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Post by jonen on Oct 22, 2016 16:02:17 GMT
Getting missiles across even an undefended 250km engagement envelope is definitely tricky. You've basically got to do a short burn to get your approach vector in vaguely the right direction, coast until you're inside your missile's engagement envelope (usually ~40-90km depending on dV and burn time) then switch homing back on. The need for a long coast will work in the laser's favor, because it means basically the first half of the approach will be very slow. The missile user will definitely want to take up a retrograde orbit and launch from there, so that the missiles can get cheap retrograde intercepts (basically spend the fuel once at the ship, instead of having the missiles spend it every time they launch). That'll allow the missiles to arrive with a high closing speed and relatively full fuel tanks, meaning they can spend less time coasting and extend their effective engagement envelope (because your initial closing velocity times your burn time gets added to your engagement range). Of course, between the high closing speed and lag, the player might have a hard time actually executing the burn-coast-burn pattern. They'll also definitely want to match orbits before intercepting so that the initial intercept can be as close to head-on as possible, if the initial intercept is off-target they're likely to overshoot and miss entirely. Ironically a gunship would have a harder time, because you can't cover the gun barrels in aerogel. So as long as it can melt the gun barrels at 250km, they're kind of boned. They might be able to get revenge if they switch "ignore range" on and saturate the area. Usually gunships are a strong counter to laser arrays, because they quickly pop enough array elements that the laser stops doing damage (a gunship with one gun left can still kill you, a laser array with one element left is a laser pointer). However, in this situation the relationship is reversed because the gunship is likely to be completely disarmed and stripped of radiators before its rounds finish traveling all the way to the target. Though when the rounds do arrive they'll probably get the kill, so maybe they can call it a draw. With 3 G's of acceleration at full thrust, "spray and pray" is not a viable tactic - the thing can kill any gunship trying it before the rounds get downrange, then thrust all of once to be well clear of incoming fire. That said - anything that forces it to expend deltaV? (And that includes turning to get lasers on target.) A step on the way to victory. Angular momentum is hell.
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Post by jonen on Oct 22, 2016 15:27:52 GMT
Hm. The AI doesn't launch missiles in those kinds of numbers, though, and besides, the thrust on the thing means that (for as long as you have enough deltaV - see my prime weakness) you can ensure missiles will never hit by just waiting until the AI missiles have expended most (if not all) of their deltaV and then burning for a upwards to a couple of seconds (or as long as required to ensure the enemy can't set off a nuke in range to take out the thrusters). Player controlled missiles have a tendency to get through any defense scheme that they are physically able to survive, though (particularly since the AI is bad at achieving maneuver kills), and even so, if the AI starts thrusting for any reason, there's a better than even chance you won't have the deltaV to hit (well, I suppose a missile design with more thrust and deltaV could, but that's something more like an interplanetary ballistic missile than something I'd use for anti-shipping duties), though using nukes I was able able to get close enough that a manual detonation killed the thrusters (and thus allowed me to finish it off with guns). EDIT: Yeah, in testing it killed 20 to 30 missiles as they closed, would've killed more faster by burning, since a lot of the time it was wasting lasing time on missiles that'd expended their deltav. Modules are actually lifted more or less out of the Unlimited Power and Laser threads on this forum, so I won't take credit for anything but pairing them up. (And even that, I'm fairly sure I'm not the first to do.) Powerplant.Laser 1 Laser 2. Yes, that's a .5 Mc 1GW laser. EDIT 2: How the hell did you squeeze five of them, a 10GW reactor, and enough radiators to cool ALL of that into 50Mc? XD Not five. ⑨.
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Post by jonen on Oct 22, 2016 14:35:46 GMT
I love lasers. I am particularly fond of the idea of the Composite Beam Superlaser (that is to say: Many individually weak, smaller lasers focus fire to OP effect). That said, the forum inspires me to use larger lasers according to the same schema. So I did a thing.Thus. ... I find myself in need of tips for good anti-laser designs that'd survive closing into gun range or delivering a missile warhead even if the ships focus fire, because a pair of these things will annihilate stock fleets in seconds of coming into 250 km range - like if you flicked a lightswitch. Hell, you don't even need to focus fire to melt stock fleets, smart use of focus just makes them go away faster. The biggest weakness in the design so far is that they run themselves out of deltaV right quick if they need to fire thrusters in combat (and all those radiators mean if they need to start turning, they need to burn more or less continuously just to cancel out angular momentum - I could probably do with some more thrusters to help with that, but meh). (Oh, and note the price - these are being worked on for the 100mc fleet challenge. Cheezy Laser Module Sniping.)
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Post by jonen on Oct 21, 2016 21:41:44 GMT
Mark III. Fleet Carrier Fleet Launcher. Fleet Carrier Fleet Carrier. Fleet Carrier Fleet Carrier Launching Fleet Carrier Fleet. Super excessive number of crew compartments because 1) I couldn't be bothered to design another new reactor, so I've got excess power and 2) I figure if the payload is fleet carriers, then the fleet carrier crews are going to need some space as well, given their fleet carriers are being carried without space to radiate so can't run their poweplants or radiate waste heat. EDIT: Revision Four. Now with magazine. Testing also indicates launching while in combat is not advisable. EDIT: A final word on the utility of this design: Maybe workable for designing a vehicle to actually carrying your battlefleet over interplanetary distances, but mostly so you can put this on in the background and tug your shirt majestically.
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Post by jonen on Oct 21, 2016 21:23:17 GMT
Mark my words: This will end in Fleet Carrier Carrier Carriers. EDIT: Look what you made me do.(The fleet carrier launchers could do some tweaking so they're actually capable of launching the carriers - as is, they just kind of spawn halfway out the launcher, meaning you need to do a bit of tricksy flying not to end up with disaster.) But how fast does it shoot out the carrier? You should target 500m/s Slight revision.Now launches them at ~8 m/s (reload time is measured in days, but current design is one carrier per launcher). Not fast, but reasonably safe and fairly majestic if I may say so myself.
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Post by jonen on Oct 21, 2016 20:47:21 GMT
1. What is the maximum amount of stages of stuff shooting smaller stuff that shoots smaller stuff can be done? I estimate 5, limited by the remote control size. Mark my words: This will end in Fleet Carrier Carrier Carriers. EDIT: Look what you made me do.(The fleet carrier launchers could do some tweaking so they're actually capable of launching the carriers - as is, they just kind of spawn halfway out the launcher, meaning you need to do a bit of tricksy flying not to end up with disaster.)
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Post by jonen on Oct 20, 2016 14:43:50 GMT
Personal experience with needle layout is that, as weapons tend to generally be the weakest point in any given armor layout, and enemy tends to focus fire on the nearest subsystem (meaning weapon in your nose if you go with needle), the main downside of the needle layout is that you're probably lining up all the insides of your ship with a weakpoint in your armor.
IE: Enemy takes out a gun, you're liable to lose everything behind it, and when all the insides of your ship are behind your gun...
Broadside, aside from allowing you to maneuver laterally, allows you to put your weapons on an otherwise empty section, with internal compartmentalization protecting crew modules, propellant tanks and volatile ammo (anything with its own propellant or explosives) - that is assuming a liberal structure budget anyway.
... So I'd say nose guns only for drones with kinetics that need to close in on the enemy anyway, and broadside for big ships (which makes sense given you can only mount so many weapons broadside, and big ships can and should carry multiple weapons systems).
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