tuna
New Member
Posts: 33
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Post by tuna on Sept 30, 2016 15:39:34 GMT
Quick question- how do you get a custom payload as an option to be fired from a cannon? All the times i have made a payload it does not show up in the options after i save it, only the generic HE , flak, the 2 nukes and the 2 decoys options. The word payload is used in two places. It means a module type in module designer (of type flare module, nuke module or explosive module) and a ship type (one with remote control and no engines) in ship designer. To mount your nuke on a coilgun, in ship designer make a new ship of type payload with that nuke, remote control and armor.
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Post by Durandal on Sept 30, 2016 16:08:48 GMT
Quick question- how do you get a custom payload as an option to be fired from a cannon? All the times i have made a payload it does not show up in the options after i save it, only the generic HE , flak, the 2 nukes and the 2 decoys options. The word payload is used in two places. It means a module type in module designer (of type flare module, nuke module or explosive module) and a ship type (one with remote control and no engines) in ship designer. To mount your nuke on a coilgun, in ship designer make a new ship of type payload with that nuke, remote control and armor. Or slap a small rocket engine on it and you have a gyeojet.
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Post by 123nick on Sept 30, 2016 16:31:55 GMT
Quick question- how do you get a custom payload as an option to be fired from a cannon? All the times i have made a payload it does not show up in the options after i save it, only the generic HE , flak, the 2 nukes and the 2 decoys options. The word payload is used in two places. It means a module type in module designer (of type flare module, nuke module or explosive module) and a ship type (one with remote control and no engines) in ship designer. To mount your nuke on a coilgun, in ship designer make a new ship of type payload with that nuke, remote control and armor. thanks, im on mobile so i cant test it yet.
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acatalepsy
Junior Member
Not Currently In Space
Posts: 97
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Post by acatalepsy on Sept 30, 2016 16:42:16 GMT
Quick question- how do you get a custom payload as an option to be fired from a cannon? All the times i have made a payload it does not show up in the options after i save it, only the generic HE , flak, the 2 nukes and the 2 decoys options. Okay, so payload means two different things. One, payload is a module - a specific nuke, explosive, or flare. Two, a payload is a type of ship - one that doesn't have any ability to move itself, and a payload module (or a weapon?). You made a payload module, now you need to go into the ship designer, and make a new ship with only that payload and some armor - I recommend basalt fiber, by the way, a millimeter or two should be sufficient.
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Post by wazzledazzle on Sept 30, 2016 18:08:15 GMT
Recently I've been doing lots of tweaks on a ship design that uses a coilgun as its primary armament. So instead of going for pure coilgun efficiency, I also tried to keep the power usage (13MW), weight and size relatively low, so the ship could keep a small cross-section. Low price as well, to afford multiple ships. Also have a slightly scaled-up variant, with a 10kg shell instead of a 5kg one. The 5kg is more precise, faster and lighter, but the 10kg shell has the neat side effect of being heavy enough to knock enemy ships into a spin. I usually have both types in a fleet since the ships themselves are pretty cheap. By the way, has anyone experimented with flak payloads for coilguns ? I've done some quick tests, and while they do less internal damage that standard shells, they're very good at destroying exposed weapons and radiators. Ideally, with a big enough spread and burst distance, you could even get a greater chance to hit, but I haven't found the right flak settings to do that. Attachment Deleted
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Post by blothorn on Sept 30, 2016 18:19:40 GMT
I have---I prefer nukes because with present fuse options, near-misses with flak are nearly useless, whereas a near-miss with a 106kt nuke will shred anything exposed (notably engines). And while nukes are bad at dealing internal damage they strip off Whipple shields far better than flak, so I suspect you can get a great synergy with a nuke launcher to strip poorly-armored exposed components and shields and a high-velocity sabot gun to finish the enemy off with internal damage.
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Post by 314159 on Sept 30, 2016 20:23:53 GMT
By the way, has anyone experimented with flak payloads for coilguns ? I've done some quick tests, and while they do less internal damage that standard shells, they're very good at destroying exposed weapons and radiators. Ideally, with a big enough spread and burst distance, you could even get a greater chance to hit, but I haven't found the right flak settings to do that. I have; and I do like them. This is the coilgun I'm using on my drones. It fires 100g submunition projectiles (100g shrapnel + a bit of explosive) at over 9km/s. I've had to increase that explosive due to the lack of options on proximity detonation; originally, the idea was to detonate it at about 2 kilometres out. And that's what an attack looks like. Those shrapnel clouds are rendered for about five kilometres into the distance. Close-in picture. The marked spacecraft is currently targeted; in the image, three or so projectiles are detonating. This should result in quite a bit of internal damage. The spacecraft to the upper left has already been destroyed. One destroyed spacecraft in the aftermath. Note the shredded armour in the back. Internally, almost everything from the remaining radiator panel to the rear has been destroyed. Interestingly, spacecraft (try to) dodge payloads, but not projectiles. In my experiment, I pitted five drones against four laser frigates at 200m/s. Expending about 500 of their 1000 shots each, all of the frigates were destroyed for no damage to the drones. Same result against four Solar Lances. (Amusingly, during a test against four Solar Lances with the drones' weapons disabled, their weapons were killed after ten seconds, after which the drones missed the lances, killed their own velocity and resumed homing, missed again, killed their own velocity and resumed homing again, and missed again again. During that time, two of the enemy solar lances were apparently destroyed in a collision putting them into a high-frequency spin, and three of the five drones were disabled.) At the moment, my main issue - aside from the proximity detonation issue - is to make the weapon as resistant as possible against lasers. Any ideas?
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Post by blothorn on Sept 30, 2016 20:41:41 GMT
Interesting---are you dispensing with the detonator to achieve that projectile weight? Or was my understanding that you need a control module for proximity detonation to work incorrect?
(And do those results against laser frigates hold if you turn their laser range up to that of the frag guns? Weapon range limits are really beginning to irk me---I can think of no earthly reason you would want to hold fire until you close to your "effective" range, when it is extremely likely that you will be dead before that happens.)
As far as resistance to lasers go, a handful of us have concluded that you want armor with very low thermal conductivity--I forget whether turrets have access to silica aerogel, but otherwise (or if you want something with a modicum of effectiveness against kinetics) look at the ceramics. However, with a coilgun I suspect your primary risk is the coil itself, which has far fewer options. (Why do we not have the option to choose the coil armor material?)
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Post by 314159 on Sept 30, 2016 22:02:04 GMT
We're supposed to put detonators on those? This is the payload; it's put onto a design consisting only of this, which is then fired from the gun. That works for me. And yes, that screenshot uses a very large explosive filler; that was part of an experiment to make it useful with the current proximity detonators. And no, they're significantly less useful against 250km-range laser frigates. At those distances, dodge is an issue (again, with current detonator logic). As is computer slowdown due to the number of projectiles underway. In my test, five drones were able to mission-kill one of the five laser frigates. I'd put more armour on them, but that's just not worth it until the weapons survive for longer. I did notice the thermal armour thread; my drones are using 1cm of silica aerogel; that's not available for turrets. So instead, they're now mounting 5cm of nitrile rubber (they did use one of the ceramics before, but nitrile rubber seems better) and a 5.6cm armour layer of ferritic steel on the barrel. The nitrile rubber does increase the lifetime of the weapon to about 10 seconds, compared to three seconds using ferritic steel for the turret armour too (both tested just entering the range of four default laser frigates with five drones at 200m/s).
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Post by strikedragon on Oct 1, 2016 0:59:54 GMT
Why do you use copper shrapnel?
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Post by blothorn on Oct 1, 2016 1:02:16 GMT
Interesting. I made a payload consisting of a flak bomb and no control module and it never detonated, even on direct impacts. Meanwhile, a frigate after having been visited by 7.42 Mt of nukes: This is probably a lot heavier than it ought to be...
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joker
New Member
Posts: 8
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Post by joker on Oct 1, 2016 8:18:23 GMT
Attachment DeletedI accidentally made a powerful 120mm coilgun. Her soild shell frags after penetrate armor, cause massive internal damage. Attachment DeletedThat's a default gunship as target. My coilgun shell drill a small hole on the other side, eviscerate everything inside. Attachment DeletedDamage caused by default 286mm coilgun.
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Post by 314159 on Oct 1, 2016 9:54:49 GMT
Why do you use copper shrapnel? Part of an attempt to reduce cost of the ammunition - for my standard drone, about 2/3rds of the cost is ammo. Later, I noticed the ammo cost isn't due to the tungsten I've used before (and am now using again), but due to the magnetic metal glass (originally 230g per bullet; I've reduced it to 75g in my current version).
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Post by nerd1000 on Oct 1, 2016 10:43:43 GMT
Why do you use copper shrapnel? Part of an attempt to reduce cost of the ammunition - for my standard drone, about 2/3rds of the cost is ammo. Later, I noticed the ammo cost isn't due to the tungsten I've used before (and am now using again), but due to the magnetic metal glass (originally 230g per bullet; I've reduced it to 75g in my current version). You can also use the Nickel Iron Molybdenum (or whatever it is) material that the stock 286mm coilgun uses as its ammo. Way cheaper than MMG, though performance is of course a bit lower.
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Post by kelarkir on Oct 12, 2016 19:06:44 GMT
Something is off about the Coilguns. The following design yields a nice 18 MJ kinetic Energy per round. Combined with that rate of fire, thats alot more than the 50MW this thing is using... -.o
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