|
Post by Easy on Jan 26, 2017 3:23:29 GMT
In regards to laser armor that is the same material as the laser's reflector, at very high powers it would need active cooling much like the laser itself is actively cooled.
That said, you could still overwhelm the actively cooled laser armor if the W/m² was high enough. Meaning the area lased would have to be smaller than the generating laser. Which might be easier said than done.
Overall I am concerned that the damage model is giving lasers more of an edge than they might have in real world material ablation.
|
|
|
Post by darkwarriorj on Jan 26, 2017 3:40:52 GMT
darkwarriorj I don't think you got my whole point and why I was writing and that could be my fault. In spirit I agree with almost everything you wrote in "rebuttal", but I glossed over details and 100% facts to get to the main point. No one has time to read term papers on here right? Read my post in vein of the thread which is about lasers and how they are powered. The point is and was that TW laser arrays are pretty impractical although they are cool. If you want to focus on other areas make your own thread and we can talk about it there. If you have ideas on the main idea of the thread that would be nice to hear too. Fair enough, it was a bit confusing parsing what you meant to say. I interpreted what you wrote to a point of "this does not make sense, it seems wrong" when it comes to NTRs, but I guess that's off. That one TW lasership is probably pretty impractical indeed. In part because instead of having one TW of laser firepower concentrated on one platform, why not spread it out across many ships? Assuming range is not the question here, of course, because higher power lasers can achieve higher effective ranges for the same given aperture. I'm not sure if I'm interpreting you properly, but I suspect you mean a 1 TW array is impractical due to reactor considerations. I will further add that even if reactors were toned down to stock levels, we already have 25MW lasers capable of dealing damage out to really far ranges so even on that end it's not exactly the most practical idea. As for the main idea of the thread: The problem is that lasers only have heat/ablation damage modeled ATM, and they are modeled per laser rather than per all energy deposited on one area at a given time. Reading the consensus on sites such as Rocketpunk Manifesto, and playing around with a few calculators, such a form of damage is 1. basically capped as we see here, and 2. the weakest form of laser and laser damage possible. Realistically, impulse shock from high speed expanding plasma would be modeled, and rather than damage being modeled per laser, it'd be modeled by energy deposited on a given segment of armor at any given time. With those changes, lasers would be even more absurdly useful and lethal. Like Apophys noted, concentrate enough energy into hot gas and it basically becomes an exploding bomb. The net effect of such lasers would not be simple ablation, but rather dramatic point blank high power explosions on a ship. Little can stand against that, and it's not exactly capped unlike ablation.
|
|
|
Post by deltav on Jan 26, 2017 4:09:04 GMT
This isn't a new argument. Everyone who discusses realistic space battle has the same arguments. They usually split into laser, missile and guns camps. forums.spacebattles.com/threads/realistic-space-combat-lasers-vs-missiles-vs-railguns.276030/Personally I think they all have their place. Lasers, missiles and guns all have disadvantages and advantages. I think the game has it just right regarding lasers. Lasers are basically just a really bright focused light that damages by heating things up. If you have strong enough "sunblock" you can really weaken it at least until you can destroy the laser with some other weapon no? Drones are basically Missiles with guns or lasers instead of warheads. +Missiles can go anywhere a ship can go, and they can hit targets that are out of line of sight. +Space dust and other phenomenon which cause refraction don't affect them. +They don't lose power no matter how far they are from the ship that launched them (but they can run out of DeltaV). -But they can miss and they can be fooled with decoys. +Guns over all are cheaper per shot than missiles, and can pack as much of a punch, can even shoot warheads as a projectile, etc. +Guns also are not affected by space weather. +Guns don't lose power the further they are from the ship either. +Guns can't be fooled with decoys in theory. -Guns can miss +Lasers can't run out of ammo. +Lasers in theory can't miss. -Lasers get weaker the further they are from the ship that shot them. -Lasers can be weakened by space weather or space dust etc. -Lasers rely on heat, and heat can be diffused.
|
|
|
Post by darkwarriorj on Jan 26, 2017 4:38:34 GMT
This isn't a new argument. Everyone who discusses realistic space battle has the same arguments. They usually split into laser, missile and guns camps. forums.spacebattles.com/threads/realistic-space-combat-lasers-vs-missiles-vs-railguns.276030/Personally I think they all have their place. Lasers, missiles and guns all have disadvantages and advantages. I think the game has it just right. But I'm open to changing. +Missiles can go anywhere a ship can go, and they can hit targets that are out of line of sight. +Space dust and other phenomenon which cause refraction don't affect them. +They don't lose power no matter how far they are from the ship that launched them. -But they can miss and they can be fooled with decoys. +Guns over all are cheaper per shot than missiles, and can pack as much of a punch, can even shoot warheads, etc. +Guns also are not affected by space weather. +Guns don't lose power the further they are from the ship either. +Guns can't be fooled with decoys in theory. -Guns can miss +Lasers can't run out of ammo. +Lasers in theory can't miss. -Lasers get weaker the further they are from the ship that shot them. -Lasers can be weakened by space weather or space dust etc. -Lasers rely on heat, and heat can be diffused. Based off my in game experience, guns are usually a non-factor. Their only role is either to pummel them stock ships silly, or to clean up after missiles which have already dealt enough damage to render enemy ships useless. My own trawling of the literature tends to split the camps into just two - missiles and lasers. I concur with this general consensus, and here's the argument: 1. Guns have a role missiles don't in the atmosphere because of drag and time. Guns can accelerate a projectile to high speed really quickly, and time is of the essence in much of terrestrial battle. Furthermore, drag limits the maximum speed a missile may attain, so guns may even have higher impact velocities than missiles. 2. This is not true in space. Consider the humble railgun which shoots at 30km/s. This sounds like a great velocity, doesn't it. Well, consider that a ship can also attain such velocities quite easily, via their usually far more effective engines. Any amount of mass a gun can accelerate to a given speed, a ship with an efficient engine (say an MPD) can accelerate even more of to such high velocities. Replace the word ship with missile or missile bus, and this slants things towards missiles even more. Now consider that we have massive transit times in space - time which I can use to build up this velocity. I can go further, and arrange for a retrograde intercept. How does a solar retrograde intercept with Earth (closing relative velocity of 60km/s sound? 60km/s kinetics impacting your ship, in a massive burst!) 3. One says, missiles may be fooled by decoys. Even ignoring the fact that decoys as depicted in game can't beat modern missiles because missile logic just gets better and better over time, there is a simple way around this. Bullets don't get tricked because bullets can't maneuver. So, let your terminal warhead not be maneuverable either. Combined with 2, which states that ships/missiles can accelerate a payload to any velocity a gun can in space, and accelerate more of it, I can afford to say, turn my 1000 tons of missile payload into 1g flak shrapnel which just blankets an entire volume of space even further out than guns can. Guns are just outclassed by missiles in most relevant roles is how I feel about them, given sufficiently efficient engines and enough time, which is the case in realistic space combat. Now, if you had a scenario where you were stuck with chem rockets, and your guns can fire at c-frac... barring the question of why not use gun as thruster instead, that might be a scenario where guns are strongly relevant. Also, your three negatives for lasers are off. Space weather is not a thing which impacts lasers in any meaningful way, unlike terrestrial weather. Yes, they drop off with distance, which imposes a max effective range for them, but baring c-frac kinetics kinetics have even worse effective ranges. Also, yes, heat can be diffused, but not extremely concentrated heat. Like, if it was just a lamp shining on my arm on a hot desert day, that can be beaten, but the effects of my arm touching a hot stove top would be catastrophic. As in, there is no way to diffuse laser heat to the point of uselessness when it's that stupidly concentrated. And it isn't that concentrated, the laser is too far away and outside its effective range. But yeah, 100MW/m^2 as is the player standard for effectiveness would just vaporize any given material, and going higher past a point after that would cause the vapor to explode violently, causing even more damage even faster.
|
|
|
Post by darkwarriorj on Jan 26, 2017 6:09:31 GMT
coilGUNS and railGUNS are a non factor? THe "humble railgun" at 30km/s lol? The Ranger and the Corvette (mostly only armed with "guns") are second only to the Drone Carriers and the Siloship itself. Speaking of modified designs you can check out some of the awesome things many have done with coilguns and railguns. Consensus where? On this blog and many others that discuss realistic space combat there are plenty of advocates of guns over missiles and lasers. About the rest, saying negatives of lasers are off, okay if you say so. I hear your points and they are well taken. I don't think we are having the same conversation. So far I feel like you are just focused on disputing everything I write without offering anything in return. Do laser have any drawbacks in your mind? I feel like you just want to argue how great lasers are, so maybe make some posts showing your laser designs compared to the best of the coilgun and railgun designs. Also maybe post some science lit showing that the modeling of the lasers in the game is wrong. Thus far there has nothing that has been shown that will convince me that coilguns and railguns with current or near current tech don't have their place. If you want to display some videos or something showing your sims that show otherwise, would love that. Edit: Oh jeez, you took down your post!? Ah screw this, I'm not taking down this one, I put too much time into this one.
Admittedly, this website mostly.Helps that there's a guy who really knows his laser stuff there, Luke Campbell. Here's a couple online calculators modelling the effects of lasers. I believe QSwitched used them too, but he generally expected far lower powers, and far higher wavelengths than what we ended up coming up with. Here they are: My favouriteAlso usefulI apologize if it sounds like all I do is dispute; it's a classic internet geek trap where people pop in to discuss things they feel are not quite correct while failing to mention anything and everything they agree with. There's an entire blog post on this somewhere lol. Consider everything I don't dispute to basically be what I more or less agree with; I'll try to point out things I agree with more. Back to the topic at hand, that's the thing. They are second to the drone and missile carriers. I mean, I've noticed that in combat between two stock fleets in orbit, it is difficult to get missiles up to the same velocity as railguns and coilguns, but in interplanetary combat such as in the Jovian Grand Tour, they are basically at such velocities by default, and with an MPD drone with sufficient delta-V I can get them to retrograde intercepts. Not to mention that even with stock ships, if it wasn't because arranging for missile intercepts is so absurdly tedious, I would just missile always. Lemme take a few screenshots. Drawbacks of lasers as they currently stand are as follows: 1. Stupidly huge radiators needed. Dear god, if one aligns them any way other than edge on, they make one's ship into an incredibly huge target. 2. Can be overwhelmed, cost effectively, by missiles. At least, as things currently stand. 3. Is also weak to lasers. Lasers vs lasers I imagine to be like the push of pike - really nasty, really ugly and sucky, as lasers fry each other. Also, as for my general skepticism of guns, the biggest problem I've had with them so far is that they are really, really, really easily completely sniped off by lasers before they can get into combat range. Plus, for the delivery of a kinetic payload, a flak missile can also do that and not be as easily wiped out. Admittedly, I have yet to face any well-armored gun designs - but I did just recently cook up a 27km/s amorph carbon coilgun, and amorph carbon can eat lasers a lot more, so maybe this will soon change... If only I can figure out how to get around its ammo's painful price! Oh, just for clarification, I am NOT saying lasers displace guns. I am saying missiles displace guns. Given a choice between missiles and guns, I pick missiles in nearly every situation bar incredibly niche ones which I don't think are likely to happen. I claim missiles can fulfill every single role guns have, and do it better, barring niche roles which I am desperately trying to find at the moment. Addendum - actually, guns as missile defense is one area I am looking into quote heavily. The most useful configuration there as far as I may discern is cheap gundrones where even shooting down one missile results in a cost effective exchange. Due primarily to targetting issues, this is far less effective than I'd hope for, but that can be said of missiles too. Screenshots: Mailman drone. Consider its entire delta-v to be the intercept velocity of the incoming missiles.My usual no-mod laser workhorse. Most of its cost comes from its armorMore on this workhorseIf we allow real but modded in materials, it starts to get absurd.Here's a small drone laser with the same output as my large laser. Yeah, high efficiencies get insane.
|
|
|
Post by RiftandRend on Jan 26, 2017 9:01:00 GMT
I should mention that my laser is not anywhere near a Tw array. In the conversation has moved on from that, sorry for interrupting.
|
|
|
Post by vegemeister on Jan 26, 2017 9:32:08 GMT
Remember that the main reasons lasers are so dominant right now is that we built ridiculous nuclear reactors, which may not function IRL. The way I see it, we should verify reactor functionality before coming back to lasers. Reactors are definitely not realistic because of material strengths reducing significantly at higher temperatures (I want this to be modeled). The problem can probably be solved by bracing with structural material like diamond, but any solution is necessarily heavier and more expensive than our current reactors. Probably within an order of magnitude, though. I think the thermocouples are also unreasonably efficient. If it were possible to get 95% of Carnot efficiency with the Seebeck effect, nobody would bother with turbines or piston engines.
|
|
|
Post by theholyinquisition on Jan 26, 2017 17:43:00 GMT
deltav The power that is used for propulsion is provided by the core built into the NTR. We have separate reactors just for ship power. Damn space ninjas.... Fine fine, but it doesn't make any sense. I think it's something added to make the game simpler. In real life think about how much care it takes to build and maintain a nuclear reactor. Having one or two is enough work. Now you are telling me you need one INSIDE each Nuclear Rocket Engine? And you need extra nuclear reactors to power your ship as well? Doesn't make any sense. Just think about it. Why are we wasting huge amounts of real estate on the ship on huge radiators when the engine exhaust can be used to both radiatate heat and provide propulsion? I'm calling a mulligan. 1. We can scrap a lot of safety regulations. 2. What you're describing is a Bimodal NTR, which I already talked about.3. If you're using exhaust to radiate heat, that's performing an engine burn. We don't have the delta v to waste.
|
|
|
Post by deltav on Jan 26, 2017 20:41:07 GMT
coilGUNS and railGUNS are a non factor? THe "humble railgun" at 30km/s lol? The Ranger and the Corvette (mostly only armed with "guns") are second only to the Drone Carriers and the Siloship itself. Speaking of modified designs you can check out some of the awesome things many have done with coilguns and railguns. Consensus where? On this blog and many others that discuss realistic space combat there are plenty of advocates of guns over missiles and lasers. About the rest, saying negatives of lasers are off, okay if you say so. I hear your points and they are well taken. I don't think we are having the same conversation. So far I feel like you are just focused on disputing everything I write without offering anything in return. Do laser have any drawbacks in your mind? I feel like you just want to argue how great lasers are, so maybe make some posts showing your laser designs compared to the best of the coilgun and railgun designs. Also maybe post some science lit showing that the modeling of the lasers in the game is wrong. Thus far there has nothing that has been shown that will convince me that coilguns and railguns with current or near current tech don't have their place. If you want to display some videos or something showing your sims that show otherwise, would love that. Edit: Oh jeez, you took down your post!? Ah screw this, I'm not taking down this one, I put too much time into this one.
Admittedly, this website mostly.Helps that there's a guy who really knows his laser stuff there, Luke Campbell. Here's a couple online calculators modelling the effects of lasers. I believe QSwitched used them too, but he generally expected far lower powers, and far higher wavelengths than what we ended up coming up with. Here they are: My favouriteAlso usefulI apologize if it sounds like all I do is dispute; it's a classic internet geek trap where people pop in to discuss things they feel are not quite correct while failing to mention anything and everything they agree with. There's an entire blog post on this somewhere lol. Consider everything I don't dispute to basically be what I more or less agree with; I'll try to point out things I agree with more. Back to the topic at hand, that's the thing. They are second to the drone and missile carriers. I mean, I've noticed that in combat between two stock fleets in orbit, it is difficult to get missiles up to the same velocity as railguns and coilguns, but in interplanetary combat such as in the Jovian Grand Tour, they are basically at such velocities by default, and with an MPD drone with sufficient delta-V I can get them to retrograde intercepts. Not to mention that even with stock ships, if it wasn't because arranging for missile intercepts is so absurdly tedious, I would just missile always. Lemme take a few screenshots. Drawbacks of lasers as they currently stand are as follows: 1. Stupidly huge radiators needed. Dear god, if one aligns them any way other than edge on, they make one's ship into an incredibly huge target. 2. Can be overwhelmed, cost effectively, by missiles. At least, as things currently stand. 3. Is also weak to lasers. Lasers vs lasers I imagine to be like the push of pike - really nasty, really ugly and sucky, as lasers fry each other. Also, as for my general skepticism of guns, the biggest problem I've had with them so far is that they are really, really, really easily completely sniped off by lasers before they can get into combat range. Plus, for the delivery of a kinetic payload, a flak missile can also do that and not be as easily wiped out. Admittedly, I have yet to face any well-armored gun designs - but I did just recently cook up a 27km/s amorph carbon coilgun, and amorph carbon can eat lasers a lot more, so maybe this will soon change... If only I can figure out how to get around its ammo's painful price! Oh, just for clarification, I am NOT saying lasers displace guns. I am saying missiles displace guns. Given a choice between missiles and guns, I pick missiles in nearly every situation bar incredibly niche ones which I don't think are likely to happen. I claim missiles can fulfill every single role guns have, and do it better, barring niche roles which I am desperately trying to find at the moment. Addendum - actually, guns as missile defense is one area I am looking into quote heavily. The most useful configuration there as far as I may discern is cheap gundrones where even shooting down one missile results in a cost effective exchange. Due primarily to targetting issues, this is far less effective than I'd hope for, but that can be said of missiles too. Screenshots: Mailman drone. Consider its entire delta-v to be the intercept velocity of the incoming missiles.My usual no-mod laser workhorse. Most of its cost comes from its armorMore on this workhorseIf we allow real but modded in materials, it starts to get absurd.Here's a small drone laser with the same output as my large laser. Yeah, high efficiencies get insane.
I erased my comment because I didn't want to get into a tit for tat. You made good points, and about the facts I think you are right for the most part. I was just trying to say, if you know better great share something helpful to everyone. Don't just disparage. That was all I was trying to say.
|
|
|
Post by apophys on Jan 26, 2017 23:13:32 GMT
Not to give you a hard time, but think about this for a sec. 1. The fact that Nuclear Aircraft carriers run in water only means they don't need cooling towers (like land based reactors), or radiators (like space based ones), besides that, there is no difference between the type reactor you would put in spaceship, and the type you would put in a sea ship. Did you notice the ship reactors in game use the exact same type of U as naval reactors? Not a coincidence. Naval reactors run hotter and therefore can be smaller, at the cost of some safety that is mitigated by being in water, in this case space. 2. You chose to focus on the Enterprise, the FIRST nuclear aircraft carrier. I get your point. But I think you missed MY point. The point of bringing up naval reactors was to show the closest equivalent to space reactors we have today, and how they perform. Surely space reactors in the very near future would be very similar if not identical. The point was to show that the idea of TW star destroyer laser arrays is kind of silly. The cost in terms of power would be ridiculous at least to me. I also wanted to be fair and show that the most modern naval reactors come close to the game reactor specs. The most up to date carriers have 2 reactors which provide about 1650 Mw of power each and weigh about 1650 tons. 3. Yes I agree that too many reactors is a bad thing. Better to have a couple big ones instead of a bunch of small ones. 1. It also means that their output temperature is around 300 K. If they used our ingame tungsten-osmium thermocouples, the 500 K dT across the thermocouple would be from 800 K to 300 K, which is several times more efficient than from 2900 K to 2400 K. This makes it easier to do stronger naval reactors than space ones (if you optimize for low radiator mass, as you should). The equivalent radiator area for a 300 K output in space would be insane. Our 2400+ K outputs are the reason that high power in space is viable. We use U-233 btw, because it's much cheaper than U-235. The difference in performance is pretty small (according to testing ingame). 2. A TW-level destroyer is possible, but a bit silly. A 100 GW destroyer is reasonable, though overkill. (4x 25 GW reactors). As mentioned elsewhere by multiple people, it's better to split your power generation among many ships instead of concentrating it into one. I like around 100 MW to 10 GW on my drones and ships right now. Space reactors in the very near future would be similar to current space ones, and to current naval ones, but that wouldn't be anywhere near what we're using in CoaDE (not yet at least). I'd say our stuff is ~ 50-75 years away (not very near imo). 3. Absolutely. The biggest single reactors we currently use ingame are in the range of 25 GW, my 25 GW one being slightly under 250 tons. That's electric power; the heat output of one of those is ~153 GW (about 600 times the heat per ton of that new naval reactor). With our efficiency handicap at 2400 K, it's ~300 times the power per ton (assuming that naval reactor has efficiency similar to other naval reactors; haven't checked). Cool links. The first one doesn't really apply though, because "the chosen reactor type must be extensively and positively tested in terrestrial applications, thus too innovative proposals are a priori excluded." 1. Core temp on current space reactors is, at best, ~1000 K lower than our core temps (which are right at fuel melting temperature, and some people are pushing it even higher by modding in encapsulated liquid). 2. Beryllium is apparently not as hard to come by as in CoaDE. 3. There's one with no coolant! But everything else uses liquid metal of some kind, which we are also doing. I want that liquid lithium coolant implemented. 4. Heat output per mass of current reactors is terrible compared to ingame, similarly to naval reactors.
|
|
|
Post by newageofpower on Jan 27, 2017 1:55:34 GMT
Trash, shitty links, because stationary, Earthbound power plants don't give a flying f*** about mass, but rather cost efficiency, reliability, operating lifespan, and ease of maintenance. CoADE's current meta is about 'winning' battles with 90%+ casualty rates and most of our reactor cores are considered "good enough" if they last six months at full power. Heck, I'd design drone reactors with a lifespan of three weeks at max power if possible; minidrones (carried by long endurance drone buses, ofc) tend to have a ludicrously high attrition rate anyhow. Current cost basis is mostly manufacturing based. COADE cost basis is mostly material-availability based.
|
|
golol
New Member
Posts: 25
|
Post by golol on Jan 27, 2017 11:17:42 GMT
This isn't a new argument. Everyone who discusses realistic space battle has the same arguments. They usually split into laser, missile and guns camps. forums.spacebattles.com/threads/realistic-space-combat-lasers-vs-missiles-vs-railguns.276030/Personally I think they all have their place. Lasers, missiles and guns all have disadvantages and advantages. I think the game has it just right. But I'm open to changing. +Missiles can go anywhere a ship can go, and they can hit targets that are out of line of sight. +Space dust and other phenomenon which cause refraction don't affect them. +They don't lose power no matter how far they are from the ship that launched them. -But they can miss and they can be fooled with decoys. +Guns over all are cheaper per shot than missiles, and can pack as much of a punch, can even shoot warheads, etc. +Guns also are not affected by space weather. +Guns don't lose power the further they are from the ship either. +Guns can't be fooled with decoys in theory. -Guns can miss +Lasers can't run out of ammo. +Lasers in theory can't miss. -Lasers get weaker the further they are from the ship that shot them. -Lasers can be weakened by space weather or space dust etc. -Lasers rely on heat, and heat can be diffused. Based off my in game experience, guns are usually a non-factor. Their only role is either to pummel them stock ships silly, or to clean up after missiles which have already dealt enough damage to render enemy ships useless. My own trawling of the literature tends to split the camps into just two - missiles and lasers. I concur with this general consensus, and here's the argument: 1. Guns have a role missiles don't in the atmosphere because of drag and time. Guns can accelerate a projectile to high speed really quickly, and time is of the essence in much of terrestrial battle. Furthermore, drag limits the maximum speed a missile may attain, so guns may even have higher impact velocities than missiles. 2. This is not true in space. Consider the humble railgun which shoots at 30km/s. This sounds like a great velocity, doesn't it. Well, consider that a ship can also attain such velocities quite easily, via their usually far more effective engines. Any amount of mass a gun can accelerate to a given speed, a ship with an efficient engine (say an MPD) can accelerate even more of to such high velocities. Replace the word ship with missile or missile bus, and this slants things towards missiles even more. Now consider that we have massive transit times in space - time which I can use to build up this velocity. I can go further, and arrange for a retrograde intercept. How does a solar retrograde intercept with Earth (closing relative velocity of 60km/s sound? 60km/s kinetics impacting your ship, in a massive burst!) 3. One says, missiles may be fooled by decoys. Even ignoring the fact that decoys as depicted in game can't beat modern missiles because missile logic just gets better and better over time, there is a simple way around this. Bullets don't get tricked because bullets can't maneuver. So, let your terminal warhead not be maneuverable either. Combined with 2, which states that ships/missiles can accelerate a payload to any velocity a gun can in space, and accelerate more of it, I can afford to say, turn my 1000 tons of missile payload into 1g flak shrapnel which just blankets an entire volume of space even further out than guns can. Guns are just outclassed by missiles in most relevant roles is how I feel about them, given sufficiently efficient engines and enough time, which is the case in realistic space combat. Now, if you had a scenario where you were stuck with chem rockets, and your guns can fire at c-frac... barring the question of why not use gun as thruster instead, that might be a scenario where guns are strongly relevant. Also, your three negatives for lasers are off. Space weather is not a thing which impacts lasers in any meaningful way, unlike terrestrial weather. Yes, they drop off with distance, which imposes a max effective range for them, but baring c-frac kinetics kinetics have even worse effective ranges. Also, yes, heat can be diffused, but not extremely concentrated heat. Like, if it was just a lamp shining on my arm on a hot desert day, that can be beaten, but the effects of my arm touching a hot stove top would be catastrophic. As in, there is no way to diffuse laser heat to the point of uselessness when it's that stupidly concentrated. And it isn't that concentrated, the laser is too far away and outside its effective range. But yeah, 100MW/m^2 as is the player standard for effectiveness would just vaporize any given material, and going higher past a point after that would cause the vapor to explode violently, causing even more damage even faster. Can you show some designs? I just quickly made a missile with 100 km dV which it could achieve in 2 months of burn time. And it weighs almost a hundred tons! I don't know if that would work... The burn time is ridiculous and you could only fire 10 or 20 of them. Unless you managed to get it much much smaller obviously.
|
|
|
Post by darkwarriorj on Jan 27, 2017 15:21:03 GMT
Can you show some designs? I just quickly made a missile with 100 km dV which it could achieve in 2 months of burn time. And it weighs almost a hundred tons! I don't know if that would work... The burn time is ridiculous and you could only fire 10 or 20 of them. Unless you managed to get it much much smaller obviously. Ah, right. My phrasing was not at all clear about this. I use a missile bus and warhead system. The mailman drone there can't achieve 100km/s, but it can achieve 27.8 km/s delta v while delivering 100 of my 200c 9kg 2kg flak payload NEFP missiles. Tha's 2kg, per missile, at about 28km/s closing velocity before factoring in whatever a NEFP does. The entire ammo capacity of my 20g coilgun, which admittedly does reach double the closing velocity, is just about 10kg, and said ammo costs more than 80 of these drones combined. The mailman drone is the smallest missile bus system I have developed so far, and the one with the least delta-v and most accel, meant to be usable in a hypothetical high-g battlespace such as Earth orbit. Another, larger ship based bus has over 70km/s delta-v and so could easily allow a hypothetical attack run coming from Mars to slam into Earth in a retrograde orbit, bringing a large kinetic payload at over 70 km/s. Mostly it has more delta v via a higher exhaust velocitt lower thrust MPD. Admittedly, if two fleets just start off in orbit around an asteroid, at say the outbreak of war or 90% of the scenarios in game, these missile busses won't have the time to accelerate up to their delivery speed, or to exploit any fancy orbital maneuvers like reversing one's orbit. I still find that sufficient missiles overwhelm absolutely anything cost effectively in game though. So long as engine exhaust velocities rival or exceed gun velocities, this method of getting missiles up to speed and rivalling guns should work.
|
|
|
Post by theholyinquisition on Jan 27, 2017 16:51:01 GMT
|
|
|
Post by darkwarriorj on Jan 27, 2017 18:32:11 GMT
Sure! Copying/using is the best form of flattery. I've done my best to cull unnecessary stuff but a lot of stuff has been left in this file. Note: For the Ce:Lff lasers to work properly, you need to get molten gold and molten tin from Candyland Armanents in the General thread, as well as the Ce:Lff crystal in the suggestions thread by other users on this forum. Also, do not let the AI launch a drone wave of 15+ mailmen drones. 1500+ missiles is game crashing... Also, there's much to improve. Here it is.
Edit: There might be something in there which belongs to other forum users. In particular, the reactors are not mine, that's for sure. Mostly Apophys and JasonVance.
|
|