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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Aug 6, 2018 21:36:37 GMT
...stock components only.
Despite its hilariously poor combat record, NP Hiveship, or to be more exact some of the technology it uses - namely low-maintenance drone mounted reactors and high velocity railguns and, for some reason, the nuke cannons (ignoring the fact that they tend to blow up the ship mounting them, first and foremost) - has left some of the brass sufficiently impressed that they want a ship built on the same technology. Obviously, with Hiveship being such a deathtrap, *you* will want to come up with a design that is actually combat worthy, and not really looking disturbingly like well-grounded accusations of sabotage and high treason.
- Due to logistic and personnel (training) considerations as well as some alarming safety reports involving newly prototyped modules the ship is to use standard, extensively tested [CORE] components EXCLUSIVELY.
- It needs to fit into 10.00kt mass- and 196Mc financial budgets per unit built.
- It needs to house at least a single wing of 25 lancer drones and be capable of fully refuelling its drone complement at least once.
- It needs to fit at least one nuke cannon and be demonstrated to use it to its advantage in combat (versions with nuke cannon removed or replaced with tankage/spacers to maintain hull shape must perform markedly worse).
- It can use any type of propulsion and propellant as long as it meets or exceeds Hiveship's mission specifications of 4.02km/s delat-v and 15.4mG acceleration at full wet mass.
- It may mount any combination of auxiliary armaments, but they should be capable of complementing nuke cannon in direct, gun-range combat, which should be the basis of combat evaluation (as drone performance isn't going to depend on carrier ship's design).
If it isn't obvious, I want to see what will you come up with when working with hilariously flawed components, low-powered stock modules and carrier/direct combat compromise all at once. I'd expect being able to take on an aggressive or cunning Gunship and win most of the time at gun range to be the baseline here, but do surprise me. Creativity encouraged.
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Post by doctorsquared on Aug 7, 2018 2:54:52 GMT
- It needs to fit at least one nuke cannon and be demonstrated to use it to its advantage in combat (versions with nuke cannon removed or replaced with tankage/spacers to maintain hull shape must perform markedly worse).
Define 'markedly worse'. Partially because my initial prototypes have a tendency to suffer from sympathetic detonation the minute said Aggressive Gunship's lasers cook the Nuke Cannon's woefully underarmored giant turret.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Aug 7, 2018 7:01:51 GMT
- It needs to fit at least one nuke cannon and be demonstrated to use it to its advantage in combat (versions with nuke cannon removed or replaced with tankage/spacers to maintain hull shape must perform markedly worse).
Define 'markedly worse'. Nuke cannon's nuke spam must contribute to the outcome (positively, I mean), so that you can't just stick it under heavily armoured engine skirt where it is relatively safe but sees no use. It needs to be more than just dead weight, put in merely to *technically* satisfy the requirement to mount it on ship, whether you use it in anti-ship or PD roles is unimportant, it just needs to see actual combat use and hit some threats. The brass wants to see it blowing *enemy* stuff up. If you can quantify its contribution, all the better. That's supposed to be the fun part here - figuring how to use this massive liability of a gun without it blowing the ship up. Mind you, it's not a weak weapon, it's just that its fragility makes it near-unusable.
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Post by bigbombr on Aug 7, 2018 8:35:08 GMT
This is my attempt at a replacement for the hiveship: It has two Nuke Cannons instead of four, and doesn't suffer from sympathetic detonation. It has six 13.0 MW 11mm Autofire Railguns instead of seven. I replaced some of the radiators. I added a redundant nuclear reactor. I replaced the four 1.000 kt Decane Tanks in the front with two clusters of seven 250 t Decane Tanks. I altered the armour layout from the original 3 cm Reinforced Carbon-Carbon, 3 cm Spidersilk to 5 mm Spider Silk, 3 cm of Amorphous Carbon, 5 mm Spider Silk. I added a 10 m Spacer to give it a pointy nose. I shifted the layout of a few components. I replaced the two 30 Crew Module by two 25 Crew Module. It is cheaper (129 Mc vs 196 Mc), it's lighter (7.56 kt vs 9.41 kt), it has more delta-v (4.79 km/s vs 4.02 km/s), it has a better acceleration (47.3 mg 0 vs 32.8 mg 0), is more compact (2020 m² vs 2240 m²) and beats the original. Craft:
CraftBlueprint Hiveship BigBombR
Modules
13.5 MW Thermoelectric Fission Reactor 2 16.678 null 0.7854 1
60x Small (100 MW) Decoy Blast Launcher 4 17.534 null 0.52 0
25 Crew Module 1 85.141 null 0 0
13.0 MW 11mm Autofire Railgun 6 79.873 null 0.53 0
25 Crew Module 1 104.45 null 0 0
5.30 km/s Decane Gimballed Nuclear Thermal Rocket 1 -30.3 null 0 0
6.50 MW Lancer Drone Launcher 2 56.705 null 0 0
250 t Decane Tank 7 92.825 null 0 0
1.000 kt Decane Tank 1 49.207 null 0 0
5x2 Silicon Nitride Radiator 2 62.797 25 Crew Module 2.3562 0
5x2 Silicon Nitride Radiator 2 42.228 6.50 MW Lancer Drone Launcher 0 0
Nuke Turreted Cannon 2 59.082 null 1.5708 0
13.2 MW Decane Auto-Refueler 2 38.674 null 0 0
25x Lancer Drone 1 78.5 null 0 0
20x8 Silicon Carbide Radiator 2 30.045 13.5 MW Thermoelectric Fission Reactor 0 0
20x8 Silicon Carbide Radiator 2 8.3828 13.5 MW Thermoelectric Fission Reactor 1.5708 0
5x2 Silicon Nitride Radiator 2 44.64 25 Crew Module 0.7854 0
10.0 m x 0 m Spacer 1 116.15 null 0 0
250 t Decane Tank 7 93.825 null 0 0
Armor
Shape Cylindrical
Concave true
ArmorLayers
Spider Silk 0.005 0 0 1 1 0
Amorphous Carbon 0.03001 0 0 1 1 0
Spider Silk 0.005 0.5 0 1 1 0
I'd expect being able to take on an aggressive or cunning Gunship and win most of the time at gun range to be the baseline here, but do surprise me. Creativity encouraged. I don't think you can expect even a heavily modified (stock) Hiveship to be able to take on a Gunship. The armor is improved but still doesn't last enough, the acceleration is improved but still too anemic to dodge. The rear 1 kt Decane Tank keeps getting popped.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Aug 7, 2018 19:25:39 GMT
bigbombr Neat, very vanilla, yet, at the same time a clear improvement and much smaller ship overall. Anyway, you don't need to stick to original's propulsion, power generation or armour. Just to fit lancers, nuke cannon(s) and stay within parameters (mass budget rounded up to nearest kiloton, cost budget, minimum acceleration and delta-v). I have something that can beat gunship more often than not, but it's very hit-or-miss, especially without fine roll control, and the effective nuke-cannon hiding also makes it vulnerable to splitting, so there is still work to be done. Also, the specs call for drone refuelling capability as one of the improvements over stock Hiveship.
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Post by bigbombr on Aug 7, 2018 20:56:36 GMT
bigbombr Neat, very vanilla, yet, at the same time a clear improvement and much smaller ship overall. Anyway, you don't need to stick to original's propulsion, power generation or armour. Just to fit lancers, nuke cannon(s) and stay within parameters (mass budget rounded up to nearest kiloton, cost budget, minimum acceleration and delta-v). I have something that can beat gunship more often than not, but it's very hit-or-miss, especially without fine roll control, and the effective nuke-cannon hiding also makes it vulnerable to splitting, so there is still work to be done. Also, the specs call for drone refuelling capability as one of the improvements over stock Hiveship. For my previous submission I tried to keep the design as close to the original as possible, so I kept modifications to a minimum. I missed the drone refueling capability, but it doesn't really make sense as Lancers have only 2.10 km/s of delta-v. They aren't coming back. And Refueling them means you have to carry both decane and oxygen and the fuel pumps for them. Anyway, this is another iteration, as I was unsatisfied with the acceleration of my previous submission. Since there weren't more powerful decane thrusters, I switched to methane. This increased cross section to even more than the original Hiveship, but now acceleration is at least over 100 mg 0, so now it can actually dodge incoming fire. I also increased the number of reactor radiators and removed the decane refueler. Picture: Code:
CraftBlueprint Hiveship BigBombR 3
Modules
13.5 MW Thermoelectric Fission Reactor 2 13.447 null 0.7854 1
60x Small (100 MW) Decoy Blast Launcher 4 14.287 null 0.52 0
25 Crew Module 1 85.141 null 0 0
13.0 MW 11mm Autofire Railgun 6 86.014 null 0.53 0
25 Crew Module 1 104.45 null 0 0
6.19 km/s Methane Gimballed Nuclear Thermal Rocket 2 -30.3 null 0 0
6.50 MW Lancer Drone Launcher 2 63.736 null 0 0
5x2 Silicon Nitride Radiator 2 59.931 25 Crew Module 2.3562 0
5x2 Silicon Nitride Radiator 2 47.917 6.50 MW Lancer Drone Launcher 0 0
Nuke Turreted Cannon 2 66.548 null 1.5708 0
25x Lancer Drone 1 78.5 null 0 0
5x2 Silicon Nitride Radiator 2 57.368 25 Crew Module 0.7854 0
10.0 m x 0 m Spacer 1 116.15 null 0 0
100 t Methane Tank 7 -30.3 null 0 0
300 t Methane Tank 7 94.796 null 0 0
100 t Methane Tank 7 -29.3 null 0 0
20x8 Silicon Carbide Radiator 4 29.644 13.5 MW Thermoelectric Fission Reactor 0 0
20x8 Silicon Carbide Radiator 4 7.3181 13.5 MW Thermoelectric Fission Reactor 0 0
Armor
Shape Cylindrical
Concave true
ArmorLayers
Spider Silk 0.005 0 0 1 1 0
Amorphous Carbon 0.03001 0 0 1 1 0
Spider Silk 0.005 0.5 0 1 1 0
It manages to fairly consistently beat a Gunship in instant action through sheer resilience.
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Post by doctorsquared on Aug 8, 2018 2:42:58 GMT
- Dropped decane-based propulsion for the new 6.05 km/s Methane - 7 Gimballed NTR cluster
- Removed most of the internal tankage and replaced with a 1 kt methane tank and set of drop tanks for additional fuel.
- Reduced Nuke Cannon count to two and adjusted positioning towards the front of the ship
- Reduced Lancer Drone Launcher count to 1
- Added a redundant reactor.
- Increased 11mm Autofire Railgun count from 7 to 8.
The end result can take on an Aggressive Gunship in instant action mode as long as it faces nose-forward. The effectiveness of the Nuke Cannon is limited, however, by those lasers that keep intercepting the shots. What's frustrating is that I can plainly see which radiators are cooling said lasers, but because its the same type of radiator used to cool the Gunship's reactor my guns seem to just go after those rads instead of the ones for the lasers since targeting just groups them all together.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Aug 8, 2018 7:05:16 GMT
What's frustrating is that I can plainly see which radiators are cooling said lasers, but because its the same type of radiator used to cool the Gunship's reactor my guns seem to just go after those rads instead of the ones for the lasers since targeting just groups them all together. You can target individual components by selecting them directly on the enemy ship, instead of list.
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Post by bigbombr on Aug 8, 2018 8:40:57 GMT
Inspired by doctorsquared , I removed one of the drone launchers and switched to the "6.05 km/s Methane 7 - Gimballed Nuclear Thermal Rocket" instead of two "6.19 km/s Methane Gimballed Nuclear Thermal Rocket" to increase thrust. This meant I had to switch out one of the "25 Crew Module" for a "30 Crew Module". I added some propellant tanks. Picture: File:
CraftBlueprint Hiveship BigBombR 4
Modules
13.5 MW Thermoelectric Fission Reactor 2 15.019 null 0.7854 2
60x Small (100 MW) Decoy Blast Launcher 4 15.782 null 0.52 0
25 Crew Module 1 85.141 null 0 0
13.0 MW 11mm Autofire Railgun 6 90.506 null 0.53 0
30 Crew Module 1 104.45 null 0 0
6.05 km/s Methane 7 - Gimballed Nuclear Thermal Rocket 1 -30.3 null 0 0
6.50 MW Lancer Drone Launcher 1 68.094 null 0 0
5x2 Silicon Nitride Radiator 2 56.436 25 Crew Module 0 0
5x2 Silicon Nitride Radiator 2 47.917 6.50 MW Lancer Drone Launcher 0 0
Nuke Turreted Cannon 2 70.137 null 1.5708 0
25x Lancer Drone 1 78.5 null 0 0
10.0 m x 0 m Spacer 1 116.15 null 0 0
100 t Methane Tank 7 -30.3 null 0 0
300 t Methane Tank 7 94.796 null 0 0
100 t Methane Tank 7 -29.3 null 0 0
20x8 Silicon Carbide Radiator 4 29.644 13.5 MW Thermoelectric Fission Reactor 0 0
20x8 Silicon Carbide Radiator 4 7.3181 13.5 MW Thermoelectric Fission Reactor 0 0
5x1 Silicon Carbide Radiator 3 52.935 30 Crew Module 0 0
5x1 Silicon Carbide Radiator 3 50.124 30 Crew Module 0 0
10.0 t Methane Tank 16 54.532 null 0 1
Armor
Shape Cylindrical
Concave true
ArmorLayers
Spider Silk 0.005 0 0 1 1 0
Amorphous Carbon 0.03001 0 0 1 1 0
Spider Silk 0.005 0.5 0 1 1 0
I'm pretty pleased with the end result. It can beat a Gunship in Instant Action if both craft are set to "Aggressive", it's cheaper (134 Mc vs 196 Mc), lighter (7.06 kt vs 9.41 kt), has more delta-v (4.42 km/s vs 4.02 km/s), has over 26 times the acceleration acceleration of the original (408 mg 0 vs 15.4 mg 0) and doesn't suffer from sympathetic detonation of the nuke turrets. A shame it has a larger cross section (2370 m² vs 2240 m²) though.
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Post by ddzirowan on Aug 8, 2018 19:32:59 GMT
Inspired by doctorsquared , I removed one of the drone launchers and switched to the "6.05 km/s Methane 7 - Gimballed Nuclear Thermal Rocket" instead of two "6.19 km/s Methane Gimballed Nuclear Thermal Rocket" to increase thrust. This meant I had to switch out one of the "25 Crew Module" for a "30 Crew Module". I added some propellant tanks. Picture: File:
CraftBlueprint Hiveship BigBombR 4
Modules
13.5 MW Thermoelectric Fission Reactor 2 15.019 null 0.7854 2
60x Small (100 MW) Decoy Blast Launcher 4 15.782 null 0.52 0
25 Crew Module 1 85.141 null 0 0
13.0 MW 11mm Autofire Railgun 6 90.506 null 0.53 0
30 Crew Module 1 104.45 null 0 0
6.05 km/s Methane 7 - Gimballed Nuclear Thermal Rocket 1 -30.3 null 0 0
6.50 MW Lancer Drone Launcher 1 68.094 null 0 0
5x2 Silicon Nitride Radiator 2 56.436 25 Crew Module 0 0
5x2 Silicon Nitride Radiator 2 47.917 6.50 MW Lancer Drone Launcher 0 0
Nuke Turreted Cannon 2 70.137 null 1.5708 0
25x Lancer Drone 1 78.5 null 0 0
10.0 m x 0 m Spacer 1 116.15 null 0 0
100 t Methane Tank 7 -30.3 null 0 0
300 t Methane Tank 7 94.796 null 0 0
100 t Methane Tank 7 -29.3 null 0 0
20x8 Silicon Carbide Radiator 4 29.644 13.5 MW Thermoelectric Fission Reactor 0 0
20x8 Silicon Carbide Radiator 4 7.3181 13.5 MW Thermoelectric Fission Reactor 0 0
5x1 Silicon Carbide Radiator 3 52.935 30 Crew Module 0 0
5x1 Silicon Carbide Radiator 3 50.124 30 Crew Module 0 0
10.0 t Methane Tank 16 54.532 null 0 1
Armor
Shape Cylindrical
Concave true
ArmorLayers
Spider Silk 0.005 0 0 1 1 0
Amorphous Carbon 0.03001 0 0 1 1 0
Spider Silk 0.005 0.5 0 1 1 0
I'm pretty pleased with the end result. It can beat a Gunship in Instant Action if both craft are set to "Aggressive", it's cheaper (134 Mc vs 196 Mc), lighter (7.06 kt vs 9.41 kt), has more delta-v (4.42 km/s vs 4.02 km/s), has over 26 times the acceleration acceleration of the original (408 mg 0 vs 15.4 mg 0) and doesn't suffer from sympathetic detonation of the nuke turrets. A shame it has a larger cross section (2370 m² vs 2240 m²) though. I still don't understand why a lower exhaust velocity should give a ship more acceleration. I use 7.00km/s methane NTRs and i always have at least half a g of acceleration. And also higher delta-v. That with lower cost and mass than vanilla. My battleship can take out the the double of it's cost in vanilla corvettes alone. And it has 10+km/s and heavy armor taht keeps dV and crew safe all the time.
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Post by bigbombr on Aug 8, 2018 20:48:26 GMT
I still don't understand why a lower exhaust velocity should give a ship more acceleration. I use 7.00km/s methane NTRs and i always have at least half a g of acceleration. And also higher delta-v. That with lower cost and mass than vanilla. My battleship can take out the the double of it's cost in vanilla corvettes alone. And it has 10+km/s and heavy armor taht keeps dV and crew safe all the time. It doesn't. However, for the same thrusting power, a higher exhaust velocity means a lower thrust, as thrusting power is the product of exhaust velocity and thrust (P thrust [W] = V exhaust [m/s] * Thrust [N]). However, you can just build a more potent engine to maintain or increase thrust while increasing exhaust velocity. The stock designs are terribly optimised, but learning how to improve on them and figuring out what does and doesn't work is most of the fun of the game IMO.
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Post by ddzirowan on Aug 9, 2018 14:54:42 GMT
I still don't understand why a lower exhaust velocity should give a ship more acceleration. I use 7.00km/s methane NTRs and i always have at least half a g of acceleration. And also higher delta-v. That with lower cost and mass than vanilla. My battleship can take out the the double of it's cost in vanilla corvettes alone. And it has 10+km/s and heavy armor taht keeps dV and crew safe all the time. It doesn't. However, for the same thrusting power, a higher exhaust velocity means a lower thrust, as thrusting power is the product of exhaust velocity and thrust (P thrust [W] = V exhaust [m/s] * Thrust [N]). However, you can just build a more potent engine to maintain or increase thrust while increasing exhaust velocity. The stock designs are terribly optimised, but learning how to improve on them and figuring out what does and doesn't work is most of the fun of the game IMO. Okay. So what's the point of Thrust Power if it depends on the latter 2 and it doesn't change in any way how the ship performs? If i want more acceleration i will increase the amount of fuel pumped in, if i want more effiency and deltaV i will increase the exhaust velocity. Also, thrust power increases if you try to increase acceleration and/or efficiency. Why would you want to keep thrust power low? By doing that you would lose efficiency when increasing thrust and viceversa.
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Post by bigbombr on Aug 9, 2018 15:11:23 GMT
It doesn't. However, for the same thrusting power, a higher exhaust velocity means a lower thrust, as thrusting power is the product of exhaust velocity and thrust (P thrust [W] = V exhaust [m/s] * Thrust [N]). However, you can just build a more potent engine to maintain or increase thrust while increasing exhaust velocity. The stock designs are terribly optimised, but learning how to improve on them and figuring out what does and doesn't work is most of the fun of the game IMO. Okay. So what's the point of Thrust Power if it depends on the latter 2 and it doesn't change in any way how the ship performs? If i want more acceleration i will increase the amount of fuel pumped in, if i want more effiency and deltaV i will increase the exhaust velocity. Also, thrust power increases if you try to increase acceleration and/or efficiency. Why would you want to keep thrust power low? By doing that you would lose efficiency when increasing thrust and viceversa. Thrusting power essentially allows you to compare apples with oranges, it allows you to compare the power output of high exhaust velocity, low thrust engines (like ion engines or magneto-plasmadynamic thrusters) with low exhaust velocity, high thrust engines (like combustion rockets and solid-core nuclear thermal rockets). It gives you a general idea how 'powerful' a rocket engine is. And if you know the input power and the thrusting power you can calculate the energy efficiency and waste heat of an engine. This is especially important in engines that have a high thrusting power-to-mass-ratio (like torch drives) as waste heat management can be even more of a major design challenge than with more down-to-earth engines. There is no real need to keep thrusting power low. You actually want to have a high thrusting power-to-mass-ratio (and especially a high exhaust velocity).
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Post by gedzilla on Aug 13, 2018 14:21:50 GMT
...stock components only.
and not really looking disturbingly like well-grounded accusations of sabotage and high treason. [/spoiler] [/div][/div][/quote] 😂😂😂😂
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Aug 14, 2018 10:58:53 GMT
I have a decent and cool looking design I am working on that can already easily brutalize a Gunship unassisted, however: - It's not very similar to original Hiveship in style (different armour scheme, a bit heavier, manoeuvrable, massive array of different weapons, completely different shape - basically an ISO-standard DCA ship)
- Knifeship layout is hard to make work in CoADE without fine, bi-axial orientation control.
- Due to above, even with attempts at lateral dodge thrusters to clobber trajectories into desired shape, nuke cannons have few opportunities to fire around the armour shroud and can sometimes catch a stray round in spite of it forcing me to forego completely partial armour layout as it couldn't hold the ship together in the event of magazine explosion.
Blah. Still needs work.
Edit:Ok, I think, I've got it - first set scatter, then switch to broadside (with nose mounted 200kW railguns) - this should keep dodge motors firing, making the ship hard to hit and forcing favourable battle geometry allowing early nuke cannon fire.
Can kill a gunship without focusing fire on any particular components, with only damage.
Edit2: Pushed design to Steam Workshop.
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