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Post by Durandal on Jul 27, 2017 3:30:49 GMT
Here's a .50 caliber machine gun. Simple and effective for around 300 years and counting.
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Post by Durandal on Jul 27, 2017 3:21:20 GMT
Here's a light conventional gun submission. To meet the challenge requirements I had to replace a 10cm sgel barrel sleeve with diamond, but it actually improved accuracy a bit. I have multiple standardized versions of the cannon loaded with different types of shells (flak, rocket-assisted NEFP, inert rad shield slug, ect.) all with similar velcoity and accuracy specs. I find the 105t NEFP shell to be my bread and butter though, just like with micro-missiles. Also, here it is mounted on a certain experimental drone.
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Post by Durandal on Jul 27, 2017 2:52:44 GMT
Here's my totally reasonable and legitimate submission. Please make sure to like this post Well folks, that's it. Game over. Shut it all down. We now have potato guns in space.
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Post by Durandal on Jul 27, 2017 2:08:35 GMT
(Re)Presenting the Battlecruiser Flight-Ib, now with Laser Boom Structural Supports™! A quick and dirty fix hooked up to a 171mW fission reactor as a proof of concept. Since almost all structural, linkage, and life support systems are abstracted as aluminium I think it would be a fare assumption that the power and optical links between the laser lenses and engines can be abstracted by a large thermally-redundant aluminium radiator. A diamond coating serves to provide laser and nukeflash damage. They're a negligible mass and credit cost. *Note, I have not tried to do any calculations to see just what sort of forces would might act on them to see if they'd be structurally sound or not. Just taking a SWAG at it. As proud of I am of how pretty this ship is, I'm on the fence on accepting it as a plausible design. On the one hand we assume with any ship that linkages are abstracted out. On the other hand these supports are not explicitly modeled into the game using whatever calculations are factored into ship design. On the gripping hand I think they look damn cool.
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Post by Durandal on Jul 26, 2017 23:04:33 GMT
This is a 10 km/s flak railgun, with 2 MW of power attached (radiators not included) for a fire rate of 930 RPM. The railgun can take up to 8 MW of power (3700 RPM) before encountering overheating issues. 4500 ammo rounds included. 412 mc cost for firing 1 second's worth of ammo. Needless to say, with an energy of 57.8 kJ for each shot, a human could not take the recoil of firing it (or the radiation of the reactors...) Code: View Attachment(uses my standard flak rounds and standard 1.01 MW reactor) Dammit Apophys, I thought I was done looting your designs for ideas! On a semi-unrelated note, does anyone remember where that modded Blackbox module for the astronaut was posted?
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Post by Durandal on Jul 25, 2017 2:13:26 GMT
So after playing around with some apophys Electronics modules, I've made pretty good progress on my idea of a dedicated combat laserstar. You'll notice that the primary feature is spaced "laser booms" that ring the hull. It's an idea I messed around with a lot during the update that made lasers hyper-fragile. At the time I used a ring of redundant 1MW point defense lasers that were able to quickly outgun heavier enemy lasers and gain las superiority. This is the same concept but scaled up. It is armed with 20 [AE] 100MW lasers, each with a triple redundant turret. Against non-laserstar warship it will quickly attain las superiority and proceed to snipe enemy turrets at leisure. The secondary battery of [AE] based 50 km/s railguns allow for killshots or for point defense. It carries my standard spam cans of NEFP ( or brimstone) equipped 105t micro-missiles, along with two silos of heaver missiles (soon to be replaced upgraded hyper-velocity KKVs) In practice, the booms allow for a greater amount of weaponry to be brought nose-forward while open volume allows rounds to literally pass through them. The heavily sloped forward hull is effective at deflecting sandblaster rounds at Mm ranges while allowing for large droptanks to be stowed behind the armor's shadow. Duel NTR/MPD propulsion allows the ship both strategic and (limited) tactical maneuverability. I attempted to use large lateral resistojet thrusters, but they proved problematic and more mass than they were worth. The primary [AE]1GW reactors are housed in the rear engine module while a secondary 1MW reactor is housed in the rear section of the forward hull. If needed, the ship can "go dark" and operate under the 1MW reactor while still able to launch missiles, so decoy flares to be added at some future point. *edit add* One major drawback in my opinion of "standard" laserstars is that if the enemy manages to get off a burst of KE fire, the ship is practically defenseless. No armor sloping means that even a modest KE burst can puncture the laserstar hull through the middle. This hull design is intended to combine the best of needleships and laserstars, with lessons learned in broadside design. While a basic laserstar is certainly fare more economical, it's my hope that further development of hypervelocity missiles may shift the meta back towards mixed-battery warships/capital drones. As a side note, this idea is why I am very much in favor of parallel staging. I could easily see the truss, laser booms, and rear engine modules being a "first stage" for a smaller more conventional ship. If sufficient damage is done to the "tail", why not jettison it fight onward with the armored bullethead? *edit 2* If the use of spaced armor in this way is seen as an exploit, I could easily add groups of stand-in radiators to simulate the mass of support structures or high tension cables.
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Post by Durandal on Jul 24, 2017 19:45:40 GMT
Boiling uranium internal combustion engines...
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Post by Durandal on Jul 23, 2017 2:52:58 GMT
I've found amorphous carbon to be exceptionally light and reasonably cheap. After a quick comparison I find it to mass less than selenium and cost far less than VCS.
Whether you accept shooting gas-filled coal balloons at your foe is up to you I guess.
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Post by Durandal on Jul 19, 2017 19:14:19 GMT
45 degrees is a decent angle, but have you attempted even steeper armor slopes?
I find that nose on, my standard diamond<graphogel<boron filiment<"bottom" reflects most types of damage to a reasonable degree. The main vulnerabilities are weapon mounts. Im afk so I don't know the exact angle though.
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Post by Durandal on Jul 19, 2017 15:20:49 GMT
Well, you can't really orbit the Trojan asteroids as their gravity is too weak. What you'll do is either match their heliocentric orbit or latch onto as asteroid and melt it for resources until the fighting starts. You can even prepare the terrain, like in modern tank combat, by digging up rough shields to hide behind. Trench warfare IN SPAAAACE!
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Post by Durandal on Jul 18, 2017 13:43:47 GMT
I also get very poor performance in the gas giant sysytems which I blame on my computer.
Does anyone have some sort of turbo "gaming PC" rig they play on? Any performance issues?
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Post by Durandal on Jul 17, 2017 23:20:47 GMT
Working on a cheaper/smaller version of my Thor AP missile. 5 Missiles with a bit more than 10kg shrapnell mass each tearing a hole clean through my test target with 1m Graphite aerogel, 1mm osmium wipple shield, 2cm of VCS and 1cm of bassalt fibre. Relative velocity was 5.5-6km/s, the missile has an acceleration of 130g wet, 592g dry. Maybe I'm behind the times of on engine design, but 130 g ? Does it use modded materials? Mind sharing the design?
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Post by Durandal on Jul 17, 2017 23:03:18 GMT
If it's outside the amror it's meant to be shot off. May as well stuff your Whipple shields with fuel. Something something heavy water Habbabuk
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Post by Durandal on Jul 17, 2017 20:16:16 GMT
If you're engaging the enemy properly from at at least 1Mm and they manage to get close enough to shoot the radiators I'd say you've lost already, broadside or not. how fast can a laser pop a drop tank? If it's outside the amror it's meant to be shot off.
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Post by Durandal on Jul 17, 2017 18:22:47 GMT
Ok, then what is the difference between flyby and intercept? Every time I choose intercept my missiles try to match match vector (bearing and velocity) with the target. This uses more delta-V and certainly more time. Flyby seems more like a missile attack, doesn't it? Well, anyway, let me play around a bit... Intercept means generally "get into weapons range and stay there". Generally good for extremely long range railguns/lasers/coilguns. Basically it tries to match the trajectory of the target. Flyby usually means "burn past them as fast as possible". Essential for missiles, and conventional gun armed drones and ships to reduce time not within good firing range. It will use lots of DeltaV to accelerate to the target as quick as possible. Well I'll be damn, I didn't realize that.
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