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Re: page 82

Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2011 8:19 am
by TrashMan
Given that the Loroi obliderated a FAR LARGER Umiak missile barrage....what exactly is the danger from those 4 cluster missle pods?

If 20 Loroi ships can take out 1000 missiles, shouldn't a numericly suprior Umiak force make short work of these?

Or is the PD technology of the Umiak so utterly horrible?

Re: page 82

Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2011 10:24 am
by Wintermute
Potentially a big factor when considering this:

The Umiak torpedoes were launched from beyond the Loroi beam weapon's maximum range (which is farther than the Umiak's). The Loroi Blisters are being launched at (comparatively) much closer range; from within the Umiak maximum range.

On paper this gives the Loroi missiles a much smaller time to impact and to be intercepted, which could factor into how easy they wind up being to shoot down.

Alternatively - given the Umiak philosophy of ignoring combat losses - it could be that the Umiak just ignore trying to shoot down incoming missiles in favor of concentrating heavier fire on the Loroi ships.

Re: page 82

Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2011 2:10 pm
by TrashMan
Wouldn't that also give them less speed (less time to accelerate?)

Re: page 82

Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2011 4:18 pm
by bunnyboy
True, but it still help, because it take away some of fire, which is targeted to lorois.

Re: page 82

Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2011 4:34 pm
by GeoModder
Next page should be simple: an expanding cloud of plasma where once those eight Umiak 'heavies' were... :lol:

I'd say the Loroi barrage has a good chance to hit a few of those capital ships. Quite a bit less time to snag them out of space, and the Umiak have been accelerating dead on towards the Loroi formation. Must have build up a respectable delta-v by now.

Re: page 82

Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2011 7:17 pm
by Suttrjac
@Trashman

Don't forget to factor in superior Loroi acceleration, I imagine that plays a role and also that we haven't seen the life span of the ordnance, we don't know to a certainty the final mode of delivery of the system however obvious it may appear at the moment. Those discharged missiles may themselves contain additional smaller warheads that capitalize on what speed has already been gained.

If such a thing is true then you'll have three stages of acceleration each one building on the former. The first is when the blisters get launched, the second when the medium warheads are dishcarged and then when the third set are discharged thus allowing for, in my mind anyways, a decent method of expedient acceleration in a short amount of time

Re: page 82

Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2011 7:55 pm
by anticarrot
Majincarne wrote:With an energy weapon hit it would probably be a bit more of great blinding light at eh end of the hallway any non oblique surface either combusting or melting while glowing furiously and the atmosphere turning rapidly into plasma.A missile hit may do the wall of fire its possible i would think, but probably be more fire wash around the far area and shock wave causing secondary shrapnel as it passes down the hallway.
In addition the beam weapons are going to cause quite a bit of secondary radiation. I can imagine a relatively small jagged hole passing though the ship - surrounded by a 50m hazard zone.

A missile hit though is going to do a lot more damage. (I'm assuming this *isn't* BSG, and that they don't waste their time with high explosives.) Anything nuke or higher is effectively going to be a flashbulb which pumps out gamma rays in the yottawatt range for about 40 nano seconds. Unfortunately, unless the hull or shields are magically good at reflecting this, or the missile explodes more than a few miles away, that will super heat any air or water container on the ship. Gas containers include the ship's main hull, and water containers of course includes Loroi bodies. Then there's radiation...

Assuming the pekaboo example two thirds down this page is accurate: http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/radiat ... _Radiation
The same warhead with the same ship, and poor Floyd is going to be upchucking if he's anywhere within 3,350km of the warhead. Loroi and Umiak warships probably have better armour, but even 1100km/m2 is still going to only reduce the upchuck distance to 3.3km. And with its shields gone, I'm not sure that a Rapier CLE (for example) has that much mass to spare.

And yes, while I know the Zsar Bomba is a big bomb, antimatter is really explosive. In my proto-novel I have a material called norite. A barionic composite made from an antimatter iron-58 atom kept safe within a buckyball of carbon-12; which isn't too far removed from the 'almost antimatter' stuff used for fuel in this universe. Using norite, the zsar bomba would weigh 10kg, and be more than small enough to fit in those little bomblet missiles.

Re: page 82

Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2011 8:42 pm
by Zakharra
icekatze wrote:hi hi

Well, Stillstorm did say to "reserve nothing," so if she held onto them, she'd be disobeying orders I guess.

Stillstorm also said 'Fire on zone one! Break up that wedge!' So use of the Tolat Blisters is appropriate with that order. I imagine the Umiak will not be expecting multiple ordinace like that to be launched at such close range.

Re: page 82

Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2011 12:49 am
by Karst45

already seen them. i actually gathered some plan to build one out of an old weed-eater

Re: page 82

Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2011 10:38 am
by TrashMan
Curiously enough the Multiple Warhead system could be used on mass drivers.

Immagine a cailgun/railgun shell that splits open (after some distacne is reached) and lets out a rain of smaller shells in a cone pattern...who then release their own bullets.

Basicly a long-ranged space shotgun...

Re: page 82

Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2011 9:44 pm
by osmium
Things to note/contribute:

These are likely sprint missiles, not long range high thrust output torpedoes but close range high acceleration. Our sprint missile system does 100g acceleration in atmosphere. I may do the math at some point, but basically get the force applied by the rocket knowing the wind resistance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_%28physics%29) making a few assumptions / worst case approximations and you could figure out what it could do in space, suffice to say significantly better than 100g.

At close range, the umiak either can shoot down the loroi or they can waste their precious time in firing range. At a closer range, especially if the Umiak are wedging tightly to punch through the Loroi formation these sorts of shotgun missile packages could be very deadly. It's not lightspeed lag, but refire rate that gets in the way here, noting that many weapons have a minimum of 40 second cool down (laser autocannons are like 27 seconds). So once you're in close enough a missile weapon especially with a very high acceleration can close a lot of distance AND given the number of shots the Umiak point defenses can make before said missiles can get there AND the fact that only the vessels in the wedge can likely fire on said missiles I think yields a weapon that could be effective in hedging against clustered Umiak penetration formations. Furthermore I seem to recall the Umiak ships either not having or not having many weapons devoted to point defense, in part because the Loroi don't make heavy use of missiles.

-O

Re: page 82

Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 7:31 am
by NOMAD
Karst45 wrote:
already seen them. i actually gathered some plan to build one out of an old weed-eater
well that would be interesting ( weerrrrr rroooooo weeerrrr rrrrooooo ). with a nice bit of fresh weed smell :lol:

Re: page 82

Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 7:34 am
by fredgiblet
icekatze wrote:Well, Stillstorm did say to "reserve nothing," so if she held onto them, she'd be disobeying orders I guess.
I don't think that means "fire everything at this very second", rather I think it means "don't keep reserves, use all your ordnance at the most opportune time."
TrashMan wrote:Immagine a cailgun/railgun shell that splits open (after some distacne is reached) and lets out a rain of smaller shells in a cone pattern...who then release their own bullets.

Basicly a long-ranged space shotgun...
Meh, the magnetic fields required to make a mass driver powerful enough to even consider would make structural integrity a huge issue, anything designed to come apart probably will, inside the gun.

Even if you fix that you have the basic physics problem inherent in mass drivers that render them largely useless in Outsider.

Re: page 82

Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 8:41 am
by TrashMan
fredgiblet wrote:
TrashMan wrote:Immagine a cailgun/railgun shell that splits open (after some distacne is reached) and lets out a rain of smaller shells in a cone pattern...who then release their own bullets.

Basicly a long-ranged space shotgun...
Meh, the magnetic fields required to make a mass driver powerful enough to even consider would make structural integrity a huge issue, anything designed to come apart probably will, inside the gun.

Even if you fix that you have the basic physics problem inherent in mass drivers that render them largely useless in Outsider.

Hence the shotgun approach. To cover a large area of space. This VASTLY increases the hit-ratio, even if the damage is reduced due to smaller shells.

Another advantage is htat the enemy would not see it coming. Loroi and Umiak don't use mass drivers. The bulelts themselves are almost impossible to detect. The launch would probably be detected, but would hte Loroi know what was launched?
How far away would they move to evade? If they think it's a normal mass driver bullet, they wouldn't need to move much from their starting position.

So the basic use would be to fire a few shots simoultaniously, not aiming at the ship, but rahter above, bewloe, to the left and right.. you want the enemy to move and enter into the fire cone..And the covered area and density would depend on the distance at which the "shotgun" is deployed

Of course, once the enemy is familiar with the weapon, it would be harder to get a hit. But this is the only way I can think off to make mass drivers viable, even a bit.

Re: page 82

Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 10:15 am
by anticarrot
fredgiblet wrote:Meh, the magnetic fields required to make a mass driver powerful enough to even consider would make structural integrity a huge issue, anything designed to come apart probably will, inside the gun.
Bare in mind everyone and their cousin have what amounts to 'electro gravity' in this world. It's a fair bet that they can build gravity coil guns that can do the job and would not suffer from this problem.

Today we can also build smart-fused and manoeuvrable shells that can survive very high accelerations in a cannon - and 40 years ago we could build the aforementioned sprint missile that could still function at 100g. And the same 'laws of physics' apply to the guns and engines. Either coil guns are weak and ships can't turn corners (in our world). Or ships can turn corners (as even heavily damaged Loroi ships can apparently do) and coil guns become infinity minus one weapons. Besides which, once any given ship commits to a course of action (say a high speed charge) and thus limits its manoeuvrability, and you introduce smart fusing (at a minimum), and stop being schizophrenic about the involved technology (engine tech = gun tech) then the utility of projectile weapons rises significantly.

This is one reason why the Millennium Gun is more effective than the Phalanx cannon.

Re: page 82

Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 3:30 pm
by fredgiblet
TrashMan wrote:Hence the shotgun approach. To cover a large area of space. This VASTLY increases the hit-ratio, even if the damage is reduced due to smaller shells.
The velocity will still be too low. A HUMAN ship can maneuver out of the path of a mass driver shot at distances of only a few thousand km, and the shotgun approach won't cover THAT much more space.
The bulelts themselves are almost impossible to detect.
Incorrect, pretty much by definition the bullets will be highly magnetic (else how were they fired by a magnetic gun?) radar will detect them easily unless they are truly minuscule and even then they will be detectable early in their flight while they are still mostly together.
How far away would they move to evade?
The standard evasive maneuvering patterns that they use in would be far more than enough to avoid a mass driver shot.
So the basic use would be to fire a few shots simoultaniously, not aiming at the ship, but rahter above, bewloe, to the left and right.. you want the enemy to move and enter into the fire cone..And the covered area and density would depend on the distance at which the "shotgun" is deployed

Of course, once the enemy is familiar with the weapon, it would be harder to get a hit. But this is the only way I can think off to make mass drivers viable, even a bit.
The velocities that mass drivers can plausibly achieve will still render this useless at any but the shortest range. When we are discussing the failure of mass drivers we aren't talking about them being JUST SHORT of being useful, we're talking about being an order of magnitude from usefulness.

Re: page 82

Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 4:07 pm
by fredgiblet
anticarrot wrote:
fredgiblet wrote:Meh, the magnetic fields required to make a mass driver powerful enough to even consider would make structural integrity a huge issue, anything designed to come apart probably will, inside the gun.
Bare in mind everyone and their cousin have what amounts to 'electro gravity' in this world. It's a fair bet that they can build gravity coil guns that can do the job and would not suffer from this problem.
The difference between gravity and electro-magnetics wouldn't be as much as you are implying. The forces required to get even the CURRENT velocity out of a mass driver are incredible, getting one with useful velocity would probably end up requiring as much (if not more) power than the Wave-Loom all being dumped into a rather small projectile in the space of a few milliseconds, it's GOING to be a rough ride.
Today we can also build smart-fused and manoeuvrable shells that can survive very high accelerations in a cannon - and 40 years ago we could build the aforementioned sprint missile that could still function at 100g.
We aren't talking 100g, we're talking 1,000,000+g, and we're talking a force that penetrates THROUGH the shell (regardless of whether it's gravity or EM) and pulls apart on pretty much the entire thing equally, rather than a force that pushes it on a single axis of force.
And the same 'laws of physics' apply to the guns and engines. Either coil guns are weak and ships can't turn corners (in our world). Or ships can turn corners (as even heavily damaged Loroi ships can apparently do) and coil guns become infinity minus one weapons.
Not true at all. The amount of power needed to move a projectile down a given barrel length goes up exponentially with velocity. And that's BEFORE losses to efficiency which will plummet as velocity increases. Increases in the requirements for engine power are linear with mass/acceleration because they aren't trying to do the acceleration in an ever-decreasing amount of time.

This is also why modern guns top out at around 3,000 fps, they can be made to go higher but it's highly inefficient, this is also why pistol rounds are much slower than rifle rounds, getting the same velocity out of them requires MUCH more power, hence the standard pistol bullet layout of high mass and low velocity.
you introduce smart fusing (at a minimum)
You mean some sort of tracking? Now you've added an engine and sensors increasing the overall mass and decreasing the launch velocity (meaning it's got EVEN MORE ground to make up) and you've essentially made a small, slow torpedo with a weak warhead.
and stop being schizophrenic about the involved technology (engine tech = gun tech) then the utility of projectile weapons rises significantly.
What's schizophrenic about it? The engines are basically giant anti-matter rockets, there's no connection whatsoever between them and mass drivers. If you are talking about applying inertial damping to mass drivers it doesn't require scizophrenia to come up with perfectly reasonable reasons that it won't work, interference from the firing of the guns, lack of sufficient capacity given the accelerations involved (i.e. inertial compensators won't work past 1000g or so), that's off the top of my head.

The bottom line is this: Mass drivers are not useful in Outsider, Arioch did not CHANGE the rules of physics to make this so, rather that is the natural state of mass drivers in the type of combat portrayed in Outsider and Arioch declined to alter them to make them useful. If you want to argue about inventing, or modifying, super-tech that fixes mass driver issues then you aren't talking about Outsider, you're talking about your own AU version of Outsider, the only in-universe ways to make a mass driver useful are mind-bogglingly high amounts of energy or barrels the length of the LHC (and merely obscene amounts of energy).

Re: page 82

Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 4:59 pm
by dex drako
yeah these ships are light seconds away from each other, that's 186,000 miles (299,792,458 meters) any. that's over half the distance to the moon, so any shotgun like mass driver round would be so Dispersed that it would be pure luck that the enemy ship would even be hit by one piece. Sure the round could explode later or spread slower but that just makes it an easy target to hit with the long range of the other races.

I think a problem some are having is this comic is not drown to size it's drawn to make it easy for us to understand.

These ships are so far apart that you couldn't you couldn't even see the closest Loroi ship with see the human eye. Using a mass diver against these races would be like using a bow and arrow on today’s battle field. Sure you could kill someone with a really good shot but you're most likely going to get picked off real quick.

Re: page 82

Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 6:34 pm
by discord
dex: actually, the bow vs modern guns is a good approximation, on land a bow could actually still be a pretty viable weapon....people do hunt and kill deer, and some might go for elk, with just bow and arrow....so killing a human with one is not all that difficult, being silent, it is a matter of application....but it is a stealth weapon....and you need to be sneaky and use cover like bushes for it to work, since you are by necessity a large target when firing, with low re-fire rate.

now the problem is that you CAN'T be sneaky in space, and there are very few places that have any reasonable approximation of bushes....so the bow is just plain not very good under those circumstances....

anticarrot: another reason the millennium gun might be better compared to the phalanx is simple age, the phalanx system has been in service since 1980, the millennium gun was taken into service 2003, in 1980 the millennium gun was not technically possible to make.

Re: page 82

Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 7:15 pm
by Arioch
Given the drive technology in Outsider (which uses the inertial damping effect to amplify acceleration of reaction mass), I think it's possible to build a decent high-percentage-of-lightspeed mass driver with Loroi or Umiak tech, especially if you're willing to build ships that look like the Gosroth from Crest of the Stars. I just think, given the other options available, that such mass drivers won't be as practical or cost-effective as the alternatives. Why work so hard to keep your mass driver round from being squished into plasma when you can just use the plasma itself?

I think that lower-velocity mass drivers will find utility use, such as being used for a launch tube for torpedoes (with a rail-driven magnetic plug or sabot as a "booster" for the torpedo).

The mass driver rounds in use by Humanity and others will almost certainly be guided -- I don't think it's possible to hit even a stationary target at range otherwise. Seeker heads and small thrusters are probably not very expensive at this tech level.
TrashMan wrote:Given that the Loroi obliderated a FAR LARGER Umiak missile barrage....what exactly is the danger from those 4 cluster missle pods?
The Loroi and Umiak have very different missile doctrines.

The Umiak can afford lots of torpedoes but have short-ranged beam weapons, so they use torpedoes from standoff range to draw Loroi fire off their ships as they close range. They don't really expect to get a hit; any damage caused by the barrage is a bonus. They generally don't reserve many torpedoes for use at close range, because they want to maximize the size of the Missile Massacre volley, and their plasma weaponry is plenty deadly at close range. The Umiak do have some blister-type torpedoes, but since they are usually destroyed before they can deploy their sub-munitions, they are not considered cost-effective.

The Loroi can afford few torpedoes (and have excellent long-range beam weapons), so they use torpedoes at close range as "oh shit!" options when an Umiak vessel gets too close. Rail-driven launch tubes can make a signficiant difference at close range (whereas the the Umiak don't care at standoff range). Even at close range, most Loroi torpedoes will be intercepted before they can reach the target, but this means drawing some Umiak beam fire off the Loroi ship (since Umiak don't bother with dedicated point defense weapons). In some cases the Umiak vessel may deliberately ignore an incoming torpedo to get more beam time on the Loroi vessel -- a one for one trade is an Umiak win.

The Loroi armored blister is also a close-in weapon. It carries 40 ultra-short range Tolot torpedoes (which do have the potential to overwhelm an Umiak quincunx's limited point defense capability) encased in an armored shell that adds a small amount of survivability. The drawback is that it's horrendously expensive, and nearly as large as a fighter. Having any of these blisters in her ship's magazines is a testament not only to a captain's discipline in not using them at the first opportunity, but to her political clout in getting them allocated to her ship in the first place.