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Post by redparadize on Nov 22, 2016 1:36:25 GMT
The crewed ship is expendable. Yes and no, if its destroyed and the foe still have his, then its a lost. If the last thing standing on the battlefield is the drone then it could be argued that its a win. Kinda sure the crew would not agree with that trough! The smaller / more efficient laser is not terribly exciting, with the drones coming at about 10 Mc each. I'll leave the last submission as is. AI will still send them in wave of 20... Not worth it. I know I am sidetracking, but its relevant to the game-y argument we previously had: After few test against my own version of a ship equipped with your laser, I managed to extrapolate that it would require +-2000 of my new "reasonable" decoy to get anything within the 100m range. Probably more considering the cumulative effect, but even if it was 20 000, that would be cost effective. My new "reasonable" decoy cost only 216, so 216c x 2000 = 432kc. Even if I go for the high 20 000 figure it still just 4.32Mc. that leave me with 495,68Mc to spend on the Mothership, Drone and offensive missile. Obviously, that's if my CPU would not melt in the process... So, its game-y after all... Now, talking about gaming the system, if I said that my new decoy is "reasonable", it's because I have a "unreasonable" version that can do it with just 100 for just 122c per decoy. I found a bug that can be exploited: The flat armor on the front cost and mass is not calculated. Basically you have it for free. And it's pretty important...  It should weight about 102kg... It mean that allot of my stuff is in fact broken. Your Laser show as well... most of the stuff is. That's annoying... Now I understand why shot and fat missile were better. |
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Post by someusername6 on Nov 22, 2016 2:02:05 GMT
I'm still on the side of "you can overwhelm any laser ship with enough missiles at a fraction of the cost". Though I wonder if there is a point in the scale where that is not true, if laser were able to start firing from a sufficiently large range.
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Post by goduranus on Nov 22, 2016 2:18:57 GMT
It only takes a carrier that gives the missiles a sufficiently high intercept velocity for missiles to cross the laser kill zone. With 1GW MPDs on the carrier intercept velocity of 50km/s is possible, crossing the 1000km kill zone in 20 seconds.
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Post by redparadize on Nov 22, 2016 2:27:41 GMT
I'm still on the side of "you can overwhelm any laser ship with enough missiles at a fraction of the cost". Though I wonder if there is a point in the scale where that is not true, if laser were able to start firing from a sufficiently large range. I believe that if interplanetary space war would happen. The starting "range" would be interplanetary. A massive coil gun Earth low orbit could launch massive large number of micro missiles, missiles would have a minimal Dv for trajectory correction, and hit anything orbiting Mars. They would be so small that you could not properly track them until its too late. For Laser, diffraction is a restrictive factor. Anyways, I am sidetracking again. It only takes a carrier that gives the missiles a sufficiently high intercept velocity for missiles to cross the laser kill zone. With 1GW MPDs on the carrier intercept velocity of 50km/s is possible, crossing the 1000km kill zone in 20 seconds. Yeap. |
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Post by tukuro on Nov 22, 2016 11:43:26 GMT
It only takes a carrier that gives the missiles a sufficiently high intercept velocity for missiles to cross the laser kill zone. With 1GW MPDs on the carrier intercept velocity of 50km/s is possible, crossing the 1000km kill zone in 20 seconds. The problem with extreme (compared to default missiles) intercept velocities is that it takes a lot more deltaV to adjust course. So if your missile swarm is closing in at 50 km/s, it will only take a small course adjustment for the enemy and your missiles will be unable to intercept to due either deltaV limits or because they don't have enough thrust. This in turn puts a limit on the max intercept velocity relative to the size of the volley: If the volley is sufficiently large and the intercept velocity high, dodging it becomes a reasonable trade off. I'm still on the side of "you can overwhelm any laser ship with enough missiles at a fraction of the cost". Though I wonder if there is a point in the scale where that is not true, if laser were able to start firing from a sufficiently large range. It might actually just be possible, and it's a lot closer than I thought. At the moment it's close based on in-game costs, but it's difficult to tell as lasers often waste time switching targets or fail to track their targets. I expect that once metamaterial based superlenses become available though, the balance will shift firmly in favor of lasers. EDIT: To know for sure we'd need better targeting AI. Because right now lasers often fail to track targets if they're not launched at once or part of very large waves (100>). |
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Post by goduranus on Nov 22, 2016 13:53:49 GMT
For the course correction problem, just set up the intercept as close as possible and use nukes.
Laser ships are forced to use no armor on their radiators because of how large their radiators can get. Even a nuke setting off a good distance away can disable the laser ship's radiators.
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Post by tukuro on Nov 22, 2016 14:43:36 GMT
For the course correction problem, just set up the intercept as close as possible and use nukes. Laser ships are forced to use no armor on their radiators because of how large their radiators can get. Even a nuke setting off a good distance away can disable the laser ship's radiators. Large nukes are harder to design and more expensive than before. And if you slap a lot of armor on them it decreases the delta V to the point where they can't get past the death zone. I think kinetic missile spam is the better choice here, that, or NEFPs, which can be detonated outside the death zone or before they're destroyed. |
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Post by redparadize on Nov 22, 2016 18:07:15 GMT
I still prefer a large number of smaller nuke. My 2.66kt served me well so far.
Now, for this challenge, I want to built a alternative design for the IA, I would like to have it spam missile in combat. For that I need to find a way to have the AI launch its missile only in battle. A gun could do that, but I still have to build one that start shooting from very far. I wish we could enforce it the same way we do for laser...
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Post by goduranus on Nov 23, 2016 5:58:33 GMT
I use multi-warhead nukes. My relatively cheap missile with 20x6kt nukes does much more damage than a single 10Mt warhead. This seems to be due to the quirk way that the game calculates damage in each frame.
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Post by n2maniac on Nov 23, 2016 19:37:10 GMT
Presenting for both defensive and offensive categories, the one that might the the obvious submission, loading a flagship with as much power and lasers as the budget allows: the Laser Show! At 497 Mc and 24.1 kt, carrying a nose with 20x 10.0 GW violet lasers, and multiple other lasers distributed through the body for the occasional side attack. Xenon propulsion, with developed-for-this-design 100 GW MPDs, able to provide a thrust of 2.71 MN at thrust:mass ratio of 31.4 kg_0! MPD that is so useful you may use it as a main propulsion or just to turn the ship around, in place of resistojets. Power is provided by 25x 10.1 GW reactors by apophys, including some redundancy in case you also want to use some of the side lasers! Armor filled in mostly to avoid radiators intersecting with each other, and two decorative Graphite rings. With a heat signature of almost 2 TW, all of the eyes will be on you. Buy yours today. You, sir, look like you are competing with the world's current nuclear reactors. Like, the whole lot of them, which produce ~380GW electrical power. Bravo! |
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Post by redparadize on Nov 23, 2016 19:47:02 GMT
Now that you mention this, it kinda sound stupid to have the world total nuclear output concentrated on a single ship. If its not physics breaking, I am pretty sure the cost is off by a long shot! |
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Post by n2maniac on Nov 23, 2016 20:03:16 GMT
Now that you mention this, it kinda sound stupid to have the world total nuclear output concentrated on a single ship. If its not physics breaking, I am pretty sure the cost is off by a long shot! The largest fleets in the campaign mission were on the order of 500Mc, but most of this cost is dumped into reinforced carbon-carbon armor. We are seeing what it looks like when that cash is dumped elsewhere, like reactors, without the typical cost penalties to precision manufacturing, such as for precision optics and reactor components. Full disclosure: the statistic appears to ignore military reactors (eg. US navy). |
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Post by rcasale42 on Dec 3, 2016 16:42:19 GMT
I uploaded a video of my self fighting the Laser Show. First I lose, but then I win. The AI is still kind of useless, even with such a potent ship.
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Post by goduranus on Dec 4, 2016 2:45:09 GMT
I uploaded a video of my self fighting the Laser Show. First I lose, but then I win. The AI is still kind of useless, even with such a potent ship. Bah, you were against the older version with a single ship. I challenge you! To fight 30 of my laser gunships, redundant to counter out of range railguns: File already cleaned up to include only this ship and its components. Attachment DeletedAlso this is my submission for the Give AI a a chance Challenge. I changed it slightly to cut costs down to 16.2Mc, so the fleet fits 30.  |
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Post by someusername6 on Dec 4, 2016 3:13:54 GMT
I fully admit the original Laser Show is not optimized -- I know better now, with making it have more efficient MPDs, engines, and running the lasers hotter to save up in radiators.
It is however iconic. It is a beautiful narrative, the small ship against the 700m behemoth, getting decimated in the first try, the doing slight better on a second try, and finally winning but scarred -- including it turning sideways for a final shot. (And yeah you could keep optimizing it to kill is faster / cheaper).
But it is the kind of encounter that makes good stories and I'd run as a GM against players in a campaign. I love it. Thanks for the video.
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