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Post by kjakker on Nov 14, 2016 19:18:53 GMT
I had a thought for drones and missiles, could a game mechanic be introduced to make engines, lasers, and guns that are made from lower quality parts and are therefore cheaper to produce?
I believe there may a historic precedence for this proposal, unfortunately I can not remember the source to site my recollection. As I recall, during World War II one of the nations involved (I think Germany or maybe the USA) had torpedo engines that were over engineered with the same kind of quality as found in warship engines. This was noticed when it was realized that a torpedo's engine only needed to function for as long as the torpedo's fuel lasted. Even with a margin of error to ensure reliability the amount of time an engine needed to operate was only a few minutes.
Could the same kind of setup be used in CoaDE for drone/missile engines and drone specific lasers and guns? Some examples being a "Low Quality" check box next to "Injector" and "Regenerative Cooling" in the engine module screen, also next to the Coolant Turbo Pump in the LASER module. With gun modules could have low quality barrel liners and an LQ Loader option, after all the 33mm Cannon carried by the Hellfire Drone only needs to function for 2 minutes and 26.5 seconds to expend it full 5000 round ammo supply so why make it to the same quality level as its shipboard counterpart?
What are your thoughts?
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Post by bdcarrillo on Nov 14, 2016 21:32:03 GMT
We sort of make some of those decisions already with the design factors that the game gives us...
Butttt....
Since material fatigue/degradation isn't modelled, we can't really build cheap disposable items.
A barrel either fractures from stress on the first shot, or never fractures. I can't imagine what it would take to incorporate a functional lifespan for objects.
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Post by dragonkid11 on Nov 15, 2016 0:16:51 GMT
Some one shot option for missile launcher or recoilless cannon that's light and cheap would be nice.
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Post by Pttg on Nov 15, 2016 1:41:15 GMT
It especially bugs me that our reactors need to have six months of operating lifetime when all they really need to do is provide power for a couple of hours, tops.
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Post by bdcarrillo on Nov 15, 2016 1:47:12 GMT
The reactor life complaint may tie into my request for batteries.
I'd also like to point out that blowback style conventional weapons may be in the future, so the one-shot request may be on the horizon.
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Post by Durandal on Nov 15, 2016 2:02:59 GMT
The reactor life complaint may tie into my request for batteries. I'd also like to point out that blowback style conventional weapons may be in the future, so the one-shot request may be on the horizon. Really? Something qswitched mnetioned? |
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Post by bdcarrillo on Nov 15, 2016 2:10:59 GMT
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Post by coaxjack on Nov 15, 2016 3:00:41 GMT
It especially bugs me that our reactors need to have six months of operating lifetime when all they really need to do is provide power for a couple of hours, tops. I think a checkbox that marks a reactor for 'start-on-launch' so it then only has to operate for however long the flight time to target is would work, so there wouldn't be some workaround to use a shoddy reactor for a full size ship. Then you can severely underengineer your powerplant for 3 days of use or whatever. Without doing the math, something about this tells me that these things will either be very cheap, EXTREMELY radioactive, or both. |
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Post by dragonkid11 on Nov 15, 2016 5:26:30 GMT
I fairly sure most player made drone produces enough radiation from their reactor alone to give people cancer just by parking in the orbit.
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Post by cuddlefish on Nov 15, 2016 11:37:33 GMT
What're a few kilowatts of neutrons between friends, though?
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Post by thorneel on Nov 15, 2016 11:53:15 GMT
For disposable nuclear reactors, how long does starting a reactor take? While combat reactors would make sense for capital ships, how fast can they be started for drones? And if they are started before launch, then the carrier needs radiators for the drone engines as well.
Then again, nuclear rockets seem to turn on and off at a whim - when not used, they don't need radiators so their reactor has to be stopped as there is no propellant to carry the heat away. Which also means that the 6-month limit makes no sense on the rockets, as often they are used a few dozen minutes in total.
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Post by n2maniac on Nov 22, 2016 23:25:35 GMT
For disposable nuclear reactors, how long does starting a reactor take? While combat reactors would make sense for capital ships, how fast can they be started for drones? And if they are started before launch, then the carrier needs radiators for the drone engines as well. Then again, nuclear rockets seem to turn on and off at a whim - when not used, they don't need radiators so their reactor has to be stopped as there is no propellant to carry the heat away. Which also means that the 6-month limit makes no sense on the rockets, as often they are used a few dozen minutes in total. Heh, that has bothered me a bit as well. Nuclear reactions can be started arbitrarily fast, control rods on a small reactor can be moved almost arbitrarily fast (how big are the motors?), but not melting down a reactor requires a bit of care. Neutron poison burnoff (esp Xe 135) is a key restart hazard, and avoiding prompt critical conditions is needed to avoid blowing the reactor apart. Given that the fast fission factor looks like it is ignored ingame, this reactor startup speed is also probably ignored. If it wasn't, some more advanced nuclear reactor calculations (on delayed fissions) along with something to represent how good the control rod - reactor fission rate control loop works might give an answer. |
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Post by someusername6 on Nov 23, 2016 7:02:55 GMT
In an ideal world / with infinite development time, I'd like to have mean time to failures for both age and usage time, on each module. Then we would get to ride the edge of safety margins only in places where it makes sense to do it.
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Post by argonbalt on Nov 23, 2016 7:19:48 GMT
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Post by wafflestoo on Nov 28, 2016 16:53:07 GMT
I'd still like to see endurance limit be a thing; granted, it won't come up very often (at least, not until we get scenario / campaign editor support) but I'd like to see a 6-month-and-a-few-minutes-time-to-minimum-criticality reactor complete 'Homecoming' (yes, I know, 4 months and change is the current record, not the point I was making), or better yet 'Jovian Tour' if we're assuming the tired-old ship has more than a few months of fighting time on her by the time you board her.
It would also be interesting to see dual-powerplant ships cruise on one set of reactors (or RTGs) and power-up and fight with a second set of shorter endurance but considerably more powerful reactors... who knows what work-arounds we'd find when faced with a whole new set of limiting factors.
I guess my real point is that right now the knife's edge is the only place worth being.
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