core2
New Member
Posts: 16 
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Post by core2 on Mar 2, 2017 8:39:43 GMT
How is the damage done to enemy laser optics by lasers calculated?
Because i tested a swarm of 60 beam drones with relatively weak lasers against some of my laser boats and their tiny laser melted the enemy optics like butter with a flamethrower (< 1 second ).
For the stats: 1 drone laser 1.5 kw/m^2 at 1000 km
i tested at 1000 km so 60x1.5 = 90 kw/m^2 at the enemy optics
optics were made of aluminum with 1.27GW/m^2 ! lasing damage threshhold.
So i expected pretty much no effect on the enemy optics but instead they got insta fried.
Is this intended behavior?
What expieriences have others made with lasers vs optics?
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Post by nerd1000 on Mar 2, 2017 11:39:47 GMT
I think the idea is that the main laser mirror focuses incoming light into a tiny spot on the secondary mirror, locally causing a much higher intensity (kinda like looking at the sun through binoculars).
Also the damage threshold in the laser module editor is not the same as what's used in the damage model during battles. Titanium dioxide has extremely high laser damage threshold in the module designer, which gave me the idea to use it as anti laser armour on my drones. In testing beams with far lower intensity than that specified in the laser editor melted the TiO2 instantly. I'm pretty sure that the battle damage model assumes that the armour is essentially non-reflective.
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Post by apophys on Mar 2, 2017 14:30:07 GMT
I'm pretty sure that the battle damage model assumes that the armour is essentially non-reflective. That would be a bug, then. *pokes qswitched * |
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Post by underwhelmed on Mar 2, 2017 15:27:24 GMT
I believe laser threshold just means you need that much intensity to reach the full ablation rate. It's no guarantee the ablation rate under that threshold is low enough to make a good armor.
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Post by leerooooooy on Mar 2, 2017 17:25:21 GMT
I believe laser threshold just means you need that much intensity to reach the full ablation rate. It's no guarantee the ablation rate under that threshold is low enough to make a good armor. that's not reasonable, since those materials work fine with intensities near the threshold when inside a laser, and if they ablated at all the laser should not work |
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core2
New Member
Posts: 16
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Post by core2 on Mar 3, 2017 3:37:04 GMT
I believe laser threshold just means you need that much intensity to reach the full ablation rate. It's no guarantee the ablation rate under that threshold is low enough to make a good armor. that's not reasonable, since those materials work fine with intensities near the threshold when inside a laser, and if they ablated at all the laser should not work thats exactly my feeling too. i think the optics are modeld way too fragile atm. making it possible to cheese away your doom ray with what is essentially a gloryfied flashlight. UPDATE i did some more testing. this time i used only 2 drones with 500 w/m^2 at 1000 km lasers (not mega, not kilo, just watt) test at 1000km distance got pretty much the same results: enemy laser pop in a single frame. also tried to run the targeted lasers way under their maximum material capacities (coolant temperatur lower, bigger optics for less intensity per area), but that didnt make any difference. So my conclusion is, there is really something fishy going on. |
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Post by lawson on Mar 3, 2017 15:58:25 GMT
Laser optics should be able to survive incoming laser beams that are less intense than the outgoing beam. Hitting off-axis on the main mirror is a little worse since that can focus incoming light on mirror support structures. (but still easy to manage) The biggest thing that would need to be added is an Optical Isolator and a cooled beam-dump. |
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Post by vegemeister on Mar 3, 2017 17:37:01 GMT
Laser optics should be able to survive incoming laser beams that are less intense than the outgoing beam. Hitting off-axis on the main mirror is a little worse since that can focus incoming light on mirror support structures. (but still easy to manage) The biggest thing that would need to be added is an Optical Isolator and a cooled beam-dump. That may still make them pretty vulnerable. This 2GW/9m bow laser averages 2.08 MW/m^2 at the mirror.  |
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Post by nerd1000 on Mar 3, 2017 23:27:15 GMT
Laser optics should be able to survive incoming laser beams that are less intense than the outgoing beam. Hitting off-axis on the main mirror is a little worse since that can focus incoming light on mirror support structures. (but still easy to manage) The biggest thing that would need to be added is an Optical Isolator and a cooled beam-dump. That may still make them pretty vulnerable. This 2GW/9m bow laser averages 2.08 MW/m^2 at the mirror. We must also account for the fact that if the mirror is exposed the laser is itself firing. I'm guessing that it is the total power hitting the mirror that matters rather than the power of each beam individually, so if your laser is 1W/m^2 below the threshold for the mirror then a 'glorified flashlight' might be enough to start damaging the surface. |
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Post by Rocket Witch on Mar 4, 2017 14:23:31 GMT
Its a really cheeky but I suspect you could use gold mirrors so they melt one frame later than lasers using silver.
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Post by AlbertKermin on Mar 4, 2017 17:03:19 GMT
My thought is that this is totally realistic.
In real life, a laser has a LOT of sensitive components, such as the devices that rotate and align the mirror and the supports for secondary mirrors, all of which could be easily damaged by an enemy laser.
Also, the coatings used on laser mirrors are custom-designed for that laser. To a laser of a different wavelength, your 99.999% high-reflective coating may well only be a 50% reflective coating (or worse- a 99.999% transmission coating, ensuring none of that wonderful enemy laser fire gets wasted on the depths of space!).
Even assuming the frequencies are the same, if the enemy laser bounces back into the gain media of yours- well, gain media are usually one step away from catching fire in order to be able to produce a laser. Adding a few hundred thousand watts more pumping force is going to do Bad Things.
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Post by apophys on Mar 4, 2017 17:44:26 GMT
My thought is that this is totally realistic. In real life, a laser has a LOT of sensitive components, such as the devices that rotate and align the mirror and the supports for secondary mirrors, all of which could be easily damaged by an enemy laser. Also, the coatings used on laser mirrors are custom-designed for that laser. To a laser of a different wavelength, your 99.999% high-reflective coating may well only be a 50% reflective coating (or worse- a 99.999% transmission coating, ensuring none of that wonderful enemy laser fire gets wasted on the depths of space!). Even assuming the frequencies are the same, if the enemy laser bounces back into the gain media of yours- well, gain media are usually one step away from catching fire in order to be able to produce a laser. Adding a few hundred thousand watts more pumping force is going to do Bad Things. 1. Components do not need to be exposed. Mirror supports can have the same material as the mirror for a coating, or at the very least turret armor. 2. We are all using aluminum mirrors, which are something like 93% reflective for the ultraviolet we use. It withstands hundreds of megawatts coming from inside. It cannot withstand a few watts coming from outside. This makes no sense. 3. Our turrets are destroyed, not our gain mediums. And our gain mediums should certainly be able to sustain a 0.000001% increase in laser intensity. We are basically shining little LED flashlights at serious military lasers to break them. This is incredibly unrealistic. |
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Post by Lukander on Mar 4, 2017 18:40:02 GMT
Um, reflective surfaces don't really help with resisting weaponized lasers though. At the energy densities(at the point focused on) used to damage a target, any materials reflective properties are ruined when it heats up. That's why "reflective" armor is considered a bad SF cliche...
Your own lasers avoid destroying themselves when they fire because the beam of coherent light is only that tightly focused when exiting the focusing device(ideally at there tightest focus at the targeted point)
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Post by Lukander on Mar 4, 2017 18:42:37 GMT
Also note even a little damage to the mirrors will ruin there ability to properly focus the beam.
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Post by darkwarriorj on Mar 4, 2017 18:50:55 GMT
Um, reflective surfaces don't really help with resisting weaponized lasers though. At the energy densities(at the point focused on) used to damage a target, any materials reflective properties are ruined when it heats up. That's why "reflective" armor is considered a bad SF cliche... Your own lasers avoid destroying themselves when they fire because the beam of coherent light is only that tightly focused when exiting the focusing device(ideally at there tightest focus at the targeted point) The problem is that the incoming laser isn't tightly focused either. In fact, with some designs floating around here, it's incredibly diffuse. Pulling up some numbers I recall reading on this forum: 1. Outgoing intensity: 2.03MW/M^2. This is the power going out from the mirror. This is what the mirror can handle while firing. 2. Incoming intensity: 100W/M^3. This is the power hitting the mirror by the counterbattery laser someone made. Often, it is the exact same wavelength because the counterbattery is a scaled down version of the larger laser. It works to insta-fry the enemy laser. The problem here is that the incoming intensity is even less, by several orders of magnitude, than the outgoing beam. The intensity; not the total energy. That is, the outgoing beam has a higher focus at outgoing mirror point than the beam it is eating. And it dies... how? Not to mention that such intensities are so far below the level of remotely doing damage that it's a tad absurd. Like, if it takes 1 megawatt/m^2 before normal aluminum armor even begins to notice it's being lased, why can 100 watts/m^2, which is over 10 000 times less than that, do anything to an aluminum laser mirror? Particularly since as noted above, the mirrors don't even need to be extremely reflective; our aluminum mirrors are only at 93% efficiency anyways and eat far more heat from its own firing than anything 100 watts/m^2 can give to it. |
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