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Post by AtomHeartDragon on May 15, 2018 22:30:29 GMT
Out-Chining the China Class: Who needs proper warships when you can just dump suited up human waves with smartguns out of an airlock and onto an intercept course? (derp fully inspired by handheld space weapons thread - I take no responsibility for this) Might be sort of cool to encounter something like this in "On The Surface of Giants" mission, I guess.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Jun 5, 2018 22:29:02 GMT
Jovian Lunar Tour: I've either lost my patience or ability to perform even remotely sane intercepts.
Edit: Actually I just managed to waste too much delta-v trying to transfer from Europa's L4 to Io in a somewhat swift manner and decided that I don't need any stinking injection - just flying straight at the enemy at several km/s while screaming and firing everything I had should work just fine, so I fine tuned my trajectory to intercept the enemy fleet the moment it left Io's cover, dropped two missile flights while decelerating a bit and left the final, smaller one to accompany my gunship during the intercept. One flight managed to miss entirely (it intercepted but didn't hit anything), the other took out the cutter by bursting it's water tank and violently kicking it away from the fleet, mushing the crew. Then during the final intercept missile entourage took out the schooner freeing my gunship to concentrate on the corsair in the handful of seconds the whole intercept lasted (almost 6km/s relative with separation during closest approach probably in the order of 50m). Yep, it worked just fine.
Sadly I haven't took shots when beating the marauders earlier - one took flaks in the engine and propellant tanks, which set it up for an unscheduled landing on Europa, the other for some reason weathered flak after flak (losing engine and some radiators on one side but not much more) forcing me to come down there with the gunship and kill it - thankfully I somehow managed to dodge most of the coilgun fire and all of 60mm slugs and score some penetrations on the immobilized marauder's crew compartment.
Overall, rapid intercepts, preferably following sudden trajectory change work very well against stock designs - they tend to have poor acceleration so there isn't much they can do when your trajectory suddenly shifts with minutes to intercept even if they try to avoid and run you out of delta-v and they can't effectively evade during rapid fly-by either. This is also a good method when using stock missiles and drones with good acceleration but crap delta-v.
Or you can divebomb like I did here by setting up aggressive intercept, dropping missiles while already on trajectory, and then pulling back - this is practically the only sensible way to use Devastators, as they simply have no delta-v to speak of.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Jul 14, 2018 11:58:17 GMT
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Post by The Astronomer on Jul 14, 2018 17:22:02 GMT
Use [spoiler][/spoiler] , please
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Post by doctorsquared on Jul 15, 2018 21:07:38 GMT
Testing out the new flak railgun with octazacubane/lead charges makes it look like enemy craft have anime-style speed lines.
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Post by jtyotjotjipaefvj on Jul 23, 2018 2:23:09 GMT
I refined my cluster munitions further, creating a dual-purpose round that has a narrow cone for penetrating armor and a wide spread ring of shrapnel for destroying radiators with the same round. I ended up with a 50 c, 4.5 kg round that can punch through a gunship in one shot, making it quite cheap as well as aesthetic. Below are some combat test screenshots from a salvo of 12 rounds hitting a gunship. Submunitions detonating: Shrapnel hitting the gunship: Exiting shrapnel visible through the generously sized hole created by the salvo:
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Post by diamondback on Jul 23, 2018 14:20:57 GMT
jtyotjotjipaefvj, how do you make a frag munition that dense? May I see the design?
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Post by jtyotjotjipaefvj on Jul 23, 2018 15:08:57 GMT
jtyotjotjipaefvj, how do you make a frag munition that dense? May I see the design? It's a fairly standard blast launcher cluster munition. The new ship design features that allow multiple front-facing launchers allow the central cone to be as dense as it is. Apart from that, I just have 80 single-shot launchers facing forward, which launch the dense central cone, and 85 launchers facing sideways, which creates the large ring of shrapnel. Using a large number of single-shot launchers means that the distribution stays dense - with multishot launchers there would be tens of meters of space between projectiles. The only downside with this design is that it's very picky about timing, meaning that the blast launcher engagement range needs to be very close to 10% of projectile velocity for it to work. If you do a fast intercept with projectiles that are not designed for it, you just get solid slug action as the blast launchers won't have time to fire before the canister impacts the target. Here's a close-up of the round. Side-facing launchers are further to the rear and clearly separate, the ambiguous blob of launchers to the front are all front-facing. Here's what the submunition pattern looks like just after firing. The canister itself disappears for some reason, but that doesn't matter too much with the amount of shrapnel we get. The launched explosives are all on an impact fuse which seems to mean that they explode just before contact. The central cone is also so tight that it goes off as soon as it's fired, as the submunitions start colliding with each other. here's an export of the test ship, stockified for more compatibility: Frog With a Cigar.txt (4.88 KB)
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Post by treptoplax on Jul 23, 2018 20:34:36 GMT
jtyotjotjipaefvj, how do you make a frag munition that dense? May I see the design? It's a fairly standard blast launcher cluster munition. The new ship design features that allow multiple front-facing launchers allow the central cone to be as dense as it is. Apart from that, I just have 80 single-shot launchers facing forward, which launch the dense central cone, and 85 launchers facing sideways, which creates the large ring of shrapnel. Using a large number of single-shot launchers means that the distribution stays dense - with multishot launchers there would be tens of meters of space between projectiles. The only downside with this design is that it's very picky about timing, meaning that the blast launcher engagement range needs to be very close to 10% of projectile velocity for it to work. If you do a fast intercept with projectiles that are not designed for it, you just get solid slug action as the blast launchers won't have time to fire before the canister impacts the target. Here's a close-up of the round. Side-facing launchers are further to the rear and clearly separate, the ambiguous blob of launchers to the front are all front-facing. Here's what the submunition pattern looks like just after firing. The canister itself disappears for some reason, but that doesn't matter too much with the amount of shrapnel we get. The launched explosives are all on an impact fuse which seems to mean that they explode just before contact. The central cone is also so tight that it goes off as soon as it's fired, as the submunitions start colliding with each other. here's an export of the test ship, stockified for more compatibility: Nice! Have you considered putting a range of different engagement ranges on the blast launchers to give it some flexibility in intercept speed? Or is it infeasible to do enough of that without reducing the amount of effective submunitions in all cases?
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Aug 1, 2018 20:55:21 GMT
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Post by doctorsquared on Aug 1, 2018 21:51:42 GMT
If you don't mind my asking, what is the benefit of hexagonal armor versus going with the standard cylindrical? I could see some benefit to be gained from sloped armor, but I've always thought the Delta-V tradeoff wasn't worth it.
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Post by jtyotjotjipaefvj on Aug 1, 2018 21:53:31 GMT
If you don't mind my asking, what is the benefit of hexagonal armor versus going with the standard cylindrical? I could see some benefit to be gained from sloped armor, but I've always thought the Delta-V tradeoff wasn't worth it it looks cool
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Aug 1, 2018 21:58:34 GMT
If you don't mind my asking, what is the benefit of hexagonal armor versus going with the standard cylindrical? I could see some benefit to be gained from sloped armor, but I've always thought the Delta-V tradeoff wasn't worth it. Currently it merely allows some easier turret arrangements and flattening. When I get around to rebuilding my fully custom variants, it will also permit interesting RCS schemes, complete with roll thrusters. Other than that it looks spiffy. There might be some minor defensive benefits to it, but I haven't done systematic testing.
OTOH delta-v cost is also minor.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Aug 15, 2018 13:06:15 GMT
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ghgh
Full Member
Still trying to make kinetics work.
Posts: 136
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Post by ghgh on Aug 15, 2018 21:48:14 GMT
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