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Post by Durandal on Oct 7, 2016 16:45:23 GMT
The original design was an armored nose-cone, but after some testing it turns out using a radiation shield as a flat plate seems to provide better performance for less mass (which is doubly beneficial, since it reduces the counterweight necessary to correct the center of mass). Putting a reflector plate in the back doesn't seem to have done anything, but it could probably use some more testing to make sure. I probably am going to have to go with Tukuro's solution of putting a nose gun on to force it to aim closer to the target's center of mass, since the missile guidance algorithm likes to aim behind the target and then make a massive last-minute correction that throws the EFP off target. I'm also working on tweaking the engines to get more reliable, less wobbly guidance (the guidance algorithm likes to oversteer a lot, making the missile unstable and wasting a lot of delta-V on wobbling). Designs should be posted later this afternoon, hopefully. Wonderful. This was one of the first things I tried to build when I got into the ship builder. *sigh* It's gonna be a long workday...
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Post by Durandal on Oct 7, 2016 13:16:40 GMT
If you get juuust the right amount though, it'll reliably drill right through any radiator block you point it at. I've also accidentally discovered that a nuke capped with a dense material will sometimes run a target clean through, with almost no regard for armor of any type or thickness, if it gets a point-blank detonation just right. My current theory is that it's liquifying the cap and launching that through the target, based on the small hole left at the center of the blast and the fact that it never happens if the missile turns sideways before hitting. Also, raising the yield of the nuke caused it to stop happening, I guess because it got too hot and vaporized the cap instead of liquifying it. The effect is very finicky and difficult to reproduce reliably though. It's an amusing way to render an arbitrarily large amount of armor pretty much irrelevant, but unless we get a missile that can reliably get a nuke dead-on target it's likely to not be worth the trouble. Capped as in with a radiation shield? Let's see a design please! Kasaba Howitzer here we come!
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Post by Durandal on Oct 7, 2016 4:26:35 GMT
Well, if a missile has the explosive force to blow up an enemey ship you can't really expect a whole magazine of them not to take your ship out when they go can you?
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Post by Durandal on Oct 5, 2016 5:26:37 GMT
snip Against enemy drones and missiles, the shear volume available to the carrier (and the high DV of the missiles and Hailstorm drones) allow it to trade 1:1 against most enemies. Note: Apologies for attaching the full UserDesigns; I am not going to attempt to isolate the transitive closure of all of this. Do you ever have frame rate issues?
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Post by Durandal on Oct 4, 2016 18:53:49 GMT
I tried to make a gigawatt reactor, and i don't think its possible with the current materials. ThermoelectricFissionReactorModule 1.01 GW Thermoelectric Fission Reactor ReactorCoreDimensions_m 0.1 0.1 NuclearReactor Coolant Sodium Moderator Diamond ModeratorMass_kg 4 Fuel U-235 Dioxide FuelMass_kg 10 FuelEnrichment_Percent 0.97 ControlRodComposition U-233 Dioxide ControlRodMass_kg 9 NeutronReflector Diamond ReflectorThickness_m 0.58 AverageNeutronFlux__m2_s 2e+020 InnerTurbopump Composition Amorphous Carbon PumpRadius_m 1.1 RotationalSpeed_RPM 420 ThermocoupleInnerDimensions_m 5 5.7 Thermocouple PTypeComposition Tungsten NTypeComposition Tantalum Length_m 0.001 ThermocoupleExitTemperature_K 2500 OuterCoolant Sodium OuterTurbopump Composition Calcium PumpRadius_m 0.8 RotationalSpeed_RPM 600
I could probably shave some mass, but it exists. Welp, time to start building resistojets and big ass lasers.
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Post by Durandal on Oct 4, 2016 0:57:21 GMT
Haven't really looked into using radiation shields as armor, though I can imagine that the game engine might regard them as such. I have them mounted behind my crew modules of course, but not in front as bow armor. Generally, if something is going to penetrate through 2.5 cm RCC, 2.5 cm Boron, 3.5 cm Maraging Steel, and more 5 cm RCC then I wouldn't imagine that a lithium plate would do a whole lot to stop it.
Try making 400+ meter supercruiser with a (couple) ten-meter thick plate(s) of tungsten. That'll stop 'em.
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Post by Durandal on Oct 3, 2016 21:37:37 GMT
I find the "can't intercept, fleet will impact the planet in x hours" after intercept exceeding frustrating at times.
Like I care if a flight of nuclear missiles falls into Neptune? A capships yeah, but it ain't like these missiles are meant to come back.
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Post by Durandal on Oct 3, 2016 12:59:50 GMT
Guys, guys, guys...why must you post beautiful these things before I have to go to work? Any tips on developing engines like these? Trial and error or do you all have a method that you follow? (Somebody slap some of these new engines on a Gt-nuke and post the results.) Has anyone tried one of their super ships out in sandbox? I built a clunky, mostly immobile tungston giga-tube last night that can just sit there and tank fire from several ships for a good while. I'd imagine a few centimeters of diamond is much more effecient than a few meters of tungstun. ;p
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Post by Durandal on Oct 2, 2016 22:10:05 GMT
Since I've had a bug that keeps me from using campaign or sandbox modes, I've just unlocked the design modules and have been messing with them. I'd like to think I've started to get a hand on most of the parts (well, except for conventional guns, coilguns and ammo). This all started with a custom 1 GW laser: It's got much three times the efficiency, an eighth the mass and much better range at a similar radiator temperature - intensity is around 7.7 GW/m2 even at maximum range (250 km - high as it would let me), same as the in-game variant at 33 km. Granted, it's a lot slower to aim, but I figure that kind of range more than makes up for it. Naturally, I decided I wanted to build a ship around said laser, but even this "light" version still outweighed anything I'd ever built several times over, and I realized I'd have to create a monster. This is said monster. I had to post it up against the largest stock design (in terms of length, at least - the fleet carrier might be a bit bigger) because the numbers and shape just don't do it justice - most ships would fit lengthwise across its diameter! It's so large the square cube law actually works in its favor, enabling 10 cm thick armor all over plus a significant whipple shield, while still leaving enough delta-v and acceleration to at least hold up to most stock designs. I had to push the module editor for what it was worth to make engines big enough for it, and as is they're just barely visible on the bottom. With a mass budget like that, stuff almost comes for free - except for the reactor, it's got double redundant everything (even the mega-death laser), and frankly there's probably enough room to fit a second reactor with all its heat disposal equipment too. It takes forever to turn, but with guns pointing every which way, it doesn't need to. As for why this is called Virgil II, Virgil I had all the parts except the propellant tanks at the very front of the ship, so I rearranged them throughout the body to put the crew closer to the CoG and better distribute drone launchers and other parts so they wouldn't all get taken out with a few lucky shots - though with this many guns, lasers and drones, I don't see how anything is getting close to this. Thing's so huge it would probably snap itself in half under its own thrust if it ever tried to turn even with that low acceleration - it's literally half a mile long - and I bet it would need spinal columns to hold itself up. If I could double this it would be on the scale of a star destroyer. How well this would actually work though is moot, because I doubt anyone's going to get the chance to take this bad boy for a spin. 42.7 Gc - that's more than a thousand times my other most expensive ship. You could literally buy a fleet for it, even if you took out seventh-eighths of the price from the twin lasers and basalt fiber. I somehow think 100 regular capitals would do a lot more damage, provided the simulation could handle that many ships. Whether or not the simulation could handle as many guns and drones as this has is questionable too... Nice! I've been waiting for someone to post some sort of monster. I wonder what the biggest ship we could build would be?
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Post by Durandal on Oct 2, 2016 20:59:14 GMT
So for poops and giggle's I made a 1-man crew module last night. It's simple enough so I won't bother with the details, but when I attempted to attach it to a Stinger drone it came up as requiring 18 crew. Engineering officers, weapon officers, plumbing and waste management, ect. I assume there's some sort of metric needed for control functions, but it strikes me as a little odd that such a "small" ship couldn't be manned by a single crewman.I know that all ships are rated for 6 month missions minimal, but it would be interesting if there an adjustable setting to modify this. I could see it having applications for remote controlled short-range interceptor missiles that others have mentioned elsewhere.
(Not that a 1-man ship would be wise, efficient, or effective. But still. ;p)
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Post by Durandal on Oct 2, 2016 18:49:48 GMT
Why try to avoid missiles in the first place? Beam drones seem to be pretty good at picking them off. Haven't had much experience with the game yet but so far even a decent amount of beam drones can destroy large number of missiles. This is what I'm seeing. Even using just a few of the stock YAG green lasers, I can pick off most missile salvos with ease. I would think that with the progress people have been making with reactors and lasers an effective "shield" could easily be made to counter missile waves. Also, has anyone built any sort if conventional cannon-based CWIS?
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Post by Durandal on Sept 30, 2016 16:08:48 GMT
Quick question- how do you get a custom payload as an option to be fired from a cannon? All the times i have made a payload it does not show up in the options after i save it, only the generic HE , flak, the 2 nukes and the 2 decoys options. The word payload is used in two places. It means a module type in module designer (of type flare module, nuke module or explosive module) and a ship type (one with remote control and no engines) in ship designer. To mount your nuke on a coilgun, in ship designer make a new ship of type payload with that nuke, remote control and armor. Or slap a small rocket engine on it and you have a gyeojet.
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Post by Durandal on Sept 30, 2016 15:05:11 GMT
My bid for "lightest 10kt nuke": And for when you need a nuke you can use to cheat at bowling: (Although I think that at this point making smaller nukes is a bit silly; the detonator and armor begin to outweigh the warhead.) That "bowling ball"... that's more like a nuclear carrot.
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Post by Durandal on Sept 30, 2016 2:41:56 GMT
Here's the design I'm most proud of so far. Based on some of the other half-armor designs that I've seen, but taken a bit further. The main focus was on minimizing the total amount of hull that faces the enemy and protecting the radiators. All the modules are stock, and I'm sure that with some tweaking I can get a much more efficient layout with customized radiators better reactors, and longer ranged weapons. I used the Mk-I and Mk-II versions to beat Vesta with, and this is essentially a larger combined version of it's predecessors. The Mk-I was basically a modified escort carrier, and the Mk-II omitted the drone launchers in favor of more point defense. A fleet of 2 Mk-Is and 3 Mk-IIs were enough to beat Vesta with zero casualties. They practically eat drones. I plan on making a dedicated anti-drone destroyer to serve as an escort to this ship or to the Mk-IV which will likely be built from modified modules.
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Post by Durandal on Sept 29, 2016 5:12:49 GMT
I designed some nuclear weapons, they seem much better than the stock ones. I'm not sure if the stock ones are sub-optimal or if this is another supergun-type thing. New striker equivalent, lighter, cheaper, and about twice as powerful. Devastator based, this one is a whole lot cheaper, is lighter, and has almost 4x the yield. I don't want this to be too huge so here's a link with some others:Uhh, I believe I managed to make a 2.27 GIGATON nuke. Could anyone point me out how to take and upload a screenshot.in from steam? Make that 22.7 gigatons. We may have a super gun situation here. *evil laugh*
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