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This 'nuke in a bottle' is just focussing the energies of a nuclear blast to create an energy weapon. A railgun works by using magnetic induction to accelerate a projectile to very high speeds (your coilgun, Deathstorm) and has nothing to do with nukes, except for the phenomenal power output needed.
Current technology renders railguns an unusable weapon - I built a small one, 10cm in length, with 2 coils of about 100 turns each. This was fed 10A of current (a huge amount, it burnt the paper tube the coils were shaped by) and propelled a small magnet with a rounded-off-at-the-ends cylindrical shape all of 5 cm. A longer barrel would increase the power of a railgun because the projectile will have the magnetic force exerted on it for a longer period of time. Railguns would work better in space for 2 reasons:
1 - there is no air resistance to impede the shot's motion
2 - there is no gravity to screw up the motion of the 'shell' and cause extra friction.
One possibility is that the 'nuke in a bottle' idea will be used to make the hand weapons of future armies- we already use bullets that eject shell casings, so if this idea is shrunk further, we will be shooting 'nuclear bullets' that eject their containment vessels. Just a thought.
Finally, the railgun would make a good FS2 cap ship design to base a campaign on, Deathstorm. A possible ship for that would be the UNCa Sagittarius in the T-V War mod (I can't remember off-hand where to get it), as it has a long cylindrical barrel, er, hull, it looks like a 'modern' GTVA ship and has the fighter bay at the front (It might be 2, I can't remember), which looks like a weapon outlet. There are turrets on the front to shoot the actual railgun shot out of (for the mission designers).

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Great idea (EDIT) (/EDIT)

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Last edited by ns33 on 11-09-2002 at 11:06 PM

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The 'nuke in a bottle' idea is a quick-and-dirty attempt at a mass driver without all the niceties of the magnetic launcher.

I did have an idea of creating a weapon similar to MechWarrior 4's gauss rifle - a very fast projectile with a huge mass. In my first test, one shot threw an Aeolus almost a full kilometer.

I think I'll make it bigger - perhaps big enough to knock an Orion about.

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Registered: Jul 2002
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The 'nuke in a bottle' idea is a quick-and-dirty attempt at a mass driver without all the niceties of the magnetic launcher.

I did have an idea of creating a weapon similar to MechWarrior 4's gauss rifle - a very fast projectile with a huge mass. In my first test, one shot threw an Aeolus almost a full kilometer.

I think I'll make it bigger - perhaps big enough to knock an Orion about.

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The point of a mass driver is that it shoots a lump of mass at a high speed, kinetic energy doing all the damage to the target. The gauss rifle is a mass driver. The 'nuke in a bottle' doesn't shoot mass, instead, it shoots charged particles and photons to do the damage by ionisation, not structural deformation and momentum transfer (gauss rifle).
Matter weapons will probably be the most effective pinpoint destructive device for decades to come, especially in space, as they can 'crack open the shells' of spaceships to expose the fragile crew. Energy weapons will need many shots before a hull breach occurs, but their advantage lies in a huge ammunition supply (the ship's reactor)

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The point of a mass driver is that it shoots a lump of mass at a high speed, kinetic energy doing all the damage to the target. The gauss rifle is a mass driver. The 'nuke in a bottle' doesn't shoot mass, instead, it shoots charged particles and photons to do the damage by ionisation, not structural deformation and momentum transfer (gauss rifle).
Matter weapons will probably be the most effective pinpoint destructive device for decades to come, especially in space, as they can 'crack open the shells' of spaceships to expose the fragile crew. Energy weapons will need many shots before a hull breach occurs, but their advantage lies in a huge ammunition supply (the ship's reactor)

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Hence, primary and secondary weapons.

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Hence, primary and secondary weapons.

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quote:

---

Originally posted by ns33
2 miles?? 3100 m... that'll take the Horus some 20 seconds to travel. Jeeze that's long.

---

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quote:

---

Originally posted by ns33
2 miles?? 3100 m... that'll take the Horus some 20 seconds to travel. Jeeze that's long.

---

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I think its in one of the FS1 tutorials they say something about "units" being "meters" (or it was in the handbook, one or the other). I'm positive it's mentioned at least the guidebook in FS1 somewhere...

BTW, do any of you have the manuals? I have my FS1 stashed around here somewhere, and my FS2 mission guide book ($20... [waste of money?]) my friend took...

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Freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered." -Cicero
"Comple others: do not be compelled by them." -Sun-tzu
"Black holes are where God divided by zero." -Steven Wright
"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." -Napoleon

Leagacy at the [VBB] - October 2001 - April 2002 - 555 posts
[url=http://www.3dap.com/hlp/hosted/the158th]The 158th[/url]

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I think its in one of the FS1 tutorials they say something about "units" being "meters" (or it was in the handbook, one or the other). I'm positive it's mentioned at least the guidebook in FS1 somewhere...

BTW, do any of you have the manuals? I have my FS1 stashed around here somewhere, and my FS2 mission guide book ($20... [waste of money?]) my friend took...

__________________
Freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered." -Cicero
"Comple others: do not be compelled by them." -Sun-tzu
"Black holes are where God divided by zero." -Steven Wright
"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." -Napoleon

Leagacy at the [VBB] - October 2001 - April 2002 - 555 posts
[url=http://www.3dap.com/hlp/hosted/the158th]The 158th[/url]

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Stealth


no, the distances in-game were never really defined (were they?)...

they were "units"... didn't say they were metres.

---

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Stealth


no, the distances in-game were never really defined (were they?)...

they were "units"... didn't say they were metres.

---

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I would guess that since most of the energy is bled off on impact...that the fighter would turn itself into the same thing as a meteor...vapor...what would be cool though, and is totally off topic, is iff bomb explosions, and maybe kamikaze attacks, actually tore holes in the sides of ships, A-la the opening sequence when the lucifer punches a hole in that Orion...and i think a BFRED beam is certainly capable of the same thing...and about the bridges thing...the old Vasudan destroyer has one, the fenris/leviathon has one in the very front, as does the Sobek (again, in the front), the Hades, even though it doesnt really count, has one...but why would destroying the bridge matter, since most combat vessels have redundant systems, why not an auxilary bridge...maybe the ship's combat performance was reduced due to the lack of experience officers and crew on the bridge, and the loss of morale...even though shivans dont tend to exhibit morale...I think the loss of the bridge of a destroyer would be a crushing blow to the morale of a battlegroup...especially if the ship had a particularly high ranked or charismatic officer...likewise, the death of a fighter squadron's leader would be similarly traumitizing, and morale breaking...

On to the nuclear Vs. antimatter...its all a matter of mass...except that once you reach a certain size of nuclear warhead, the yield doesnt go up...Its basically the same as regular explosives...C4 has typically one fuse, as does a nuclear warhead. Well, the initial detonation of the blasting cap is sufficient to set off up to a certain amount of C4. after that, the excess just becomes...well, excess. It doesnt detonate, it just gets destroyed. Same with a nuclear warhead. After a certain size, the initial reaction doesnt unleash all the available power, it just atomizes the rest of the fissionable/fusionable material. and a nuclear warhead, even a hydrogen bomb, still uses fissionable materials to get the hydrogen to a point that it can begin fusion...

Antimatter warheads are pure speculation...and it would actually be 50^(-20) 50 to the negative 20th power...and what about the electromagnetic effects of such Nuclear and Antimatter (AM) blasts...why arent these blasts frying the systems of fighters and bombers getting too close to it...after all, to actually hit a ship now, you have to practically unleash at point blank...which leads me to my next Q...are the bombs actually detonating when shot down, or are they just being destroyed...cause they cause an awful large shockwave for something that isnt actually carrying high explosives...not even fighters jam packed with ordnance and fuel, explode like that...

back to the ships...If they ever get their **** together with the source code...will the be able to make it so you can blow holes in the ship, then do a reactor overload, and blow the ship apart from the inside? Or how bout blowing the back half of the ship apart and leaving part intact to drift...or how about when you actually take down the weapons subsystem, weapons fire more randomly, and beam weapons are rendered nearly useles....instead of nothing happening...or how bout a beam weapon slicing a ship in half...that would be cool too...

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I would guess that since most of the energy is bled off on impact...that the fighter would turn itself into the same thing as a meteor...vapor...what would be cool though, and is totally off topic, is iff bomb explosions, and maybe kamikaze attacks, actually tore holes in the sides of ships, A-la the opening sequence when the lucifer punches a hole in that Orion...and i think a BFRED beam is certainly capable of the same thing...and about the bridges thing...the old Vasudan destroyer has one, the fenris/leviathon has one in the very front, as does the Sobek (again, in the front), the Hades, even though it doesnt really count, has one...but why would destroying the bridge matter, since most combat vessels have redundant systems, why not an auxilary bridge...maybe the ship's combat performance was reduced due to the lack of experience officers and crew on the bridge, and the loss of morale...even though shivans dont tend to exhibit morale...I think the loss of the bridge of a destroyer would be a crushing blow to the morale of a battlegroup...especially if the ship had a particularly high ranked or charismatic officer...likewise, the death of a fighter squadron's leader would be similarly traumitizing, and morale breaking...

On to the nuclear Vs. antimatter...its all a matter of mass...except that once you reach a certain size of nuclear warhead, the yield doesnt go up...Its basically the same as regular explosives...C4 has typically one fuse, as does a nuclear warhead. Well, the initial detonation of the blasting cap is sufficient to set off up to a certain amount of C4. after that, the excess just becomes...well, excess. It doesnt detonate, it just gets destroyed. Same with a nuclear warhead. After a certain size, the initial reaction doesnt unleash all the available power, it just atomizes the rest of the fissionable/fusionable material. and a nuclear warhead, even a hydrogen bomb, still uses fissionable materials to get the hydrogen to a point that it can begin fusion...

Antimatter warheads are pure speculation...and it would actually be 50^(-20) 50 to the negative 20th power...and what about the electromagnetic effects of such Nuclear and Antimatter (AM) blasts...why arent these blasts frying the systems of fighters and bombers getting too close to it...after all, to actually hit a ship now, you have to practically unleash at point blank...which leads me to my next Q...are the bombs actually detonating when shot down, or are they just being destroyed...cause they cause an awful large shockwave for something that isnt actually carrying high explosives...not even fighters jam packed with ordnance and fuel, explode like that...

back to the ships...If they ever get their **** together with the source code...will the be able to make it so you can blow holes in the ship, then do a reactor overload, and blow the ship apart from the inside? Or how bout blowing the back half of the ship apart and leaving part intact to drift...or how about when you actually take down the weapons subsystem, weapons fire more randomly, and beam weapons are rendered nearly useles....instead of nothing happening...or how bout a beam weapon slicing a ship in half...that would be cool too...

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Miraxis
back to the ships...If they ever get their **** together with the source code...will the be able to make it so you can blow holes in the ship, then do a reactor overload, and blow the ship apart from the inside?

---

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Miraxis
back to the ships...If they ever get their **** together with the source code...will the be able to make it so you can blow holes in the ship, then do a reactor overload, and blow the ship apart from the inside?

---

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On the subject of ramming other ships, shouldn't the damage from that be delt in preportion to the speed of the two ships? If, for example, you have two ships traveling at 50% lightspeed and they collide, the resulting explosion would completely and utterly obliterate both vessels. They don't even need to be packed with explosives.

That gives me a great idea for an anti-cruiser weapon, actually. If one could modify the Maxim cannon to accelerate shells to 70-90% of C, the rounds wouldn't even need to detonate, they would probably work better if they were solid uranium (depleted, of course).

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Last edited by Krim on 11-17-2002 at 08:55 PM

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On the subject of ramming other ships, shouldn't the damage from that be delt in preportion to the speed of the two ships? If, for example, you have two ships traveling at 50% lightspeed and they collide, the resulting explosion would completely and utterly obliterate both vessels. They don't even need to be packed with explosives.

That gives me a great idea for an anti-cruiser weapon, actually. If one could modify the Maxim cannon to accelerate shells to 70-90% of C, the rounds wouldn't even need to detonate, they would probably work better if they were solid uranium (depleted, of course).

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Last edited by Krim on 11-17-2002 at 08:55 PM

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