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Post by omnipotentvoid on Feb 14, 2017 22:10:24 GMT
omnipotentvoid HOw are you getting such long engagement ranges? Have you been able to engage at the range ingame? If so, how? Only lasers are limited to 1Mm in game. If a KE weapons range for a specific target is beyond 1Mm the ships will still engage at the maximum range. All thats required are high accuracy guns (10m² at 250km is a good ballpark for insane engagement ranges). Try building railguns with 1g projectiles and super high velocities. You also need big targets. They should be at least 10000m² (you can probably beat 1Mm with just 5000m², but only just), and the bigger the better.
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Post by omnipotentvoid on Feb 14, 2017 22:04:30 GMT
So in the current structure of the game we bang our heads against built-in limitations and physics anomalies. Basically. This is alway the problem with simulation games played by people who have at least some advanced knowledge of the simulation subject. They will almost instantly attempt to push the simulation to the limit, revealing any weaknesses it holds. Take DCS. Most members of this community would be utterly overwhelmed by the amount of details (especially all the buttons). A trained pilot, on the other hand, is likely to put himself in situations that reveal shortcomings of the simulation within hours of starting.
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Post by omnipotentvoid on Feb 14, 2017 21:33:34 GMT
Zirconium Copper is far from the best material to use for the high power ~GW class railgun. I've got a "perfect accuracy" example that throws 134km/s 1g sand for around half the mass and 1.35Gc (or 600Mc less cost), and slightly smaller, lower powered versions at 129km/s for "only" 37.5kt and 993Mc. These are obviously still not practical weapons nor are they probably valid once the EM code is overhauled, but they don't deliberately exploit any obvious bugs in payload handling, and I deploy them with a handwavium capacitor (Alu rad shield) with sufficient mass to account for 4x the shot energy at 360J/kg, plus limit the fire rate to a total duty cycle of <25%, which is the best I can do for now. (The fire rate I select is deliberately lower than this too - at the longer ranges the weapon is used at, the tof gives sufficient hits to kill most modules which can be hit reliably (e.g side on radiators, turrets (from any angle), missiles/drones) that additional dwell is only a waste of ammunition. Significant improvement in PD performance can also be increased by manually stepping through drone fleet/missile fleet individuals as priority targets based on lateral proximity/shortest path, rather than allowing the AI to select based on range only. Off topic question: What materials are best material for building railguns? Can you share your design?
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Post by omnipotentvoid on Feb 14, 2017 21:04:54 GMT
So if I hurt someone, or I think I will hurt someone, all I can do is apologize. Let them know I'm sorry, and erase those words however I can. What has been said cannot ever be truly erased. So don't even try. Rather try, through communication, to right the wrongs or clear up misunderstandings. Deleting posts that you find aren't received as you intended or that you are not proud of having made is akin to running away. It would reflect much better on your person to leave the posts there and solve the problems by talking.
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Post by omnipotentvoid on Feb 14, 2017 20:01:44 GMT
To bad, it seemed like such a promising idea. Guess its time to think of some other use for liquid/gaseous explosives thats at least marginally practical. Liquid? like Nitroglycerin/ Yes. Heptanitrocubane and octanitrocubane also sublimate above 200°C, allowing for gaseous explosives. I wonder how effective it would be to use them to make what is effectively HESH by letting them spread across the armor before detonating. Further more, I wonder what igniting a mixture of fuel and oxidizer (such as a cloud of dicyanoacetylene and oxygen) that has been allowed to disperse around the hull a bit (say a few seconds) would do.
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Post by omnipotentvoid on Feb 14, 2017 19:42:40 GMT
Hmn. Neutronium, afaik, is not stable under normal conditions, but is the closest substance I can think of where the Strong Force (and the Weak Force, alas) predominates over Electromagnetism. I guess I missed that. Thank you very much. Are there any ideas out there to make it stable seem the natural next question. I'll get right on that. Also: I finally found the like button.
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Post by omnipotentvoid on Feb 14, 2017 19:38:31 GMT
Sorry if this may seem a little off-topic, but have you thought that increasing engagement range further makes current tactical UI (that range diagram to the right) completely inadequate. It was good when the only real variable in maneuvering was the initial vector of the two fleets since ranges were too small for meaningful maneuvers. If ranges are huge, you need something like a Homeworld tactical view with trajectory plotting because maneuvers become meaningful. The current tactical UI is inadequate anyway. For very large ships, like the one I mount my "Doomhammer" coilgun to, I get engagement ranges of beyond 1.7Mm for my super high accuracy guns. TtCA has reached several hours in many cases. Which brings me to my guns everyone asks for: RailgunModule 1.000 GW 8mm Turreted Railgun 3.4MJ "Longspear"
UsesCustomName true
PowerConsumption_W 1e+009
Rails
Composition Zirconium Copper
Thickness_m 9.2
Length_m 50
BarrelArmorThickness_m 0.225
Armature
Composition Vanadium Chromium Steel
BoreRadius_m 0.0037
Mass_kg 0.001
Tracer Hafnia
Payload null
Loader
PowerConsumption_W 1e+008
Turret
InnerRadius_m 15
ArmorComposition Maraging Steel
ArmorThickness_m 0.01
MomentumWheels
Composition Tin
RotationalSpeed_RPM 8.6
AttachedAmmoBay
Capacity 10000
Stacks 1
TargetsShips true
TargetsShots true This is currently my range testing railgun. I was reluctant to post it, because I haven't finished testing yet and it's probably really unoptimized since I'm still new at the game and haven't learned any better yet. Also, I know someone will point out that it's huge and expensive and impractical. I know. It's meant to test the limits of the simulation, not be an effective weapon. As for the test so far (sample size is still small because the tests take a looooooooooooong time): Using the Longspear to force long ranges and fighting around Ganymede, I get engagement ranges between 1.8 and 2.2 Mm against a 10000m² target. By the time the target is destroyed, the ranges can open up to over 3Mm. Time to closest approach varies wildly, getting as low as 2 hours and up to 20 hours. At the end of engagements, the target is often moving away due to the impact of projectiles. The time to first hit is around 17s for the Longspear and between 1.75 and 2.5 minutes for the Doomhammer. Time to kill is between 3.5 and 6 min for the Longspeer and between 20 and 70min for the Long spear. The Doomhammer needs between 20 and 40 hits to kill its target and has an has a hit percentage of around 4-6%. The Longspear used between 7000 and 10000 shots to kill its target. All tests started with flat, stationary targets (unarmed stations), armor composition was 1cm UHMWPE 1cm boron 10cm graphite aerogel 4m space 2mm tungsten rhenium (again, not optimized and not the point of the test). 9 tests were done, 4 scraped because of me failing to operate a stopwatch (*sigh*). Other observations: - The railgun needed to destroy/damage alot of armor to be able to kill the ship. Over all most of the armor was damaged or destroyed by the time the target was killed. The coil gun left most of the armor intact, almost no armor being damaged and little being destroyed by time of target kill.
- Most of the inaccuracy of the weapons seemed to come from the way the turrets tract across the surface of the target. This is particularly noticeable on the Longspear, but the shot patterns of the Doomhammer reveal the same problem. I suspect that the TTK of the Doomhammer could be reduced to about 2/3 of the current by targeting center, and the Longspears may even be cut down to 1/3 of its current TTK.
- While the Longspear will win most of the time, if the Doomhamer gets a killing or weapon disabling blow within the first minute of engagement, the Longspear will be unlikely to be able to kill/disable a Doomhammer. (This will hapen in less than 2% of the cases by my quesstimation)
- Despite the Doomhammers rounds weighing 5000 times as much as the Longspears, it uses only 10-20 times the mass to kill the target.
I will be conducting further test with significantly thicker armor
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Post by omnipotentvoid on Feb 14, 2017 18:57:59 GMT
And as far as efficiency goes, my 20m coilguns seem to achieve an energy efficiency of of 6500000%, can your railguns do that? I refuse to build a coil or rail that exceeds 90% efficiency. You can stop the 5 ton, 1.5TJ slugs with less than 10m of nitrile rubber, if that makes you feel any better. Most of the energy they have seems to vanish on impact. Doesn't even leave glowing craters in the rubber.
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Post by omnipotentvoid on Feb 14, 2017 17:05:50 GMT
My issue though, is that a storm of 2 MJ sand is more efficient at killing ships than a single 100MJ impactor; those kilograms of ammo add up really quick. Depends on how you define efficiency and quantify damage. While sandblasters are certainly the KE weapon with the fastest times to kill in the game right know, both damage per J and probably damage per g of projectile are very poor for extremely light projectiles (if damage is quantified as I state here). Additionally, guns need to be more accurate the less damage they do per impact in order to avoid spreading damage out and thus requiring significantly more shots to kill the target. Guns capable of penetrating armor need not worry about this at all and can fire as effectively at maximum accurate range to hit as at close range. I don't expect the equivalent of naval battles in space, I don't think sandblasters are the optimum KE weapon. Think about it, if we take the idea behind the sandblaster to the extreme (reducing projectile weight in order to increase speed, eventually reaching a mass of 0 and a speed of c) they effectively approach being lasers. And while lasers are certainly are effective, there must be some merit to using KE weapons, or else we wouldn't use them. This should make it clear that there is a more complex efficiency curve behind KE weapons and the prevalent faster and lighter meta for KE weapons is either an artifact of simulation limitations, or due to us not yet finding the tactical relevance of heavier KE weapons. Most likely it's a mixture of both. And as far as efficiency goes, my 20m coilguns seem to achieve an energy efficiency of of 6500000%, can your railguns do that?
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Post by omnipotentvoid on Feb 14, 2017 13:36:02 GMT
Apart from being impossible, as far as modern physics is concerned, does anyone have an idea of the properties that SIMs ( Strong Interaction Materials) would have? These are are a fictional material from the series Remembrance of Earth’s Past by Liu Cixin. Specifically, it appears first and is (as far as I can remember) best described in the second book, The Dark Forest.
Allegedly, some sort of field is used, that effectively extends the range at which the strong interactions is relevant (which is impossible as far as I know). The result is a material in which the individual components (it's not specified whether these are still atoms or perhaps nuclei or some sort of quark/gluon/boson/hadron or what have you plasma) in which the strong interaction binds particles together, rather than electric/magnetic attraction or chemical bonds. I've been unable to find anything on how such a material would behave (which I expected) or what kind of bonds hold the material and what properties these bonds would have. At least not anything that I can understand. Does anyone here have any ideas or sources?
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Post by omnipotentvoid on Feb 14, 2017 11:02:16 GMT
I actually hadn't thought of that, thank you for pointing it out. I'd still say that there a point where the expenditure of a bit of amunition is worth the dV the enemy is forced to use to avoid incoming and "potentially incoming" shots, but this does cut down on my expectation of engagement ranges significantly. I still think they could be up to an order of magnitude greater than currently though. Ammunition can add up quickly in both cost and mass. A thousand one gram projectiles is a kilogram, and we know with sandblasters it takes a lot more than one hit to penetrate armor and cause disabling damage. So you end up firing millions or more projectiles and the ammunition masses several tons or more. Suddenly a high ISP, low thrust, thruster to induce a bit of Brownian motion doesn't seem so bad. Especially if a kilogram of fuel dodges more than a kilogram of kinetics. It is also a reason to use drones and missiles that will coast in the interim and make course corrections and terminal guidance, It is a lot easier when your bullets steer themselves or an expendable robot carries a gun a lot closer. Sandblasters against distance targets, especially well armored ones, are almost inconsequential (verified in testing sandblasters at extreme range using lasers to extend maximum engagement range and shutting them down in combat). That would be the point of projectiles that can instantly kill you. It forces you to dodge, even if the enemy might be firing. Instead of continues fire, I'd fire of rounds timed randomly, making my rate of fire a round every few minutes on average over a 30h encounter. This forces the enemy to dodge a lot while limiting munition expenditure. On the whole, rounds don't need to become much heavier to be threating, between 10g to 1kg at most for railguns, 10 times that for coilguns current ships. Super heavy rounds are only necessary against ships that I would class as super capital, having armor that is meters thick at points.Super high impulse KE weapons (with rounds above a ton in mass) would be extremely effective at very short ranges, provided you survive the sandblasters and lasers, because the can guaranty kills upon hitting ships.
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Post by omnipotentvoid on Feb 14, 2017 10:37:24 GMT
To bad, it seemed like such a promising idea. Guess its time to think of some other use for liquid/gaseous explosives thats at least marginally practical.
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Post by omnipotentvoid on Feb 14, 2017 10:32:54 GMT
Rules of armor0) You'll probably get hit eventually.1) Don't get hit.2) Hit the other guy first, before he hits you. 3) Hit the other guy so he can't hit you. 4) Try not to die when you do get hit. 5) Stay alive long enough to #3 6) Prioritize the important parts, protect them more than less important parts 7) Weapons that allow for #3 are very important 8) Redundant important parts are less important 9) Less important parts can be used as armor for important parts 10) Don't put priority targeted weapons adjacent or in front of critically important, non redundant modules 11) Don't put important parts so close that missing one will hit the other 12) Maximize use of sloped armor, position weapons so nearby shots hit the slope. Improvements welcome. Points 4) and 12) are irrelevant for high impulse weapons, while point 12) is the most effective way to shield against low impulse weapons. I did some basic calculations for pressures asserted on armor by a glancing blow (5° as angle between incoming vector and armor). These assume perfect elastic collisions over 1ms and a ship that doesn't move. Best case scenario: impact along a part of the flat side (assumed to be roughly 20m²) results in roughly 1GPa of pressure. Worst case scenario is assumed to be an area of roughly 10mm² (hitting on an edge) resulting in about 2TPa of pressure on the armor. Inelastic collisions will produce significantly higher pressures, potentially an order of magnitude greater as the projectile is decelerated even more in the short time span. Full frontal impact with full loss of velocity over this time span will generate pressures of about 6GPa on an area of 20m² or 12TPa. Note: These values are wildly inaccurate because of assumptions and simplifications and may be an order of magnitude or so off.
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Post by omnipotentvoid on Feb 14, 2017 0:44:35 GMT
2. Memes, jokes, and other shallow content are not the focus of COADE Board. Submissions should be for the most part serious, thoughtful and constructive although humorous posts are welcome. Why does this have to be a rule? I don't see many people coming to this forum (because of the content of the game and the level of discussion currently on the forum) that would not automatically try to submit mostly serious and generally thoughtful content. Beyond that, CoaDE is still a game. While technical discussions should maintain a level of meticulousness (thoroughness? Can't think of the right word right now) that allows them to be of use, as well as keeping some mannerisms that allow for good discussion (such as citation), keep in mind that we are just playing with the idea of giant space battles with ships fielding almost unimaginably devastating weapons, not actually building them. The campaign itself is pretty clear on the not so serious nature of the game with its (relatively) light hearted presentation of some brutal conflicts, some of which contain rather heinous actions. Plus, always being super cereal about everything tends to stifle creativity. A lot of good ideas start out as jokes and content that might initially seem shallow may lead to deeper realizations. While I fully agree with the code of personal conduct you present, I personally think that the forum will be most enjoyable and productive if content is left as unrestricted as possible. Personally, I'd leave the content restrictions out for the moment. Most types of content that can increase the forums toxicity are prohibited anyway and the community seems to be developing rather well compared to most online communities as far as I can tell.
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Post by omnipotentvoid on Feb 13, 2017 21:59:52 GMT
I was doing some research on explosives and noticed some explosive (specifically polynitrocubanes) can remain relatively stable in solid or gaseous state. This lead to the idea of using explosives as fuels for missiles or dumb fire rockets. This would (as far as my limited to no knowledge of rocket engines tells me) have following benefits: - High thrust
- Unburned fuel would detonate on impact
- Can function as both explosive ordnance and KKVs depending on deployment range
- High energy/fuel density (?)
The major drawbacks being low efficiency and someone detonating the missiles as they leave the hull (with, say, a laser).
The use, that I envisioned for these rockets, would be drone carried micro missiles or gun launched missiles, where the fuel acts as a warhead. These would be used for drone on drone or anti missile/drone weapons and maybe for aggressively dismantling unarmored ships.
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