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Post by gfarrell80 on Jan 1, 2018 15:31:33 GMT
Yeah, the absurd barrel acceleration is one reason why I prefer to launch only simple, solid material payloads out of guns/coilguns/railguns. anything with thin-walled fuel tanks and complex moving parts like rocket motors probably isn't going to do well. What would be a good g limit to work with? Projectiles can have some complexity to them - HE shells survive the acceleration of conventional guns, you could probably launch a shell that has a simple rocket booster on it that would survive some pretty high g's. But a complex KKV with fuel tanks and a guidance system going from zero to over 1 k/s over the distance of a few meters sounds like trouble. Maybe we can set 60,000 gee as a upper limit of realistic missile acceleration, given that it is about the highest possible acceleration of a guided projectile today, which is fired from a railgun. Railguns aren't firing complex devices with tanks, propellant, and guidance systems, they're firing a simple hunk of metal. 60,000 sounds pretty high for missile components. The g's a guidance package is supposed to endure are between 20,000 to 40,000 per wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun). Although, the guidance package they are talking about is I believe an aerodynamic fin/drag type guidance system on a solid metal projectile, not a missile with thrusters and propellent and some kind of warhead.
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Post by gfarrell80 on Jan 1, 2018 15:01:51 GMT
eh, for some reason though, about two seconds after launching, something goes haywire and the missiles blow up nearby my ship. You can get around this by just quickly hitting the 'back' button to return to the orbital view, but still, not the best.
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Post by gfarrell80 on Jan 1, 2018 0:33:51 GMT
Oh baby, I got it working. The missile atop its drone firing stage: imgur.com/LGafxQ6Payload inside that stupid looking blast launcher: imgur.com/z3F5GRzJust a 10 kg tungsten slug as a warhead. imgur.com/QQNoPo6About 7 kps inbound result 'enemies are no longer a threat'. imgur.com/4Woeu6wThe walls of the single-shot blast launcher I ended up using UHMWPE fiber and just 1 gram of Nitro Glycerin. Results in not too much extra tonnage, but it would look alot sexier with my kinetic kill missile on top of it instead of a silly looking big box.
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Post by gfarrell80 on Dec 30, 2017 16:41:37 GMT
Yep, that is what I was looking at, but you have to carry around the walls of the blast launcher. Could be do-able if you were allowed to do a blast launcher with no walls and explosive bolts or something.
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Post by gfarrell80 on Dec 30, 2017 16:24:31 GMT
Yeah, the absurd barrel acceleration is one reason why I prefer to launch only simple, solid material payloads out of guns/coilguns/railguns. anything with thin-walled fuel tanks and complex moving parts like rocket motors probably isn't going to do well.
What would be a good g limit to work with? Projectiles can have some complexity to them - HE shells survive the acceleration of conventional guns, you could probably launch a shell that has a simple rocket booster on it that would survive some pretty high g's. But a complex KKV with fuel tanks and a guidance system going from zero to over 1 k/s over the distance of a few meters sounds like trouble.
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Post by gfarrell80 on Dec 29, 2017 19:24:52 GMT
Is it possible to create a missile where the 1st stage is in-line with the main axis of the missile, and drops off after burning?
The staged nuclear striker has side-mounted tanks.
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Post by gfarrell80 on Dec 28, 2017 5:03:36 GMT
I've just bought the game. Having read through this thread and also the wiki this is what I'm getting: A-Carbon, Boron Filament, and Diamond are great general purpose materials for bulk armor. RCC also works but is expensive and an unspecialized monolithic material. VC Steel (especially) or Beta Titanium is also good as a main layer. Curious does anyone know how Amorphous C-Steel compares? Sounds like an A-carbon/VC-Steel/Diamond composite is the way to go. Boron Filament seems to have dropped in popularity since its not the old Boron. Graphite aerogel is almost a must for stuffing Whipple Shields. Si-gel is great against lasers and nuke flashes as a coating. Aramid fiber and nitrile rubber are better choices for anti-laser armor. Former on a per-weight basis and latter on a per-cost basis. Titanium carbide is the best nuke flash armor. Or is Si-gel? Not sure. Tin, Cadmium, or Lead is great for a whipple shield. Osmium, iridium, or tungsten is great for a hard outer shell. Spider silk is a great spall liner/bumper. Cheap and light. Other materials mentioned for spall-liners are Boron Filament, A-Carbon, polyethylene, and nitrile rubber. So it would appear that the optimum armor scheme would appear as follows (innermost to outermost layer): 2cm? Spidersilk 1cm A-Carbon 1cm VC-Steel (These three layers are probably going to be of varying thickness) Also, AC Steel or Beta Titanium seem to be viable cheaper substitutes, but that's just from my own time in-game. 1cm Diamond 50cm-1m graphite aerogel (maybe even 2m?) 5mm tin whipple shield (or osmium?? There seem to be two competing schools of thought for whipple shields. One supporting a relatively soft metal, and the other a high density hard metal) <5mm titanium carbide (against nuke flashes) 1cm aramid fiber (alternatively the last two layer could be replaced with Si-gel. Or the Ti-Carbide might be considered optional?) It all depends on what you are going to be going up against and how much delta V and money you want to sacrifice. Light relatively cheap armor that works pretty well versus the stock weapons in a nose-on high angle conical configuration: Anti Spall layer: 2 cm Spider Silk Rigid Kinetic/Thermal layer: 1 cm Amorphous Carbon Malleable Kinetic/energy absorbing layer: 2 cm Aluminum Thermal/Energy absorbing layer: 8 cm Graphite Aerogel Whipple shell void: 35 cm Empty Whipple shell backer: 8 mm Aluminum Whipple shell outer layer: 2 mm Diamond Alternately: Anti Spall: 2 cm Spider Silk Rigid Kinetic: 1 cm Boron or Beta Titanium Rigid Kinetic/thermal: 1 cm Amorphous Carbon Thermal/Energy absorbing layer: 2 cm Polyethylene Whipple shell void: 35 cm Empty Whipple shell backer: 8 mm Aluminum Whipple shell outer layer: 2 mm Diamond It may be possible to go even thinner and cheaper and maintain similar effectiveness.
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Post by gfarrell80 on Dec 26, 2017 22:24:17 GMT
Alright, I did it with a satisfying non-cheesy solution that I think should give a consistent chance for success:
1. You start with your energy state already pointed at a relatively natural intercept towards the enemy fleet. Take advantage of this and launch a missile alpha strike. Fire all missiles, just holding 20 strikers and 20 flak missiles in reserve. Burn 1/4 of the missile's delta V on the initial intercept burn, coast towards the target, and shortly before intercept burn another 1/4 of the missile fleet's dV to decrease the enemy's countermeasure time (leaving 1/2 the missile's delta V for the final homing) Make sure you plot your final intercept to get the missiles reeeal close, like under 100 meters.
2. While your missiles are outbound, you have to deal with inbound enemy waves: first, try and increase your point defense time. Burn about 1/3 of your dV to get a trajectory AWAY from the enemy incoming, slightly towards Vesta. Plot some burns to make sure you have enough dV remaining to re-enter orbit and intercept the enemy's orbit head-on. But for now only burn the away burn. Once burnt, launch all your drones, but do not split them from the fleet. Keep them as additional point defense. Then shoot about half of your remaining 'in reserve' missiles one at a time at the incoming waves (prioritizing the drones). similar strategy for these missiles - only burn about 1/4 of the missile's dV on the initial intercept course, save the rest for correcting for evasions and the final homing. Fired individually you should be able to get almost a 1 to 1 kill ratio with them, and it will force the incoming drones to burn some dV to evade.
3. Before contact with the enemy incoming, make sure:
1. all your drones are set to orient broadside and ignore range. 2. ditto for your capital ships. Except maybe the corvette. The corvette is the only ship that has a decent nose armor configuration, so I set it nose-on. You may want to roll it slightly or check it to make sure the weapons are firing immediately. 3. Fire your decoys liberally and hopefully your fleet should be able to handle all the incoming. Some of the stinger drones did manage to land some bullets on my ships, but otherwise I came out okay.
Success may depend on the result of your missile alpha strike. On contact, their fleet carrier mysteriously blew in half before my missiles even got there (decoy issue? - sometimes decoys can hit friendly ships and do damage it seems). The missile wave destroyed the Siloship and badly damaged the Corvette, but left the Cutter unscathed.
From there I had enough delta V to enter the enemy fleet's orbit head-on. The Cutter split from their fleet and came at me individually, it wasn't too bad to take down, but did land some shots on my capital ships before going down. At that point I refueled my drones and sent them on an intercept to wipe out the last enemy missiles that were still floating around, after finishing off the cripples in a head-to-head. It was cool refueling the drones! I wish you could also re-arm with fresh ammo.
Took 1 day 7 hours, ended with no crew killed, no disabled ships, in Vesta orbit with a small amount of delta V remaining.
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Post by gfarrell80 on Dec 23, 2017 6:32:13 GMT
minor thing, instead of 40cm of empty space you could stuff that space with Graphite Aerogel to improve defense It is already surviving quite well against stock weapons, I'm going to try skinnying it up even more to see if it maintains the same level of effectiveness. Nose on and a long pointy cone really helps amazingly.
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Post by gfarrell80 on Dec 22, 2017 17:25:29 GMT
If anybody can beat Vesta Overkill with the default fleet, I would love to see how you do it posted on YouTube!
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Post by gfarrell80 on Dec 22, 2017 17:21:52 GMT
Just going against stock weapons in the campaign, I'm enjoying highly sloped armor. On a long conical ship oriented nose-on, this seems to work quite well versus stock railguns, coil guns, conventional guns, and flak missiles:
1. Anti Spall: 5 cm Spider Silk 2. Malleable metal layer: 4 cm Beta Titanium 3. Rigid ceramic layer: 5 to 12 cm of Amorphous Carbon 4. Malleable metal energy absorbing layer - 5 mm Aluminum (just to slightly slow down things that get through the whipple shield before they hit layers 2&3) 5. Whipple gap: 40 cm empty space 6. Whipple shell: 5 mm Aluminum 7. Whipple outer hard shell deflection/reflective layer: 2 mm Diamond
Layers #2 and #3 I thicken up on the front nose cone area of the ship with an additional layer of same material. Plus I throw in a liberal amount of bulkheads, including like 10 bulkheads up in the nose area, and multiple bulkheads in front of major components. They seem to improve survivability quite a bit without much weight or cost sacrifice.
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Post by gfarrell80 on Dec 20, 2017 6:20:33 GMT
Awesome update, very cool stuff!
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Post by gfarrell80 on Dec 20, 2017 5:47:54 GMT
I'd like to beat it without taking advantage of dumb AI... I gave up going stock, getting close to beating it now with a fleet of small well armored gun boats... fun stuff.
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Post by gfarrell80 on Nov 27, 2017 3:11:27 GMT
Thanks RiftandRend. Interesting, that explains it. So is the only way to defeat that nonsense to break up my missile intercept fleets into one or two missiles one after the other? That is going to be a serious pain in the butt.
Stock remote modules. So is there a way to manipulate the remote module to overcome this?
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Post by gfarrell80 on Nov 26, 2017 20:59:20 GMT
Heya guys, I discovered this game on YouTube from Ready Set Rudy's videos and loved it, bought it and have been enjoying the heck out of it.
I have worked my way through to Vesta Overkill and am doggedly attempting it with the stock ships. It seems do-able, but:
How can I make my missile intercepts more effective? Combat begins with the enemy fleet launching at least two missile swarms and two drone swarms at you. Your fleet's point defenses seem unable to deal with it, so I have been attempting to intercept with missiles. My kill ratios are terrible though, I send 10-20 striker missiles against a swarm of 20 and the AI only manages to kill 3-4 for me. Two or three of the drones move to evade and my whole missile swarm goes for the runners. But I have the distributive targeting set up. Is there a way to get a closer to 1 to 1 kill ratio with intercepting missiles without pulling my hair out? How do I individually assign each missile to a specific target?
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