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Post by The Astronomer on Jan 8, 2017 11:12:59 GMT
Sodium already has my drones launching too fast and eventually colliding with each other. Why need better coolants? Less mass and cost is the advantage of ethane in launchers (or small nuclear reactors for that matter). Sodium is the undisputed king of heat transfer performance, but as you said in the case that your launchers are already firing too fast using a lighter cheaper coolant could save mass and cost and resolve the too fast problem all at the same time. (I personally use sodium in most things though)  I am disappointed in Ethane's poor efficiency that results in much bigger pumps. Sodium's high efficiency results in smaller pumps. Since it's the pump's mass that's actually relevant in the construction, I find sodium much more useful than ethane. |
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Post by bigbombr on Jan 8, 2017 11:31:44 GMT
Less mass and cost is the advantage of ethane in launchers (or small nuclear reactors for that matter). Sodium is the undisputed king of heat transfer performance, but as you said in the case that your launchers are already firing too fast using a lighter cheaper coolant could save mass and cost and resolve the too fast problem all at the same time. (I personally use sodium in most things though) I am disappointed in Ethane's poor efficiency that results in much bigger pumps. Sodium's high efficiency results in smaller pumps. Since it's the pump's mass that's actually relevant in the construction, I find sodium much more useful than ethane. This might be true for powerful launchers, but this is not the case in 1 kW launchers. |
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Post by David367th on Jan 8, 2017 20:26:54 GMT
Meanwhile a project of mine launches from it's construction facility on Charon, and witnesses it's first Pluto-rise in what is hopefully it's long and eventful career.  Planning on unveiling its sisters sometime soon when I can write up a good story for them or something.
PS if anyone knows a way to remove the UI that would be fantastic. |
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Post by caiaphas on Jan 8, 2017 20:38:54 GMT
Meanwhile a project of mine launches from it's construction facility on Cheron, and witnesses it's first Pluto-rise in what is hopefully it's long and eventful career. Planning on unveiling its sisters sometime soon when I can write up a good story for them or something.
PS if anyone knows a way to remove the UI that would be fantastic....is that gold you've plated it in? |
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Post by David367th on Jan 8, 2017 20:47:36 GMT
Meanwhile a project of mine launches from it's construction facility on Cheron, and witnesses it's first Pluto-rise in what is hopefully it's long and eventful career. Planning on unveiling its sisters sometime soon when I can write up a good story for them or something.
PS if anyone knows a way to remove the UI that would be fantastic....is that gold you've plated it in? Titanium Nitride... so, close. |
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Post by thorneel on Jan 8, 2017 21:27:02 GMT
...is that gold you've plated it in? Titanium Nitride... so, close. Good choice, titanium nitride has a lovely red tint. Better than gold for decoration, to me. |
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Post by David367th on Jan 8, 2017 21:40:17 GMT
Titanium Nitride... so, close. Good choice, titanium nitride has a lovely red tint. Better than gold for decoration, to me. Plus has arguably better physical properties for whipple shields. |
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Post by thorneel on Jan 8, 2017 23:07:00 GMT
So I took the recent 1MW UV laser that was posted recently (sorry, I couldn't find the source again) and put it on a drone. It works pretty great, if you can withstand the lag. ![]()  The laser was initially only something like 35km range, but I upped it to 1Mm range, as a swarm of those can still cause damage from there. The downside is that if you end up against a heavily armoured craft, it will take forever to burn through/get close enough to burn through. The laser armour was replaced by silica aerogel (1 cm), and a thin silica aerogel (1.5mm) armour was also added to the drone. This gives some laser protection at long range when it is manoeuvring, though don't count on it too much. I only armoured it against lasers as it is agile enough to avoid all but the fastest sandblaster, and those will probably be more expensive than the drones - and chances are that the drones will still burn the guns before being shot down. Here is a long-range version with drop tanks, though I have yet to test it:  Also, you know that feature that allows you to put two different engines at the back, or two different weapons at the front? It also allows you to put a radiator on top of a reactor. I would have changed it for something more realistic, but I thought it looks better that way. I tested a swarm of 300 drones against a 5x10GW laserstar with 6 cm of silica aerogel on lasers plus and 1 cm as ship armour, with 7.36 g acceleration from resistojet (useful to escape sandblasters):  The drones won every time, despite random fratricide, often retaining about half their numbers. (Note : having no way to know when a laser is firing can be problem) |
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Post by theholyinquisition on Jan 8, 2017 23:28:38 GMT
It would be helpful if, whenever someone posts a design that uses something other than a stock engine, they post the engine as well. A 500c NEFP isn't useful without an engine, and if you don't post the engine as well, it's dead mass.
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Post by newageofpower on Jan 9, 2017 1:01:41 GMT
I also want to note how grossly underestimated my cost on nukes were as an AoE quality nuke starts around the 1Mt range (which costs roughly 100,000c) which means your nuke would be required to intercept 100 or more missiles simultaneously to be able to trade cost effectively (assuming 100% perfect kill rate which would require a perfectly clumped missile swarm with no cascading approach, which is actually questionable on missiles designed to tank large amounts of EM and heat damage from the front (aka laser armor)). Considering that the nuke would be forced into making that intercept to protect the drone fleet (as 100 mini-missiles threatens them) all tempo is in the hands of the attacker in this case. The nuke would also be forced into an early detonation, before the first wave of attackers hit in a cascade as if the attackers land a disabling blow the payload could be lost (and would likely be lost within the first 5 missiles). This would not insure 100% kill rate on the missile swarm as many could hang back. You have no situational control or tempo when you are in control of the more expensive missile. So even in the best case scenario for this engagement the trade is even 1:1 cost ratio. When your best possible outcome from a tactical blunder is 1:1 it is a very unfavorable exchange. First of all, fix your sentence structure/paragraph formatting. Your writing is becoming less readable than amimai 's writing, which is saying something. Next, the solution to 'counter-counter' missiles would be to thicken your non-expendable defenses (lasers, etc) to the point where it takes more money in attacking missiles to penetrate them than the price of your countermissile(s). Sure, a nuclear countermissile might be worth hundreds of attacking missiles (or more!) so you just increase your defenses to the point where anything less than hundreds of attacking missiles has no chance of penetrating your defenses. Duh. |
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Post by David367th on Jan 9, 2017 1:56:21 GMT
So I took the recent 1MW UV laser that was posted recently (sorry, I couldn't find the source again) and put it on a drone. It works pretty great, if you can withstand the lag. ![]() The laser was initially only something like 35km range, but I upped it to 1Mm range, as a swarm of those can still cause damage from there. The downside is that if you end up against a heavily armoured craft, it will take forever to burn through/get close enough to burn through. The laser armour was replaced by silica aerogel (1 cm), and a thin silica aerogel (1.5mm) armour was also added to the drone. This gives some laser protection at long range when it is manoeuvring, though don't count on it too much. I only armoured it against lasers as it is agile enough to avoid all but the fastest sandblaster, and those will probably be more expensive than the drones - and chances are that the drones will still burn the guns before being shot down. Here is a long-range version with drop tanks, though I have yet to test it: Also, you know that feature that allows you to put two different engines at the back, or two different weapons at the front? It also allows you to put a radiator on top of a reactor. I would have changed it for something more realistic, but I thought it looks better that way. I tested a swarm of 300 drones against a 5x10GW laserstar with 6 cm of silica aerogel on lasers plus and 1 cm as ship armour, with 7.36 g acceleration from resistojet (useful to escape sandblasters): The drones won every time, despite random fratricide, often retaining about half their numbers. (Note : having no way to know when a laser is firing can be problem) You might be talking about mine childrenofadeadearth.boards.net/post/9423/thread . If so I could point out a few things about the drone, first the range was stuck on 20km because these are drones and they can quickly dispatch enemies (in their case enemy drones). Also didn't like sitting and waiting for something 750km away to slowly get drilled. Secondly, changing the armor from Aramid to Silica gel actually reduced its resistance to lasers. Back in the 1.0.7 patch Silica had a wrong number in its refractance that caused it to basically be a perfect mirror IIRC. Aramid Fiber is now the top dog for laser resistance as it has the smallest laser ablation rate, though I think there's still a composite thats better but I keep forgetting what it is. Other than the last bit, you did improve the drone quite a bit, and I'm rather impressed. |
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Post by David367th on Jan 9, 2017 2:35:12 GMT
I already posted this on the Technical Support, but I thought it might get more attention in designs. Made a ship (from my disarmed Gunship ofc) that apparently doesn't emit any visible light.  |
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Post by someusername6 on Jan 9, 2017 2:39:54 GMT
I already posted this on the Technical Support, but I thought it might get more attention in designs. Made a ship (from my disarmed Gunship ofc) that apparently doesn't emit any visible light. This is a bug, but once we are able to mod in new spectra I'll want to add Vantablack, if only to make it an aesthetic armor coating that looks just like that. |
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Post by David367th on Jan 9, 2017 2:40:47 GMT
I already posted this on the Technical Support, but I thought it might get more attention in designs. Made a ship (from my disarmed Gunship ofc) that apparently doesn't emit any visible light. This is a bug, but once we are able to mod in new spectra I'll want to add Vantablack, if only to make it an aesthetic armor coating that looks just like that. Maybe I haven't unlocked Cadmium as a material yet? What mission am I supposed to beat for that? /s |
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Post by dragonkid11 on Jan 9, 2017 2:57:23 GMT
I generally put 250 km range for any laser that doesn't have more than 500 MW power because waiting for them to do any damage is boring. I already posted this on the Technical Support, but I thought it might get more attention in designs. Made a ship (from my disarmed Gunship ofc) that apparently doesn't emit any visible light. Christ that looks dark as hell, you weren't kidding when you said it's a Nightstalker. |
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