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Post by lieste on Dec 27, 2016 20:41:47 GMT
In my own experience, medium/small nukes are better than flak at point defense, while high velocity flak is actually superior to nukes at penetrating armor. Unless the nuke can manage a direct hit; but that almost never happens. Giant nukes do both pretty well, but are hilariously expensive. Giant nukes become vulnerable to PD guns too. The three items shown above are directly targeted by my 100MW railguns at a little more than (1.28m^2) 33.3km/40.4km/54.6km, (2.28m^2) 38.5km/46.7km/63.1km, and a little less than (0.142m^2) 12.1km/14.5km/19.6km, with lasers working at 35km by default. A " use all the power" 300MW (908t) option hits the three missiles at (roughly) 83.6km/96.5km/48.3km It might be difficult to deal with a huge swarm arriving at once, but it offers a solid backstop to a "huge laser" carrying vessel. |
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Post by amimai on Dec 27, 2016 20:59:06 GMT
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Post by David367th on Dec 27, 2016 21:01:00 GMT
What's the payload?
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Post by lieste on Dec 27, 2016 21:11:53 GMT
That one breaks physics a bit... 735% efficiency. It has an impressive large target range, but is relatively poor against smaller drone/missile threats. Not quite sure what you made that one out of, as I was having trouble with making efficient high velocity weapons (mine are ~30-60km/s and draw more power). Would be interesting to see the schematic. Also I note the 'ignores armour' target was named "pure whipple" which doesn't suggest a KE optimised heavy armour package. |
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Post by amimai on Dec 27, 2016 21:15:02 GMT
just a silly little light railgun
RailgunModule Narwhal Cannon
UsesCustomName true
PowerConsumption_W 9.5e+007
Rails
Composition Aluminum Copper Lithium
Thickness_m 0.93
Length_m 29
BarrelArmorThickness_m 0
Armature
Composition Osmium
BoreRadius_m 0.00245
Mass_kg 0.001
Tracer null
Payload Osmium Needle
Loader
PowerConsumption_W 9.5e+007
Turret
InnerRadius_m 7.4
ArmorComposition Amorphous Carbon
ArmorThickness_m 0.0001
MomentumWheels
Composition Potassium
RotationalSpeed_RPM 34
AttachedAmmoBay
Capacity 10000
Stacks 1
TargetsShips true
TargetsShots true
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Post by newageofpower on Dec 27, 2016 21:25:08 GMT
More important than the gun itself is the projectile you are firing. My own needleguns (~150kms) are good vs soft armor (i.e. whipple) but terrible vs 'hard' armor, such as your diamond/boron schema. Ofc, it does nothing vs the ultimate "hard armor" target:  A bank of 12 of my 250MW PD guns firing magnetic metal glass takes minutes to chew through this. |
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Post by lieste on Dec 27, 2016 21:42:12 GMT
just a silly little light railgun RailgunModule Narwhal Cannon
UsesCustomName true
PowerConsumption_W 9.5e+007
Rails
Composition Aluminum Copper Lithium
Thickness_m 0.93
Length_m 29
BarrelArmorThickness_m 0
Armature
Composition Osmium
BoreRadius_m 0.00245
Mass_kg 0.001
Tracer null
Payload Osmium Needle
Loader
PowerConsumption_W 9.5e+007
Turret
InnerRadius_m 7.4
ArmorComposition Amorphous Carbon
ArmorThickness_m 0.0001
MomentumWheels
Composition Potassium
RotationalSpeed_RPM 34
AttachedAmmoBay
Capacity 10000
Stacks 1
TargetsShips true
TargetsShots trueI don't get anything close to workable with that material/power/dimension. Stress 4.58 GPa/505Mpa beam deflection, 16.5GPa internal stress, both failing the barrel. There must be something fundamentally glitchy about the needle payload to make the system work. |
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Post by amimai on Dec 27, 2016 21:47:24 GMT
More important than the gun itself is the projectile you are firing. My own needleguns (~150kms) are good vs soft armor (i.e. whipple) but terrible vs 'hard' armor, such as your diamond/boron schema. Ofc, it does nothing vs the ultimate "hard armor" target: A bank of 12 of my 250MW PD guns firing magnetic metal glass takes minutes to chew through this. meh, my 150kg NEFP nuke can take that down in one hit! |
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Post by newageofpower on Dec 27, 2016 22:03:35 GMT
Right. A good KKV/NKV can kill any amount of armor; but the issue is KVs are slower (and shorter ranged) than needle/sand and can be intercepted/evaded more easily.
Also, this is the third time someone is asking you to share the design of your payload.
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Post by shiolle on Dec 27, 2016 22:06:40 GMT
In my own experience, medium/small nukes are better than flak at point defense, while high velocity flak is actually superior to nukes at penetrating armor. Unless the nuke can manage a direct hit; but that almost never happens. I have to admit, I have recently fought laserstars mostly and nukes are fine at taking out those giant radiators. For example, one of these missile ships can take on two of those 10GW laserstars with multi-nukes quite comfortably. Outside laserstar fights, my fleet doctrine, if you can call it that, view these missile ships as support vessels. As to counter-missiles, I feel that currently it doesn't matter what kind of warhead you have, but you are right in that if this was multiplayer I would probably use nukes to shoot down incoming missiles. |
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Post by newageofpower on Dec 27, 2016 22:13:35 GMT
I have to admit, I have recently fought laserstars mostly and nukes are fine at taking out those giant radiators. For example, one of these missile ships can take on two of those 10GW laserstars with multi-nukes quite comfortably. Outside laserstar fights, my fleet doctrine, if you can call it that, view these missile ships as support vessels. As to counter-missiles, I feel that currently it doesn't matter what kind of warhead you have, but you are right in that if this was multiplayer I would probably use nukes to shoot down incoming missiles. All my warships are built with at least 1:2 radiator redundancy. My spinal designs sometimes get up to 1:4. Admittedly, that is not good enough (on it's own, at least) when the swarm of missiles gets too thick, but ensures that a leaker or two will not frag all my radiators. In high speed intercepts, I find that flak missiles have a hard time (even worse than KVs attempting to impact!) actually hitting an enemy missile with their cloud of flak. A nuke tends to be more fault-tolerant. |
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Post by shiolle on Dec 27, 2016 22:46:46 GMT
All my warships are built with at least 1:2 radiator redundancy. My spinal designs sometimes get up to 1:4. Admittedly, that is not good enough (on it's own, at least) when the swarm of missiles gets too thick, but ensures that a leaker or two will not frag all my radiators. I do the same on my warships, but I usually don't build laserstars. Those things look like butterflies already, so adding redundancy to their radiators would cut heavily into their delta-v. Additionally, I find that while small radiators are easy to make nuke-resistant, it's much harder to do economically with large ones (the radiators on the ship I mentioned are 200 meters long!). At these sizes frag bombs blow radiators away instantly as well, but I like the fact that with nukes I don't really care if it's a hit or a near miss. In high speed intercepts, I find that flak missiles have a hard time (even worse than KVs attempting to impact!) actually hitting an enemy missile with their cloud of flak. A nuke tends to be more fault-tolerant. I agree with that. I spent quite some time trying to find the right number of fragments and cloud dissipation speed that would reliably kill missiles, but alas my designs don't work. Right now most of my interceptors do their job by triggering enemy warheads early. That's what I was referring to when I said the type of warhead did't matter. |
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Post by newageofpower on Dec 28, 2016 0:25:37 GMT
I do the same on my warships, but I usually don't build laserstars. Those things look like butterflies already, so adding redundancy to their radiators would cut heavily into their delta-v. Additionally, I find that while small radiators are easy to make nuke-resistant, it's much harder to do economically with large ones (the radiators on the ship I mentioned are 200 meters long!). At these sizes frag bombs blow radiators away instantly as well, but I like the fact that with nukes I don't really care if it's a hit or a near miss. Around 4mm thickness and 3mm armor, a radiator may survive a kiloton-range nukeflash at short distance; although it increases weight sevenfold compared to a paper radiator. With 100 km/s dV MPD based strategic propulsion, I only need about 6 km/s dV on the tactical drives for dodging; so I can afford *some* armor on the radiators. It's better to have multiple radiators, but I do both light armor and redundancy. I agree with that. I spent quite some time trying to find the right number of fragments and cloud dissipation speed that would reliably kill missiles, but alas my designs don't work. Right now most of my interceptors do their job by triggering enemy warheads early. That's what I was referring to when I said the type of warhead did't matter. That's a bit of an exploit, I guess. A player would just leave his missiles on cancel orders; in engagement with capships homing should lock missiles on the capships. |
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Post by dragonkid11 on Dec 28, 2016 7:45:42 GMT
So, after getting inspiration from lieste, I decided to see if i can make small drone with big gun. The result is a 60 tons flak needle railgun drone.  But afterward, I realised that this would be a more efficient usage of mass and cost than using capital ship. So I decided to develop what I now called as tank-class drones. because they weigh like a tank, ranging from 50ton to 100 ton. Which is ironic because my current prototype of the design weighs even less than that.  At around 40 ton (Because I forgot), the tank class prototype has packed enough firepower to deal with a stock fleet efficiently. As more often than not, it will expend all missiles onto the targets by the time the battle is finished. Which is a good thing because that what I designed it for, to make it use its mass efficiently in the smallest package possible. I will most probably give it more ammo though, as it did run out of ammo in a couple test run and considering all of my ships have hundreds and thousands of missiles, having just a hundred small class missiles and a thousand micro class missiles are considered as lightly armed for the ship here. I will most probably name my ship after rock type as I ran out of name for my other things. |
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Post by shiolle on Dec 28, 2016 10:57:51 GMT
Around 4mm thickness and 3mm armor, a radiator may survive a kiloton-range nukeflash at short distance; although it increases weight sevenfold compared to a paper radiator. I usually don't use nukes of 1kt and below against capital ships. Even 10 kt is not that effective at close range against a properly protected ship, and my light nukes are 18kt. You don't have to destroy all of the radiators either, if half of the radiators are gone, chances are that big laser is no longer firing. Regarding counter-missiles, I begin to think that there is a bug somewhere there, because even low-velocity guns that aren't that accurate can shoot down some of those missiles reliably but somehow they fly right through dozens of clouds of shrapnel. That's a bit of an exploit, I guess. A player would just leave his missiles on cancel orders; in engagement with capships homing should lock missiles on the capships. Yes, and quite a significant one. Just for the record, canceling orders is not effective; you should disable warheads instead. That said, it's an exploit but is it really a problem? Brace yourself, rant incoming. I think I have a decision to make. I can either design the most effective things the game allows me or I can stick only to those I find plausible. I tried to find a compromise here but perhaps I shouldn't. It sometimes appear to me that the community on this forum, myself included, is in full Eurisko mode, i.e. trying to break the simulation in as many ways as possible. Between 2500% efficient needle guns, microscopic MPDs that accelerate propellant at 177 billion gs, multinukes, paper-thin rocket nozzles, nuclear hand grenades, murky power consumption bugs, etc. is there even a sliver of scientific plausibility left? It's like an iceberg, where the tip are those principles and practices the game enforces and everything under are those things you are free to break. I don't know what QSwitched thinks about it, but the goal of exploring realistic space combat seems farther than ever. Plus, there are limitations in design and AI behavior that make defending against certain technologies difficult. For example you can't tell the game to launch a certain number of counter missiles (or other projectiles) at each enemy missile so you have to engage in careful tuning of your launcher to ensure your interceptors have time to retarget, like I described in another thread. You have to eyeball the direction of intercept as the target dodges across the new 1000 km engagement zone. You can target ship's engines and burn straight through it from nose to aft, but you can't set persistent rotation to protect yourself against such tactics. Protecting yourself by launching lots of missiles against a giant laser is not that realistic either, but the game doesn't let you employ many alternatives. I like those crazy designs a lot and I freely admit they are much more interesting than mine, and in a game like this I'd like to stick to things which are physically possible but I find it increasingly harder to do. Sorry about whining. |
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