Read by Council angling armor

[wanzer]

hi
here with another wacky post

what if you can bounce of rounds by angling a flat surface ?
that can give the sloped armor blocks also a more practical use

 

[Master_Artificer]

Sloped armor is pretty strong already, in making the thickness of where you hit it 5 to 10 times thicker depending on the angle.

I do not think that buffing sloped armor any more would be a wise move.

 

[wanzer]

no its not about buffing the armor

its about being aware of how the angle of a incoming round effects the amount of damage
perhaps even losing effective armor when a shot goes straight in at a 0 degree angle
but becoming harder to penetrate when its hit at lets say 70 degree angle

but I see what you mean

 

[Pacific_Jim]

I don't hate the idea, but I'd be careful about adding something that may be more performance intensive into the game. Starmade has enough calculations going on in combat as is, and as has been said before sloped armour is already pretty good due to the added thickness.

 

[wanzer]

wait guys
what you are talking about is the effective armor with thickness

what I am aiming at is the possibility of a bounce .. even if its 1 layer of armor
and yes that does add a algorithm..
but .. see the upside

once a shot is deemed to be a bounce .. no further blocks need to be considered ^^
unless ofc the round bounces of to another object >.>

 

[Madman198237]

It works in tank games...but this isn't a tank game. Deflections happen when a round is made of material and the armor is resistant to impact. An antimatter cannon is not going to deflect, it's basically just a beam compressed into a highly energy-dense format and launched at your enemy.

Or, at least, that's what I assume. Because, by the laws of physics, the cannon cannot fire antimatter. Why? Because an antimatter projectile the size of our cannon blasts would likely be sufficient to disable an entire titan. E=mc^2, remember? And when matter and antimatter touch, well, you get mc^2. A nuclear bomb doesn't get that much efficiency. When matter and antimatter collide, you get 100% of the matter transformed into pure energy.

So anyway, scientific rant over. Basically, there's no deflection in the space game.

 

[StarWars1981]

Deflection isn't necessary or realistic. If you hit an object with a large cannon round (like our guns) the round doesn't deflect... it deforms and basically sticks.
Plus the above post.
And there's the fact that armor angling works like this anyways: 5 blocks long armor, 1 block tall. That's 5 armor blocks to be penetrated at a 90* angle to the rest of the hull. Say you're at 60*; you've turned to put your 2 blocks of armor in a better location. A 60* slope (a quick and easy turn) doubles effective armor thickness (see T-34 armor thicknesses vs. effective thicknesses) - therefore I now have 4 blocks to penetrate before I can kill you. Building ridges into your vessel will increase this because THEN, this shot is hitting MULTIPLE armor plates of said thickness.
The point is, if you angle armor, you already get large bonuses.

 

[Monchoman45]

It works in tank games...but this isn't a tank game. Deflections happen when a round is made of material and the armor is resistant to impact. An antimatter cannon is not going to deflect, it's basically just a beam compressed into a highly energy-dense format and launched at your enemy.

Or, at least, that's what I assume. Because, by the laws of physics, the cannon cannot fire antimatter. Why? Because an antimatter projectile the size of our cannon blasts would likely be sufficient to disable an entire titan. E=mc^2, remember? And when matter and antimatter touch, well, you get mc^2. A nuclear bomb doesn't get that much efficiency. When matter and antimatter collide, you get 100% of the matter transformed into pure energy.

So anyway, scientific rant over. Basically, there's no deflection in the space game.

This is true if the entire cannon blast is antimatter, but it doesn't have to be. Especially considering AMCs use no ammo; producing enough antimatter for a cannon blast the size of what you see in starmade would involve a huge power cost (specifically because the only way we can currently make antimatter is by turning energy into mass). It's probably safe to assume that only a small part of the blast is antimatter, and the rest is a casing of some sort.

You can further head canon this (lol) by assuming that higher alpha cannon combos like cannon/pulse involve greater amounts of antimatter for a larger power cost; although in reality AMCs wouldn't be piercing weapons like they are in starmade.

 

[Madman198237]

Yeah---if it fired a completely antimatter projectile, it'd effectively be launching small, radioactivity-less nukes every shot.

Which is a HILARIOUS concept.


But the problem does, as you say, come from the idea of antimatter. It EXPLODES. You can't make antimatter into an effective armor-piercing round. So, it's safe to say that the cannon condenses energy into a projectile, forming a sort of melting effect. Perhaps it uses antimatter to generate this energy? To launch this energy? Perhaps it is a solid projectile, but the antimatter is used to generate a HEAT round-like effect. Shaped charge, with antimatter providing the explosion.

Ballistic astrophysics, yes!

 

[wanzer]

yea I keep forgetting its antimatter

I know roughly what it does, someone once explained it with a paperclip and vaporizing manhattan

as it behaves in game I keep seeing it as a kinetic impact that keeps progressing till it runs out of .. kinetic energy
that's why I forgot

 

[Master_Artificer]

I think maybe the cannon uses antimatter to launch a magnetically induced plasma spike that retains its shape until the energy has been dissipated in the system blocks of your spacecraft.

But judging on how the round does not fragment, scatter, or is deflected in any way while travelling through the structure... I think that the more logical explanation is a focused laser pulse of some kind that is not effected at all after being shot though a prism made of glass.

 

[CyberTao]

Remember boys and girls, they are no longer called "Anti-matter cannons", just cannons, so there isnt much need to go into detail about why it wouldn't work with anti-matter potential damage when that is already not replicated ingame.

But like many people have said, Sloped armour is already superior to flat surfaces, and doing things to directly benefit a singular design style doesnt seem ideal, as it limits the "optimal" ship design. Cannons also carry a inherit punchthrough effect, so if a round didnt deflect on initial contact, it would have to check again for each block it hits after, which becomes a mess if it hits interior and it's many sloping bits on some ships.

 

[Madman198237]

Yes, we do have to discuss the exact physics of how a cannon works.

You, sir or ma'am, are clearly not a physics/ballistics nerd. You wouldn't understand.

 

[StarWars1981]

Sloped armor does already have benefits, so buffing it is kind of pointless. However... using cubes (and half-cubes but same difference) to build ships, I'd love to see you build sloped armor that isn't just, basically, building a bigger armor plate. It's just more material, unlike on a tank where you can control the slope to actually put more armor in the way - THIS WORKS, only because a tank can at least ASSUME, that MOST of the time, the enemy is on FLAT GROUND, not flying around blasting holes in your vehicle from EVERYWHERE ... so sloped armor isn't very helpful in most cases. Unless you're a more maneuverable ship trying to tank it out ... for ... some reason...

 

[wanzer]

Sloped armor does already have benefits, so buffing it is kind of pointless. However... using cubes (and half-cubes but same difference) to build ships, I'd love to see you build sloped armor that isn't just, basically, building a bigger armor plate. It's just more material, unlike on a tank where you can control the slope to actually put more armor in the way - THIS WORKS, only because a tank can at least ASSUME, that MOST of the time, the enemy is on FLAT GROUND, not flying around blasting holes in your vehicle from EVERYWHERE ... so sloped armor isn't very helpful in most cases. Unless you're a more maneuverable ship trying to tank it out ... for ... some reason...

now you mention it
the idea came when I was facing a stationary object and angled my ship so all turrets on one side ware able to get a los on it

 

[jayman38]

There have been multiple "bouncing" posts, including a bouncing gun weapon suggestion. The bouncing "vector" effect thread was rather popular.

 

[lupoCani]

Remember boys and girls, they are no longer called "Anti-matter cannons", just cannons, so there isnt much need to go into detail about why it wouldn't work with anti-matter potential damage when that is already not replicated ingame.

For the record, they're still called anti-matter cannons in the structure tab, and I'm fairily certain their texture has been switched back to say "AMC" rather than "CAN", as it did for a while.

 

[Madman198237]

They are often referred to as AMCs still. Back to scheming about how to use schema's name to invent all sorts of sci-fi means of destruction!

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I feel like this issue was brought up once in the past and shot down due the increased calculations that would need to happen figuring out angle of shot, angle of armor and whatnot but I may be mistaken or suffering from dejevu

 

[Megacrafter127]

I feel like this issue was brought up once in the past and shot down due the increased calculations that would need to happen figuring out angle of shot, angle of armor and whatnot but I may be mistaken or suffering from dejevu

No, it did actually come up once, New effect: Vector-Effect
The thread had absolutely no dev response.