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Post by ironclad6 on Jan 18, 2018 9:33:34 GMT
Kerr I've been keeping up with your posting activity. Ship to ship combat is a game of long range guided projectiles and close in weapon systems. The biggest, most powerful ships will tend to boost their missiles from coaxial rail guns but everyone else is less fortunate. If combat closes to knife fight range then guided projectiles give way to rapid fire bursts of inert tungsten slugs. I've just finished a scene where the female lead is strapped into a G-couch one row down from a dude who takes a 6kg rail gun slug through his chest. The rest of the crew (professional spacers) have to apply patches while trying to disregard the fountain of blood and viscera going hither and yon under the impetus of thrust-gravity. I'm really focused on making sure the technical detail serves the human drama.
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Post by Kerr on Jan 18, 2018 9:38:07 GMT
Kerr I've been keeping up with your posting activity. Ship to ship combat is a game of long range guided projectiles and close in weapon systems. The biggest, most powerful ships will tend to boost their missiles from coaxial rail guns but everyone else is less fortunate. If combat closes to knife fight range then guided projectiles give way to rapid fire bursts of inert tungsten slugs. I've just finished a scene where the female lead is strapped into a G-couch one row down from a dude who takes a 6kg rail gun slug through his chest. The rest of the crew (professional spacers) have to apply patches while trying to disregard the fountain of blood and viscera going hither and yon under the impetus of thrust-gravity. I'm really focused on making sure the technical detail serves the human drama. I think hydrostatic shock would pulverize his torso at orbital velocities. So no lasers huh? |
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Post by ironclad6 on Jan 18, 2018 9:42:36 GMT
Kerr I've been keeping up with your posting activity. Ship to ship combat is a game of long range guided projectiles and close in weapon systems. The biggest, most powerful ships will tend to boost their missiles from coaxial rail guns but everyone else is less fortunate. If combat closes to knife fight range then guided projectiles give way to rapid fire bursts of inert tungsten slugs. I've just finished a scene where the female lead is strapped into a G-couch one row down from a dude who takes a 6kg rail gun slug through his chest. The rest of the crew (professional spacers) have to apply patches while trying to disregard the fountain of blood and viscera going hither and yon under the impetus of thrust-gravity. I'm really focused on making sure the technical detail serves the human drama. I think hydrostatic shock would pulverize his torso at orbital velocities. So no lasers huh? No. I was reading a lot of yours and Matterbeam's work and just came to the conclusion that they're not worth the trade offs. Lasers do appear in the setting but they're really not the central feature that they used to be. Ultimately it was an editorial decision rather than a technical one. I'm sure someone could make it all work but I decided I'd rather get stuck in with what I have already gotten down. |
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Post by Kerr on Jan 18, 2018 9:47:37 GMT
I think hydrostatic shock would pulverize his torso at orbital velocities. So no lasers huh? No. I was reading a lot of yours and Matterbeam's work and just came to the conclusion that they're not worth the trade offs. Lasers do appear in the setting but they're really not the central feature that they used to be. Ultimately it was an editorial decision rather than a technical one. I'm sure someone could make it all work but I decided I'd rather get stuck in with what I have already gotten down. Trade offs? Could you be a bit more specific? |
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Post by matterbeam on Jan 18, 2018 13:38:47 GMT
I think hydrostatic shock would pulverize his torso at orbital velocities. So no lasers huh? No. I was reading a lot of yours and Matterbeam's work and just came to the conclusion that they're not worth the trade offs. Lasers do appear in the setting but they're really not the central feature that they used to be. Ultimately it was an editorial decision rather than a technical one. I'm sure someone could make it all work but I decided I'd rather get stuck in with what I have already gotten down. I have to agree here. I would suggest that if you do not want lasers to become a dominant weapon system, that you do not eliminate the technology completely, but simply point out their disadvantages to explain why they are not used. |
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Post by ironclad6 on Jan 18, 2018 17:19:35 GMT
No. I was reading a lot of yours and Matterbeam's work and just came to the conclusion that they're not worth the trade offs. Lasers do appear in the setting but they're really not the central feature that they used to be. Ultimately it was an editorial decision rather than a technical one. I'm sure someone could make it all work but I decided I'd rather get stuck in with what I have already gotten down. Trade offs? Could you be a bit more specific? Basically lasers compete with reactors for hull space and compete with potentially more efficient weapon systems for power. |
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Post by Kerr on Jan 18, 2018 17:33:28 GMT
Trade offs? Could you be a bit more specific? Basically lasers compete with reactors for hull space and compete with potentially more efficient weapon systems for power. Energy efficiency doesn't alway equals effectiveness. Lasers suffer from very low outlet temperature most of the time. Plasma armature slugs launched from a railgun at hundreds of km/s make a good competitor, they can operate at pretty high temperatures and achieve decent efficiencies. But nerfing lasers can most easily down by limiting the power to weight ratio, 1kW/kg for FEL's means that a single GW requires a entire kiloton of beam generator mass. Your 3x 20GW lasers would mass 60kT of highly complex machinery that requires cryogenic temperatures and can get only 65% efficiency for 1300K outlet (heat pumps included to efficiency and mass). And then you need exotic radiators to dissipate that much heat without being turned into a easy target. And 200nm is the lower limit for your laser weaponry. If you don't want liniacs potentially kilometers long to produce hard x-ray focused through diffraction x-ray crystal cavities up to light minute ranges. |
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Post by ironclad6 on Jan 18, 2018 22:29:25 GMT
Basically lasers compete with reactors for hull space and compete with potentially more efficient weapon systems for power. Energy efficiency doesn't alway equals effectiveness. Lasers suffer from very low outlet temperature most of the time. Plasma armature slugs launched from a railgun at hundreds of km/s make a good competitor, they can operate at pretty high temperatures and achieve decent efficiencies. But nerfing lasers can most easily down by limiting the power to weight ratio, 1kW/kg for FEL's means that a single GW requires a entire kiloton of beam generator mass. Your 3x 20GW lasers would mass 60kT of highly complex machinery that requires cryogenic temperatures and can get only 65% efficiency for 1300K outlet (heat pumps included to efficiency and mass). And then you need exotic radiators to dissipate that much heat without being turned into a easy target. And 200nm is the lower limit for your laser weaponry. If you don't want liniacs potentially kilometers long to produce hard x-ray focused through diffraction x-ray crystal cavities up to light minute ranges. I've run numerous tests. Lasers are less effective as CIWS compared with kinetic energy weapons of equal power draw and sufficient rate of fire. They're also heavier and don't slew to new targets as fast. They also suffer from needing to hang massive exotic radiators off hull space that may already be needed to cool the main reactors. The final version of Morokweng and her consorts look radically different from her predecessors. |
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Post by ironclad6 on Jan 19, 2018 0:19:32 GMT
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Post by bigbombr on Jan 19, 2018 7:49:43 GMT
I've run numerous tests. Lasers are less effective as CIWS compared with kinetic energy weapons of equal power draw and sufficient rate of fire. They're also heavier and don't slew to new targets as fast. They also suffer from needing to hang massive exotic radiators off hull space that may already be needed to cool the main reactors. The final version of Morokweng and her consorts look radically different from her predecessors. "Lasers are less effective as CIWS compared with kinetic energy weapons of equal power draw and sufficient rate of fire." Depends on what you consider "close in defense". With lasers, your CIWS umbrella can extend several Mm. One of the interesting things about lasers is that there is no need to differentiate between '"CIWS" and "main battery". Your multi-GW laser will be just ass effective against missiles as against manned spacecraft. "Don't slew around to targets as fast." In my experience, laser turrets slew considerably faster than kinetic weaponry of equal power draw. "They also suffer from needing to hang massive exotic radiators off hull space that may already be needed to cool the main reactors." And kinetic weaponry/missile launchers require ammunition. Which one ends up being lighter depends purely on the duration of the mission, how much targets you have to engage. If you engage only a few vulnerable targets, missiles are the lightest, as they require neither bulky cannons (or railguns, coilguns, ram-accelerators, ...) nor heavy radiators. If you engage better defended/more numerous targets, kinetic weaponry might be the lightest solution (the mass penalty of the 'gun' component is offset with lighter ammunition when compared with missiles). If you engage a vast amount of targets, lasers are the lightest as the mass penalty of the radiators are offset by the mass of the massive amount of munition other weapon systems would require. |
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Post by Kerr on Jan 19, 2018 13:57:07 GMT
Energy efficiency doesn't alway equals effectiveness. Lasers suffer from very low outlet temperature most of the time. Plasma armature slugs launched from a railgun at hundreds of km/s make a good competitor, they can operate at pretty high temperatures and achieve decent efficiencies. But nerfing lasers can most easily down by limiting the power to weight ratio, 1kW/kg for FEL's means that a single GW requires a entire kiloton of beam generator mass. Your 3x 20GW lasers would mass 60kT of highly complex machinery that requires cryogenic temperatures and can get only 65% efficiency for 1300K outlet (heat pumps included to efficiency and mass). And then you need exotic radiators to dissipate that much heat without being turned into a easy target. And 200nm is the lower limit for your laser weaponry. If you don't want liniacs potentially kilometers long to produce hard x-ray focused through diffraction x-ray crystal cavities up to light minute ranges. I've run numerous tests. Lasers are less effective as CIWS compared with kinetic energy weapons of equal power draw and sufficient rate of fire. They're also heavier and don't slew to new targets as fast. They also suffer from needing to hang massive exotic radiators off hull space that may already be needed to cool the main reactors. The final version of Morokweng and her consorts look radically different from her predecessors. CIWS and turret mass can easily be fixed by one laser type, phased arrays. That can steer the beam electronically near instantly, only being limited by the speed of light the beam needs to cross point A to B. Exotic radiators significantly reduce requirements in area and mass for dissipating the waste heat, you could get multiple hundred kW/kg for the radiators, or use dusty plasma radiators that don't have a physical form and can even be used as regenerative whipple shields for hypervelocity rounds (+50km/s). bigbombr Very well done response |
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Post by Kerr on Jan 19, 2018 18:18:08 GMT
How are the radiators that hot? And 0.1c Dv for those interceptors? |
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Post by ironclad6 on Jan 19, 2018 19:50:10 GMT
How are the radiators that hot? And 0.1c Dv for those interceptors? The radiators are at about 4000 k and the interceptor dv budget includes six huge drop tanks. |
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Post by The Astronomer on Jan 20, 2018 0:41:20 GMT
How are the radiators that hot? And 0.1c Dv for those interceptors? The radiators are at about 4000 k and the interceptor dv budget includes six huge drop tanks. I am as sure as **** that color is not 4000 K. It's more like 7000 or 8000 K and that's more like LDR emulators than normal radiators. |
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Post by ironclad6 on Jan 20, 2018 2:20:50 GMT
To an extent you are correct. I am emulating dusty plasma radiators. However I can tell you the reactors are running at 4435K.
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