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Post by newageofpower on Mar 15, 2017 14:21:54 GMT
Cumbustion guns: cheap, but I'm not going to lie but they are still damn useless against very generic lasers. Dispense them by the thousand on miniscule microdrones. Use your own flashlights to suppress enemy lasers.
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Post by The Astronomer on Mar 15, 2017 14:27:49 GMT
Cumbustion guns: cheap, but I'm not going to lie but they are still damn useless against very generic lasers. Dispense them by the thousand on miniscule microdrones. Use your own flashlights to suppress enemy lasers. No, even their simple engine burn will get even the fastest of the stock projectile ten kilometers away or so. Don't even talk about these slow guns.
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Post by Durandal on Mar 15, 2017 14:27:57 GMT
I wouldn't be so quick to write off conventional guns. With separate ammo storage and decent las-armor my .50 BMG reproductions are surprisingly effective even with ignore range.
And that's not evening considering the potential for gun-launched micro missiles.
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Post by The Astronomer on Mar 15, 2017 14:33:03 GMT
I wouldn't be so quick to write off conventional guns. With separate ammo storage and decent las-armor my .50 BMG reproductions are surprisingly effective even with ignore range. And that's not evening considering the potential for gun-launched micro missiles. Unless I can get rid of the enemy ship's engines (which takes a lot of time), conventional projectiles are useless. Even after lasers and engines are out I have to watch out for their tendency to fire thousands of thousands of projectiles and give my computer a mechache.
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Post by vegemeister on Mar 15, 2017 14:40:17 GMT
The enemy ship will get rid of its own engines, if you force it to keep dodging with a constant trickle of bullets.
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Post by Durandal on Mar 15, 2017 14:45:06 GMT
I wouldn't be so quick to write off conventional guns. With separate ammo storage and decent las-armor my .50 BMG reproductions are surprisingly effective even with ignore range. And that's not evening considering the potential for gun-launched micro missiles. Unless I can get rid of the enemy ship's engines (which takes a lot of time), conventional projectiles are useless. Even after lasers and engines are out I have to watch out for their tendency to fire thousands of thousands of projectiles and give my computer a mechache. At Mm range they are of course ueseless, but I'd say that comes down to tactics. If you burn out the enemy lasers than you get to pick the engagement range. I don't know what sort of weapons and armor everyone considers as a baseline, but I have trouble killing even stock ships quickly with 1g KE slugs at range. 42g rounds at close range (<300km) with a strong ability to out maneuver enemy fire (+1g combat acceleration) however is a reliable quick kill. *edit* One coveat to all that is Xenophon's 9mm railgun which I've found to be an almost perfect main battery cannon for capships for almost up to 1Mm. The only drawbacks are its power requirements and size.
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Post by ross128 on Mar 15, 2017 18:32:13 GMT
I find conventional guns to be good for two things.
1: packing decent short-range firepower into something with minimal power requirements.
2: launching very heavy payloads such as missiles.
Even though they pretty much top out at around 2.5km/s or so, once you start throwing more than ten kilograms around the EM guns start struggling to meet similar speeds without tearing themselves apart. Conventional cannons scale much more easily into heavy payloads, partially because they can use Vanadium-Chromium Steel as their barrel material. A conventional cannon can get a 20-30kg payload up to 2km/s about as easily as a 1g payload, with a relatively small increase in power requirements (mostly in the reaction wheels to swing the heavier barrel around).
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Post by dragonkid11 on Mar 15, 2017 22:38:19 GMT
Conventional cannon can be made up to 3 kmps or even 4 kmps too!
While railgun and coilgun has longer range, conventional cannon excel in short range where they can just dump ridiculous amount of firepower at enemy vessel and rip them apart faster than any railgun or coilgun can do.
Though I always use boron for their barrel and honestly can't find anything else to be better. Gonna try Vanadium Steel like you said later.
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Post by vegetal on Mar 15, 2017 23:22:50 GMT
Conventional cannon can be made up to 3 kmps or even 4 kmps too! While railgun and coilgun has longer range, conventional cannon excel in short range where they can just dump ridiculous amount of firepower at enemy vessel and rip them apart faster than any railgun or coilgun can do. Though I always use boron for their barrel and honestly can't find anything else to be better. Gonna try Vanadium Steel like you said later. VC steel is even tougher than boron, so you can increase the charge.
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Post by ross128 on Mar 15, 2017 23:28:05 GMT
VCS is basically the toughest material you can put on there short of UHMWP, but unlike UHMWP it's steel so it has a reasonably high melting point and good heat dissipation. Its main downside relative to Boron is that it's heavy.
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Post by dragonkid11 on Mar 15, 2017 23:36:38 GMT
I was wondering I can use VCS to decrease the weight of the gun instead, because increasing the weight of propellant charge for 3kmps and 4 kmps conventional cannon makes the weight go to a crazy high level.
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Post by ross128 on Mar 15, 2017 23:59:45 GMT
Well, it should be able to use a thinner barrel than an equivalent boron barrel. So how it works out will probably depend on whether you save more weight on the smaller turret+wheels than you spend on the denser barrel.
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