950 replies to this topic

[dal10]

actually, it is possible to have an armor composite that would be unsuitable for ammunition (ammunition would require more tensile strength while armor could be based on shear strength. this is why you don't see ammunition based on chobaum armor.)

as for the long energy storage, it is possible that they reached some max storage density point. which is why you might have multi-ton capacitors for the weapons. the gauss rifle might use multiple capacitors to store all the charge. if it uses 100, then all of a sudden you only have 2.5 million joules, if it uses 1000 (which might literally weight a ton or 2 or more when combined) you would only have 250k joule storage capacity. even if it only uses one, if would weight more than those infantry suits you keep talking about.

as for the armor, have you ever thought about that there might be a minimum size that armor can effectively put on? think about it, lets say that armor can have a minimum thickness of 5 inches before it effectively can't be put on. can you imagine trying to move around in a suit that is up to twice the size of a human with 5 inch armor plating covering it? it would be so unwieldy, if it could move at all, that it would be unusable. (line of thinking comes from ferro-carbie and ferro-aluminum armor that is used on warships and can not effectively be used on anything smaller than a dropship)

Edited by dal10, 18 April 2013 - 07:27 AM.

[Melcyna]

That's a reasonable concern yes...

but unfortunately BT stumbled badly there

you see they made the image of the armor sections and thickness... not only was the armor illogically thin, their description of it's mechanism was primitive and nonsensical as it defy the very condition required for the mechanism to work (ie: ablating).

based on their diagram of the armor, it most certainly will fit on the power armor with ease, the other thing is that we know from their illogical mech design and how they armored each of it's part including the tiny and sometimes super thin piece that it can't be of any great thickness...

for example if we assume 5 inches of armor as minimum thickness.. then how much material is left on a Timberwolf arm beneath the armor covering it?

answer: not much at all... considering the arms are already starvingly thin to start with.

So in their attempt perhaps to avoid the obviously illogical mech design of theirs that would make questions like, how on earth do things fit into those if the armor is thick... they describe the armor as very thin, very light, etc...

That's what BT is, a soft sci fi, and like all soft sci fi it's full of inconsistency, and when they try to fix one inconsistency, they naturally stumble, and create another inconsistency... but that's why soft sci fi is entertaining for some of us, we get to pick them apart, one inconsistency at a time...

OH, incidentally? BT do have power armors... both IS and Clan (ie: elementals and the IS equivalent), but yep... their usage of them? ludicrous and their armor is INCONSISTENT as all hell, and they also have power armor in smaller scale too, you read them from time to time in the novel used by their commandos, etc...

The funniest had to be the novel in which a squad of elementals were killed by militias... in it, one of the elemental was penetrated by a bolt fired from a launcher jury rigged out of a car suspension.

so apparently... this elemental ARMOR (which is similar to battlemech armor) that can withstand direct hit from battlemech laser weaponries measuring in multi hundred MJ, can be penetrated by a makeshift catapult made of suspension spring.

I closed the novel book after that and threw it into the rubbish bin..

(note: the armor point is a valid one, however the chobham armor part is off tangent,

chobham armor is intended to defeat HEAT and kinetic energy penetrator, but to defeat kinetic penetrator more effectively abrams for example is further armored with DU armor layer as a supplement to the chobham armor showcasing that the chobham is of limited effectiveness on it's own against kinetic energy penetrator.

we don't use chobham as a kinetic projectile material since the armor isn't really intended to stop just kinetic projectile as it's primary goal in the first place and thus density isn't really the best property and strength of the armor.

on the other hand, we do use both tungsten and DU as kinetic energy penetrator AND armor as the materials are both very dense and very hard, and naturally when it comes to kinetic energy weapon or armor, we seek precisely those 2 qualities above most other things)

Edited by Melcyna, 18 April 2013 - 11:57 AM.

[dal10]

clan elemental armor can not survive a large laser hit, and medium's hurt them pretty bad. there is wobbie battle armor than can survive a direct gauss hit. but that is just beyond the realm of possibility for me.

the chobaum piece was literally just as a counterpoint to your if this armor is so great, why not just make ammunition out of it point.

[Melcyna]

As i said in that last part... Chobham is intended to stop both HEAT warhead and KE penetrator
however they are not in fact very effective against KE penetrator directly on it's own, HEAT warheads by virtue of it's mechanism means that it can be defeated via other means than just thickness or at least severely degraded in performance... which is basically what Chobham is intended to defeat.

this is why Abrams and Challenger BOTH have extra armor layer to stop KE penetrator more effectively,
on abrams this is made of DU armor layer, on challenger 2 this is made of tungsten

ie: we don't throw projectiles made of chobham since chobham weren't very good at defeating KE penetrator in the first place.

And guess what penetrator for KE projectiles are made of these days

yep... DU or Tungsten... the european naturally being quite averse to DU prefer the tungsten.

(though to be more accurate, the DU and tungsten armor layer is technically part of the chobham armor package overall in those tanks, the entire sandwich of ceramic, and DU/tungsten layer, and whatever filler or backing material makes up the composition of the chobham armor [the 1st model equipped with chobham armor didn't have the DU layer though], so in a way we ARE throwing chobham armor as projectiles... we just happen to be only throwing the part most effective against KE projectile)

When it comes to KE weapons, the principles hold true in general... whatever material is good for KE armor? will make excellent KE penetrator in turn, and when you want to stop one and have no better ways? you use the same material as the KE penetrator but in larger mass and thickness, thickness improvement here achieved through any way possible... angling the layer being one way to do so.

And with regard to elementals whether it is beyond realm of possibility or not is pretty much a moot point by now, since we ALL know they are nonsensical really, but it just showcase the problem with BT consistency in general... or rather, their lack of one.

Edited by Melcyna, 18 April 2013 - 12:44 PM.

[Just wanna play]

Melcyna, on 17 April 2013 - 11:08 PM, said:

Failure on comprehension

read the statement again,
what i stated is that if BT has all the energy weapons it has... it MUST have working capacitors capable of powering the system

if so, it KNOWS how to make a energy storage device sufficient to power the power armor when considering the size of the weapons, and the energy these weapons output, and given the involved miniaturization on them, it obviously has reached the point where it has enough energy storage density to store enough power for a power armor.

this is all in context with BT supposed level of tech
in short: based on what BT has, they most definitely have energy storage sufficient for power armor energy consumption, doubly so considering BT have a strange material weight and density and the ludicrous amount of energy they regularly handle.

incidentally, no one in the right mind uses high magnesium content for military vehicle parts likely to be exposed to hostile fire... for obvious reason... for a ground combat vehicle like a tank that is expected to receive heavy incoming fire on an exposed part to use high magnesium content alloy on such part... that takes guts...or plain suicidal mindset.

for the record, capacitors are only used in the guass and MAYBE the ppcs, they wouldn't be used in powering anything, as someone else said, they only give a short, nearly instant burst of energy, and also, guass rifles should be REALLY, REALLY, powerful but slow shooting in this game, while producing A LOT of heat, but oddly they aren't like real ones...

and its not a high concentration of magnesium, just an alloy containing it, its just enough to make the tracks light, kinda like the stuff in race car wheels, they are magnesium, but they don't actually burn easily when there is a fire or something

yeah i did read your statement a tiny bit incorrectly, i was a little tired when reading what you said....

[Melcyna]

Just wanna play, on 18 April 2013 - 05:33 PM, said:

for the record, capacitors are only used in the guass and MAYBE the ppcs, they wouldn't be used in powering anything, as someone else said, they only give a short, nearly instant burst of energy, and also, guass rifles should be REALLY, REALLY, powerful but slow shooting in this game, while producing A LOT of heat, but oddly they aren't like real ones...

and its not a high concentration of magnesium, just an alloy containing it, its just enough to make the tracks light, kinda like the stuff in race car wheels, they are magnesium, but they don't actually burn easily when there is a fire or something

yeah i did read your statement a tiny bit incorrectly, i was a little tired when reading what you said....

From their description, Gauss rifle have capacitors indeed powering the mechanism

function wise however, it's virtually mandatory for their PPC and lasers to both have it as both fires their energy discharge in one very short burst

note that unlike in MWO or say MW3, 4 etc... the lore description of BT lasers describes them to be practically instant, a laser essentially appearing for mere moment and dumping pretty much all of it's energy before most ppl can react to it. And given how the weapon cycling works in both PPC and laser, it's very likely that they are dumping the power via capacitor and recharging it while cycling since otherwise nothing stops the laser from continuously firing until the system overheated.

And this exception occurred in MW3 where pulse lasers can be fired indefinitely until it overheated, so as you can probably guess... there are plenty of inconsistency overall on the representation and how they are supposed to be.

Note however that the gauss rifle description you mentioned is incorrect, real gauss gun we have produces only nominal heat in general, most of it coming from the process of switching the electromagnet along the barrel length, and minimal barrel wear but in an ideal gauss gun there's virtually no contact between the projectile and the barrel and thus very little heat overall with no friction..

What you described is the railgun, which is VERY different to gauss gun, unlike gauss gun, railguns do have contact between projectile and barrel assembly (mandatory in fact as the projectile or part of it must complete the electric circuit conduit), and do not have electromagnet assembly along it's barrel but conductor rails instead channeling massive current through... both of which results in massive heat and often massive barrel wear likely necessitating replacement in short order. Technically aside of those issues, and the time it takes to charge the capacitor before dumping the energy, you can fire either railgun or gauss gun as fast as you can load the next shell in.

So in this particular case they are technically correct assuming this is some sort of an ideal gauss gun

Incidentally, can i get a clarification on the tank track? so the track shoe body is made of an aluminum alloy? (where magnesium is often used), the manufacturer of the track shoe T156 for M1 abrams mentioned it's a steel construction.

[Just wanna play]

Melcyna, on 18 April 2013 - 09:05 PM, said:

From their description, Gauss rifle have capacitors indeed powering the mechanism

function wise however, it's virtually mandatory for their PPC and lasers to both have it as both fires their energy discharge in one very short burst

note that unlike in MWO or say MW3, 4 etc... the lore description of BT lasers describes them to be practically instant, a laser essentially appearing for mere moment and dumping pretty much all of it's energy before most ppl can react to it. And given how the weapon cycling works in both PPC and laser, it's very likely that they are dumping the power via capacitor and recharging it while cycling since otherwise nothing stops the laser from continuously firing until the system overheated.

And this exception occurred in MW3 where pulse lasers can be fired indefinitely until it overheated, so as you can probably guess... there are plenty of inconsistency overall on the representation and how they are supposed to be.

Note however that the gauss rifle description you mentioned is incorrect, real gauss gun we have produces only nominal heat in general, most of it coming from the process of switching the electromagnet along the barrel length, and minimal barrel wear but in an ideal gauss gun there's virtually no contact between the projectile and the barrel and thus very little heat overall with no friction..

What you described is the railgun, which is VERY different to gauss gun, unlike gauss gun, railguns do have contact between projectile and barrel assembly (mandatory in fact as the projectile or part of it must complete the electric circuit conduit), and do not have electromagnet assembly along it's barrel but conductor rails instead channeling massive current through... both of which results in massive heat and often massive barrel wear likely necessitating replacement in short order. Technically aside of those issues, and the time it takes to charge the capacitor before dumping the energy, you can fire either railgun or gauss gun as fast as you can load the next shell in.

So in this particular case they are technically correct assuming this is some sort of an ideal gauss gun

Incidentally, can i get a clarification on the tank track? so the track shoe body is made of an aluminum alloy? (where magnesium is often used), the manufacturer of the track shoe T156 for M1 abrams mentioned it's a steel construction.

idk exactly, i just know there is some magnesium, might have been an older model, but some abrams did have it

ands kids make guass rifles for science fair, iv seen them

[Melcyna]

Gauss gun is fairly simple in construction really if someone just wants to make a primitive one, we often used disposable camera flash capacitor back in the college days, unlike railgun, gauss gun is also relatively resistant to damage in novice model attempt...

The difficult part is in making a good efficient one, as that requires well thought electromagnet arrangement on the barrel (if you want to make them efficient you have to do fair amount of work calculating which electromagnet to trigger at which point during the firing sequence and for how long), and also the switch mechanism that has to switch electromagnet on and off along the barrel assembly, if efficiency is not particularly a concern and you just want to fling metallic projectile at some low speed you can make one in a few hours.

It's a good project and hobby incidentally, and it'll teach the fundamental parts of gauss gun and why gauss gun and railgun are COMPLETELY different, especially if you try to build a railgun next...

Spoiler

I know abrams uses aluminium alloy road wheels... those probably do have some small amount of magnesium content to strengthen it.

but the track itself, or rather the shoes body (at least T156 model) to the best of my knowledge were steel, what composition exactly i am not certain though given what other tanks normally use i'd hazard a guess that it's manganese steel since they are commonly used for such application due to their property, if this information is no longer up to date and accurate then i'd appreciate a source so i can update my record.

edit: now that i think about it, are you sure you didn't mistaken manganese for magnesium? because now i remember a fair number of ppl who made that mistake in the past when we mentioned that the track of some tanks were made of manganese steel.

just for the record, there is no magnesium steel

Edited by Melcyna, 19 April 2013 - 08:27 AM.

[Krzysztof z Bagien]

AFAIK magnesium is not used in any alloy steel. You might have confused it with manganese, which is in fact used to make steel tougher.
Magnesium is used in light alloys, with lithium for example. They are used in aircrafts and space vehicules, where low weight is the most important factor. They are of course much more expensive than steels, so I don't think anyone would use them to make part of a tank that is such easily destroyed like a track (not to mention that tracks don't have to be that light actually).

Edit: I didn't notice last Melcyna's spoiler

Edited by Krzysztof z Bagien, 19 April 2013 - 11:04 AM.

[Just wanna play]

Krzysztof z Bagien, on 19 April 2013 - 11:00 AM, said:

AFAIK magnesium is not used in any alloy steel. You might have confused it with manganese, which is in fact used to make steel tougher.
Magnesium is used in light alloys, with lithium for example. They are used in aircrafts and space vehicules, where low weight is the most important factor. They are of course much more expensive than steels, so I don't think anyone would use them to make part of a tank that is such easily destroyed like a track (not to mention that tracks don't have to be that light actually).

Edit: I didn't notice last Melcyna's spoiler

the don't "have" to light, but you would def want them to be to help make the tank as fast as possible

it might have been British tanks with magnesium in their treads

yeah i might have gotten manganese and magnesium mixed up, i got that info a while ago, couldn't remember for sure

[Krzysztof z Bagien]

You know, each track can weigh more than two tons. Even if you manage to cut it by half, that would only give you about 2 tons total and you don't want to do it at the cost of durability.
Just for reference: Abrams overall weight is over 60t and it takes more than 1.5t of fuel, and about 800kg of ammo for main gun (so 2t is not much of a difference).

[Just wanna play]

Krzysztof z Bagien, on 19 April 2013 - 12:20 PM, said:

You know, each track can weigh more than two tons. Even if you manage to cut it by half, that would only give you about 2 tons total and you don't want to do it at the cost of durability.
Just for reference: Abrams overall weight is over 60t and it takes more than 1.5t of fuel, and about 800kg of ammo for main gun (so 2t is not much of a difference).

i don't see your point, and keep in mind its still 2 tons of unsprung weight, cars weighing 2 tons are greatly affected by their tires losing 40 lb, im sure a tank is 2

unsprung has a much bigger affect on speed and mobility compared to sprung weight

[Just wanna play]

i do understand they don't want to loss durability tho

[Krzysztof z Bagien]

My point is that being low on ammo and fuel can reduce tank's weight by 2 tons and they don't gain much speed by that.. Moreover some cars are designed especially for high speed, and tanks are not, main concern is firepower and durability.

Edited by Krzysztof z Bagien, 19 April 2013 - 02:15 PM.

[Just wanna play]

Krzysztof z Bagien, on 19 April 2013 - 02:13 PM, said:

My point is that being low on ammo and fuel can reduce tank's weight by 2 tons and they don't gain much speed by that.. Moreover some cars are designed especially for high speed, and tanks are not, main concern is firepower and durability.

any car will notice the difference, and lighter tracks would also improve mpg, and even tho they physically can't go faster, since the top speed is governed , and for good reason, mobility is still a big concern, and wtf is that writing beside hypno toad mean lol?

[Krzysztof z Bagien]

All glory to the Hypnotoad in alien language from Futurama
http://www.gotfutura...ive/AlienCodec/

Edited by Krzysztof z Bagien, 19 April 2013 - 02:42 PM.

[Just wanna play]

XD nice, still, that show has been going downhill since Season Three...

[Krzysztof z Bagien]

I still enjoy it, and some of the new episodes were brilliant I must say. Can't wait for next season.

[Just wanna play]

Krzysztof z Bagien, on 19 April 2013 - 02:49 PM, said:

I still enjoy it, and some of the new episodes were brilliant I must say. Can't wait for next season.

lol you didn't get the joke? thats what fry said when hypno was on the tv
it was the first episode with hypno toad in it

episode is called Bender should not be allowed on tv

[Krzysztof z Bagien]

Ahh! My bad! I feel ashamed. Guess I have to watch everything once again

Edit: But! That show was called "Everybody loves Hypnotoad", so I guess it's ok I didn't get it!

Edited by Krzysztof z Bagien, 19 April 2013 - 03:57 PM.