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Post by newageofpower on Dec 10, 2016 4:41:51 GMT
I mean, these 60 m reactors look not very fitting to my spacecrafts... Clearly, you're not thinking big enough ; ) Jokes aside, gigantic MPD vessels are not for everyone. |
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Post by The Astronomer on Dec 10, 2016 7:52:31 GMT
I mean, these 60 m reactors look not very fitting to my spacecrafts... Clearly, you're not thinking big enough ; ) Jokes aside, gigantic MPD vessels are not for everyone. Also: economically unfeasible. |
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Post by amimai on Dec 10, 2016 8:57:22 GMT
I find even a 1GW MPD is a much better travel drive then any normal thrust unit... it's not very useful in combat but that is what resistor jets are for.
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Post by tessfield on Dec 10, 2016 18:56:15 GMT
Okay, can someone who has actually done it recreate cubit's 8MW laser design? We don't get to see enough of the actually important things about the laser to figure out how to recreate it in our games. cubit's original post has both images that are necessary to make the laser. Heya! I only see 1 link on the original post myself... Why is it not recreatable? What is it missing? cubit32 could you provide us with a better link to your laser? someusername6 I'm adding your laser  Thanks! I'm going to add intensity at ranges soon, but first I need to go through all the feedback and posts |
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Post by tessfield on Dec 10, 2016 19:30:16 GMT
Heya apophys and amimai ! It's rather confusing for me to keep up with discussions on this thread, because I don't know what is right or not, specially with systems I'm not familiar with; I've compiled you two's discussions on lasers over here, but I'm not sure I like the idea of posting it as is, what do you guys think? Can you guys come up with generic advice/organize this better? Do you guys agree with each other's ideas? Some more guidelines for designing laser modules: | Thermostable Materials | Diamond, Molybdenum, Tungsten (focusing mirror should be Silver since it does not have heat issues.) |
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| Optical Nodes | As few as you need to get [m2 = 3.01] |
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| Rod Radius | amimai : For green lasers, smaller is better, larger rods simply add cost
apophys : Not for purple lasers, though |
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| Outlet Temperature | amimai : 2000°K+
apophys : High temperature lasers get a huge hit to efficiency, and the savings in radiators is not worth it.
You lose ~55% of laser efficiency while saving ~90% of the laser's radiators; this looks great at first glance. But you have to think about the whole power system; total radiator area (laser+reactor) only scales down ~55%. And you continue to use the same cost/weight of laser & reactor, so it's strictly worse. Oddly enough, silver cavities with their 1234K temperature remain superior. |
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| Aperture | amimai : 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).
Doubling the Aperture Diamerter increases the intensity by 4x, the cost by 5x and the mass by 6x its really not a good trade off.
apophys : 45 degrees traverse (the minimum possible) is enough, regardless of the yellow warning thrown by the game.
Aperture should only be dictated by the intensity you desire at 1 Mm range (because there really isn't any downside to extending your range as far as it can go). For 100MW green, the aperture should be at least around 1m to get usable intensity at 1Mm range.
amimai : 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. |
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| Armour/Turret Size | amimai : Boron, aim for around 20cm armour for every 100cm turret so they don't break off so easily
apophys : A smaller cavity is a reduction in mass. This reduction would be fairly significant if you had very little armor, like I do.
amimai : 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. |
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| Reaction Wheel | Polyethylene, cheap, light and perfect for lasers (better then lithium because you can get rpm>10) |
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Post by amimai on Dec 10, 2016 19:31:10 GMT
BTW on main post the part about MPD drives being best out of vanadium is utterly wrong... vanadium is strong so it makes for smaller MPD's but it reduces the GW/kg fuel you can put in significantly.
We were describing 2 separate design philosophies for lasers.
My comments are for compact lasers as secondary weapons (with the goals being survival and weight saving)
Apophys comment were for dedicated offence lasers, glass cannon designs with 1 huge laser mounted on a dedicated lasing ship(more damaging and effective but requires building your ship around the laser, It's the min/max design)
My high temperature laser designs are small and dirt cheap, apophys low temperature design is expensive and more powerful but hard to armour or defend. Pick your favourite.
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Post by tessfield on Dec 11, 2016 0:15:19 GMT
Thank you for clarifying amimai! Also, thank you for the MPD information, I'm about to compile that for the OP, then I'll see about posting the laser information. |
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Post by newageofpower on Dec 11, 2016 0:37:41 GMT
BTW on main post the part about MPD drives being best out of vanadium is utterly wrong... vanadium is strong so it makes for smaller MPD's but it reduces the GW/kg fuel you can put in significantly. We were describing 2 separate design philosophies for lasers. My comments are for compact lasers as secondary weapons (with the goals being survival and weight saving) Apophys comment were for dedicated offence lasers, glass cannon designs with 1 huge laser mounted on a dedicated lasing ship(more damaging and effective but requires building your ship around the laser, It's the min/max design) My high temperature laser designs are small and dirt cheap, apophys low temperature design is expensive and more powerful but hard to armour or defend. Pick your favourite. So, if VCrFe is the wrong material for big MPDs, what is the correct material? Quite curious here. Also, has anyone ever built a good Mercury NTR? |
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Post by amimai on Dec 11, 2016 5:57:25 GMT
As I said earlier I notice you lack any good MPD drives, BEHOLD! minimaxed 50GW MPD's... some notes: Mercury MPD : This has the best density and acceleration of all MPD, if you need to get a lot of mass going very fast this should be your go-to Neon MPD : This is the cheapest MPD, but its has less acceleration per GW, its a straight up trade, cost and dV for burn time and acceleration (+40% dV, -45% g0, +45% burn time) while mercury can burn straight out most planets gravity wells with neon you will often find you need to slingshot and gravity assist your way out that can add weeks or months to journey time. materials: the ones stated below are the best I have yet found, cost for MPD is really a non-issue so you can go wild, I imagine my ships crew make replacement heads for MPD out of spent fuel rods from the reactor in their free time... mercury booster (186km dV, 37mg0, 4.2d burn time) MagnetoplasmadynamicThrusterModule 192 km/s 53.7 GW Mercury Gimballed Magnetoplasmadynamic Thruster
CathodeRadius_m 0.17
ChamberThickness_m 0.056
AnodeThickness_m 0.0014
ThrusterLength_m 0.066
CathodeComposition Potassium
AnodeComposition Depleted Uranium
InsulatorComposition Boron
Propellant Mercury
Current_A 2.6e+005
Injector
Composition Aluminum
PumpRadius_m 0.062
RotationalSpeed_RPM 9.6
Gimbal
InnerRadius_m 0.1
ArmorComposition Silica Aerogel
ArmorThickness_m 0.0001
ReactionWheels
Composition Potassium
RotationalSpeed_RPM 13000
GimbalAngle_degrees 20Neon Booster (270km dV, 25mg0,  burn time) MagnetoplasmadynamicThrusterModule 274 km/s 52.6 GW Neon Gimballed Magnetoplasmadynamic Thruster
CathodeRadius_m 0.036
ChamberThickness_m 0.05
AnodeThickness_m 0.001
ThrusterLength_m 0.2
CathodeComposition Potassium
AnodeComposition Depleted Uranium
InsulatorComposition Boron
Propellant Neon
Current_A 3.2e+005
Injector
Composition Aluminum
PumpRadius_m 0.077
RotationalSpeed_RPM 31
Gimbal
InnerRadius_m 0.14
ArmorComposition Silica Aerogel
ArmorThickness_m 0.0001
ReactionWheels
Composition Potassium
RotationalSpeed_RPM 12000
GimbalAngle_degrees 20CathodeComposition Potassium AnodeComposition Depleted Uranium InsulatorComposition Boron also did not mention this in the last post: if you are going to use MPD as backup thruster for a combat ship use methane as the main ship propellant, it allows 10x more MW/g flow and gives higher fuel efficiency for small MPD one of the smallest MPD's I have made (adjust radius up and down to change power requirements, im still looking for the best nano-thruster design) (edit : Optimised) the smallest one! 100kw methane drone MPD (52% efficiency, 76mg flow rate, 10x more efficient then NTR) perfectly designed for driving 20kg drones around the solar system
MagnetoplasmadynamicThrusterModule 36.9 km/s 100 kW Methane Gimballed Magnetoplasmadynamic Thruster
CathodeRadius_m 0.001
ChamberThickness_m 0.088
AnodeThickness_m 0.001
ThrusterLength_m 0.01
CathodeComposition Potassium
AnodeComposition Depleted Uranium
InsulatorComposition Boron
Propellant Methane
Current_A 2500
Injector
Composition Aluminum
PumpRadius_m 0.012
RotationalSpeed_RPM 1.3
Gimbal
InnerRadius_m 0.018
ArmorComposition Silica Aerogel
ArmorThickness_m 0.0001
ReactionWheels
Composition Potassium
RotationalSpeed_RPM 2200
GimbalAngle_degrees 10
mass/radius balanced vs efficiency (you can make a 4.8m wide MPD that drives 100kW with just 34mg flow rate(twice efficiency), but that wont fit on drones) |
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Post by newageofpower on Dec 12, 2016 1:31:44 GMT
amimai so you said for 2600k+ reactors, smaller reactors generate more power/weight than larger reactors?
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Post by amimai on Dec 16, 2016 22:50:44 GMT
I did some number crunching on MPD propellants density/1k : roughly correlates to dV/m^3 of fuel SQRT adjust : more meaningful in some cases 10g/100g/1kg/4kg : propellant flow rate  |
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Post by newageofpower on Dec 18, 2016 1:28:07 GMT
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Post by deskjetser on Dec 18, 2016 1:33:15 GMT
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Post by The Astronomer on Dec 18, 2016 1:53:44 GMT
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Post by deskjetser on Dec 18, 2016 2:18:13 GMT
The Astronomer I know, and I love watching it; Not even four hours since the update and peeps already going ham!  
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Thanks!
burn time) 
