Forums » Suggestions
I've posted on this before, but I can't/don't want to find any of the other threads, so I'm making one anew.
Rail guns launch small projectiles at extremely high speeds. So why don't they exert any force on their targets? It would be awesome to see enemy vessels get thrown back by a slew of rail bursts. Yeah. That's my line, and I'm sticking to it.
Rail guns launch small projectiles at extremely high speeds. So why don't they exert any force on their targets? It would be awesome to see enemy vessels get thrown back by a slew of rail bursts. Yeah. That's my line, and I'm sticking to it.
their range should also be considerably enhanced. at least up to radar range (5km).
it'd rather have them range-less. if you're good enough to hit a target by aiming through zoom, you ought to hit it. period. (well, a moving target would probably be infeasible).
it'd rather have them range-less. if you're good enough to hit a target by aiming through zoom, you ought to hit it. period. (well, a moving target would probably be infeasible).
the speed of an object doesnt affect the force it has on other objects very much.
think of a bullet, it doesnt knock people back it just kills them with penetration
now think of a cannon ball, it knocks people around like dolls and kills them with force
its the mass not the speed so the railgun would punch holes in the ship but not throw it back
think of a bullet, it doesnt knock people back it just kills them with penetration
now think of a cannon ball, it knocks people around like dolls and kills them with force
its the mass not the speed so the railgun would punch holes in the ship but not throw it back
I would like to extend the range, but there's a technical problem with quantization (you tend to shoot on either side of something). However, awhile back I had an idea of using a very fast homing missile with a very small degree of "homing" (just enough to overcome the quantization issue). Would look the same, but might be more extensible to greater ranges. I haven't had a chance to experiment with it yet.
Anyway, on the force subject.. umm.. that's possible. But, yeah, realism would depend on one's interpretation of what a "railgun" is.
Anyway, on the force subject.. umm.. that's possible. But, yeah, realism would depend on one's interpretation of what a "railgun" is.
actually, mr bean, the force of a bullet entering a body can knock someone over. And the speed that an object is traveling is just as important as its mass. Say someone dropped a baseball on your head from a height of 10 feet. It would hurt, but there wouldn't be any significant damage. Now what if someone dropped a baseball on your head from the top of the Empire State Building. If he did actually hit you in the head, the impact would kill you. This is not because the ball's mass changes when it travels faster, but because the ball's kinetic energy is significantly greater when it is dropped from high altitudes, and it then transfers that energy into your head.
I think that railguns would not only bounce the target around a bit, but also would have some fairly interesting recoil on the shooter. It would certainly make railgun combat interesting, and of course, you'd need some appropriate sound of rending metal for impact, and some crazy shooting sound instead of the *thip* that it is now. hehehehe *drooooooolllll*
Well how much interpretation do you want, inc? It's a gun. With rails. :P
I think that railguns would not only bounce the target around a bit, but also would have some fairly interesting recoil on the shooter. It would certainly make railgun combat interesting, and of course, you'd need some appropriate sound of rending metal for impact, and some crazy shooting sound instead of the *thip* that it is now. hehehehe *drooooooolllll*
Well how much interpretation do you want, inc? It's a gun. With rails. :P
the interpretation should probably lie on the rod (bullet) rather than rails projecting it.
it is, as stated earlier, a speed/mass issue. what's the mass of one such bullet? and it's surface? then the relative innertia ( & mass) of the target ship?
btw, the baseball thing probably wouldn't kill you because of terminal velocity but you would get a severe bump for sure. :-)
edit:
inc, is the range issue related to the jerkiness we see when being far out in sector and turning slightly?
i'd love to try that corrected range thing. actually makes sense: the us mil is currently toying with ballistic-correction cannon bullets that alter their trajectory slightly to hit a target dead on to compensate for winds and whatnot.
it is, as stated earlier, a speed/mass issue. what's the mass of one such bullet? and it's surface? then the relative innertia ( & mass) of the target ship?
btw, the baseball thing probably wouldn't kill you because of terminal velocity but you would get a severe bump for sure. :-)
edit:
inc, is the range issue related to the jerkiness we see when being far out in sector and turning slightly?
i'd love to try that corrected range thing. actually makes sense: the us mil is currently toying with ballistic-correction cannon bullets that alter their trajectory slightly to hit a target dead on to compensate for winds and whatnot.
Ah yea... looks like a baseball's terminal velocity is 95 mph. It could possibly kill you, but it would definitely give you at the very least a concussion if you weren't wearing any headgear.
Okay fine. so someone drops a .50BMG bullet on your head from 10 feet. It would sting a little but not much. Now someone shoots a .50BMG bullet from a Barrett M82. The M82's muzzle velocity is 2800 ft/sec (1900 mi/hr), and that would definitely blow your head into little bits.
But yea. I always envisioned railgun shells to be around 40-60mm in diameter and probably 160-240mm long (depending on which version of railgun). As such the round probably weighs several kilos and is shaped to improve armor penetration. And of course, the game's specs say that the railgun shoots 400-480m/s.
Okay fine. so someone drops a .50BMG bullet on your head from 10 feet. It would sting a little but not much. Now someone shoots a .50BMG bullet from a Barrett M82. The M82's muzzle velocity is 2800 ft/sec (1900 mi/hr), and that would definitely blow your head into little bits.
But yea. I always envisioned railgun shells to be around 40-60mm in diameter and probably 160-240mm long (depending on which version of railgun). As such the round probably weighs several kilos and is shaped to improve armor penetration. And of course, the game's specs say that the railgun shoots 400-480m/s.
EDIT: erm... repeated a lot of what CP and uc said... if in a slightly different way. Oh well, I'll leave the post even if it is a bit redundant.
E=MC^2... speed (C^2, yes a constant but still a speed constant), mass(M), and energy(E) are all erm... relatively interrelated?
Very simply... if you fire a bullet fast enough it is the same as if it had more mass at a slower speed. The question of whether it throws you back or punches through you has more to do with the way in which the energy propagates through the medium it impacts and the properties of the material the bullet is made of. i.e. if the impacted material absorbs the energy and disperses it over a wide area the net effect will be a push. If the energy is absorbed in a smaller area, it will overload the material leading to a puncture. If the puncturing body travels all the way through the impacted body, the impacted body will be pushed to entry speed - exit speed. If it stays within then obviously the impacted body will have absorbed MOST of the energy... a certain amount (ALOT) will dissipate as heat and in other interesting ways in any case.
Problem is... for every effect there is an equal and opposite effect. So every time you fired would have to push your ship back the same amount, more actually, taking into account energy losses, (interesting that eh... your shoulder takes more of an impact then the person hit by the shotgun... but spread over a longer time. Makes the whole man hit by shotgun flying through the air thing patently absurd eh?) as it pushed back the impacted ship... or it'd be inconsistent and thus stupid.
Real physics don't really belong in a fantasy universe in my opinion... 'cept when they are fun... this sounds fun... So thumbs up from me, as long as consistency is maintained.
:)
EDIT: While you are at it make cargo have real mass... i.e. it'd slow down your ship when you picked it up and continue moving when dropped. (I know there are difficulties with this, but a consistent universe IS important.)
E=MC^2... speed (C^2, yes a constant but still a speed constant), mass(M), and energy(E) are all erm... relatively interrelated?
Very simply... if you fire a bullet fast enough it is the same as if it had more mass at a slower speed. The question of whether it throws you back or punches through you has more to do with the way in which the energy propagates through the medium it impacts and the properties of the material the bullet is made of. i.e. if the impacted material absorbs the energy and disperses it over a wide area the net effect will be a push. If the energy is absorbed in a smaller area, it will overload the material leading to a puncture. If the puncturing body travels all the way through the impacted body, the impacted body will be pushed to entry speed - exit speed. If it stays within then obviously the impacted body will have absorbed MOST of the energy... a certain amount (ALOT) will dissipate as heat and in other interesting ways in any case.
Problem is... for every effect there is an equal and opposite effect. So every time you fired would have to push your ship back the same amount, more actually, taking into account energy losses, (interesting that eh... your shoulder takes more of an impact then the person hit by the shotgun... but spread over a longer time. Makes the whole man hit by shotgun flying through the air thing patently absurd eh?) as it pushed back the impacted ship... or it'd be inconsistent and thus stupid.
Real physics don't really belong in a fantasy universe in my opinion... 'cept when they are fun... this sounds fun... So thumbs up from me, as long as consistency is maintained.
:)
EDIT: While you are at it make cargo have real mass... i.e. it'd slow down your ship when you picked it up and continue moving when dropped. (I know there are difficulties with this, but a consistent universe IS important.)
Um... you hit the right cargo and your ship will slow down like a ton of bricks dropped into a pond of 31.8 degree shit. Cargo already has real mass, and as far as moving once dropped... it behaves like all other mass in VO. Just like there's friction.
Well... You should slow down when you hit it... certain laws (such as that one about conservation) say it must. I didn't say it would be fun, I said inconsistency sucks... though I also said it's a game so do what is fun even if it violates "real" physical laws. So fine... don't do it... but I think turboing at someone, launching a load of samo... and watching them slam into a roid because of the sudden acceleration in the direction the cargo was traveling would be fun as hell... and you could pick up the samo and re-use it after they popped.
And it does NOT behave like everything else, though of everything, only ships actually have mass. It behaves as if it had zero mass outside of a ship.
And it does NOT behave like everything else, though of everything, only ships actually have mass. It behaves as if it had zero mass outside of a ship.
Well, I see the Rail gun as firing a projectile akin to a FSAPDS ( fin stabilised armour piercing discarding sabot ) tank round . Its basically a very fast tungsten dart , 2 k per second muzzle velocity , very accurate to 3000 m.
When it hits an armoured target it punches a relatinely neat hole in the armour then flies around inside the target mincing the contents. The target itself doesn't jump backwards: that would be a waste of the KE of the round .
Recently I have had a number of good fights with Firsm who was flying a quad rail hornet . The slight blue flash and the huge internal damage without much shock that the old 'taur suffers is actually very realistic.
There have been various experiments to fire this kind of projectile from electromagnetic rail guns, but so far nothing has proved as practical as a solid propellent.
Ecka
When it hits an armoured target it punches a relatinely neat hole in the armour then flies around inside the target mincing the contents. The target itself doesn't jump backwards: that would be a waste of the KE of the round .
Recently I have had a number of good fights with Firsm who was flying a quad rail hornet . The slight blue flash and the huge internal damage without much shock that the old 'taur suffers is actually very realistic.
There have been various experiments to fire this kind of projectile from electromagnetic rail guns, but so far nothing has proved as practical as a solid propellent.
Ecka
I guess I wasn't clear enough: you do slow down when you pick up cargo.
erm... what? since when? I can plow through a load of whatever and still have the same velocity I had before... at least I could... when did this change?
I'm sure there are conservation of energy problems with that, but whatever :P
that never changed chillum. you only probably picked up cargos that weighted pretty much the same thing so you never noticed much of a change.
load up a moth with ore and you'll see how the thing steers.
put one cu of sammo into a light fighter and the thing handles like a drunk asteroid.
load up a moth with ore and you'll see how the thing steers.
put one cu of sammo into a light fighter and the thing handles like a drunk asteroid.
speaking of sammo. Wouldn't it be better to fire 48mm samo rounds in stead of xith rounds?
depends on the relative hardness of it.
erm... y'all are missing the point... by a mile.
Yes cargoes have mass WHILE IN THE SHIP.
They have zero mass outside the ship.
They instantly GAIN mass when picked up... moving at the same velocity as the ship.
They instantly return to ZERO mass when dropped. (Zero mass = zero energy = dead stop as well. erm... Sometimes... Certain massless particles are known to have great velocities... So maybe they shouldn't stop but actually accelerate to the speed of light? Or something.)
This violates so many fundamental principles (in RL) that it ain't even funny.
But it's a game, eh? So have fun... and who cares really if reality is relatively portrayed. (But NOT Relatively.)
EDIT: Shoots... is that HOW light gets to travel at the speed of light? Bleed off mass into energy 'til the photon is (almost) massless yet moving at (almost) the maximum possible speed? Since in effect an object moving at the speed of light has infinite mass the only way to move an object AT the speed of light is for it to have Zero mass... 0 * ∞ = 0. (that thing is (supposed to be an) infinity symbol... which it is on a mac... but just in case you have problems.)
Lol... maybe... Zero PWNS Infinity?
Yes cargoes have mass WHILE IN THE SHIP.
They have zero mass outside the ship.
They instantly GAIN mass when picked up... moving at the same velocity as the ship.
They instantly return to ZERO mass when dropped. (Zero mass = zero energy = dead stop as well. erm... Sometimes... Certain massless particles are known to have great velocities... So maybe they shouldn't stop but actually accelerate to the speed of light? Or something.)
This violates so many fundamental principles (in RL) that it ain't even funny.
But it's a game, eh? So have fun... and who cares really if reality is relatively portrayed. (But NOT Relatively.)
EDIT: Shoots... is that HOW light gets to travel at the speed of light? Bleed off mass into energy 'til the photon is (almost) massless yet moving at (almost) the maximum possible speed? Since in effect an object moving at the speed of light has infinite mass the only way to move an object AT the speed of light is for it to have Zero mass... 0 * ∞ = 0. (that thing is (supposed to be an) infinity symbol... which it is on a mac... but just in case you have problems.)
Lol... maybe... Zero PWNS Infinity?
>_>
Why are you guys using E=MC^2 for a particle moving at 480m/s?
Hell in that equation C is a constant. Anyway.
Why are you guys using E=MC^2 for a particle moving at 480m/s?
Hell in that equation C is a constant. Anyway.
upper case:
I already did the calculations you speak of once, I can easily do them again (actually, anyone with a basic grasp of physics can do it).
It is easiest using the vo-wiki, to quickly obtain the needed numbers.
Using the Rail Gun Advanced's values, we have:
Speed of projectile: 480 m/s (which isn't that far into the supersonic range, I might add).
Energy required to launch the projectile: 100, let's assume these are kJ.
Using these values we get:
Ek = 1/2 * m * v2
100 kJ = 0.5 * m * (480 m/s)2
m = 2 * 100e3 J * (480 m/s)-2
m = 0.87 kg
There we go, mass. It doesn't sound all that far off, maybe one number of magnitude. Especially coupled with Ecka's bit about APFSDS rounds, it makes more or less sense, since the sizes of the ships are roughly equal to today's tanks, unsure about mass.
It'd be interesting to have different types of railgun ammunition, though, to create more 'stopping power' and less piercing.
I already did the calculations you speak of once, I can easily do them again (actually, anyone with a basic grasp of physics can do it).
It is easiest using the vo-wiki, to quickly obtain the needed numbers.
Using the Rail Gun Advanced's values, we have:
Speed of projectile: 480 m/s (which isn't that far into the supersonic range, I might add).
Energy required to launch the projectile: 100, let's assume these are kJ.
Using these values we get:
Ek = 1/2 * m * v2
100 kJ = 0.5 * m * (480 m/s)2
m = 2 * 100e3 J * (480 m/s)-2
m = 0.87 kg
There we go, mass. It doesn't sound all that far off, maybe one number of magnitude. Especially coupled with Ecka's bit about APFSDS rounds, it makes more or less sense, since the sizes of the ships are roughly equal to today's tanks, unsure about mass.
It'd be interesting to have different types of railgun ammunition, though, to create more 'stopping power' and less piercing.