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Post by apophys on Jul 31, 2017 16:43:32 GMT
I had a go against the laser boat apophys linked and I sort of beat it. That is to say, both ships died but mine had less people and credits in it so it's way more efficient  The laser boat has practically no thrust, so I don't need to worry about dodging, which means that conventional guns can easily hit it even from 1000km away. My design. It's ~400kc cheaper and has one less crew than the ship apophys used. A few seconds into the combat. My ship died but it managed to squirt off a few hundred rounds before that. Now we wait. About a minute later, the bullets are still on their way. Getting closer though. And here we go. The laser boat died instantly since it has no armor. There's only a few broken pieces left of it. This only works because of terrible AI; it stops trying to dodge as soon as all enemies are dead (even if projectiles are en route). The acceleration would be more than enough to dodge conventional cannons if it actually tried. 10 mg 0 acceleration would move the ship over 700 m distance (more than enough to dodge everything) in 2 minutes. Here's a calculator.Also note that given the time to kill (seconds), the laser ship would be effective much farther out than 1 Mm, giving it even more time to dodge. As lasers scale up, it just becomes more favorable: a laser can be made that would theoretically be effective to 40 Mm while able to dodge projectiles from a 200 km/s railgun with an MPD, and cheaper than the aforementioned 200 km/s railgun. Finally, I could use a fleet of drones instead of a capital (drones are my normal way of doing things). You would not be able to score a mutual kill against the entire swarm. The AI handles drones even worse than this ship though, so it's quite hard to properly test against them. |
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Post by Durandal on Jul 31, 2017 16:48:46 GMT
I had a go against the laser boat apophys linked and I sort of beat it. That is to say, both ships died but mine had less people and credits in it so it's way more efficient The laser boat has practically no thrust, so I don't need to worry about dodging, which means that conventional guns can easily hit it even from 1000km away. My design. It's ~400kc cheaper and has one less crew than the ship apophys used. A few seconds into the combat. My ship died but it managed to squirt off a few hundred rounds before that. Now we wait. About a minute later, the bullets are still on their way. Getting closer though. And here we go. The laser boat died instantly since it has no armor. There's only a few broken pieces left of it. This only works because of terrible AI; it stops trying to dodge as soon as all enemies are dead (even if projectiles are en route). The acceleration would be more than enough to dodge conventional cannons if it actually tried. 10 mg 0 acceleration would move the ship over 700 m distance (more than enough to dodge everything) in 2 minutes. Here's a calculator.Oh that's handy. *edit* Like jtyotjotjipaefvj said, I think hypervelocty kill vehicles have some good potential to beat the "laser gap". Kenetics themselves not so much, but a good sandblaster bomb can do a lot of damage. |
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Post by princesskibble on Jul 31, 2017 17:19:10 GMT
I had a go against the laser boat apophys linked and I sort of beat it. That is to say, both ships died but mine had less people and credits in it so it's way more efficient The laser boat has practically no thrust, so I don't need to worry about dodging, which means that conventional guns can easily hit it even from 1000km away.  My design. It's ~400kc cheaper and has one less crew than the ship apophys used.  A few seconds into the combat. My ship died but it managed to squirt off a few hundred rounds before that. Now we wait.  About a minute later, the bullets are still on their way. Getting closer though.  And here we go. The laser boat died instantly since it has no armor. There's only a few broken pieces left of it. This is awesome I love you X3 |
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Post by jtyotjotjipaefvj on Jul 31, 2017 18:06:17 GMT
This only works because of terrible AI; it stops trying to dodge as soon as all enemies are dead (even if projectiles are en route). The acceleration would be more than enough to dodge conventional cannons if it actually tried. 10 mg 0 acceleration would move the ship over 700 m distance (more than enough to dodge everything) in 2 minutes. Here's a calculator.Also note that given the time to kill (seconds), the laser ship would be effective much farther out than 1 Mm, giving it even more time to dodge. As lasers scale up, it just becomes more favorable: a laser can be made that would theoretically be effective to 40 Mm while able to dodge projectiles from a 200 km/s railgun with an MPD, and cheaper than the aforementioned 200 km/s railgun. Finally, I could use a fleet of drones instead of a capital (drones are my normal way of doing things). You would not be able to score a mutual kill against the entire swarm. The AI handles drones even worse than this ship though, so it's quite hard to properly test against them. Well if we can ignore the game's shortcomings I could use a 40km/s sand cloud missile to destroy pretty much anything in the game for pennies, but the intercept mechanics stop working around 10km/s. The only reason I didn't use my 20km/s KE missiles was because it's so frustrating to try to get a proper intercept with high velocity vehicles. Another note on game limitations is the frame rate drops caused by high projectile counts. You could just make a 1-gram railgun with 60k rpm and fill the ~400m volume completely with bullets before your laser ship had time to shoot it down. But it's unfeasible because the game would crash before you'd get even close to the needed projectile counts. Even my 30x60mm cannon ships can crash the game if you're not careful to limit salvo lengths, and they only fire around 60 projectiles per second. |
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Post by jtyotjotjipaefvj on Jul 31, 2017 19:07:11 GMT
But minor edits like this are moot when the cavity costs a whopping 7 Mc due to the lasing rod. About a thousand times what it should be costing. Well the long lasing rod gives it a lot more power per watt. At 1000km, it's 60 times more powerful than the 100MW laser used on your laser boat, so 6 times more efficient per watt. I wasn't too interested in having the best design credit for credit, I just wanted something that has a powerful laser. |
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Post by treptoplax on Jul 31, 2017 19:14:48 GMT
[snip] And here we go. The laser boat died instantly since it has no armor. There's only a few broken pieces left of it. This only works because of terrible AI; it stops trying to dodge as soon as all enemies are dead (even if projectiles are en route). The acceleration would be more than enough to dodge conventional cannons if it actually tried. 10 mg 0 acceleration would move the ship over 700 m distance (more than enough to dodge everything) in 2 minutes. Here's a calculator.Also note that given the time to kill (seconds), the laser ship would be effective much farther out than 1 Mm, giving it even more time to dodge. As lasers scale up, it just becomes more favorable: a laser can be made that would theoretically be effective to 40 Mm while able to dodge projectiles from a 200 km/s railgun with an MPD, and cheaper than the aforementioned 200 km/s railgun. Finally, I could use a fleet of drones instead of a capital (drones are my normal way of doing things). You would not be able to score a mutual kill against the entire swarm. The AI handles drones even worse than this ship though, so it's quite hard to properly test against them. I'm tending to think now that swarms are a better idea than scale-up for both lasers and guns, but they're hard to test because AI doesn't handle it well and the lag is brutal. I've been working with very small railgun drones (will try to post design soon); it's 1 gram at only about 6.5Km/s, but the drone only costs 3.5Kc and is only 20cm diameter (<60cm including radiators!) - the conventional gun variant is 2Kc with a 4g:2Km/s projectile. I was trying to make the guns more survivable with wildly variable results - sometimes they all burned off in a few seconds, sometimes they made it for minutes. After multiple other tests I now I think what's happening is that if the drones outnumber the individual lasers it kills the guns but stays locked onto damaged drones, which are much, much harder to kill for some reason (often make it inside 300Km, which is plenty of time for the slugs to hit) leaving some drones uncontested. It strikes me as odd that the guns are so much more vulnerable than the missiles... nothing seemed to help them much against 100Mw lasers. The only thing that seemed to help a little was making the railgun rails out of depleted uranium (!) - maybe because of the high melting point? |
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Post by apophys on Jul 31, 2017 19:41:09 GMT
After multiple other tests I now I think what's happening is that if the drones outnumber the individual lasers it kills the guns but stays locked onto damaged drones, which are much, much harder to kill for some reason (often make it inside 300Km, which is plenty of time for the slugs to hit) leaving some drones uncontested. It strikes me as odd that the guns are so much more vulnerable than the missiles... nothing seemed to help them much against 100Mw lasers. The only thing that seemed to help a little was making the railgun rails out of depleted uranium (!) - maybe because of the high melting point? If you are playing the laser side, are you marking the guns as a priority target? Does this survival happen when both combatants are AI? If either is yes, that is strange... Completely erasing the module on receiving any damage is unfortunately an artifact of CoaDE's damage model, but disabling a railgun with a laser should probably be easy. If the front of the railgun barrel vaporizes, it makes sense that the characteristics change, accuracy could be completely thrown off, and possibly the gun causes more damage to itself on its next shots. Whereas a missile just has a dumb hunk of armor in front. |
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Post by jtyotjotjipaefvj on Jul 31, 2017 21:02:46 GMT
I did another quick test against a heavier laser boat with 6x1GW lasers, now priced at 180 Mc: designI created a 3x1 GW railgun ship that can take the laser boat down without dying with at least some reliability, priced at 105 Mc: designHere's a youtube video showing the three-gigawatt sandblaster removing the enemy's radiators, thus disabling it. Also featured in the video are the bizarre intercept effects that occur at high velocities. The combined velocities of the ship and the railgun's muzzle velocity give the projectiles a 40km/s velocity relative to the target, cutting travel time down to 25 seconds, giving very little time for dodging. Since the railgun is turreted, it can react to dodging fairly quickly. Moreover, the ship can survive around 10 seconds of lasing before it's disarmed, meaning that even if a ship were to dodge, it would have to be very agile indeed to dodge the corrected shots as well. |
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Post by treptoplax on Aug 1, 2017 3:00:06 GMT
So, here's my current favorite drone; it's a bit costlier and possibly lower armor penetration than its conventional gun cousin, but makes up for it with a far larger magazine and greater velocity...  The railgun fires 1g solid AC at 5.75 Km/s at about 180 RPM. The tiny size makes it extremely difficult to hit outside its effective range and the low cost makes it spammable. I have wildly varying results from my anti-laser tests, but I feel good about its odds against anything with similar cost. (Maybe not so good about the likelihood of anybody hanging around through the lag to watch it). The railgun could easily handle more power; this would compromise size somewhat but replacing the AE 100Kw reactor with a megawatt one is eminently reasonable. There's a nitrile rubber bulkhead immediately behind the railgun so it can continue on as a missile if the gun is disabled. Currently named "Duck" (because I'm bad at naming?) as in "nibbled to death by..." Design file: duck.txt (5.9 KB) |
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Post by cyborgleopard on Aug 1, 2017 23:58:50 GMT
 I've seen these crazy forum challenges for things like an all-gold ship, all carbon ship, and all Iron ship. I made an all-osmium ship. It's not a complete slouch but it still sorta sucks. |
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Post by RiftandRend on Aug 3, 2017 5:03:43 GMT
This is one of the weapon systems I've been working on. Its heavily modded and uses a good deal of limit editing. This is the primary carrier, the S-13-6-5 Spool. It has 1.85 mg of MPDT acceleration and 8.73 Km/s of NTR ∆v. It carries 24 D-6-5 Drones. It's armor is designed to counter long range laser attack but is also quite effective versus kinetics. The Highly angled Aluminium cone would realistically be 100% reflective to most laser frequencies. This is the intermediate shuttle, the D-6-5 Thread. It has 17.9 mg of MPDT acceleration and 11.6 Km/s of NTR ∆v. It carries 18 D-5 Drones. Finally, this is the actual weapon, the D-5 Needle. It has 36.7 mg of MPDT acceleration and 3.57 Km/s of NTR ∆v. It's railgun spits 1 mg projectiles at 52.8 Km/s. When these drones are massed their combined firepower makes armor irrelevant. A large swarm should be able to saturate a large area with projectiles. |
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Post by madmike on Aug 7, 2017 1:44:13 GMT
So I conducted a bit of a "refit" on Nagato. I was going to change around the armament, but ended up just keeping what I have. Instead, her armor scheme has been revised to offer more efficient protection (and just more protection in general against high-energy lasers), and her powerplant has been converted from hydrogen deuteride to methane - mostly just to standardize on a single fuel type across my fleet, but it had the added benefit of improving her deltaV and handling characteristics. I was also testing a thin osmium citadel, because I've been observing dense materials like osmium and DU resisting impacts that should outright overmatch the plate. It feels a little exploit-y, but it's easy enough to remove should I decide I don't like it.  CarrierModule 1.000 MW NB-HKF M2 Atlas Launcher
UsesCustomName true
Payload NB-HKF M2 "Atlas"
Launcher
Stator Aluminum Nickel Cobalt
TrackLength_m 0.24
StatorDepth_m 0.1
Forcer Copper
ForcerRadius_m 0.02
Coolant Ethane
PowerConsumption_W 1e+006
CoolantTurbopump
Composition Reinforced Carbon-Carbon
PumpRadius_m 0.16
RotationalSpeed_RPM 21.5
CoolantInletTemperature_K 1300
ArmorMaterial Aramid Fiber
ArmorThickness_m 0.1
EngagementRange_km 0
TargetsShips true
TargetsShots false
LaunchCountCap 0
FlareModule 437 MW Nitrocellulose Flare
UsesCustomName false
ArmorComposition Martensitic Stainless Steel
ArmorThickness_m 0.001
Cylinder_m 0.23 2
Pyrotechnic
CombustionReaction Nitrocellulose
DelayComposition Iron
DelayCompositionMassFraction 0.424
RadiationShieldModule 20.0 m Diameter 1.000 cm Radiation Shield
UsesCustomName false
Composition Lithium-6
Dimensions_m 10 0.01
RailgunModule 110 MW 5mm Turreted Capacitor Railgun Armored
UsesCustomName true
PowerConsumption_W 1.6e+008
Capacitor
Count 1
DielectricComposition Hafnia
Dimensions_m 0.35 0.1442
Separation_m 2.4e-007
Rails
Composition Zirconium Copper
Thickness_m 0.2
Length_m 7.7
BarrelArmor
Composition Graphite Aerogel
Thickness_m 0.6
Armature
Composition Vanadium Chromium Steel
BoreRadius_m 0.0028
Mass_kg 0.001
Tracer Tin
Payload null
Loader
PowerConsumption_W 3e+006
ExternalMount false
InternalMount false
Turret
InnerRadius_m 1.7
Extruded true
ArmorComposition Vanadium Chromium Steel
ArmorThickness_m 0.05
MomentumWheels
Composition Selenium
RotationalSpeed_RPM 510
AttachedAmmoBay
Capacity 100000
Stacks 1
TargetsShips true
TargetsShots true
RailgunModule 300 MW 10mm Turreted Capacitor Railgun
UsesCustomName false
PowerConsumption_W 3e+008
Capacitor
Count 1
DielectricComposition Hafnia
Dimensions_m 0.57 0.34
Separation_m 6.4e-007
Rails
Composition Zirconium Copper
Thickness_m 0.15
Length_m 11
BarrelArmor
Composition Graphite Aerogel
Thickness_m 0.96
Armature
Composition Vanadium Chromium Steel
BoreRadius_m 0.0053
Mass_kg 0.0086
Tracer Tungsten
Payload null
Loader
PowerConsumption_W 5e+006
ExternalMount false
InternalMount false
Turret
InnerRadius_m 2
Extruded true
ArmorComposition Reinforced Carbon-Carbon
ArmorThickness_m 0.06
ElectricActuators
PermanentMagnet Neodymium Iron Boron
PowerConsumption_W 6.2e+006
AttachedAmmoBay
Capacity 100000
Stacks 50
TargetsShips true
TargetsShots true
RadiationShieldModule 20.0 m Diameter 10.0 cm Vamadium Steel Plate
UsesCustomName true
Composition Vanadium Chromium Steel
Dimensions_m 10 0.1
CraftBlueprint Extra-Large (440MW) Decoy
Modules
437 MW Nitrocellulose Flare 1 0 null 0
Armor
AmmoModule 50x NB-HKF M2 "Atlas"
UsesCustomName false
SuppliedModule 1.000 MW NB-HKF M2 Atlas Launcher
AmmoBay
Capacity 50
Stacks 1
ArmorComposition Amorphous Carbon
ArmorThickness_m 0.002
BlastLauncherModule 50x Extra-Large (440MW) Decoy Blast Launcher
UsesCustomName false
Payload Extra-Large (440MW) Decoy
PayloadRows 10
PayloadColumns 5
ExplosiveMaterial TNT
ExplosiveMass_kg 2.5
ArmorMaterial Vanadium Chromium Steel
ArmorThickness_m 0.05
EngagementRange_km 0
TargetsShips false
TargetsShots false
LaunchCountCap 0
CraftBlueprint Nagato-class Battleship
Description
Modules
6.37 km/s 17.8 MN Methane NTR 8 0 null 0
[AE] 1.01 GW Reactor 4 0.98836 null 0
20.0 m Diameter 1.000 cm Radiation Shield 1 93.332 null 0
35 Crew Module 4 93.392 null 0
Keres II Fin Radiator 2 66.819 35 Crew Module 1.57
[AE] 1 GW 200 km-s 152 mg Flak Railgun 1 190.18 null 0
W-W ENT 30x6 Amorphous Carbon Radiator Reverse 3.5m 2 30.822 [AE] 1.01 GW Reactor 1.57
110 MW 5mm Turreted Capacitor Railgun Armored 8 177.98 null 0
300 MW 10mm Turreted Capacitor Railgun 4 163.11 null 0
[AE] 5000x 152 mg 1 cm Flak [3] 5 237.93 null 0
[AE] 333 MW 100 km-s 152 mg Flak Railgun 4 161.26 null 0.79
[AE] 5000x 152 mg 1 cm Flak [2] 20 177.76 null 0
W-W ENT 30x6 Amorphous Carbon Radiator 3.5m 2 43.967 [AE] 1.01 GW Reactor 1.57
80x30 Boron Nitride Radiator 2 95.672 [AE] 1.01 GW Reactor 0
20.0 m Diameter 10.0 cm Vamadium Steel Plate 1 252.4 null 0
17.5 kW Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator 1 252.9 null 0
Launcher Radiator 2 147.26 17.5 kW Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator 0
1.000 MW NB-HKF M2 Atlas Launcher 2 95.476 null 1.57
Launcher Radiator 2 144.07 1.000 MW NB-HKF M2 Atlas Launcher 0
50x NB-HKF M2 "Atlas" 4 135.58 null 0
50x Extra-Large (440MW) Decoy Blast Launcher 2 73.437 null 0
10.0 kt Methane Tank 1 25.851 null 0
Armored 1.000 kt Methane Tank 12 38.283 null 0
10.0 kt Methane Tank 1 26.851 null 0
9.95 MW Methane Auto-Refueler 2 38.609 null 0
Armor
ArmorLayers
Osmium 0.002 0 0.83 1 1
Reinforced Carbon-Carbon 0.05 0 0 1 1
Graphite Aerogel 0.5 0 0 1 1
Boron Filament 0.025 0 0 1 1
Silicon 0.001 0 0 1 1
Gold 0.001 0 0.83 1 1
Gold 0.001 0 0 0.16 1
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Post by Enderminion on Aug 7, 2017 2:35:29 GMT
RCC is really expensive, BF rubber composite armor is superior
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Post by Enderminion on Aug 7, 2017 2:36:23 GMT
Lasers missiles or drones would be nice, long range firepower, since a laser ship could swiss chesse that at 10 million meters
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Post by madmike on Aug 7, 2017 3:18:14 GMT
RCC is really expensive, BF rubber composite armor is superior Oops, forgot to delete that from the old design. The intent is basically boron filament whipple shield>graphite aerogel buffer>aC main armor plate, with a further osmium citadel plate in the nose section. The outer layers are just "paint". Also, the boron filament might become something else - I just used it because it was "good enough". Lasers missiles or drones would be nice, long range firepower, since a laser ship could swiss chesse that at 10 million meters I was deliberately going for a kinetic-only warship, partially just because I wanted to. Nagato is meant to serve in a battle group, anyway. Long-range duties are mostly relegated to my laser destroyers, laserstar, and (WIP) carrier. That said, I did tack on a decent battery of those Atlas missiles that omnipotentvoid posted earlier in the thread. Basically, the rest of my fleet screens the various uber-long-range meta threats like lasers and missile spam, while Nagato exists solely to delete anything dumb enough to get within 1Mm of the fleet, be it drones or capital ships. |
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