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Post by dragonkid11 on Nov 1, 2016 12:20:03 GMT
So, I tried to make an armor out of money for my Royal Navy which is probably more prestigious or something.
I use basalt fiber composite, nickel phosphorus microlattice, hoping that their 'magically' good properties can help out these Royal (Read, expensive) version of the ship.
They are crap.
I have to use armor equivalent to 10 times the original cost of my ship just to make sure it's actually better than the stock ship and even then not by much.
I basically gave up afterward and just put in nickle phosphorus microlattice into my graphite filled whipple shield armor and gold plated the royal ship to make it seems fabulous.
It now merely cost 1.5 to 2.0 times as much as the original ship, which is okay because my ship are dirt cheap at 8 to 11 millions per kiloton.
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Post by captinjoehenry on Nov 1, 2016 12:26:33 GMT
So, I tried to make an armor out of money for my Royal Navy which is probably more prestigious or something. I use basalt fiber composite, nickel phosphorus microlattice, hoping that their 'magically' good properties can help out these Royal (Read, expensive) version of the ship. They are crap. I have to use armor equivalent to 10 times the original cost of my ship just to make sure it's actually better than the stock ship and even then not by much. I basically gave up afterward and just put in nickle phosphorus microlattice into my graphite filled whipple shield armor and gold plated the royal ship to make it seems fabulous. It now merely cost 1.5 to 2.0 times as much as the original ship, which is okay because my ship are dirt cheap at 8 to 11 millions per kiloton. Not sure what went wrong with you. My best design uses microlattice as a filler with only 5mm of basalt fiber on top. Followed by a substantial layer of silica aerogel to deal with lasers and finally a thinner layer of micro lattice backing another 5mm thick basalt fiber whipple shield. That has proven to be by far the best armor layout I have ever made. It is also by far the most expensive |
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Post by dragonkid11 on Nov 1, 2016 12:50:21 GMT
So, I tried to make an armor out of money for my Royal Navy which is probably more prestigious or something. I use basalt fiber composite, nickel phosphorus microlattice, hoping that their 'magically' good properties can help out these Royal (Read, expensive) version of the ship. They are crap. I have to use armor equivalent to 10 times the original cost of my ship just to make sure it's actually better than the stock ship and even then not by much. I basically gave up afterward and just put in nickle phosphorus microlattice into my graphite filled whipple shield armor and gold plated the royal ship to make it seems fabulous. It now merely cost 1.5 to 2.0 times as much as the original ship, which is okay because my ship are dirt cheap at 8 to 11 millions per kiloton. Not sure what went wrong with you. My best design uses microlattice as a filler with only 5mm of basalt fiber on top. Followed by a substantial layer of silica aerogel to deal with lasers and finally a thinner layer of micro lattice backing another 5mm thick basalt fiber whipple shield. That has proven to be by far the best armor layout I have ever made. It is also by far the most expensive The problem is that it costs so much, it's ridiculous. A 850 ton ship costing eighty five millions is just too much for me. They really aren't kidding when they say it's made out of money, nickel phosphorus microlattice is by far the most expensive thing in the game, even more so than the already expensive basalt fiber. Since it's kinda effective, I put 3 cm of it in the royal ship together with graphite aerogel which is just too damn effective for me to replace it. Though gold plating the ship is really neat. |
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Post by magusunion on Nov 1, 2016 14:24:41 GMT
Yeah, I just tested the combat effectiveness of this weapon, and it hits like ass. I didn't realize how bad the combat effectiveness of these guns were. Even the model 2 version of the Dread ship is still ineffective. I'll have to relook at this problem again. Hate to say it, but my big ships are crap  |
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Post by captinjoehenry on Nov 1, 2016 15:26:48 GMT
Not sure what went wrong with you. My best design uses microlattice as a filler with only 5mm of basalt fiber on top. Followed by a substantial layer of silica aerogel to deal with lasers and finally a thinner layer of micro lattice backing another 5mm thick basalt fiber whipple shield. That has proven to be by far the best armor layout I have ever made. It is also by far the most expensive The problem is that it costs so much, it's ridiculous. A 850 ton ship costing eighty five millions is just too much for me. They really aren't kidding when they say it's made out of money, nickel phosphorus microlattice is by far the most expensive thing in the game, even more so than the already expensive basalt fiber. Since it's kinda effective, I put 3 cm of it in the royal ship together with graphite aerogel which is just too damn effective for me to replace it. Though gold plating the ship is really neat. Well the micro lattice is hugely expensive it is also very low density. So if you use it in the same thickness as you would normal high quality armor it would cost the same. Most likely be subpar though. But if you simply don't care about the cost using meters upon meters of the stuff is stupidly good. Also the same as armoring your ship with 0 malt credits  Heck at that point your ship is worth more than its volume in gold I do believe XD |
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Post by wafflestoo on Nov 1, 2016 15:54:47 GMT
The primary gun has a 400 km engagement range. And while it's slow in terms of aiming speed, it can still bring fire down range of whatever target is unfortunate to be within your sights. I haven't experimented with "micro-nuking" yet, so it fires standard level munitions. I couldn't help but notice that your coils only draw 700kw but your reaction wheels are drawing 50+Gw. I think you could make it more efficient by increasing coil wattage and making the barrel shorter, which would allow you to get by with less wheel power. |
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Post by ross128 on Nov 1, 2016 16:52:42 GMT
I'm generally skeptical of the efficiency of high-cost armor, even when it does show remarkably high resistance to fire. Mostly because, as I've stated before, "any armor can be ablative if you're persistent".
Of course, this is mostly because I look at it from the perspective of an engagement between forces with roughly equal resources. If you have a tremendous resource advantage over your opponent, then taking ludicrously expensive defenses could prove a worthwhile investment if they allow you to quickly curb-stomp the opposition and come back with minimal damage. If that advantage doesn't exist though, money you spend on excessive armor is money that the opponent may have spent on stand-off weapons to defeat said armor efficiently from a safe distance.
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Post by magusunion on Nov 1, 2016 17:12:22 GMT
I couldn't help but notice that your coils only draw 700kw but your reaction wheels are drawing 50+Gw. I think you could make it more efficient by increasing coil wattage and making the barrel shorter, which would allow you to get by with less wheel power. For extremely large guns, I've found that most of your power does go to the turret regardless of barrel size. I did shorten the barrel on a model, though, and was able to get the turning speed to a respectable degree. Sent my revision of Dreadnaught Mk.3 against the Vespa Overkill group, and it managed to preform well, at least. Still, the hard counter to large battleships is well orchestrated drones, so you definitely don't want to send this solo against anything that can swarm you with missiles/drones. |
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Post by jonen on Nov 1, 2016 17:14:02 GMT
How much efficiency are you getting out of those radiators?
It seems to me they must be dumping quite a lot of heat into each other.
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Post by wafflestoo on Nov 1, 2016 18:20:44 GMT
For extremely large guns, I've found that most of your power does go to the turret regardless of barrel size. Ah, I see. To be fair I'm usually trying to see how small I can push things and remain effective so I don't have a lot of experience with big guns. My current favorite is a 12kw railgun that I mounted on a souped-up version of the 'Stinger' drone. XD Attachments:
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Post by magusunion on Nov 1, 2016 18:53:20 GMT
How much efficiency are you getting out of those radiators? It seems to me they must be dumping quite a lot of heat into each other. Yeah, I'm pretty terrible at this game. They were at 87% loss. I had overlooked that for some reason. Fixed it, and managed to reduce my cross-sectional area in the process by a fair margin. Was also able to add an additional series of coil guns along the tail side, and improved delta-v on the ship. |
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Post by bluuetechnic on Nov 1, 2016 19:19:23 GMT
magusunion ehh yeah you're going to want to spend a bit of time on those Coil guns. You should never be using that much power just for aiming. I spent some time making adjustments, and came up with this:  It's almost identical statistically, but only uses ~34 MW for rotation, and I probably could've optimized it even further. It also only weighs 718 T, costs 19.5 MC, and 1.01 KC/round. Feel free to use this as a base, and go from here. I've learned most of what I know from copying and fiddling with other peoples' designs, and a large fraction of my modules even now are based off other designs. Edit: I redesigned your second gun too.  I'm still not sure If I'd recommend using this one though; I never like using any weapon that requires more than 1 GW for anything other than firing. If you have enough excess energy though, you can crank the rpm up to 50 to get over 20 rpm turning speed and still save energy.
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Post by bluuetechnic on Nov 1, 2016 19:29:44 GMT
Also, if you guys want some long range guns, I would recommend taking a look at this:  (Thanks randomletters). I've actually managed to reach even slightly higher speeds based on this design, but I find that ultimately it's not worth increasing the cost 1000x for only 10 extra km/s And speaking of guns and armor and such, I want to bring up a point that has been contentious for a while now: are battleships or other large capital ships viable? I find that most people, even a large portion of the people in this thread, think that they aren't and that missiles defeat all other tactics. I disagree, and I'm in the process of writing an in-depth thread that touches on this and several other related topics. Given how slowly I write though, it might not be out for a while. |
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Post by Pttg on Nov 1, 2016 20:35:59 GMT
That superdreadnaught is insane. I don't know how we can convert credits to dollars, though.
How would you guys go about armoring a space station as opposed to a vessel? I would presume it has a few stationkeeping thrusters but nothing more powerful.
I suppose the biggest weakness would be the radiators -- if I could, I'd load it with a lot of ammonia and have it vaporize the ammonia and dump it into space rather than risk losing radiators... would two meters be wide enough for the exhaust port?
Anyway, since mass is irrelevant, density, hardness, and cost are more relevant. I'm thinking two or three meters of solid iron. Maybe an interesting surface layer for heat conduction, and certainly an internal layer of something anti-spalling. I'm thinking that the laser layer could be a few centimeters of something thermally conductive, isolated from the iron layer by a meter or so. Run the generators as hot as possible so as to ensure tiny, tiny radiators, and have two or three spares, of course. Have to find a way to make cheap, high-temperature radiators, but remember, it doesn't matter how massive they are.
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Post by ross128 on Nov 1, 2016 20:41:00 GMT
Well, a quick-and-dirty way would be to choose a benchmark material, like iron (although iron is incredibly abundant in the solar system, it's also incredibly abundant on Earth and its price can only go down so much) and compare prices to get an exchange rate.
If you wanted something more comprehensive, you could compare prices across a wide variety of materials and average the exchange rates together.
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Heck at that point your ship is worth more than its volume in gold I do believe XD
