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Post by deltav on Jan 15, 2017 3:46:32 GMT
Edit: The update (1.10) changed all the stock guns. Check them out here... childrenofadeadearth.boards.net/post/15032/threadHad a hard time looking at stock guns in COADE and finding out what is what, so I made a table with how many joules, foot pounds, range against a capital ship, and so on. That way could figure out what works best against what targets and so on. Also is it possible to build cannons that are just as powerful as Coilguns or Railguns? 02/01/17 Surprisingly the 60 mm/33 mm Cannons deal out about the same level of damage per second as the 11 mm Railgun, just not the same range. 02/16/17 Updated chart with new stock cannons. 02/18/17 Found out yes, it IS possible to build cannons that are just as powerful as Coilguns or Railguns, but mostly for smaller 10m^2 to 1m^2 targets. 02/18/17 Assumed that longer range at 1km^2 meant longer range for smaller targets. That was wrong. This means shorter ranged weapons at 1km^2 may be better for point defense. Added 10m^2 and m^2 for that reason. Also guns without turrets are useless for point defense (unless nose mounted/aimed) as far as I can tell, so ignore unturrented Cannons/Coilguns/Railguns for this purpose. Type | km^2 | 10m^2 | m^2 | Velocity | Shot Mass | Rounds | Joules/shot | Joules/sec@100%hit | Rate_Fire | Pow.Draw | Cost |
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| Nuke Turreted Cannon | 8 km | 2.5 km | 1.4km | 1.12km/s | 115,001 g | 100 | 10,200,000,000,000 | 12,240,000,000,000
| 1.20 rps | 1 MW | 19,300 kc | HE Turreted Cannon | 9 km | 2.9 km | 1.7km | 1.31km/s | 39,801 g | 250 | 114,200,000 | 121,052,000
| 1.06 rps | 1 MW | 4,160 kc | 22 mm Turreted Cannon | 10 km | 3.1 km | 1.7km | 1.37km/s | 10 g | 1000 | 9,388 | 143,050
| 20.66 rps | 0.194 MW | 8.09 kc | 120 mm Cannon | 11 km | 3.3 km | 1.9km | 1.47km/s | 10,000 g | 0 | 10,808,214 | 22,697,249
| 2.10 rps | 0.060 MW | 1,200 kc | 1200 mm Cannon | 12 km | 3.9 km | 2.2km | 1.73km/s | 1,000,000 g | 500 | 1,496,964,054
| 718,542,746
| 0.48 rps | 13 MW | 124,000 kc | 60 mm Turreted Cannon | 13 km | 4.1 km | 2.3km | 1.82km/s | 10 g | 5000 | 16,568 | 422,650
| 25.51 rps | 0.423 MW | 18.6 kc | 33 mm Cannon | 16 km | 5.1 km | 2.9km | 2.25km/s | 5 g | 5000 | 12,661 | 258,411
| 20.41 rps | 0.258 MW | 10.4 kc |
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| Flak Turrented Coilgun | 17 km | 1.9 km | 0.6km | 2.34km/s | 20,200 g | 1000 | 54,900,000
| 740,052,000
| 13.48 rps | 13 MW | 4,000 kc | 8mm Coilgun | 18 km | 5.8 km | 3.3km | 2.54km/s | 47.4 g | 1000 | 152,955 | 3,413,956
| 22.32 rps | 0.200 MW | 24.9 kc | Flak Coilgun | 33 km | 10.4km | 5.8km | 4.57km/s | 20,100 g
| 500 | 54,900,000
| 114,192,000
| 2.08 rps | 1 MW | 89,900 kc | 286mm Turreted Coilgun | 36 km | 7.7 km | 2.5km | 5.14km/s | 10,000 g | 1000 | 132,143,438 | 1,014,861,604
| 7.68 rps | 13 MW | 19,400 kc |
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| 3mm Railgun | 36 km | 10.7km | 3.4km | 5.06km/s | 2.5 g | 10,000 | 32,015 | 586,195
| 18.31 rps | 0.200 MW | 60.4 kc | 11mm Turreted Railgun | 37 km | 4.9 km | 1.5km | 5.18km/s | 1 g | 10,000 | 13,421 | 1,947,924
| 145.14 rps | 13 MW | 380 kc | 8mm Turreted Railgun | 46 km | 5.9 km | 1.9km | 6.37km/s | 15 g | 10,000 | 304,431 | 11,315,700
| 37.17 rps | 29 MW | 1,160 kc |
First thing that is clear from this chart is the range = velocity period. Yes it is true in space there is really nothing to stop your rounds from going on forever, but the round still needs to be fast enough to reach the target before it's moved somewhere else, and that means speed, pure and simple.
Second thing that is clear is gosh darn the 286 mm Coilgun is powerful. The 8mm Railgun is a nice but distant second.
When you look at the two strongest stock craft the Gunship and the Fleet Carrier, no wonder they are armed with a bunch of these two powerful guns.
Any thoughts?
I still haven't figured out how to calculate rate of fire from the data in the game. From there I would want to find out joules per seconds of impact, damage given in a certain time period.
02/01/2017 Figured out rate of fire but still want to figure out how to find if damage of nukes and HE are increased by the force of being launched from a gun.
Any help with that?
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Post by jasonvance on Jan 15, 2017 4:17:12 GMT
Conventional cannons are limited by the explosion velocity of the charge (you can't go faster than the explosion) so they top out at ~9.59km/s at the very very tippy top, you likely won't get anywhere near that ballistic efficiency.
So no conventional cannons will never reach the same velocities as coilguns / railguns (which velocity being a big factor in accuracy and total energy it means they will likely never deliver as much damage).
All stock designs are really horribly inefficient.
As you have noticed velocity = range and it takes a whole lot of energy to get meaningful velocities in projectile weapons. That is why lasers are king the projectile speed (photons) is already at c. You can pump literally near infinite amounts of energy into any sort of projectile weapon and only approach what lasers are already doing projectile speed (and thus range) wise. Assuming total energy is constrained to within an amount that is greater than what is required to burn material and less than infinity lasers will always out perform projectile weapons in range.
It basically comes down to an energy range... Lets assume the first useful burning laser requires 10MW (*note this is a completely arbitrarily selected number and not accurate at all you can make burning lasers much lower power wise) and lets assume railguns / coilguns start to reach past ~7km/s at 1kw (which is the minimum allowed power for a railgun, coilguns are 100kw).
Anything from 0-1,000 watts would be conventional cannons being king (they only need to power the loader and this is the only weapon that can really fire) anything from 1,000 watts - 10,000,000 watts railguns / coilguns will dominate anything from 10MW + lasers will dominate
The reason lasers are king is how cheap energy is. The more GWs you pump into a railgun the returns become less and less... where as pumping GWs into a laser always returns a linear increase in total damage / second (assuming multiple laser platforms to avoid ablation caps to work around the games weird damage system).
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Post by jasonvance on Jan 15, 2017 4:27:14 GMT
Just to drive home the point a bit better, we regularly talk about 1,000km lasers (they are pretty much the standard go-to range for developing a laser). They can range as low as 27,000c for energy and laser and require no actual ammo tonnage or cost. The longest effective range railgun I have seen is ~900km (sheet range against cap ships could ignore range and likely hit things 1,000km out), has a mass of 130 kilotons and a cost of 3,130,000,000 credits. It takes a lot of energy to move a projectile 1,000km in a reasonable amount of time to hit a target to compete with lasers and it takes a whole lot of mass to contain that energy to transfer it to a projectile without shattering the projectile or the weapon while firing. The problem continues further if the arbitrary max range of 1,000km was removed to any range engagements. We can easily build 10GW lasers which would be effective out to 100,000km with the current game setup. In real life we have actual proposed laser defense platforms (with today's technology) that would construct laser arrays capable of burning 29,400kg of material / second. (Source: www.deepspace.ucsb.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/SPIE-Optical-Engineering-Towards-Directed-Energy-Planetary-Defense-Lubin-at-al-2014.pdf ) That proposed laser array also has an effective range of 10 au which is 1,496,000,000 km
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Post by David367th on Jan 15, 2017 5:22:18 GMT
Honestly, from what I've seen Flak Coil/Railguns have by far the most damage potential. Yet normal Railguns seem to have the best efficiency as they are accurate and can have incredible range.
So I guess Flak guns are space shotguns who decimate things up close and railguns are space assault rifles that kill things from medium range. Then Jason already pointed out the massive killing potential of Lasers, the space sniper rifle that can't miss unless you have a really blurry gopro on the front of the laser.
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Post by caiaphas on Jan 15, 2017 5:27:28 GMT
Honestly, I think that this poll should account for the killing potential of coilgun-launched missiles as well.
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Post by newageofpower on Jan 15, 2017 6:23:05 GMT
Just to drive home the point a bit better, we regularly talk about 1,000km lasers (they are pretty much the standard go-to range for developing a laser). They can range as low as 27,000c for energy and laser and require no actual ammo tonnage or cost. The longest effective range railgun I have seen is ~900km (sheet range against cap ships could ignore range and likely hit things 1,000km out), has a mass of 130 kilotons and a cost of 3,130,000,000 credits. It takes a lot of energy to move a projectile 1,000km in a reasonable amount of time to hit a target to compete with lasers and it takes a whole lot of mass to contain that energy to transfer it to a projectile without shattering the projectile or the weapon while firing. The problem continues further if the arbitrary max range of 1,000km was removed to any range engagements. We can easily build 10GW lasers which would be effective out to 100,000km with the current game setup. In real life we have actual proposed laser defense platforms (with today's technology) that would construct laser arrays capable of burning 29,400kg of material / second. (Source: www.deepspace.ucsb.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/SPIE-Optical-Engineering-Towards-Directed-Energy-Planetary-Defense-Lubin-at-al-2014.pdf ) That proposed laser array also has an effective range of 10 au which is 1,496,000,000 km I have a far superior needlegun design... but yes, building projectile weapons that can fight laserstars is ridiculously hard. You really use missile swarms to force the other player to not go pure laser (or he dies) and swarms of kinetic-armed drones are great at supplementing laser-based defenses (with proper positioning) against incoming missile attacks.
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Post by kitten on Jan 15, 2017 7:36:59 GMT
If you want range against a manoeuvering target, I have to say I can't see past the advantages of lasers.
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Post by deltav on Jan 15, 2017 7:44:27 GMT
Conventional cannons are limited by the explosion velocity of the charge (you can't go faster than the explosion) so they top out at ~9.59km/s at the very very tippy top, you likely won't get anywhere near that ballistic efficiency. So no conventional cannons will never reach the same velocities as coilguns / railguns (which velocity being a big factor in accuracy and total energy it means they will likely never deliver as much damage). All stock designs are really horribly inefficient. As you have noticed velocity = range and it takes a whole lot of energy to get meaningful velocities in projectile weapons. That is why lasers are king the projectile speed (photons) is already at c. You can pump literally near infinite amounts of energy into any sort of projectile weapon and only approach what lasers are already doing projectile speed (and thus range) wise. Assuming total energy is constrained to within an amount that is greater than what is required to burn material and less than infinity lasers will always out perform projectile weapons in range. It basically comes down to an energy range... Lets assume the first useful burning laser requires 10MW (*note this is a completely arbitrarily selected number and not accurate at all you can make burning lasers much lower power wise) and lets assume railguns / coilguns start to reach past ~7km/s at 1kw (which is the minimum allowed power for a railgun, coilguns are 100kw). Anything from 0-1,000 watts would be conventional cannons being king (they only need to power the loader and this is the only weapon that can really fire) anything from 1,000 watts - 10,000,000 watts railguns / coilguns will dominate anything from 10MW + lasers will dominate The reason lasers are king is how cheap energy is. The more GWs you pump into a railgun the returns become less and less... where as pumping GWs into a laser always returns a linear increase in total damage / second (assuming multiple laser platforms to avoid ablation caps to work around the games weird damage system). I'd love if there was a way to make a chart showing the sweet spot of cannons vs RGs/CGs vs Lasers. Where did these numbers come from? (Not challenging just asking.) At least from the stock designs, the lasers seem to only be effective vs small targets like drones and sometimes missiles. Not sure why, but even the Laser Station 1GW laser doesn't seem to do much damage vs let's say the 286mm CG. Ingame the 13 Mw 11mm TRG seems much more powerful than the 13Mw Laser. Any thoughts?
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Post by deltav on Jan 15, 2017 7:55:44 GMT
Honestly, I think that this poll should account for the killing potential of coilgun-launched missiles as well. Flak Coilguns are an option in the poll. I meant for that to include Nuke/Flak and Missile Coilguns but now I can't change it...
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Post by kitten on Jan 15, 2017 7:55:48 GMT
Lasers are very inefficient if you compare the power you put in to the effects on target. But in the world of CoaDE, energy is cheap, thanks to efficient thermocouple nuclear reactors. If you can just park side by side and unload, I'd expect the electromagnetic launchers to be more energy efficient and the chemical energy guns to be more cost-efficient but if you take range into account then lasers can't be dodged so they can quite easily outrange KE weapons.
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Post by deltav on Jan 15, 2017 8:05:11 GMT
Just to drive home the point a bit better, we regularly talk about 1,000km lasers (they are pretty much the standard go-to range for developing a laser). They can range as low as 27,000c for energy and laser and require no actual ammo tonnage or cost. The longest effective range railgun I have seen is ~900km (sheet range against cap ships could ignore range and likely hit things 1,000km out), has a mass of 130 kilotons and a cost of 3,130,000,000 credits. It takes a lot of energy to move a projectile 1,000km in a reasonable amount of time to hit a target to compete with lasers and it takes a whole lot of mass to contain that energy to transfer it to a projectile without shattering the projectile or the weapon while firing. The problem continues further if the arbitrary max range of 1,000km was removed to any range engagements. We can easily build 10GW lasers which would be effective out to 100,000km with the current game setup. In real life we have actual proposed laser defense platforms (with today's technology) that would construct laser arrays capable of burning 29,400kg of material / second. (Source: www.deepspace.ucsb.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/SPIE-Optical-Engineering-Towards-Directed-Energy-Planetary-Defense-Lubin-at-al-2014.pdf ) That proposed laser array also has an effective range of 10 au which is 1,496,000,000 km I have a far superior needlegun design... but yes, building projectile weapons that can fight laserstars is ridiculously hard. You really use missile swarms to force the other player to not go pure laser (or he dies) and swarms of kinetic-armed drones are great at supplementing laser-based defenses (with proper positioning) against incoming missile attacks. I think it's really important to consider cost because without cost, any discussion like this becomes meaningless, because cost is just another way of saying how much work it takes to make something effective. I keep hearing all this rah-rah about lasers, but I still don't see it for three main reasons. 1. Powerful lasers mean big reactors and big radiators, and that means more and more mass and less delta-V = bigger targets. I don't see any way around this. Isn't the Laser Space Station an indication of that? Yes it might be great for a ground based/ planet based system, but aren't we talking about Ship based systems here? 2. For the same amount of power/cost, can't you get more by building heavier and stronger/faster coilguns and railguns? Don't they use less power for the same amount of damage? 3. Lastly and most significantly, look at the power vs range curves in the game stats of the laser weapons. Does not power drop severely with range, with a laser being only a tiny fraction as powerful at 1000 km as it is at 1km? Doesn't a coilgun not suffer from this same problem? Isn't a coilgun projectile just as powerful at 1000 km as 1 km? The limitation being if it can get to the target fast enough to hit it before the target changes course?
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Post by dragonkid11 on Jan 15, 2017 8:06:34 GMT
This thread is about guns.
WHY ARE WE TALKING ABOUT LASER!?
In other news, I have been recently experimenting drone with payload firing conventional cannon/coilgun.
They are devastatingly powerful, but has quite limited ammunition capacity and short range.
Still something fun to design though.
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Post by deltav on Jan 15, 2017 8:08:45 GMT
Lasers are very inefficient if you compare the power you put in to the effects on target. But in the world of CoaDE, energy is cheap, thanks to efficient thermocouple nuclear reactors. If you can just park side by side and unload, I'd expect the electromagnetic launchers to be more energy efficient and the chemical energy guns to be more cost-efficient but if you take range into account then lasers can't be dodged so they can quite easily outrange KE weapons. I'm 100% with you that lasers seem to be inefficient. I don't understand how the power drop off at range is being ignored. I really hope I can be enlightened here. A coilgun/railgun projectile in space is just as dangerous at 100km as it is 1km provided it can hit the target. A laser beam is only a tiny fraction as powerful at 100km as it was at 1km. I really feel like I'm missing something here.
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Post by jasonvance on Jan 15, 2017 8:11:39 GMT
Just to drive home the point a bit better, we regularly talk about 1,000km lasers (they are pretty much the standard go-to range for developing a laser). They can range as low as 27,000c for energy and laser and require no actual ammo tonnage or cost. The longest effective range railgun I have seen is ~900km (sheet range against cap ships could ignore range and likely hit things 1,000km out), has a mass of 130 kilotons and a cost of 3,130,000,000 credits. It takes a lot of energy to move a projectile 1,000km in a reasonable amount of time to hit a target to compete with lasers and it takes a whole lot of mass to contain that energy to transfer it to a projectile without shattering the projectile or the weapon while firing. The problem continues further if the arbitrary max range of 1,000km was removed to any range engagements. We can easily build 10GW lasers which would be effective out to 100,000km with the current game setup. In real life we have actual proposed laser defense platforms (with today's technology) that would construct laser arrays capable of burning 29,400kg of material / second. (Source: www.deepspace.ucsb.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/SPIE-Optical-Engineering-Towards-Directed-Energy-Planetary-Defense-Lubin-at-al-2014.pdf ) That proposed laser array also has an effective range of 10 au which is 1,496,000,000 km But at 1000 km just powerful is that laser? We know from the stock lasers that the power drops exponentially with range. For instance let's take the most powerful stock laser ingame, the 1GW Laser Station laser. It has 8.57 Tw/m^2 at 1km, but only 8.57 Mw/m^2 at 1000 km. In this case this is with a huge space station powering it. Can we really say lasers make sense vs CGs and RGs? All of the stock laser designs are terrible:
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Post by newageofpower on Jan 15, 2017 8:19:09 GMT
I'm 100% with you that lasers seem to be inefficient. I don't understand how the power drop off at range is being ignored. I really hope I can be enlightened here. A coilgun/railgun projectile in space is just as dangerous at 100km as it is 1km provided it can hit the target. A laser beam is only a tiny fraction as powerful at 100km as it was at 1km. I really feel like I'm missing something here. It doesn't matter if our beam diffraction decreases intensity exponentially; because with a big mirror and stacking frequency doublers you can get intensities in the gigawatts/m2 at 1000 km (more if you go to ludicrous mirror sizes). That means you can hit targets at light seconds and have sufficient intensity to ablate armor while it would take minutes for even the most powerful railguns/coilguns projectiles (with 20x the efficiency!) to cross the distance. The fundemental problem with guns in space is that dodging drops the effectiveness of the gun at delivering energy to the target to 0% (so guns are useless until they enter a range where their duty cycle allows them a non-trivial possibility of hitting the target), hence high velocity guns firing light projectiles are preferred over lower velocity weapons firing heavy slugs. The solution, of course, is then to saturate the entire volume of space the enemy laserstar could move into with high velocity sand at sufficient energies to kill or at least deal critical damage to it, but is likely to require multiple times more mass in rail/coil systems and reinforcement structure than laser systems/structure, and is a strategy that is inherently vulnerable to running out of ammo - it takes a large amount of 'sand' to saturate a volume of space, especially at ranges minutes out, after all.
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