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Post by ironclad6 on Aug 28, 2017 23:02:28 GMT
Hi guys! I've been reading this with quite some interest and I like what ironside6 is doing. May I suggest using much smaller, lower number representations of your ship designs for testing in the game? For example, a 10kT 10TW 1g acceleration 1000km/s rocket can be represented by a 100t 100GW 1g acceleration 1000km/s deltaV model in the game. Same performance and behaviour, but much fewer part numbers and better on-screen performance. Even more importantly, laser defense against missile swarms. If your design can shoot down 4000 missiles using 200 point defense lasers, then how about equipping your in-game representation with only 2 lasers, taking a dead weight penalty for the missing lasers instead? That way, you only need to send 40 missiles on-screen to defeat it. For realism's sake, you could say that each on-screen missile is actually a packet of 100 missiles, and each firing laser is actually a set of 100 networked lasers. The best thing with this approach is that you can fully implement multi-ship testing without crashing the game. Even with 10 ships per side, it's only 400 missiles on screen and 20 lasers firing! Many thanks. I've actually been playing around with this tentatively but I'm still doing my full scale models first to work out what all of the technical, tactical and cultural implications follow on from my starting assumptions. Mostly I'm pretty scientifically literate. My first degree was engineering. That said, fusion and rocket design are were never on my reading lists so I've been aping my way through. I am really glad I've been having this conversation, forcing me to revisit my starting assumptions because already it's materially improved the quality of the story. |
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Post by thorneel on Aug 28, 2017 23:03:46 GMT
That is always the upside. I was previously planning to use P4 fusion. I'm not totally certain which fusion cycle to use now. Everything else I pretty much understood going in but I've more or less aped my way through fusion propulsion. I know that the Adamists will be reverting to Zubrin NSWR designs. D-T: high energy density, moderatly common, 80% of the reaction can't be directed because they are fast neutrons. D-He3: high energy density, quite rare on earth but somewhat abudant on gas giantd, very high charged particle fraction. P4: very high energy, extremely abudant, nearly impossible to ignite, never achieved, unknown reaction charged particle fraction. p-B11: low energy density, quite abudant, nearly 100% charged particle output, extremely hard to ignite. Your best bets are either p-Boron 11 or D-He3. Later comes with many advantages that makes it the better for an warship. p-B11 can be used for world building as an fusion fuel for the civilian sectore. While we're at it, CNO cycle-catalysed proton fusion: like P4, slightly not quite as absurdly impossible to ignite, higher working temperature. Similarly to P4, mostly used for gravity-confined fusion reactors, mostly by the bigger ones. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNO_cycleAt some point I should maybe try my hand at mods and make this one, possibly as a bipropellant with negligible CNO? Also about liquid breathing evoked a few pages before: why would there be splash with direction change? If your crew are in tanks, the liquid shouldn't have anywhere to splash, should it? |
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Post by Kerr on Aug 28, 2017 23:06:25 GMT
HAHA You've made them FASTER!. I've started modelling a variable geometry magnetic confinement nozzle mounted on a blade armature. I'm currently working through how field strength equates to power input from my reactors and how to convert that number into GPA so CDE doesn't hate me. What? "You've made them FASTER!" Uh. |
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Post by ironclad6 on Aug 28, 2017 23:12:02 GMT
D-T: high energy density, moderatly common, 80% of the reaction can't be directed because they are fast neutrons. D-He3: high energy density, quite rare on earth but somewhat abudant on gas giantd, very high charged particle fraction. P4: very high energy, extremely abudant, nearly impossible to ignite, never achieved, unknown reaction charged particle fraction. p-B11: low energy density, quite abudant, nearly 100% charged particle output, extremely hard to ignite. Your best bets are either p-Boron 11 or D-He3. Later comes with many advantages that makes it the better for an warship. p-B11 can be used for world building as an fusion fuel for the civilian sectore. While we're at it, CNO cycle-catalysed proton fusion: like P4, slightly not quite as absurdly impossible to ignite, higher working temperature. Similarly to P4, mostly used for gravity-confined fusion reactors, mostly by the bigger ones. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNO_cycleAt some point I should maybe try my hand at mods and make this one, possibly as a bipropellant with negligible CNO? Also about liquid breathing evoked a few pages before: why would there be splash with direction change? If your crew are in tanks, the liquid shouldn't have anywhere to splash, should it? 1) I'll look again a pseudo-stellar fusions once I work out how to generate enough power onboard ship to actually confine them. If anyone has any fusion power mods I'm missing I'd love to see them. 2) If the tanks are sealed then my crew is going to have to be plumbed in and utterly restrained with no scope for being able to usefully adjust one's air line etc. I've played games like that before when I didn't have an elephant on my chest. It's a cool idea but definitely way cooler in concept than in application. 3)Yes make mods. |
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Post by ironclad6 on Aug 28, 2017 23:16:05 GMT
HAHA You've made them FASTER!. I've started modelling a variable geometry magnetic confinement nozzle mounted on a blade armature. I'm currently working through how field strength equates to power input from my reactors and how to convert that number into GPA so CDE doesn't hate me. What? "You've made them FASTER!" Uh. Magnetic fields have negligible mass. |
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Post by Kerr on Aug 28, 2017 23:18:46 GMT
What? "You've made them FASTER!" Uh. Magnetic fields have negligible mass. I don't think saying magnetics fields have negligible mass is right. Its an extreme understandment. You mean superconducting magnets? |
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Post by ironclad6 on Aug 28, 2017 23:29:02 GMT
Magnetic fields have negligible mass. I don't think saying magnetics fields have negligible mass is right. Its an extreme understandment. You mean superconducting magnets? Eventually I'll work out the maths... |
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Post by matterbeam on Aug 28, 2017 23:34:16 GMT
Kerr: Considering the sizes of the ships involved, I think that a lot of technologies neglected for their mass penalties or energy requirements start to edge out over simpler and cheaper designs through scale savings. Look at the proton-boron11 fusion reaction. Compared to D-T, it is much harder to ignite and requires a frikking particle accelerator on top of all the usual fusion machinery! The downside is slightly lower efficiency and neutron radiations to be shielded against? Simple choice to make, right? At such a large scale, the particle accelerator is smaller than the gigawatt lasers you mount several of. The efficiency difference amounts to kilotons of mass saved or gained... and neutron radiation becomes terawatts of waste heat you cannot avoid or even realistically deal with. So, my suggestion is to go with proton-boron11 fuel. Your accelerator might be powerful enough to brute force the protons through the electron barrier a solid boron target has, allowing for a much simpler design that doesn't need a separate power and cooling loop for drive lasers. Using a separate propellant as afterburner might not be a great idea. Your magnetic fields will be tailored to deflect alpha nuclei in normal operations. Another much stronger layer of magnets would be needed for oxygen ions from the water plasma, since charge mass ratio is worse, plus the complexity of preventing the two fields from negatively interacting. The whole apparatus is dead weight outside of afterburner mode. It might be simpler to use helium as afterburner propellant! Or, if you only need thrust for short bursts, the raw power of nuclear thermal engines. ironclad6: I'd like to point out that filling your munitions with metallic hydrogen propellant gives them big weaknesses: your enemy only has to compromise the metallic hydrogen container or indirectly heat up any point of the propellant to decomposition temperature to make the whole thing blow up. Compare this to a less performant hydrogen a propelled rocket. Poking holes will just let hydrogen leak, excess pressure from heating can be vented. Metallic hydrogen? Blows up. As for power generation on fusion ships, magnetohydrodynamics on the main drive magnets allow 1-50%+ of the exhaust stream's output to be converted into electricity. My knowledge is a lot less formal than yours it seems, but is built on a lot of personal work and reading the conclusions of long-standing discussions by more knowledgeable people 
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Post by Kerr on Aug 28, 2017 23:36:40 GMT
I don't think saying magnetics fields have negligible mass is right. Its an extreme understandment. You mean superconducting magnets? Eventually I'll work out the maths... You just have to convert the fields energy in joules and then divide it by 299792458(^2). Maybe few nanograms at most. |
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Post by Kerr on Aug 28, 2017 23:46:30 GMT
matterbeamMagnetohydrodynamics only sound good for powering high power demnanding things like lasers or your engine laser/particle beam array and magnetic nozzle. You still need to get power independantly from your drive. To even start the fusion and to not need keeping your fusion engine on 24/7
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Post by thorneel on Aug 28, 2017 23:46:55 GMT
2) If the tanks are sealed then my crew is going to have to be plumbed in and utterly restrained with no scope for being able to usefully adjust one's air line etc. I've played games like that before when I didn't have an elephant on my chest. It's a cool idea but definitely way cooler in concept than in application. The idea is that they are breathing the liquid itself, so they don't have air in their lungs. They should not only survive but remain functional at much higher g - that is, they will even feel it less. The tank should be big enough for them to move around and work at their station, so they should be fine able to continue their operation. If you have seen Abyss, at some point it depicts the use of liquid breathing (intended for extreme depth pressure instead of g). There is a scene where a rat is immersed in breathing liquid until it start breathing it, to demonstrate the stuff. As far as I know, it was a real scene, with the rat actually breathing the liquid. Not sure about the extreme pressure stuff and human trials as of today, but the concept is proven for animals at least, so it should be fine in this context. |
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Post by ironclad6 on Aug 28, 2017 23:47:35 GMT
Kerr : Considering the sizes of the ships involved, I think that a lot of technologies neglected for their mass penalties or energy requirements start to edge out over simpler and cheaper designs through scale savings. Look at the proton-boron11 fusion reaction. Compared to D-T, it is much harder to ignite and requires a frikking particle accelerator on top of all the usual fusion machinery! The downside is slightly lower efficiency and neutron radiations to be shielded against? Simple choice to make, right? At such a large scale, the particle accelerator is smaller than the gigawatt lasers you mount several of. The efficiency difference amounts to kilotons of mass saved or gained... and neutron radiation becomes terawatts of waste heat you cannot avoid or even realistically deal with. So, my suggestion is to go with proton-boron11 fuel. Your accelerator might be powerful enough to brute force the protons through the electron barrier a solid boron target has, allowing for a much simpler design that doesn't need a separate power and cooling loop for drive lasers. Using a separate propellant as afterburner might not be a great idea. Your magnetic fields will be tailored to deflect alpha nuclei in normal operations. Another much stronger layer of magnets would be needed for oxygen ions from the water plasma, since charge mass ratio is worse, plus the complexity of preventing the two fields from negatively interacting. The whole apparatus is dead weight outside of afterburner mode. It might be simpler to use helium as afterburner propellant! Or, if you only need thrust for short bursts, the raw power of nuclear thermal engines. ironclad6 : I'd like to point out that filling your munitions with metallic hydrogen propellant gives them big weaknesses: your enemy only has to compromise the metallic hydrogen container or indirectly heat up any point of the propellant to decomposition temperature to make the whole thing blow up. Compare this to a less performant hydrogen a propelled rocket. Poking holes will just let hydrogen leak, excess pressure from heating can be vented. Metallic hydrogen? Blows up. As for power generation on fusion ships, magnetohydrodynamics on the main drive magnets allow 1-50%+ of the exhaust stream's output to be converted into electricity. My knowledge is a lot less formal than yours it seems, but is built on a lot of personal work and reading the conclusions of long-standing discussions by more knowledgeable people Fuckin' hell that's solid gold. Don't suppose you know of any mods for modelling fusion power? I am sure I saw one around somewhere. You seem like you'd know. |
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Post by ironclad6 on Aug 28, 2017 23:49:14 GMT
matterbeam Magnetohydrodynamics only sound good for powering high power demnanding things like lasers or your engine laser/particle beam array and magnetic nozzle. You still need to get power independantly from your drive. To even start the fusion and to not need keeping your fusion engine on 24/7 Use a thorium reactor for hotel power then? |
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Post by Kerr on Aug 28, 2017 23:58:56 GMT
matterbeam Magnetohydrodynamics only sound good for powering high power demnanding things like lasers or your engine laser/particle beam array and magnetic nozzle. You still need to get power independantly from your drive. To even start the fusion and to not need keeping your fusion engine on 24/7 Use a thorium reactor for hotel power then? Depends wether or not the reactor can supply enough energy to kick start fusion. Igniting aa small piece of fusion fuel which is then partly converted back to electric energy, but if this process can produce more energy every new cycle fusion is questionable. Even if, this process could take some time. Making the ship an easy target. There is no fusion power mod in CDE, that would require a new custom module. Fusion engines currently are just normal chemical engines with uber fuel. For p-B11 power just use a percantage you feel is appropiate of the engines thrust power, multiply this power with your MPH efficiency and you got your output. With other fuels its a bit more complex. |
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Post by ironclad6 on Aug 29, 2017 0:16:27 GMT
 The Adamite Dreadnought Jefferson Davis, reworked in to hopefully her final identity, a 1.14 million ton NSWR rocket. Dirty, crude and Brutal. |
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