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Post by deltav on Jan 15, 2017 8:08:45 GMT
Lasers are very inefficient if you compare the power you put in to the effects on target. But in the world of CoaDE, energy is cheap, thanks to efficient thermocouple nuclear reactors. If you can just park side by side and unload, I'd expect the electromagnetic launchers to be more energy efficient and the chemical energy guns to be more cost-efficient but if you take range into account then lasers can't be dodged so they can quite easily outrange KE weapons. I'm 100% with you that lasers seem to be inefficient. I don't understand how the power drop off at range is being ignored. I really hope I can be enlightened here. A coilgun/railgun projectile in space is just as dangerous at 100km as it is 1km provided it can hit the target. A laser beam is only a tiny fraction as powerful at 100km as it was at 1km. I really feel like I'm missing something here.
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Post by deltav on Jan 15, 2017 8:05:11 GMT
Just to drive home the point a bit better, we regularly talk about 1,000km lasers (they are pretty much the standard go-to range for developing a laser). They can range as low as 27,000c for energy and laser and require no actual ammo tonnage or cost. The longest effective range railgun I have seen is ~900km (sheet range against cap ships could ignore range and likely hit things 1,000km out), has a mass of 130 kilotons and a cost of 3,130,000,000 credits. It takes a lot of energy to move a projectile 1,000km in a reasonable amount of time to hit a target to compete with lasers and it takes a whole lot of mass to contain that energy to transfer it to a projectile without shattering the projectile or the weapon while firing. The problem continues further if the arbitrary max range of 1,000km was removed to any range engagements. We can easily build 10GW lasers which would be effective out to 100,000km with the current game setup. In real life we have actual proposed laser defense platforms (with today's technology) that would construct laser arrays capable of burning 29,400kg of material / second. (Source: www.deepspace.ucsb.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/SPIE-Optical-Engineering-Towards-Directed-Energy-Planetary-Defense-Lubin-at-al-2014.pdf ) That proposed laser array also has an effective range of 10 au which is 1,496,000,000 km I have a far superior needlegun design... but yes, building projectile weapons that can fight laserstars is ridiculously hard. You really use missile swarms to force the other player to not go pure laser (or he dies) and swarms of kinetic-armed drones are great at supplementing laser-based defenses (with proper positioning) against incoming missile attacks. I think it's really important to consider cost because without cost, any discussion like this becomes meaningless, because cost is just another way of saying how much work it takes to make something effective. I keep hearing all this rah-rah about lasers, but I still don't see it for three main reasons. 1. Powerful lasers mean big reactors and big radiators, and that means more and more mass and less delta-V = bigger targets. I don't see any way around this. Isn't the Laser Space Station an indication of that? Yes it might be great for a ground based/ planet based system, but aren't we talking about Ship based systems here? 2. For the same amount of power/cost, can't you get more by building heavier and stronger/faster coilguns and railguns? Don't they use less power for the same amount of damage? 3. Lastly and most significantly, look at the power vs range curves in the game stats of the laser weapons. Does not power drop severely with range, with a laser being only a tiny fraction as powerful at 1000 km as it is at 1km? Doesn't a coilgun not suffer from this same problem? Isn't a coilgun projectile just as powerful at 1000 km as 1 km? The limitation being if it can get to the target fast enough to hit it before the target changes course?
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Post by deltav on Jan 15, 2017 7:55:44 GMT
Honestly, I think that this poll should account for the killing potential of coilgun-launched missiles as well. Flak Coilguns are an option in the poll. I meant for that to include Nuke/Flak and Missile Coilguns but now I can't change it...
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Post by deltav on Jan 15, 2017 7:44:27 GMT
Conventional cannons are limited by the explosion velocity of the charge (you can't go faster than the explosion) so they top out at ~9.59km/s at the very very tippy top, you likely won't get anywhere near that ballistic efficiency. So no conventional cannons will never reach the same velocities as coilguns / railguns (which velocity being a big factor in accuracy and total energy it means they will likely never deliver as much damage). All stock designs are really horribly inefficient. As you have noticed velocity = range and it takes a whole lot of energy to get meaningful velocities in projectile weapons. That is why lasers are king the projectile speed (photons) is already at c. You can pump literally near infinite amounts of energy into any sort of projectile weapon and only approach what lasers are already doing projectile speed (and thus range) wise. Assuming total energy is constrained to within an amount that is greater than what is required to burn material and less than infinity lasers will always out perform projectile weapons in range. It basically comes down to an energy range... Lets assume the first useful burning laser requires 10MW (*note this is a completely arbitrarily selected number and not accurate at all you can make burning lasers much lower power wise) and lets assume railguns / coilguns start to reach past ~7km/s at 1kw (which is the minimum allowed power for a railgun, coilguns are 100kw). Anything from 0-1,000 watts would be conventional cannons being king (they only need to power the loader and this is the only weapon that can really fire) anything from 1,000 watts - 10,000,000 watts railguns / coilguns will dominate anything from 10MW + lasers will dominate The reason lasers are king is how cheap energy is. The more GWs you pump into a railgun the returns become less and less... where as pumping GWs into a laser always returns a linear increase in total damage / second (assuming multiple laser platforms to avoid ablation caps to work around the games weird damage system). I'd love if there was a way to make a chart showing the sweet spot of cannons vs RGs/CGs vs Lasers. Where did these numbers come from? (Not challenging just asking.) At least from the stock designs, the lasers seem to only be effective vs small targets like drones and sometimes missiles. Not sure why, but even the Laser Station 1GW laser doesn't seem to do much damage vs let's say the 286mm CG. Ingame the 13 Mw 11mm TRG seems much more powerful than the 13Mw Laser. Any thoughts?
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Post by deltav on Jan 15, 2017 7:25:16 GMT
Can you teach me how to record my game video and post it like that? Yes thanks I see your point, yes the Laser Frigate does lose vs every Missiles ship except the Privateer, but the main use of laser is not against missiles anyway. Drones OR Decoys + Point Defense beat Missiles, Missiles beat Lasers, Lasers beat Drones. To kill Missiles you need other Missiles, or you need Decoys to give you point defense guns time to work on them or make them miss. It's paper, rock, scissors. Missile Ships are only superior vs Laser Dominant craft. Bring Drones, or Decoys + Point defense into the mix, and Missiles Ships are at a disadvantage. My main proof is the lowly 35 c Ranger. It can beat every Missile Ship except the Siloship, and even then only if the Siloship fires pretty much all it's missiles in one salvo because the Ranger has great Decoys + Point Defence. What do you think? To record video download OBS (Open Broadcaster Software). I use it to stream mostly but it is also a pretty good video screen capture and it is free, google should find it, and youtube has a ton of tutorials on how to set it up / use it (though the interface is really user friendly). Decoy point defense is a touchy subject imo from the way missiles behave. You can manually give them trajectory orders and manually detonate, set them to ignore orders etc. and micro them onto target to completely ignore decoys. This might be a bit cheaty but I don't know I would expect it wouldn't be too hard to develop an optical confirmation system to place on missiles to check "Is this a ship sized target or a flare?" I have a bit of trouble believing that in the future chaff like decoy will be useful as cameras and radar are getting cheaper and cheaper. This may lead to new types of decoys possibly in the future, but there is no reason for missile guidance to be relying on IR signatures. I am actually kind of disappointed that is how the game is currently operating as pretty much no existing self-guided missile in service today works like that. Most use X-band radar returns, IR, and guidance updates from fleet combined to target something. So basically I don't think decoy flares should be in the game (at least not in their current implementation). They should have to fool radar, IR, visual, and scramble outside guidance to be effective against current tech. Another interesting point is most of our huge laser boats that are sucking down GWs put of insane amounts of heat, and it is actually near impossible to build a cost effective decoy for them that would over power the ships own IR signature. Regardless of that though all point defense systems (no matter what their composition) have a saturation limit. It doesn't really matter what you use to over-saturate point defenses (missiles, KKVs, drones, other ships, etc.) the end result is the same the payload leaks through and does the damage required. The question will then be "was it worth it?" So you analyze how much it costs to attack a system from a saturation attack. Since the ship has to factor in the cost of weapons and the ship they tend to be at a major disadvantage. Think of a 1,000,000$ tank being beat by a 3,000$ missile. I've been working on cost effective CIWS options lately and it is really hard to beat out tons of cheap missiles without just countering with tons of even cheaper missiles (plus whatever lasers you have going at the time). The stock drones losing to laser craft is more the terrible design of the default drones than anything else, the gun they put on the nose of the ship is a structural weak point with ammo embedded in it so any amount of heating up causes an ammunition explosion destroying the drones. The stinger drone in particular is really really bad in that regard. Any weapon system or ship design you can put on a ship you can put on a drone for cheaper (since you don't need to accommodate the people that it isn't carrying for space). 1. Thanks for the tip about recording, have to look into that. 2. About the Decoys, they weigh between 300 kg and 1 ton and seem to be more than just simple flares. I think the game is assuming that the decoys (even though they are called flares) have the ability somehow to spoof the signature of a ship, and make the missiles think they (the flares) are the ship itself. There are already currently systems already in place called Nulkas which can fool anti-Ship missiles into thinking the decoy is the ship itself. The tech exists currently. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NulkaAlso the Missile has to do a lot of jobs, like track the target over 1000s of km, get to the target, and detonate danger close due to the weakness of Nukes in space, all the meanwhile not getting lost or running out of delta-v. The Decoy only has one job, distract the missiles for a split second during terminal phase so the point defense (guns) can destroy them. Plus you only need a few decoys at a time to distract a swarm of missiles. It's not hard to imagine that a great decoy is cheaper and easier to design than a just "good" missile. Since this game is supposed to be realistic space combat using only tech available today and currently at least in prototype form, I don't see how Decoys can be left out. 3. About Drones, the advantage of drones is mainly their small size imho. Removing the crew compartment doesn't necessarily give much advantage or make the ship smaller. It depends. Let's say you took a Gunship and removed the crew compartment and made it a drone. That wouldn't give it any advantage that a drone has, and it would be just about as big. The advantage of a drone is that it is basically a rocket with a gun stuck to it, (very tiny and therefore hard to shoot at range), meanwhile the capital ship involved is a much bigger and easier target for the drone to hit. If you make drones more than just a tiny bit larger with armor and guns, either they lose so much delta-v that the target ship can make them run out with course corrections (shooting star), or it can hit them at range with weapons the drones can never carry like heavy lasers and railguns. What do you think?
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Post by deltav on Jan 15, 2017 7:10:32 GMT
Can you teach me how to record my game video and post it like that? I would actually love this information too. Shadowplay doesn't work with CDE sadly. Yeah I've got to learn to do that. I think this game/ simulator has a ton of potential. If KSP is any indication, the kind of people who like programs like this are the type to figure out mods that can add extra features like being able to upload the design of others into our programs, or maybe one day even be able to run our ships vs each other online. Anywho, I think you are onto something about the Missile Ships. It's true that the Silo Ship can take out the Gunship at range, with almost no risk to itself, and the Silo Ship is half the cost of a Gunship. Of course if a Silo Ship comes against even the weakest Drone Carrier, it's toast. Something to ponder. Maybe the Missile Ship is the most superior weapons platform provided some way can be found to counter drones.
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Post by deltav on Jan 15, 2017 6:36:13 GMT
Here is one missile schooner worth of missiles going up against a laser frig (it kills about 24 missiles before impact) to kind of hit home on how much better missile ships are than other designs. Can you teach me how to record my game video and post it like that? Yes thanks I see your point, yes the Laser Frigate does lose vs every Missiles ship except the Privateer, but the main use of laser is not against missiles anyway. Drones OR Decoys + Point Defense beat Missiles, Missiles beat Lasers, Lasers beat Drones. To kill Missiles you need other Missiles, or you need Decoys to give you point defense guns time to work on them or make them miss. It's paper, rock, scissors. Missile Ships are only superior vs Laser Dominant craft. Bring Drones, or Decoys + Point defense into the mix, and Missiles Ships are at a disadvantage. My main proof is the lowly 35 c Ranger. It can beat every Missile Ship except the Siloship, and even then only if the Siloship fires pretty much all it's missiles in one salvo because the Ranger has great Decoys + Point Defence. What do you think?
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Post by deltav on Jan 15, 2017 6:25:13 GMT
Yes Drones can be uparmored enough to withstand lasers. All you need to do is get a decent hit on a Defence Laser and the ship is as good as dead against drones and missiles, and a few extra seconds from thicker Aramid Fibers can do that. The idea I've always seen is you damage with missiles, cripple with drones, and mop up with gunships. Yes you are right, but it's a lot cheaper and easier to add extra armor to a laser, and to add more lasers to a ship without sacrificing delta v and cost, than to add more and more armor to each drone that no matter what happens will be tossed away after the battle. Ingame the Laser Frigate dominates every Carrier except the Fleet Carrier, which happens to be armed with almost all the heavy guns of a Gunship. Long term and overall, the more armor you add to a drone, you more likely you reduce it's main advantage, which is it's small size, relatively cheap cost and large delta-V. But adding more and more guns and armor to ONE ship, is not nearly as costly as trying to upgrade scores of drones, no?
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Post by deltav on Jan 15, 2017 6:20:56 GMT
I'm with you regarding drones and missiles being cheaper/smarter overall than "battleships". But with good point defense/lasers, they have the potential to outfire/overwhelm missiles/drones. Each Cannon, Railgun, and Coilgun on average carries 10,000 rounds. Lasers can fire as long as there is power infinite rounds. Dead is dead, and once a Carrier or Missile Ship is out vs a "Battleship", it is really done for, because without the extra weight and size involved of packing drones/missiles, it can carry all the more Guns for the same or even less cost. Gunships vs Fleet Carrier are the top two stock ships in game. Once the Fleet Carrier is out of Drones, it stands no chance. On earth carriers/ missile ships have replaced battleships only because 1. battleships can't see over the horizon, 2. guns weren't controlled by computers, 3. battleships were helpless vs. aircraft. This is already changing with use of sat spotting and great point defense. In space the carrier has almost no advantage over the "battleship" provided it is designed with long enough enough range weapons to take out drones and missiles far away from the ship. In game the Laser Frigate can destroy/beat all of the Carriers and Missile Ships Except the Fleet Carrier, although it is not much cheaper. Check out my updated chart with prices, and full armaments for each stock ship, tell me what you think. yeah but we are talking about stock ship point defense... The default striker and flak missiles didn't have that terrible of armor (1cm AC). Even the AI's default 20 missile swarm could usually over saturate ship defenses and it gets waaaaay worse if you do the logical thing and fire more than that. The laser frig does not stand a chance against a full salvo of cost / mass equivalent missile schooners (which is ~3 schooners). You can fire 600 total missiles (300 flak and 300 strikers) all at once and obliterate it at slightly less cost and mass. Even an alpha strike from a single schooner (firing 200 missiles) will down a laser frigate with a laughable amount of overkill. Of course you are right, the Laser Frigate is toast vs every Missile Carrier except the Privateer, but against every drone carrier except the Fleet Carrier, the Laser Frigate comes out on top one on one. It comes back to our paper, rock, scissors discussion earlier. Lasers beat Drones, Drones beat Missiles, and Missiles beat Lasers (all things being equal). But I left something out, Decoys beat Missiles too. If you have plenty of Decoys and Lasers, plus guns, you can beat Missiles and Drones and eat Carriers and Missile Ships for breakfast lunch and dinner. The Gunship comes very, very close. The only reason the Gunship doesn't beat every other stock ship ingame, is that (quite strangely I might add), the Fleet Carrier has almost all the guns the Gunship has minus just 2 11mm Turreted Railguns.
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Post by deltav on Jan 15, 2017 6:01:31 GMT
[...] Gunships vs Fleet Carrier are the top two stock ships in game. Once the Fleet Carrier is out of Drones, it stands no chance. The Fleet Carrier actually carries those 240 some mm 5kg coilguns that tear ships appart. Though the Gunships 15g railgun would give it a run for its money. You're right. The Gunship has 2 extra 1mm-TRGs and the 2 100MW lasers, but besides that the guns/lasers on the Fleet Carrier are the same. Really I think the Gunship was deliberately not armed with more weapons because otherwise it would nerf the game. As it stands the Gunship ties with the Fleet Carrier. Add 2 more 100 MW lasers like the Laser Frigate has, or add 2 more 286mm TRGs, and it wouldn't even be a competition. Now that I think of it's a bit strange that the "Carrier" and the "Battleship" of this game have almost the same exact "gun" armament. You would think the Gunship would have at least double or triple the amount of guns vs a carrier.
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Post by deltav on Jan 15, 2017 5:56:15 GMT
Well no really, you could take the Siloship and the Fleet Carrier and give them Personal Defence Lasers and Laser Drones and the two ships could probably take on a fleet of Corvettes just fine. Gunships have the fun idea of getting shot back, which puts the ship and its crew in unnecessary harm. Drones and Missiles are cheap, lives are not. TLDR: People like the gunship/warship because their crew is in unnecessary harm giving the sense of risk and excitment I personally voted for missile ships, but I am not really surprised that gunships / warships are winning. It was a poll on favorite play style not most effective play style. Missile and drone carriers (while very effective) have no real challenge to them or threatening feeling. You start the mission lob all of your missiles or drones and fiddle with trajectories until the mission is over. Your capital ship is never posed any risk (probably didn't even have to move from the spawn in point). While I personally get a huge amount of glee from micromanaging tiny fleets of missiles and drones I can see how it would be boring to most people as you never have any feeling of risk or danger. People want the feeling of big capital ships slugging it out with each-other (basically WWI era naval war in space). The problem is that mythos is even falling away at current technology level (missile cruisers/destroyers and aircraft carriers have pretty much already replaced battleships). Commanding a battleship is cool big guns pew pew trading slugs with another target you can see and feel but watching an up-to-date map on where your missiles are at 100s of kilometers away is pretty boring. So unless you find enjoyment from efficiency itself gunships/warships are really the only option. If a game like world of warships brought in current tech of spy satellites to find the fleets and hyper-sonic attack missile swarming every match would be over in the first minute as all ships fire their attacker swarms and decimate each others fleet. While realistic this is really boring gameplay. Check out my response to David and tell me what you think. In short the advantages of Drone Carriers and Missiles Ships is party moot in Space Warfare. 1. In space there is no horizon so Carriers and Missiles Ships cannot "see further" than the "Battleship". 2. With good point defense (strong lasers, etc.) the advantage of Missiles and Drones is severely blunted. Every Drone and Missile launched that is destroyed before it reaches the target is tons of weight and cost that could have been used to add an extra long range laser or gun. 3. Computers and great sensors can react more quickly than any human removing the advantage. When it comes down to it what is a missile or drone? A missile is just a way of getting an explosive charge to the enemy. A drone is just a way of getting a gun of some type close to the enemy. Does it matter if that missile's explosive charge is delivered by Gun (Flak or Nuke Railgun or Coilgun) instead, or that drone's projectile is delivered with a faster and longer range ship mounted gun instead? I would say it doesn't. For those who say Drones and Missiles can simply be up armored to make them more effective against ship mounted lasers and point defenses, you can only add so much armor before the main advantages of missiles/ drones is eliminated, mainly their small size, which means low delta v to maneuver.
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Post by deltav on Jan 15, 2017 5:38:23 GMT
Well no really, you could take the Siloship and the Fleet Carrier and give them Personal Defence Lasers and Laser Drones and the two ships could probably take on a fleet of Corvettes just fine. Gunships have the fun idea of getting shot back, which puts the ship and its crew in unnecessary harm. Drones and Missiles are cheap, lives are not. I'm with you regarding drones and missiles being cheaper/smarter overall than "battleships". But with good point defense/lasers, they have the potential to outfire/overwhelm missiles/drones. Each Cannon, Railgun, and Coilgun on average carries 10,000 rounds. Lasers can fire as long as there is power infinite rounds. Dead is dead, and once a Carrier or Missile Ship is out vs a "Battleship", it is really done for, because without the extra weight and size involved of packing drones/missiles, it can carry all the more Guns for the same or even less cost. Gunships vs Fleet Carrier are the top two stock ships in game. Once the Fleet Carrier is out of Drones, it stands no chance. On earth carriers/ missile ships have replaced battleships only because 1. battleships can't see over the horizon, 2. guns weren't controlled by computers, 3. battleships were helpless vs. aircraft. This is already changing with use of sat spotting and great point defense. In space the carrier has almost no advantage over the "battleship" provided it is designed with long enough enough range weapons to take out drones and missiles far away from the ship. In game the Laser Frigate can destroy/beat all of the Carriers and Missile Ships Except the Fleet Carrier, although it is not much cheaper. Check out my updated chart with prices, and full armaments for each stock ship, tell me what you think.
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Post by deltav on Jan 15, 2017 3:46:32 GMT
Edit: The update (1.10) changed all the stock guns. Check them out here... childrenofadeadearth.boards.net/post/15032/threadHad a hard time looking at stock guns in COADE and finding out what is what, so I made a table with how many joules, foot pounds, range against a capital ship, and so on. That way could figure out what works best against what targets and so on. Also is it possible to build cannons that are just as powerful as Coilguns or Railguns? 02/01/17 Surprisingly the 60 mm/33 mm Cannons deal out about the same level of damage per second as the 11 mm Railgun, just not the same range. 02/16/17 Updated chart with new stock cannons. 02/18/17 Found out yes, it IS possible to build cannons that are just as powerful as Coilguns or Railguns, but mostly for smaller 10m^2 to 1m^2 targets. 02/18/17 Assumed that longer range at 1km^2 meant longer range for smaller targets. That was wrong. This means shorter ranged weapons at 1km^2 may be better for point defense. Added 10m^2 and m^2 for that reason. Also guns without turrets are useless for point defense (unless nose mounted/aimed) as far as I can tell, so ignore unturrented Cannons/Coilguns/Railguns for this purpose. Type | km^2 | 10m^2 | m^2 | Velocity | Shot Mass | Rounds | Joules/shot | Joules/sec@100%hit | Rate_Fire | Pow.Draw | Cost |
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| Nuke Turreted Cannon | 8 km | 2.5 km | 1.4km | 1.12km/s | 115,001 g | 100 | 10,200,000,000,000 | 12,240,000,000,000
| 1.20 rps | 1 MW | 19,300 kc | HE Turreted Cannon | 9 km | 2.9 km | 1.7km | 1.31km/s | 39,801 g | 250 | 114,200,000 | 121,052,000
| 1.06 rps | 1 MW | 4,160 kc | 22 mm Turreted Cannon | 10 km | 3.1 km | 1.7km | 1.37km/s | 10 g | 1000 | 9,388 | 143,050
| 20.66 rps | 0.194 MW | 8.09 kc | 120 mm Cannon | 11 km | 3.3 km | 1.9km | 1.47km/s | 10,000 g | 0 | 10,808,214 | 22,697,249
| 2.10 rps | 0.060 MW | 1,200 kc | 1200 mm Cannon | 12 km | 3.9 km | 2.2km | 1.73km/s | 1,000,000 g | 500 | 1,496,964,054
| 718,542,746
| 0.48 rps | 13 MW | 124,000 kc | 60 mm Turreted Cannon | 13 km | 4.1 km | 2.3km | 1.82km/s | 10 g | 5000 | 16,568 | 422,650
| 25.51 rps | 0.423 MW | 18.6 kc | 33 mm Cannon | 16 km | 5.1 km | 2.9km | 2.25km/s | 5 g | 5000 | 12,661 | 258,411
| 20.41 rps | 0.258 MW | 10.4 kc |
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| Flak Turrented Coilgun | 17 km | 1.9 km | 0.6km | 2.34km/s | 20,200 g | 1000 | 54,900,000
| 740,052,000
| 13.48 rps | 13 MW | 4,000 kc | 8mm Coilgun | 18 km | 5.8 km | 3.3km | 2.54km/s | 47.4 g | 1000 | 152,955 | 3,413,956
| 22.32 rps | 0.200 MW | 24.9 kc | Flak Coilgun | 33 km | 10.4km | 5.8km | 4.57km/s | 20,100 g
| 500 | 54,900,000
| 114,192,000
| 2.08 rps | 1 MW | 89,900 kc | 286mm Turreted Coilgun | 36 km | 7.7 km | 2.5km | 5.14km/s | 10,000 g | 1000 | 132,143,438 | 1,014,861,604
| 7.68 rps | 13 MW | 19,400 kc |
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| 3mm Railgun | 36 km | 10.7km | 3.4km | 5.06km/s | 2.5 g | 10,000 | 32,015 | 586,195
| 18.31 rps | 0.200 MW | 60.4 kc | 11mm Turreted Railgun | 37 km | 4.9 km | 1.5km | 5.18km/s | 1 g | 10,000 | 13,421 | 1,947,924
| 145.14 rps | 13 MW | 380 kc | 8mm Turreted Railgun | 46 km | 5.9 km | 1.9km | 6.37km/s | 15 g | 10,000 | 304,431 | 11,315,700
| 37.17 rps | 29 MW | 1,160 kc |
First thing that is clear from this chart is the range = velocity period. Yes it is true in space there is really nothing to stop your rounds from going on forever, but the round still needs to be fast enough to reach the target before it's moved somewhere else, and that means speed, pure and simple.
Second thing that is clear is gosh darn the 286 mm Coilgun is powerful. The 8mm Railgun is a nice but distant second.
When you look at the two strongest stock craft the Gunship and the Fleet Carrier, no wonder they are armed with a bunch of these two powerful guns.
Any thoughts?
I still haven't figured out how to calculate rate of fire from the data in the game. From there I would want to find out joules per seconds of impact, damage given in a certain time period.
02/01/2017 Figured out rate of fire but still want to figure out how to find if damage of nukes and HE are increased by the force of being launched from a gun.
Any help with that?
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Post by deltav on Jan 15, 2017 1:56:50 GMT
Multi-GW lasers, assuming reasonably efficient design, are simply too strong to be worth armouring most things against currently. When and if we get longer range engagements, we'll probably worry about armouring against them at extreme range—if lasers could shoot out to hundreds of light milliseconds they would both be less intense and much harder to avoid, so some form of armouring would become compulsory. But worry not, that would require large changes to the engine (including modeling appreciable travel time for light at those distances), so in the immediate, keep your capships away and overwhelm them with numbers. Make your drones and missiles effective at as long a range as possible, send in lots of them and play the numbers game. Kinetic kill missiles don't seem viable against serious point defences because you require the targetable missile to actually hit; instead of 10 missiles it's better to have 10 drones that will put hundreds of hypervelocity projectiles into space before they get vapourised. Also, gigaton class nuclear missiles that detonate for huge AoE flash before the lasers can even be brought to bear and laser drones should be effective. I hope that in future patches it will become easier to design super-flak missiles that fill space with fast-moving, dense debris. The engagement ranges in the stock game are frankly absurdly close—35km is point blank for RL naval fleets that have to deal with stuff like atmospheric drag and the curvature of the Earth. Right now I'm of the opinion that anything you command in the orbital mechanics portion of the game should only need to be in the general vicinity of its target, having to close the distance in the combat phase is just asking for trouble. 35 km is point blank range for blue water navy? Let's think about this for a second. Yes missiles and aircraft carriers can reach out far beyond 35 km, but that's not what we are talking about. We are talking about using guns. For the old school WW2 Battleships, the longest hit ever made on another ship during combat is 26,260 yards, about 24 km. So using a gun even if it is coil powered, the target has to be tracked and targeted using sensors for exactly where the ship is, and the fact that the target may be gone by the time the round arrives. For comparison, someone who makes a sniper shot at 2500 m, the bullet takes almost 6 seconds to reach the target. If the target is moving erratically the shot will most likely miss wasting rounds. Also space is not completely empty, there is space dust and so on. So taking all this into account, 46 km vs a capital ship (the range of a 39 MW 8mm Turrented Railgun), isn't it a perfectly reasonable range?
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Post by deltav on Jan 15, 2017 0:39:10 GMT
Gunships and Warships are cool and all, but Missile and Drone carriers have better combat efficiency. So in head to head One on One combat... Drones (UAVs) kill Missiles (MSLs) Heavy Laser (Ls) kill UAVs but Heavy MSLs like Devastators kill Ls So it's kind of like paper, rock, scissors. Missiles and Drones allow a ship to attack multiple targets at once anywhere in the Hill Sphere, but having them means less lasers/point defense. So it makes sense to make space fleets similar to naval fleets. Mix and match pairs of ship classes into one fleet to get maximum lethality.
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