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Post by AdmiralObvious on Oct 30, 2017 0:56:15 GMT
Fascinating stuff! Thanks for all the detailed replies folks. So the aerogel: is it more effective than simply a vaccuum space? I would assume so, which then raises the question of "what characteristics are the guide to what is the best material for this role?" Obviously the very low mass per volume. High thermal conductivity? I know that they use spacing in contemporary tank armor (and probably other military applications too) so the idea that using space between layers has a lot of appeal. It is just such an esoteric topic, hard to guess what will work well. I suppose having a 5cm layer of a very light material like the aerogel between every layer (except the conductor insulator sandwich which obviously needs to be in contact) is a good general rule of thumb? What about fiberglass insulation, or just plain old air!? I suppose keeping the layer pressurized to retain the air would be even more troublesome that just spraying the aerogel in there and letting it cure . . . I noticed that remarkable thermal conductivity of diamond and it piqued by interest! Given how dense it is, it would seem to be a pretty good outer layer for kinetics too? Pricey I bet . . . Graphigel is weak, but better than pure nothing provided by a total vaccum. A vaccum won't slow down spall, and in some cases makes damage worse. Graphigel is pretty universal for stopping or slowing pretty much all projectiles, provided they aren't too dense/hard. It's also great for dispersion of heat between layers. Fiberglass can work for laser suppression, and you can more or less mod in "generic air" if you wanted to, but it'd have to be stored in a tank, which defeats the purpose of it, since it's a liquid (according to the game, unless you can freeze it). Diamond is actually pretty common, on earth, and on the galactic scale. The problem (in the real world at least) is making a single contiguous piece. It's a great conductor/insulator, but if you can rupture it, it tends to fracture, and spalls.
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Post by treptoplax on Oct 30, 2017 1:16:10 GMT
Having skimmed the materials list a bit more I do have a few questions for you, this may arc off into an intense discussion of armor, and perhaps there is a not too old thread around that would be better to take the discussion to? Oh, this thread looks interesting: childrenofadeadearth.boards.net/thread/201/capital-ship-armor-threadThe first questions that come to mind: (1) Why "tin" instead of "lead." Lead appears superior in every way for the apparent role the tin is intended to serve, no? Cheaper, denser, higher melting point, stretches better, etc.?? (2) half a meter of graphite aerogel? Wow that is actually pretty massive, rather bulky, fairly expensive and I'm not entirely clear what it is doing? Is this a "heat absorbing" layer or what? Which specs are the key for heat mitigation? (3) amorphous carbon, is this like the "fall back" line? assuming the outer layers are being swiss cheesed this is sort of a "general purpose dense, hard, strong and slow to melt" layer? When you say "thin" does that mean 500 micro meters? (4) What the heck does the silk do!? I can see myself getting obsessed with just the armor design "Spaceship-Armorer Simulator 2017" . . . How does one achieve the sloping that millesmissiles referred to (in the OP of the thread linked above) where his ships taper from a ~5m diameter bow to a ~20 m diameter stern? place a 4 m diameter space in the front and a 19m spacer in the back? Given the guns are generally positioned radially at various points along the ship cylinders, what does "broadside" actually mean? Does this mean the ship will turn at _whatever_ angle gives it line of sight with maximum number of guns? Or is it actually a fixed angle and therefore one wants to actually arrange one's weapons in stripes running down the long axis of the hull? Given the obvious importance of cross-section, it seems to me that angling the hull from narrow to wide going from stem to stern and then positioning the weapons so that effectively all of them can have line of sight while the craft is pointing its nose directly at the target is the wise design, but I'm not sure to what degree the game engine affords this? Does the game account for blocked line of sight from modules blocking one another and/or opened line of sight from the angle of the hull? I'm not too surprised if that armor configuration isn't much use against stock weapons, which mostly fire big heavy (more than a couple grams!) things slowly (less than 10Km/s). My ships tend to be small with very high acceleration and large stores of drones and missiles, so I'm mostly concerned about countering high-velocity (30Km/s+) low mass (1g) railguns and lasers - anything equipped with stock weapons (other maybe than drones) is unlikely to live long enough to get into effective range. My most heavily-used up-to-date ship is a small carrier; 5.1 Km/s dV from a decane NTR with an acceleration (fully loaded) of almost 700 milligees and a cross-section of 628 m^2. The first versions had HD, but every time I switched to a denser fuel the size/mass/armor savings more than outweighed the ISP loss. I just checked the armor scheme - I think I must have had some extra mass/space in my budget and half-randomly added stuff to the armor until it was used up - the armor scheme is (outermost to innermost): 2.5mm tin 40cm graphite aerogel 1.5mm spider silk 47cm graphite aerogel 2.5mm amorphous carbon 7.5mm boron filiment 2.5mm spider silk In my experience it works as well as can be expected against lasers and high-velocity railguns (which is not great, but it'll take more than one hit to take you out). My recollection is that in anther thread the testing indicated that platinum was the best Whipple shield, with tin almost as good and much cheaper. Gold and silver are also pricey but effective, and maybe better against lasers. I think maybe silicon was decent and significantly useful against lasers? YMMV. If you're expecting to slug it out nose-on, not the armor scheme you want; maybe a cone or pencil-shape with something resembling this but a hard cap on the exposed nose of a few cm of vanadium-chromium steel or reinforced carbon-carbon or diamond/AC would be my suggestion...
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Post by treptoplax on Oct 30, 2017 16:19:07 GMT
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Post by dichebach on Oct 30, 2017 16:35:28 GMT
Thanks treptoplax! Haven't played for a day or so, fiddling with work-like stuff . . . However, one thing you said that piqued my curiousity. You mentioned a space craft with a "a cone or pencil-shape with something resembling this but a hard cap on the exposed nose of a few cm of vanadium-chromium steel or reinforced carbon-carbon or diamond/AC would be my suggestion." What about a "Shield shape" on the nose which overlaps the diameter of the rest of the ship sufficiently that it "blocks" shots within a reasonable cone of straight on prograde? There are a few space ships in EVE Online, that have something about like this, been so long since I played I cannot even recall the "faction" name of the space ship designers/users . . . ah yes the Amarr! The space ship which most exemplifies this is the Avatar (shown at the end of this video, and which is preposterously enormous) but a couple of the smaller ones show the basic design to some extent. www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0O3Xl6a4wcI wonder if that is at all possible with this engine? As Witch said, the game doesn't calculate LOS for friendly shots, but does for enemy shots? So maybe this would work? Put a big "umbrella" of heavy armor on your nose and always use nose forward command in combat??
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Post by RiftandRend on Oct 30, 2017 18:36:04 GMT
Thanks treptoplax! Haven't played for a day or so, fiddling with work-like stuff . . . However, one thing you said that piqued my curiousity. You mentioned a space craft with a "a cone or pencil-shape with something resembling this but a hard cap on the exposed nose of a few cm of vanadium-chromium steel or reinforced carbon-carbon or diamond/AC would be my suggestion." What about a "Shield shape" on the nose which overlaps the diameter of the rest of the ship sufficiently that it "blocks" shots within a reasonable cone of straight on prograde? There are a few space ships in EVE Online, that have something about like this, been so long since I played I cannot even recall the "faction" name of the space ship designers/users . . . ah yes the Amarr! The space ship which most exemplifies this is the Avatar (shown at the end of this video, and which is preposterously enormous) but a couple of the smaller ones show the basic design to some extent. www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0O3Xl6a4wcI wonder if that is at all possible with this engine? As Witch said, the game doesn't calculate LOS for friendly shots, but does for enemy shots? So maybe this would work? Put a big "umbrella" of heavy armor on your nose and always use nose forward command in combat?? That armor scheme does work and is quite good. You could make the nose of your ship a very angled and armored cone, and then have no armor on the sides. Saves on mass and offers increased protection. Something like this should work well.
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Post by treptoplax on Oct 30, 2017 19:17:02 GMT
Thanks treptoplax! Haven't played for a day or so, fiddling with work-like stuff . . . However, one thing you said that piqued my curiousity. You mentioned a space craft with a "a cone or pencil-shape with something resembling this but a hard cap on the exposed nose of a few cm of vanadium-chromium steel or reinforced carbon-carbon or diamond/AC would be my suggestion." What about a "Shield shape" on the nose which overlaps the diameter of the rest of the ship sufficiently that it "blocks" shots within a reasonable cone of straight on prograde? There are a few space ships in EVE Online, that have something about like this, been so long since I played I cannot even recall the "faction" name of the space ship designers/users . . . ah yes the Amarr! The space ship which most exemplifies this is the Avatar (shown at the end of this video, and which is preposterously enormous) but a couple of the smaller ones show the basic design to some extent. www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0O3Xl6a4wcI wonder if that is at all possible with this engine? As Witch said, the game doesn't calculate LOS for friendly shots, but does for enemy shots? So maybe this would work? Put a big "umbrella" of heavy armor on your nose and always use nose forward command in combat?? Indeed, a wide class of designs in that style are possible and effective. If you consider shooting through your own shield too cheesy, there is this childrenofadeadearth.boards.net/post/26674/thread elegant variation from Durandal ; the core components are shadowed behind a heavily armored and sloped nosecone, while the surface-mount weapons are dispersed along a wide unarmored 'ring' in the back. Or just stick to missiles and drones...
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Post by dichebach on Oct 31, 2017 3:28:21 GMT
What are blast launched missiles really good for?
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Post by RiftandRend on Oct 31, 2017 5:04:40 GMT
What are blast launched missiles really good for? High speed launches without power. They are handy for launching sub-munitions on powerless drones or for flares, like on the stock ships.
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Post by AdmiralObvious on Oct 31, 2017 6:37:52 GMT
What are blast launched missiles really good for? High speed launches without power. They are handy for launching sub-munitions on powerless drones or for flares, like on the stock ships. Just be mindful of how many "stages" you use. I've made the game go to a hard 1 FPM as a result of installing g blast launchers into blast launchers.
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Post by dichebach on Oct 31, 2017 13:07:27 GMT
Trying to take on Vesta Overkill. This design, "Hydro Dm Armored Cruiser," seems like an improvement, but still not up to task. Ship is light and cheap (can field up to 11 of them within the allocation for Vesta Overkill). Seems to be pretty effective armor: the nose cone has an extra layer which shows up as the lower 3 or 5 layers in the list, something like Out-to-In Diamond, Aerogel, AmorphCarbon, plastic . . . then the tin-aero-amorphcarb-fiber is the inner covering the whole ship . . . suprisingly effective armor relative to what I've experienced previously. I initially had blast launched nukes but those just sort of fly off in every which direction and seem to cause the dreaded "1 Frame per Minute" problem AdmiralObvious describes. Not clear how blast launchers + nuke missiles would be effectively used . . . anyway, replacing the blast launchers with rollout bay launchers required a bit of tweakage in power and radiators which ate up a bit of dV and acceleration but now the missile fleets are actually useable. Most recent attempt I used on Escort carrier and I believe 7 of these. The enemy drone fleets just whittled me down wave after wave and getting nuclear missiles to intercept drone fleets is both tedious and sketchy. What do you guys recommend? Bad design in general? Or decent foundation that just needs accessorizing? The way weapons ranges function is somewhat mystifying. Virtually every engagement the drones opened fire before my point defense weapons did. I'm guessing I need some blast decoy launchers?
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Post by Enderminion on Oct 31, 2017 14:05:07 GMT
stock 400kw lasers are terrible, you could have three one megawatt lasers instead
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Post by dichebach on Oct 31, 2017 15:37:31 GMT
stock 400kw lasers are terrible, you could have three one megawatt lasers instead Good! Will try those! ADDIT: actually this raises a more general question for me: I see many experienced users making comments like "Oh, you mean 'stock' . . ." which leads me to the hunch that: many or most long-time users do not make that much use of stock game assets? I can imagine many reasons why that might be the case, but well . . . why? I have a tendency to many, if not most of my games quite heavily, so the general idea of modded assets is not unfamiliar. I'm just not clear what general characteristics the stock assets tend toward which many users would seek to change by using modded assets? Less OP? More OP? More balanced? More accurate? Less accurate? ??
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Post by Enderminion on Oct 31, 2017 15:49:29 GMT
stock 400kw lasers are terrible, you could have three one megawatt lasers instead Good! Will try those! ADDIT: actually this raises a more general question for me: I see many experienced users making comments like "Oh, you mean 'stock' . . ." which leads me to the hunch that: many or most long-time users do not make that much use of stock game assets? I can imagine many reasons why that might be the case, but well . . . why? I have a tendency to many, if not most of my games quite heavily, so the general idea of modded assets is not unfamiliar. I'm just not clear what general characteristics the stock assets tend toward which many users would seek to change by using modded assets? Less OP? More OP? More balanced? More accurate? Less accurate? ?? everything that ships with the game, the modules, the ships, are called stock parts, player made parts are much better but still not modded. the only mods we can do are materials mods and planet mods, most materials don't provide that much of a benefit, exceptions include UTaC-233 which can allow higher temp nuclear reactors for use in thermal rockets, and some of the laser materials which can allow up to ~40% efficiency (up from ~3.5%)
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Post by treptoplax on Oct 31, 2017 16:10:12 GMT
Trying to take on Vesta Overkill. This design, "Hydro Dm Armored Cruiser," seems like an improvement, but still not up to task. Ship is light and cheap (can field up to 11 of them within the allocation for Vesta Overkill). Seems to be pretty effective armor: the nose cone has an extra layer which shows up as the lower 3 or 5 layers in the list, something like Out-to-In Diamond, Aerogel, AmorphCarbon, plastic . . . then the tin-aero-amorphcarb-fiber is the inner covering the whole ship . . . suprisingly effective armor relative to what I've experienced previously. [snipped pic] I initially had blast launched nukes but those just sort of fly off in every which direction and seem to cause the dreaded "1 Frame per Minute" problem AdmiralObvious describes. Not clear how blast launchers + nuke missiles would be effectively used . . . anyway, replacing the blast launchers with rollout bay launchers required a bit of tweakage in power and radiators which ate up a bit of dV and acceleration but now the missile fleets are actually useable. Most recent attempt I used on Escort carrier and I believe 7 of these. The enemy drone fleets just whittled me down wave after wave and getting nuclear missiles to intercept drone fleets is both tedious and sketchy. What do you guys recommend? Bad design in general? Or decent foundation that just needs accessorizing? The way weapons ranges function is somewhat mystifying. Virtually every engagement the drones opened fire before my point defense weapons did. I'm guessing I need some blast decoy launchers? Not a bad design for stock modules. I do see that you have an excess of 9 crew capacity; considering how expensive the stock crew modules are it's probably going to be cost effective to add some kind of weapon that'll use that up. Decoy launchers will affect missiles more than drones (I think it'll confuse their homing order, potentially?, but they'll still target ships). I do recall the 1 and 13 Mw stock lasers as being the only halfway worthwhile ones for the most part. The drones are indeed the big problem in Vesta Overkill. The issue with point defense guns is that all conventional cannons fire at roughly similar velocities, but manned ships are far larger than drones, so you'll be in their range long before you have much chance of hitting them. A big ship can have heavier armor, but even your turrets will be as large a target as the enemy drones... I have lots of non-stock-module solutions for this. Here are some ideas without: - Make the nose cap much heavier (like, 3+cm of AC/diamond/vandadium-chromium-steel, whatever suits your style) and just burn straight at the closing enemy drones, punching past them before they can do lethal damage. They'll overshoot and lack enough fuel to make a second pass. - Intercept them with large nukes. The stock megaton nukes aren't particularly cost-effective, but you can take out a whole flight of drones with one of them. - You have lot of delta-V; evade them with repeated 90-degree plane changes each time they start to get close, all the while spamming flights of 50+ nukes at the enemy fleet. - Intercept them with drones; even if you only send a couple of drones, the enemy drones will take evasive maneuvers as long as yours are nearby - if you can come near to matching velocities you don't have to win the dogfight, just force them to use up their fuel. I think I used a combination of a heavy nose-cap and megaton-nuke interception, with an offensive mix of stinger drones and striker nukes. There may be cheesy solutions, too - there used to be a bug where the AI was unable/unwilling to find an intercept against a target that was skimming too close to the surface (because the intercept path results in a collision after the fight?). re:stock/non-stock. In addition to ship design, you can design your own modules - engines, guns, etc. (or, potentially, mod in your own materials to do so). Unless you override (which is easy), unlocking the module designer happens when you beat the campaign Vesta Overkill mission (which, from Steam records, is the one that most causal-to-semi-serious players get stuck on). The stock conventional cannons and NTR/chemical engines are kinda OK; you can do much, much better on power plants, lasers, rail/coil guns, and drones. There's another thread here challenging to produce the cheapest fleet (with custom modules, but no modded materials) to beat Vesta Overkill; I've done it for 5Mc, and I'm not going to bother submitting an entry there unless it's interesting or I can get the cost under 1.5Mc.
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Post by Rocket Witch on Oct 31, 2017 16:28:58 GMT
Trying to take on Vesta Overkill. This design, "Hydro Dm Armored Cruiser," seems like an improvement, but still not up to task. Ship is light and cheap (can field up to 11 of them within the allocation for Vesta Overkill). Seems to be pretty effective armor: the nose cone has an extra layer which shows up as the lower 3 or 5 layers in the list, something like Out-to-In Diamond, Aerogel, AmorphCarbon, plastic . . . then the tin-aero-amorphcarb-fiber is the inner covering the whole ship . . . suprisingly effective armor relative to what I've experienced previously. I initially had blast launched nukes but those just sort of fly off in every which direction and seem to cause the dreaded "1 Frame per Minute" problem AdmiralObvious describes. Not clear how blast launchers + nuke missiles would be effectively used . . . anyway, replacing the blast launchers with rollout bay launchers required a bit of tweakage in power and radiators which ate up a bit of dV and acceleration but now the missile fleets are actually useable. Most recent attempt I used on Escort carrier and I believe 7 of these. The enemy drone fleets just whittled me down wave after wave and getting nuclear missiles to intercept drone fleets is both tedious and sketchy. What do you guys recommend? Bad design in general? Or decent foundation that just needs accessorizing? The way weapons ranges function is somewhat mystifying. Virtually every engagement the drones opened fire before my point defense weapons did. I'm guessing I need some blast decoy launchers? Effective range is determined most obviously by a combination of a weapon's velocity and spread, but also less obviously by the size of the target. This means, all other things being equal, the smaller ship will open fire first. The ranges the game gives act more as a guideline, and liberal use of ignore range often yields favourable results (for the battle's outcome, not your framerate). With fixed guns, neither Stinger nor Hellfire drones can both evade and return fire, so if you start shooting the moment they do, they can only unload what they can before dying and you minimise your exposure time to them. The classic way of beating Vesta was to spam small ships with pretty much a single railgun and green laser each, and often only enough power to use one of these systems at a time. The lasers were used to shoot down incoming missiles and drones alike, then strip the enemy fleet of weapons, then railguns would finish the job. This was 'back in the day' though, when the AI wouldn't ignore range at any time and drones didn't have internal guns. Now when you start lasing their weapons off they'll be returning fire, but I think the level could still be completed in the same manner, just with more losses (which, having 10+ ships, one could afford). I've personally beaten the level with the default ships by intercepting drones with waves of 5 nuclear missiles. If you want to beat the level unscathed you'll have to undertake such a standoff defence, whether it's using drones, missiles, or splitting off single ships from your fleet as sacrificial vanguards (suppose the last of these doesn't technically leave you unscathed though...). You could also try using the 2.46km/s combustion rockets for massive thrust to dodge bullet streams, since for Vesta you don't really need delta-V. For armour you can honestly just slap a 25m spacer and 5cm of diamond on the front of your ship for a giant fuckoff cone that bounces everything. Many of the more advanced armour schemes aim to optimise mass and cost while achieving the same effect, but you can just take the old 12 inches of steel approach like ye olde battleships. Don't put any weapons on the cone though, since when they get destroyed they'll leave holes in the armour. The main issue with your current design is being very large due to the hydrogen deuteride propellant. It often pays to stick with the methane stuff, though you might want to experiment with water too. You don't need staged Strikers for fighting over an asteroid, so switching to the normal variant will allow you to enjoy more delta-V or pack more missiles in. Also the 400kW IR laser doesn't really do anything, but the 13MW green is quite dependable. If you can upgrade to a 13MW reactor it opens up a lot of options for the ship's armament.
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