|
Post by Pttg on Aug 26, 2018 4:28:27 GMT
Now we use this as the fast explosive in a nuke and watch as the game engine actually starts crying.
EDIT: I'm trying it now as a propellant in a "chemical" cannon. The barrel is having trouble dealing with the 235 ZPa pressures...
|
|
|
Post by Pttg on Aug 24, 2018 3:42:49 GMT
Would that actually release the resultant energy? Well, I'll give it a shot. Have to add a conventional explosive to set it off on command.... Who knew that getting a fusion reaction was as easy as having a big tank of deuterium and popping it with a firecracker?
Ok, that works for fusion monoprop, which I suspect is as close as we're likely to get to simulating pure fusion blasts.
|
|
|
Post by Pttg on Aug 23, 2018 18:19:50 GMT
We've got matter/antimatter "combustion" engines, but I've yet to see something like that power density in nuclear-like warheads.
I tested octazzacubane explosives with nuclear energy levels, but that doesn't produce flash effects as far as I can tell.
Anyone have any thoughts on how to mod in antimatter explosives or similar supertech stuff?
|
|
|
Post by Pttg on Aug 2, 2018 20:11:13 GMT
That projectile is like 250kg minimum. Probably more.
I'm not great at optimizing coilguns, but good luck making that thing work with those specs.
One thing to note, effective ranges can be shorter in space, because (nearly) all targets move subsonically relative to you. So your targets are easier to hit with slower projectiles.
|
|
|
Post by Pttg on Jul 21, 2018 8:40:28 GMT
Come to think of it, nukes do impart momentum on ships at close range (you can make really, really bad orion drives this way), so I suppose that non-flak modules actually would get accelerated that way.
|
|
|
Post by Pttg on Jul 20, 2018 23:25:34 GMT
What realistic countermeasures would there be, then?
|
|
|
Post by Pttg on Jul 20, 2018 23:23:45 GMT
I'm not 100% sure this is a bug, but the firing animation for chemical guns toggles the "flare" effect with each shot. I don't know enough about gas dynamics of explosives in space to be sure, but I expect that what should happen is that every shot should be followed by a brief muzzle flash, and that the flash should fade away in proportion to the amount of propellant still in the barrel.
CURRENT BEHAVIOR: No flare Gun fires - Flare at 100% Gun reloads - Flare remains 100% Gun fires - Flare at 0% Gun reloads - Flare at 0% (Repeats)
EXPECTED BEHAVIOR: No flare Gun fires - Flare at 100% Gun reloads - Flare tapers down to 0% quickly Gun fires - Flare at 100% Gun reloads - Flare tapers down to 0% quickly (Repeats)
|
|
|
Post by Pttg on Jul 20, 2018 22:48:59 GMT
The larger the living space, the more hull needs to be armored.
Also, if you're in a battle situation, why the hell are your pilots out of their pressure suits? Suit up, depressurize the cabin, and the habitat can tank a few hits just fine.
If your crews are feeling a little cooped up, tell them to spend their off shifts in VR.
|
|
|
Post by Pttg on Jul 20, 2018 19:56:11 GMT
On the other hand, civilian ships would very likely use MHD thrusters as the absolute credits-per-v cost is far more important to civilians than is pure mass.
Your Q ship might have a secret thruster to get it out of trouble quickly, but its main drive will likely be an ion cloud.
|
|
|
Post by Pttg on Jul 20, 2018 0:08:36 GMT
If you can't hide your ship, hide your guns! Let's discuss ships that are designed to look like civilian ships up until the moment they start firing... or at least long enough to get the first shot.
Ship designs should also mention some detail of the strategy such a ship would use.
Things to consider:
Anyone with a telescope can see what your ship is using as fuel and how hot it is. Civilian ships are going to have lower-enrichment fuel, and they are probably going to use cheaper reaction mass rather than better ones.
Civilian ships will probably rely on whipple shields more than bulk armor, as they are only expecting debris strikes, not intentional attacks.
If your armor is thick enough that the turret could reasonably be retracted into it, then you can have turrets on your ship. Likewise, if your surface armor is the same as the armor on your blast launchers and regular launchers, they can be "hidden" for free.
Crew size can be guessed at by the number of radiators at room temperature. Either keep 'em small or explain why your "gas freighter" has 50 drone controllers aboard.
The most basic Q-ship is a civilian tanker with a couple megatons sitting in the water tanks. X-ray inspection is probably mandatory for every ship before they get too close, so even a perfectly civilian exterior isn't quite enough.
I'm working on a design myself, but examples and design considerations from others are welcome.
|
|
|
Post by Pttg on Jul 18, 2018 19:11:41 GMT
Many materials are versatile enough to use in many roles. But what's the fewest distinct materials needed to build a ship? For this competition, perhaps the industrial-scale refineries used to make the gargantuan quantities of graphogel or whatever have been damaged by enemy attack and command wants to limit the number of separate lines needed to make a given ship class.
I have a few ways to score such a competition:
- Classes by number of materials. Players simply try to build a ship while staying in a price budget, and each entry is compared to only ships with the same number of materials.
- Price multiplier effect. All ships are given a price budget, but the final cost of the ship is calculated as (number of materials used)2 * (base cost of the ship). This means that low-diversity ships could be very expensive indeed.
- Fixed refinery budget. Simply dictating that ships have five (for instance) different materials available, and in true military fashion there's no bonus for coming in under budget.
- Different classes for different materials, but allow some exceptions. For instance, Gold-only, but the unremovable Al, reaction mass, and fissiles don't count.
In any case, stock and modded divisions would be, of course, separate. Mods also add a few materials that are extremely small variations from stock, such as tempered Al or tempered Cu. I'm willing to allow materials like that as free variants of the base materials because the important change emerges from the manufacturing process, not the refining one. However, I'm much more reluctant to count all allotropes of carbon as one "material," since it is so flexible. I'd like input on that.
Comparisons would be done through AI v AI fights, or else it could be more of a showcase than actual grading. A ship would count structural aluminum as one material, but none of the other "implied" or "mandated" materials would count (food, air, humans, and other such compounds aren't made through the standard manufacturing lines anyway). Therefore, a ship made with only aluminum would be a 1-material ship (well, station, since it most likely wouldn't have propulsion), even if it had a complete crew module. Good luck getting power generation on it, though...
So, thoughts on how this competition aught to be run?
|
|
|
Post by Pttg on Jul 16, 2018 21:55:05 GMT
Casaba Howitzers (or at least nuclear shrapnel) might really shake things up in the game meta.
|
|
|
Post by Pttg on Jul 12, 2018 19:20:10 GMT
Would like to point out that a laser star would likely be armored out of humanitarian concerns -- the crew wouldn't like to work on a ship that's no more sturdy than its giant aluminum mirror.
Yeah crews are replaceable and all that, but if they surrender immediately when the enemy comes within an AU, the ship isn't going to be all that useful.
|
|
|
Post by Pttg on Jul 10, 2018 16:58:58 GMT
Bulk armor? Amorphous carbon. Whipple stuffing? Carbon areogel. Anti-Spalling layer? Carbon fiber. Ablative Laser armor? Graphite.
Is there anything carbon can't do?
|
|
|
Post by Pttg on Jun 5, 2018 20:42:40 GMT
Currently, the game doesn't really simulate neutron flux from nuclear explosions. Lacking atmospheric shielding and considering the difficulty of protecting a ship's crew from radiation, the effective kill distance for a nuclear missile far exceeds the distance at which the missile will significantly melt the whipple.
Obviously it is very difficult to simulate the received momentary radiation of a crew, and even moreso to simulate the immediate effects of radiation poisoning. However, the lack of simulation does hide the serious effect on tactics we would see. An unshielded enemy ship can simply be irradiated by a single warhead well outside of most defensive ranges, and taken whole for its valuable elements. Even if you do intend to destroy a ship, no missile should ever be destroyed by an incoming projectile so long as it's safely away from the launching ship; a ship close enough to fire upon a missile is almost certainly close enough to bombard with radiation and then be destroyed at leisure.
The adequate defense against such attacks seems to me to be interceptor drones -- simple, cheap shrapnel drones that intercept incoming missiles outside of the irradiation zone. The countermeasure is a kind of stealth. You do not need to hide that your missile exists, but if you blur or conceal its exact trajectory, you may be able avoid interception.
|
|