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Post by ross128 on Oct 6, 2016 19:52:51 GMT
After my failed attempt to make a nuclear bunker-buster, I got to thinking about other ways that thermal armor could be defeated to make nukes more effective. Now of course, stripping radiators is an obvious go-to strategy because radiators by definition cannot be insulated against heat (though a really good radiator can take quite a lot of thermal flux to overload and melt, it's nowhere near what is possible for armor). However, it's unsatisfying and for good radiators it can require expending a pretty significant amount of ordinance, especially since you pretty much have to get it in one volley (the radiators will have plenty of time to cool off between volleys, putting you mostly back at square one for each attempt).
So I was wondering, what about tandem warheads? For example, a flak warhead to punch a hole in the target's thermal armor, and expose their internals or at least the (usually much meltier) ballistic armor to the nuke?
Obviously these don't exist in game yet, as there's no way to force two warheads to detonate in a specific sequence and currently whichever one goes off first will destroy the other (we'd need shaped flak charges to project the fragments forward, away from the nuke warhead). But would such a system be worth looking into?
Of course, in the meantime a really simple solution is to launch high-acceleration flak missiles in a fleet with the nukes. They'll tank PD fire, probably get a kill, and hopefully at least strip away the target's thermal armor.
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Post by nivik on Oct 6, 2016 20:03:53 GMT
After my failed attempt to make a nuclear bunker-buster, I got to thinking about other ways that thermal armor could be defeated to make nukes more effective. Now of course, stripping radiators is an obvious go-to strategy because radiators by definition cannot be insulated against heat (though a really good radiator can take quite a lot of thermal flux to overload and melt, it's nowhere near what is possible for armor). However, it's unsatisfying and for good radiators it can require expending a pretty significant amount of ordinance, especially since you pretty much have to get it in one volley (the radiators will have plenty of time to cool off between volleys, putting you mostly back at square one for each attempt). So I was wondering, what about tandem warheads? For example, a flak warhead to punch a hole in the target's thermal armor, and expose their internals or at least the (usually much meltier) ballistic armor to the nuke? Obviously these don't exist in game yet, as there's no way to force two warheads to detonate in a specific sequence and currently whichever one goes off first will destroy the other (we'd need shaped flak charges to project the fragments forward, away from the nuke warhead). But would such a system be worth looking into? Of course, in the meantime a really simple solution is to launch high-acceleration flak missiles in a fleet with the nukes. They'll tank PD fire, probably get a kill, and hopefully at least strip away the target's thermal armor. You might be able to set up a drone with a nuclear warhead and missile launchers. The drone would launch high-g missiles when it gets within a certain range, which would fly ahead and mess up the first layer of armor, then the drone's nuclear payload would go off according to its fuse. I'll look into playing with this when I get home. I've been considering "multi-stage" missiles like this anyway, to get a high-g "terminal phase" by using sub-missiles to turn a drone into a MIRV. Slapping a nuke on the first "stage" wouldn't cost much more, and would make the first stage a lot more useful. |
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Post by ross128 on Oct 6, 2016 20:13:03 GMT
Hmm, on the topic of drones as improvised MIRV, they could probably get away with using unguided warheads (ie just a payload and a detonator) if you wanted to go for area saturation instead of a staging effect.
Edit:
Okay, I went and tested this. Unguided flak MIRV is pretty worthless due to how detonators currently work, because they always go for the closest approach regardless of arming range, anything that isn't a direct hit sees the flak cone forming in-plane with the enemy fleet and expanding behind it uselessly. So flak is better off simply delivered as a large missile formation, so that the guided missiles can achieve direct hits.
Nuke MIRV though. That gets interesting. See, due to how interception works, you've got to mount a gun of some sort on the drones to extend your engagement range. Otherwise they'll engage at the launcher's engagement range, and deploy the warheads before accelerating toward the target (which means the warheads will drift extremely slowly toward the enemy).
But that gun has another use. Other than giving you room to accelerate, a simple 22mm cannon does a rather acceptable job of punching holes in enemy thermal armor during the approach, which the dispersed cloud of free-falling nukes proceeds to exploit with brutal efficiency.
The dispersal of the unguided nukes also does a good job of irradiating the entire enemy fleet from multiple angles and minimizes fratricide, even ships that didn't have their armor stripped by the cannons typically saw their radiators fried. Nuclear MIRV drones are remarkably powerful.
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Post by tukuro on Oct 6, 2016 23:04:15 GMT
On the topic of MIRV drones, this is what I'm using:    ~60kc 20m Drone with over 5km/s DeltaV and 2cm of silicon aerogel armour firing 100 1.91kt nuclear missiles. Each missile has 6km/s of DeltaV, a burn time of ~6 seconds (~45G acceleration) and reasonable (0.5mm of silicon aerogel) resistance against lasers. Obviously the nuke isn't scientifically accurate (12g of plutonium and 2kg+ of tritium-deuteride contained within a 6.66cm diameter core) but the concept it self works. It's less accurate than my coilgun variant, but also a lot cheaper (Over 8 MIRV drones for 1 coilgun drone). The missiles themselves only cost 139c. The standard manoeuver is to intercept at near max velocity and then have the MIRV drones home in on the target while releasing their sub-munitions. If the enemy has a strong laser point defense the drones can point their launchers away from the target (also angling their armour) until they are close enough to home in and fire their rockets. Accuracy is somewhat poor (could be related to the very high acceleration), but I mostly use these if the enemies would zap my coilgun drones before they can engage. Alternatively I send them together with the coilgun drone to overwhelm the point defense. |
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