page 82

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fredgiblet
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Re: page 82

Post 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.

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Re: page 82

Post 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).

dex drako
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Re: page 82

Post 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.

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Re: page 82

Post 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.

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Re: page 82

Post 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.

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Re: page 82

Post by dex drako »

[quote="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....quote]


I was just thinking that most large armies use bullet proof vests and helmets that could stop most arrows so you have to be a really good shoot to get a kill shot with a bow.

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Re: page 82

Post by Karst45 »

NOMAD wrote:
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:
na smell more like sweet revenge over a neighbor that mow his grass at 6 am am sure i could make money out of that :P

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Re: page 82

Post by TrashMan »

fredgiblet wrote: 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.
It would depend when the "shell" bursts, no? The sooner it bursts, the larger the area covered...but, also the larger the gap between bullets.

The whole point of it is that the Loroi/Umiak wouldn't know what we're shooting at them.
Not super-effective? No..but still more effective than a regular mass driver shell.

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.
Disagree. That charge would dissipate almost instantly upon launch, and the universe is a very noisy place.
If you have sensors that can detect tiny chunks of metal in space, then you have GODLY sensor tech.

The standard evasive maneuvering patterns that they use in would be far more than enough to avoid a mass driver shot.
But this wouldn't be a regular mass driver shot. Would the enemy captain move far more than it's necessary to evade? Does he know the driver bullet is a MIRW warhead itself?

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Re: page 82

Post by captainsmirk »

I think the problem here is not that this wouldn't in some way increase the effectiveness of humanities existing weapons but what would be the point?
Fighting really isn't an option for us, we're already not just at a large technical disadvantage but also a (probably even larger) numerical disadvantage. Sheer numbers would overwhelm the TCA ability to defend itself. The Tempest's understrength strike group has more ships in it than the entire Terran fleet and Scout Corps combined.

Even putting up a token resistance is likely to be counter productive, both the Loroi and Umiak have shown that they have no qualms about using genocide (or should that be xenocide?) against difficult uncooperative species. If either side came in force its likely that our only option would be to welcome our new alien overlords with with open arms.

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Re: page 82

Post by Mjolnir »

dex drako wrote:I was just thinking that most large armies use bullet proof vests and helmets that could stop most arrows so you have to be a really good shoot to get a kill shot with a bow.
I would not trust a bulletproof vest to stop an arrow. They move a lot slower than bullets, but put a lot of mass behind a sharp point in a form factor that restricts it from tumbling, and could easily puncture/slice through something that'd be effective protection against small arms.

Bows and arrows are obsolete due to the speed and rate of fire (yeah, yeah...using firearm terminology for the comparison), limitations in carrying bows and arrows, relative difficulty in making bows and arrows, and the large amount of training, skill, and physical conditioning required to use them well.

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Re: page 82

Post by Mjolnir »

TrashMan wrote:The whole point of it is that the Loroi/Umiak wouldn't know what we're shooting at them.
Not super-effective? No..but still more effective than a regular mass driver shell.
More effective than something that has an infinitesimal chance of hitting doesn't help much.

TrashMan wrote:Disagree. That charge would dissipate almost instantly upon launch, and the universe is a very noisy place.
If you have sensors that can detect tiny chunks of metal in space, then you have GODLY sensor tech.
That is a wildly inaccurate description of the universe. The universe is an extremely cold, quiet, and empty place: 2.7 K background, vast stretches of empty space with only a sparse scattering of solid objects...it is an exceptionally clean environment for sensors to operate in. We can track bits of cm-scale debris in orbit now, through an active atmosphere, without trying very hard. And though they'll almost certainly be quite hot from the mass driver, it's not any sort of "charge" that they'll be tracked by...such a launch will require them to be constructed in a way that'll also make them clearly visible on radar. But while the target is almost certainly capable of tracking the shots, they wouldn't need to...they need only adjust their trajectory a bit.

TrashMan wrote:But this wouldn't be a regular mass driver shot. Would the enemy captain move far more than it's necessary to evade? Does he know the driver bullet is a MIRW warhead itself?
To make a wide debris cone requires propulsion that can achieve a good chunk of the velocity imparted by the mass driver itself, and to have any chance at a hit you need very high mass driver velocities. The faster the projectiles are fired, the narrower the debris cone will be or the more visible the projectiles' propulsion systems will be. The slower they are, the further the evasion maneuvers will take the target by the time they pass.

Outsider ships could literally turn around and outrun projectiles fired at them. Say a mass driver with a muzzle velocity of 100 km/s fires at a ship 16000 km away...point blank range in Outsider terms, 0.05 light seconds. They take a full 60 seconds to turn around and get their drives up to 30 g. A bit under 3 minutes later, the projectile has approached to within a couple thousand km and is now falling behind. They would only do this to show off...they could easily dodge the projectile by a wide margin by doing a much shorter burn at a perpendicular instead. Even a minor maneuver would take the target far out of any plausible debris cone, they simply have no reason to expose themselves to the risk.

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Re: page 82

Post by Karst45 »

TrashMan wrote:It would depend when the "shell" bursts, no? The sooner it bursts, the larger the area covered...but, also the larger the gap between bullets.

but the less dense it become so it might get too large and the ship could just maneuver between 2 shard

take for example a shotgun (12ga) vs a small target. At 10 ft it do enormous damage but at 600 ft?

Not super-effective? No..but still more effective than a regular mass driver shell.
Surely an improvement but let say you have an railgun of a specific size that shoot standard size ammunition. Ether you shotgun fire smaller shell or to keep the same size per "pellet" as the standard ammo you increase the size of the railgun.

You say that bullet will be small enough to not be detected. am sure ship would have "natural" defense against that, after all they fight at great speed in system were flying pieces of debris fly all around from previous battle.

yet again i take the 12ga as an example and a normal Kevlar body armor. At close range you wont like being shot might get broken bone or worst. but a long range i dont think you would get any damage.

TrashMan wrote: The standard evasive maneuvering patterns that they use in would be far more than enough to avoid a mass driver shot.

But this wouldn't be a regular mass driver shot. Would the enemy captain move far more than it's necessary to evade? Does he know the driver bullet is a MIRW warhead itself?
he would probably think of it as if it was a torpedo and torpedo seem to cover a large area with particle.

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Re: page 82

Post by fredgiblet »

TrashMan wrote:Disagree.
If they aren't ferromagnetic then the MD won't be able to shoot them.
the universe is a very noisy place.
If you have sensors that can detect tiny chunks of metal in space, then you have GODLY sensor tech.
Not really, WE have sensors capable of detecting chunks of ferromagnetic materials at hundreds of miles IN ATMOSPHERE, space is MUCH quieter than Earth, it's not really a problem.
But this wouldn't be a regular mass driver shot.
They aren't TRYING to evade mass driver shots, they're trying to evade beam weapons which require FAR more movement.

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Re: page 82

Post by fredgiblet »

Arioch wrote: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.
Hmmmmm. This seems to be a bit of a switch from what you were saying before. I need to get the old forums scraped so I can re-read what you posted before but I seem to remember you implying, if not stating, that tech like that wouldn't be applicable to MDs.
captainsmirk wrote:The Tempest's understrength strike group has more ships in it than the entire Terran fleet and Scout Corps combined.
And chances are good that the Winter Tide as of Page 81 is capable of wiping out the entire TCA by itself.
Mjolnir wrote:I would not trust a bulletproof vest to stop an arrow.
Soft vest? Neither would I. Vest with ceramic plates? Bring it on...just aim for the plates please

NOMAD
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Re: page 82

Post by NOMAD »

Karst45 wrote:
NOMAD wrote:
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:
na smell more like sweet revenge over a neighbor that mow his grass at 6 am am sure i could make money out of that :P

NOw that Is a good idea :D
I am a wander, going from place to place without a home I am a NOMAD

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Mjolnir
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Re: page 82

Post by Mjolnir »

fredgiblet wrote:If they aren't ferromagnetic then the MD won't be able to shoot them.
EM mass driver projectiles likely wouldn't be ferromagnetic...it's the simplest way to build a mass driver, but not particularly effective (issues of saturation, hysteresis, etc). High power mass drivers will operate more like induction motors, with a conductive projectile that the accelerating magnets induce currents in. Basically a scaled up EMALS.

They'll still be radar-visible for the same basic reasons, though.

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Mjolnir
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Re: page 82

Post by Mjolnir »

fredgiblet wrote:Hmmmmm. This seems to be a bit of a switch from what you were saying before. I need to get the old forums scraped so I can re-read what you posted before but I seem to remember you implying, if not stating, that tech like that wouldn't be applicable to MDs.
Depends on what "high percentage of c" means. 0.1c or so? Or more directly competitive with beam weapons? But even if the latter, it might not matter...

For a given projectile energy, higher speeds require a shorter pulse of higher power. It's easier to make a high-mass, low-velocity projectile with outrageous amounts of kinetic energy. My understanding is that this would be why Terran mass drivers are terrifyingly destructive if they actually hit...even at much more limited peak power input, human ships can pile more energy into the projectile before it leaves.

But once you've built a relativistic mass driver, you've got to power the thing. If you're powering it with the same thing you're powering plasma weapons with, and firing shots at comparable velocities, your energy per shot, shot mass, and peak power output are similar...if mass drivers aren't vastly more efficient than plasma weapons, you've now got mass drivers which now have characteristics similar to plasma weapons, but require a quite different approach to ship design. Piling more energy in to get results similar to Terran mass drivers requires bigger power supplies or slower shots. They might be able to build a similarly destructive relativistic mass driver, but could they fit it and its power supply on a ship?


Some random numbers:
10 kg@0.05c: 1.13e15 J, 270 kt TNT
Leaves a 100 m accelerator 13 microseconds after acceleration starts. Power averaged over acceleration: 85 exawatts.

10 g@0.9c: 1.16e15 J, 280 kt TNT
Leaves a 100 m accelerator 741 nanoseconds after acceleration starts. Power averaged over acceleration: 1565 exawatts.

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Re: page 82

Post by anticarrot »

fredgiblet wrote:The difference between gravity and electro-magnetics wouldn't be as much as you are implying.
I'm afraid I have to conclude you do not understand the laws of physics or the principles of engineering nearly as well as you think you do. Especially when you start to say that gravity 'pulls apart on pretty much the entire thing equally'. Most of what you say about guns is also incorrect. Tank guns top 5000fps. Light gas guns top 20,000fps. As an illustration, exactly what contains the engine reaction, and stops it blowing up the ship? Because once you're containing and directing such high pressures in a practical useful way... Exactly how is that different from a gun barrel?

If you want to believe that the Loroi and the Umiak are significantly more advanced than the humans of the future, who are in turn significantly advanced than us, then you can't suddenly turn around and say something is impossible for the Loroi because it's impossible for us.

If you want to say, "Rail guns don't work because this is a space opera, and they don't look pretty," then fine. But please don't try and hide behind real world physics. You look silly.
Hmmmmm. This seems to be a bit of a switch from what you were saying before [Arioch].
Especially when the author contradicts you.

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Re: page 82

Post by fredgiblet »

anticarrot wrote: Especially when you start to say that gravity 'pulls apart on pretty much the entire thing equally'.
Gravity penetrates through objects, a gun designed to pull things along by gravity at tens of thousands of gs will put enormous strain on anything fired through it. That strain would not likely be coming from directly in front of the projectile (nor would the pushing force if you were using a repulsion effect), resulting in in significant "pulling apart" effect on projectiles that would indeed be more or less equally spread out throughout the projectile.
Most of what you say about guns is also incorrect. Tank guns top 5000fps. Light gas guns top 20,000fps.
I was referring to infantry weapons, there aren't many rifle rounds that go significantly above 3000-3500 fps, the returns start to diminish too quickly for it to be terribly practical. There are certainly rounds that do, some even top 4000 fps, but they tend to be specialist rounds that aren't very popular (some people don't like replacing their barrels every couple hundred rounds for some reason).
As an illustration, exactly what contains the engine reaction, and stops it blowing up the ship? Because once you're containing and directing such high pressures in a practical useful way... Exactly how is that different from a gun barrel?
You're talking about vastly different things. The violence of a mass driver firing at a velocity high enough to be useful is likely to be FAR greater (and focused in a much smaller area) than the engines. For comparison consider the Saturn 5 rocket burning steadily over the course of several minutes vs. all the fuel in a Saturn 5 detonating at once. Which is easier to contain? How strong would the body of the S5 have to be to contain that force and direct it in a useful manner?

As I said before, the force needed to accelerate a ship increases linearly (give or take efficiency) with the desired acceleration. The amount of force required for a gun goes up exponentially (before efficiency losses), those engines are performing a far milder task than a relativistic mass driver.
If you want to believe that the Loroi and the Umiak are significantly more advanced than the humans of the future, who are in turn significantly advanced than us, then you can't suddenly turn around and say something is impossible for the Loroi because it's impossible for us.
Without massive applications of super-tech mass drivers are GOING to be out-performed by significant margins by other options, this is simply the way it is. Arioch has stated that mass drivers will be outperformed by other weapons on more than one occasion, in fact IN THIS VERY THREAD he has stated that even with the best tech the Loroi have mass drivers will be outperformed (at the very least on an ROI basis) by other weapons. So yes, it apparently is impossible for the Loroi to build a mass driver competitive with other weapons.
If you want to say, "Rail guns don't work because this is a space opera, and they don't look pretty," then fine. But please don't try and hide behind real world physics. You look silly.
"Hide behind real world physics"? So I should assume that physics don't apply until I'm told that they do?
Especially when the author contradicts you.
If you re-read that post you'll note that the CONCLUSION (mass drivers can't compete) is still the same, even though the details were contradicted.

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Re: page 82

Post by Majincarne »

If it was a gravity driven rail gun I would be tempted to go the Mass effect2 way and use a material in the liquid state as a projectile. And accelerate a short stream of it.
Probably would not hold together long but if you managed a system that could get the low mass your firing out of it to about .7 the dispersal would probably be small enough at weapon effective range that it would be a nice anti systems weapon. Probably not too good against heavy armor but hell on external weapons and sensors.

Ship design would be interesting for that weapon due to the gravity requirements of getting that much acceleration even if you go with a hybrid magnetic gravity system you still gonna have to keep it away from the main ship.

Would give Terran ships of the future a a different look if they had to mount their weapons like this. .... Forum software are some spaces but you can still see the idea.

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