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Post by The Astronomer on Jan 15, 2017 9:50:44 GMT
I made this thread to try to add something to the board. I'm not here to make anyone upset. I was hoping my questions and threads/posts would be welcome. The more people we get playing COADE and on this board the better right? Hard Scifi has a pretty small fanbase. We should welcome new members who have questions, not attack or insult them. Please check out my other thread and comment and vote. childrenofadeadearth.boards.net/thread/710/stock-ships-headPlease pics and video, there is no way to verify simple text or to learn how to replicate the results. Thanks to everyone who took the time to participate on this thread. This thread is about guns and it was a mistake to add lasers to it, so later I'll try to make a separate thread of lasers vs guns. Thanks for everyone who welcomed me to this thread by really getting into the discussion. It is cool man, we can be vicious sometimes, and I hope we didn't give you a too bad of a feeling, but that is just because we have spent so much time asking and answering the same questions already that it looks obvious to us and some people can get frustrated when something looks obvious to them and they have to explain it. I am sure you can relate to that in some way. I personally like to stick to the math and keep my own opinions out of things as much as possible since it is really hard to get mad at math and not sound crazy. I hope you stick around it is good to have people to talk with. This was the most active the forums have been in a while and brought up some good debates. I was actually surprised to see some of the results on these polls and hope to see more. ...and they aren't kidding. This is probably the record for being the most active thread on this forum. Posts are few minutes, and sometime even one minute apart.
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Post by newageofpower on Jan 15, 2017 9:52:38 GMT
I'm going to disagree with lasers as the universally best option. It's possible to create low cost coilguns able to launch projectiles at well over 30, 40 and even 50 km/s. Assuming both systems use the same amount of power, an amorphous carbon/titanium-aluminide coilgun and 10,000 metallic glass rounds - which ingame are very expensive compared to real life, where metglas components only become prohibitively expensive if you're trying to make them larger than a few centimeters - are cheaper than a comparable laser system and its radiators. Even if we are cheesing the momentum wheels so they are a negligible percentage of the mass/cost. And assuming we are ignoring range, the coilgun system is just as effective as the laser. Which would be even more so if they'd properly lead their targets. I personally love guns, and have an entire library of gun designs. The problem is that lasers scale more effectively (not efficiently, of course) with power/mirror mass than guns with more power/barrel mass. If you saw my previous post discussing my almost 200km/s needlegun drone vs my laserstar drone, I noted my laser drone could kill my needlegun drone (which has non-trivial amounts of anti-laser armor, btw) at a range here it would take nearly an hour and a half (!) for the rounds fired to hit my laser drone. Of course, if we limit the size of the arena to 1,000 km, as is currently the case with the CoADE engine, then yes, it might be possible to cheese lasers with kinetics. I can easily manage mutual kills by using 'ignore range'; and that's with normal sand-firing (1g) weapons at 40-60km/s. EDIT: Even with an unlimited combat arena, lasers aren't the ultimate weapon, because of micromissile swarms. Very resistant to lasing (for cost), insanely cheap, useful amounts of dV, more than enough thrust to counter evasion attempts. So there's necessity for a combined arms doctrine.
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Post by caiaphas on Jan 15, 2017 9:53:05 GMT
I'm going to disagree with lasers as the universally best option. It's possible to create low cost coilguns able to launch projectiles at well over 30, 40 and even 50 km/s. Assuming both systems use the same amount of power, an amorphous carbon/titanium-aluminide coilgun and 10,000 metallic glass rounds - which ingame are very expensive compared to real life, where metglas components only become prohibitively expensive if you're trying to make them larger than a few centimeters - are cheaper than a comparable laser system and its radiators. Even if we are cheesing the momentum wheels so they are a negligible percentage of the mass/cost. And assuming we are ignoring range, the coilgun system is just as effective as the laser. Which would be even more so if they'd properly lead their targets. ...I'm sorry, how in blazes are you getting 50 flipping km/s out of an amorphous carbon coilgun? I've having issues hitting 30 km/s with a reasonably-sized (e.g. not the length and mass of the entire rest of the ship) carbon coilgun firing 100 g metallic glass slugs.
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Post by argonbalt on Jan 15, 2017 9:53:45 GMT
Anyone know how to figure out the fire rate of cannons, coilguns and railguns in game? For rate of fire just look at the reload time on each weapon. Laser damage is just laser intensity at range, and 1 joule=1 watt, so the stock 18.0 mw YAG green laser puts out 24.1kw/m2=24100 joules per every two metres of surface area hit (i think per second im pretty sure). If i get any of this wrong feel free to correct me it's like 5 am here.
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Post by jasonvance on Jan 15, 2017 9:56:14 GMT
It is cool man, we can be vicious sometimes, and I hope we didn't give you a too bad of a feeling, but that is just because we have spent so much time asking and answering the same questions already that it looks obvious to us and some people can get frustrated when something looks obvious to them and they have to explain it. I am sure you can relate to that in some way. I personally like to stick to the math and keep my own opinions out of things as much as possible since it is really hard to get mad at math and not sound crazy. I hope you stick around it is good to have people to talk with. This was the most active the forums have been in a while and brought up some good debates. I was actually surprised to see some of the results on these polls and hope to see more. ...and they aren't kidding. This is probably the record for being the most active thread on this forum. Posts are few minutes, and sometime even one minute apart. Yeah I originally had a nice reply post that had a bunch of stuff about laser physics and then accidentally hit back on my browser and the thread was up to 3 pages with most of what I wanted to say already covered lol. One side tangent thing I was going to mention was I wish there were nuclear pumped lasers in the game instead of just arc lamps or other forms of light pumping like flash tubes maybe (though those were probably not out preform arc lamps, nukes sure would though).
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Post by dragonkid11 on Jan 15, 2017 10:17:23 GMT
I decided to increase the propellant in my 3.2kmps 1 gram conventional cannon and got this thing. 4.0 kmps! That's better than some ingame coilgun! But unfortunately, it's probably going to be practical for 1 gram conventional cannon only. Though most of the weight of that cannon is due to the fire rate increase, but it's probably not necessary and I will probably removed it. But honestly, this is kinda reaching the practicality limit of high end conventional cannon. I tried to make a 3.2kmps 10 gram conventional cannon and it's starting to expensive when compared to railgun or coilgun. Of course, I can see it could still be of some use when running a extremely low powered warship instead of the hundreds megawatt monsters we have.
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Post by bigbombr on Jan 15, 2017 10:28:25 GMT
... One side tangent thing I was going to mention was I wish there were nuclear pumped lasers in the game instead of just arc lamps or other forms of light pumping like flash tubes maybe (though those were probably not out preform arc lamps, nukes sure would though). True, there are much more types of lasers than the arclamp lasers we get to play with: nuke-pumped xasers, free-electron lasers ranging from microwave to x-ray or even gamma-ray (with efficiencies aproching 60%), diode lasers (those in cd-readers and laser pointers, they can reach efficiencies of 60% for commercial models, and an experimental model reportedly reached 70% efficiency, but they don't scale up well or handle heat well) or diode-pumped lasers (using a bunch of diode lasers to pump a medium, think the scalabilaty of arclamp lasers with an efficiency in excess of 50% up to 70%). Diode-pumped lasers are fairly new but, as far as I can tell, might be (together with FEL's) the most promising, if immature.
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Post by tukuro on Jan 15, 2017 10:30:19 GMT
...I'm sorry, how in blazes are you getting 50 flipping km/s out of an amorphous carbon coilgun? I've having issues hitting 30 km/s with a reasonably-sized (e.g. not the length and mass of the entire rest of the ship) carbon coilgun firing 100 g metallic glass slugs. I personally love guns, and have an entire library of gun designs. The problem is that lasers scale more effectively (not efficiently, of course) with power/mirror mass than guns with more power/barrel mass. If you saw my previous post discussing my almost 200km/s needlegun drone vs my laserstar drone, I noted my laser drone could kill my needlegun drone (which has non-trivial amounts of anti-laser armor, btw) at a range here it would take nearly an hour and a half (!) for the rounds fired to hit my laser drone. Of course, if we limit the size of the arena to 1,000 km, as is currently the case with the CoADE engine, then yes, it might be possible to cheese lasers with kinetics. I can easily manage mutual kills by using 'ignore range'; and that's with normal sand-firing (1g) weapons at 40-60km/s. EDIT: Even with an unlimited combat arena, lasers aren't the ultimate weapon, because of micromissile swarms. Very resistant to lasing (for cost), insanely cheap, useful amounts of dV, more than enough thrust to counter evasion attempts. So there's necessity for a combined arms doctrine. Scaling is definitely an issue, but to do that I simply add more coilguns. The only reason I use the 50 km/s design is because the AI won't engage even when it would be perfectly able to destroy the laser ship at 1000 km, this way I can force them to engage at around ~400 km. Kinetics take time, true, but so do lasers having to chew through centimeters of broadside nitrile rubber, aramid fibre and thermally conductive layers. And once the pellets arrive they swiss cheese the laser ship. The 37.4 design has an effective range of around 1000 kms, and I suspect even more given enough time. However without an increase in engagement ranges it's difficult to tell which system is "better". Laser of course can be used against missiles, but so can kinetics (though seemingly less cost effective). In this case last moment dodging and redundancy can be just as effective. Especially if you selectively thin out parts of the missile screen so your ships can pass through unharmed. Also, can you link that needlegun design? I can't find it.
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Post by jasonvance on Jan 15, 2017 10:33:07 GMT
I decided to increase the propellant in my 3.2kmps 1 gram conventional cannon and got this thing. 4.0 kmps! That's better than some ingame coilgun! But unfortunately, it's probably going to be practical for 1 gram conventional cannon only. Though most of the weight of that cannon is due to the fire rate increase, but it's probably not necessary and I will probably removed it. But honestly, this is kinda reaching the practicality limit of high end conventional cannon. I tried to make a 3.2kmps 10 gram conventional cannon and it's starting to expensive when compared to railgun or coilgun. Of course, I can see it could still be of some use when running a extremely low powered warship instead of the hundreds megawatt monsters we have. I always lovingly refer to those as waffle cannons since the bore radius is large enough that the projectile is a thin wafer disk with a thin propellant layer behind it lol. That particular waffle is 9.8 um thick with a diameter of 7.6cm
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Post by newageofpower on Jan 15, 2017 10:37:36 GMT
Right, but the thing is, range is artificially limited to 1,000 km; an ludicrously powerful laser can still melt through whatever anti-laser armor there is at at a thousand times that range; in which even the best non-needle (sand) kinetics take hours to arrive, which is extremely dodgeable. Also, can you link that needlegun design? I can't find it. I never revealed it's exact design, because... Himitsu des~ Unless you are challenging my claims, in which case prepare to die lose all your internet points!
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Post by dragonkid11 on Jan 15, 2017 10:38:44 GMT
Checked.
That waffle cannon I made was outdone by my own railgun design in every aspect.
Of course, railgun need lots of power, it needs some too but not much.
I guess that's the only good thing about it. It's practically a poor man railgun.
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Post by deltav on Jan 15, 2017 10:39:27 GMT
Anyone know how to figure out the fire rate of cannons, coilguns and railguns in game? For rate of fire just look at the reload time on each weapon. Laser damage is just laser intensity at range, and 1 joule=1 watt, so the stock 18.0 mw YAG green laser puts out 24.1kw/m2=24100 joules per every two metres of surface area hit (i think per second im pretty sure). If i get any of this wrong feel free to correct me it's like 5 am here. Thanks about the laser stuff, have to check into that. Looks good. By the way I found a Mw/m^2 to joule converter baby! I think you have it right, and I'll see what the converter says too. www.endmemo.com/sconvert/w_m2j_sm2.phpBut as far as the gun stuff I need way more detail please. Under each gun there is a "cooldown time" and a "reload time". Do you just add them together and then divide by seconds in a minute to get rounds per minute? Exactly how to you take those numbers and make it into a accurate ingame rounds per minute? Please show me how to convert that data into a "rounds per minute" or "joules of energy per minute". Please pick a stock weapon and do it step by step. Thanks.
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Post by deltav on Jan 15, 2017 10:40:58 GMT
...and they aren't kidding. This is probably the record for being the most active thread on this forum. Posts are few minutes, and sometime even one minute apart. Yeah I originally had a nice reply post that had a bunch of stuff about laser physics and then accidentally hit back on my browser and the thread was up to 3 pages with most of what I wanted to say already covered lol. One side tangent thing I was going to mention was I wish there were nuclear pumped lasers in the game instead of just arc lamps or other forms of light pumping like flash tubes maybe (though those were probably not out preform arc lamps, nukes sure would though). Yeah this was my thought exactly! Am I the only one who used to read those Honorverse books? Laser pumped missiles baby!
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Post by tukuro on Jan 15, 2017 10:46:16 GMT
All of the stock laser designs are terrible: How did you get a 111 MW/m² at 1000km laser for only 13.3 kc and 2.29 t?
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Post by jasonvance on Jan 15, 2017 10:48:45 GMT
Yeah I originally had a nice reply post that had a bunch of stuff about laser physics and then accidentally hit back on my browser and the thread was up to 3 pages with most of what I wanted to say already covered lol. One side tangent thing I was going to mention was I wish there were nuclear pumped lasers in the game instead of just arc lamps or other forms of light pumping like flash tubes maybe (though those were probably not out preform arc lamps, nukes sure would though). Yeah this was my thought exactly! Am I the only one who used to read those Honorverse books? Laser pumped missiles baby! Heh, I was actually talking about the means of producing the photons you are capturing and aligning. Currently the game only simulates arc lamps, which a really good and practical, but I want more power. Back in the 70s we did research on nuclear pumped lasers to focus photons (gamma and x-rays mainly) generated from nuclear detonations into a laser. Imagine being able to beam a nuclear detonation directly onto a ship without the messy wasteful AoE detonation *drool*
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