Author Topic: Newtonian Fighters  (Read 28385 times)

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Offline Rastaman

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Re: Newtonian Fighters
« Reply #45 on: November 08, 2011, 01:19:48 PM »
Big ships might not be the solution either. Any ship can be one-shotted after all. Fighters could have good point defence in numbers, each fighter can have multiple guns or anti-missiles. Redundancy can well be had in numbers, not just in tonnage. Maybe the ideal fleet is a multitude of medium sized ships. Bigger ships become a strong point that is ultimately a weak point.

In the words of the master, Iain M. Banks:

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And there was one behemoth in there, a giant ship, probably a command-and-control lander- and troop-carrier plus facili-ties-and-repair vessel. At least a billion tonnes, klicks across, doubtless very heavily armoured and armed and escorted, but a classic grade-A high-value target, a possible king-piece, a back-breaker, if it could be successfully engaged and destroyed or taken out of action or even captured. Just posting a powerful-enough guard-ship screen to try and keep it safe in the event of a serious attack threat would significantly sap the invading/occupying force's abilities, cut down their dispositional options and drastically curtail their split-regroup capacity.

The Fleet tacticians had been positively cruel about this dinosaur of a ship. A vanity piece, they called it, an Idiot Aboard! sign hung round the neck of the enemy fleet. Every space-faring species that built warcraft quickly found out one way or another - often the hard way - that big ships just didn't work except as a hideously expensive way of impressing the more credulous type of native. Flexibility, maneuverability, low unit risk-cost, distributed inherent damage resistance, fully parsed battle-space side-blind denotation control grammar . . . these and other even more arcane concepts were what really mattered in modern space warfare, apparently, and a Really Big Ship just didn't sit too comfortably with any of them.

The tacticians pretty much spoke their own language, were mostly very intense, and blinked a lot.
'So a strong point that's really a weak point,' Taince had suggested at one of their briefings.
'That would be a viable alternative definition,' one of them said, after a moment or two's thought.


Really looking forward to this forum developing a fully parsed battle-space side-blind denotion control grammar.  ;D
« Last Edit: November 08, 2011, 01:26:46 PM by Rastaman »
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Offline Bremen

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Re: Newtonian Fighters
« Reply #46 on: November 08, 2011, 03:35:03 PM »
Quote from: Rastaman link=topic=4320. msg42842#msg42842 date=1320779988
Big ships might not be the solution either.  Any ship can be one-shotted after all.  Fighters could have good point defence in numbers, each fighter can have multiple guns or anti-missiles.  Redundancy can well be had in numbers, not just in tonnage.  Maybe the ideal fleet is a multitude of medium sized ships.  Bigger ships become a strong point that is ultimately a weak point.

In the words of the master, Iain M.  Banks:


Really looking forward to this forum developing a fully parsed battle-space side-blind denotion control grammar.   ;D

Well, there are advantages to large ships.  Since armor and shields are based on surface area, a large ship will be much better protected than a smaller ship with the same % tonnage dedicated to armor and shields.  A lot has been made about instant kills by contact nukes, but I think missiles are going to play a far smaller role in Newtonian Aurora than TNE (and most people haven't realized it yet).  And in the case of anything but a contact hit (IE proximity detonation, laser head, or shrapnel) a large ship will be far more survivable than a small one.  They also get more efficient drives, regardless of power/efficiency ratios, simply because large engines are more effective than smaller ones; if you trade this for power you actually get large ships being slightly faster than smaller ones for the same fuel efficiency.

What large ships will need is escorts, but I could easily see fleet concept being a backbone of Capital ship(s), some escorts, and some fighters/bombers.
 

Offline bean

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Re: Newtonian Fighters
« Reply #47 on: November 08, 2011, 03:46:03 PM »
Big ships might not be the solution either. Any ship can be one-shotted after all. Fighters could have good point defence in numbers, each fighter can have multiple guns or anti-missiles. Redundancy can well be had in numbers, not just in tonnage. Maybe the ideal fleet is a multitude of medium sized ships. Bigger ships become a strong point that is ultimately a weak point.

This depends on how you interpret the phrase "bigger ships".  Yes, it is probably a worse idea to have a few huge ships then it is to base your fleet around fighters.  That doesn't mean that effectiveness scales inversely with size, either.  I'm not going to speculate farther until we know more.
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Offline Yonder

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Re: Newtonian Fighters
« Reply #48 on: November 08, 2011, 03:56:23 PM »
I find that only vaguely plausible in the current version.  I would send in a radar picket, and have big fire controls.
That may be the way to go, sending a handful of drones with active sensors or something of that nature. One of the reasons I am thinking that smaller fire controls closer to the enemy would be better is because I was sort of hoping that sensors would degrade with the square of range, instead of linearly like they currently do.
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And how fast are these projectiles going again?
A 1 kg projectile going 30k km/s has an impact energy equivalent to 109 megatons of TNT.
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And what about your carriers?  Are they hiding behind their magical shield of "I want fighters"?
That and the idea of a layered fleet (this next fleet deployment is for high velocity fighting when one hit will be crippling/lethal). The idea is that the approaching fleet has to get through your missiles, fighters, destroyers, then cruisers, etc. Each layer does its best to destroy every enemy layer that it meets so that they don't have the chance to destroy the more valuable allies behind them. Each layer also does its best to survive each enemy wave so that it can attack the enemy's more expensive rear waves. The hope is that after getting through all of the combat waves your enemy will either be destroyed, crippled, out of ammo, or otherwise be unable to destroy your carriers and other support vessels, and you hope that your own waves survived.
The reason for doing this is the idea that at these speeds every enemy combatant is a threat that you must face. At 30k km/s the smaller slugs from a fighters cannon are basically as dangerous as the large shells from a battleship, but the firing platform is cheaper. Since all of your ships are about as lethal as any other you send the cheapest ones first, any damage they do is great, and any munitions that the enemy uses on them (and they must, because even the cheap ships are lethal) isn't being used against your more expensive ships.
Now the question becomes "why have expensive ships at all?" Because in this example fight of a combined 30k km/s approach they are a liability, however in other circumstances (like when they arrive at the planet they are meant to invade and slow down to a 5km/s invasion) the heavy armor and armaments of those larger ships is now important. Now the battleships laugh off the 1kg fighter slugs that no longer bore through them like Swiss cheese. Now their 70kg high speed shells go 80% faster than their smaller brothers' weapons instead of .000003% faster.

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And?  I've specifically used PT boats repeatedly in my examples.  And if you notice, they always operated out of land bases or tenders, after being shipped in as deck cargo. During the invasion of Okinawa, the US didn't load up an LSD with PT boats and use them to cover the landing against suicide boats.  They could have, and it might even have been useful.  But the didn't.  There is no mention of PT boats after about 1943, because that was when the war moved out across the open ocean.
First you said that FACs were only ever used defensively on coastal waters. You said that they were never, ever used offensively and no one ever even tried to take them from their coast to another coast. Then I link a page that gives references to them being shipped overseas and used defensively around friendly naval bases, offensively against opposing capital ships and naval bases, offensively to raid enemy supply convoys, and offensively to support operation D-Day and your response is "well yeah, I totally talked all about PT Boats, but they weren't transported across the ocean in the right way (aboard LSDs) and they weren't involved in this specific battle." It just seems like at this point your criticisms have been met and you are changing your definition of what is required of an offensive FAC.
To meet your latest concerns, PT Boats were indeed used in both the Atlantic and the Pacific after 1943, a small selection of reports of actions PT Boats were involved in can be found here: http://www.ptboats.org/20-07-05-reports-001.html , and further searching can dig up more examples.
After some quick googling ("LSD PT Boat") the first hit ( http://www.usscabildo.org/lsds.html ) states that all LSD craft were equipped with facilities for the maintaining and repairing of the PT Boats that they often supported. A later link ( http://www.hullnumber.com/LSD-1 ) specifically mentions the USS Ashland picking up a load of PT Boats to take to (hilariously enough) Okinawa, though this was after the close of that battle and the war. I'm guessing those were reinforcements, or maybe planned as preparation to support invasion of the mainland, who knows. That last one was a pretty lucky find because reading that page and the pages for the other LSDs, it rarely states the specific craft that the LSD is loading and transporting.
 

Offline UnLimiTeD

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Re: Newtonian Fighters
« Reply #49 on: November 08, 2011, 04:12:06 PM »
Why don't we all wait how it'll play out?^^
 

Offline bean

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Re: Newtonian Fighters
« Reply #50 on: November 08, 2011, 05:17:06 PM »
That may be the way to go, sending a handful of drones with active sensors or something of that nature. One of the reasons I am thinking that smaller fire controls closer to the enemy would be better is because I was sort of hoping that sensors would degrade with the square of range, instead of linearly like they currently do.
So fighters might be plausible, if the sensor model changes turn out just like you want them.  OK.

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A 1 kg projectile going 30k km/s has an impact energy equivalent to 109 megatons of TNT.
And it will of course behave exactly like a bomb of that yield whenever it strikes a target.

Quote
That and the idea of a layered fleet (this next fleet deployment is for high velocity fighting when one hit will be crippling/lethal). The idea is that the approaching fleet has to get through your missiles, fighters, destroyers, then cruisers, etc. Each layer does its best to destroy every enemy layer that it meets so that they don't have the chance to destroy the more valuable allies behind them. Each layer also does its best to survive each enemy wave so that it can attack the enemy's more expensive rear waves. The hope is that after getting through all of the combat waves your enemy will either be destroyed, crippled, out of ammo, or otherwise be unable to destroy your carriers and other support vessels, and you hope that your own waves survived.
The reason for doing this is the idea that at these speeds every enemy combatant is a threat that you must face. At 30k km/s the smaller slugs from a fighters cannon are basically as dangerous as the large shells from a battleship, but the firing platform is cheaper. Since all of your ships are about as lethal as any other you send the cheapest ones first, any damage they do is great, and any munitions that the enemy uses on them (and they must, because even the cheap ships are lethal) isn't being used against your more expensive ships.
Now the question becomes "why have expensive ships at all?" Because in this example fight of a combined 30k km/s approach they are a liability, however in other circumstances (like when they arrive at the planet they are meant to invade and slow down to a 5km/s invasion) the heavy armor and armaments of those larger ships is now important. Now the battleships laugh off the 1kg fighter slugs that no longer bore through them like Swiss cheese. Now their 70kg high speed shells go 80% faster than their smaller brothers' weapons instead of .000003% faster.
This is almost preposterous.  Nobody will want to close at .1 c, because of this exact problem.  Not to mention that you have to slow down and reassemble your fleet.  If I'm the defender, I'll shoot missiles out at lower speed, because you have conveniently made yourself such a tempting target.  On the attack, I'll do much the same.

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First you said that FACs were only ever used defensively on coastal waters. You said that they were never, ever used offensively and no one ever even tried to take them from their coast to another coast.
Where, exactly, did I say that?  I said that nobody had ever build an FAC or PT boat carrier, and never used them offensively from a ship, even though several navies have possessed vessels that could be used.

Quote
Then I link a page that gives references to them being shipped overseas and used defensively around friendly naval bases, offensively against opposing capital ships and naval bases, offensively to raid enemy supply convoys, and offensively to support operation D-Day and your response is "well yeah, I totally talked all about PT Boats, but they weren't transported across the ocean in the right way (aboard LSDs) and they weren't involved in this specific battle." It just seems like at this point your criticisms have been met and you are changing your definition of what is required of an offensive FAC.
My definition of what is required from an offensive FAC is not that it is used to attack the enemy.  It is that it is carried into battle on a larger ship to attack the enemy.  If you have FACs in the same system as an enemy planet because you share the system, then by all means, use them.  But that assumes you have a foothold.  

Quote
To meet your latest concerns, PT Boats were indeed used in both the Atlantic and the Pacific after 1943, a small selection of reports of actions PT Boats were involved in can be found here: http://www.ptboats.org/20-07-05-reports-001.html , and further searching can dig up more examples.
After some quick googling ("LSD PT Boat") the first hit ( http://www.usscabildo.org/lsds.html ) states that all LSD craft were equipped with facilities for the maintaining and repairing of the PT Boats that they often supported. A later link ( http://www.hullnumber.com/LSD-1 ) specifically mentions the USS Ashland picking up a load of PT Boats to take to (hilariously enough) Okinawa, though this was after the close of that battle and the war. I'm guessing those were reinforcements, or maybe planned as preparation to support invasion of the mainland, who knows. That last one was a pretty lucky find because reading that page and the pages for the other LSDs, it rarely states the specific craft that the LSD is loading and transporting.
I spoke hastily in dismissing them after 1943.  You will note, however, that their prominence did go down.
I had no clue about the Ashland, but it still changes nothing.  They used an LSD to transport PT boats, not to operate them in support of some invasion.  That is what I'm pointing out has never, to my knowledge, (and probably never ever, given that you haven't found it) be done.  I will concede the point if you can find an example where a vessel was used to deploy and recover PT boats during a battle while those boats were operating against the enemy.
Or to put it more simply, I've never heard of PT boats, FACs, or anything similar being used in a manner we would consider consistent with a carrier-based "fighter".  Period.

Edit:
Just for fun, let's take a look at another attempt to operate one vehicle from another in the same medium.  I refer to aircraft carrying aircraft (or aircraft aircraft carriers).  I know of three examples: the XF-85 goblin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XF-85), the FICON project (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FICON_project) and the F9C Sparrowhawk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtiss_F9C_Sparrowhawk).  The first two were plans to operate aircraft (the XF-85 and a modified F-84) from B-36 bombers.  The last was a biplane fighter that flew from dirigibles.  The first two were cancelled, while the third ended when both airships crashed.  I also ran across a fourth, the Zeveno project (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zveno_project).  It was also cancelled, though it did see combat briefly.
So why didn't it work?  Part of it is the fact that landing an airplane on another airplane is really difficult.  I am aware of this fact.  However, all (except the Sparrowhawk) failed because it simply wasn't worth it.  It's generally better to build one airplane to do the job, rather then build two and try to separate them.  Not to mention the performance penalties on the parasite, which is specifically what doomed the XF-85.
« Last Edit: November 08, 2011, 05:26:17 PM by byron »
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Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: Newtonian Fighters
« Reply #51 on: November 09, 2011, 04:51:56 AM »
Why don't we all wait how it'll play out?^^

Good idea :). At the moment, we are in danger of arguing how many angels can dance on the head on a pin. I think there are many variables involved and everything will likely be influenced by factors that won't even become apparent until we start playing. The whole concept may even turn out to be unplayable. I am really just putting the pieces in place and one of the things I am really looking forward to is to see how they interact. I am sure there will be plenty of unforeseen consequences.

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Offline chrislocke2000 (OP)

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Re: Newtonian Fighters
« Reply #52 on: November 09, 2011, 05:04:10 AM »
Probably something for the very long term but what really strikes me about all of these discussions is that it would be the fantastic to be able for us to be able to "put our money where are mouth is" and play one another with the various strategy options. I would not expect to be able to do this as part of a campaign but to be able to give players x tech points and y build points to build their fleets and then let them go at one another would be fantastic.

On the fighters point, sorry for kicking off such a heated debate! Cant wait to see more developments but in the mean time Would love to see what a fighter performance might look like in comparison to the posted ship example at the start of the other thread.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: Newtonian Fighters
« Reply #53 on: November 09, 2011, 05:33:27 AM »
On the fighters point, sorry for kicking off such a heated debate! Cant wait to see more developments but in the mean time Would love to see what a fighter performance might look like in comparison to the posted ship example at the start of the other thread.

Very quick example of fighter and comparable tech warship. No real design thought has gone into this - I just threw a few systems together. The beam fire control in the destroyer is a placeholder. The engine designs are shown below. The fighter is using an engine with a 75% power boost and a corresponding 183% increase in fuel use. Engine + fuel is 38% of hull size for destroyer and 52% for fighter.

Twin Ion Engine class Fighter    166 tons standard     256 tons full load      2 Crew     80.95 BP
Length 20m     Armour 1-16     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 1.8
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 51%    IFR 0.7%    1YR 3    5YR 47    Max Repair 20 MSP
Active Signature 5.12    Thermal Signature 52.5    EM Signature 0/0
Magazine 24    

Fighter Ion Drive (2)    Total Power 5.25 MN    Fuel Use 205.8 litres per hour   Exp 17%
Full Load Acceleration  20.51 mp/s (2.09G)    Hourly Acceleration 73.83 km/s    Daily Acceleration 1771.87 km/s
Standard Acceleration  31.63 mp/s (3.22G)    Hourly Acceleration 113.86 km/s    Daily Acceleration 2732.53 km/s
Fuel Capacity 30,000 Litres    Delta-V Budget (Full Load) 11,441 km/s    Full Burn Duration 6.1 days

S6 Box Launcher (4)    Missile Size 6    Hangar Reload 45 minutes    MF Reload 7.5 hours
Missile Fire Control (1)     Range 60.0m km    Resolution 100

Resolution class Destroyer    3,895 tons standard     4,895 tons full load      186 Crew     951.3 BP
Length 103.5m     Armour 6-46     Sensors 1/20/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 16.92
Maint Life 1.69 Years     MSP 121    AFR 191%    IFR 2.7%    1YR 51    5YR 763    Max Repair 100 MSP
Active Signature 97.9    Thermal Signature 225    EM Signature 10000/2160000

Rolls Royce 7500 KN Ion Drive (3)    Total Power 22.5 MN    Fuel Use 299.2 litres per hour   Exp 10%
Full Load Acceleration  4.6 mp/s (0.47G)    Hourly Acceleration 16.55 km/s    Daily Acceleration 397.14 km/s
Standard Acceleration  5.78 mp/s (0.59G)    Hourly Acceleration 20.8 km/s    Daily Acceleration 499.1 km/s
Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres    Delta-V Budget (Full Load) 61,875 km/s    Full Burn Duration 139.2 days

24 GJ Shield Generator (3)     Max Strength: 72 GJ    Max Point Strength: 1790 MJ    Recharge Rate: 150 MJ/s
690 MW Stellarator Fusion Reactor (2)     Total Power Output: 1380 MW    Exp 10%
11 GJ Homopolar Generator (3)     Total Power Storage: 33,000 MJ    Recharge Time: 24 seconds

Odin 4800 MJ Heavy Railgun (1)    Energy: 4,800MJ    Velocity: 69,282 m/s    Power Reqt: 13,714 MJ    Cooldown: 30 secs
Thor 2400 MJ Railgun (1)    Energy: 2,400MJ    Velocity: 69,282 m/s    Power Reqt: 6,857 MJ    Cooldown: 24 secs
Firestar 1.5 GJ Far Ultraviolet Laser (1)    Energy: 1,476MJ    Wavelength: 1,476 nm    Power Reqt: 4,217 MJ    Cooldown: 13 secs
Beam Fire Control (1)    Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 4000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48

R100 Active Search Sensor (1)     GPS 10000     Range 100.0m km    Resolution 100   Power Reqt: 500 MW
EM20 Passive Sensor (1)     Sensitivity 20     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  20m km

Fighter Ion Drive
Power Output: 2.625 MN     Exp Chance: 17     Fuel Efficiency: 39.2016    Thermal Signature: 26.25
Base Acceleration: 52.5 mp/s (5.35G)
Fuel Use at Full Burn: 102.9042 litres per hour
Engine Size: 50 Tons    Engine HTK: 0
Cost: 13.125    Crew: 2
Materials Required: 3.2812x Duranium  9.8438x Gallicite
Development Cost for Project: 131RP

7500 KN Ion Drive
Power Output: 7.5 MN     Exp Chance: 10     Fuel Efficiency: 13.3    Thermal Signature: 75
Base Acceleration: 30 mp/s (3.06G)
Fuel Use at Full Burn: 99.75 litres per hour
Engine Size: 250 Tons    Engine HTK: 2
Cost: 37.5    Crew: 4
Materials Required: 9.375x Duranium  28.125x Gallicite
Development Cost for Project: 375RP

Steve
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: Newtonian Fighters
« Reply #54 on: November 09, 2011, 10:18:18 AM »
Actually there is a pretty big issue here that needs to be addressed, I calculated the exhaust velocity of the Daring's propulsion system at 1.5c.

I am just revisiting this point. After further reflection, it occurs to me that if I restricted the game to exhaust velocities below the speed of light, which is only reasonable in a game where realistic physics are supposed to be important :), it would actually slow everything down without having to change engine thrust. This is relatively straightforward as I just need to change the fuel efficiency tech line. I would ensure that the most efficient possible engine at max tech level does not have an exhaust velocity beyond that of light speed and then work backwards. Ships would either have to carry more fuel or live with a much lower top speed. This solves some of the issues around very high speed kinetic impacts. I'll play around with this and then post the resulting changes.

I starting thinking seriously about this when I started looking at the impact energies for kinetic missiles :)

EDIT: The reason that this issue has arisen was that I was using standard Aurora as a baseline for likely speeds when instead I should have been looking at the physics involved. It's looking like fuel consumption is about to increase by 10x, which should have a significant impact on the game :)

Steve

« Last Edit: November 09, 2011, 11:30:27 AM by Steve Walmsley »
 

Offline blue emu

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Re: Newtonian Fighters
« Reply #55 on: November 09, 2011, 12:08:59 PM »
Twin Ion Engine class Fighter    166 tons standard     256 tons full load      2 Crew     80.95 BP
Length 20m     Armour 1-16     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 1.8
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 51%    IFR 0.7%    1YR 3    5YR 47    Max Repair 20 MSP
Active Signature 5.12    Thermal Signature 52.5    EM Signature 0/0
Magazine 24    

Fighter Ion Drive (2)    Total Power 5.25 MN    Fuel Use 205.8 litres per hour   Exp 17%
Full Load Acceleration  20.51 mp/s (2.09G)    Hourly Acceleration 73.83 km/s    Daily Acceleration 1771.87 km/s
Standard Acceleration  31.63 mp/s (3.22G)    Hourly Acceleration 113.86 km/s    Daily Acceleration 2732.53 km/s
Fuel Capacity 30,000 Litres    Delta-V Budget (Full Load) 11,441 km/s    Full Burn Duration 6.1 days

S6 Box Launcher (4)    Missile Size 6    Hangar Reload 45 minutes    MF Reload 7.5 hours
Missile Fire Control (1)     Range 60.0m km    Resolution 100

Excellent... more numbers to toss around.

A six-day fuel endurance means 36 hours to turn-over, which in turn gives a range of about 2.5 billion km at constant acceleration.

Sound right?
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: Newtonian Fighters
« Reply #56 on: November 09, 2011, 12:24:57 PM »
Well, it did until I just changed all the fuel numbers: Now it looks like this:

Twin Ion Engine class Fighter    166 tons standard     256 tons full load      2 Crew     80.95 BP
Length 20m     Armour 1-16     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 1.8
Maint Life 0 Years     MSP 0    AFR 51%    IFR 0.7%    1YR 3    5YR 47    Max Repair 20 MSP
Active Signature 5.12    Thermal Signature 52.5    EM Signature 0/0
Magazine 24    

Fighter Ion Engine (2)    Total Power 5.25 MN    Fuel Use 2058 litres per hour   Exp 17%
Full Load Acceleration  20.51 mp/s (2.09G)    Hourly Acceleration 73.83 km/s    Daily Acceleration 1771.87 km/s
Standard Acceleration  31.63 mp/s (3.22G)    Hourly Acceleration 113.86 km/s    Daily Acceleration 2732.53 km/s
Fuel Capacity 30,000 Litres    Delta-V Budget (Full Load) 1,145 km/s    Full Burn Duration 14.6 hours

S6 Box Launcher (4)    Missile Size 6    Hangar Reload 45 minutes    MF Reload 7.5 hours
Missile Fire Control (1)     Range 60.0m km    Resolution 100

And the destroyer is now:

Resolution class Destroyer   3,895 tons standard     4,895 tons full load      186 Crew     951.3 BP
Length 103.5m     Armour 6-46     Sensors 1/20/0/0     Damage Control Rating 1     PPV 16.92
Maint Life 1.69 Years     MSP 121    AFR 191%    IFR 2.7%    1YR 51    5YR 763    Max Repair 100 MSP
Active Signature 97.9    Thermal Signature 225    EM Signature 10000/2160000

Rolls Royce 7500 KN Ion Drive (3)    Total Power 22.5 MN    Fuel Use 2992 litres per hour   Exp 10%
Full Load Acceleration  4.6 mp/s (0.47G)    Hourly Acceleration 16.55 km/s    Daily Acceleration 397.14 km/s
Standard Acceleration  5.78 mp/s (0.59G)    Hourly Acceleration 20.8 km/s    Daily Acceleration 499.1 km/s
Fuel Capacity 1,000,000 Litres    Delta-V Budget (Full Load) 6,186 km/s    Full Burn Duration 13.9 days

24 GJ Shield Generator (3)     Max Strength: 72 GJ    Max Point Strength: 1790 MJ    Recharge Rate: 150 MJ/s
690 MW Stellarator Fusion Reactor (2)     Total Power Output: 1380 MW    Exp 10%
11 GJ Homopolar Generator (3)     Total Power Storage: 33,000 MJ    Recharge Time: 24 seconds

Odin 4800 MJ Heavy Railgun (1)    Energy: 4,800MJ    Velocity: 69,282 m/s    Power Reqt: 13,714 MJ    Cooldown: 30 secs
Thor 2400 MJ Railgun (1)    Energy: 2,400MJ    Velocity: 69,282 m/s    Power Reqt: 6,857 MJ    Cooldown: 24 secs
Firestar 1.5 GJ Far Ultraviolet Laser (1)    Energy: 1,476MJ    Wavelength: 1,476 nm    Power Reqt: 4,217 MJ    Cooldown: 13 secs
Beam Fire Control (1)    Max Range: 192,000 km   TS: 4000 km/s     95 90 84 79 74 69 64 58 53 48

R100 Active Search Sensor (1)     GPS 10000     Range 100.0m km    Resolution 100   Power Reqt: 500 MW
EM20 Passive Sensor (1)     Sensitivity 20     Detect Sig Strength 1000:  20m km

Steve
 

Offline Yonder

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Re: Newtonian Fighters
« Reply #57 on: November 09, 2011, 12:40:50 PM »
Sweet, that does a heck of a lot to limit the ability of easy, small-scale kinetic attacks to genocide a planet. I have been looking at 1/5th Delta-V as a baseline for combat operations, and in that case the old Resolution would be making attack runs of 12.3k km/s, now it's only going 1.23k km/s.

That's 100 times less kinetic energy for murdering innocent women and children!
 

Offline blue emu

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Re: Newtonian Fighters
« Reply #58 on: November 09, 2011, 12:45:32 PM »
So that looks like 2.5 m-km to burn the first 1/4 of your fuel... then you would coast at 400-odd kps (1.5 m-km per hour) out to turnover.

Have you considered maling fuel tankage take up less displacement? That could be used as a balancing element, to tweak these changes in delta-v.
« Last Edit: November 09, 2011, 12:48:53 PM by blue emu »
 

Offline Yonder

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Re: Newtonian Fighters
« Reply #59 on: November 09, 2011, 12:54:21 PM »
So that looks like 2.5 m-km to burn the first 1/4 of your fuel... then you would coast at 400-odd kps (1.5 m-km per hour) out to turnover.

Have you considered maling fuel tankage take up less displacement? That could be used as a balancing element, to tweak these changes in delta-v.

It's better to think in terms of delta-V than fuel. If you break your burn times up into 1/4 fuel mass burns it's more confusing because each burn gets you a different speed. It's simpler to think of 1/4 delta-V as being a quarter of your capacity. Then the only thing you have to watch out for is other changing masses. For example if you have a "full load" (what Steve has been quoting in his designs) delta-V of 5k km/s and you burn for 2k km/s, then drop off all of your missiles, you'll have more than 3k km/s of Delta-V left.

You could actually run into situations where you have to launch your missiles at random waypoints since your mission plan assumed you would use 3/4 of your missiles at this location, and you don't have the delta-V to get back unless you leave your missiles behind (although I'm guessing most of us won't be planning missions with that little margin for error).