Semi-Official 6.x Suggestion Thread

[MarcAFK]

Well to be honest Rail guns should require ammunition, I would also love to be able to select the number of shots per salvo.
But I'm happy enough with the way they work now.

[linkxsc]

Well to be honest Rail guns should require ammunition, I would also love to be able to select the number of shots per salvo.
But I'm happy enough with the way they work now.

Perhaps, but they're already in a lot of ways worse than lasers as the main Missile/Kinetic vs Energy Weapons, categories.
Higher research costs, shorter range. Penetration of lasers vs railguns taking lots of chunks out of armor, is also a pretty big deal depending on your enemy's armor doctrine.
Like I'm not saying I want the weapons to be identical across the board, but if rails started using ammo constantly, AND needing reactors... yeah that seems a little iffy, as far as balance.


WTB, spinal mount rails huehuehuehue 120cm advanced spinal mount railgun. Just fire 4 small meteors at the enemy ship in quick succession.

[Rich.h]

Not sure if this is possible and I am just missing how to do it, but the ability to move POW's around would be nice. I made a mistake of offloading my first ever POW's to my research colony then found I was stuck with them there once the racial biology research was complete. I had set up a new penal colony on a nice sunny chunk of rock for these and all future prisoners but saw no possible way to pick up the POW's from the original colony they were off loaded to.

So if this is not already in I would love the ability to shuttle POW's around using my own vessels, the deep mines won't operate themselves you know.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I'm not sure ammunition would do much except limit extreme edge cases where like 1 beam ship gradually kills hundreds of FACs.

Even then it would just have to fly back for mo ammo.

WTB, spinal mount rails huehuehuehue 120cm advanced spinal mount railgun. Just fire 4 small meteors at the enemy ship in quick succession.

Personal opinion:  Decoupling weapon size from theoretical research would be pretty sweet.  You could build massive spinal primary weapons, and really core the smeg out even thickly armored targets. If you hit ;p

Maybe also couple that with making all BFCs able to fire out to 5ls, or able to build super-oversize BFC.  Then you could actually use beam area defence!

[Paul M]

I'm still rather fond of the "Renegade Legion: Leviathan" ships with their spinal mount mass driver...hard to get it into arc but boy when you could "Toss the Crowbar" ...the several tonne iron rod it threw I used to call a "Thunder Strike" when it hit.  As the even the destroyers in that game were 0.5 km long (the Battleships were closer to 2 km) they had realistically a lot of kinetic energy when they hit.  This was around a 5000 mm rail gun, not some sort of fighter mountable pop cannon (120 mm).

But realistically rail guns should require ammo space as should guass cannon and it should be possible to run out of ammo.

The "lost fleet" series handled this well, with the fleet having the auxillaries around who made up new kinetic projectiles from asteroids between fights (as well as spare parts and so forth).

The real problem with the game system from Leviathan was the fact they changed it to make fighters viable in less than huge numbers against the capital ships...the Star Wars Effect...

[TheDeadlyShoe]

well technically the diameter of a railgun doesn't even matter xD

just the NRG

[linkxsc]

well technically the diameter of a railgun doesn't even matter xD

just the NRG

well to an extent yes, and too an extent no. A lot of people like to talk about how powerful railguns could be because they can get LOL 5 gram projectiles up to hundreds of km/s. But truth is, even if a tiny projectile had that much energy, it would probably still be blocked quite easily by armor due to Newtons Approximation of impact death. Basically above a certain speed, the speed matters no more and its all the density of the projectile vs the density of the armor.
And even if it did penetrate, it would blast through with a sairly small non explosive projectile, not doing too much (best case is it doesn't go through and out the other side and instead bounces around a bit).
Once you reach the max projectile speed... your best bet from there is to scale the projectile size up, and try to keep the same speed.


Which could actually be quite interesting. Perhaps as a silly thought, Add a new kinetic weapon, the Coil Gun, fires explosive fillered (magnetic filler also for acceleration) rounds.
From start it can be scaled in size as high as wished, yet larger guns have shorter range (due to projectile speed). Instead of researching range and weapon size. You research kinetic energy technologies (or just coil tech) that allows higher amounts of energy being put into the gun. And thus extending the range on the same sized weapon.
(railguns fire solid aluminum or other diamagnetic rounds, can't have explosive filler due to the electric charge actualyl running through the round)

dunno, gotta head to school, will elaborate later

[83athom]

But truth is, even if a tiny projectile had that much energy, it would probably still be blocked quite easily by armor due to Newtons Approximation of impact death. Basically above a certain speed, the speed matters no more and its all the density of the projectile vs the density of the armor.

Well that is true, however when you start accelerating a projectile in a smaller space (lets say to about 0.25c+ in 100m), the projectile would condense itself do to the immense pressures put on it.

And even if it did penetrate, it would blast through with a fairly small non explosive projectile, not doing too much (best case is it doesn't go through and out the other side and instead bounces around a bit).
Once you reach the max projectile speed... your best bet from there is to scale the projectile size up, and try to keep the same speed.

Also true, however the impact force of even the small projectiles will still be an immense issue for an enemy ship. Even though they would pass strait through, they will still leave behind so much kinetic energy that passing through doesn't really matter. I can't help but think about the super MACs from halo, they are so powerful that they blast through 2 Covenant ships (completely destroying them) and then cripple a third (although this gives you a bit more credit, oh well).

Which could actually be quite interesting. Perhaps as a silly thought, Add a new kinetic weapon, the Coil Gun, fires explosive fillered (magnetic filler also for acceleration) rounds.

A coil gun is a gauss weapon, so maybe instead you can set the ammo type when designing the gauss cannon.

[linkxsc]

Hows about another doozy.
Would like considered, the ability to generate a new solar system... BUT, I'd like to be able to create individually every planet, moon, asteroid, and comet in the system, with my own paramaters. (Setting orbital distance and speed, and perhaps a starting angle off of "north" so I don't have to run the simulation for a few centuries to jumble everything up).

Why do I want this. Well because I'm a moron pure and simple.
I'd like to take your silly space game, and play out glorious naval warfare simulations with it, how bout that. Make a bunch of planets, and conveniently place them around in the rough areas of naval bases during the second world war, perhaps the Pacific Theatre of Operations. Turn off orbital motion.
Figure that 1000km/s would be about equal to 60km/hr (a little less than 40 knots, fairly average speed for "fast" warships). Do a little math and scale the distance between the bases so they're roughly the same distance (travel time wise) apart as IRL.

Yes yes, use the game engine, to do completely what it was not made to do. It would be wonderful.

1Well that is true, however when you start accelerating a projectile in a smaller space (lets say to about 0.25c+ in 100m), the projectile would condense itself do to the immense pressures put on it.
2Also true, however the impact force of even the small projectiles will still be an immense issue for an enemy ship. Even though they would pass strait through, they will still leave behind so much kinetic energy that passing through doesn't really matter. I can't help but think about the super MACs from halo, they are so powerful that they blast through 2 Covenant ships (completely destroying them) and then cripple a third (although this gives you a bit more credit, oh well).
3A coil gun is a gauss weapon, so maybe instead you can set the ammo type when designing the gauss cannon.

1. (TBH, max range 50cm rail is actually firing at 1.2c)
But I don't understand what you mean by "condensing itself" unless you mean that the projectile will be "flattened" by Lorentz contraction.
Note that thats for shrinkage which might produce better penetration.
At the same time the mass of the projectile would scale up again by the same relativistic factor.
If the game wanted to be slightly more scientifically accurate. A if a 50cm rail with 1 vel (200km range, 40kkm/s speed, .13c) deals 20 damage on hit. A 50cm rail with 7 range tech, 1.4mkm r, 280mkm/s or .93c, woudl be almsot 2.7 times as heavy of a projectile at the speed, and should deal like 54 damage on hit. The best damage dealing weapon would be a 45cm rail at max range tech, with .96c projectile speed, and the 16 base damage would go up 3.6 times to over 57 damage on hit. Because relativistic effects OP.

2. at relativistic speeds, there'd honestly be chances of both really. Possibly a highly shrunken relativistic projectile could blast straight through a ship, leave a nice hole, and transfer almost no kinetic energy, primarily because at such high speeds, the atoms of the projectile can't really interact with the atoms of the target ship, coruscate this would only happen at speed in excess of .99c. With slower projectiles having an easier time hitting and transferring their energy to the target ship.
Meanwhile, if your armor was thicker, there would be more to interact with your projectile and try to absorb that energy. There would be more kinetic energy transferred to the target. (almost like, less armor would be better vs such extremely fast projectiles.)
Or it would obliterate the entire ship and turn the whole thing into a glowing, rapidly expanding, cloud of plasma. Dunno, we've never acutally done any kidn of proper testing firing relativistic speeded projectiles at stuff.

3. Point for me saying "coilgun" rather than gauss cannon, was so it could be a different research line than the existing gauss cannons (Which a large amount of the game and AI rely heavily on) and it might be quite problematic to start tinkering with the existing gauss cannon mechanics. Ofcourse a coilgun and a guass cannon are names for the same thing, and very much not the same as railguns.
Perhaps not even call them coilguns though. forget this scifi BS. I want a regular cannon.
gonna work out the exact sillines behind my plotted idea in the morning though. its getting late.

[MarcAFK]

I've been thinking that I need the designer mode password and a whole bunch of database edits I order to run a WWII simulation.

[Paul M]

It is not lorentz contraction that is the issue...it is the fact that at Aurora velocities what happens when two solid objects impact causes my mind to go blank.  Normally the only thing moving at those velocities are ions or electrons in accelerators.  They interact in a specific way with a target material...now we have two solid objects that are going to interact somewhate differently.  The Newton Appoximation of Impact Depth you mention is not relevant due to the fact it assumes a realistic/reasonable velocity for the objects in question.  It assumes the material impacted on can infact move as a liquid...in this case the impact speed exceeds the phonon speed...it exceeds atomic speeds in a solid.  Even the situation in a core-bounce during a supernova when you have infalling material passing through the outgoing shock front from the core contraction is not the same sort of thing as everything is plasma.  Asteroid impacts are about the closest you get but the impact velocities are much lower (low 10s of km/s).

So...and this is has a lot of assumptions and approximations...
5 gm object 5 mm long moving at 1000 km/s (and this is SLOW in aurora)...has a kinetic energy of 0.0025 kg*10^12 m2/s2 = 2.5x10^9 J
Impact distance is 5 mm (assuming it stops in its length as would be suggested by the NAID forumla for two like dense objects)...2*accelleration*0.005 m = 0 - (10^6 m/s)^2
acceleration = -10^14 m/s2 = more than enough Gs to produce compaction of the target as basically the nose brakes and the tail impacts on it...and frankly this number isn't signfically modified by the length so long as you assume the ship has dimensions in the 100s of m (so it could take 100m to stop and you still get "absurd" G forces on the projectile)...to put this is perspective the suns surface gravity is 30 G

It is fairly safe to assume the projectile does not survive the impact..it is converted into a plasma.  Temperature change of the impactor for 2x10^9 J kinetic energy transfered to heat is E = mc(Tf-Ti) = 0.005 kg * 1 (assuming a heat capacity of water) * (Tf - 0K) = well ok 10^12 K...right ...hmmm even with losses (which won't happen since phonon speed is below projectile speed) I assume you now may have a situation where that energy is transfered to the target in a localized area and thermal shock causes issues to the target.

The time for the brake to happen is 0.005 m = 10^14*0.5*t^2 = > t = 10 ns ...thus the power of the impactor is E/t = well nothing sensible....0.2 Exa watts....probably down to Penta Watts for a few m of stopping distance...

Just to make it complete let us look at the momentum transfer for a fully stopped impactor...
10^6 m/s*0.005 kg = 5000 kgm/s  a 2000 kg car moving 100 kph has a momentum of 2000 kg * 28 m/s = 56 000 kgm/s so this 5 gm projectile is the equivelent of behing hit by a car moving at 10 kph.  But this means that even a 50 000 tonne vessel hit by this...5x10^7 kg*v = 5000 kgm/s has a new velocity of 1x10^-4 m/s but this velocity change was accomplished in 10 ns so the acceleration of the ship was v/t = 1x10^-4 m/s / 10x10^-9 s = 10^4 m/s2 or a thousand Gs...every human on the ship now resembles strawberry jam...and serious structual damage

And this is all for 1000 km/s and 5 g...  consider what may happen if you speak of impact by a 250 000 km/s several thousand kg missile or 100 kg rail slug or whatever.

And I make no claim that I've not forgot a factor of 2 or pi in the above, and the above is well the most trivial analysis possible but my point is basically that my mind goes blank when I consider the situation.  The only thing that seems to be absolutely clear is that in the end the impactor becomes plasma...the plamsa induces a thermal shock wave in the target which responds by spalling and ablating material which further adds to the structural shocks the target faces.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

the wrench in all of that is that we are dealing with trans-newtonian physics so the ability of kinetic energy to inflict damage is strictly arbitrary

the actual energy imparted by the railgun might be quite low, and the velocity of the projectile (as indicated by its range) is in fact a transnewtonian pseudovelocity the limitations of which impose the hard limit on railgun range

[Paul M]

the wrench in all of that is that we are dealing with trans-newtonian physics so the ability of kinetic energy to inflict damage is strictly arbitrary

the actual energy imparted by the railgun might be quite low, and the velocity of the projectile (as indicated by its range) is in fact a transnewtonian pseudovelocity the limitations of which impose the hard limit on railgun range

What you say is correct but I can't account for psuedo velocities and so on.  My point mainly was you can't apply the "Newtons Approximation of Impact Depth" to a situation where the impactor velocity is greater than the speed of the electrons in the material.  At that point the math leads you towards "absurd" rather quickly. 

[MarcAFK]

I've seen this discussion somewhere before, it might be in one of the Newtonian Aurora threads, I'm remembering there's exotic physics related to these kinds of velocities that hasn't been brought up yet but I can't remember the specifics.

[Rich.h]

The ability to copy weapon & FC control assignments would be nice. I understand we already have this for copying from one ship to another but on a ship only basis would be nice. For example a ship has 30 FC for missiles, and also has 30 size 1 missile launchers. Most of the time this will be set up in such a way where you will have one launcher per FC to create 30 salvos, once set up once if you never change the format it is nice and simple. But if for any reason you were to change your salvos it would require you to go through 30 FC setups again manually. If instead you could have an option where you could set up one FC then have an auto button that will allocate an equal number of equal sized weapons to any empty FC's of equal properties to the one selected. This save a hell of a lot of time.