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Post by cuddlefish on Dec 19, 2016 4:09:25 GMT
I've been staying away from electromagnetic weapons while they're 'in the shop', and at times have despaired of the velocity limitations on conventional cannon. Either you're flinging sliver-plates, or you just can't get the energy behind your projectile to get it going fast. Except, of course, for the magic invention that is the sabot - using payloads and UHMWPE gram-plates behind them, you can set your barrel radius to as high as you darned well need it to be, while still keeping your light and compact projectile. My current weapon of choice is a 100mm cannon firing slugs and shells approximately the size of traditional bullets - at a nice 3km/s, with thin walled cannon. It's fantastic. Sabots, I love you dearly.
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Post by cuddlefish on Dec 19, 2016 0:33:51 GMT
There's three problems with that theory: 1: They detonate just fine as long as the RC unit is on there. 2: I was using nukes, they do damage in a sphere. 3: They were impacting the target without detonating, so I'm pretty sure they were on-target. The patch notes indicated that we can use fuses without the RC unit now. So the question is... how? I don't know about nukes, but my 9mm / 10 gram micro-flak shells have been working as expected.
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Post by cuddlefish on Dec 18, 2016 13:08:22 GMT
Advanced laser design would be a fantastic subject for a DLC expansion.
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Post by cuddlefish on Dec 18, 2016 13:06:51 GMT
I think the saving grace of the tanker is that it is recoverable. If you want to use drop tanks to any substantial degree, your thrust performance will be significantly degraded until you either use it all up or separate - but once you click detach, your tanks are gone forever. So it's best used on things which can count on not needing significant endurance after they hit the point of needing to put on their dancing shoes - for example, getting good 'range' on missiles by using heavy drop-tanks to do your 'overland travel' while keeping a full terminal stage worth of fuel internally - then, just blow the tanks as you approach the target and you're good to dance with a nice, predictable fuel allotment.
It's a bit less convenient if you might need to make multiple 'trip' stages with high-power maneuvering in the midst - at that point, using a fighter/tender type setup with tankers might be better, even with the crew penalty.
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Post by cuddlefish on Dec 18, 2016 8:51:15 GMT
I'd assume that's a craft-builder display bug - there's a lot of things where the in-play calculators appear smarter than the generator ones, possibly to save on processing times when you make changes.
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Post by cuddlefish on Dec 18, 2016 6:28:10 GMT
Wanted to chime in to say that I would happily pay for content alongside free updates ala the Paradox model.
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Post by cuddlefish on Dec 9, 2016 0:18:40 GMT
I suspect that a lot of the blame for the ungodly-death-laser meta can be laid at the remarkably high energy reactors able to be made at present. Improved coolant modeling will likely change that state of affairs dramatically - so that might be worth looking at first, before going too far in terms of accommodating for said meta.
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Post by cuddlefish on Dec 3, 2016 4:59:27 GMT
No arguments there.
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Post by cuddlefish on Dec 3, 2016 1:17:00 GMT
You do realise Stalin was actively against war with anyone? His policy was isolationist industrial modernisation for Russia, most of that "expand the USSR" sentiment was post war effects rolling on the success of WW2. And really all those "governments in exile" and "resistance movements" mostly amounted to nothing but massive amounts of infighting... there is a reason the British explicitly did not involve any French leaders in organising the French resistance, and the various French resistance groups themselves probably inflicted just about as much damage to each other as they did to any occupying forces due to infighting and rampant criminal activity they engaged in. cource it's more complicated then that, it would depend on how fast Germany could get peace with England, and a bunch of other factors that matter like if he could take the Suez Canal asap, exactly how long it would take to fully consolidate holdings, political climate, and when the ussr would start making noise (that would still give hitler until 1944-48 to get his shit in order) also instead if Hiroshima/Nagasaki we would probably have a few European cities getting nuked eventually, not by US but Germany or Russia... so there is a good chance we would have a nice bit more neuclear wasteland out there then we did in original. You're aware that in the Molotov - von Ribbentropp pact, Stalin laid out a plan for territorial expansion which he then stuck to, right? Eating three countries (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia) and parts of three more (Poland, Romania, Finland [that one needed a shooting war]) over the course of a year or so?
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Post by cuddlefish on Dec 2, 2016 5:04:14 GMT
Yes indeed, militarism tried and failed... that is pretty much paraphrasing me. I never said the Nazis could take Britain, or Japan had any chance vs the US. I said if hitler and the Japanese army/navy were not insane and stopped trying to invade, instead focusing on consolation of their claims in 5-10 years time they would have stabilised the conquered regions of China, Europe and the Middle East without any real opposition. The US never wanted to get involved in a brawl cross the oceans and had no interest in waging war in Europe half the globe away. Stalin was a moron and would never invade Germany without provocation, the rest of the world consisted of England, the colonies, and a few remaining countries in the Middle East and Europe that while hostile to Germany but simply didn't have the manpower or weapons to challenge them and win ground. Hitler's mistake was over reaching, not any real issue with what he already conquered. Let me rephrase. Economically, keeping what they had going was just not feasible. It was well on its way to collapsing under its own weight, in both cases, because of lack of critical resources their territories simply did not contain, let alone at a scale sufficient to maintain the occupation of their holdings over stiff local resistance. US didn't need to actually send manpower to Europe, though I suspect they would have anyway - simply backstopping Britain, the Commonwealth and the various governments in exile with industrial supplies and equipment, as they were already doing to an unprecedented degree, would have been enough to hold on until the whole edifice came crashing down. Case in point - US total casualties were about a quarter million. The UK and Commonwealth wouldn't have been destroyed by that much extra load. And I find your idea that Stalin would have been happy in perpetuity with his half of Eastern Europe a touch comical. Which is not to say that the German attack was some sort of self defense, as some apologists do - rather, it was a desperate effort to keep their campaign of aggression moving against the inevitability of its collapse.
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Post by cuddlefish on Dec 2, 2016 4:58:02 GMT
Well, the thing about nuclear bombs is that they are very secret and their basic workings have been well known in the public sphere since the 60s at the latest. These things appeared in a few mentions, then disappeared under classification and haven't returned. They probably didn't work out, but either way, no way to tell, let alone model it.
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Post by cuddlefish on Dec 2, 2016 1:13:18 GMT
You should notice that the Brits were on the winning side of the war, causes of loss were different to what Imperial Japanese Navy or Kriegsmarine had. Anyway, about that accuracy. 0.0018 degrees actually is not very accurate. My rifle, nitrocellulose powder, brass cases and copper-jacketed lead projectiles going through thick air at supersonic velocity that is, has mechanical accuracy much better than that, and it'd only get better with a thicker barrel and/or more consistent or higher quality ammunition than what I've used. (...) seriously the only reason the world won against the Nazi's is because Hitler was phenomenally stupid and invaded Russia, that in tern eventually allowed D-day by spreading Germany too thin. Really Stalin was pretty cool with Hitler killing of the west cause you know, western nations were kinda dicks to the soviets? If Hitler did not invade Russia, and Pearl Harbour did not happen you would be proudly flying the Nazi flag and frog marching everywhere with a little Hitler tash... or we would have gundams, really depends what japan decided to do with its half of the planet. I find your astonishing over-generalizations and lax grasp of economics disturbing. Read The Wages of Destruction if you get the chance - Hitler's little adventure was not self-sustaining, and was utterly dependent on resources imported from the USSR. He knew Stalin had him over a barrel, Stalin knew he had him over a barrel, and he went for total conquest in the hopes of actually getting the resources he needed to function, but it wasn't realistic. Beyond that, Sealion was a pipe dream, and the German economy was dependent on plunder to function, plunder which was rapidly becoming thin on the ground. They couldn't have broken the UK, as any invasion by land would necessitate both naval and airborne supremacy over the Channel to be something other than a turkey shoot, and that wasn't happening. The UK would certainly outlast them, even without direct American involvement. Similarly, Japan needed war with the western allies if it was to keep itself running, because of the American et al oil embargo and the cost of their ongoing adventures in China. There wasn't an alternative, and it was a pretty distant hope to begin with, much like the German campaign against the Soviets. Militarism in the face of industrial supremacy tried, and failed. Both times.
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Post by cuddlefish on Nov 30, 2016 2:52:29 GMT
I mean, they probably wouldn't bother classifying it if it was a failure. I wouldn't be so sure. Information is information - if having it keeps opponents from wasting money chasing pipe dreams, that's unfortunate for you in a zero-sum sense. If access to your information allows a rival to make a leap of insight you couldn't? That's disastrous.
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Post by cuddlefish on Nov 30, 2016 2:47:08 GMT
With the visual appearance of flak trails - is that a cull, or is that the fragments cooling to a no-longer-visible temperature spectrum?
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Post by cuddlefish on Nov 27, 2016 20:53:02 GMT
Weapons? We need no weapons mortal, your mind will shatter when you gaze upon our glorious form and your flesh will boil from our mere presence! Ahh to be a lovecraftian extradimentional being, how does one fight something that sees you akin to a child's doodle of a stick figure in their notebook? The good news is, there's little reason to need to fight them, as they have little reason to fight us. One rarely fights with their children's drawings, after all. Perhaps you mount them on the fridge - but you're usually quite careful to avoid destroying the thing in the process. In that metaphor, we should hope they notice us - you don't destroy your child's drawing, you treasure it... but if there's a crumpled up napkin somewhere it's probably getting tossed, even if there turns out to be art hidden in there somewhere.
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