Alderbranch wrote:
Nope, nor was high-pressure, vacuum/evaporated furnaces. I was essentially back to the basics with manual labor for the most of it. All grinding my oxides and metals by hand at that...

X-ray diffraction and SEM was the coolest we got... or well there was that with neutron diffraction too but since I had my samples shipped there to have it done I never did those things hands on there.

Alderbranch wrote:
Exactly. But I still don't see why that is bad defence.

Alderbranch wrote:
I think so and while this is part of the english vocabulary in terms of chemistry/physics the forumrules says nothing about how advanced the said usage of the language could get.

Alderbranch wrote:
*sigh* You really have to take this to the extreme levels don't ya? Science major or what?

Alderbranch wrote:
For one simple reason. Always bring your own explosives. You don't get a guarantee that they have electrons available for you to target. If you supply all ingredients for a big bada-boooom. Then its bound to happen. If you however rely on your opponent bringing their own doomsday with them... well then that plan could really backfire...

Alderbranch wrote:
And I never said they would be close together... I said they would be nearly parallel which says nothing about the distance between them. That way the interactions occur when close to the target which is what you want anyway.

Sharidann wrote:
A lepton a day ... keeps the doctor away !



For us mere mortals without technical background, that is !

Nosferatiel wrote:
Of course

But sorry, I always forget what counts as "extreme"...

Nosferatiel wrote:


There's a lot of evidence for no stable natural antimatter, so it is not likely that they'll cruise around in antimatter ships. If they were, I'd just let a few Craver ships out of matter ram their battlecruisers and watch the spectacular explosions. ^^

Nosferatiel wrote:


Nearly parallel at almost light speed is bound to be "close together" or it won't collide at the wanted point, so I took it for granted that we were talking about battles in light seconds distance at the most.

Alderbranch wrote:
I dont blame ya... I myself did my Master thesis in inorganic and structural chemistry. ^^ But most ppl get tired long before.

Alderbranch wrote:
But you can have shielding based on antimatter and magnetic fields... The natural way to attack them is to overload them in some way.

Alderbranch wrote:
Still its possible to do and as we have seen of the combat sofar we dont even need lightseconds.

Nosferatiel wrote:
I did my diploma thesis (old german version of a "master thesis") in elementary particle physics, so I can't really resist... XD

Nosferatiel wrote:


I'm not really sure what the purpose of antimatter shielding would be. If the shielding antimatter is at rest and the incoming matter has an impulse toward the ship, the resulting explosive mess will be boosted towards the ship, depending on the incoming projectiles original impulse. Of course there will be some radial spread of energy, but I'm not sure that wouldn't just worsen things, since a lot of that additional energy would still hit your ship.

Magnetic protection would be a viable way to divert impulse of incoming charged particles, but of course there'd be the small matter of synchrotron radiation that would still hit the ship.

Nosferatiel wrote:


That's why they'd have to be extremely close together from the very start.

Alderbranch wrote:
Mine covered conductivity in general as that was the aim for the synthesised compounds. Basically I was to bash at the crystal structure and see how much pounding it could take by pounding away specific atoms at specific positions in order to change the conductivity of the compounds. (most interesting was protonconduction and superconduction-properties).

Alderbranch wrote:
Explosions can be contained or deflected. Just look at a tank... it can deflect quite a punch... from the right angles...

Alderbranch wrote:
With a very long ship it could be covered anyway... one set of beams from one end and the other from the other. Sure there would be a maximum range this way around which is good and what I dont like about laser-weapons... the possibility to shoot yourself if you travel faster than the speed of light etc in the same direction as the laser you just fired...

Nosferatiel wrote:
Found any new high-temperature superconductor, yet?

Nosferatiel wrote:


Of course, but if your defense actually worsens the punch you have to deflect, I call that a bad defense. XD

Nosferatiel wrote:


Just think of WWII and the ME262. They started to have the same problems with firing at full speed, as far as I know. And once you allow ships to travel faster than light you can as well use tachyon weapons to shoot them.

Nosferatiel wrote:
...

Alderbranch wrote:
...

Alderbranch wrote:
Nope, most on cuprate-perovskites etc has been covered. What we were looking at was Pyrochlores which has these really interesting tubular canals in their crystal structure.

Cadmium-Rhenium-oxides was the thing we started out with as they have shown super-conductivity at around 2K...

We tried to dope it but the problem is that it was a gasphase-transfer reaction where the Rhenium first and foremost changed into ReO4 before reacting with the Cadmium. ^^

Alderbranch wrote:
Now ive stopped playing with chemistry and work fulltime as a CIO... I dubbed myself "Swedens most failed chemist" for that very reason ^^

You still doing particle physics?

Alderbranch wrote:
Actually it is not. Its easier to deflect than to try to absorb.

Alderbranch wrote:
... cuprate-perovskites ... Pyrochlores ... Cadmium-Rhenium ... gasphase-transfer

Raptor wrote:
So the missiles in ES... [/QUOTE



Yeah...Iwasthinkingthesamething...whatsthechemicalcompositionorphysicalcomponentsthatmakesthosetrigger

Nosferatiel wrote:
Building it from scratch by molecular beam epitaxy was no option?

Nope, nor was high-pressure, vacuum/evaporated furnaces. I was essentially back to the basics with manual labor for the most of it. All grinding my oxides and metals by hand at that...

X-ray diffraction and SEM was the coolest we got... or well there was that with neutron diffraction too but since I had my samples shipped there to have it done I never did those things hands on there.

Nosferatiel wrote:


Working on my phd and starting to look into supersymmetry search with tau leptons. Otherwise doing some heavy flavour jet calibration with photon+jet and Z+jet events.

That just sounds so awesome just saying it.

Nosferatiel wrote:


Reflection inflicts twice the force on the material than absorption does, if the projectile is inert and doesn't react any further with the material. That's one of the reasons why solar sails work. If you deflect things at shallower angles the whole pressure inflicted on the armor is lower and the local pressure is significantly smaller since the area of impact is spread.

Exactly. But I still don't see why that is bad defence.

Slowhands wrote:
Don't we have a policy that the forum language is English?

I think so and while this is part of the english vocabulary in terms of chemistry/physics the forumrules says nothing about how advanced the said usage of the language could get.

Alderbranch wrote:
*sigh* You really have to take this to the extreme levels don't ya? Science major or what?

For one simple reason. Always bring your own explosives. You don't get a guarantee that they have electrons available for you to target. If you supply all ingredients for a big bada-boooom. Then its bound to happen. If you however rely on your opponent bringing their own doomsday with them... well then that plan could really backfire...





And I never said they would be close together... I said they would be nearly parallel which says nothing about the distance between them. That way the interactions occur when close to the target which is what you want anyway.

Sharidann wrote:
Alderbranch and Nosferatiel.... GET A ROOM !!!

Nosferatiel wrote:
I'm working 500m away from our synchrotron radiation beamlines, there's a working free electron laser on the compound and XFEL is being built, here. XD

Nosferatiel wrote:


Hm, depends on your defense doctrine. The best defense is, of course, not to be hit. You can achieve this by a) not being seen, b) being to fast to be targeted/evading or c) killing the enemy before he can shoot.

If you're hit, the minimum defense is to survive, until you can destroy the enemy. The medium defense is to survive while taking almost no damage at all. The maximum though, is to take the least damage with the least material budget cost.

The more force is applied by purely kinetic energy on a material, the thicker it has to be to accomodate. If you want to reflect kinetic projectiles instead of just stopping them, you need twice the force. That's my argument why it is a bad idea.

If the impact is inelastic, so e.g. heat is transferred by your hated laser beam, then I agree with you that reflection is a better option than absorption, even if there is a lot of force applied to the armor. It's better than the armor being melted, at least.

Sharidann wrote:
Alderbranch and Nosferatiel.... GET A ROOM !!!

Alderbranch wrote:


I think so and while this is part of the english vocabulary in terms of chemistry/physics the forumrules says nothing about how advanced the said usage of the language could get.

Alderbranch wrote:
Yes and some defensive doctrines utilise the concept of using the opponents power against them... I mean its all about energy in the end. If some of the energy can be deflected while the other can be put to use to power some system, defensive mechanism or counter-offensive move then that would be the best. And I never said anything on the matter of reflection. You were the one that brought that up. Deflect is what I was after as that is the easiest way to remove much of the incoming force by redirection. Its the rest one has to deal with until it is reduced to a level that cause little or no strain on the structure that has to sustain it.

As for lasers... Still the lamest weapon ever.

Nosferatiel wrote:
You mean aikido-like mechanisms? But those work by exerting force perpendicular to the motion of the opponent. Since forces are superposable that is a nice approach, but hard to cover in space, since there is no friction. Also you'd have to have very funny looking ships with active defenses around the ships main body that would fire at projectiles and missiles breaching the outer defense perimeter to be shot out into space where they don't deal damage any longer.

Nosferatiel wrote:


About reflective shieldings: I really don't understand how they would possibly work effectively. You'd need unlimited computational power (what hits where, when, with which force?), sensor power (find that whole stuff out BEFORE it hits you) and energy (stop the projectile, using the same force it has, then accelerate it in the direction it came from, using the same force it had, again).

Nosferatiel wrote:
Why not target yourself with a simple and nice cannon, using energy a lot more effectively and with a lot less computational and sensor power needed?

Nosferatiel wrote:


Absorption on the other hand: If you could harness lightning, so to say, why not? There's nothing wrong about converting your enemy's weapon power to boil a good tea.

Alderbranch wrote:
I think so and while this is part of the english vocabulary in terms of chemistry/physics the forumrules says nothing about how advanced the said usage of the language could get.

Slowhands wrote:
Sorry, should have put a smiley face. I'm reading your conversation with wikipedia open...

Alderbranch wrote:
You do realise we will have fun with the entire scientific part of each and every weapon and defensemodule you guys create right... Think one topic on each all filled with this techno-stuff.

Slowhands wrote:
I'm reading your conversation with wikipedia open...

Raptor wrote:
In Melee we can be sure that at least 2 types of weapons can be fired: http://i.imgur.com/Dnn3w.jpg In this case missiles and kinetic weapons. I think we haven't seen a screenshot of beam weapons being used yet.

Alderbranch wrote:
If its one type of defense against one type of weapon as you imply it will make it easy to balance yet strategically interesting as weapon/shield-ratios has to be taken into account.

Alderbranch wrote:


A question that arise for me is if there is a way to analyse the opponents ships... to learn what type of weaponry they use and what type of shields.

Raptor wrote:
Also something very important is where do we see some weapon stats? Is there a separate page that gives more info and stats on weapons and other ship systems?

Alderbranch wrote:
My rapid guess would be the ship configuration-screen as implied by the shipcustomisation shot.



The Firepower seems to be the MP of the enitre ship which is compriced of the defence and offense.

Not that the symbol on the weapons are the same as for MP and Defense-modules.

The tonnage has to be the corresponding number on each part until is just to add modules until its full.

So a Large ship has 400 tons.



Normal armor seems to add HP only. There is no description on Support besides costing tonnage nor on the engines.





The armor and weaponry seems to scale quite fast too.

ObiMark wrote:
Would there be weapon mounts for direct fire weapons? so that basic weapon can traverse very well, heavy mount can move slowly but has longer range bigger damage, spinal can traverse several degrees without turning the entire ship but can do massive damage at even longer range

Alderbranch wrote:
I mean if only one of three types of weapons fire per sequence then its gonna get very predictable.

Boygor wrote:
It depends on the variety within the weapon types rather than the number of weapon types. One missile configuration may be very different from another.

Raptor wrote:
Yes this could be the case. This would add variety, although if we are talking realism, it would be logical to have short-range/long-range missiles while the kinetic weapons and beams are much less affected by range in space. The missiles have to carry fuel to maneuver, thus short range missiles can definitely be different than long range ones, both in size and design. A kinetic projectile works the same way at short and at long ranges. Since it is unguided it is the same if you fire it at 100 m or at 10000 m it travels with the same speed all the way. Hitting a target at long range with an unguided munition can be hard though, if the target is agile enough it can easily avoid it. That's why I guess missiles would be most effective in the Long range phase, while kinetic weapons and beams would excel in Melee.

Boygor wrote:


I imagine beam weapons will travel at light speed although their effects will dilute/ dissipate over distance?

Boygor wrote:
This sounds about right. I wonder if the longer range weapons will be less effective from a damage perspective otherwise it's a no-brainer what I'll be going for!



I imagine beam weapons will travel at light speed although their effects will dilute/ dissipate over distance?

Raptor wrote:
Exactly. They do eventually dissipate in space but for the battle distances we are talking about in ES this dissipation would be negligible if any. For the balance's sake though such effect could be modeled in ES so beam weapons could be less damaging and easier to shield from in Long Range phase.

Alderbranch wrote:
What says that beam weapons have to be laserbased? I mean it could be supercharged electrons which indeed there is a uncertainty too (Heisenberg's uncertainty principle) and hence can dissipate.

Nosferatiel wrote:
I don't know what you mean with "supercharged", since electrons always have the same charge, but anyways: For charged particles the problem is that they carry, in this case at least, the same charge. They repel each other. If you accelerate and collimate them well enough, they'll stay together for quite a distance, but nonetheless the bunch will disperse.

If you take particles of different charges, you may get better results. But by mixing particles and antiparticles, you'll just gain an explosion. Probably not so good an idea to do that anywhere but on the enemy ship hull. (Therefore fire at least some positrons at them, it'll get you better results at dissolving their armor at lower energies. :P )



On the other hand it is normally very hard to accelerate neutral particles, since you have no "grip" to accelerate them at all. That's why people use lasers. Photons carry no electric charge, so the dispersion is only optical in nature. That can be handled with methods differing for different wavelengths and those include e.g. x ray mirrors.

Raptor wrote:
Jesus, just use the good ol' lazors

Alderbranch wrote:
Meh... You really have to ask annoying scientific questions in order to ruin a good description eh?... Of course I know you can't change the charge of an electron (yet mind you, they might just start playing with quarks) but they can be excited which is the scientific term of supercharging them cause supercharging sounds so much cooler.



A electron-beam-based gun I expect to be two nearly parallel beams... one with positrons... one with electrons. Their point of convergence (hence nearly paralell) is where you'll get your explosion of course. And this should be fairly easy to manage with some proper use of math for calculating the forces involved between the beams. This also would explain what force-shields do to deflect them... aka change the trajectories of the beams which essentially disperse most of the beam. The loss of the electrons excited state is what causes the often seen "beam" of light as what's emitted is photons.



Nerdy enough for ya?...

Nosferatiel wrote:
Almost. I'll just object to using leptons when a perfectly good photon with sufficient energy will produce electron positron pairs on its own. Also there will be electrons in the armor of the enemy ship already. Why fire them in a second beam? All the positrons will do is annihilate either with an electron from the beam or one from the armor. The leftover electrons from the beam will emit photons due to bremsstrahlung and those will make pair production, again.



The idea of putting two beams close together is also flawed, because the distance of the electrons among themselves, r, is far smaller than the distance of the beams, R, and the coulomb potential goes ~1/r², so the dispersion force will be far greater than the attractive force and in some cases go along the same direction, so you'll get some electron-positron-annihilations from start to finish, lowering the power of your beams.