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Post by The Astronomer on Mar 7, 2017 10:33:57 GMT
You say armor is not worth it, that lasers rule everything, and that needle swarms rule lasers. It could well be the conclusion that space combat is not viable, or that you need massive amounts of armor and fuel to do it. Maybe the concept if a crewed figthing spaceship is just not doable or a guaranteed suicide mission. The hyperspeed needle swarm always gets through. I and the enemy fly a ship with 250 milli-gee of acceleration firing 100 km/s graphene sand from 1 Mm away. Well, we dodged most of the sand, and our aramid fiber armor blocks death lasers well. Without the armor layer, we'd all doomed by the first second.
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Post by Durandal on Mar 7, 2017 13:31:22 GMT
Not very reliable against sub-gram flak traveling >100 km/s. My 635km/s flak gun crashes the game every 2 shots. On the other hand, most reasonable targets die in one! As much as I love the idea of these types of weapons, if it causes a crash I wouldn't consider it a viable weapon. Ergo, no need to plan against it.
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Post by lawson on Mar 7, 2017 16:57:20 GMT
Not very reliable against sub-gram flak traveling >100 km/s. My 635km/s flak gun crashes the game every 2 shots. On the other hand, most reasonable targets die in one! I can usually get 10-20 shots on target before the game crashes with my variant of your awesome gun. It uses 2mg lithium specks and a spacer for shells. 5-7Mm range in a ship that can play in the campaign? YES PLEASE!
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Post by Durandal on Mar 8, 2017 18:17:48 GMT
So kinetics then, but is it cost effective ? Cuase boron isnt very dense, but it has Gpa's of yield strength, so if its less dense, with more strength, why use a worse material ? For the outer kinetic layer - assuming the outer layer isn't a anti-flash layer - you want a material that is dense, but ductile and with low heat capacity. If it can't easily deform it will shatter and create secondary debris, while the latter ensures that any spall will turn into plasma, which can then be absorbed by the spall liner. There are a few materials that have these properties, while also being cheap: Tin, Cadmium and Lead. The next layer is the stuffing, in this case graphite aerogel because it is cost-effective compared to aramid fibre. For this layer you want high-heat capacity to absorb plasma. You can also use silica aerogel, but it will be much more expensive. Then you have the spall liner that absorb the kinetic impact of secondary debris, and the thermal energy of plasma. It need to have high-heat capacity, low moduli and yield strength. You can use spider silk as a cost-effective solution, but that tends to melt easily. Boron has high moduli, but it also has high yield strength, high melting temperature, high specific heat, is relatively cheap and has low density. With that in mind you can either add more stuffing-spall liner layers, or fill it up with anti-laser and anti-nuke armour, including an outer flash layer (aluminium/silver/molybdenum). Aluminum silver or molybdenum as a flash layer? Wouldn't a few cm of S-Gel be more cost and mass effective or has the meta changed?
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Post by Enderminion on Mar 8, 2017 18:22:08 GMT
yes, 0.5mm of slicagel spaced off the main armour serves to extend survival time against nuke and laser fire, repeat as needed, I don't use that because I like the jet-black of diamond more then the matte-black of areogel
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Post by Durandal on Mar 8, 2017 19:08:11 GMT
yes, 0.5mm of slicagel spaced off the main armour serves to extend survival time against nuke and laser fire, repeat as needed, I don't use that because I like the jet-black of diamond more then the matte-black of areogel Agreed on that. Diamond makes for a nice shiny layer instead of the black gel, and it can help serve as KE armor. A thin layer of aluminium looks nice too with Diamond or amorph-carbon armored turrets, but I prefer utility over a looks. (Gold stripes on my rear engine cones non-withstanding)
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Post by Enderminion on Mar 8, 2017 19:19:32 GMT
yes, 0.5mm of slicagel spaced off the main armour serves to extend survival time against nuke and laser fire, repeat as needed, I don't use that because I like the jet-black of diamond more then the matte-black of areogel Agreed on that. Diamond makes for a nice shiny layer instead of the black gel, and it can help serve as KE armor. A thin layer of aluminium looks nice too with Diamond or amorph-carbon armored turrets, but I prefer utility over a looks. (Gold stripes on my rear engine cones non-withstanding) I wish we could "paint" ships with various materials...
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Post by midnightdreary on Mar 8, 2017 23:57:39 GMT
1) 5-10cm Boron 2) 1-5cm Amorphous Carbon -- 10cm gap 3) 1cm Spider Silk 4) 1cm Diamond -- 10cm gap 5) 1cm Spider Silk 6) 1cm Diamond -- 10cm gap 7) 1cm Spider Silk 8) 1cm Diamond -- 10cm gap 9) 1cm Spider Silk 10) 1cm Diamond
I can't be bothered to armor a ship against mega death guns/lasers. I just like having some resistance to sand blasters and standard missiles and spend most of my resources on weapons to kill the other guy first.
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Post by Durandal on Mar 9, 2017 4:19:23 GMT
1) 5-10cm Boron 2) 1-5cm Amorphous Carbon -- 10cm gap 3) 1cm Spider Silk 4) 1cm Diamond -- 10cm gap 5) 1cm Spider Silk 6) 1cm Diamond -- 10cm gap 7) 1cm Spider Silk 8) 1cm Diamond -- 10cm gap 9) 1cm Spider Silk 10) 1cm Diamond I can't be bothered to armor a ship against mega death guns/lasers. I just like having some resistance to sand blasters and standard missiles and spend most of my resources on weapons to kill the other guy first. Does that reliably resist sandblastes fairly well? I typically use something like: 1-4cm Boron (depending on ship size) 1m Graphite Aerogel 1cm space 1.5m Graphite Aerogel 1cm Diamond 1cm space 5mm Silica Aerogel Armor for turrets is typically as thick a layer of RCC as possible while maintaining fast enough movement. Lasers typically have up to 10 cm of S-Gel or 1-5cm of Diamond. My armored capital NTRS are designed so that the reactor itself is inside of an osmium shell, but they are only used on certain ships.
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Post by RiftandRend on Mar 9, 2017 4:25:27 GMT
1) 5-10cm Boron 2) 1-5cm Amorphous Carbon -- 10cm gap 3) 1cm Spider Silk 4) 1cm Diamond -- 10cm gap 5) 1cm Spider Silk 6) 1cm Diamond -- 10cm gap 7) 1cm Spider Silk 8) 1cm Diamond -- 10cm gap 9) 1cm Spider Silk 10) 1cm Diamond I can't be bothered to armor a ship against mega death guns/lasers. I just like having some resistance to sand blasters and standard missiles and spend most of my resources on weapons to kill the other guy first. Does that reliably resist sandblastes fairly well? I typically use something like: 1-4cm Boron (depending on ship size) 1m Graphite Aerogel 1cm space 1.5m Graphite Aerogel 1cm Diamond 1cm space 5mm Silica Aerogel Armor for turrets is typically as thick a layer of RCC as possible while maintaining fast enough movement. Lasers typically have up to 10 cm of S-Gel or 1-5cm of Diamond. My armored capital NTRS are designed so that the reactor itself is inside of an osmium shell, but they are only used on certain ships. Why RCC over AM carbon?
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Post by Durandal on Mar 9, 2017 4:33:32 GMT
Does that reliably resist sandblastes fairly well? I typically use something like: 1-4cm Boron (depending on ship size) 1m Graphite Aerogel 1cm space 1.5m Graphite Aerogel 1cm Diamond 1cm space 5mm Silica Aerogel Armor for turrets is typically as thick a layer of RCC as possible while maintaining fast enough movement. Lasers typically have up to 10 cm of S-Gel or 1-5cm of Diamond. My armored capital NTRS are designed so that the reactor itself is inside of an osmium shell, but they are only used on certain ships. Why RCC over AM carbon? RCC seems to have decent enough KE protection. AM is good for heat absorption and for anti-las defense, but I'm leaning heavily towards the Counter-Laser meta to be honest.
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Post by midnightdreary on Mar 10, 2017 1:04:50 GMT
1) 5-10cm Boron 2) 1-5cm Amorphous Carbon -- 10cm gap 3) 1cm Spider Silk 4) 1cm Diamond -- 10cm gap 5) 1cm Spider Silk 6) 1cm Diamond -- 10cm gap 7) 1cm Spider Silk 8) 1cm Diamond -- 10cm gap 9) 1cm Spider Silk 10) 1cm Diamond I can't be bothered to armor a ship against mega death guns/lasers. I just like having some resistance to sand blasters and standard missiles and spend most of my resources on weapons to kill the other guy first. Does that reliably resist sandblastes fairly well? It's all a matter of what you want out of your armor. I have a budget I'm always trying to stay within (self-imposed, obviously). Diamond does well against most thermal issues / shocks incoming kinetic rounds, the spider silk seem to work well for anti-spalling, and the multiple layers takes a lot to break up with sand blasters (very rare to get multiple shots in same hole. The amorphous carbon soaks up any leftover heat and the boron provides a nice back stop. But most importantly... all the materials are cost-effective and fit within my budget.
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Post by Enderminion on Mar 10, 2017 1:53:14 GMT
if you have that much boron a few mm of fiber behind it will be very helpful
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Post by David367th on Mar 10, 2017 2:47:14 GMT
if you have that much boron a few mm of fiber behind it will be very helpful Boron does not generally spall if that's what you mean.
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Post by Enderminion on Mar 10, 2017 2:48:54 GMT
I heard boron in extreme thickness spalled, I have P-aramid spall liners in all my ships anyway
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