v1.13.0 Changes Discussion Thread

[Jorgen_CAB]

Multiple Salvos will require multiple BFC.

This is false, multiple salvos require multiple weapons to simultaneously target but not necessarily multiple PD BFCs. A change that happened in C#

Even more specific it is either per individual weapons or turret. A turret can have multiple weapons and each turret can only engage one salvo.

I would be in favor of a more random salvo engagement of PD... it is a bit irritating that you have to completely eliminate one salvo before you start shooting at the next one. Please make the PD engage in a more random way and simple weight the random so larger missiles are engaged first, larger salvos second... but it should still be fairly random so PD fire are spread out among the incoming salvoes.

[Droll]

Multiple Salvos will require multiple BFC.

This is false, multiple salvos require multiple weapons to simultaneously target but not necessarily multiple PD BFCs. A change that happened in C#

Even more specific it is either per individual weapons or turret. A turret can have multiple weapons and each turret can only engage one salvo.

I would be in favor of a more random salvo engagement of PD... it is a bit irritating that you have to completely eliminate one salvo before you start shooting at the next one. Please make the PD engage in a more random way and simple weight the random so larger missiles are engaged first, larger salvos second... but it should still be fairly random so PD fire are spread out among the incoming salvoes.

I would prefer that such random targetting is based not on missile size but just weighted on salvo size, that will make each salvo draw proportionate fire. A salvo with 40 missiles should draw around twice as many shots as a 20 missile one.
I think favoring specific types of missiles based on missile parameters can upset balance. I think there was a discussion about this somewhere else in the forum already.

[tornakrelic]

Thanks for all the help!

One last thing, I was reading that gauss cannons do not have the failure rate like other weapons, is that correct? It was stated earlier in this thread but wasn't confirmed.

Thanks again! Love this feaking game!

[Froggiest1982]

Thanks for all the help!

One last thing, I was reading that gauss cannons do not have the failure rate like other weapons, is that correct? It was stated earlier in this thread but wasn't confirmed.

Thanks again! Love this feaking game!

Yes sorry weapons not bfc, not sure about gausses though as I don't use them.

Also you may want to ask questions on the relative section: The Academy

 

[captainwolfer]

Thanks for all the help!

One last thing, I was reading that gauss cannons do not have the failure rate like other weapons, is that correct? It was stated earlier in this thread but wasn't confirmed.

Thanks again! Love this feaking game!

Gauss Cannons do have a failure rate like all beam weapons. However, it tends not to be a problem unless you are intending to do something like attack an AMM base with beam ships.

[serger]

In fact it's quite reverse: the damage of nuclear explosions drops much faster in air, than in vacuum, because in vacuum nearly all of explosion's energy is moving as spherical wave (so depressing at 1/r^2), while in air it's boiling in all the volume of this sphere (so depressing nearly at 1/r^3).
The main damaging factor of nuke in vacuum is very dense gamma wave. Gamma have quite feeble penetrability (millimeters of steel, for example), so any spacecraft's hull will absorb this wave, resulting in evaporation and hummerlike blow of vaporized materials of hull, if it was close enough. At bigger distance - hull will melt or seam by uneven thermal expansion.

Heat is relatively easy to  armor against, though.

When it's "slow" heat in atmosphere - well, you'll have an option to find water or wait several minutes for the rain. Though in vacuum it's very difficult to discharge heat - you'll have thermal radiation only.

But that's not a main point. Once more again. Nuclear explosion in vacuum - it's heat wave, compressed in microseconds. Your intuition will inevitably produce a bunch of bugs when you trying to picture it, because you have no experience of similar events. Such a sharp heat wave is much worse than a wave of slightly heated and compressed air, that your intuition will inevitably perceive as catastrific impact.
Just another try: at the same distance, where in air your ship will be hummered with air wave - in vacuum it will be hummered much worse with it's own shell, evaporated in microseconds. When this shell mass is evaporated - it's very, very dense vapour, very dense and hot "super-air" if you like air to picture, and it's much sharper, the wave is compressed to microseconds, not milliseconds as air wave in atmosphere! Your ship will suffer from momentary titanic kick, because a half of it's shell will be momentary transformed in super-dense super-brisant explosive charge.

The thing is that because it is a spherical explosion, increasing the distance between you and the nuke rapidly decreases how much energy you absorb.

Yes! But again - in air this decrease is much faster! Look again at the formula. It's inversely quadratic proportional in vacuum, and inversely cubic proportional in air (because, again, nuke's energy in air is boiling in all volume of air ball, when in vacuum it's compressed at the edge of spherical gamma wave, that wasn't absorbed by air).

Air is not a multiplier of impact! It's just shock-absorber.

[captainwolfer]

In fact it's quite reverse: the damage of nuclear explosions drops much faster in air, than in vacuum, because in vacuum nearly all of explosion's energy is moving as spherical wave (so depressing at 1/r^2), while in air it's boiling in all the volume of this sphere (so depressing nearly at 1/r^3).
The main damaging factor of nuke in vacuum is very dense gamma wave. Gamma have quite feeble penetrability (millimeters of steel, for example), so any spacecraft's hull will absorb this wave, resulting in evaporation and hummerlike blow of vaporized materials of hull, if it was close enough. At bigger distance - hull will melt or seam by uneven thermal expansion.

Heat is relatively easy to  armor against, though.

When it's "slow" heat in atmosphere - well, you'll have an option to find water or wait several minutes for the rain. Though in vacuum it's very difficult to discharge heat - you'll have thermal radiation only.

But that's not a main point. Once more again. Nuclear explosion in vacuum - it's heat wave, compressed in microseconds. Your intuition will inevitably produce a bunch of bugs when you trying to picture it, because you have no experience of similar events. Such a sharp heat wave is much worse than a wave of slightly heated and compressed air, that your intuition will inevitably perceive as catastrific impact.
Just another try: at the same distance, where in air your ship will be hummered with air wave - in vacuum it will be hummered much worse with it's own shell, evaporated in microseconds. When this shell mass is evaporated - it's very, very dense vapour, very dense and hot "super-air" if you like air to picture, and it's much sharper, the wave is compressed to microseconds, not milliseconds as air wave in atmosphere! Your ship will suffer from momentary titanic kick, because a half of it's shell will be momentary transformed in super-dense super-brisant explosive charge.

The thing is that because it is a spherical explosion, increasing the distance between you and the nuke rapidly decreases how much energy you absorb.

Yes! But again - in air this decrease is much faster! Look again at the formula. It's inversely quadratic proportional in vacuum, and inversely cubic proportional in air (because, again, nuke's energy in air is boiling in all volume of air ball, when in vacuum it's compressed at the edge of spherical gamma wave, that wasn't absorbed by air).

Air is not a multiplier of impact! It's just shock-absorber.

This is simply incorrect, unless you are referring to nuclear radiation. The majority of a nuke’s damage in atmosphere is caused by the pressure wave of the bomb.

See this link
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php#warhead

[serger]

This is simply incorrect, unless you are referring to nuclear radiation. The majority of a nuke’s damage in atmosphere is caused by the pressure wave of the bomb.

See this link
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php#warhead

What is incorrect?! I tell you the same thing: the majority of a nuke’s damage in atmosphere is caused by the pressure wave of the bomb, which is decreasing much faster (roundly with inversely cubic proportional law), than a gamma wave, that initially caused this air pressure wave!

Yet another try.
Initial energy burst of nuke is - what? - yes, gamma photons with some tail of other energy forms.
In air these gamma quants will absorb mostly in first hundreds of meters, causing overheated initial air ball.
So nuke energy in air is delaminating on impact factors, proceeding to the target in this order:
1. The rest (small part) of gamma wave, that wasn't absorbed in air.
2. X-ray, UV, visual and IR reemissions - even less dangerous for ships, because it's small part of nuke's energy too, and it's stretched out comparinf to initial gamma wave.
3. Compressed air pressure wave (caused by rather small part of overall nuke's energy, much slower and less dense comparing to initial gamma wave, but it's enough to take down most non-armoured targets, though armoured battle machines are quite staunch to this blow).
4. Air, water and ground heat wave - the most energy-capacious, but not very dangerous, except if your target is over or under explosion point.
5. Long-term radiation - well, not a danger for TN ships and GF.

Notice the way in which nuke's energy in air is delaminating, stretching and slowing down.
Yes, p.3 (compressed air pressure wave) is the most dangerous, but it's the most dangerous comparing with other impact factors in air, not comparing with impact factors in vacuum! In fact most of nuke's energy in air will be wasted on heating air ball, that will further lift itself over explosion point.

Comparing with vacuum impact factors - it's smth completely different! No air - no absorbtion of initial gamma wave. No no slowing down, no delamination, no stretching in the volume of the air ball - nearly all the energy impact is moving with the speed of light in one microsecond-length wavefront. All the energy, that caused air pressure wave - all that energy is traveling now (in vacuum) to the target too, but in other form. And in addition to this, in the same form of microsecond-length gamma wavefront you'll take nearly all other parts of nuke: all those gamma quants, that was wasted or slowed down in air - all that gamma you'll instantly take on your ship's shell.

You think, obviously, that this shell (ship's hull) is quite capable of absorbing this damage. Yes, that's what I trying to tell: it will be absorbed! It will be absorbed in microseconds. There is no way to take it away safely: gamma is very stubborn thing, it's nearly impossible to reflect, because gamma photons have very high energy, so they are just tearing electrons off the material, no way to reflect (instantly reemission) that much energy with any material's surface. So, nearly all the energy will cause heat. The Heat! And not in the air in all the way to the target! All that heat - target's sectional area's part of nuke's energy - will be delivered instanly, without delamination and stretching, nealy withoul losses - and what do you think, the ship will safely dodge all this energy? No way. It will evaporate some part of the shell, as I wrote above, and this evaporation will be in INSTANT. What is instant evaporation of some dense matter? Yes, it's explosion! Some part of ship's hull will just explode. Explode with much more brisance, then any brisant explosive you can imagine (because no chemical brisant can release this much energy so quickly), and that will be much more part of nuke's energy, than in compressed air wave.

No miracles! If you take more energy in less time length with the same area - you'll suffer more damage.

[serger]

By the way, there is a mention about Impulsive Shock damage below at your link.
They only forget 2 things:
1. There will be not a uniform absorbtion in the depth of hull, but logarithmic (so closer to the surface - more absorbtion density), and so there must be much lesser Kt by the distance to evaporate some part of the hull.
2. There will be hummering effect on the ship itself, not only a shell damage they calculated. Let's calculate a little. 1kt tac nuke at 1 km range will deliver smth about 300k J per 1m^2 of ship's shell in microsecond. If your ship's sectional area is 1000m^2 (smth like 10x100m cigar-like hull, wet navy's corvette or frigate) - smth about 1/2 of this energy will cause instant evaporation of the hull surface, so it's about 10 kg of iron vapour in microsecond - 10g per 1m^2. It doesn't sound dangerous until you remember that RDX's density is 1.77g/cm^3, so iron vapour in contact - that's no less then 5cm of RDX explosive cubes at all the hull's surface plates. It's like satchel charges through all the hull.
And it's 1kt surface tac nuke. Take 1Mt at the same 1km range - and it's roundly 50kg of RDX plates per hull square meter all around the hull's nuke side. That's what crack any Wet Navy battleship as an egg.

[tornakrelic]

By the way, there is a mention about Impulsive Shock damage below at your link.
They only forget 2 things:
1.  There will be not a uniform absorthion in the depth of hull, but logariphmic (so closer to the surface - more absorthion density), and so there must be much lesser Kt by the distance to evaporate some part of the hull.
2.  There will be hummering effect on the ship itself, not only a shell damage they calculated.  Let's calculate a little.  1kt tac nuke at 1 km range will deliver smth about 300k J per 1m^2 of ship's shell in microsecond.  If your ship's sectional area is 1000m^2 (smth like 10x100m cigar-like hull, wet navy's corvette or frigate) - smth about 1/2 of this energy will cause instant evaporation of the hull surface, so it's about 10 kg of iron vapour in microsecond - 10g per 1m^2.  It doesn't sound dangerous until you remember that hexogen's density is 1. 77g/cm^3, so iron vapour in contact - that's no less then 5cm of hexogen explosive layer at all the hull's surface.  It's more then armour-piercing satchel charges.
And it's 1kt surface tac nuke.  Take 1Mt at the same 1km range - and it's roundly 5 meters of hexogene plates all around the hull's nuke side.  You'll need a small battle moon to deal with it.

This implies modern newtonian hull materials, not trans-newtonian materials.  When looking at a 6,000 ton ship in game compared to the modern day ticonderoga-class cruiser at 9,800 tons, and looking at the ability of the modern naval cruiser to withstand even a 1kt nuclear explosion,  the in game trans-newtonian hull materials would have to have massive specific heat figures while also having near perfect thermal conductivity ratings (either near zero or near infinity).  To vaporize even a single molecule of the material at the surface would take massive amounts of energy, and it would be much more effective to then attack the armors elasticity and strength values (tensile, yield, compressive, etc. ) which would result in blowing "chunks" off the ship, instead of using radiation energy to vaporize it.

In effect, the damage of nukes would be much more limited in space than if the same ship was in atmosphere, as the concussive blast wave of the air in atmosphere would likely cause more damage than just the initial explosive force of a direct hit in vacuum.

[serger]

This implies modern newtonian hull materials, not trans-newtonian materials.  When looking at a 6,000 ton ship in game compared to the modern day ticonderoga-class cruiser at 9,800 tons, and looking at the ability of the modern naval cruiser to withstand even a 1kt nuclear explosion,  the in game trans-newtonian hull materials would have to have massive specific heat figures while also having near perfect thermal conductivity ratings (either near zero or near infinity).  To vaporize even a single molecule of the material at the surface would take massive amounts of energy, and it would be much more effective to then attack the armors elasticity and strength values (tensile, yield, compressive, etc. ) which would result in blowing "chunks" off the ship, instead of using radiation energy to vaporize it.

In effect, the damage of nukes would be much more limited in space than if the same ship was in atmosphere, as the concussive blast wave of the air in atmosphere would likely cause more damage than just the initial explosive force of a direct hit in vacuum.

Well, let's go this way. Any Aurora TN ship is able to fully reverse her full velocity in 5 secs without any damage. Let's be moderate - take 10kkm/s fighter, not smth of antimatter era. 10kkm/s per 5s = 2000000m/s^2 ~= 200000 G.
TN hull, that can withstand this, will withstand any blowing "chunks".

[nuclearslurpee]

Regarding nuclear weapons damage: It's helpful to start by realizing what a nuclear weapon actually produces that delivers the heat and radiation damage.

Broadly, a (fission) nuclear weapon releases several kinds of radiation when it detonates:

• MeV heavy fission products, which carry the majority of the reaction energy initially
• MeV fission neutrons
• MeV prompt gamma rays
• Delayed beta and gamma emissions in the 100s keV to MeV energy range

Two things are important here: first, the energy level of these particles/radiations are all of roughly MeV order (correlating with temperatures on the order of 10 billion degrees), which determines the nature of the material interaction when the radiation impacts our ship's armor. In reality since this energy will be most immediately distributed to the non-fissioned part of the warhead (and at least some of the surrounding structure) the actual per-particle energy is probably dipping into the 100s keV range.

Second, all of the fission energy at the atomic scale is kinetic energy - when people say it is "easy to deal with heat" this is not an accurate statement when dealing with nuclear explosions and radiation. At the atomic scale, all "heat" is in fact kinetic energy.

In atmosphere, this energy most immediately goes to the surrounding air which produces the characteristic shockwave most are familiar with. It's not true that the shockwave decays as 1/r³ as the superheated atmosphere still gets pushed out with the blast and that energy will be transferred to a target, although the actual nature of the damage may vary substantially due to the lower per-particle energies involved. Thus 1/r² is the right first approximation.

In vacuum, with no atmosphere the blast expands in a roughly spherically-symmetric way - thus serger I believe was correct that it falls off as 1/r². Thus the energy that does impact the ship is the cross sectional area over 4*pi*r² which is the major contribution to how a spaceship can even survive a nuclear impact (strictly speaking, missile "accuracy" should be a continuum value as the key value is how near to the ship a missile explodes rather than a binary hit/miss.

Anyways, the point is that considering space vs atmosphere, there is no reason a space explosion would be any less lethal other than the distances involved.

On impact, the first thing that will happen is all those MeV particles will ablate probably the first cm or so of hull plating (possibly less for a TNE plating - however as the base armor tech is conventional steel we have a baseline for comparison, though I won't do this right now). The ablated layer which is basically a compressed metal (or ceramic depending on tech) layer will on one hand "shield" the underlying armor, however the momentum arriving at the target will cause two effects:

First, the ablation layer will be driven "forward" by the middle and tail "ends" of the blast wave. Even though the armor underneath is shielded from direct impacts there will still be significant melting at a rapid rate though probably slower than the initial vaporization impact (this is a highly nonlinear process). Once the blast wave is more or less "finished" then this vapor will begin dissipating off into space and the rate of melting will slow and eventually stop.

Second, overall conservation of momentum will push the ship significantly and unexpectedly in the outward direction from the explosion center. In Aurora this is the "shock" damage which correctly scales inversely with ship mass. Intuitively it should scale as 1/M however I believe in Aurora it may be 1/sqrt(M) accounting for the larger cross sectional area of a larger ship. This is difficult to estimate precisely, but if we assume an impact energy of ~1 kT (say a MT warhead but only a fraction of that energy impacts due to the 1/r² scaling) or about 4 TJ a 10,000-ton ship would see roughly a 1 km/s change in velocity. Therefore the "shock" damage has little to do with an apparent change in the ship's velocity, and everything to do with the sudden material stresses that it experiences when that 4 TJ of energy is transferred through the entire structure as essentially a pressure wave - notably interference effects at every material interface are likely to cause unpredictable failure modes.

Really the most unrealistic part of Aurora's missile damage model is that it damages a discrete section of the armor instead of being spread across the entire armor belt with some gradient based on an assumed distance from the explosion center. In this sense the damage model appears to represent a direct impact of ~kT warheads rather than nearby detonation of ~MT warheads, though I'd more readily just attribute this to handwaving to fit the game mechanics.

[tornakrelic]

This implies modern newtonian hull materials, not trans-newtonian materials.   When looking at a 6,000 ton ship in game compared to the modern day ticonderoga-class cruiser at 9,800 tons, and looking at the ability of the modern naval cruiser to withstand even a 1kt nuclear explosion,  the in game trans-newtonian hull materials would have to have massive specific heat figures while also having near perfect thermal conductivity ratings (either near zero or near infinity).   To vaporize even a single molecule of the material at the surface would take massive amounts of energy, and it would be much more effective to then attack the armors elasticity and strength values (tensile, yield, compressive, etc.  ) which would result in blowing "chunks" off the ship, instead of using radiation energy to vaporize it. 

In effect, the damage of nukes would be much more limited in space than if the same ship was in atmosphere, as the concussive blast wave of the air in atmosphere would likely cause more damage than just the initial explosive force of a direct hit in vacuum.

Well, let's go this way.  Any Aurora TN ship is able to fully reverse her full velocity in 5 secs without any damage.  Let's be moderate - take 10kkm/s fighter, not smth of antimatter era.  10kkm/s per 5s = 2000000m/s^2 ~= 200000 G.
TN hull, that can withstand this, will withstand any blowing "chunks".

Relative to C that ship is accelerating at less than 1% of C.  An impact with an object, for this instance a explosion of a nuke propelling fragments at a conservative . 5C, would be quite a different story, as they would add their speeds together, as well as the fragments would behave as if their mass was exponentially greater than it actually is due to relativity.

Also, the idea of the hull material being able to withstand massive radiation (high density gamma wave) as opposed to physical trauma (ballistic impacts from nuke exploding and fragments) is already modeled, with radiation multiplier tech decreasing armor damage for a given warhead.  Now this theory should also allow high velocity missiles with a warhead of 0 to still do massive damage on impact to a ship, but that is up to steve, and it doesnt have to do with damage caused by nuke explosions.

Again, the game implies a material with near zero thermal conductivity and astronomically high specific heat.  In reality with modern, or even futuristic in the terms of the next 50-100 years, your analysis of damage with regards to vacuum or atmosphere is correct.  I was just pointing out how the game models it, and what a material would require for it to behave accordingly.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Really the most unrealistic part of Aurora's missile damage model is that it damages a discrete section of the armor instead of being spread across the entire armor belt with some gradient based on an assumed distance from the explosion center. In this sense the damage model appears to represent a direct impact of ~kT warheads rather than nearby detonation of ~MT warheads, though I'd more readily just attribute this to handwaving to fit the game mechanics.

It is game-play based rather than realistic. Also to restrict damage to a single ship.

Here are the nuclear detonation rules for Newtonian Aurora, which does spread the damage over half the armour belt.

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=4329.msg43459#msg43459

[Droll]

Really the most unrealistic part of Aurora's missile damage model is that it damages a discrete section of the armor instead of being spread across the entire armor belt with some gradient based on an assumed distance from the explosion center. In this sense the damage model appears to represent a direct impact of ~kT warheads rather than nearby detonation of ~MT warheads, though I'd more readily just attribute this to handwaving to fit the game mechanics.

It is game-play based rather than realistic. Also to restrict damage to a single ship.

Here are the nuclear detonation rules for Newtonian Aurora, which does spread the damage over half the armour belt.

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=4329.msg43459#msg43459

How complete is newtonian aurora and is it under development or is it considered finished? Is there a download?