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Post by someusername6 on Feb 21, 2017 16:41:56 GMT
They would fill slower if there was no more supply side power increase. This is the primary limitation. Adding more complexity to the gun system does nothing to solve this aspect of the energy balance. Adding more capacitor banks or using high energy storage (middling power delivery) permits rapid firing of a very small number of shots before exhaustion, but the time to recharge all for another burst of shots becomes the same as that to recharge the same number of single shots at the normal slow rate. There are advantages to burst firing - most of the advantages of a rapid fire weapon, with less potential to overheat, to recoil off target, to expend inordinate amounts of ammunition to prosecute small/weak targets, but they remain only able to average the normal slow firing rate overall, so have limited ability to kill large/hard/complex targets. I would be interested in seeing competing designs, balancing how much energy storage to put in a weapon system / ship in order to provide for burst fire capabilities, versus just providing more power in the first place. Unless energy storage is much cheaper I suspect "just add more reactors" is going to win every time.
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Post by lieste on Feb 21, 2017 17:14:04 GMT
Compulsators are approximately the same order of magnitude for mass compared to capacitor banks that provide the same power rating. They do however need to store an order of magnitude more energy to provide the short duration power pulse without extreme mechanical stresses - this is trivially exploitable to provide a multi-shot capability with a charging period between.
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Post by Enderminion on Feb 21, 2017 18:38:55 GMT
They would fill slower if there was no more supply side power increase. This is the primary limitation. Adding more complexity to the gun system does nothing to solve this aspect of the energy balance. Adding more capacitor banks or using high energy storage (middling power delivery) permits rapid firing of a very small number of shots before exhaustion, but the time to recharge all for another burst of shots becomes the same as that to recharge the same number of single shots at the normal slow rate. There are advantages to burst firing - most of the advantages of a rapid fire weapon, with less potential to overheat, to recoil off target, to expend inordinate amounts of ammunition to prosecute small/weak targets, but they remain only able to average the normal slow firing rate overall, so have limited ability to kill large/hard/complex targets. you would have a capacitor bank for the gun and another capacitor bank for the gun, when one is halfway done charging the other discharges, does that work?
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Post by lieste on Feb 21, 2017 20:16:54 GMT
Charging two capacitors simultaneously 'half way' is essentially no different from just charging one capacitor with the entire supply. There are detail differences, but if you think of two (or more) buckets being trickled filled via a constant water flow compared to one bucket being filled by the same water supply you will see how you cannot magic an improvement by increasing the number of buckets (the discharge of the capacitor or overturning the bucket is 'instantaneous' compared to the inflow rate).
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Post by nerd1000 on Feb 22, 2017 3:15:41 GMT
A significant difference is the delivery of power to the projectile, each cartridge is supplied with it's own pre-packaged supply of propellant, while the powerplant needs to deliver sufficient energy for each shot, usually from a much lower delivered average power. As performance increases the power requirement increases steeply, partly to accomodate the rise in shot energy, partly to deliver the increased energy in the shorter duration 'in barrel', and partly due to increasing losses at high delivery rates. With similar supply side power, the rates of fire of high performance EM weapons *must* fall as velocity increases, and the heavier shots, although using relatively slow projectiles have significantly higher muzzle energy and thus power draw than they are currently portrayed as having. Having more chambers does nothing to reduce the power supply requirements, when the power is delivered by a low powered reactor (in this context this includes 100MW supply side feeding a 1MJ, 1g, 45km/s example with a 10m rail - this would require power delivery in excess of 18GW from an intermediate storage, and at 50% *rail* efficiency, and 50% charging efficiency (maximum possible from the integration of energy storage into capacitors) an absolute maximum rate of fire of 25rps. Having two rails does permit each to cool for twice as long between shots, but the combined firing rate cannot exceed that of a maximum rate of fire from single rail supplied the same 100MW supply. Indeed, when I remarked that a multibarrel setup might be needed for a high fire rate railgun I was thinking in terms of heat management and barrel wear (which COADE doesn't model, sadly. I bet most current in-game railguns wouldn't last long enough to fire their entire ammo supply). A gatling setup might also cut back on the power consumption of the loader (which is rather high in most of our guns) though I'm not sure whether that would stack up in reality.
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Post by thorneel on Feb 22, 2017 10:53:23 GMT
Indeed, when I remarked that a multibarrel setup might be needed for a high fire rate railgun I was thinking in terms of heat management and barrel wear (which COADE doesn't model, sadly. I bet most current in-game railguns wouldn't last long enough to fire their entire ammo supply). A gatling setup might also cut back on the power consumption of the loader (which is rather high in most of our guns) though I'm not sure whether that would stack up in reality. CoaDE does model barrel wear, though it is kind of obfurscated: there is an error for railgun that barrel wear is too high, with a percentage given. Unfortunately, there is no info about how many shots the percentage corresponds to, or how many times the barrel can shoot before having to change the rails. And when the barrel is conform, the information disappears entirely. Ideally, barrel wear would be modelled as to give a number of shots before railgun performances degrade and/or it stops working, with an option to change barrels and a reserve of barrels next to the ammo tank. Also, should chemical gun barrel wear also be modelled?
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Post by underwhelmed on Feb 22, 2017 12:15:20 GMT
Indeed, when I remarked that a multibarrel setup might be needed for a high fire rate railgun I was thinking in terms of heat management and barrel wear (which COADE doesn't model, sadly. I bet most current in-game railguns wouldn't last long enough to fire their entire ammo supply). A gatling setup might also cut back on the power consumption of the loader (which is rather high in most of our guns) though I'm not sure whether that would stack up in reality. CoaDE does model barrel wear, though it is kind of obfurscated: there is an error for railgun that barrel wear is too high, with a percentage given. Where is this documented?
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Post by thorneel on Feb 22, 2017 13:02:38 GMT
CoaDE does model barrel wear, though it is kind of obfurscated: there is an error for railgun that barrel wear is too high, with a percentage given. Where is this documented? As far as I can tell, it isn't. It is just that in some cases, the module designer throws an error about barrel wear being too high.
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Post by David367th on Feb 22, 2017 13:23:27 GMT
Where is this documented? As far as I can tell, it isn't. It is just that in some cases, the module designer throws an error about barrel wear being too high. There's a .txt full of all the design errors somewhere. Edit: Doesn't say anything about barrel wear in it.
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Post by Enderminion on Feb 22, 2017 14:28:26 GMT
As far as I can tell, it isn't. It is just that in some cases, the module designer throws an error about barrel wear being too high. There's a .txt full of all the design errors somewhere. Edit: Doesn't say anything about barrel wear in it. its like excessive meltege or something, MPDs and Railguns get it when the power to the barrel is too high or something like that
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Post by bdcarrillo on Feb 22, 2017 14:54:10 GMT
That's likely per single firing event, not an accumulation over time.
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Post by Enderminion on Feb 22, 2017 16:54:32 GMT
That's likely per single firing event, not an accumulation over time. almost certainly
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Post by David367th on Feb 22, 2017 17:03:46 GMT
It would be neat to have a mechanic that allows for weapon lifetimes.
Like a rail gun might only have 5000 shots before the material loss can no longer be negated, and starts to affect ballistics or what have you.
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Post by Enderminion on Feb 22, 2017 17:50:51 GMT
It would be neat to have a mechanic that allows for weapon lifetimes. Like a rail gun might only have 5000 shots before the material loss can no longer be negated, and starts to affect ballistics or what have you. At that point you carry spare barrels, compared to the mass of a turret the rail mass could be quite low. also we know how to make barrels last for thousands of shots, even cannon barrels.
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Post by bigbombr on Feb 22, 2017 18:28:58 GMT
It would be neat to have a mechanic that allows for weapon lifetimes. Like a rail gun might only have 5000 shots before the material loss can no longer be negated, and starts to affect ballistics or what have you. At that point you carry spare barrels, compared to the mass of a turret the rail mass could be quite low. also we know how to make barrels last for thousands of shots, even cannon barrels. The wear and tear on railgun barrels is much more severe than on cannon barrels (coilguns should only experience mild wear and tear). I believe (though I might be wrong about this)that while tank guns are rated for 10 000 rounds, the Pegasus Railgun has to replace its barrels every 20 rounds. Sure, the technology is immature, but I don't expect railgun barrel life expectancy to ever approach that of conventional cannons.
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