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Post by qswitched on Sept 2, 2016 2:32:04 GMT
Sure thing, PM sent.
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Post by qswitched on Sept 2, 2016 1:48:30 GMT
Concerning the Orion drive, it was very much on the cusp of feasible technologies. Everything is there except for certain aspects about the pulse unit.
Side Note: in game, if you drop nukes behind your craft and detonate them manually, you can actually accelerate your craft that way. However, the efficiency is mediocre, because the detonation is omnidirectional. Also, the energy is transferred via photons rather than mass, which increases exhaust velocity and drops thrust to abysmal levels.
The missing piece was how effective the pulse unit could transfer the energy into the channel filler and then into the propellant. From the papers on Orion that I found, they mentioned pulse unit would effectively channel the propellant into a cigar-shaped plasma jet which is... rather impressive. If you dump 10 million degrees K into a material, it will turn into plasma which will expand in every direction. By my calculations, with Tungsten, 10 million K will yield an exhaust velocity of about 100 km/s (it cools through space to the pusher plate, which is why the exhaust velocity is lower).
The pulse unit is somewhat shaped like a nozzle to contain the plasma, but temperatures as high as 10 million K, the nozzle will have very little effect on the propellant as it leaves the pulse unit. The shape will be less a cigar and more of a giant, sprawling cone at best. And since the nozzle will vaporize in microseconds too, much of the energy will still be emitted spherically anyways.
This goes back to a recurring problem that I've seen crop up a lot with many of these designs. To date, as far as I am aware, no nuclear detonation has ever been contained or controlled within a small container. At 10 million K, no material can withstand a nuclear detonation, and there is no data on how many microseconds something can stay together when a nuke detonates inside it.
Regardless, a giant cone of plasma is still pretty feasible for a drive, providing you're okay with far lower efficiencies than what the papers predicted. I could model the plasma jet as less of a jet and more of a fat cone or hemisphere, and the rest would work.
I am a little iffy on doing original calculations rather than taking calculations from peer reviewed papers. However, I have done it for one particular system in game. The explosive lens on the nuclear devices is completely classified, so the equations governing it's implosion is approximated based on various sources. I could do something similar in this case.
With all that in mind, implementing the Orion drive is something I have mulled over a lot over the last two years working on this project. I will say that it will not be in the base game when it ships, however if I ever do further post-ship updates/patches/content, the Orion drive would be very high on the priority list.
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Post by qswitched on Aug 31, 2016 23:27:21 GMT
Beta 0.5.0 has just been released. It's rather large for a new beta build, and adds in a lot of requested features/fixes. Future beta builds will likely not be as extensive.
Changelist: - Added partial armor/armor sectioning. Armor may be used to only partially cover a section of a spacecraft, based on length along the craft and radial sectioning. - In combat, modules window can be expanded via the separator now, as can numerous other UI separators throughout the game. - All weapons can now be optionally fired whilst out of range. - Side engines on spacecrafts will now be recognized as the main engine if there is no engine at the base. - Added ability to optionally see center of mass in ship design. - Added ability to armor coilguns, useful for spinal weapon mounts. - Error/warning windows are prevented from covering too much of the screen in ship design now. - Added info on relative intercept velocity after plotting an intercept or flyby an enemy fleet. - UI tweaks, bug and crash fixes. - Backups for your user designs will be saved in "Backups" folder every time you start the game.
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Post by qswitched on Aug 30, 2016 18:28:58 GMT
In game, no. A number of lasers are IR or UV, so wouldn't be seen anyways. Most exhaust plumes don't have the best reflectance of the visible light anyways, being mainly transparent in the visible spectra.
Also, attenuating a laser with an exhaust plume wouldn't be the best idea because you'd be exposing your rocket nozzles to the laser to do so.
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Post by qswitched on Aug 30, 2016 18:23:53 GMT
Currently, all the beta keys have been given out and the beta is closed, but I'll let you know of any further developments.
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Post by qswitched on Aug 30, 2016 18:22:37 GMT
Currently not by ship, however, some fans have reached out to contribute translations. For instance, a Chinese fan offered to translate the first gameplay trailer, plus additional content. Other fan translations would be greatly appreciated (after the game ships, however).
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Post by qswitched on Aug 30, 2016 18:19:38 GMT
I've added 'ignore range' options to all projectile weapons in the latest build, fyi.
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Post by qswitched on Aug 29, 2016 21:59:17 GMT
FEL's are currently not in the game, most technological developments on it are still closed (the Navy's first multi-megawatt FEL won't be revealed until 2018).
Current lasers in game tend to get about 5% efficiency up to GW power levels (though the size/mass tends to balloon beyond 100 MW). They also tend to get around 5 or less for an M squared (given reasonable size/mass levels).
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Post by qswitched on Aug 29, 2016 4:13:18 GMT
It is a lot of steps to set up, however, if you are iterating on a single design, it shouldn't be an issue, no? Or are you mass producing multiple similar warheads?
Also, I usually find duplicating existing designs to be fastest when making new warhead/missile/launcher systems, you just duplicate what's there and tweak one value on each.
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Post by qswitched on Aug 29, 2016 4:10:46 GMT
I'll get some changes in to address this in in the next build.
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Post by qswitched on Aug 28, 2016 20:39:32 GMT
I'll have a fix in the next build.
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Post by qswitched on Aug 28, 2016 15:48:30 GMT
Next build, there will be partial armor: armor which only wraps radially somewhat, or armor which only covers somewhat longitudinally. Glacis cones can be made with it.
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Post by qswitched on Aug 28, 2016 3:31:32 GMT
Oh, just saw this one. Again, you could try altering the new 'Screen Scaling' option.
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Post by qswitched on Aug 28, 2016 3:30:33 GMT
There is a new option 'Screen Scaling' which could be at fault.
There is a rotation slider on attaching modules (underneath count) as well.
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Post by qswitched on Aug 28, 2016 0:05:08 GMT
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