|
Post by jasonvance on Jul 26, 2017 0:03:31 GMT
|
|
|
Post by jasonvance on May 8, 2017 7:45:51 GMT
That is because the temp values listed show the coolant's temp, not the reactor's temp. On my reactors that are a few mili-K away from meltdown the coolant temp leaving the reactor is only 2910 K. That means the reactor is right at 3140K and the flow rate at 2910K is enough to keep continuing to rise. But if your coolant flow off the reactor reads 2910K that does not mean your fuel rod temp is 2910K. I'm sure there is a formula with thermal conductivity of the coolant / fuel rods / flow rate and what not you could use to number crunch for this challenge though if you wanted to. Here are two screenshots showing the fuel rods melting at 2911K vs not melting at 2910K. To make the challenge easier you could just say reach meltdown then reduce coolant temp by an extra 10 degrees I guess if you don't want to dig up formulas (I have been avoiding this challenge due to this ambiguity myself). Where can I view the reactor temperature? Or is it unavailable? It is clearly being calculated by some formula, but sadly it isn't displayed to the user (as far as I know at least if someone has some trick to get the fuel rod temp to display I'm all ears). Also if there is a wild Qswitched reading it would be nice info to have for people designing reactors so we don't have to slowly inch up until we get the error then back off in fractions of steps to close in on the melting point (one of the more tedious parts of building reactors that could be solved or at least assisted with this value displayed).
|
|
|
Post by jasonvance on May 8, 2017 7:32:34 GMT
Actually the reactor temp's a bit confusing. The displayed T is significantly lower than the melt point of the fuel, yet the warning pops up. That is because the temp values listed show the coolant's temp, not the reactor's temp. On my reactors that are a few mili-K away from meltdown the coolant temp leaving the reactor is only 2910 K. That means the reactor is right at 3140K and the flow rate at 2910K is enough to keep continuing to rise. But if your coolant flow off the reactor reads 2910K that does not mean your fuel rod temp is 2910K. I'm sure there is a formula with thermal conductivity of the coolant / fuel rods / flow rate and what not you could use to number crunch for this challenge though if you wanted to. Here are two screenshots showing the fuel rods melting at 2911K vs not melting at 2910K. To make the challenge easier you could just say reach meltdown then reduce coolant temp by an extra 10 degrees I guess if you don't want to dig up formulas (I have been avoiding this challenge due to this ambiguity myself).
|
|
|
Post by jasonvance on May 5, 2017 5:00:15 GMT
|
|
|
Post by jasonvance on May 1, 2017 19:45:01 GMT
What do you mean by current reactors? It seems this thread is about improving on some kind of reactor design, made by apophys it seems. But that design are never linked here. It seems you also expect to see some specific operating temperature, but that is never mentioned in the requirements either. Here. Apophys reactors. I'll update the thread. I do like how over half of those pertaining to the challenge are mine but I never get credit (there are also 100MW ones further down in the post but the thread owner kind of disappeared)
|
|
|
Post by jasonvance on May 1, 2017 3:28:22 GMT
10 K from meltdown=Safe from meltdown... What a good standard... It is orders of magnitude safer than my current reactors lol
|
|
|
Post by jasonvance on Apr 20, 2017 19:29:41 GMT
Is there some sort of ballpark for cost and mass we should be shooting for to go along with the reactor we build? With no constraint I'm torn between ludicrously cheap (like I usually do) or ludicrously expensive (with like 10 layers of 10 meter armor that costs Gc but still meets the 100g of U-233 challenge over all). 1000 grams I look forward to seeing your 1000 gram ship...
|
|
|
Post by jasonvance on Apr 20, 2017 14:08:21 GMT
Is there some sort of ballpark for cost and mass we should be shooting for to go along with the reactor we build?
With no constraint I'm torn between ludicrously cheap (like I usually do) or ludicrously expensive (with like 10 layers of 10 meter armor that costs Gc but still meets the 100g of U-233 challenge over all).
|
|
|
Post by jasonvance on Apr 14, 2017 17:25:42 GMT
can't use it against ships much beyond a light minute though Yeah, well you could for a little bit it will be on a known "free fall" trajectory for most of its trip and it won't have any warning that the fire is incoming until it lands to force it to burn delta-v to get out of the beam. Once its new trajectory is known and it stops doing evasion burns you could zap it again. They would need to closely balance how much fuel they can burn to keep their ship from burning up without running out of delta-v and being stranded on a free fall trajectory (and free to be finished off by the beam if they felt like it). I agree though it would be a ridiculous amount of overkill to use it as a normal weapon on single ships I just wanted to point out that 1Mm max range for lasers is really short (even with what we can build in game).
|
|
|
Post by jasonvance on Apr 14, 2017 16:40:34 GMT
Sorry for off-topic post. Making the assumption that the minimum burning intensity to destroy enemy optics is 100w (which your lasers are optimized for at 1Mm). A laser which is 100Mw at 1Mm could begin engagement of your drones from 100Mm and start attempting to fry their optics since it will be within effective kill range. Lens caps or placing them on the rear / internal / behind armor until deployed could attempt to combat this but it would lose engagement efficiency as you would always have to turn into the beam to attempt to counter and would likely be burned out before alignment could be completed. (This is a whole different can of worms for a potentially different post though) I think this doesn't take into account a couple of factors: - Less powerful lasers with multiple turrets protected by armor/shutters will still be an effective strategy. This doom laser is going to focus on only one spot. When you are close enough to deal damage to the opponent's optics, just fire through the turret that is not being focused at the moment. This also means your armor has to last until your laser is in range, which depends on the ratio between your laser power and enemy laser power. You should still be able to kill doom lasers with systems one or two orders of magnitude less powerful.
- In reality lasers can also blind optical sensors at about 10 times the range where they can deal damage, if we are to believe Atomic Rockets. This also means that two small ships with weak lasers have an advantage over a large ship with a powerful laser, because both can't be blinded at the same time. Of course, you still need multiple sensors to replace those burned permanently burned by the laser. You can also set up lenses on your sensors to have additional protection against enemy laser by making lenses opaque at the frequencies of the laser (usually high frequencies) but still transparent in red/infrared.
- Pulsed lasers are much better for counter-fire than continuous wave lasers since peak intensity can reach much higher values (you are trying to make his mirrors non-reflective instead of burning the whole mount into a slag of metal). Of course, then the enemy will likely employ pulse lasers as well, but with pulse lasers, much like with electromagnetic accelerators, you can still match your adversary laser in power even if you don't have powerful reactor by lowering your rate of fire.
Realistically speaking the "best" laser setups would be the strongest you can build it until light lag and targeting issues start to become major issues (which would have distances measuring in the light second category). Larger installations would still be useful beyond that as many targets (planets, orbital stations, etc.) are mostly predictable and could be still targeted beyond a few light seconds effectively (also a whole different can of worms for a potentially different post). Why do you think these lasers will be able to reach such distances? What input power would a diffraction limited laser require to remain an effective weapon at 1 light second? 1 light second (300Mm) is actually pathetically short range for what is possible in space. This proposed planetary defense laser array (using 70GW) could operate effectively out to 10au (or roughly 1.5 Trillion meters) (which would require a lot of materials, but is actually build-able with today's technology, though ungodly expensive to send it all to orbit). Remember there is very little in space to get in the way of the beam and knock the photons off course the main limiting factor is focusing the beam so it has as small of a cone as possible. (source) www.deepspace.ucsb.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/SPIE-Optical-Engineering-Towards-Directed-Energy-Planetary-Defense-Lubin-at-al-2014.pdfJust as a fun side note if this was built in orbit around Earth it could destroy orbital facilities around Titan (one of Saturn's moons) which is right on the edge of its range.
|
|
|
Post by jasonvance on Apr 14, 2017 11:57:47 GMT
This is more a limitation the game of engagement ranges than anything else. Making the assumption that the minimum burning intensity to destroy enemy optics is 100w (which your lasers are optimized for at 1Mm). A laser which is 100Mw at 1Mm could begin engagement of your drones from 100Mm and start attempting to fry their optics since it will be within effective kill range. Lens caps or placing them on the rear / internal / behind armor until deployed could attempt to combat this but it would lose engagement efficiency as you would always have to turn into the beam to attempt to counter and would likely be burned out before alignment could be completed. (This is a whole different can of worms for a potentially different post though) Realistically speaking the "best" laser setups would be the strongest you can build it until light lag and targeting issues start to become major issues (which would have distances measuring in the light second category). Larger installations would still be useful beyond that as many targets (planets, orbital stations, etc.) are mostly predictable and could be still targeted beyond a few light seconds effectively (also a whole different can of worms for a potentially different post). Limited as the game is to 1Mm max engagements (unless you add on one of those cheesed coil / railgun designs) a weird optimization game starts for cost effectiveness on burning lasers and their counters. I haven't dove into micro drones to counter because they aren't a realistic approach (though if mp ever does come along in some form and the game stays in its current state they would be a staple I would guess). Agree, but i think that it may be a bit too hard to aim anything when you are ~10Mm from the enemy ship... The current aiming wiggle added was 2.5m at 1Mm so following the same inverse square laws it would be about 25m of wiggle room at 10Mm. Hitting a 1m bullseye within 25m might be a little challenging, but time is on your side, they have 9Mm to close before they can attempt to fire back odds are pretty good of the kills occurring during that travel time. The odds of a ship closing that distance without being hit is astronomically low even if the inaccuracy cone was increased 10 times. This is of course under the assumption of no stealth in space so you know the trajectory etc. (another can of worms which has been beaten to death in other threads). Remember the light "projectile" is really really fast we are talking about a projectile that will travel 10Mm in ~0.0333 seconds so dodging won't really be a thing you just have to rely on targeting inaccuracy as you won't be able to move out of the way of a shot. You will also have no warning of incoming fire until the ships are being hit (not that it would really make much difference since you can't dodge it anyways).
|
|
|
Post by jasonvance on Apr 14, 2017 11:39:02 GMT
Micro counter laser laser drones are exploitation of current bug/incorrect setting though. But then that also depends on how micro is this. Is 1.3 kc, 75 kg micro? Maybe no, but that's small enough~ and I still not very sure if it is a bug, but I am sure that small laser can kill much large laser IRL~ This is more a limitation the game of engagement ranges than anything else. Making the assumption that the minimum burning intensity to destroy enemy optics is 100w (which your lasers are optimized for at 1Mm). A laser which is 100Mw at 1Mm could begin engagement of your drones from 100Mm and start attempting to fry their optics since it will be within effective kill range. Lens caps or placing them on the rear / internal / behind armor until deployed could attempt to combat this but it would lose engagement efficiency as you would always have to turn into the beam to attempt to counter and would likely be burned out before alignment could be completed. (This is a whole different can of worms for a potentially different post though) Realistically speaking the "best" laser setups would be the strongest you can build it until light lag and targeting issues start to become major issues (which would have distances measuring in the light second category). Larger installations would still be useful beyond that as many targets (planets, orbital stations, etc.) are mostly predictable and could be still targeted beyond a few light seconds effectively (also a whole different can of worms for a potentially different post). Limited as the game is to 1Mm max engagements (unless you add on one of those cheesed coil / railgun designs) a weird optimization game starts for cost effectiveness on burning lasers and their counters. I haven't dove into micro drones to counter because they aren't a realistic approach (though if mp ever does come along in some form and the game stays in its current state they would be a staple I would guess). On a side note I do have some doubt as to if 100w spread over 1m^2 would be enough intensity to realistically damage an optic but I am not a laser physicist and too lazy to go look up the formulas required for that if someone actually wants to do the math that would be cool. I am however, fairly certain the game damages them far more quickly than would be the case in actuality and it would require a fairly long sustained contact if that amount of energy is actually enough to deform or mar the mirror, which would give the stronger laser an advantage in the sense that it can burn out the lower powerful laser's optics faster than it can be burned out itself.
|
|
|
Post by jasonvance on Apr 13, 2017 16:34:45 GMT
1. long range laser drones (500kc / 117t) / missile drones, and the station / carrier to deploy them from 2. Neon MPDs for ships/drones (cheapest total cost propellant), Hydrogen/Florine combustion for missiles 3. Lasers / missiles so ammo isn't really a thing (missiles are between 1,000 and 100c each so depending on the cost limits there can be thousands but the game only really supports ~400 at a time without crashing) 4. Large 20x cost optimized 1Mm laser arrays on the nose built on the cheapest unarmored hull that can move it around effectively. The main fleet doctrine is long range glass cannon damage output and cost effectiveness 5. No real logistical needs the drones tend to be outfitted with ~20km/s delta-v but can scale up to 200km/s if needed for some reason with just more fuel.
The setup could pretty much be boiled down to a slider of "how many missiles to bring along with the lasers"
75Mc of lasers would be 150 drones with 3000 1Mm lasers total along with 25Mc of missiles which could be 250,000 attacker missiles or 25,000 with the longer range and slightly larger payload
I would probably be more heavy on missiles if the game didn't crash from large swarms.
|
|
|
Post by jasonvance on Mar 14, 2017 13:54:33 GMT
Missiles can be made resistant enough to lasers that it is very difficult to shoot down a large swarm of them on a high-velocity approach. Also they can be light and cheap enough that it's not difficult to deploy a large swarm. Example: Flares work, but I think it's unrealistically easy to fool the missile guidance. If your own ship has a large heat signature, though, it's best to have a small backup reactor with low temperature radiators and just enough power to run life support and the flare launcher. I use 500 kW / 850 k. That actually ends up being enough power to run missile launchers too, so you could make a (relatively) stealthy missile boat. When combat starts, shut down your main reactor, wait as many seconds as you can afford to, then close the radiators. Projectile point-defense guns could probably do it, but not with the current gunnery algorithm that doesn't switch targets until the first is dead. Kinetic-kill countermissiles could do it, but again, not with the current guidance that causes all the missiles to go for the same target. I've also had a problem with cannon-launched gyrojets where all shots after the first seem to try to home on the first missile's engine heat, instead of the enemy missiles. High-yield nuclear countermissiles probably work, to take out the entire swarm with a single bomb, but I haven't tried them myself. Big nukes are really expensive. A 1.35 Mt warhead alone costs as much as 41 of the above missile. Heavy too, if you go much bigger than the 1.35 Mt optimum (it's bigger for U-235, but I haven't tried to find it). I think a good bet is probably medium-small (<1 t), high-acceleration laser drones, with lasers mounted on the sides in extruded turrets, so they can shoot backwards. Such a drone could be launched to intercept a swarm of missiles long before it reached the mothership, fly through the swarm, and then immediately lase their unprotected engine nozzles. I haven't tried this yet, though. Totally agree on flares not making any sense in this game. The problem with trying to use a drone to fly by or just intercept missile in general is you usually loose the cost exchange when the missile slam into the drone as a drone with a reactor and a laser on it is orders of magnitude more expensive than an attacker missile. Firing a large nuke at them has the same problem as if they just have a few waves of cheap missiles accelerate ahead to intercept the single huge nuke has no defense of its own and will be intercepted so it is forced to attempt to dodge (burning a ton of delta-v) and eventually detonate itself early when it runs out. You can also go a whole lot cheaper in attacker missiles. There are tons of gameplay issues with missile swarms that prohibit us form using them in game like the tracking issues you mentioned, the targeting problems, and the massive amount of lag / eventual crashing of launching a bunch of cheap missiles causes. But assuming those get fixed at some point I don't really see anything beating missiles out. A few point defense lasers to reduce the number of interceptors required and to deal with drones or finish off disabled ships would be handy but overly investing could leave you vulnerable to being out missiled.
|
|
|
Post by jasonvance on Mar 14, 2017 13:28:28 GMT
I am wondering, how do you defend a fleet from missiles and drones? keep in mind the enemy has enough missiles that you can't doge them. TLDR: Destroy the drones with lasers and then launch cheaper (cost saved in not adding any armor) missiles to intercept the attacker missiles. Attacker missiles require armor and a hefty rad shield to effectively protect them long enough to cost effectively saturate defenses. This means that an identical missile without the armor will be cheaper, have better acceleration (easier to insure interception), and be nearly as lethal (some lost shrapnel from armor). Since the interceptor missiles (without the armor) are cheaper than the attacking missiles you can just launch an equal value of missiles and win cost effectively as a result regardless of what else occurred point defense wise. Your fleet will also contribute a small amount in helping destroy some missiles with their weapons but in a saturation attack this will be a not very relevant amount as scaling more guns is far more expensive than scaling more missiles is. So for every n credits of weapons added to the fleet n credits missiles could be added (this heavily favors missiles). In the case that the missile fleet is defended by laser drones that would chew through interceptor missiles (which are unarmored) the first tactic should be to attempt to destroy the drones then launch interceptor missiles. If there isn't enough time or the drone fleet is too well defended or massive then the drone fleet will also be expensive and thus their fleet will be more susceptible to saturation attack from your fleet. In this case fire attacker missiles at their missile and drone fleet and destroy them cost effectively with your own attacker missiles. The idea is the missiles will all trade 1:1, the drones will destroy a couple of attackers, but if you have fully saturated for the missiles and point defense the leakers will then trade with the drones making up the cost differential. Since the missile are 1:1s they are a null factor and it is the same formula for intercepting a drone fleet alone with attacker missiles (simply subtract the missiles fleets in advance). I did a post on missile saturation attacks with all the math on another board somewhere if you want me to dig up a link so you can calculate exactly how much you need to launch for any situation (given you know some base line performance values) let me know.
|
|