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'Gatling' PD effect |
Junky Da FunkyMonke
Admiral
Joined: May 14, 2007
Posts: 347
From: The Hotel California, takes excursions to Deep Sexys Space every now and then
|  Posted: 2007-08-11 21:20
i would think that you should have 4 miniguns in 1 slot seems smarter to have 4 smaller guns having a long burst then 1 big gun in short burst
maybe make theem each fire at a diffrent target because it would be easier and better then lasers
[ This Message was edited by: Junky on 2007-08-11 21:21 ]
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Gejaheline
Fleet Admiral
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 19, 2005
Posts: 1127
From: UGTO MUNIN HQ, Mars
| Posted: 2007-08-21 14:58
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On 2007-08-08 15:18, Fattierob (x2 Weeks™) wrote:
Purely from a logical standpoint, it makes sense to shoot down projectiles with a large spread of small pellets.
I mean, Thats how alot of non-missile Anti-Air guns work - a bunch of rapidly firing lead properly aimed.
I mean, hell, the more I think a bout, the less sense it makes to try to cut a missile in half (or at least hit it) in space with a tiny laser that only lasts a couple of seconds with a limited range then to fire a hailstorm of bullets at it, either from a belt-fed weapon, or a shotgun like device that is tracked by Radar/Ladar. I guess Anti-Radar missiles would kinda defeat that purpose, but who the hell uses those? XD
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Please note that I shall be utilising certain near-future technologies and principles in this post.
For one, a laser is stupidly accurate compared to firing bullets, particularly if the ship and target are travelling at the speeds one would probably see in space combat.
Secondly, a laser would have a longer range, since by definition it can hit anything you can see. In space, there is no atmosphere to attentuate a directed-energy weapon.
Finally, if you've got a LADAR system, you already have a fearsome weapon system. A LADAR capable of surveying a tactically significant part of a solar system would be able to melt nearby targets by simply operating normally, and if one was to focus the individual elements onto a single point, it would make for an extremely potent device.
The one limitation of a laser is the prodigious amount of power it consumes, but one could easily imagine that future spacraft could contain several small, efficient fusion reactors. Or indeed something more exotic.
Of course, DS doesn't really have any resemblance to real space combat. Singularity Sky by Charles Stross gives a good account of what interstellar combat could be like: Akin to submarines hunting each other, so far apart that LADAR is slow and laser-propelled nuclear torpedoes are launched at the locations where you think enemies are, and you hope that there isn't one coming back at you that you can't yet see...
So, in conclusion, gatling PDs would probably be shorter-ranged than lasers, fire faster, take no power, and would have an ammunition count. As well as doing ballistic-type damage rather than laser-type damage, just to surprise all those people with reflective armour.
And they might miss occasionally, but let's assume not in order to keep it simple.
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Fattierob
Vice Admiral
Joined: April 25, 2003
Posts: 4059
| Posted: 2007-08-21 18:03
I would like to point out ahead of time that this post has little relevance to the topic, however it still bears posting.
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On 2007-08-21 14:58, Gejaheline wrote:
Please note that I shall be utilising certain near-future technologies and principles in this post.
For one, a laser is stupidly accurate compared to firing bullets, particularly if the ship and target are travelling at the speeds one would probably see in space combat.
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This is both a blessing and a curse. If you have an extremely accurated laser, you need an extremely accurate way of firing it - battlefields are filled with ECM, ECCM, and god knows what else flying around - having a laser that is .5 nanometers in length is extremely hard to aim at a target moving towards you, or perspectively away from you. The mechanics to move the actual mechanism to aim the point of the laser at the object also has a certain percentage of accuracy.
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Finally, if you've got a LADAR system, you already have a fearsome weapon system. A LADAR capable of surveying a tactically significant part of a solar system would be able to melt nearby targets by simply operating normally, and if one was to focus the individual elements onto a single point, it would make for an extremely potent device.
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Nono, Not a super high-powered Solar System from Gundam 0079 that takes up gobs of energy and requires a 129x129 km solar array to power up. I'm talking about a very weak ping-like laser pulse. It's used by law enforcement to measure speed.
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So, in conclusion, gatling PDs would probably be shorter-ranged than lasers, fire faster, take no power, and would have an ammunition count. As well as doing ballistic-type damage rather than laser-type damage, just to surprise all those people with reflective armour.
And they might miss occasionally, but let's assume not in order to keep it simple.
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Also cheaper and less maitence. I agree.
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Junky Da FunkyMonke
Admiral
Joined: May 14, 2007
Posts: 347
From: The Hotel California, takes excursions to Deep Sexys Space every now and then
| Posted: 2007-08-21 20:42
moving more toward rob on this 1
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Leonide
Grand Admiral
Templar Knights
Joined: October 01, 2005
Posts: 1553
From: Newport News, Virginia
| Posted: 2007-08-21 23:47
looks like Rob is winning. 
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Leviatan
Cadet
Joined: April 22, 2005
Posts: 186
| Posted: 2007-08-22 12:25
Rob is pretty much correct on this. You dont need a superpowerful, ass-kicking, planet-burning, omnidirectional laser pulse of d00m to survey a solar system for objects of whatever size.
Space is pretty close to a perfect vacuum(it is not, a perfect vacuum, because of the random proton and occasional electron and small chunks of your random matter, such as hydrogen, floating around), and therefore the dampening effect it would even theoretically have on the laser pulse, is between zero and none.
Theoretically, you could survey a solar system with a flashlight, if you had a sensitive enough detector, but in this case you would probably want to observe the almost unexistant reflections of various objects, unless they are in the shadow of whatever.
In other words, I would rather pick Rob's choice of a weak ping-like pulse over a very strong pulse that would melt metal(also, if it really would melt metal, it would melt it anywhere where you point the LADAR, because again, space does not have a meaningful dampening effect).
One might think that it's harder to hide from a stronger pulse, but then again, you would have to bend the light around your ship, or make it out of some material that does not reflect the LADAR wavelenght at all. Which means, that no matter how strong the pulse is, you wouldnt detect it anyway.
And considering that you need about a 1MW laser to melt a bottle of coca cola at 100 kilometers, even if it's focused, although this is in an atmospheric envinronment, but currently it is not possible to test it's true effectiveness in space, it would be an unbelieveable waste of energy to blast an omnidirectional pulse that melts METAL, nevermind if mankind invents a way to make some metal, that can endure alot more heat than titanium, for example.
And like I already said, you have to focus the laser to make it effective. Just using a non-focused beam of laser is another tremendous waste of energy.
And considering how fusion technology is still in it's baby shoes(iTER wont be complete and in use atleast before 2015), I dont see this as plausible "near-future" technology.
Conclusion:
Even in real life, it would be more useful to use a flak cannon, a gyrostabilized gatling cannon, or a similar mass-projectile weapon to repel incoming lightly-armoured objects.
This however, probably went way off topic. I forgot most of the topic's content during the typing process of this post. Thanks.
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Kano
Cadet
Joined: February 22, 2004
Posts: 20
| Posted: 2007-08-22 21:06
MTHEL
More info here and here. See also ABL. Compare to CIWS and the vehicle protection systems under APS.
[ This Message was edited by: Kano on 2007-08-22 21:06 ]
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Drafell
Grand Admiral
Mythica
Joined: May 30, 2003
Posts: 2449
From: United Kingdom
| Posted: 2007-08-23 14:23
Actual hit effect's are not a big issue with this, as they are not currently synced correctly to impacts as it is. You may not have noticed the slight (<1sec) delay between a weapon hit and the shield flare, but it is there.
Awesome discussion so far, btw.
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DarkSpace Developer - Retired
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Kano
Cadet
Joined: February 22, 2004
Posts: 20
| Posted: 2007-08-26 01:29
Any chance that this effect or a similar one could be used for a heavy autocannon type weapon?
By the way, why are gun shots being tracked as objects in beta? Doesn't that make server lag worse instead of better?
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Sixkiller
Marshal
Courageous Elite Commandos
Joined: May 11, 2005
Posts: 1786
From: Netherlands
| Posted: 2007-08-26 04:45
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On 2007-08-26 01:29, Kano wrote:
Any chance that this effect or a similar one could be used for a heavy autocannon type weapon?
By the way, why are gun shots being tracked as objects in beta? Doesn't that make server lag worse instead of better?
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So that you can actually dodge everything, and see your dodging it.
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Kano
Cadet
Joined: February 22, 2004
Posts: 20
| Posted: 2007-08-26 12:34
That doesn't make sense to me. I've been dodging gunfire just fine for years. The object icons (the little X's labelled "particle cannon" or "railgun") only show up in F2 anyway. You can't steer in F2 so there's no way that this gunfire tracking helps you do anything, unless you are being shot at from beyond sensor range. Then you can use F2 to easily see which direction it is coming from. But I can see which direction gunfire is coming from without having to look at the map. It's not that hard. Furthermore this practice is relatively rare in my experience...
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Lyedtau
Admiral
Joined: January 18, 2007
Posts: 147
From: Dev land
| Posted: 2007-08-26 19:17
Each particle cannon shot is treated as an object so as when players dodge a shot, they actually dodge one, and can make a significant difference if you're near dying, or skilled at dodging.
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Made by Doran
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Kano
Cadet
Joined: February 22, 2004
Posts: 20
| Posted: 2007-08-27 00:20
Okay, this is starting to make more sense if I make a few assumptions about how the current and new systems are implemented. I assume, then, that the way it is now, the location of where the gunfire is displayed onscreen is not necessarily the same as where it actually is? So for example, it may look like I'm dodging the shots, but actually I'm not? And the reason for that would be lag, or something else?
Does that mean that currently, the display of gunfire and the recording of hits is managed on the client side, e.g. from a transaction where the direction of the gunfire is sent to the server by the player who fired the shots, and then received by the target player? So that due to server lag, connection lag, computer lag, or all three the final determination by the target client could be way off?
Then the new system inserts some kind of server side management where the server gets to decide where the shot is going, and sends that information to the target client?
It's unclear to me whether this will result in more or fewer shots connecting, due to the elimination of randomness that was introduced by the original client-server transactions, if my assumptions were correct. On the whole I am not really persuaded that this is ultimately a better solution. I guess we'll see though.
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Gejaheline
Fleet Admiral
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 19, 2005
Posts: 1127
From: UGTO MUNIN HQ, Mars
| Posted: 2007-09-12 15:48
True, a laser can go on forever in a vacuum until it hits something, so theoretically your LADAR system can be a flashlight and a light-sensitive diode.
However, it appears that everyone is forgetting the issues of coverage and resolution.
In a space conflict, your battlefield is going to cover millions if not billions of cubic kilometres. The photons from your Flashlight-ADAR are, after travelling halfway across the solar system, going to be spread out over a very large arc of space. So large that it's conceivable that the target (even a DarkSpace half-the-size-of-a-planet-dread) is not going to be hit by ANY of the light from your flashlight, never mind the chances of it being reflected precisely back along its path to hit the stupendously small target of your light-dependent diode.
Even if a single photon DID make the trip there and back, it's not only a very weak signal, but you can't tell how big it is, where it's going, or any other pertinent information aside from its distance (assuming the photon travelled a perfectly straight path there and back and both of you are stationary).
The solution, then, is to put out more photons in order to fill in the gaps and improve your resolution. This, predictably, involves turning up the wattage. Since you are covering a three-dimensional area, every time you double the range (or, in this case, double the distance at which you acheive a certain resolution since the range is theoretically infinite), you require four times the power output.
If you wanted to acheive a resolution of one watt per square kilometre (that is, a solar cell one kilometre wide and high would recieve a total of one watt of light on its surface) at a range of one million kilometres (not all that far in an interstellar war) you would need to output a total of twelve-point-five gigawatts. Assuming you could only focus half of that in any direction (thanks to the emitters being spread over the ship) and you still have a six-gigawatt laser at your disposal.
Your ping-like pulse would, admittedly, be almost undetectable to the enemy since they would have to have a kilometre-wide-and-high detector in order to pick up the candle-like strength of the pulse, but you would get almost nothing back. And you STILL have a doomsday laser array.
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