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Post by mikeck on Nov 19, 2016 1:35:06 GMT
Made my first attempt at designing a ship. It's sort of a heavy frigate. Armed with 3 bow 8mm rail guns, 4 lasers (mainly for taking out drones) along the waist and 2 striker nuclear missile launchers. Ok....so please forgive my complete cluelessness here as to design and armor:
So I wanted to protect against lasers so I put on an interior 1cm layer of silicon aerogel. I wanted so harder protection for shells and flachettes so the outer layer of armor is 1.5cm of Spider Silk. The ship has 55 crew, 7.68 delta-V and decent acceleration. Came in with a weight of around 7kt and cost of 51 (not sure of the unit) so it seems similar enough to other ships with similar weaponry. Meaning it's not significantly more expensive, heavier or anything. It's actually doing fairly well in tests and it looks pretty tough.
But I have no idea about the armor. I chose spider silk because it was black (looked cool), was lightweight, had a high tensile strength and high hardness (or whatever that number above tensile strength is). There are a ton of armors....I started with amorphous carbon but found that Spider Silk had better numbers across the board and was less expensive...or similar.
1.What does tensile strength and hardness mean? As in- how does it affect incoming rounds
2. Why would I use most of the armors if REALLY good ones (I presume) are less expensive and lighter? Do different types protect against other things better? Are there other factors I'm missing (like maybe how easily it turns to plasma?
3. Melting point and heat convection (or whatever it's called)...are those important for protection against nuclear detonations?
I guess I'm looking for some help with what the qualities mean and if there is a reason to pick one armor over another.
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Post by dragonkid11 on Nov 19, 2016 2:04:56 GMT
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Post by someusername6 on Nov 19, 2016 2:08:24 GMT
It's kinda dead mostly because we probably found the currently cheapest and the most effective armor of all time. "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement." |
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Post by dragonkid11 on Nov 19, 2016 2:52:32 GMT
Well why don't you go ahead and make something new and innovative in the thread then?
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Post by amimai on Nov 19, 2016 3:32:12 GMT
My battleship armour (each layer is equal mass)
Out
Diamond
Amorphous carbon
Space
Boron
Graphite Gell
Boron
Inner
25% ship mass of this is good, It's really cheap, and so far it's proven resilient vs everything except constant nuclear bombardment by Mt strangth warheads that eventually boil off the outer layers. It's particularly efficient vs all varieties of kinetic weapons up to withstanding 5kg+ Coil gun launched KKV Missiles with 15km/s terminal velocity.
Another option is alternating layers of boron/graphite gell/boron but that seems worse as you lose armour density in favour of bulk. But nothing says armour like 10m of graphogell
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Post by mikeck on Nov 19, 2016 3:41:10 GMT
No, I've been reading that thread but it seems most of it is arguing over things I don't understand. I was really just looking for more of an explanation of the terminology and why each quality is important....or what it does. The term I missed was "yield strength" and "tensil". I don't know what those are/do. I edited the ship. Has 2cm of spider silk over 1cm aerogel. Has 1 flak and 1 nuclear missile launcher each, 4x8mm rail guns in the bow and 5 13MW green lasers around the waist- again, mainly for drones and missiles. Acceleration is 337mg with 7.15km/s of delta v . Weighs 4.96kt and costs 45.9 MC. Lol... I don't even know if that's good |
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Post by apophys on Nov 19, 2016 3:48:28 GMT
1.
Yield strength = force it can withstand without bending.
Ultimate tensile strength = force it can withstand without breaking. This is more important for ballistics, because bent armor still stops the bullet.
Hypervelocity impacts on monolithic armor will cause melting on the front and spallation on the back - you'd want high melting point * specific heat to resist melt, and high speed of sound to make shockwaves less damaging. But hypervelocity impacts are best dealt with using a whipple shield to turn it into plasma.
As above mentioned, whipple shields stuffed with aerogel are great to stop bullets.
2.
There are other factors, as the recent bugfix of silica aerogel shows. But commonly used materials are commonly used for good reason.
3.
Melting point, specific heat, and thermal conductivity are the important ones for nukes & lasers (and plasma generated from a whipple shield taking hypervelocity impact).
You either want low thermal conductivity (to ablate away only a small bit at a time) or high thermal conductivity combined with high melting point * specific heat (to absorb heat without damage as long as possible).
Many paper-thin armor layers with air spaces in between are the current best laser defense.
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Post by mikeck on Nov 19, 2016 4:06:20 GMT
1. Yield strength = force it can withstand without bending. Ultimate tensile strength = force it can withstand without breaking. This is more important for ballistics, because bent armor still stops the bullet. Hypervelocity impacts on monolithic armor will cause melting on the front and spallation on the back - you'd want high melting point * specific heat to resist melt, and high speed of sound to make shockwaves less damaging. But hypervelocity impacts are best dealt with using a whipple shield to turn it into plasma. As above mentioned, whipple shields stuffed with aerogel are great to stop bullets. 2. There are other factors, as the recent bugfix of silica aerogel shows. But commonly used materials are commonly used for good reason. 3. Melting point, specific heat, and thermal conductivity are the important ones for nukes & lasers (and plasma generated from a whipple shield taking hypervelocity impact). You either want low thermal conductivity (to ablate away only a small bit at a time) or high thermal conductivity combined with high melting point * specific heat (to absorb heat without damage as long as possible). Many paper-thin armor layers with air spaces in between are the current best laser defense. Ahhh! Yes, thank you for the info. Sucks I have to complete another mission to get to modular design but damn it's worth it. I don't see "whipple shield" as a selection in "armor". I know what it is but not how to get it. Am I missing it or is it something I have to design in the "module design" screen? |
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Post by apophys on Nov 19, 2016 4:06:45 GMT
I edited the ship. Has 2cm of spider silk over 1cm aerogel. Has 1 flak and 1 nuclear missile launcher each, 4x8mm rail guns in the bow and 5 13MW green lasers around the waist- again, mainly for drones and missiles. Acceleration is 337mg with 7.15km/s of delta v. Weighs 4.96kt and costs 45.9 MC. Lol... I don't even know if that's good For 16.6 Mc, I have a ship that fields 9 1GW lasers. See the 100 Mc fleet thread (a little outdated, but still works). For 20 Mc, I have a ship that fields 120 drones which each have a 40MW laser. The ship also has 7 coilguns with 52 km/s muzzle velocity (firing rate is toned way down so as not to break physics). Drones output more heat than the mothership, so they are inherently missile decoys. I have not published this one yet. My philosophy is that of glass cannons with huge range, to try and avoid taking damage in the first place. Ahhh! Yes, thank you for the info. Sucks I have to complete another mission to get to modular design but damn it's worth it. I don't see "whipple shield" as a selection in "armor". I know what it is but not how to get it. Am I missing it or is it something I have to design in the "module design" screen? You can go unlock it without the mission. Main screen -> Infolinks -> Concept -> Unlocking Content and Mods. I did that (played campaign to Retaking Ceres; it's tedious). Whipple shield = a thin plate of armor followed by large empty space (or fill that space with something cheap like aerogel for a "stuffed" whipple shield). Use the Spacing slider in the armor layer for an empty space. |
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Post by amimai on Nov 19, 2016 8:02:03 GMT
I have to agree, from the pure practicality perspective no armour, and lots of 1000km range guns/missiles/drones is by far the most practical approach to war in space. Generally speaking "practical" space weapons are things traveling at %c things with onboard guidance, and occasionally lasers. The first 2 no amount of armour will stop for long, and lasers are more of a defence weapon.
But we like building space battleships because of manliness and GAR! so you may as well make the most manly armour of all and coat your hull in STEEL while making your turrets out of GREAT BALLS OF BRASS!
Or you know whatever works for you, I like simulating glorious mele brawls between space battleships so I self impose a 30km range cap for all weapons. If I was doing things seriously I would probably put on 2 layers of 10mm diamond/Amorphous carbon armour with 50cm gap between and a back plate of graphogell to catch stragglers, let them shatter on my diamond hull! It's not like I would ever let them get in 2000000km of my ship, kill me with drones and missiles from a safe distance and be done with it.
Just think for every 1MC your enemy can field 2000 missiles or more, that is literally blot out the sun levels of firepower to contend with...
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Post by magusunion on Nov 19, 2016 19:43:56 GMT
Just think for every 1MC your enemy can field 2000 missiles or more, that is literally blot out the sun levels of firepower to contend with...  |
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Post by amimai on Nov 20, 2016 4:44:04 GMT
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