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Post by samchiu2000 on Dec 27, 2016 15:55:49 GMT
After watching some video and test result of some really powerful laser ,i find out that conventional gun and missiles just can't get in their range to destroy the laser platform which molten them. For example ,a 10 gigawatt laser can disable most of the weapon on a stock gunship at~1000 km.So i wonder if the laser will eliminate the existent of gun and missile in the future multiplayer of COADE, or even in the real space battlefield in the far future.What do you think about it?
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Post by bdcarrillo on Dec 27, 2016 16:01:39 GMT
I'd agree on the basis that flight times for kinetic weapons are far too long in a close encounter.
Missiles will still have a place as a standoff/strategic weapon.
Cost or mass limits would be nice in multiplayer.
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Post by samchiu2000 on Dec 27, 2016 16:21:17 GMT
Cost or mass limits would be nice in multiplayer. A 10 gigawatt laser ship only cost about 17 MC and weight less than 1 kt. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Oz6_wTSVzw Watch it and you will know how destructive laser can be. |
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Post by David367th on Dec 27, 2016 16:45:32 GMT
This is how I see popular matches going. The option to limit players to Stock Ships or Stock Weapons will be probably used all the time. That saying, the fleet and arsenal of Stock Ships would need to be reworked to better optimize and bring more diversity to what's available.
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Post by lawson on Dec 27, 2016 17:13:39 GMT
After watching some video and test result of some really powerful laser ,i find out that conventional gun and missiles just can't get in their range to destroy the laser platform which molten them. For example ,a 10 gigawatt laser can disable most of the weapon on a stock gunship at~1000 km.So i wonder if the laser will eliminate the existent of gun and missile in the future multiplayer of COADE, or even in the real space battlefield in the far future.What do you think about it? No. You can quite reasonably armor missiles and ships versus laser fire. 1cm rubber over 2mm diamond on a very pointed nose and backed by a fuel tank will let your missiles tank a 10GW laser for 10-30 seconds. That's more that long enough to let most of a missile swarm to cross 1,000Km. As laser damage and armor get more realistic, the details of the missile swarm will shift but I expect that a large missile swarm will always be able to kill dedicated laser ships. Similarly, optimized kinetic weapons like this needle gun allow small fleets of ships to wipe out laser ships/fleets. One ship of the kinetic fleet pushes forward to tank the lasers for ~30 seconds, while the other ships "ignore range" and manually rotate targets every second or two. (alternatively the kinetic fleet can bring a small number of laser armored missiles to tank the laser for them) |
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Post by bigbombr on Dec 27, 2016 17:35:17 GMT
After watching some video and test result of some really powerful laser ,i find out that conventional gun and missiles just can't get in their range to destroy the laser platform which molten them. For example ,a 10 gigawatt laser can disable most of the weapon on a stock gunship at~1000 km.So i wonder if the laser will eliminate the existent of gun and missile in the future multiplayer of COADE, or even in the real space battlefield in the far future.What do you think about it? No. You can quite reasonably armor missiles and ships versus laser fire. 1cm rubber over 2mm diamond on a very pointed nose and backed by a fuel tank will let your missiles tank a 10GW laser for 10-30 seconds. That's more that long enough to let most of a missile swarm to cross 1,000Km. As laser damage and armor get more realistic, the details of the missile swarm will shift but I expect that a large missile swarm will always be able to kill dedicated laser ships. Similarly, optimized kinetic weapons like this needle gun allow small fleets of ships to wipe out laser ships/fleets. One ship of the kinetic fleet pushes forward to tank the lasers for ~30 seconds, while the other ships "ignore range" and manually rotate targets every second or two. (alternatively the kinetic fleet can bring a small number of laser armored missiles to tank the laser for them) This relies on laser range being arbitrarily limited to 1 Mm and the AI refusing to dodge until the very last moment. A laser with a range of over 13.6 Mm (intensity threshold = 80 KW/m²) weighs only 48~ t and requires 10 GW. |
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Post by amimai on Dec 27, 2016 18:22:49 GMT
a laser that is 10GW weighs 1.42kt minimum...
at minimum 45t(radiator(1900K))+14t(compact high temperature laser)+100t(10GW reactor)+1270t(reactor radiators)
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Post by bigbombr on Dec 27, 2016 18:32:40 GMT
a laser that is 10GW weighs 1.42kt minimum... at minimum 45t(radiator(1900K))+14t(compact high temperature laser)+100t(10GW reactor)+1270t(reactor radiators) The 10 GW reactor can also power resistojets and/or MPD's, so you're saving on propellant mass. |
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Post by amimai on Dec 27, 2016 19:14:25 GMT
Meh, my 100MW reactor powered rail boat gets 5GW out of its resistor thruster, more then enough to get it moving fast.
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Post by ross128 on Dec 27, 2016 19:20:55 GMT
I do expect that lasers would be fairly dominant in a multiplayer environment, due to something only tangentially related to their efficiency as weapons: frame rates. It's possible to design a missile that can bring down any given laser platform cost-effectively, and with a few data points it's not too difficult to calculate how many missiles you'd need to fire to achieve a high kill probability. The problem is right now, that number is more than your computer can render. You'd win in theory, and probably IRL, but in-game you'd just cause the simulation to crash. Similarly, it's possible to design an expendable kinetic platform that can reliably achieve a mutual kill against a laser platform by ignoring range and saturating the laser platform's potential maneuver volume. Like with missiles, with a bit of math you can determine how many you'd need and it would certainly be cost-effective. But the number of projectiles that thing would fire would destroy frame rates and possibly crash the simulation. So essentially, lasers' greatest strength is that they're easy to render.  |
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Post by newageofpower on Dec 27, 2016 20:13:08 GMT
Kinetics, if Q-switched improves PD AI (by allowing target switching after X shots fired, for example) are immensely more effective vs missiles (especially anti-laser armor optimized missiles)
Thus, they'd also have a role in protecting laser battlestars from missile swarms.
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Post by someusername6 on Dec 27, 2016 20:21:17 GMT
I'm very much on the side of "we are not able to tell until N adjustments are made", some of which were mentioned in this thread, and some not:
* We can put out way more than 10 GW. Why limit laser power by 10 GW? Why limit laser range to 1 Mn?
* We can put out many, many missiles at a cheap cost. They need to be rendered / computed in a more efficient manner, though -- or maybe we can rent space on a cloud server somewhere to compute the battles for us, once this computation can be made remotely.
* Kinetics are still defying physics, so some people (self included) are not optimizing as aggressively with it as we might want to. Might become better with sub-1g projectiles, too. AI focusing on point defense is also not great right now.
* So that nukes are not left out: I realize we can't have T-U due to classified information. Can we at least have larger nukes?
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Post by amimai on Dec 27, 2016 20:52:19 GMT
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Post by vegetal on Dec 27, 2016 21:11:25 GMT
Interestingly, I've designed a very simple missile that consistently kills my 9 GW laser with a standard 20 swarm. With 3 or 4 shot down usually, so I could maybe use even less.
That's all my experimenting however, results in a chaotic multiplayer battle may vary. With missiles broken in the current version, testing became a little imprecise.
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Post by bdcarrillo on Dec 28, 2016 0:48:19 GMT
Do keep in mind that we're all designing things with limitless budgets and resources.
A 602 ton weapon? Although impressive, I struggle to think of how feasible that would be, especially with a "near future" setting. The ISS is only 450 tons and has taken decades to assemble.
Of course, mining and manufacturing in space is easier than hauling stuff into orbit.
IF we reign in the mass, cost, and materials to achievable numbers, these massive gw lasers and 600 ton guns wouldn't be reasonable.
Put those same limitations on multiplayer and we won't have multi-kt doom balloons toting tw lasers, tens of thousands of missiles, a meter of diamond armor, or needle guns.
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