly past each other (which ever comes first). Trials were scrapped and restarted upon disability of the experimental ship's ability to move (zero dV), disability of the coilgun, or death of the experimental ship, as the study is to determine the damage effectiveness of the ammo, not the battle effectiveness of the ship.
Dropbox link to study (.xlsx file extension): www.dropbox.com/s/7dep22hx0jglmbn/CoaDE%20Nuclear%20Penetrator%20Study.xlsx?dl=0
With regards to the asterisks in the xlsx file:
*To go into more detail about the various payloads used:
**The number of components disabled on the enemy ship. The number is listed as "N/A" when the enemy ship was killed in the engagement to avoid skewing the data as virtually all components outside of radiators become automatically disabled upon ship death.
***This is based on the starting ammo count in the ship (1000) minus the ammo count at trial end. It should be noted that 20+ rounds may still be present flying towards the target corvette after the trial has ended, and therefore skew the data. I felt it would be more honest to simply not guess at the number of rounds still in-flight that did not contribute to the damage done to the target corvette.
Conclusions:
From my study, it can be concluded that there is most likely no difference in the effectiveness of using one large, or many smaller penetrators to arm a nuclear penetrating warhead with. This can be shown by the fact that the average number of shots per kill for both the penetrator-armed warheads are within one standard deviation of each other. For those of you who aren't versed in statistics, this (basically) means that the trial-to-trial difference in the number of rounds fired is large enough that it could have taken 100 rounds to kill a ship for the single penetrator, which would have made it less effective than the multiple penetrator warhead, likewise the multiple penetrator warhead could have had only 70 shots-per-kill which would have made it more effective than the single penetrator warhead, while in both cases still remaining within the bounds of the stated statistics.
In addition, it appears to be that a pure nuke warhead (that is, without penetrators) is potentially more effective than a nuclear warhead containing penetrators, as not only was the kill rate 30% higher than than of penetrator warheads, but the kill rate was still 20% higher when the round is normalized for mass. In addition, one can argue that the mass normalized round is unrealistic, as it is weighted down purely for removing a possible variable and not designed to contribute to the damage done by the round. On top of that, the average number of shots fired to kill the target ship is outside of one (but within two) standard deviations of all other rounds, meaning that it is far more likely that a pure nuke warhead is in-fact more effective than nuclear-formed penetrator warheads.
As an aside, as noted within the .xlsx document, penetrator-like holes were observed in penetrator warheads, and non-penetrator warheads alike. Although the quantity of these was far higher in the penetrator warheads. This does bring into question what these small penetrator-like holes are in the non-penetrator warheads. Perhaps a dev can be of assistance here?
All that being said, it is entirely possible that a completely different design would yield different results, and as with any proper scientific study, other independent (i.e. somebody other than me) studies should be performed on the subject. However unlike most science, the physics by which these studies work with can be altered at any time, so in the event major changes to the physics engine should occur, I should note that this experiment was done in patch 1.0.7.
Each round is a identically made (save for the warhead, of course) rocket-assisted payload for a coilgun. Each coilgun is identical in composition save for the varying payloads. Each coilgun is mounted on an identical ship (save for the ammo storage, which is 1000 of whatever round the coilgun fires).
Each trial took place in the "Predatory Opportunism" preset, with one of the experimental ships versus one stock corvette. Trials successfully ended upon either the death of the target corvette, or when the two ships fly past each other (which ever comes first). Trials were scrapped and restarted upon disability of the experimental ship's ability to move (zero dV), disability of the coilgun, or death of the experimental ship, as the study is to determine the damage effectiveness of the ammo, not the battle effectiveness of the ship.
Dropbox link to study (.xlsx file extension): www.dropbox.com/s/7dep22hx0jglmbn/CoaDE%20Nuclear%20Penetrator%20Study.xlsx?dl=0
With regards to the asterisks in the xlsx file:
*To go into more detail about the various payloads used:
- Nuclear Armor Penetrating (Single Penetrator): Penetrator consists of one 12x1 cm Osmium radiation shield.
- Nuclear Armor Penetrating (Multiple Penetrators): Penetrators consist of 36 2x1 cm Osmium radiation shields in a tapering pattern of 9x8x7x5x4x3.
- Nuclear Control (No Penetrators): Warhead portion consists only of the 118 t yield nuclear bomb.
- Nuclear Control w/ Mass Normalization: Warhead portion consists only of the 118 t yield nuclear bomb, but has a 12x1 cm Osmium radiation shield just before the rocket engines to keep the mass in-line with that of the penetrator warheads.
**The number of components disabled on the enemy ship. The number is listed as "N/A" when the enemy ship was killed in the engagement to avoid skewing the data as virtually all components outside of radiators become automatically disabled upon ship death.
***This is based on the starting ammo count in the ship (1000) minus the ammo count at trial end. It should be noted that 20+ rounds may still be present flying towards the target corvette after the trial has ended, and therefore skew the data. I felt it would be more honest to simply not guess at the number of rounds still in-flight that did not contribute to the damage done to the target corvette.
Conclusions:
From my study, it can be concluded that there is most likely no difference in the effectiveness of using one large, or many smaller penetrators to arm a nuclear penetrating warhead with. This can be shown by the fact that the average number of shots per kill for both the penetrator-armed warheads are within one standard deviation of each other. For those of you who aren't versed in statistics, this (basically) means that the trial-to-trial difference in the number of rounds fired is large enough that it could have taken 100 rounds to kill a ship for the single penetrator, which would have made it less effective than the multiple penetrator warhead, likewise the multiple penetrator warhead could have had only 70 shots-per-kill which would have made it more effective than the single penetrator warhead, while in both cases still remaining within the bounds of the stated statistics.
In addition, it appears to be that a pure nuke warhead (that is, without penetrators) is potentially more effective than a nuclear warhead containing penetrators, as not only was the kill rate 30% higher than than of penetrator warheads, but the kill rate was still 20% higher when the round is normalized for mass. In addition, one can argue that the mass normalized round is unrealistic, as it is weighted down purely for removing a possible variable and not designed to contribute to the damage done by the round. On top of that, the average number of shots fired to kill the target ship is outside of one (but within two) standard deviations of all other rounds, meaning that it is far more likely that a pure nuke warhead is in-fact more effective than nuclear-formed penetrator warheads.
As an aside, as noted within the .xlsx document, penetrator-like holes were observed in penetrator warheads, and non-penetrator warheads alike. Although the quantity of these was far higher in the penetrator warheads. This does bring into question what these small penetrator-like holes are in the non-penetrator warheads. Perhaps a dev can be of assistance here?
All that being said, it is entirely possible that a completely different design would yield different results, and as with any proper scientific study, other independent (i.e. somebody other than me) studies should be performed on the subject. However unlike most science, the physics by which these studies work with can be altered at any time, so in the event major changes to the physics engine should occur, I should note that this experiment was done in patch 1.0.7.
