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Post by deltav on Feb 14, 2017 22:06:04 GMT
Off topic question: What materials are best material for building railguns? Can you share your design? I've been trying to figure just this out ever since I've been playing around with that "Doomhammer" design. Bismuth, Titanium, Amorphous Carbor, Pyro Carbon, Selenium, and almost all the alloys seem to be pretty good. Still trying to understand how it works as I did with lasers. With Lasers that are so much less choices in materials. The amount of choices for coilguns are really daunting. (Oops I just realized you said "raliguns".)
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Post by omnipotentvoid on Feb 14, 2017 22:10:24 GMT
omnipotentvoid HOw are you getting such long engagement ranges? Have you been able to engage at the range ingame? If so, how? Only lasers are limited to 1Mm in game. If a KE weapons range for a specific target is beyond 1Mm the ships will still engage at the maximum range. All thats required are high accuracy guns (10m² at 250km is a good ballpark for insane engagement ranges). Try building railguns with 1g projectiles and super high velocities. You also need big targets. They should be at least 10000m² (you can probably beat 1Mm with just 5000m², but only just), and the bigger the better.
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Post by apophys on Feb 14, 2017 22:25:57 GMT
Testing that railgun. The difference in lethality compared to my railguns is shocking. Apparently having a flak payload is a really big deal. My railgun: the Gladiator from the battle thread. 150 mg flak (50mg osmium). Did another round of testing with more space between shots so I could actually count: Five shots to kill. My target, btw, is jasonvance 's laser tester: Outer to inner: 25cm silica aerogel, 25cm amorphous carbon, 25cm tantalum hafnium carbide, 25cm aramid fiber, 25cm osmium. (50m wide spacer for a nice flat surface) Distance engaged at: 1.79 Mm On materials: Zirconium copper is quite a good rail barrel material. The aluminum alloys are lighter, sure, but so far my best raw performance has been from zirconium copper, due to high strength and low resistivity. deltav - For coilguns, my favorites are molybdenum and hafnium carbide.
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Post by lieste on Feb 14, 2017 22:32:54 GMT
Only lasers are limited to 1Mm in game. If a KE weapons range for a specific target is beyond 1Mm the ships will still engage at the maximum range. All thats required are high accuracy guns (10m² at 250km is a good ballpark for insane engagement ranges). Try building railguns with 1g projectiles and super high velocities. You also need big targets. They should be at least 10000m² (you can probably beat 1Mm with just 5000m², but only just), and the bigger the better. 1Mm @ 1210m^2 (slightly larger than Hive ship) 1.208Mm @2580m^2 (stock fleet carrier) 2.359Mm @37500m^2 - big fat ass target.
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Post by newageofpower on Feb 15, 2017 4:15:16 GMT
On materials: Zirconium copper is quite a good rail barrel material. The aluminum alloys are lighter, sure, but so far my best raw performance has been from zirconium copper, due to high strength and low resistivity. A composite structure consisting of superconductive "rail" and Spectra reinforcement/bracing would be almost strictly superior to monolithic rails.
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Post by bdcarrillo on Feb 15, 2017 4:31:01 GMT
On materials: Zirconium copper is quite a good rail barrel material. The aluminum alloys are lighter, sure, but so far my best raw performance has been from zirconium copper, due to high strength and low resistivity. A composite structure consisting of superconductive "rail" and Spectra reinforcement/bracing would be almost strictly superior to monolithic rails. A composite projectile with a magnetically happy outer layer and inner penetrator or cap would make more sense to me as well. (Without the payload lag)
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Post by apophys on Feb 15, 2017 5:18:23 GMT
A composite structure consisting of superconductive "rail" and Spectra reinforcement/bracing would be almost strictly superior to monolithic rails. Composite structure would be helpful in a lot of places. Diamond structure for thermocouples, MPD anode/cathode bracing, and multi-layer turret armor are other examples that come to mind.
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Post by deltav on Feb 15, 2017 6:09:48 GMT
A composite structure consisting of superconductive "rail" and Spectra reinforcement/bracing would be almost strictly superior to monolithic rails. Composite structure would be helpful in a lot of places. Diamond structure for thermocouples, MPD anode/cathode bracing, and multi-layer turret armor are other examples that come to mind. Composite structures would make Cannons better too. They would also make designs much more complex and more difficult.
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Post by dragonkid11 on Feb 15, 2017 10:47:51 GMT
Good, because conventional cannons are really easy to design compared to other stuffs in the game.
COMPLICITY COMPLEX HO!!!
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Post by ross128 on Feb 15, 2017 17:36:57 GMT
Heh, that would be greatly amusing if we had people breaking out finite-element analysis tools to design gun barrels for their spaceships.
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Post by caiaphas on Feb 15, 2017 17:53:00 GMT
Heh, that would be greatly amusing if we had people breaking out finite-element analysis tools to design gun barrels for their spaceships. Pretty neat, but I remember that even a basic finite-element analysis scheme I needed to do for school bricked my computer for half a day until it completed.
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Post by vegemeister on Feb 16, 2017 21:18:05 GMT
I think any gun intended for use at very long range will necessarily fire guided projectiles. Even if velocity dispersion out of the barrel is zero, there's some uncertainty in the position of the target and in orbital mechanics predictions. But that doesn't necessarily mean gimbals and turbopumps and fuel tanks. A li-ion battery and electric solid propellants could do it.
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Post by omnipotentvoid on Feb 16, 2017 21:58:22 GMT
I think any gun intended for use at very long range will necessarily fire guided projectiles. Even if velocity dispersion out of the barrel is zero, there's some uncertainty in the position of the target and in orbital mechanics predictions. But that doesn't necessarily mean gimbals and turbopumps and fuel tanks. A li-ion battery and electric solid propellants could do it. That actually solves (almost) all the problems of long range KE weapons, provided you can track your targets. In an attempt to bring the thread back towards what I initially intended: I still think the whole target acquisition, targeting and gun laying is to simple. The technology is to complex and important to simply ignore and the none trivial effectiveness of different strategy/tactics involving targeting, target acquisition means that simply assuming a type of targeting (as is currently in the game) oversimplifies things.
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Post by bdcarrillo on Feb 17, 2017 16:28:02 GMT
Agreed that it is simplistic.
I consider a necessary evil until the game grows further. Look how far we've come already!
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Post by Easy on Feb 17, 2017 17:07:45 GMT
I think any gun intended for use at very long range will necessarily fire guided projectiles. Even if velocity dispersion out of the barrel is zero, there's some uncertainty in the position of the target and in orbital mechanics predictions. But that doesn't necessarily mean gimbals and turbopumps and fuel tanks. A li-ion battery and electric solid propellants could do it. Of course the now guided projectile either receives command guidance or has its own sensor suite.
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