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

I am seeing the exact opposite. If you compare my reactors in the OP, a set of 10 of any reactor is heavier and costlier than a single one of the higher tier (and same temperature).

Added your design to the list, thanks for sharing!

PS Thank you for making me think of myself as a 1.6 MT device, I have a new life goal

---

amimai I like that information table more it's more readable/easier to understand, I'll add the extra info on the next page as well

I think this is mostly a faithful recreation from that.  I can't match the pumping * cavity shape from that design, but I can get a larger overall efficiency (4.40%) from same power (8 MW) and aperture (2.1 m) by improving the design elsewhere.
I would also rather use less / lighter armor, but here it is.

EWWW that laser... your using a silver cavity.

my lasers diamond molybdenum are much better, they have a 2200k outlet temperature and their radiators can fir on a dime (1 sec ill post design)

also you would be better off building a laser with a smaller aperture and a smaller turret and sticking 10 of them on your ship (it will work out better and more damaging)


realistically you are looking at around 50kg/1MW in ship weight so having a system that's several hundred tones only using 8MW is kind of a joke
doubling the aperture diameter increases the intensity by 4x, the cost by 5x and the mass by 6x its really not a good trade off


some key guidelines for making your laser:
mass: 50-100kg/MW
thermostable materials: Diamond, Molybdenum, tungsten (focusing mirror should be silver since it does not have heat issues)
optical nodes : as few as you need to get M2=3.01
rod radius: smaller is better, larger rods simply add cost
outlet temp: 2000k+
Aperture: first set up your turret ball to match mass, then set up aperture so you have 65deg ark (6 lasers for 360 coverage with overlaps)
armour: boron, aim for around 20cm armour for every 100cm turret so they don't break off so easily
reaction wheel: polyethylene, cheap, light and perfect for lasers (better then lithium because you can get rpm>10)
to shrink your optical nodes: to keep m2=3 with less nodes you need to increase the cavity axis

the laser system:

the details:

and what it looks like on a drone:

and the mass breakdown (do note the near 1:1 balance in cost and mass between laser and radiator/power)




EDIT:
by following my own rules I have made an even better laser system, its perfect for my emerald butterflies!

pictures


components:

it really depends what kind of radiators you are using and what kind of armour you want to put on your ship...

a 1m diameter turret with several cm of boron can take a hit from some really nasty things like highV shrapnel bombs, remember once the turret goes you have a hole in your armour which is bad... if said hole is 30m across

then again one thing to note, using the 16m aperture turret using a 5MW laser I created a death star that vaporised its way through 15m or boron armour without much issue.

on turret sizes for offensive lasers:
for 45.1deg (minimum turret designs for light flywheels)
spot diameter does not change with increase of laser power output, only m-rating changes spot diameter

may be relevant


also I did a lot of testing on rail gun materials recently:

for barrel:
best speed : Zirconium Copper
best mass : aluminium copper lithium (33% less speed, 50% less mass&cost)

for projectile (best material changes to purpose):
light super velocity rail gun : Amorphous carbon (this causes minimal barrel stress at 50k+ velocity)
Heavy Mass Rail gun : osmium (you can safely and effectively launch 100g of this at 30km/s+)
shuttle material (for payload narrow) : Osmium (100g payload to 20km/s is ez)
shuttle material (for payload wide) : beryllium (expensive but best) aluminium zinc magnesium (cheap but 5% slower)
if shuttle material melts : gamma titanium aluminium (15% slower then beryllium but 100x as thermostable, also inexpensive)

rail guns have 2 "peaks" fore velocity depending on bore radius, one at 5mm or less, this is best for projectiles and gives high velocity, the second at 2cm or more, this gives the best performance when launching payloads.