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Post by Pttg on Nov 15, 2016 5:44:18 GMT
Good thing you can launch one every 15 seconds. Having to wait 20 seconds between launches would be just too long.
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Post by Pttg on Nov 15, 2016 1:41:15 GMT
It especially bugs me that our reactors need to have six months of operating lifetime when all they really need to do is provide power for a couple of hours, tops.
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Post by Pttg on Nov 14, 2016 22:10:55 GMT
I would love to have some molten aluminum coolant. Might be good to add gallium and lead while we're at it... wasn't there a real-world reactor with lead coolant?
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Post by Pttg on Nov 14, 2016 21:42:45 GMT
Since you asked: Here's Val with the sword, showing how it's a solid iron Zweihander: Attachment DeletedI wanted to give it a spider-silk grip, but the armor layer insisted on sloping, so it's a pure iron tang. Here's the coilgun. It's nearly 10 km/s, so it might be slightly bugged: Attachment DeletedI tried to get it to stop saturating but then I realized I didn't care because it's already going like 10 km/s. Also, this thing is stupidly large. You'd need to be insane to put this on some kind of practical combat platform. So this is the practical combat platform I built for it: Attachment DeletedThe basic concept is to melt incoming projectiles with lasers and kill everything else with swords, which means that 50% of its strategy comes straight from the 1200s.
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Post by Pttg on Nov 14, 2016 3:55:31 GMT
Starting a thread to share random design tips I found while playing this game: Materials: Boron- A surprisingly good material to build almost everything, cheap, light, strong, blocks radiation, and high melting point Good for cannon barrels, rocket nozzles, propellant tanks, missile-launcher coolant pumps, power plant coolant pumps, radiation shields that double as armor I like selenium for low-temperature turbopumps, and it's generally useful as having among the best relative-yield-strength-per-credit. My fuel tanks are almost always UHMWPE with no extra armor. People have suggested adding high compartmentalization, and I'd second that. Strong fuel tanks will be holed regardless, but a cluster of tanks can take hit after hit after hit. When making small coilguns, consider switching from zir-copper to pure silver. Not only is it slightly more efficient, it also helps protect against werespaceships. I've come to the conclusion that one shouldn't put any neutron reflectors on your reactors at all. It's heavy and expensive, and you have to make it temperature safe. Instead, use a lithum-6 manhole cover between your reactor and your crew module. You'll save mass and cost, and if you somehow manage to park next to an enemy ship, your reactors alone will cook them. Don't overlook conventional guns, especially for large projectiles.
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Post by Pttg on Nov 14, 2016 3:21:43 GMT
Oh, that picture doesn't show the muzzle velocity: 1kms.
I mean the lasers have their own rockets so speed isn't super important, but it's got to shoot the lasers, no just launch them.
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Post by Pttg on Nov 14, 2016 2:27:45 GMT
No, it doesn't shoot laser beams. It shoots lasers. This is the gun: And these are the lasers it shoots: It is not actually practical, but hey, neither is that coilgun I made that shoots swords.
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Post by Pttg on Nov 13, 2016 22:38:14 GMT
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Post by Pttg on Nov 13, 2016 21:40:50 GMT
If you can have a reactor this small why bother with RTGs This thing has to be breaking physics somehow, right? Otherwise, I mean, Fallout-style nuclear cars would not be a problem.
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Post by Pttg on Nov 13, 2016 18:37:10 GMT
What are the limitations on adding heat pumps and subsystems to the game?
Lots of our systems are limited in operating temperature by the functional limits of the materials. Lasers like to be below the melting points of their mirrors. Crew modules like to be below the boiling point of water. That sort of thing.
It seems reasonable to hook up a household AC unit to our crew modules and compress and heat outward-flowing coolant to a nice cherry-red before sending it to the radiators. Then the radiator can be extremely tiny and slow-flowing, run back through a decompressor, and refrigerate our crew modules however you like. I don't see a physics violation in the loop, although I can understand why the ISS doesn't use a system like that since it might be very power-intensive. For our 10 Mw reactors, though, a few extra kw won't break the bank.
I'm especially curious if self-pumping power plants make thermodynamic sense; can we get enough power from a powerplant to step its coolant up a few hundred K before it hits the radiators?
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Post by Pttg on Nov 13, 2016 7:20:58 GMT
Why are we trying to mask nuclear reactors with chemical reactions?
I'm thinking a simple "nuclear flare" could consist of two subcritical lumps that get knocked together with a simple explosion and just reach criticality without exploding. It'd quickly melt and maybe vaporize, but it'd for sure be hot enough to confuse a few sensors, and it'd last for a long dang time.
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Post by Pttg on Nov 11, 2016 8:12:00 GMT
I've found that coilguns can easily launch the same projectile faster than a similar railgun while weighing much less (and, therefore, costing less too). In what situations are railguns called for?
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Post by Pttg on Nov 9, 2016 19:33:14 GMT
I can't find any documentation on accessing the command line. ~ doesn't work...
Oh, it's the command line flags.
In steam, right-click on COADE, click properties, then Set Launch Options. Type "PrintMaterials" in the box, then click OK and run the game. It'll start and close immediately. Go back and delete PrintMaterials, then open the directory where your saved games are (defaults to C:\Users\YOUR USERNAME HERE\AppData\Roaming\CDE).
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Post by Pttg on Nov 9, 2016 4:15:15 GMT
I'm enjoying the new minimum diameter for missiles: 6.38cm.
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Post by Pttg on Nov 5, 2016 22:52:47 GMT
The existing crop of high-temperature superconductors function up to around 130-140K. Maybe a little low to use as thermocouples in our reactors, but still a possible substance for launcher forcers and coilgun coils, and as we've seen with the borosillicate glass bug, high conductivity can do amazing things. A ship such as a carrier or a missile frigate that doesn't mind the fact that its radiators are gargantuan could reasonably make use of such devices.
The addition of heat pumps would make this sort of thing a LOT more effective....
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