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Old November 29, 2002, 10:50   #1
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Armor, part II
I have just read previous Armor thread. Lots of ideas, but most a simply unreal.
I'm not a military, but I do know something about real armour technology. In short: the "thicker is better" is from 19-mid20 century.
Then projectile strikes armor, shock wave develops. Its strength (pressure) depends on equations of state of both projectile and armour. The rule of thumb: the denser the materials are, the more powerfull wave will be.
If projectile is fast enough (>~3-5 km/s), pressure in shock wave will "dissolve" armour (armour will act as it would be liquid). Then, penetration depth may be easily estimated as *sqrt(/ ).
Shock wave will suffer decrease from back-moving unloading wave with rate of ~1/.
When reaching next free surface, shock wave may (_will_, in real) create spalling, creating spray of fast-moving (if both projectile and armor is of same material and we'll forefit pressure extinction, velocity will be the same as projectile's). This particless will destroy equipment, detonate load and kill unfortunate staff).
Particle beams are more fun. They penetrate some depth in armour, creating "energy deposition zone". In this zone pressure rises almost instantly, proportional to specific energy density, with coefficient known as Gruneisen constant.. This presure forms shock wave and viola - spalling.
So, absorbing layer of armour must be either dense, tough and thick to survive, or use some nasty tricks of trade:
1. Layered armour: the idia is that spalling particles are "weaker", more spread, so _next_ layer of armour may be more lucky. There must be some free distance between layer, of course. This thing is used in russian T-80, if I corretly remember.
2. Armour may be very energy-hungry, eating energy from shock wave. One clue (my own idea): porous medias actualy transfer much more energy from shock wave to harmless heat, then their pores collapse.
3. Against beams, armour must have less possible Gruneisen in the world. In general, plastics have less than metals (~1 and ~2)
4. Against beams, high-Z materials as lead, tungsten or depleted uranium ase 100% help for attacker, as they will have much better energy density in deposition zone
5. Long (several nanoseconds) laser pulses are futile against armour, as expanding corona of superheated plasma blocks laser beam - completely. Anyway, modern lasers are very inefficient creatures, with extremly low efficiency coefficient (ranging from 15% (CO2 lasers) to 0,1% or even less).
Much others - realistic suggestions?
IMHO, any way of field armour repair will be fruitless. Units are highly unlikely to survive successfull hit, they may be more stealthy instead. Any modern carier may be sinked with single anti-ship missile with high probability.
P.S. Concerning shielding. Can't say much, but cummulative stream may be efficiently dispersed if armour is magnetized (around 1 Tesla, which is dramaticaly big and surely make all on-board circurity insane). Any early interruption of incoming "agressor" (beam or projectile) is also much help.
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Old November 29, 2002, 10:59   #2
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Damn that web interface, it garbled formula I just wrote. Penetration depth is estimated as:
(length of projectile) * sqrt((projectile density)/(armour density))
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Old November 29, 2002, 12:35   #3
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well i wont disagree with you on all of this....but:

**missile can be shot down these days....you have the goalkeeper system that fires several rounds in a short timespan that well shoots down the missile....

**many modern day tanks use reactive armor...i think the russians invented it.....it is consists out of several blocks that are put all over the tank....the block is 2 sheets of metal with some explosive in between...it a projectile hits such a block it will = hit the first metalplate this in will try to slow the projectile down...because of the pressure and the heat of the projectile against the first plate the explosives between the two plates wil detonate. this will slow the projectile down some more. the last metal plate will be push against the tank it self and reflect.....it will crash against the projectile and it will be destroyed.....it is a one time use...but what if in the future you can make armor that has several of this kind of layers....?


and what if you can build metals in a way that they have a hexagonal structure.....this structure will let our upper legs withstand 1,5 tons (Kg) of weight......?

just some ideas
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Old December 2, 2002, 08:09   #4
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** Penetration of any anti-missile system is matter of sheer number of incoming warheads. So-called "Phlanax" system is nice stuff until it have to track multiple contacts.
** Reactive armor was in fact designed against cumulative warheads. Cumulative round consist of HE explosive with conical shell covered with some "heavy" metall (russians usualy prefer copper, americans sometimes employ uranium). This relative thin film may be accelerated to velocities close to detonation velocity (~9 km/s for HMX) and penetrate _any_ armor like knife cuts butter. Exploding round can't rotate as rotation will distrupt cumulative stream to relative harmless short pieces. Cumulative stream is to some extent unstable, especialy while moving inside "special" media. Explosive is definitely "special" and unstabilizes stream. Reactive armour is't very fit for deflecting projectiles.

Honeycomb-like structures are definitely great idea. Shock wave will crush its sections rather then do more "useful" deeds... but whis stuff must be too bulky in order to stop real copperhead.

Just one more idea: nanotech. Nanites may form zillions of acoustic "channels" which will take momentum of incoming shell and then disperse it over great surface causing reduction of pressure ~ to increase in area. Distinct "channels" must be fairly sparse in order to guide momentum separately... At work I routinely use substance called "aerogel" which are extensive 3D network of 3-5 nm sized SiO2 nanoparticles. This stuff has sound velocity of something like 50 m/s (6 times less than air... just imagine it) and eats wave energy like mad (reduces bulk speed from 500 m/s to 50 m/s via 1 cm... I think the later must be error... how media may disperse wave _such_?). If we could reproduce media of same properties and controlled structure (OK, we may do it via SP nanotech easily) it may be excellent armour and weight something like 150 g per liter...
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Old December 2, 2002, 11:14   #5
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While StP was proclaimed as "realistic" game, nobody seems to want discuss real world armour physics. It was my mistake to start such a thread. It's too special. Hope current state of armour tech is close enough to "real world".

So, what about closing this thread?
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Old December 2, 2002, 11:48   #6
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no wait this can be great stuff for anything...and i think your are just a kind of specialist that we all arent....
about the phalanx-system....
it first uses rockets to shoot down missiles (>10km) then within 5km it uses the guns....one modern day warships they only have 1 or 2 of these systems but in the future you can have enough to take on multiple warheads...and not many ships fire more then 2 missiles at another ship these missiles are way to expensive to fire 50 at one ship if only one is enough.
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Old December 2, 2002, 11:54   #7
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Nah, I'm not going to close this thread. I think those ideas are great, and as I said previously, I do care about realism. I'll have a look at your ideas as I have more time.
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Old December 2, 2002, 12:15   #8
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OK, thanks, I was disappointed by some apparent ignorance. Now I know it was just deep thinking. Thanks.
Phlanax is great stuff, but simple compare velocity of modern missiles (~1 km/s in atm.) with velocity of best superboosted guns (~3 km/s). Phlanax has very little time to fire back and shoting down _maneuvring_ missiles is't "fish in barrel". It's fish in fast river. And like anti-ballistic defence, this system may be fooled with fakes - cheap and numerous.
But, IMHO, point defence is one of directions of future defencive systems, as "shields" are still fantasy (we now almost know how to teleport but still out of ideas of any "force field"). This systems will be improved dramaticaly, and means of their penetration, too. Currently, american SDI have no chanses agains russian "Satana" and "Stilet" class missiles (if I correctly remember their western nicks) even under best conditions. BTW, if missile can't hit its prey, it may detonate beforehand, causing dramatic collateral damage and crippling stuff around.
Futuristic missile platforms may deploy anti-matter payloads, extremly small and deadly. ~26 g of antimatter will make as bang as 1Mt warhead does...
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Old December 2, 2002, 12:29   #9
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Quote:
Futuristic missile platforms may deploy anti-matter payloads, extremly small and deadly. ~26 g of antimatter will make as bang as 1Mt warhead does...
cool

problem is the production of anti-matter if we produce 100X more then we do now we will have enough for a teaspoon in about well 1000 years (or more i cant remember that) i think that (if we can build them with sufficient strenght and smaller) lasers will be the best pointdefence system around. The speed of a missile will have no affect because a laser travels at the speed of light. the only problem will be the targeningsystem. but that can be handled too. another anti-smartweapons-system will be EMP-missiles. i dont have much info about EMP but what I was thinking is this. if a missile is locked on to what ever if has electronic onboard if you can fire a rocket at the missile that unleashes a EMP-shockwave near the rocket (~500 - 1000m) you can disable the missile. it will stop every action and will fall to the ground. maybe a simple casing around the missile would be enough to stop the EMP wave. but we work around that part too
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Old December 2, 2002, 12:47   #10
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I do know something about EMP, it really wipes out electronics. In general, this stuff consist of explosive-magnetic generator which converts energy of chemical explosion inside collapsing circuit into energy pulse of several MWt (and possible up to GWt!), then emits this pulse via emmiter. But circuits may be effectively protected by shielding (metal plating, what is). BTW, at work I use electronics near 10GWt e-beam accelerator, and simple electromagnetic shielding helps much, while computer ~30 m away routinely shuts down if it's switche on during pulse.
Anti-matter: sure, currently we can't produce much of anti-matter, but 100 years before we were unable to produce any isotopes. Who knows? Anti-matter is mirrored or almost mirrored counterpart of our matter, so matter possible may be "mirrored" into anti-matter --- without recreating AM from scratch, as we currently do.
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Old December 2, 2002, 13:11   #11
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i ment EMP not ECM. me stupid and changed.

Anti-matter: if you think we maybe can produce it in the future i think you cant be as hard as you have been about the other ideas of armor. because they are all based upon thinks that might be able in the future... that was all

BTW where the heck do you work...you play with all lot of neat stuff
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Old December 2, 2002, 13:26   #12
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Antimatter belongs to poorly known field of particle physics, while physics of shock waves is fairly well known, believe me. Newtonian physics still work at low speeds and gravity fields while it's extended bu Relativity Theory. So we can't expect something dramaticaly new in basic properties of matter.

I work at "Institute for High Energy Physics", or IHED, while stuff I play with is in place called "Russian Science Center "Kurchatov's Institute"". BTW, 20 years ago, USSR made ~30% of world's net experimental research, so there are lots of neat stuff surprisingly still working.
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Old December 2, 2002, 13:47   #13
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Hell, IHED == Institute for High Energy Denseties. Seems I need go home... bye, people
"Basic" means "simple" here, not laying at the base or fundamental.
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Old December 3, 2002, 06:29   #14
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Hey, I'am here today, but this can't last too long (boss nearby). So let's add some new ideas.
1. Plastics armour. Rather than withstand rigors of shock-wave loading, rubber and likewise media espand like mad then move back. Rubber need to be stretched ~600% in order to break. Recently, I did some work regarding e-beam loading of rubber, and, hey, this stuff is't easy to torn apart!
Another anamaly: unloading wave is way too fast in rubber and eats loading wave more quickly. So thick layer of rubber may dramaticaly decrease shock wave pressure and eventualy prevent deadly spalling. Wonder why this is't used in tanks ... or it is?
2. Electromagnetic armour. Consist of cells which take momentum of projectile then convert it into electricity and charge unit's battery ... this stuff still may cause EMP damage and eventualy may be overloaded by larger projectile...
3. Advanced reactive armour. Section detonates _before_ real impact, accelerating plate attached to its forward. This stuff may be easily accelerated to ~3-5 km/s, so warhead will meet hot reception
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Old December 3, 2002, 07:48   #15
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Here’s my idea for nanite armour (incidentally I thought of it before this thread, as I am well aware of the limitations of armour at stopping high energy projectiles - I've always said armour should be most effective against small arms and minimally effective against anti-tank weapons)

The nanites have three functions:
Produce gas (to form a foam/sponge/honeycomb like structure)
Absorb gas (to form a liquid)
Bind with other nanites (to form a solid)

Collectively these nanites can form 3 structures:
Fluid: In this state it can be stored in tanks and pumped to sites that need the armour to be replenished, ie where it has been breached or blasted apart.
Foam: To enter this form the nanites produce gas, creating many small air pockets, the foam would be quite stiff (stiff enough to support the weight of the outer armour layer), but collapse when hit by a high energy shockwave, thus absorbing much of the impact, when collapsed it would go into fluid state.
Solid: The nanites can bind into a super hard ceramic or metal like solid, this forms the outer layer of the armour, protecting the foam and deflecting small arms fire and other environmental hazards.

How the armour reacts:
When the armour is hit by a high energy projectile the outer layer is smashed or crushed, the foam absorbs as much of the shock as possible and becomes fluid, depending on the extent of the damage the fluid can either refoam and resolidifiy to immediately replace the damage - or if large amounts of the nanites where physically blasted from the armour plate a simple protective layer is quickly generated, suitable for keeping out environmental hazards.
Once in safer conditions the temporary protective layer goes into fluid mode, and more nanite fluid is pumped to the damaged location, at which point the original shape and structure of the armour is restored.

The outer layer would resist heat, and the foam would provide a degree of insulation, a high energy laser could melt the armour, but the way the armour could quickly regenerate, provided the internals aren’t damaged too badly.

Control:
Think of the armour layer as a shell, inside is the "body" of the vehicle or ship, on the outside of the body are electrodes that can generate electromagnetic fields, when properly stimulated by the field the nanites will change shape, thus ultimately a computer controls all the nanites. This does mean if the computer can be hacked the armour can be disabled (as in the nanite layer falls off), or an EMP may be able to fuse the armour into it's current state, making regeneration impossible.

In practice the outer layer could also protect from EMP, and if the nanites in the outer layer are damaged beyond repair, then they could simply be shed or absorbed. With proper security hacking should not be a threat, although IF the computer could be hacked, it would be possible to turn the machine against it's masters.

Worth noting I don’t really know if it’d work or not, perhaps stiff foam would not be the best structure for absorbing shock, perhaps if instead the nanites bonded to form something like a rubber honeycomb.
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Old December 6, 2002, 03:44   #16
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BTW, this foam will be surely vaporized by shock wave, as pore collapse produces _lots_ of heat unlike ordinary shock wave. It's like fuel ignition inside diesel cylinders. This heat generation is pure 100% victory, as heat equivalent for projectile energy is humble (average high-powered bullet can heat ~1kg of water by 1 C under atmospheric conditions)
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Old December 10, 2002, 01:40   #17
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Armor does not equal defense
Hmmmm, in English your "cumulative" warhead (must lose something in translation) is called a "shaped charge" warhead. The effect depends on the axial conical cavity shape of the explosive charge. (AFAIK the Nato warheads use copper for the metal film.)

About the use of rubber in armor: possibly part of the formula for Chobham armor, which is very effective at damping the shock wave/spalling effect.

As I opined in the previous Armor thread (closed due to argumentativeness by certain posters [not me ]), armor is the *last* line of defense, and defining the defensive value of a unit by its armor isn't a good model. Military units follow the maxim, "The best defense is a good offense." Shoot the other guy before he can shoot you. Force the other guy to spend his time running instead of shooting.

I also posted about new ballistic armor that uses unwoven fibers (laid down straight instead) to carry the energy away as a longitudinally transmitted shock wave (roughly perpendicular to the attacking vector). Woven Kevlar can only stop a 44 magnum pistol bullet or a .22 rimfire rifle bullet. This new kind of ballistic cloth (5-10 mm thick pad of cross-directional layers) can stop almost any small arms round. I saw footage of testing with a 12-guage shotgun (firing slugs) and a 7.62 mm rifle that would barely have bruised the skin of a living target.

Any foot soldier would love to have armor that stops rifle/MG bullets and shrapnel. Any tanker would like armor proof against shaped charge and kinetic warheads. However, anyone would rather get the drop on his enemy than have to depend on body armor to stop the enemy's fire. That means stealth, passive detection, and aiming systems. That means secure command, control, and communications at the squad level, and so on.
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Old December 10, 2002, 22:47   #18
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There is an alternative if this nanite armor doesn't work.
I have previously discussed an alloy called "Nanometal"
This armor and various other alloys and/or shielding is located in this thread: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=64685
By the way Blake I like your idea on the armor.


Oh and yes the unit would need stealth, Maneuverability, etc. But if the other unit(s) is faster or has better targeting computers. Then the defensive unit would need good armor, would it not?
-J.B.-
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Old December 11, 2002, 03:50   #19
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Thanks, it's if fact "shaped charge", but NATO seems to really love depleted uranium and uses it whenever they can, both projectile and armor.
Concerning kevlar fiber armour: yes, this thing really works, but against non-advanced bullets only. There is thingie called "resonance piercing" if I've translated correctly. _Multiple_ projectiles (like very specilal "buckshot") may create special pattern shockwave that in fact concentrates inside armor medium and creates great pressures at some depth. It's even simpler for "energy" weapons. Using special patterns (circular etc.) it's possible to punch a hole (1st in bulletproof, next in soldier) with reasonable low velocity projectiles or beam energy.
BTW, reasonable strong shockwave will simply ignore that strands as it'll simply collapse vest's internal structure and jump from thread to thread (kinda lurker).
IMO, armor is't last line of defence, but if it's passed, any unit is 95% sure dead or "wounded" and needs extensive repairs/cure. Other layers may include stealth, evasive manoeuvres, jammers, decoys, point defence. Or it may simply kill its enemy before it may strike back.
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Old December 18, 2002, 12:36   #20
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Concerning Neutronium armor, I think it's unlikely to ever be done, as neutronium is really nasty thing to handle.
1st of all, HOW you may handle it? neutrons simply ignore forces that bind ordinary matter together and pi-mesons may too. So you must punch a lot of charged particles into neutronium and they may simply run out of it.
OK, you place neutronium around you favorite tank. But neutronium must have really big surface forces so it will crush that tank into football sized junk piece. And you can't stop it from doing it by any matterial means, neutronium is simply too strong stuff.
But actual neutronium is't something like atom core, IMO. It's like _very_ hot gas bounded by neutron star gravity force. Will it survive Earth conditions or simply explode in single burst? or may be dissipate slowly... it's like "plasma armor"
At last, you are able to somehow stop neutronium both from crushing your tank and from decomposition. OK. Enemy fires energy weapon, beam strucks neutronium and generates _REALLY_ big shock wave. It's so heavy so energy density will be enormous, and pressure too. Heavy "vaporized" neutronium cloud strike deeper layers and cuts it like butter (in fact, much better).
So I think that neutronium armor must be either _pure_ fantasy, not "sci-" or _VERY_ high tech gadget, something between Types II and III.
On other hand, neutronium may be used for "unstopable" projectile weapon, or crossbreed of projectile and energy weapons...
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Old December 18, 2002, 14:47   #21
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Yup, I agree that neutronium sounds more like a high tech projectile or weapon (much like antimatter discussed in another thread) than armor.
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Old December 20, 2002, 02:29   #22
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targon, multiple-projectiles must hit simultaneously for the effect you've described. I've no doubt that test-bench results are good, but I expect field conditions would eliminate simultaneity and negate the effect. For the other case I suppose that "reasonably strong shockwave" is high enough to put the projectile out of the small arms category, which makes the matter moot. Make the projectile big enough and you can kill a man with momentum impulse.

Jeremy, tactics far outweighs passive factors such as armor and weapon effectiveness. Even then, production can outweigh either.

In the "Great Patriotic War" (as targon would call it) the Germans were slow to upgrade the Pzkw III design and had no advance intelligence on the T-34. The T-34's 85mm gun made short work of Pzkw III and early IV armor, and was itself nearly proof against the short 75mm gun.

At first it was a bloodbath, with ~4 Panzers killed for each T-34 killed. Then German squad training and radios enabled them to hide behind terrain and use spotters to surprise T-34s at close range (~100m). It still took a handful of Panzers to kill a T-34, bombarding its sides and rear until a shot penetrated. The kill ratio swung to the Panzer's favor.

The Pzkw IV [D variant, IIRC] soon sported a long 75mm gun and more armor, achieving parity with the T-34. Pzkw V and VI were superior in both departments. The kill ratio of the Panzers climbed higher, yet the sheer number of T-34s kept victory at out of reach (over 30,000 produced).

[Thanks to the History channel show for details I'd forgotten or never known.]
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Old December 20, 2002, 03:06   #23
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Neutronium would be considered a different state of matter, just as plasma is a state of matter defined separately from gas or liquid. Plasma is a "fluid" whereas neutronium is a solid. Nuclei stripped of electrons are somehow linked via the Strong Nuclear force instead of electron orbitals and Weak force. The electrons then skate over the surfaces of the neuclear layer.

The problem, as you stated, is the gigantic density. A single layer could be heavier than the most implausible thickness of conventional armor. While the layer itself would be of surpassing strength it must still be bonded by lesser forces to normal matter, which then becomes its weakness. An attack would be more likely to disrupt that bond, sending an impossibly thin (ie: sharp) superdense material flying about. Slice and dice…
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Old December 23, 2002, 08:31   #24
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Among other things, German tanks were impaired by their "unstoppable advance" tactics, with mighty armor columns slicing enemy defence with overhelming concentration of firepower. They were _excellent_ armoured at front but weak form sides and especialy rear (as no living thing
simply can't be here). But T-37 managed to break...
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Old December 23, 2002, 11:25   #25
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Shielding
Recently, I've found some weak possibility of space ship shielding. I know this stuff for a while, but this way of "utilization" was somewhat obscure for me.
Just create thick layer of plasma (not especialy hot or dense) around ship and maintain it somehow (this is most tricky part). Then beam of charged particles hits that plasma, some interesing things occur... hard to explain without dozen pages of math... there is thingie called "beam instability" preventing beams of charged particles (esp. electrons) from traversing plasma for free. Under some conditions light beams are also affected.
Pros: plasma block low-freq (lower than plasma freq) waves, fun for communications. Also forgot about stealth, that plasma will radiate at some waves like mad.
This it still very faint possibility, I need some time to blow away some dust frome my old Plasma Physics copybooks. And some time to estimate this situation.
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Old December 25, 2002, 03:53   #26
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Quote:
Originally posted by Straybow
I've no doubt that test-bench results are good, but I expect field conditions would eliminate simultaneity and negate the effect.
In fact, this thing works in places other than test-bench. That's why "ball" warheads are so effective (even against kevlar). And unsimultaneity fears are completely irrelevant for "energy" beams. That kind of weapons may really benifit form beam patterns other than classic TEM_00, I may show you math if you have any doubts.
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Old December 26, 2002, 17:34   #27
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playability vs. scientific accuracy

hmmm...

I know my choice (though not for neutronium... that's just stupid).
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Old December 28, 2002, 21:31   #28
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Do we really need everything in StP exactly scientific?
All other Scifi related games and/or stories have unrealistic things in them. So therefore we dont need to have a working Idea. Just try to make it make sense then slap it together pretending it actually works. We aren't trying to develop it just make a game. The development work would go alot smoother.
well thats my recent view on this.
-J.B.-
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Old December 29, 2002, 09:56   #29
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It's science fiction.
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Old December 30, 2002, 07:23   #30
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JB,
You see, StP can't be strictly scientific anyway, providing it will related to some kind of interstellar flight via FTL. Inrodusing FTL means we really broke some nature laws and may carry on. But why we need to break laws that can be actualy preserved? And, among other things, any theory may confilict with known laws and still be valuable (as some leap in the future, like universe inflation theory) but it can't be _internaly_ discrepant.
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