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Post by inbrainsane on Dec 31, 2016 22:51:44 GMT
Dude you are boasting about 3 tons for a 25 MW laser, while there are 1 GW designs staying below 2.5 tons. It is such a horrible design it's ridiculous to use it as example. There is a point I keep making that everyone seems to ignore or forget. Laser damage is capped to the ablation rate of the material you are firing upon. For example aramid fiber has a critical intensity of 2.3MW/m^2 (Thanks to Zuthal for doing the math on that). If you fire a 1000000000GW death beam with 9^999999999999999 MW/m^2 intensity at it it will burn away at the same speed as a 2.3MW/m^2 laser. Every material has it's own max ablation rate in game. Some of the more heat resistant ("nuke armor") has a much higher ablation rate so capping to 2.3MW/m^2 could end up getting you stuck on unable to get through the nuke layer. *Note* I did choose 100 MW/m^2 somewhat arbitrarily so there might be a more efficient lower intensity (which would reduce size, cost, power requirements). While not hyper realistic it is how the game currently works. My lasers are min-maxed for the game mechanics. The only way to burn through materials faster is to put multiple lasers on target as each laser's damage is calculated individually. That laser is min-maxed for holding ~100Mw/m^2 at 1,000km for the cheapest price possible (including all elements required which includes radiators and reactors). On a side note if you wanted to know how much cost and mass you are adding from your power requirement you get ~2900 Watts / credit and 54 Wattts / gram with reasonably optimized reactors. You can do the math on your GW lasers and figure out how much they actually weigh and cost off that. Combined with the fact that they don't actually kill anything faster I would say my lasers are fairly well optimized... People need to try and test. On paper they wont believe it. And, uhm, jasonvance, I found a way to challenge your setup. By using 20x1GW, I could make my turrets super small and still have enough intensity. And super small turrets have two advantages: Lasers miss them at 1Mm and they can be cost-effectively armored with 20cm of graphite and they are still super small. See the results here: Attachment DeletedAttachment DeletedAttachment Deleted
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Post by inbrainsane on Dec 31, 2016 20:48:47 GMT
When you test killer drones vs killer drones, make sure to let AI vs AI play or when you play one party, then set aim for lasers of enemy. If you dont, the AI fleet will always win. Also, put a radiation shield between your guns and the rest of your drone. 20cm graphite. If you dont, everything kills everything always immediately. If you do, you can count the popped guns as a good reference.
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Post by inbrainsane on Dec 31, 2016 18:27:55 GMT
Not sure if you are trolling or what... scroll up a few posts to the post you replied to and see that laser with radiators is 3.32 tons and 19.3kc then look that if i switch it to silver it is now 4.02 tons and 70.7kc WITHOUT radiators yet there is now way to save negative tonnage and cost in radiators. Dude you are boasting about 3 tons for a 25 MW laser, while there are 1 GW designs staying below 2.5 tons. It is such a horrible design it's ridiculous to use it as example. Be careful and do not call jasonvance lasers 'horrible'. There is a concept behind all this. And the concept is the 20xLaser 100MW/m2 at 1Mn Death Star Drone. Build it on your own and then try to find something that beats it. And then you will realise a few things: - Lasers can not be armoured efficiently.
- When aiming for enemy turrets, a 25MW laser rigged for proper intensity is about as fast a killer as a 1GW laser.
- The 1GW laser is more expensive when you take radiators and power supply into account.
- A single drone with 20x25MW lasers (jasonvances design) will kill 15 single-1GW-laser-drones at 1Mm distance. Easily.
Believe me. Jasonvances lasers are very valid and very cool. If you look at one of my earlier posts, where I compare those 125MW Nd:YAG+Krypton to his 100MW Ti:Sapphire/Xenon, you will see that on paper the Kryptons have better performance. However, when I compare them on the battlefield (drones with Ti:Sapphire/Xenon vs drones with Nd:YAG+Krypton for even total mass and cost), the Ti:Sapphire/Xenon drones win every single time. And I am quite sure, a flight of 25MW drones would beat a flight of 100MW drones (both flights same mass and cost again).
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Post by inbrainsane on Dec 30, 2016 16:50:06 GMT
Too bad we cant just fire "into the wild". Because using a thing like this to launch a missile swarm would be quite good. 9.91km/s free dV for the missiles.
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Post by inbrainsane on Dec 30, 2016 16:40:20 GMT
As a competitor to jasonvance flavoured death star drones, here my own. I did some testing and it performs better than all my previous death laser systems. For module specs see apophys reactors or my posts in lasers.
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Post by inbrainsane on Dec 30, 2016 15:02:27 GMT
Can someone help me and tell me how to combine engines of different types? I would like to have like an inner and an outer ring on the bottom of my ship. Is that at all possible? With ultra heavy lasers you have a lot of spare power. And while most MPDs are not viable as main engine, it would be a shame to let all that power go to waste. So I would like to add some MPD to an otherwise NTR or Resistojet propelled spacecraft. How can this be done nicely? And by nicely I mean not have a single mpd sticking out at the side of the ship (ugh).
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Post by inbrainsane on Dec 30, 2016 14:34:39 GMT
qswitched could this be fixed with 4 digit accuracy? While it rounds off to three digits on the display, it uses at least 5 in the actual calculation and user design file. As an example, try a laser with an 8.0m aperture and a turret inner radius of 16.971m. You are right. But notice the "singularity" where it rounds down the needed turret size internally. Also I hope the formula is useful.
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Post by inbrainsane on Dec 30, 2016 14:21:53 GMT
I made 3 configurations for comparison. All of them including lasers, reactor, radiator. The radiators are optimised. The reactor is from apophys. For the lasers I compare jasonvances 100MW Ti:Sapphire with a 125MW Nd:YAG. Here are the results: Laser Input Power | Laser Output Power | Laser Intensity at 1Mm | Number of Lasers (System) | Wavelength | Total Power Consumption | Total Cost | Total Mass | Laser Chem | Total Output Power | 100MW | 2.96MW | 422Mw/m2 | 10 | 198nm | 1GW | 764kc | 83.7t | Ti:Sapphire + Xenon | 29.6MW | 125MW | 5.39MW | 421MW/m2 | 8 | 266nm | 1GW | 835kc | 83.8t | Nd:YAG + Krypton with Aluminium Mirror | 43.1MW | 125MW | 5.46MW | 426MW/m2 | 8 | 266nm | 1GW | 1180kc | 77.8t | Nd:YAG + Krypton with Silver Mirror | 43.7MW |
As you can see, the systems are of comparable performance. Now lets put forward the individual strengths and weaknesses: - The first system has a lower input power for the same intensity. This allows to have 2 more individual lasers. Current damage model slightly favours a higher number of smaller lasers. However, the first system has also the lowest output power per laser. The 2 additional lasers can not compensate, it also has the lowest total output power. The lower wavelength is also advantageous against some armour materials.
- At a comparable mass, this system costs 9.3% more than the first system. But output power is 45.6% higher.
- This system is only marginally better in power and intensity, compared to the second. However, it is 6 tons lighter and at the same time 345kc more expensive. To evaluate/compare, you need to assume cost for payload mass. If this cost (more engines/more fuel) is higher than 57.5kc/t then system 3 is better than system 2.
All lasers have the same dimensions.
*Edit* Some screenshots added *Edit* *Edit 2* Also added a screenshot of a system where we use only one big laser. That allows to scale down the focusing mirror and keep the same intensity. Also that allows to use silver reflector cost efficiently. As a result we have a tremendous better total output power at a lower cost (mass and credits). And also the cross section is much smaller. If it performs better in the simulation must still be tested. Damage and targeting model are obscure.
Attachment Deleted Attachment Deleted Attachment Deleted
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Post by inbrainsane on Dec 29, 2016 23:40:25 GMT
caiaphas Your laser is quite inefficient and super expensive. Sorry. What is there to be sorry of? The guy is just posting his design. If you are going to rain on his parade at least tell him what you are comparing his design to that made you draw this conclusion. Posting a design without skimming through some threads before you do so is risky. I made the same mistake in the past. I am sorry for him because his "mega death laser" is not that good. At 10GW input, it should have > 430MW output power. And it should not cost 13Mc but rather <100kc. And because it is so expensive, I also know that it is likely to heavy. By an order of magnitude.
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Post by inbrainsane on Dec 29, 2016 23:12:32 GMT
Is there some way to provide just a bit of gimbaling? My problem is, as an example, that I might have a laser with a 10 meter mirror that masses 30 tons. I put it in a turret (with no armor) and it's 1000 tons. That's not particularly workable. Here, have a look: childrenofadeadearth.boards.net/post/8783/threadThis should solve your problem at least for lasers.
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Post by inbrainsane on Dec 29, 2016 23:05:07 GMT
You may have noticed that the mass and cost of your laser turret seems to be strange and "jumpy". The reason is, that the required turret inner radius (tir) is calculated with the following formula from the aperture radius (ar): tir = 2*ar + (ar/8.24) Then it is rounded up to 3 valid digits, and so some overhead may come in. That overhead is automatically filled with reaction wheels. They add a huge amount of unnecessary mass. Lasers that snipe at 1Mm do not need to turn fast. So, what is the solution? The solution is picking values for the aperture radius that result in a precise match for the turret inner radius. This keeps rounding small and everyone happy. So, as a service to the public, follows a table with all significant local optima. No more fiddling. This is a complete list in a reasonable range that has all the minima for turret mass. Aperture Radius (m) | Turret Inner Radius (m) | 1.07 | 2.27 | 1.40 | 2.97 | 1.73 | 3.67 | 2.06 | 4.37 | 2.80 | 5.94 | 3.13 | 6.64 | 3.46 | 7.34 | 3.79 | 8.04 | 4.12 | 8.74 | 4.53 | 9.61 | 4.76 | 10.1 | 5.09 | 10.8 | 5.42 | 11.5 | 5.75 | 12.2 | 6.08 | 12.9 | 6.41 | 13.6 | 6.74 | 14.3 | 7.07 | 15.0 | 7.40 | 15.7 | 7.73 | 16.4 | 8.06 | 17.1 | 8.39 | 17.8 | 8.72 | 18.5 | 9.05 | 19.2 | 9.38 | 19.9 | 9.71 | 20.6 | 2.39 | 5.07 |
Two notes: - Beginning with (4.76,10.1) the tir is rounded to next 10cm. This brings greater waste for all sizes that follow.
- The pair (2.39, 5.07) is a singularity. Here, 5.07004854 is rounded down. As a result, when you want to build the lightest turret of all times, these are the dimensions!
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Post by inbrainsane on Dec 29, 2016 22:36:22 GMT
caiaphas Your laser is quite inefficient and super expensive. Sorry.
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Post by inbrainsane on Dec 29, 2016 16:53:53 GMT
Does anyone have very cost effective designs for drone lasers (~100kw - 1 MW), point defense lasers (~10-100 MW), main battle lasers (~100-500 MW), and then mega death lasers (~500+ MW)? A lot of what I am seeing are just the most crazy and no-expense-spared designs, which are cool, but I find those sorts of designs impractical. If I can't afford to equip a fleet with something, then it's just a novelty. (Like building a multi million dollar infantry rifle that is the best rifle ever made... and then only able to equip one soldier with it.) I mean, I could completely understand a planet having an orbital defense laser that is truly insane, but not a fleet that is expected to move about in any reasonable fashion. Scaling for Laser is a bit tricky. You need decent Intensity to be effective. Opinions about best intensity vary a bit. But please have a look at this from a perspective where you consider Laser, Power Supply and Cooling. So lets look at our budget. 5x 2GW Laser | 8.55t | 0.15Mc | 1x 10GW Power Plant | 98.6t | 1.98Mc | Cooling for Power Plant | 83.7t | 1.76Mc | Cooling for Laser | 178t | 1.04Mc |
So we have a total of 369t and 4.93Mc for the entire system. The reactor allows fitting an auxiliary MPD drive because you need only power when you fire. That is a quite small and affordable system. You can even justify fitting it on a drone. The biggest parts are the radiators. Compared to them, the rest is tiny. The reactor is from apophys. Look at the standards thread. The radiators are not fully optimized, you can even cut down a little there. The laser is my current favourite. See below. The system is tested. You want to add armor on the laser but its dimensions are tiny, so shouldnt be a problem. pastebin.com/7VdrEmz0Attachment Deleted
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Post by inbrainsane on Dec 29, 2016 12:41:29 GMT
jasonvance You have two points here. - Ti:Sapphire + Xenon: I played around with them and found that the drop in efficiency is not worth it. However, converting a design is easy.
- Smaller vs. bigger: A smaller design has more weight and cost per MW power. That is a slight case for bigger modules. Current damage model favors few smaller lasers quite massively over one bigger module with total power equal to the sum of total power of the smaller ones. That is a major case for smaller modules. Scaling down is quite easy.
So my table is not meant as the optimal configuration. It is just a set of standards. Adjusting/Recalibrating for smaller size or for different medium should be easy and can be done by the user.
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Lasers
Dec 29, 2016 6:30:23 GMT
Post by inbrainsane on Dec 29, 2016 6:30:23 GMT
3.4% efficiency? You can do better with Nd:YAG + krypton (with frequency quadrupling nowadays, I see little reason to use anything else). Your spot size is ~9cm wide. You'd probably do better with less intensity. Might want to add a little aramid armor on the turret to help with mirror matches. Otherwise you can cut some mass from the reaction wheels; your traverse speed is overkill for a 1Mm sniper. I played around some more. I posted my results in the standardisation thread. childrenofadeadearth.boards.net/post/8744/threadMy design above was flawed.
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