Solar System Organization of Standardization [2017-01-31]

IF anyone needs (probley bad) coilguns I have a couple of them ready to go

I also have a coilgun to contribute.



CoilgunModule 140 MW 28mm Coilgun
UsesCustomName true
PowerConsumption_W 1.4e+008
Coil
Composition Amorphous Carbon
WireRadius_m 0.044
NumberOfTurns 5
NumberOfLayers 1
NumberOfStages 18
BarrelArmorThickness_m 0
Armature
Composition Magnetic Metal Glass
BoreRadius_m 0.014
Mass_kg 0.001
Tracer Gallium Nitride
Payload null
Loader
PowerConsumption_W 21600
Turret
InnerRadius_m 0.62
ArmorComposition Nitrile Rubber
ArmorThickness_m 0.03
MomentumWheels
Composition Magnesium
RotationalSpeed_RPM 12000
TargetsShips true
TargetsShots true

37.4 km/s for 18kc isn't bad. 1/3rd of which is Nitrile Rubber.

I'm working on a full game pack featuring people's companies. I can remember AEON now. Thanks!

newageofpower mentioned 'Thorneel Propulsion Laboratories' in my thread. I suppose that is a part of Thorneel Technologies. Thanks for the submission.

With coilguns, higher density barrel materials result in higher accuracy.

For example, molybdenum can be easily made to replace AlCuLi where higher accuracy is desired. (I'm starting to really like molybdenum for this reason).

Oh, yeah, for the critical laser intensity needed to start ablating things away, there's a line called "LasingDamageThreshold_TW__m2" in the material if you can us it as armor; should speed along that effort.

I think the best advice I can give for getting into it is to start from a stable point (like a default reactor or thruster) and slowly fiddle with things and see which directions stuff goes in. Once you kind of know how everything relates to the other stats you can start trying to optimize for something in particular. A lot of modules can be broken up into smaller parts that are more or less independent of each other to make it a little easier.

Just to use nuclear reactors as an example:

The reactor part is independent of the cooling system and thermocoupler so they can be designed and optimized completely isolated from each other. The reactor part generates the heat and the coolant loop / thermocoupler deals with the heat that was generated and leeches the power off of it. But any reactor side design that generates 300MW of heat is the same as far as the coolant / thermocoupler side is concerned.

Now that the things are broken up you essentially have 2 simple systems to optimize (reactor and extractor)

For fiddling with the reactor there is only really 1 goal: Get as much power to meet the amount of total heat generated out of as little fuel as possible without burning the reactor out too quickly (you get an error for it if it is burning to fast). This all comes down to stabilizing the criticality of the reactor (that band in the middle between super and sub critical). Reactor dimensions, fuel amount, fuel enrichment, coolant type (should probably just use sodium here 99% of the time for the better cooling efficiency later), and moderator will all impact the location of the criticality zone. Control rods will increase the size of the band.

After you have the reactor generating the heat you need to leech from it is time to get the thermocoupler and coolants to stop the thing from melting and breaking. Pretty much every thing does the same thing here so it is more about balancing the 3 parts to the coolant loop. Increasing the size of and RPM of either turbo pump will cool things down more at the cost of credits and mass, increasing the size of the thermocoupler will cool things down as well at the cost of more mass and cost. Turbo pumps also take energy to spin so they will cut into your total power output so keep an eye on that to make sure you aren't losing significant portions.