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Post by Durandal on Oct 10, 2016 4:17:07 GMT
snip Have you seen the Nuclear Explosive Formed Penetrators we've been building?
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Post by Durandal on Oct 9, 2016 13:44:05 GMT
I can't stop thinking that maybe , just maybe we are all making a mistake with those hot steamy incredibly small reactors. I know that gigantic amounts of power are very tempting but , with all those kinetic missiles , nukes and shrapnel flying about I can't stop thinking about flares , and I can't think of any viable way to pump gigawatts of energy at 2500K for more than milliseconds. Maybe the way are more efficient ways to fool the missiles - like those small hot reactors instead of flares that somebody mentioned... but maybe , just maybe the way is... less power. I'm currently trying to restrict my power consumption. I slapped one of the big 13MW stock reactors back , instead of the optimized one that I had on my test hull... . Sure its more than 10 times bigger. Sure the radiators are at 1200k , but now my flares are actually viable and work for a change. What do you think ? I've been wanting to develop purpose-built reactors for each of my ships classes. No point in carrying around extra mass for an extra 2MW of power and heat that I'm not using. I need a better understanding of the reactor mechanics to do so however, and my degree isn't in nuclear engineering.
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Post by Durandal on Oct 9, 2016 12:11:05 GMT
In steam, by default hitting F12 will take a screenshot through their overlay. I don't know why, but I've never gotten this to work either. I've never adjusted my screenshot settings in steam. All my screenshot in have been made using a snipping tool.
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Post by Durandal on Oct 9, 2016 1:47:31 GMT
Argonbalt, your ships look beautiful. I wonder, what is the lean animalistic purpose of that gold piping there? Joking aside, they look great. I particularly like your laser destroyer.
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Post by Durandal on Oct 8, 2016 23:16:20 GMT
What about making a smaller rad shield and setting the count to 3. Do you get 3 separate hole in the target? Or do they go flying in all directions. Maybe you could even have 2 small rads, a spacer and then 1 small rad, or vise versa for some possible scatter effects. Edit: Nvm, I just realized that's what you meant be 3 shields in the same stack layer. I've actually had some luck with double stacked rad-shields. I neglected to mention it, but my the missiles I posted with my frigate used them. And Ross, I'll try adjusting the COG here soon. *edit* And Ross, thanks for sharing.
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Post by Durandal on Oct 8, 2016 21:49:58 GMT
Ross128, would you mind sharing the design for that 1.6Mt warhead that you're using?
On a related note, I've found that an osmium rad-shield combined with an osmium nose-cone is reasonably effective. I'm not sure if it helps or not, but I've set the nose cone to end at 99%, so that that the nose of the missile is open (beneath the layer of aerogel and silica basalt). The nose cone on my 106kt design is 3cm, and the rad shield is 6cm if I remeber right. Kills are fairly consistant at the right angles, but it's difficult to gauge the effective difference given the blink and you'll miss it speed of impact.
*edit*
Ending the nose cone at 99% did prove far more effective than a fully enclosed nose cone when combined with the rad-shield. Again, not sure why exactly, by both with both missiles launched from the same ship, the open-nose missiles achieved more kills.
I've also made attempts and mixing up the layout of the rad-shields. One attempt used a trio of shields in the same "stack layer, which seemed to kill the effect. Another used a much wider shield with the same diameter as the missile body, at the same thickness as the shields I've been using, which again seemed to have not trigger the effect. I tried adding an armored collar of Titanium Hafnium Carbide (given its thermal and mechanical properties that I've found useful in other applications) and this didn't seem to do anything either (except for slowing down the missile).
Any advice for eliminating the "wobble" of the missile? I've modified my engines to reduce their gimble speed which seemed to work a little. I think someone mentioned using a counter-weight somewhere.
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Post by Durandal on Oct 8, 2016 16:30:36 GMT
Kiloton-range warheads are likely to still be capable of generating the EFP effect and allow for even smaller, more accurate missiles for fleets that want to further sacrifice area damage for larger volleys and more direct hits. This is true. And I'm very impressed with some of the decane designs I've seen around here. Might have to switch from methane...
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Post by Durandal on Oct 8, 2016 4:29:57 GMT
Introducing the Broadside Frigate MK-VII. Incorporating a wide variety of technologies developed by fellow members of the board, the Broadside MK-VII features a 1cm whipple shield of boron, a second 3cm layer of boron, a 15cm armored citadel of Vanadium Chromium Steel, all coated by a 5cm layer of silica aerogel. The ship's slim frontal profile provides full protection to the radiators against incoming fire. 9mm railguns accurate to 50km provide long to mid-range sniping of enemy modules and radiators. A pair of stock ND:YAG lasers and a pair of gimbled 30mm cannons provide close and mid-range defense against incoming missiles, along with 200 1.89kt interceptor missiles. The primary armament consists of 200 106kt Casaba Howitzer missiles. While they still require some finagling, they've proven quite effective against stock enemy designs. Secondary armament consists of 25 Stinger Mk-II drones, mainly intended for CAP duty in the event of a mass enemy missile strike that is expected to get past the interceptor missiles and the lasers. The ship recently solo'd against a fleet of four Gunships, 3 Corvettes, 2 Beamships, and an Escort Carrier without suffering a single hit. *EDIT* Apologies for the crappy formatting and pics. I can post better screenshots if interested.
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Post by Durandal on Oct 8, 2016 2:41:38 GMT
The Nuclear EFP missiles are up in the design thread if anyone wants to look at them. Though after posting it I thought of something that should have been obvious: they were inflicting such massive overkill against anything they were pointed at (if they hit), why not scale them down? They have such an incredible surplus of excessive firepower, sacrificing some of that to make them lighter, cheaper, and nimbler has no downsides at all. The new 1.6Mt version is still every bit as excessively lethal as the old 10MT version (well okay, maybe not every bit, but I haven't made any targets tough enough to tell the difference!), but allows me to make the Osmium cap much thinner without vaporizing it. The thinner cap saves so much weight that I can scale the fuel tank down and go back to using a single gimballed rocket, because the missile is no longer suffering excessive wobble induced by the heavy warhead. I can even remove the counterweight without losing guidance. And because the missiles are so much smaller and cheaper, I can bring hundreds of them and launch them in flights of 20 or more, solving the inconsistency problem with volume. For small warheads at least, I see little or no reason not to put a thin layer of Osmium on the nose just to enhance their lethality (the 1.6Mt NEFP uses just 6mm). Confirmed nuclear charges work. Still testing.
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Post by Durandal on Oct 7, 2016 19:46:46 GMT
I didn't realize that gigantic 12.4 GW reactor was meant to be practical. Well then. Since there's actually a desire for even higher power than my 1GW reactor, I feel compelled to upscale my design. Here's 10 GW. It comes at 151 t of mass, so it's marginally more mass efficient than my 1GW (at the cost of ballooned volume, so armoring will suck). In the course of building this, I find that a slightly lower efficiency than the maximum slightly improves the stats here, because of the absurd draw of the inner turbopump at these scales. The thermocouple can be rearranged to have high radius and low height instead of the current high height and low radius. ThermoelectricFissionReactorModule 10.1 GW Thermoelectric Fission Reactor ReactorCoreDimensions_m 0.25 0.1 NuclearReactor Coolant Sodium Moderator Diamond ModeratorMass_kg 1 Fuel U-235 Dioxide FuelMass_kg 110 FuelEnrichment_Percent 0.97 ControlRodComposition U-233 Dioxide ControlRodMass_kg 99 NeutronReflector Diamond ReflectorThickness_m 0.6 AverageNeutronFlux__m2_s 2e+020 InnerTurbopump Composition Amorphous Carbon PumpRadius_m 2.3 RotationalSpeed_RPM 480 ThermocoupleInnerDimensions_m 13 30 Thermocouple PTypeComposition Tungsten NTypeComposition Tantalum Length_m 0.001 ThermocoupleExitTemperature_K 2500 OuterCoolant Sodium OuterTurbopump Composition Boron PumpRadius_m 0.75 RotationalSpeed_RPM 800 This is all your fault View Attachmentit has 10 km/s of Dv and pulls 3.3 g, there no escape >Power use: 1GW/20GW THE GODS HAVE RISEN
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Post by Durandal on Oct 7, 2016 19:15:31 GMT
Possibly. I'm going to try putting a DU reflector plate behind the warhead, to see if it makes the performance more consistent. I'm not sure if that's modeled, but I was able to replicate the result at much greater distances. I used a 30cm osmium plate on top of a 1 gigaton nuke. I aimed it by placing a weapon on the front, which turns the missile into a "drone". I was able to blast through 2cm of osmium and 1 cm of aramid fibre at a distance of ~10km. EDIT: Nvm, that was just the cannon I mounted. The nuke I use is too powerful and vaporises the plate. Did you say 1 gigaton nuke?
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Post by Durandal on Oct 7, 2016 18:52:47 GMT
Immune to all weapons fire, you say? I think you might want to take a look at what's been brewing in the capital ship armor thread. (though its potential to blast opponents into space dust before it gets hit at all might prove a much better form of immunity than any amount of armor) I insist that you post something design-wise soon, good sir.
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Post by Durandal on Oct 7, 2016 18:47:32 GMT
Looks very similar to a design I tried. I prefer "conventional" drones myself. I *do* need to post my MK-VI Broadside Frigate tonight though. Much better performance than the MK-III I posted earlier.
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Post by Durandal on Oct 7, 2016 18:12:36 GMT
What are you folks building that you need 10 GW reactors???
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Post by Durandal on Oct 7, 2016 17:15:56 GMT
Wonderful. This was one of the first things I tried to build when I got into customization but I couldn't get it to work. 10km armor piercing range you said? From a 109kt warhead? *sigh* It's gonna be a long workday... ____________________________________________________________ You'll have to ask Tukuro about that one (his was about 100Mt though), I've yet to get mine working with anything other than a point-blank detonation. Though I suspect it's mostly a matter of getting the nose pointed at the target. When it does work though, it seems like 10Mt is entirely sufficient to treat any reasonable armor (and a lot of unreasonable armor) like tissue paper. I'm sure it does scale up handily though, if you want to call Luke Skywalker and tell him the trench run won't be necessary. Though at really high yields, a plate thick enough to avoid getting vaporized might get pretty heavy. My mistake on the misquote. Still, if these work properly I think you gents may have revolutionized our little space warfare sim.
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