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Post by Easy on Jun 7, 2017 12:57:47 GMT
Play those Star trek/ Wingcommander games I always wondered why those ships weren't given enough power generation to run all systems at full power. But now playing CDE I find myself doing the same thing with making under powered ships, since power generation is really expensive, and ships don't really need to be able to accelerate and shoot at the same time. Similar design philosophy in Battletech/Mechwarrior games where you sacrifice heat dissipation rather than power generation. So you end up with a set of long and short range weapons, but not able to safely fire both or design a controlled overheating where you have a few turns to get really hot and then find time to rest afterwards. It is kind of like designing your ship to be an athlete who can sprint for a short duration and get that extra little kick for when it matters, rather than a jogger who can run forever, but can never go faster than a jog.
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Post by Easy on May 6, 2017 1:40:07 GMT
What are the specs of your needle gun and did it survive the patch ? It got hammered pretty bad in the patch. No longer viable That happened to almost every user design that relied on out-ranging an AI that doesn't use ignore range. However many lines of code it took, it was worth it to see the new stock designs become fearsome.
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Post by Easy on Mar 24, 2017 13:20:42 GMT
Nuclear reaction is started by sufficient density of neutrons flying everywhere. Get enough critical mass, and you get enough neutrons. Neutron reflector instead reflect the neutron back to the fissile material, so even with less critical mass, you can still have a nuclear bomb, or a working nuclear reactor. CoDE lets you build reactors below critical mass without any neutron reflector mass. So that doesn't answer the problem.
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Post by Easy on Mar 17, 2017 16:08:36 GMT
If he had turned physician instead of eco-ranger, he would have recommended two bullets in the head for a migraine cure. And of course he aims the two asteroids at two major historical and cultural population centres, because that's tradition at this point. When you're convinced humanity is the disease, the cure seems obvious.
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Post by Easy on Mar 17, 2017 2:57:02 GMT
Fundamentally at some point there will be peace again. If you murdered whatever subfaction without quarter the other remaining factions will be somewhat upset. Your faction will get a reputation " Does not play nice with others." Unless you have assured supremacy, I can't imagine it is a healthy long term strategy. Collateral damage can be understood, but cold murder of noncombatants? Yikes. An entire space habitat of thousands or millions plus? However, if we captured a space habitat that decided to be belligerent, we might attempt to smoke them out but you're trying to convince the holdouts to surrender and evacuate anyone who surrenders to a safe area where they are searched for weapons and guarded securely until your security and engineering teams have sanitized the station of weapons or other threats. After which the captive population might be allowed to return to their homes. But you wouldn't want to rule over a hostile population for very long, I'll reference Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. It is more about getting the leaders to capitulate and negotiate beneficial (for you) terms that are realistic enough to be enforced. Don't start any wars without a plan to get to the peace afterwards.
As for "Does not play nice with others." it means the other factions might decide to team up against you, and to use extreme measures like relativistic bombardment or any means effective to remove your ruling class and perhaps entire faction from existence.
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Post by Easy on Mar 17, 2017 2:29:58 GMT
I negotiate an end to hostilities making the enemy's attack undesirable for both parties at which point trade flourishes and everyone gets rich.
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Post by Easy on Mar 6, 2017 19:49:18 GMT
The problem is that your projectile is longer than the coil.
Switch to your 2 coil setup and vary the projectile mass and bore size (changing the projectile's aspect ratio).
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Post by Easy on Mar 6, 2017 1:16:41 GMT
Resistivity and conductivity do change by orders of magnitude with temperature so I would not expect the thermoelectric sensitivity to remain constant. Especially not through a state change.
How about them gas turbines? WHRRRRRRRR
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Post by Easy on Mar 6, 2017 0:37:44 GMT
Once we have dedicated decorative layers those 2-3 μm of electroplated gold foil and cobalt paint aren't going to make much of a difference - both in terms of mass and cost - on a multi-kiloton ship. It's simply a matter of the relationship between volume and surface area. This is a total war doctrine, the brass will look to cut whatever corners they can. who said this was total war? That isn't decoration, these are docking indicators and high visibility safety bands.
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Post by Easy on Mar 5, 2017 23:53:51 GMT
There isn't much incentive to decorate number 6,234 of 10,000. The captain of #6234 may disagree with you. "There are many like it, but this one is mine." Unique decoration can also have an intimidation factor if that particular vessel is known for skill or brutality. Also: the conformity discipline of the Navy will matter. Maybe the captain will be tolerated and other ships paint themselves or maybe the captain is removed from duty for the offense. Also the empire ships all have really nice art and wood paneling.
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Post by Easy on Mar 5, 2017 21:46:34 GMT
My current go-to armor on ships around 1,200 tons or less is the following: 5-10mm Spider Silk 4-6cm Amorphous Carbon 25cm Silica Aerogel or ~50cm Graphite Aerogel 5mm Boron I haven't tested its effectiveness against lasers yet, but it's resistant to light kinetics and flak. are there any particular properties of spider silk that make it a better choice over s-glass or the other fiber materials?
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Boarding
Mar 5, 2017 21:37:14 GMT
via mobile
Post by Easy on Mar 5, 2017 21:37:14 GMT
Easy if they have radio or non-physical communications then they can be hacked, not a matter of If but When. the crew of the disabled warship might not be able to crack the code in the little time they have left but the spies back home have years to work the code down too little, too late. Remember that the ship being boarded has already lost the battle and is existing at the mercy of the victors. Meaningful resistance is at best a delaying tactic that probably won't las long enough for friendly rescue. Of course we are assuming quarter will be given. If the crew can expect only torture and death from capture they might choose self destruction. The crew isn't without options, they might increase radiation dramatically to force boarding parties to operate within the same radiation umbrella the surviving crew is hiding in. And you might hold yourself hostage with a nuclear weapon so both boarders and derelict crew die. But that assumes the standoff will last long enough for friendly rescue (days? Weeks? Years?). How much life support does the damaged crew module on emergency power have? Even then the boarders may keep distance and disassemble the ship with expendable salvage drones.
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Post by Easy on Mar 5, 2017 21:06:29 GMT
A minor optimization for conventional cannons is to separate the ammo storage from the cannon. It prevents lasers from detonating the ammo on gun destruction.
Not super realistic due to the lack of ammo feeds but all weapons and modules have similar abilities. Especially goofy when you separate a drone launcher from the drone ammo storage.
For hellfire and stinger drones it results in the disarmed vehicles setting a collision course.
I'm sure future ammo could be designed to cook off in a less energetic manner. Not entirely safe, but better. Lots of real life examples of both.
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Post by Easy on Mar 5, 2017 19:39:53 GMT
Salted nuclear bombs wouldn't cause nucleair winter as there wouldn't be a massive release of black carbon in the atmosphere, so climate-wise the impact should be quite minimal as long as there isn't a massive drop in photosynthesis due to plants getting radiation sickness. The missiles would mostly target population centers, so anything near major cities would get irradiated but not to an unsurvivable degree. Animals dependent on or living in close proximity to humans might go extinct. People would use at least a few conventional nukes to disrupt the power and communications network of their foes, so anything near large powerplants (dams, nucleair reactors, wind farms, coal powerplants, ...) will be a glowing crater. Also you have pesky plants and fungi and single cell organisms who tend to be so radiation tolerant it would make an inanimate object blush.
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Post by Easy on Mar 5, 2017 19:33:43 GMT
Encryption won't be hacked We have a long history of breaking unbreakable codes, assume the enemy can hear what you're saying, and can hack you Your ship is wrecked, your propellant tanks punctured, rocket nozzles perforated, cannon barrels melted and radiators empty of coolant. Your cameras watch a boarding vessel approach and match velocities and little drones and space marines start crawling along your hull. Hack those drones before they cut open your already depressurized bulkheads. Try hacking them when they have a cable reel that leads back to the boarding ship and the drones are plural and mutually supported by both armed drones and armed human marines.
Speaking politically there may be some Factional negotiations about recovering the crew of derelict vessels. In that enemies may or may not ask for their crews to be rescued or to insist the derelict be left in solar orbit for friendly recovery. Now agreeing with your adversary is a dangerous thing so they might loudly proclaim you should not board their derelict warship, but what are they going to do about it if you board anyways? That's more of the political/humanitarian law of space warfare regarding quarter. I don't see a faction being required to rescue a disabled enemy on an escape trajectory, but if an enemy crew is stranded in your sphere of influence and requests rescue the defender might have some reasonable obligation to accept a surrender. Again this is politics which will often conflict with idealized physical equations.
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