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Post by rcasale42 on Dec 4, 2016 3:18:45 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. Also 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. Oh neat! Will this counter out of range rail guns though? As I can in turn make each ship the priority target so a blast gets sent its way, and since the AI won't try to evade that might go down fairly quickly. But I look forward to seeing what happens. What does the multinuke launcher do? Also, there has been some talk of overwhelming laser ships with more projectiles (whether they be drones, nukes, or kkvs) then it could possibly shoot down. Against the Laser Show this would not be possible because the game can't handle it, but against a fleet consisting of a single one of these Laser Gunships it would be possible to try out some things as it could be overwhelmed without killing the game (I hope).
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Post by rcasale42 on Dec 4, 2016 3:22:05 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. Np! Thanks for the ship design. Of course, the only reason my ships succeeded is because of the failings of the AI. A human opponent could just shoot out all of my rail guns in probably a few seconds.
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Post by goduranus on Dec 4, 2016 3:40:05 GMT
The Laser Gunboat is much smaller than the Laser Show, having about 1/25th of the frontal area, so it's harder to hit and needs a longer burst of gunfire to reliably destroy.
The multinuke launcher fires a 7km/s deltaV missile carrying 20 6kt nukes, it's quite unexpectedly strong. This is designed to weed out enemy fleets that don't have adequate point defense and countermeasures before they can get into laser range. The multiple warheads on one missile is meant to deliver more warheads around the fact that the AI only launches 20 missiles at a time.
Edit: I made a typo calling the it the Laser Shower. Now that I think of it, it actually looks like a shower head.
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Post by rcasale42 on Dec 8, 2016 17:02:45 GMT
The Laser Gunboat is much smaller than the Laser Show, having about 1/25th of the frontal area, so it's harder to hit and needs a longer burst of gunfire to reliably destroy. The multinuke launcher fires a 7km/s deltaV missile carrying 20 6kt nukes, it's quite unexpectedly strong. This is designed to weed out enemy fleets that don't have adequate point defense and countermeasures before they can get into laser range. The multiple warheads on one missile is meant to deliver more warheads around the fact that the AI only launches 20 missiles at a time. Edit: I made a typo calling the it the Laser Shower. Now that I think of it, it actually looks like a shower head. It's good! I have a much harder time against this ship then the Laser Show, but I can still beat it mostly because of AI failings. I can swoop in at say about 2km/s or 4km/s and cover the engagement zone and take em out with normal guns, thought it's more difficult because of ships are smaller and the way targeting works. Of course, the AI could win if they just targeted my radiators on all my ships in turn. The nukes weren't much of an issue also because I don't know the AI knew how to plot an intercept against my ballistic trajectory. In either cas
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Post by goduranus on Dec 8, 2016 17:39:58 GMT
Nice! How did you get around the nukes though? They get me every time.
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Post by rcasale42 on Dec 9, 2016 18:01:07 GMT
Nice! How did you get around the nukes though? They get me every time. I think my velocity was too great for them to handle. As soon as I got into the sandbox I would head right for the laser gunships. The AI would just launch some missiles and not try to intercept. In the actual engagement, the missile launchers have a low engagement range so they only get used on my closest approach.
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Post by rcasale42 on Dec 10, 2016 23:41:23 GMT
Here's the video. I tried fighting the laser gunboats with conventional rail gun ships and had some set backs and successes, but I wouldn't say that I won any of the engagements. I'll probably try to make more improvements to my ship design. I'm still trying to figure out how much silica aerogel I really need, and what type of rail gun would be best. For example, I could try to design exclusively for high muzzle velocity and sacrifice mass on the round, as I only really need to knock off the radiators. In any event, I think nuclear missiles or specialized drones would be the best bet.
Actually, as I'm writing this I think a gun that shoots nukes might be good. Getting into rail gun range (~200km) is not a problem. The main challenge is inflicting enough damage as you fly by (especially since all my ships just focus on one enemy at a time). If they were shooting nuke rounds then I think I would stand a chance of taking them all out in one fly by.
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