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Post by darkwarriorj on Feb 15, 2017 1:12:56 GMT
1. Currently, there are two different types of armors to hold out against lasers - threshold type where no damage is dealt below a certain intensity level (Ex. Diamond) and ablative type where it doesn't matter what the intensity is, it ablates at a capped rate. There are? From browsing the forums, I thought ablation rate increases with intensity, then maxes out at a certain intensity threshold. There are, though for all intents and purposes given the arbitrary cap on laser range at the moment, only the ablative type of armor matters. But try it out! How I found out was this: I made a laser drone with a laser of approx. 37kw/m^2 intensity at 1000km, and then tested that against a target armored with nitrile rubber vs a target armored with diamond. Against nitrile rubber, it was doing damage, and 20 drones beat one laserstar armored with nitrile rubber. Against the same laserstar now armored with thin diamond though, the drones did precisely zero damage, all the while the big laserstar wiped the floor with the drones.
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Post by caiaphas on Feb 15, 2017 1:19:32 GMT
Look at it this way; here are the necessary design requirements for a practical missile. You need - sufficient dV and burn endurance (how long can your missile accelerate for?) to get it moving fast, for course corrections, and for pursuit.
I've been playing with missile guidance a bit more - for certain values, you can actually get midcourse to basically be pulse width modulation, which increases your effective burn time. Do you mind posting a shot of your guidance scheme? I've had that happen to me as well, but I think it might also be a function of the acceleration available to your missile.
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Post by apophys on Feb 15, 2017 1:25:38 GMT
underwhelmed - Try to avoid triple posting. There's an edit button. I made a laser drone with a laser of approx. 37kw/m^2 intensity at 1000km That laser is underpowered. You can make a laser with 20+ MW/m 2 at 1 Mm fairly easily, which makes threshold-type laser armor largely useless.
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Post by darkwarriorj on Feb 15, 2017 1:33:08 GMT
That laser is underpowered. You can make a laser with 20+ MW/m 2 at 1 Mm fairly easily, which makes threshold-type laser armor largely useless. It is very underpowered. The drone is also pathetically small and not remotely effective because like you said, 20+MW/m^2 at 1MM lasers are easy to make and lasers get more and more proportionally effective with size and power. It was just an early forray into laser drone development. Its primary served purpose at the end of the day was to demonstrate that threshold armor is a real possibility - if laser ranges were not arbitrarily capped at 1000KM. I believe I mentioned that - with the current situation in game, threshold type armor is pointless, but it would have a point if laser ranges were extended. Probably. At the very least, it'd prevent lucky shots by the death star array from murdering your ship from a light minute out, instead only allowing the death star array to do that at three light seconds out. As such, keeping said threshold armor around is primarily theorycrafting on my part. Since I imported the Cerium doped laser and molten tin, that same drone with roughly the same laser size can reach 30MW/m^2 at 1000km.
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Post by newageofpower on Feb 15, 2017 3:33:08 GMT
Why are you armouring MIRV buses, they should drop missiles before combat is joined to prevent a lucky laser taking them out before they launch all of the payload Because sometimes you can force the laser to switch between the micromissile and the missile bus repeatedly; this tactic can create heavy inefficiencies against the defending lasers. It's far more cost effective to wrap a drone in a few mm of Aramid than to wrap thousands of micromissiles in the same stuff. Surface area scales more slowly than volume, especially if we're making the micromissiles tiny and pointy.
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Post by bdcarrillo on Feb 15, 2017 4:12:55 GMT
Why are you armouring MIRV buses, they should drop missiles before combat is joined to prevent a lucky laser taking them out before they launch all of the payload Because sometimes you can force the laser to switch between the micromissile and the missile bus repeatedly; this tactic can create heavy inefficiencies against the defending lasers. It's far more cost effective to wrap a drone in a few mm of Aramid than to wrap thousands of micromissiles in the same stuff. Surface area scales more slowly than volume, especially if we're making the micromissiles tiny and pointy. Hmm... If we could program the missiles to accelerate in bursts, you could counter simple "shoot at closest" targeting algorithms by constantly presenting a fresh "new and closer" target
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Post by underwhelmed on Feb 15, 2017 4:42:23 GMT
I've been playing with missile guidance a bit more - for certain values, you can actually get midcourse to basically be pulse width modulation, which increases your effective burn time. Do you mind posting a shot of your guidance scheme? I've had that happen to me as well, but I think it might also be a function of the acceleration available to your missile. The way I got it to activate was to set midcourse to APN and 0.01, then increase the value slowly. It's been limited use to me so far, because unlike boost phase, it'll keep using your dV until you run out of it.
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Post by caiaphas on Feb 15, 2017 4:44:49 GMT
Do you mind posting a shot of your guidance scheme? I've had that happen to me as well, but I think it might also be a function of the acceleration available to your missile. The way I got it to activate was to set midcourse to APN and 0.01, then increase the value slowly. It's been limited use to me so far, because unlike boost phase, it'll keep using your dV until you run out of it. All right, thanks.
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Post by Enderminion on Feb 15, 2017 14:49:25 GMT
you could use the PWM in the boost phase?
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Post by deltav on Feb 16, 2017 0:11:56 GMT
Anyone have a sample Missile Bus design they want to share to get an idea of where to start/best practices?
Also have you had most success with small lightly armored missiles from the Missile Bus or less larger ones?
Also how large are these Missile Buses? The launchers must be humongous no?
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Post by bdcarrillo on Feb 16, 2017 2:19:13 GMT
Anyone have a sample Missile Bus design they want to share to get an idea of where to start/best practices? Also have you had most success with small lightly armored missiles from the Missile Bus or less larger ones? Also how large are these Missile Buses? The launchers must be humongous no? I had some small ones that would toss about 10 very compact nukes out, less than 10kg each. The bus itself was just a couple tons. I did find that it was very cost effective to give a mini-bus a couple kg railgun, since it had a reactor already. Then I stuffed in a moderate nuclear warhead to make it more exciting. Once we have rack mount launchers, hopefully we won't need a reactor onboard. If you do have a reactor, might as well use that juice on a kinetic weapon as well.
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Post by caiaphas on Feb 16, 2017 2:32:22 GMT
Anyone have a sample Missile Bus design they want to share to get an idea of where to start/best practices? Also have you had most success with small lightly armored missiles from the Missile Bus or less larger ones? Also how large are these Missile Buses? The launchers must be humongous no? I had some small ones that would toss about 10 very compact nukes out, less than 10kg each. The bus itself was just a couple tons. I did find that it was very cost effective to give a mini-bus a couple kg railgun, since it had a reactor already. Then I stuffed in a moderate nuclear warhead to make it more exciting. Once we have rack mount launchers, hopefully we won't need a reactor onboard. If you do have a reactor, might as well use that juice on a kinetic weapon as well. What's the railgun performance against interceptor missiles?
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Post by bdcarrillo on Feb 16, 2017 2:46:07 GMT
It was decent against missiles, and effective to 80km against small cap ships.
Not at the computer right now... And memory says I may have retired some of the modules.
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Post by RiftandRend on Feb 16, 2017 19:18:23 GMT
Once you attach guns to it its more of a bomber than a missile.
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Post by deltav on Feb 16, 2017 19:57:27 GMT
He's my first attempt at a Drone Missile Bus (DMS)/MIRV and Drone launched micro Missile (DM) (after all the imput from this thread. Needs a lot of work but I'm excited about the ideas and the possibilities. It's set to close within about 10 km, then it launches 1000 DM as fast as it can. Need to find a way to do more with less. THe cost is about what a small stock ship would cost, so it needs work.
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