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Post by koganusan on Nov 14, 2017 20:08:58 GMT
I've recently had a series of entertaining ideas related to scattering unpowered sub-munitions from missiles or shells. I want to be able to dump a whole bunch of tiny frag explosives, micronukes or lumps of osmium or the like very quickly, in the direction of the target and spread out rather than clumped like my early attempts with launchers or blast tubes. It occurred to me that a comically inaccurate and low muzzle velocity high rate of fire gun on a turret could probably do the job quite nicely. The problem is, I can't figure out how to make one bad enough. Nothing seems to be up to the challenge of filling a cone measured in tenths of a degree at most with tiny projectiles traveling tens of meters per second at most away from the launcher. I've tried conventional, rail and coil guns, but everything seems to work too well for this application. To make matters worse, the constraints the problem is placed under (tiny, low mass, low power) make it even harder because they implicitly rule out some of the stupider things you can do while building a gun.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this problem? In fact, if anyone feels up to it, let's make this an impromptu challenge thread. What's the smallest, lightest thing you can build to scatter at least 100 of the 152 mg 1 cm Flak payload from the standard modules thread? Submunitions should disperse as evenly as possible, and stay close enough to be expected to hit whatever the missile was aimed at. If you want to go a bit bigger, how about at least 50 micronukes?
(Yes, this is half joking, but only half. I doubt the results would come anywhere close to an optimized version of a more conventional set of missiles, to say nothing of lasers, but I think it might have niche applications and it would be very entertaining.)
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Post by jtyotjotjipaefvj on Nov 14, 2017 20:22:43 GMT
Single-shot blast launchers facing sideways do the job quite well. They deploy in a ring simultaneously so you get a nice spread pattern that's easily controllable, and the launchers are still pretty light and cheap. You might want to up fragment mass to around 100 grams though, otherwise the exit velocity is going to be too high for most use cases. See here for more info: childrenofadeadearth.boards.net/post/29531/thread
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Post by koganusan on Nov 14, 2017 20:31:36 GMT
The pictures you linked aren't showing up for me. Mind rehosting/recreating them?
I tried this approach but presumably didn't tinker with it enough to bet good results. The best I ever managed was several lines of projectiles dispersing too fast, too early or late, and with large chunks of space left open.
On a related topic, I also looked at missiles with a nuke and a frag payload with either the nuke launched ahead or the frag launched behind such that hopefully the nuke softens the armor and the frag pierces it, but my results with making that work properly have been even more disappointing.
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Post by treptoplax on Nov 14, 2017 21:23:10 GMT
Have you tried conventional drone/missile launchers? The rate of fire won't be good but they may otherwise do what you want.
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Post by jtyotjotjipaefvj on Nov 14, 2017 22:05:23 GMT
The pictures you linked aren't showing up for me. Mind rehosting/recreating them? I tried this approach but presumably didn't tinker with it enough to bet good results. The best I ever managed was several lines of projectiles dispersing too fast, too early or late, and with large chunks of space left open. On a related topic, I also looked at missiles with a nuke and a frag payload with either the nuke launched ahead or the frag launched behind such that hopefully the nuke softens the armor and the frag pierces it, but my results with making that work properly have been even more disappointing. Looks like dropbox is down. Here's an imgur version: You can find an exported design a few posts down from the post I linked. You need to allow the projectiles three frames for them to properly leave the blast launchers: on first frame, the blast launcher triggers, on the next the projectiles are spawned and only on the third frame they start traveling out from the launcher. So you need a trigger range of about 10% of your relative velocity to get good results. This gives you between 0 and 1/30th of a second expansion time for the submunition ring, which translates to around 0-10 meters for my round.
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Post by 𝕭𝖔𝖔𝖒𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖈𝖑𝖊 on Nov 15, 2017 6:43:07 GMT
The pictures you linked aren't showing up for me. Mind rehosting/recreating them? I tried this approach but presumably didn't tinker with it enough to bet good results. The best I ever managed was several lines of projectiles dispersing too fast, too early or late, and with large chunks of space left open. On a related topic, I also looked at missiles with a nuke and a frag payload with either the nuke launched ahead or the frag launched behind such that hopefully the nuke softens the armor and the frag pierces it, but my results with making that work properly have been even more disappointing. Looks like dropbox is down. Here's an imgur version: You can find an exported design a few posts down from the post I linked. You need to allow the projectiles three frames for them to properly leave the blast launchers: on first frame, the blast launcher triggers, on the next the projectiles are spawned and only on the third frame they start traveling out from the launcher. So you need a trigger range of about 10% of your relative velocity to get good results. This gives you between 0 and 1/30th of a second expansion time for the submunition ring, which translates to around 0-10 meters for my round. If this game had no computational limits, our weapon ideas could be ridiclous. we could have submunitions firing submunitions firing submiunitions
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Post by Argopeilacos on Nov 15, 2017 8:11:02 GMT
We could have submunitions firing submunitions firing submiunitions Nobody would dare. Oh wait... Annnd sorry for doubleposting buttt I made thisss. It's a carrier... That launched a carrier drone... That launched more missiles drones... That launched MORE MISSILESSSS!!! So yeah, I did the first one with powered launcher, I have to do it with blast launcher too.
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Post by treptoplax on Nov 15, 2017 19:27:30 GMT
Have you tried conventional drone/missile launchers? The rate of fire won't be good but they may otherwise do what you want. OK, I tried this, and... it was surprisingly non-awful? I turned the AE flak rounds into a payload, and built a 1W launcher with minimal everything; it was 1cmx1cmx10cm and launched something like 5 rounds/second at about 1.5m/s and a cost well under one credit. Slapped seven of them on the front of a medium kinetic missile with a big flak magazine and long deployment range and they promptly crashed the game. Cut the deployment range to 250m and the flak started taking out radiators and engines on a regular basis. I still think blast launchers or small guns are probably the way to go, but this might be tuned into something useful.
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Post by Kerr on Nov 15, 2017 20:37:37 GMT
We could have submunitions firing submunitions firing submiunitions Nobody would dare. Oh wait... Annnd sorry for doubleposting buttt I made thisss. It's a carrier... That launched a carrier drone... That launched more missiles drones... That launched MORE MISSILESSSS!!! So yeah, I did the first one with powered launcher, I have to do it with blast launcher too. What came first? The carrier drone/missile/ship or the blast launcher?
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Post by 𝕭𝖔𝖔𝖒𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖈𝖑𝖊 on Nov 16, 2017 1:56:47 GMT
Ta Daaaa Just saying, this gun is actually able to be mounted on a drone if you want a hyper velocity cloud of projectiles. Ive made THE worst gun Ive ever seen in this game, and I seriously doubt you will be able to beat me with this
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Post by Rocket Witch on Nov 16, 2017 5:56:25 GMT
I made a half-degree spread nuke cannon a while ago. I originally posted it in the designs thread but nobody seemed very interested. The nuke uses modded explosives, but in any case it's not optimal; I designed it to better withstand being fired out of a gun without damage, so it's a simple solid-core design using TATB. One point of advice I can offer is to use stretchy materials (low Young's modulus) for the barrel reinforcement, in my case LCPF for some thermal resistance, but spider silk is ideal for the weapon's function.
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