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Post by tukuro on Oct 7, 2016 5:37:31 GMT
Well, there are some problems with that. Making them tall and narrow, like spikes, will make them re-radiate tons of heat onto each other. With long and narrow radiators that's not a problem, but on the other hand you have to start fitting things between your radiators, which means that in a fight both your radiators and your weapons are likely to go down together if the enemy targets either of them. So there has to be a balance, but I will experiment with 2500K reactors. Are there any downsides to them? 14MW reactor at 2500k will only require four 30m long 20cm wide radiators, unless you have a very small radius, you won't get any interreflectance. The downside is that using flares will become difficult once you are using 30 MW and up. |
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Post by morrigi on Oct 7, 2016 5:57:59 GMT
New missile, comparable to the others people have been posting recently. The A and B variants have a 5kg flak and 5kg 3 kiloton nuclear warhead, respectively, and are powered with conventional ethylene oxide rocket engines. The C and D variants have the same warheads, but NTR propulsion running on methane. The A and B variants obviously have less delta V, but they're a tenth the cost. Edit: Picture isn't loading properly, please stand by. Edit 2: Fixed.  |
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Post by beta on Oct 7, 2016 6:08:33 GMT
Well, there are some problems with that. Making them tall and narrow, like spikes, will make them re-radiate tons of heat onto each other. With long and narrow radiators that's not a problem, but on the other hand you have to start fitting things between your radiators, which means that in a fight both your radiators and your weapons are likely to go down together if the enemy targets either of them. So there has to be a balance, but I will experiment with 2500K reactors. Are there any downsides to them? 14MW reactor at 2500k will only require four 30m long 20cm wide radiators, unless you have a very small radius, you won't get any interreflectance. The downside is that using flares will become difficult once you are using 30 MW and up. Do the higher temperature radiators have a higher chance of getting cooked by nukes? Seems like they would be able to absorb less heat and get wrecked faster when they are 1000K hotter. |
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Post by apophys on Oct 7, 2016 9:41:01 GMT
So there has to be a balance, but I will experiment with 2500K reactors. Are there any downsides to them? The higher the output temperature of a reactor, the less raw power you're able to get out of it, because the temperature difference from the core (~3100) to radiator lessens, and that increases reactor mass versus power generated. This is made completely irrelevant by the fact that (with good reactor designs) radiators significantly outweigh reactors, and radiators get better at their job at higher temperatures. Higher output temperatures reduce the heat:power efficiency of a reactor, for the same reason. I.e. you're producing more heat for a given amount of power. This can make heat decoys rather impractical. A higher radiator temperature brings it closer to the melting point, making it easier to break with nukes and lasers. This is not a big deal though, because higher radiator temperatures also make them many times more efficient at radiating heat, so you can afford to place multiple redundant ones. Also, materials like amorphous carbon or diamond can be chosen, which have very high melting points. Overall, it's totally worth it. |
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Post by goduranus on Oct 7, 2016 10:01:42 GMT
This design isn't possible in game, but here's the design I've been dreaming up, what do you guys think? Call it the HMS Hermes or something It's features a slightly tilted fuselage with off-center thrusters, so while accelerating towards the enemy, all armor will be heavily sloped. The front prow will have the heaviest armor, while the top wedge will have medium armor but are sloped at a good 75 degrees, the rest of the main hull will only have light armor to defend against flanking drones and glancing nukes. The ship's body will shield its radiators from direct fire. Main guns will be placed along the top ridge to get the maximum field of fire. Also missile and drone launchers are attached to the underside of the main hull, shielded by the main body while in close combat. The ship would carry drop tanks on either side of the main fuselage, which are not depicted here. Side view  Front view, the enemy sees this.  |
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Post by tukuro on Oct 7, 2016 14:24:52 GMT
So there has to be a balance, but I will experiment with 2500K reactors. Are there any downsides to them? The higher the output temperature of a reactor, the less raw power you're able to get out of it, because the temperature difference from the core (~3100) to radiator lessens, and that increases reactor mass versus power generated. This is made completely irrelevant by the fact that (with good reactor designs) radiators significantly outweigh reactors, and radiators get better at their job at higher temperatures. Higher output temperatures reduce the heat:power efficiency of a reactor, for the same reason. I.e. you're producing more heat for a given amount of power. This can make heat decoys rather impractical. A higher radiator temperature brings it closer to the melting point, making it easier to break with nukes and lasers. This is not a big deal though, because higher radiator temperatures also make them many times more efficient at radiating heat, so you can afford to place multiple redundant ones. Also, materials like amorphous carbon or diamond can be chosen, which have very high melting points. Overall, it's totally worth it. For 2500k reactors I noticed you really want to stick to amorphous carbon, as it has a very high specific heat. Even a few centimetres of armour make them very resilient to nukes. |
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 7, 2016 16:52:58 GMT
Ok here is my super dreadnaught and its weapons. They might be physic defying though  The ship:  The Megaton nuke shooting coilgun that use kilowatts!  The pure money flare that works great!  And finally the light light megaton nuke the coilgun shoots:  The design carries 16,000 rounds for the coilguns and has 160 heavy flack missiles with 3 200kg flack warheads, 15g acceleration and over 3km/s of delta v. In addition it has 60 missiles with a 250mt war head, 9gs of acceleration and a bit over 3 km/s of delta v. So in total the ship has 16,000 megatons of nuke coilgun ammo firing at 44 megatons per second per broadside and 15,000 megatons of nuke missiles. So the ship if it blew up all it's ammo would have a yield of 31 gigatons! So be it firing 44 megatons per second down range destroys any fleet in a very short amount of time and the coilguns will still kill just fine at over 300km even though they do not 'have' 300km of effective range! Also you can't really see it here but the armor goes: 6cm of basalt fiber, 9cm of osmium, 3 METERs of silica areogel, 15cm of basalt fiber, 2 meter space, and finally another 4cm (I think can't quite recall) of basalt fiber. It is very much immune to all weapon fire even massive barrages of flack missiles and it has triply redundant crew and power plants. The turrets are all protected by 100 cm of basalt fiber and max thickness of barrel armor on all the weapons other than the 4mm CIWS railguns which I can't armor and keep a good rotation speed. The radiators are made of diamond and are max thickness and have the max amount of addition armor also made of diamond. The whole ship carries over 150,000 tons of fuel. Not sure how much since I switched to a bit over a 1,000 ton fuel tanks for a massive amount of redundancy as each tank has 5cm of boron armor so while they do get knocked out they take a miniscule amount of fuel and protect the rest of the fuel tanks . |
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Post by concretedonkey on Oct 7, 2016 18:42:49 GMT
![]()  Has anybody tried broadside drones ? |
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Post by Durandal on Oct 7, 2016 18:47:32 GMT
Looks very similar to a design I tried. I prefer "conventional" drones myself. I *do* need to post my MK-VI Broadside Frigate tonight though. Much better performance than the MK-III I posted earlier. |
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Post by ross128 on Oct 7, 2016 18:49:18 GMT
Immune to all weapons fire, you say? I think you might want to take a look at what's been brewing in the capital ship armor thread. (though its potential to blast opponents into space dust before it gets hit at all might prove a much better form of immunity than any amount of armor) |
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Post by Durandal on Oct 7, 2016 18:52:47 GMT
Immune to all weapons fire, you say? I think you might want to take a look at what's been brewing in the capital ship armor thread. (though its potential to blast opponents into space dust before it gets hit at all might prove a much better form of immunity than any amount of armor) I insist that you post something design-wise soon, good sir. |
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Post by ross128 on Oct 7, 2016 18:56:33 GMT
Alas, I'm still on mobile for now. Soon.(tm)
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Post by concretedonkey on Oct 7, 2016 18:56:51 GMT
![]() Has anybody tried broadside drones ? Looks very similar to a design I tried. I prefer "conventional" drones myself. I *do* need to post my MK-VI Broadside Frigate tonight though. Much better performance than the MK-III I posted earlier. it came a quite a bit heavier than the conventional version but it does have 2 additional cannons to the laser and it can use all of it at the same time.. I have to check if it does any good however. |
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 7, 2016 19:09:02 GMT
Well the armors greatest weakness is getting ablated away As long as it isn't under a massive concentrated attack it survives great! Also the armor is more or less proof against high caliber 100kg 15+km/s coil gun shots. But again the armor will eventually get ablated away from massed fire but I mean if I can engage from longer range I can more or less instantly wipe out a fleet of 30 gun ships at over 200km with just a few bursts from the coilguns. Sadly at that range I can only fire bursts as otherwise the game lags to death. Same goes for trying to have 2 of those bad boys shooting at once. And the rail gun throws 50g osmium 7mm rounds at nearly 20km/s which is also really devastating. But again I'm not sure they are physically possible XD. Also the flare is about 10gw hotter than the ship and ejected at over 30m/s so it is a pretty darn good defense against any missiles. The only really vulnerable thing is the engine and the CWIS rail guns. It is really irksome to lose my main engine and be reduced to a total of like 200 m/s of delta v from a nuke that does nothing else to the ship except kill the main engines. Same goes for getting shot from the rear. The engines die but the ship is still operational and everything. The only real killer is internal ammo explosions  . |
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Post by RA2lover on Oct 7, 2016 19:47:36 GMT
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