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Post by bluuetechnic on Nov 17, 2016 16:51:54 GMT
*EDIT: This weapon is highly unrealistic, but by using similar ideas I think I might have a concept that will actually work, look at other posts for details* We all know that in the current patch lasers are pretty much the strongest weapon. After the last patch, with the buff to laser engagement range and nerf to aerogel, nothing can compete with their range and power; they force the opponent to invest significant resources just attempting to armor against them. So they're unbeatable - or are they? I am, probably above almost anyone else here, a massive fan of, and believer in ballistic weapons, particularly railguns. And after spending a frankly absurd amount of time experimenting, testing, and developing, I've devised a weapon that pretty much objectively outclasses any of my laser weapons thus far. Be forewarned though, it doesn't come cheap:   This is the MPAC II-T, or Macroscopic Particle Accelerator Cannon, Type II Turreted Variant. Shoots a 1 gram 6.2 mm Van-Chrome Steel slug at 125 km/s, or about .042% the speed of light. (To quote that drill sergeant from ME2; "That means: Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space! (...) If you pull the trigger on this, you are ruining someone's day, somewhere and sometime!"). Again though, it doesn't come cheap; at 27.6 GC, it's by far the most expensive individual module I've ever built. But in terms of raw firepower, I've yet to find anything that can outclass it. It's range is 1000 km against ships with a 1540 m 2 cross section, and it only increases from there. The design is very similar to max speed varient from my 'speed record' thread (the base design is practically identical in fact, now that I look at it again). I haven't fully optimized it, but if you have this much money to waste, I doubt optimization is much of a prioity. And yes, I have tested this against my most powerful lasers, and it wins every time even when a.) It is intercepting at very high speed, b.) I have the laser set to 'ignore range', and c.) I'm targeting the gun with the laser So do you guys have any weapons designed to outclass lasers, or are better than them in multiple areas? Please feel free to share below |
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Post by redparadize on Nov 17, 2016 16:55:10 GMT
That's...
a very expensive and heavy rail gun you have there!
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Post by jonen on Nov 17, 2016 17:01:28 GMT
That's - am I reading this right? - a megaton of coilgun turret.
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Post by Argopeilacos on Nov 17, 2016 17:09:24 GMT
So, it is a massive reaction wheel with a railgun on top? It would probably be better to get rid of the turret...
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Post by bluuetechnic on Nov 17, 2016 17:15:20 GMT
That's - am I reading this right? - a megaton of coilgun turret. It would appear so, yes. Also it just occurred to me that I never tested it on a fixed mount - that might actually be a very good idea. |
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Post by concretedonkey on Nov 17, 2016 17:16:28 GMT
One can argue that nothing except FPS stops you of swarming multi gigawatt laser ships with thousands of missiles. Its more afordable , its lighter and the ships that fire them are much less fragile - less radiators and lower heat signature. Also rescent advances in armor make them much more resistant than the first days after the patch. Also this gun is *^%&*#^%& expensive. Is it broken ?
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Post by jonen on Nov 17, 2016 17:25:06 GMT
Also this gun is *^%&*#^%& expensive. Is it broken ? It's got something like 24 to 25 Gc of Osmium reaction wheels. Maybe upwards to 900 kilotons of Osmium reaction wheels. |
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Post by apophys on Nov 17, 2016 17:25:58 GMT
So, how many lasers did you test this against? I've got 54 1GW lasers in a fleet of 100 Mc, including the actual ships (see fleet thread, and edit the lasers for 1 Mm), so you should be testing this against, at the very least, 13500 1GW lasers. I find it hard to believe that you'd be able to field that many without crashing the game.
I also find it unlikely you'd win against that many lasers.
Your bullets take 8 seconds to travel, so even assuming instant reload, it will take 3 hours 20 minutes to chew 1500 ships at max engagement with current AI.
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Post by bluuetechnic on Nov 17, 2016 19:07:30 GMT
So, how many lasers did you test this against? I've got 54 1GW lasers in a fleet of 100 Mc, including the actual ships (see fleet thread, and edit the lasers for 1 Mm), so you should be testing this against, at the very least, 13500 1GW lasers. I find it hard to believe that you'd be able to field that many without crashing the game. I also find it unlikely you'd win against that many lasers. Your bullets take 8 seconds to travel, so even assuming instant reload, it will take 3 hours 20 minutes to chew 1500 ships at max engagement with current AI. Well obviously it's not very cost effective, but in terms of raw damage from a single weapon it's better. But yeah, it's highly impractical to say the least, and tbh I really just wanted to show off this gun. That being said, if I could have an optimized AI that only fires a minuscule burst at each laser, then it would beat the lasers because it only takes a few rounds to completely obliterate most lasers, and it tends to disable even my armored designs after 2 shots. Even manually switching targets as quickly as possible greatly increases the weapon's efficiency. I have a scaled down design that only shoots at 115 km/s, and if I were to build a ship around a fixed variant of that, then it might be somewhat feasible, but I doubt it with current AI. |
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Post by bluuetechnic on Nov 17, 2016 23:39:52 GMT
I've spent almost my entire time in this game trying to make cap ships and ballistics viable, but ironically enough, to do so will probably require me to use a form of drones. First, some context; this is the first ship I designed in CoaDE:  It looks kind of silly, and the name makes no sense without the 1200mm cannon on the nose that was in the original version. But the concept of forwards facing armor may be the solution to lasers. Currently, Having any exposed weapons on a vessel is essentially letting the enemy disarm you for free. But by having a super thick bulkhead, potentially using it to store the fuel, it may be possible to hide all engines, radiators, and weapons behind it. Next by using powerful engines and having plenty of dV, a ship could tank enough damage to get into fairly close range without being disabled. The other piece of this concept was inspired by the 'Shooting Star' drones from the vanilla game - Basically, the ship will carry tons of tiny drones without any main engines, rather just having fixed forwards facing weapons and start launching them rapidly when the approach velocity and/or distance is high enough. Done correctly, I suspect that the drones will be able to saturate any reasonably priced laser system, and out-dps them too. In my (admittedly very, very short tests), they cut through most current turret armors with relative ease, because they are designed to counter lasers, not ballistics. And whenever a turret is disabled, the enemy fleet will suffer a permanent loss to DPS, whilst each drone destroyed will merely be replaced. The obvious solution is to start armoring turrets against ballistics, but then you leave yourself open to lasers, and with the current single layer limit on turret armor, it seems nigh impossible to protect against both without bloated costs, size, and/or mass. I haven't had much time to work on this, but I think this one might work, if at the very least in certain situations. |
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Post by amimai on Nov 18, 2016 10:23:36 GMT
Coilgun launched 10kg frag missile with 5kg payload lobbing 50x100g shards at the target ship, shred the laser radiators and you win
if you can get a missile going 15km/s there is not much that will take it out in time for cost effect, not to mention even if the missile explodes at 10+ km range at that speed the shrapnel is still a deadly cloud that shreds
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Post by lawson on Nov 18, 2016 15:31:24 GMT
Over in the 100Mc challenge thread, Randomletters posted a thoroughly cost optimized coil gun. Works best on a drone without a turret. Best for a capital ships is with a turret that can do at least 2 degree per second, a maxed out fire rate, and mounted in a cluster of 7 or less on the front. (the thrust from the gun makes clusters of 7 or more have lower average fire-rate) The gun tends to kill all exposed modules before melting through the front armor. The race for a 100 km/s 100 kc gun continues.  This inspired me to make variations on his gun with greater per-hit lethality. 10g shell 55kmps, 10g Osmium rod penetrator, Dumpster lid gun The 10 gram shells of the first gun take about half as long to kill a ship, but both the Osmium rod and 100g dumpster lid guns can punch through a stock Corvet's armor in 1-2 hits with 10-100 hits needed to get a kill. (btw. the Osmium rod gun causes massive lag!) I did find out some new things with all this. Beryllium and Amorphous Carbon make good coil materials. Beryllium makes light and accurate guns with low power draw and higher cost. Carbon makes light and accurate guns with high power draw and low cost. So far, my best strategy for killing laser ships is sacrificial gun drones set to "ignore range". Even with conventional cannons the AI isn't smart enough to dodge and the bullets will eventually hit. (5 minutes later...) Might be a good reason to add a "targets shells" option to lasers. (or just improve the AI.) They could evaporate stray shells when they don't have missiles, drones, or ships to target. |
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Post by Durandal on Nov 18, 2016 15:51:02 GMT
Over in the 100Mc challenge thread, Randomletters posted a thoroughly cost optimized coil gun. Works best on a drone without a turret. Best for a capital ships is with a turret that can do at least 2 degree per second, a maxed out fire rate, and mounted in a cluster of 7 or less on the front. (the thrust from the gun makes clusters of 7 or more have lower average fire-rate) The gun tends to kill all exposed modules before melting through the front armor. The race for a 100 km/s 100 kc gun continues. This inspired me to make variations on his gun with greater per-hit lethality. 10g shell 55kmps, 10g Osmium rod penetrator, Dumpster lid gun The 10 gram shells of the first gun take about half as long to kill a ship, but both the Osmium rod and 100g dumpster lid guns can punch through a stock Corvet's armor in 1-2 hits with 10-100 hits needed to get a kill. (btw. the Osmium rod gun causes massive lag!) I did find out some new things with all this. Beryllium and Amorphous Carbon make good coil materials. Beryllium makes light and accurate guns with low power draw and higher cost. Carbon makes light and accurate guns with high power draw and low cost. So far, my best strategy for killing laser ships is sacrificial gun drones set to "ignore range". Even with conventional cannons the AI isn't smart enough to dodge and the bullets will eventually hit. (5 minutes later...) Might be a good reason to add a "targets shells" option to lasers. (or just improve the AI.) They could evaporate stray shells when they don't have missiles, drones, or ships to target. I've been using derivatives this gun as my main KE weapon too. Has anyone checked if it's broken though? Weapon. |
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erik
New Member
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Post by erik on Nov 18, 2016 16:35:15 GMT
I've been using derivatives this gun as my main KE weapon too. Has anyone checked if it's broken though? Weapon. Well its power use is 440 kW and output 275 MW. 624.000 % broken.  |
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Post by Durandal on Nov 18, 2016 16:40:55 GMT
I've been using derivatives this gun as my main KE weapon too. Has anyone checked if it's broken though? Weapon. Well its power use is 440 kW and output 275 MW. 624.000 % broken. [bnr] Well damn. I'll have to reoptimise my secondary batteries. |
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