206 replies to this topic

[Wecx]

Alek Ituin, on 09 October 2016 - 08:20 PM, said:

1 - Since we're not on a Lunar installation, the coils on a coilgun cannot be spaced far enough apart to prevent problematic field interaction, not to mention the issues with degaussing the coils when either shutting them down or swapping polarities. Making a round designed to interact as much as possible with the fields increases the chance of the round actually being impeded by physical constraints of the gun mechanisms. Thus a balance must be struck between the length and width of the round; not so wide as to induce obscene drag, not to long as to be impractical within a compact coilgun assembly. Ogive shaped projectiles are also the closest one can reasonably get to achieving the optimal aerodynamic form, while providing a good cross section and frontal area with which to deform on impact.

2 - Breaking up on impact is ideal for a kinetic weapon that relies on imparting kinetic energy on target, especially when that target uses ablative armor. You're simply not understanding the purpose of a hyper-velocity accelerator weapon. It's not to punch a hole through the target, it's to smash a crater in to it... then punch a hole through what's left. You're imparting the literally explosive kinetic energy of the round in to the target to cause damage. It's like the "Rods from God" idea for Kinetic Orbital Bombardment systems, but for vehicles.

3 - Heat is literally everything for a hyper-velocity round. The hotter the round gets, the weaker the round gets. And at hyper-velocity, vaporization and oxygen corrosion becomes serious problems. Not to useful to fire a dense slug if half of it is splattered all over the terrain as the round travels to the target. You need it to remain in one piece until it actually hits the target, or else it's pretty useless... Unless you want a shotgun that fires molten metal chunks at several times the speed of sound.

4 - Tungsten is indeed an impressive material, but a nickel-iron alloy such as Invar can surpass its low thermal expansion coefficient, and with the addition of trace elements such as silicon or chromium, you can get superalloys far surpassing the thermal resistance of tungsten. All while remaining highly ductile and easily deformed on impact... Perfect for a weapon designed to smash targets with kinetic projectiles.

5 - It uses a sabot around the shell, yes... and that's about all you got right. Railguns exploit electromagnetism by turning the non-magnetic yet conductive rails, sabots, and shell in to a giant electromagnet by running a current up one rail and down the other. At no point are their dedicated electromagnets anywhere within the barrel assembly. This has several practical advantages, and several major disadvantages. Advantages being no need to worry about degaussing since it's basically a single "coil", less fiddly s**t and maintenance of multiple coil assemblies, and no need to worry about coil timing. Downsides being the rails get chunks disintegrated by plasma arcs every time you fire, reducing their effectiveness each shot; the ammunition is downright inconvenient with the sabots, and replacing the rails is an absolute pain. Oh, and they're brutally inefficient when scaled down.

Railguns aren't some fantastic "real engineer" solution to those silly sci-fi coilguns. They're actually a s**tty, underpowered, inefficient weapon that requires years more R&D in to power sources, capacitors, and general materials science before having a chance of becoming useful. And if we're being honest here, the Sci-fi engineers got it right, coilguns are infinitely superior to railguns when scaled down (yes the Gauss is a coilgun).



"muh military training" is not an argument. Nor is that link, it explains nothing and basically says "hurr hurr DU self-sharpens". Super useful, much information.

Both DU and TC rounds undergo mushrooming upon impact, with the formation of adiabatic shear bands causing the penetrator to shear off the "mushroom" as it continues further in to the target. This resultant loss of material causes BOTH DU and TC rounds to become thinner as more armor is penetrated. There is no "sharpening" action, nothing becomes sharper as the round penetrates, and the end result is only a semi-molten chunk of dense metal of a lower diameter than the initial penetrator.

How does it prove nothing? i said it that DU APFSDS Self-sharpens and it proves me right, you said and i quote

"There is no "sharpening" action, nothing becomes sharper as the round penetrates"

I quote my link

Artist depiction shows why a DU penetrator, which
sharpens itself as it moves through armor, is much
more effective than tungsten, which becomes blunt.

]Sharpens while moving through armor.

"Since the flechette gets thinner, it retains higher penetration for longer, which i suppose leads to the misconeption of the "self-sharpening tip"

Here you say there is a misconception that it self sharpens, but in my link it says that DE is self sharping.

How does my link prove nothing? it proves everything.

Military training is an argument, i am an expert on the topic.
Read again
http://www.globalsec...unitions/du.htm

It says it self-sharpens just like i explained,

Edited by Wecx, 09 October 2016 - 08:30 PM.

[Dirus Nigh]

FupDup, on 08 October 2016 - 07:44 PM, said:

Probably.

I give him a free pass because of his humor and fourth-wall breaking.

Lobo did it first.

[Alek Ituin]

Wecx, on 09 October 2016 - 08:27 PM, said:

How does it prove nothing? i said it that DU APFSDS Self-sharpens and it proves me right, you said and i quote

"There is no "sharpening" action, nothing becomes sharper as the round penetrates"

(I Know this i explained to you it sharpens while in flight)

"Since the flechette gets thinner, it retains higher penetration for longer, which i suppose leads to the misconeption of the "self-sharpening tip"

Here you say there is a misconception that it self sharpens, but in my link it says that DE is self sharping.

How does my link prove nothing? it proves everything.

Military training is an argument, i am an expert on the topic.
Read again
http://www.globalsec...unitions/du.htm

It says it self-sharpens just like i explained,

"It self sharpens in flight"

Immediately shoots down

"I'm an expert on the topic"

Coincidentally, my friend who is an actual M1A2 crewman, also agrees that you are not in fact an expert on this topic.


Your silly little link explains NOTHING. Nor does it support your laughable supposition that the M829 somehow "sharpens" in flight. Frankly, that'd be absolutely re*arded. But lets examine that link, shall we? This is the ONLY time self-sharpening is mentioned:

"When they strike a target, tungsten penetrators blunt while DU has a self-sharpening property."

Aaaaaaaaaand that's it. No further description, no further extrapolation, nothing. Doesn't even bother going in to the terminal ballistics of the round and why it might do such a thing. Nope, it just says "it self-sharpens", end of story.

EDIT: An oft-quoted study that would prove my point is proving disconcertingly difficult to find. Give me a moment, I've found papers considered mythical before, this shouldn't take long.

Edited by Alek Ituin, 09 October 2016 - 08:41 PM.

[Anjian]

Yeonne Greene, on 09 October 2016 - 07:31 PM, said:

That's...not at all how the railgun works.

A railgun simply requires a conductive piece to bridge the charged rails. There are no magnets involved here, not in the sense you are using the term, just very high current. The pieces wrapped around the projectile (which is a fin-stabilized rod) are that conductive armature, nothing more.

Sorry but you got it all wrong.

A railgun turns electricity into force. Its basically works like a linear motor. For that to happen, the tube must be creating alternating and oscillating magnetic forces, basically wire wound around a ferrite core. Likewise, the shell must either be magnetized, or magnetized through electrical coils looped around a ferrite core.

[Alek Ituin]

Anjian, on 09 October 2016 - 08:48 PM, said:

Sorry but you got it all wrong.

A railgun turns electricity into force. Its basically works like a linear motor. For that to happen, the tube must be creating alternating and oscillating magnetic forces, basically wire wound around a ferrite core. Likewise, the shell must either be magnetized, or magnetized through electrical coils looped around a ferrite core.

What a fascinating lack of external electromagnets and/or wire coils...

[Shiroi Tsuki]

Wecx, on 09 October 2016 - 02:08 PM, said:

Your not correct, I used to be a Armor Crewmen in an M1A1, we only used Heat Rounds on Lightly armored targets because our APFSDS would go right through. An example would be a time we shot an APFSDS at a light truck and it just went right through, Also using an APFSDS on APCS does the same thing. And your kind of right about the Helicopter thing but wrong,M830 is the HEAT Round and the round used against Helicopters is the MPAT or M830A1, Basically you take a HEAT Round and twist the top to set a timed fuse, doesn't have anything to do with higher velocity. Your completely wrong about old tank rounds being better, they were made out of crappy tungsten and would Mushroom our new rounds use depleted uranium.

I was reading the manual for M1 Abram's crews (I believe it was the TC's) I remember reading that the TC's .50 is best suited for aircraft followed by the Loader's 240.

[Y E O N N E]

Anjian, on 09 October 2016 - 08:48 PM, said:

Sorry but you got it all wrong.

A railgun turns electricity into force. Its basically works like a linear motor. For that to happen, the tube must be creating alternating and oscillating magnetic forces, basically wire wound around a ferrite core. Likewise, the shell must either be magnetized, or magnetized through electrical coils looped around a ferrite core.

I don't have it all wrong, and that's not accurate.

The rails are generating magnetic fields perpendicular to the current's direction of travel purely due to the amount of current running through them and the right-hand rule. It is direct current, with no alternating. Because the current is travelling in opposite directions along the two rails, the resulting magnetic fields basically turn into each other, which makes the rails and armature want to fly apart due to the Lorentz force. The rails can't fly apart, but the armature can, and so it does.

At no point do you need to create any coils or use anything that is ferrous; since the magnetic fields being induced are done via the high-current brute-force method, it is merely enough that it be conductive.

It is precisely because rail-guns work with high current that they are so inefficient. Hooray for Joule's First Law!

[Aggravated Assault Mech]

razenWing, on 08 October 2016 - 10:01 PM, said:

Again, if you are going to do meaningful comparison, you can't take video game values vs real world values. The range/speed limitation in the video game is only because we as gamers, have a chance to do anything. If they inserted real world values? None of us would actually see one another due to all of us engaging from like 4-5 km out. That's just asinine in gameplay

Take for instance, any Call of Duty/Battlefield games. Are they a realistic equivalent of real life military? Hell no!

So in doing these debates, it's meaningless to take what you see on screen vs the concept of what they are supposed to do. As for high altitude bombing, that's the whole point of AMS, correct? Again, have to assume because 1000 years of anti-electronic warfare, our lock-on system would be mostly ineffective. A more meaningful discussion is why space future human don't use high altitude bombing with space weapons?

But truthfully, I think they do. Btech universe is a lot more indepth than 24 people brawling with battlemechs. You don't airdrop M-1 to battlefields and expect it to kick butt. You clear airspace, you send infantry escrort, you setup SAM site. If you are going to compare "let's use the entire US military against 1 battlemech," then should a more fair comparison be "the entire US military vs an entire Davion battle division?"

Battlemechs are probably always deployed after airspace cleared by future space fighters with sides setting up Naval lasers. If you remember those... they one-shot dropships in orbit. I say that's about as good of anti-air battery as the entire modern WORLD arsenal put together. Also if you remember the opening cinematics of Mechwarrior 3, the Allied battlemechs are flanked by vehicular units and infantries. So, SEAL/marines would be fighting future men with space guns that's pretty much point and click adventure.

As for weight, again, just have to assume unobtainium. Otherwise, a Direwolf using just slabs of metal would probably weigh 500 tons... and that's just dumb and not impressive sounding.

You're not talking about Battletech then.. mechs shoot at one another almost entirely from within 1km. This is referred to in-game, in explanations of tabletop rules, and in fiction. The "real world" distance of one hex is what.. 90m? This isn't a product of "unobtanium armor", otherwise mechs would be able to erase squads of regular infantry (which also exist in battletech) from 1km+ with an AC20, just like how the Soviets used 152mm assault guns during WW2. Aerospace fighters and vehicles likewise fill only minor roles in BT lore, for little reason other than "mechs da best" written into the rules- through-armor crits and pilot skill rolls etc.

This "1000 years of anti-electronic warfare" is likewise just fanboy handwaving that doesn't exist in any supporting media of mechwarrior or battletech, except where it is referenced in specific contexts ie: stealth armor or ECM. The very fact that "ECM" is a thing itself suggests that radar is still the preeminent form of detection and targetting after 1050 years vs. optical/thermal/LIDAR.. which we could of course use to hit Battlemechs using even 1970s SACLOS missiles... nevermind a modern GPS-guided bomb or laser-guided missile.

Further evidence that mech weaponry is only slightly more advanced than our own is the fact that they were able to "lose" the ability to produce super-mega-advanced technology like cannister shot. They're still piloted by actual pilots, using actual mk.1 eyeball through armored glass like it's 1939 (except in the case of protomechs), rather than remote control or remote optics, which would be a given for contemporary technology. If AMS is as ****** as every other aspect of Btech technology, hitting a guided bomb would be somewhere between "extremely unlikely" to "impossible", which is supported by the fact that it doesn't work vs. ballistic weapons, artillery etc. which all fall into a similar category.

The ONLY logical conclusion you can make is that Battletech is governed by the "rule of cool" to make a sick boardgame, just as much as Warhammer 40k (This should be obvious?).

Why bother making these logical leaps to rationalize them winning? Obviously armored knights aren't going to beat a combined force of 100 000+ people waging war by spreadsheets, nor an insurgency that picks them apart with xbox huge IEDs/carbombs/assassinations.. which are all things in Btech canon as well.

[Anjian]

Alek Ituin, on 09 October 2016 - 08:54 PM, said:

What a fascinating lack of external electromagnets and/or wire coils...

I think you need to read your basic science books.

A rail itself would not be producing sufficient magnetic forces if it wasn't constructed by having coils wound around a ferrite core. By coiling you greatly increase the length of the electron travel several times.

Your infographic refers to armatures and you know what an armature looks like?




That looks like coils wound around a ferrite core.

Edited by Anjian, 09 October 2016 - 09:30 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

Anjian, on 09 October 2016 - 09:17 PM, said:

I think you need to read your basic science books.

A rail itself would not be producing alternating magnetic forces if it wasn't constructed by having coils wound around a ferrite core.

Your infographic refers to armatures and you know what an armature looks like?




That looks like coils wound around a ferrite core.

The armature, in the case of the Navy's current railgun, looks like this:



It's just a conductive sabot that holds the projectile and rides the rails. That's it.

Edited by Yeonne Greene, 09 October 2016 - 09:21 PM.

[Alek Ituin]

Anjian, on 09 October 2016 - 09:17 PM, said:

I think you need to read your basic science books.

A rail itself would not be producing magnetic forces if it wasn't constructed by having coils wound around a ferrite core.

Your infographic refers to armatures and you know what an armature looks like?

That looks like coils wound around a ferrite core.

This is just sad now.

The armatures are simply conductive rails. They are not made of nor contain wire coils. You pump current in one rail and out the other, creating an induced magnetic field around both rails. Lorentz force takes care of the rest... namely the whole "accelerating a projectile" thing.

[Jack Booted Thug]

Mcgral18, on 08 October 2016 - 09:59 AM, said:

But what if Mech armour is super protective and stuff, making our conventional weapons worthless!


Either they wreck, or get rekt. There's not much inbetween.

So we're back to issues with the match maker again are we?

[RestosIII]

Why are we debating railguns/gauss rifles and the scientific basis for them when the mechs that mount them in the Battletech IP that somehow have shorter range with LASERS than people IRL have shot people with a hand held sniper rifle?

[Y E O N N E]

RestosIII, on 09 October 2016 - 09:34 PM, said:

Why are we debating railguns/gauss rifles and the scientific basis for them when the mechs that mount them in the Battletech IP that somehow have shorter range with LASERS than people IRL have shot people with a hand held sniper rifle?

It's not a debate, it's an educational slaughter.

[Anjian]

Sigh.

Look closely what is next or behind the rails.

[RestosIII]

Yeonne Greene, on 09 October 2016 - 09:34 PM, said:

It's not a debate, it's an educational slaughter.

Same thing when I'm half asleep. Carry on if you truly believe educating someone on an internet forum will actually work.

[Snowbluff]

Wecx, on 09 October 2016 - 08:27 PM, said:

Military training is an argument, i am an expert on the topic.
Read again
http://www.globalsec...unitions/du.htm

I'm not questioning your expertise, but I think you're underestimating the rest of us. As I pointed out, hard core rounds, chobham amor, and stuff like that are common knowledge to nerds who play stompy robit games.

RestosIII, on 09 October 2016 - 09:34 PM, said:

Why are we debating railguns/gauss rifles and the scientific basis for them when the mechs that mount them in the Battletech IP that somehow have shorter range with LASERS than people IRL have shot people with a hand held sniper rifle?

It's because I'm trying to make a good model for how much damage a gauss rifle (not a rail gun) does for the purposes of guessing the toughness of the battlemech armor. It's a crude abstraction, but since we don't have much to work with for the purpose of comparison, there we go.

EDIT: For example, those short range laser might have that kind of effective range against battlemechs, due to how resilient the robots are, so we don't have much information to work with.

Edited by Snowbluff, 09 October 2016 - 09:49 PM.

[RestosIII]

Snowbluff, on 09 October 2016 - 09:47 PM, said:

I'm not questioning your expertise, but I think you're underestimating the rest of us. As I pointed out, hard core rounds, chobham amor, and stuff like that are common knowledge to nerds who play stompy robit games.


It's because I'm trying to make a good model for how much damage a gauss rifle (not a rail gun) does for the purposes of guessing the toughness of the battlemech armor. It's a crude abstraction, but since we don't have much to work with for the purpose of comparison, there we go.

Okay, you can't use that gif without linking the original scene. That scene is too good to be left out. I'm sorry.



Now go back to debating stuff that I'm too tired to understand.

[Snowbluff]

RestosIII, on 09 October 2016 - 09:49 PM, said:

Okay, you can't use that gif without linking the original scene. That scene is too good to be left out. I'm sorry.

I love that anime. I watched the clip for the laughs, but the ironic use of the end tune caught me off guard. :')

Quote

Now go back to debating stuff that I'm too tired to understand.

What I'm doing isn't too complicated. If you want I can offer a simple explanation. :0

[RestosIII]

Snowbluff, on 09 October 2016 - 09:54 PM, said:

I love that anime. I watched the clip for the laughs, but the ironic use of the end tune caught me off guard. :')

What I'm doing isn't too complicated. If you want I can offer a simple explanation. :0

If it wasn't 2 AM after a day of staring at a man's classic car collection, I'd be able to tell what you guys were talking about. But I can't because I did. So I'm just here looking at the forums barely registering what people are posting while also watching stuff like this.