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 Post subject: Re: KE weapons in trek low tech super weapon or lark?

Posted: 2010-06-24 06:09am 

I was trying to refer that your ships are going to have so much power demanded, that you'd want to tone down the weapons (smaller shots) to where they use less power than an equivalent Federation ship. The power demands I put up are for one shot per minute. I'd assume you want a faster firing rate, and/or more than one gun?



Think the Hadron collider, with a few places where the containment can be dropped. You accelerate small projectiles in a circle, and when an enemy is at the right position, you prevent the projectile from curving, and let it go. You rotate the accelerator so the 'vent' is in the direction of the enemy, and cut the field that causes the projectile to bend.

You'll want a few of these, to get counter-rotation (to avoid gyro effects), and because you have to roll the ship to cover enemies 'above' and 'below'.

 Post subject: Re: KE weapons in trek low tech super weapon or lark?

Posted: 2010-06-24 10:26am 

Shouldn't you be using reltivistic kinetic as he put them almost 30% speed of light. Or is that still low for reltivistic effects to amount for more than a small amount.

Also wasn't there an episode in Voyager where they used a mass driver type weapon the isokinetic cannon.

 Post subject: Re: KE weapons in trek low tech super weapon or lark?

Posted: 2010-06-24 10:59am 

As I wrote earlier smaller only works up to a point before it becomes ineffective or worse doesn't deliver the kind of damage you would need to effectively disable/destroy the enemy ship. A small projectile rifle bullet size and smaller might not transfer enough of its kinetic energy to cause enough serious ship damage through the shields and hull of the target. Or worse have so little mass that the main deflector dish can redirect the projectile before impact.

However I do agree with you that the power demands need to drop somehow to be more effective in combat. First is dropping the velocity for a reduced recharge time in combat from the maximum possible for the weapon of .293c to .15c during combat reducing both recharge time and weapon recoil this might also extend the life of the barrel and reduce maintenance costs. Yes this would reduce effective range but really when was the last time any Trek power used the range they supposedly have, IIRC Trek combat is at a range that might be considered "spitting distance".
Secondly the introduction of a smaller weapon to the arsenal BEHOLD the 30mm Rail gun and reduced velocity calcs.

Max power
48” MAC
Mass Kilograms: 80,000
Velocity Meters/Second: 87,839,190
Kinetic Energy Joules: ~3.09E20

406mm/16in Rail gun
Mass Kilograms: 1200
Velocity Meters/Second: 87,839,190
Kinetic Energy Joules: ~4.63E18

203mm/8in Rail gun
Mass Kilograms: 150
Velocity Meters/Second: 87,839,190
Kinetic Energy Joules: ~5.79E17

127mm/5in Rail gun
Mass Kilograms: 30
Velocity Meters/Second: 87,839,190
Kinetic Energy Joules: ~1.16E17

30mm Rail gun
Mass Kilograms: 5
Velocity Meters/Second: 87,839,190
Kinetic Energy Joules: ~1.93E16

Average Muzzle Velocity: .293C

Full Combat Power

48” MAC
Mass Kilograms: 80,000
Velocity Meters/Second: 44,968,868
Kinetic Energy Joules: ~8.09E19

406mm/16in Rail gun
Mass Kilograms: 1200
Velocity Meters/Second: 44,968,868
Kinetic Energy Joules: ~1.21E18

203mm/8in Rail gun
Mass Kilograms: 150
Velocity Meters/Second: 44,968,868
Kinetic Energy Joules: ~1.51E17

127mm/5in Rail gun
Mass Kilograms: 30
Velocity Meters/Second: 44,968,868
Kinetic Energy Joules: ~3.03E16

30mm Rail gun
Mass Kilograms: 5
Velocity Meters/Second: 44 968 868
Kinetic Energy Joules: ~5.05E15

Average Muzzle Velocity: .15c


Additionally could you post the calculation method you used to determine power needed for the weapons so I can play with the mass/velocity/power consumption figures to optimize the weapons.



Interesting... different I kind of like it but I think trying to adapt it to a warship weapon might prove difficult and maybe it is just me but I don't see an advantage over having rail weapon in a turret mount.

 Post subject: Re: KE weapons in trek low tech super weapon or lark?

Posted: 2010-06-24 06:17pm 

Joules divided by (seconds per shots) is Watts. So a weapon that needed 3 TJ to fire, and fired once per 8 seconds, needs a power supply of (3 TJ / 8 seconds) .375 TW, or 375 GW.

A weapon that needs 2 TJ to fire, but you want it rapid fire (7 shots per second) needs a 14 TW power supply.


The advantage would be that you can rapidly fire along the plane where the spiral is. The downsides are that you won't get as much damage per shot, and you have to constantly power it.

 Post subject: Re: KE weapons in trek low tech super weapon or lark?

Posted: 2010-06-25 10:47am 

Another two cons would be its large size and the need to keep almost all of the mechanism exposed to enemy fire in order to have a large field of fire. A possible plus might be the ability to do a gradual acceleration up to the required velocity rather than trying to require all the energy available and used in a single moment.



Ok I have finally got the power calculated for the weapons at their various yields. Feel free to check the math if you don’t think it's right. Figures are for one shot every 60/sec

Weapon/ Max power/ Full combat power

48” MAC/ ~5,100,000 TW/ ~1,300,000 TW

406mm/16in Rail gun/ ~77,000 TW/ ~20,222 TW

203mm/8in Rail gun/ ~9600 TW/ ~2528 TW

127mm/5in Rail gun/ ~1900 TW/ ~505 TW

30mm Rail gun/ ~321 TW/ ~84 TW



So having figured this out I can hash together the armament/power scheme for the 550m frigate.


"Younger/New" race 550m frigate

Four Reactors producing 750TW each for a total of 3000TW available.

X1 127mm/5in Rail gun spinal mount 30 sec refire rate 1010TW

X4 30mm Rail gun turret mounted 15 sec refire rate 336TW each 1344TW total

X2 VLS Missile installations for KE missiles, conventional weapons, and nuclear weapons 32 missiles each 64 total

note:all rail weapons have 4 capacitance banks storing 1 precharged max power shot each available at all times.

Power used 2354TW leaving 646TW available for use for other systems or decreasing weapon refire rates.

 Post subject: Re: KE weapons in trek low tech super weapon or lark?

Posted: 2010-06-28 01:39pm 

I'm sure now that the "Younger/New" ships will be acceptably effective in close combat thank you everyone especially Coalition.

Now to the more important parts that I needed to know.

What are the tactics and more importantly what the strategic implications of the use of KE weapons and users would be. Remember this is a "new" group just encountering the Alpha Quadrant and the races within.
The time frame would be early to mid TNG.

I want to turn the ideas generated here on SDN into a fanfic introducing the "Younger/New" race to the galactic scene. Any suggestion will be appreciated especially plot types. Also I am open to suggestions for the for the name of the "Younger/New" race.

 Post subject: Re: KE weapons in trek low tech super weapon or lark?

Posted: 2010-06-29 03:31am 

The tactics would depend heavily on what kinds of enemies they are used to fighting. Given the rather low rate of fire on some of your weapons it looks like they are used to fighting enemies that don't maneuver much or do so at low speeds.
Your ships seem almost purpose built to be Borg killers and that would make a great way to introduce them to the TNG cast and crew.
Picture a small empire/race on the edges of Borg space, they have developed KE weapons to fight the Borg because the Borg really don't do well with KE impacts. They note through long range observation that a cube sent into the alpha quadrant never returned. Fearing the establishment of a Borg outpost that might cause more problems down the road they send a small expedition force into the Alpha quadrant. Its mission is to track down the missing cube and destroy any Borg colony they encounter. Where it goes from there, who they encounter and what the result is could be interesting.

 Post subject: Re: KE weapons in trek low tech super weapon or lark?

Posted: 2010-06-29 04:24am 

Federation and Klingon ships don't exactly respond well to KE impacts either, on the main site I recall reading that even fully shielded, 5 terajoules of kinetic impact is too much for a galaxy class or Vor'cha, so having even smaller railguns of 5-10 terajoules with a faster refire would still be devastating.

As for the race in general I like the idea of them being the kind of race that turns the whole Trek standard tech tree square on it's head, barely warp capable, like warp 5 or 6, Ion engines with mid range acceleration, no artificial gravity, no shields, obscenely powerful kinetic weapons, thick and durable armour that is possibly polarized/ablative.

Using fighters or screens of unmanned drones (like hull plates that fly around the ship and project ECM) to intercept incoming particle beams, (fighters would be used to fight enemy ships point blank, so the enemy has to divide their targets between short and long range) and point defense systems to shoot down incoming torpedoes and the like.

yeah, i've been watching allot of Babylon 5 Recently

 Post subject: Re: KE weapons in trek low tech super weapon or lark?

Posted: 2010-06-29 09:41am 

Interesting thought I like the direction of this. It might cast the "Younger/New" race in a initial non-evil light to the federation unlike what I had first thought of.

If I extrapolate from your idea, let us see... Say they are directly between the Borg and the feddies and is the reason the feddies and the rest of the AQ have had to deal with the borg. Going further I could say that the reason that the feddies have only had to deal that ONE cube in "The Best of Both Worlds" instead of a swarm was because it was the only cube to survive going through the "Younger/New" race's space. The fleet following that cube could be the one to encounter the races of the AQ similar to what you suggested.

 Post subject: Re: KE weapons in trek low tech super weapon or lark?

Posted: 2010-06-29 10:34am 

True, but since the "Younger/New" race can control how much power is going to the weapons (like every other race) and what speed the projectile is going at they can increase the fire rate as much as they need to while having to deal with a shrinking effective range. To drop it to those power levels would reduce the effective range to knife fighting levels while spamming out possibly dozens of rounds per mount per minuet. If it gets to that range they might choose to drop velocity to deal with a maneuverable enemy.



Heh heh heh... you seem to have got the idea concept I had for my race down pat. Indeed, no fancy artificial gravity or shields the ion engines I planed to use from the start and the amour is measured in meters thick ablative probably but none of that polarized bullshit... shields by any other name. As for the warp drive... if I chose to allow them to have it it would be slow at the warp 5 to 6 level but I'm thinking that since they have hung around dealing with borg for so long that they have probably developed something completely different for FTL. Perhaps something like a B5 jump drive or a Haloverse slipstream drive however I am leaning toward the B5 jump drive for tactical, strategic, and plot ideas.



Damn that's a different idea! Using deployed drone armor plates kind of like a physical Macross style pin point barrier system that's bloody original. The tactical ideas for that just boggle the mind from blocking shots to creating a wall in space for enemies to comedically run into or force them into a specific weapon arc.

Point defence is a must for certain they probably would use something similar to today's weapons like a magnetically powered Gatling gun similar to a modern phalanx system, since it would be a close weapon the mount would use a small caliber bullet like a rifle bullet propelled at a slower speed than the main weapons. Another idea that just hit me is a deployable munition like a chaff/flare system only it would deploy an energy diffusing/reflecting shower of particles this could come in a few forms.

1. An obscuring cloud emitted from the ship like some kind of smoke screen effect.
2. A cloud spread from the Drone Armor plates obscuring the area just before the energy shot hits
3. A munition form the ship that deploys a spread of the particles (kind of like the anti-beam depth charges from Gundam SEED)
4. A specifically designed drone that deploys a cloud in front of or on the enemy ship to constantly screw with the enemies energy weapons.

 Post subject: Re: KE weapons in trek low tech super weapon or lark?

Posted: 2010-06-29 12:17pm 

Something I've always wanted to see in Trek was a race that used artificial wormholes for FTL. Of course the things would probably be HUGE energy sinks and might have a reasonably short range. I can imagine that they would force the Young Ones to hop from system to system due to recharge rates and other issues. Of course this means that they can completely bypass Federation fleets that have to go between systems.
A thought occured to me, if they have artificial wormhole technology and they are in "claimed" Federation space, that is within the sphere the Federation has claimed but not explored then the Romulans would get really pissed off. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't there a treaty between the Romulans and the Federation that prevents the Fed's from developing artificial wormhole technology?
Cue conflict point where the Romulans start giving the Federation grief over the Young Ones use of artificial wormholes, the Federation trying to get the Young Ones to adopt warp drives, and the Young Ones telling everyone to go to hell.

 Post subject: Re: KE weapons in trek low tech super weapon or lark?

Posted: 2010-06-29 02:54pm 

None that I'm aware of; it sounds like you're misremembering the treaty which prevents the Federation from developing cloaking technology.

 Post subject: Re: KE weapons in trek low tech super weapon or lark?

Posted: 2010-06-29 03:35pm 

Can't say I have heard of many times that artificial wormholes have been used for FTL ship ship travel. Is it the rapid teleportation type like in Battletech/Mechwarrior Kearny-Fushida drive or are we talking about a ripping open a wormhole portal and flying through type? If it is the latter then I can still use some of the ideas I had for using the B5 jump drive.



I don't remember any treaty about artificial wormholes anywhere in Trek. Are you sure you were not thinking about cloaking devices?
More likely the feddies and Romulans would demand that they turn over the tech for study while in feddie or Romulan space.

 Post subject: Re: KE weapons in trek low tech super weapon or lark?

Posted: 2010-06-29 04:44pm 

My thinking was it was the ripping open a portal and fly through type. My thoughts were that there would be two basic types, a ship mounted style and a station mounted style. The ship mounted ones would be formed close to the front of the ship and be only as wide as the ship itself.
The station mounted one would be based around a ring like feature, allowing multiple ships to jump together at once.
To prevent it from becoming too uber you could make it only possible to move from star system to star system forcing the "Young Ones" to essentially 'island hop' through space.
part of the backstory could even be that it is based on the Borg transwarp corridor idea.

As to the treaty, I could be confusing myself as to the treaties, a Dominion-Federation treaty preventing the development of artifical wormhole technology sounds better but that would be post DS9 and thus not an issue for your story.

BTW As far as a name goes "Young Ones" seems to work just fine.

 Post subject: Re: KE weapons in trek low tech super weapon or lark?

Posted: 2010-06-30 12:58pm 

Well for the ship mounted ones I will have it close but a little further away then as close as possible as the act of ripping open space/time would be more than somewhat destructive to anything in the immediate vicinity. (there is a purpose for that)

As for the large "Jump Gate" style stations I think that I will have it look like a series of rings becoming progressively smaller so the whole gate looks like a cone. These gates will be more powerful and have vastly longer range than the ship mounted drives.

As for calling them "Young Ones", that is fine as a place holder for the thread but I will still need to come up with a name for the race itself for the fic even if it is just calling them Young Ones in a different language.

While I have a few funny scenes in mind for the first few encounters namely A scene mocking the origin of the "No Laser Fallacy" from "The Outrageous Okona" I still need to figure out what the strategic implications of weapons are and reactions from the various AQ races might be.

 Post subject: Re: KE weapons in trek low tech super weapon or lark?

Posted: 2010-06-30 02:56pm 

They ships probably have armor measured in meters with or without shields. If the armor also acted as a barrier against transporters that removes a weapon and technique that others can use against them.
As a result the ships probably have a number of smaller craft attached to them, shuttles and such. This could be extended into including assault ships or gunboats with smaller rail weapons fired through capacitors that are charged from the mother ship.
Battle tactics probably call for saturating the space around a target to prevent it from maneuvering out of the way, or getting close enough at that maneuvering would not make much difference.
Key difference would be targeting, these ships would probably aim for center mass rather than the precision targeting that Federation and alpha quadrant ships go for.
In a conflict between Federation and Young Ones ships the federation would probably attack things like antennas, sensor emplacements, and turrets hoping to blind the ships if they can't get through the armor.
Also look for massive facefaults when a Federation captain requests to beam-over or asks the Young Ones to beam over only to learn their ships armor prevents that.

Young Ones building doctrine might call for building the largest vessel that their materials technology can handle, equipping it with as many guns as possible and forming a fleet of smaller faster ships around it. Kinda like the pre-aircraft carrier tactics of British navies where fleets were created around ships like HMS Dreadnought. Also depending on what your using for fuel in the reactors and stowage capacity of the ships you might need dedicated resource supply ships or attached merchant ships with large cargo capacities. A combination of both might be best. Also the establishment of supply depots and resource bases might be a key requirement of the Young Ones, resulting in territory they need to defend when the shit hits the fan.
As for the inevitable occasion where a fleet of Alpha Quadrant ships decides to deep strike the Young Ones home worlds, I would imagine that the Young Ones having extensive experience with Borg attacks would fortify their homeworld to outrageous extents. Mine fields, battle stations, HK-Satellites, and regular patrols of light and fast interceptors would all be included. Looks of shock and awe on the faces of the Alpha quadrant crew when they realize their basically attacking a freaking Fortress would be great.

 Post subject: Re: KE weapons in trek low tech super weapon or lark?

Posted: 2010-07-04 04:21pm 

Jgregory32 I am definitely going to use some or possibly most of your ideas thanks a bunch!

Anyway I have finally gotten around to posting what I have written for the fic got it posted here http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=143566 Any other ideas anyone has please share, any help getting this out faster, better, or more accurate is appreciated.

 Post subject: Re: KE weapons in trek low tech super weapon or lark?

Posted: 2010-08-21 08:22pm 

this is off topic and i may be really stupid in asking this but : is there a fourmula or somthing that could help me out on finding the kinetic force of a particle beam? any help would be great. and please no yelling at me for not knowing how to do this. if there is a thread with this information all ready please durect me to it.

 Post subject: Re: KE weapons in trek low tech super weapon or lark?

Posted: 2010-08-21 10:18pm 

I don't know for certain, but since particle beams have mass by their very nature then if you knew how much mass is being released per blast and how fast the beam travels then you could use this formula to find how much kinetic energy (ie force) is in the beam.

KE = 1/2 (M * (V * V))

KE=Kinetic Energy

M=Mass

V=Velocity

Mind you that if your particle beam is moving a significant part of c (c=speed of light) then you may require a relativistic kinetic energy calculation you can find one here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energy#Relativistic_kinetic_energy_of_rigid_bodies

There is likely a better calculation for exactly what you seek but damned if I can think of one right now. However this formula should work if you can fill all of the parameters.

 Post subject: Re: KE weapons in trek low tech super weapon or lark?

Posted: 2010-08-22 08:59am 

thanks for your help. what would classify as a significant part of c?

 Post subject: Re: KE weapons in trek low tech super weapon or lark?

Posted: 2010-08-22 09:42am 

Well that is somewhat subjective to the user. Around .3c (1/3 c) the relativistic KE is not significantly higher than the standard Newtonian KE. At around .5c is when I start using the relativistic KE calcs. One just has to judge when they want to trade simplicity for accuracy.

It is worthwhile to note that if you are extremely concerned about absolute accuracy then the relativistic KE becomes noticeable around 6,000,000 m/s. (meters per second)

Although it might not scale down to particles scale Mike has a calculator for this kind of KE calculation here. http://stardestroyer.net/Resources/Calculators/Relativity.html

 Post subject: Re: KE weapons in trek low tech super weapon or lark?

Posted: 2010-08-22 10:05am 

Above post: Anything above about 10% is where relativistic effects start becoming noticeable

To borrow an idea from Stargate, you mentioned station-mounted jump drives that can go further and allow multiple ships to cross, and possible be based on Borg transwarp conduits?

Why not make it so the gates can go further, but only from one gate to another? Adds a strategic twist that they have what the feddies would consider tactical FTL on their ships and have to island hop, until they built their jump gate and boom, much longer range FTL

Or maybe make it like lost in space, where their FTL can go further, but is much safer/easier/more accurate if going between gates, hence the island hopping from system to system

 Post subject: Re: KE weapons in trek low tech super weapon or lark?

Posted: 2010-08-22 11:59am 

ok this is my last question that kinda fits in to this thread : in a sci fi i've been writing, some of my soldiers have a semi-long rang gauss rifle, it fires a 7-9 gram round at 1300 m/s, which has 67.6TJ. now to my question, is thise weapon over powered for anti-infantry weapon?

 Post subject: Re: KE weapons in trek low tech super weapon or lark?

Posted: 2010-08-22 12:50pm 

Depends on what kind of infantry you are hunting. If you mean for normal unarmored humans then yes it is likely to much. If you are hunting something a bit tougher like toughened alien with a carapace or an armored or power armored human infantryman, then you may need the armor penetrating potential.

To put it into perspective a tank firing a Kinetic Kill weapon like a sabot round typically fires around ~1,800 m/s you have your rifle firing at 1,300 m/s and normal .50 BMG and 30-06 rounds have a velocity of around ~900 m/s.

Also I think you might need to recalculate your KE calc for that weapon. Most likely you used the number of grams straight right? Not quite the best as the formula is set more for kg than g so you would need to put 0.006 than 6.

To demonstrate.

(remember inner brackets first) V*V= 1300 X 1300 = 1,690,000

next bracket level M*(V*V)= M X (V X V)= M X 1,690,000 = 0.006 X 1,690,000 = 10,140

KE = 1/2 (M*(V*V)) so just 1/2 the results from the brackets to get 5070 J.

Not so mind numbingly insane of a weapon now is it?
Again putting it into perspective a 30-06 rifle round has around ~ 3,800-4000 J and a .50 BMG has over ~13,800-14,000 J

Why the difference? Well quite frankly your bullet is a light weight compared to the full rifle rounds its closer to the 62 grain (4g) bullet of the 5.56X45 NATO round used by the M-16 than the 150-220grain (9.7-14g) range of the 30-06. To say nothing of the heavy 650-800 grain (42.4-52g) for the .50 BMG.

So while it might be more gun than you need it would not be unreasonable for an infantry weapon. The most likely use I can think of for this is as a sniper weapon where the velocity would likely help maintain a flat trajectory better.

 Post subject: Re: KE weapons in trek low tech super weapon or lark?

Posted: 2010-08-22 12:57pm 

your right sorry, its so post to be .07 Kg so that would be 70 grams right, that is the mass i meant it to be. and yes this is for a sniper rifle. but my gauss rifle idea has it so the speed is a bit ajustible but this is mostly for large game.