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[Flare]

Give the practialities of running a fleet of ships on a shoe string, I think powder powered projectiles fit the bill nicely. Railguns to my knowledge is probably going to be much more expensive than bullets propelled by gunpowder. I imagine there should be one more advantage and that would be the fact that they don't, or shouldn't, create any flux to fire. Turning the gun around remotely might take some power, or not if you have some poor sod man it outside of the hull, but the power needed to fire a weapon where the energy is stored inside of the projectile's casing itself should be minimal sompared to railguns and lasers. Much like a smaller unguided version of lasers, they really shouldn't cause much flux to be generated. These weapons are the sort where you can leave it on auto-fire to shoot down missiles and bombers and not worry about raising your flux level while the ship is direct ship to ship combat.

Although on the other hand you take something as complex and powerful as a railgun, they might be suited for a different purpose than shooting down small fighters or missiles. The sheer speed at which rounds can be discharged from the railgun are going to be magnitudes greater than something that has to take into consideration the expansion of gases. The ratio of space to the momentum of the shell is going to favor railguns greatly. The flux on a railgun might be incredibly high, but because of this I think such guns should be ship killing instruments or have specialized roles rather than shooting down something that a cheap battery of flak or AA fire can take down.

But frankly, I think it's safe to say that pretty much every single projectile weapon in space that aren't self-propelled like missiles, will be shot out from railguns.
Magnets = no heat what so ever, not even friction as the bullet never even touches the barrel.

I disagree, the amount of current flowing through the rails is going to be immense. Unless it's a material that can conduct electricity without any resistance whatsoever, the sheer amount of power you need to send through those rails often leads to, as of today's technology, the rail gun having only a few shots before it wears out.

Heck we even build them today irl. Check for "Metal Storm" on youtube, they even fire grenades..... Nor would there be any explosion sound, it'd be a completely silent weapon (even inside the walls of the ship near the gun) constantly hailing bullets at the enemy. But that wouldn't be much fun in a pew-pew boom-boom game

As far as I know, metal storm is a gun that uses the technique of stacking bullets on top of each other to create a incredibly rate of fire. They do not produce any rail or gauss weapons that I know of.

I mean, imagine a version of that weapon in just 50 or 100 years.. Imagine 1 million grenades being launched at a target, per second, per 1 metalstorm turret emplacement.
Let's say a futuristic space frigate has 10 turrets, that's 10 million explosive or armor piercing rounds being fired every second. Have fun, and that's with todays tech. =P

The amount of space needed to house that 10 million rounds of explosives is going to dwarf those 10 turrets. You're far better off making a really accurate turret and launching only a few rounds to destroy the target rather than spraying material at th direction of the opposing fleet.

[BeanusMaximus]

That's not a railgun. It's just a tube with a stack of bullets/propellant that is electrically triggered.

It is incredibly awesome, though. 

Feel sorry for the person receiving the rounds haha

[Simberto]

Give the practialities of running a fleet of ships on a shoe string, I think powder powered projectiles fit the bill nicely. Railguns to my knowledge is probably going to be much more expensive than bullets propelled by gunpowder. I imagine there should be one more advantage and that would be the fact that they don't, or shouldn't, create any flux to fire. Turning the gun around remotely might take some power, or not if you have some poor sod man it outside of the hull, but the power needed to fire a weapon where the energy is stored inside of the projectile's casing itself should be minimal sompared to railguns and lasers. Much like a smaller unguided version of lasers, they really shouldn't cause much flux to be generated. These weapons are the sort where you can leave it on auto-fire to shoot down missiles and bombers and not worry about raising your flux level while the ship is direct ship to ship combat.

Hm, it is all about efficiency. I am pretty sure that the theoretical energy efficiency of a railgun should be much higher then that of powder weapons, i don't see where large energy losses would be absolutely necessary. So if you have a sufficiently efficient energy source, the fuel + bullet for a railgun should take up a lot less space then powder + bullets for a powdered gun.

However, i think one important factor should also be style. A railgun feels far "cleaner" than a powdered gun, where you are basically producing a lot of additional unwanted trash in the form of shell hulls, gases, additional heat, and so on, when compared to the railgun which basically takes a lump of metal and energy and without a lot of byproducts accelerates the bullet.

Although on the other hand you take something as complex and powerful as a railgun, they might be suited for a different purpose than shooting down small fighters or missiles. The sheer speed at which rounds can be discharged from the railgun are going to be magnitudes greater than something that has to take into consideration the expansion of gases. The ratio of space to the momentum of the shell is going to favor railguns greatly. The flux on a railgun might be incredibly high, but because of this I think such guns should be ship killing instruments or have specialized roles rather than shooting down something that a cheap battery of flak or AA fire can take down.

I don't really agree with this. If you have efficient railguns, they should be more effective then gunpowder weapons in pretty much any situation. Worst case, you need another additional reactor (or a larger one) for the additional power, but since you also need a lot less space for the bullets (you don't need bullet hulls and powder, just good shaped pieces of metal), that should balance out to still having more space left over. Also, i am pretty sure that heat, or more specifically getting rid of it, is a very important aspect in space combat. And i just can't see a railgun ever producing more excess heat than a gunpowed weapon. Sure, you have pretty high currents to induct the necessary magnetic fields, but as long as you have good enough conductors that should still work out. Using superconductors might be problematic because of the formerly mentioned heat problems, but it is pretty easy to increase the conductivity of any conductor by simply increasing its size.

Though you might have a case if for some reason it is only possible to build effective railguns from a certain size upwards.

[Cryten]

Give the practialities of running a fleet of ships on a shoe string, I think powder powered projectiles fit the bill nicely. Railguns to my knowledge is probably going to be much more expensive than bullets propelled by gunpowder. I imagine there should be one more advantage and that would be the fact that they don't, or shouldn't, create any flux to fire. Turning the gun around remotely might take some power, or not if you have some poor sod man it outside of the hull, but the power needed to fire a weapon where the energy is stored inside of the projectile's casing itself should be minimal sompared to railguns and lasers. Much like a smaller unguided version of lasers, they really shouldn't cause much flux to be generated. These weapons are the sort where you can leave it on auto-fire to shoot down missiles and bombers and not worry about raising your flux level while the ship is direct ship to ship combat.

On a pointless realism point of order gunpowder technonolgy dosnt work in space because of the lack of oxeygen, you have to use self feeding types of propelent or compressed gas weapons. Energy weapons are one of the few things which become more practicle in space because there is far less obsticles (mostly micro scopic) to disapate the beam potential.

[SgtAlex86]

Give the practialities of running a fleet of ships on a shoe string, I think powder powered projectiles fit the bill nicely. Railguns to my knowledge is probably going to be much more expensive than bullets propelled by gunpowder. I imagine there should be one more advantage and that would be the fact that they don't, or shouldn't, create any flux to fire. Turning the gun around remotely might take some power, or not if you have some poor sod man it outside of the hull, but the power needed to fire a weapon where the energy is stored inside of the projectile's casing itself should be minimal sompared to railguns and lasers. Much like a smaller unguided version of lasers, they really shouldn't cause much flux to be generated. These weapons are the sort where you can leave it on auto-fire to shoot down missiles and bombers and not worry about raising your flux level while the ship is direct ship to ship combat.

On a pointless realism point of order gunpowder technonolgy dosnt work in space because of the lack of oxeygen, you have to use self feeding types of propelent or compressed gas weapons. Energy weapons are one of the few things which become more practicle in space because there is far less obsticles (mostly micro scopic) to disapate the beam potential.

mmm guns work underwater why not in space... 

[Zarcon]

mmm guns work underwater why not in space... 

Because of the oxygen in the water...H20






Just kidding, but it seemed too funny to me at the time to avoid the silliness on my part.  I'm a silly person to the core.   

[Cryten]

thing is they dont, the only ones that do are weapons purposefully built to do so by having a self contained breach that is completely airtight. These weaponry are naturally prohibativly expensive.

*edit* on reflection I believe they get one shot off before filling with water and making any attempt to fire dangerous.

*edit edit* well my pointless point of order was pointless aparantly modern gunpowerder carries its own oxeydizer.

[DNAz]

Throwing chunks of metal or streams of particles sound the most efficient.

[Zarcon]

thing is they dont, the only ones that do are weapons purposefully built to do so by having a self contained breach that is completely airtight. These weaponry are naturally prohibativly expensive.

*edit* on reflection I believe they get one shot off before filling with water and making any attempt to fire dangerous.

If I'm not mistaken the original reason he mentioned a gun firing in water, is to ask why a gun couldn't fire in a vacuum.  I guess the only thing you would need is to provide some oxygen to the ammo or the barrel for the combustion effect, because if I'm not mistaken an average cartridge in a modern firearm uses the oxygen in the barrel of the gun to interact with the propellant right?  I could be way off, but I think an average modern bullet wouldn't be able to react with anything in a vacuum, and would be inert with no explosion to speak of and thus no thrust?

* Edit* Oops, I clearly didn't do my homework before posting, tsk tsk, they carry their own oxidizer?  Sweetness, looks like our space cannons are ready to rock and roll!   

[Cryten]

Looks like I beat your to the punch by 3 minets . Still yes you are correct, baring heating issue's guns do work in space.

[Falkenot]

So in the release notes it states the following:

Changed Assault Chaingun to use animated spinning barrels

On a minigun, that is used on earth the barrels spin, in order to better dissipate heat into the air arround them. What is the point of spinning barrels in an airless environment? I can think of 2 reasons why never to make your barrels spin in an airless environment:
1. your bullets will fly everywhere, but where you are aiming
2. you produce heat via friction, which needs to be dissipated on top of the heat produced by the projectile movig through the barrel.

Thoughts?

Off topic: is there any way to set sound volume(s)?
Edit: Typos and stuff

To dissipate the heat from the top exposed firing barrel into the heatsink at the bottom of the gun, while maintaining a rapid rate of fire without pause for heat reasons (or the sides, or wherever we imagine they are) of course..   
While I appreciate your realism-approach, there's plenty of imaginary explanations to be made that would still fit with real-life physics, all it takes is a bit of imagination 

But frankly, I think it's safe to say that pretty much every single projectile weapon in space that aren't self-propelled like missiles, will be shot out from railguns.
Magnets = no heat what so ever, not even friction as the bullet never even touches the barrel. Heck we even build them today irl. Check for "Metal Storm" on youtube, they even fire grenades..... Nor would there be any explosion sound, it'd be a completely silent weapon (even inside the walls of the ship near the gun) constantly hailing bullets at the enemy. But that wouldn't be much fun in a pew-pew boom-boom game

So in that sense I agree, no need for spinning barrels

A million rounds a minute, have fun =D
I mean, imagine a version of that weapon in just 50 or 100 years.. Imagine 1 million grenades being launched at a target, per second, per 1 metalstorm turret emplacement.
Let's say a futuristic space frigate has 10 turrets, that's 10 million explosive or armor piercing rounds being fired every second. Have fun, and that's with todays tech. =P
Future warfare will be ridiculous, especially in space.

I can imagine shields being a problem for that sort of weaponry though Even if they use shield piercing rounds, they would use more resources to build and would probably be bigger to bypass the shields if possible lol.

rail guns produce a ridiculous amount of heat, from the fact that the current moving through the rails is so massive that as long as the rails have any resistance at all they will get extremely hot and also from the rails requiring contact with the projectile to work.
on a separate note, metal storm is one of the impractical systems for weaponry ever designed, they fire at an extremely high rate when you look at a single firing, but in a protracted battle the reload times make them useless, combined with the differing barrel length each shot requiring either re aiming between shots or each round carrying a different amount of propellant and being loaded in the correct order, which would make reloading even more time consuming

[icepick37]

rail guns produce a ridiculous amount of heat, from the fact that the current moving through the rails is so massive that as long as the rails have any resistance at all they will get extremely hot and also from the rails requiring contact with the projectile to work.

True. They probably mean magnetic accelerators or whatever. The kind that uses fields instead of being a true rail gun.

on a separate note, metal storm is one of the impractical systems for weaponry ever designed, they fire at an extremely high rate when you look at a single firing, but in a protracted battle the reload times make them useless, combined with the differing barrel length each shot requiring either re aiming between shots or each round carrying a different amount of propellant and being loaded in the correct order, which would make reloading even more time consuming

Meh. These things will be sorted in time. You can stick all the propellant and projectiles in a tube and solve the reload rate. Plus the point is rate of fire, not accuracy.

[Flare]

Hm, it is all about efficiency. I am pretty sure that the theoretical energy efficiency of a railgun should be much higher then that of powder weapons, i don't see where large energy losses would be absolutely necessary. So if you have a sufficiently efficient energy source, the fuel + bullet for a railgun should take up a lot less space then powder + bullets for a powdered gun.

However, i think one important factor should also be style. A railgun feels far "cleaner" than a powdered gun, where you are basically producing a lot of additional unwanted trash in the form of shell hulls, gases, additional heat, and so on, when compared to the railgun which basically takes a lump of metal and energy and without a lot of byproducts accelerates the bullet.

You raise a very good point, if rail-guns do one day become efficient, weapons relying on gunpowder discharge to function may well go away. I guess I'll have to appeal to the lore to prop up this argument. Given how many high-technologies have been on the decline for many centuries, the ability to produce or maintain railguns might have become too expensive for everyone without a functional government backing them. Thus powder discharge weapons might make a comeback due to how easy it might be to produce these types of rounds and barrels. Although, since I've not known anything about the lore that specifies this, I think I'll leave this point to speculation .

I don't really agree with this. If you have efficient railguns, they should be more effective then gunpowder weapons in pretty much any situation. Worst case, you need another additional reactor (or a larger one) for the additional power, but since you also need a lot less space for the bullets (you don't need bullet hulls and powder, just good shaped pieces of metal), that should balance out to still having more space left over. Also, i am pretty sure that heat, or more specifically getting rid of it, is a very important aspect in space combat. And i just can't see a railgun ever producing more excess heat than a gunpowed weapon. Sure, you have pretty high currents to induct the necessary magnetic fields, but as long as you have good enough conductors that should still work out. Using superconductors might be problematic because of the formerly mentioned heat problems, but it is pretty easy to increase the conductivity of any conductor by simply increasing its size.

Some areas may become efficient, and others may be stagnant. Perhaps these rail-guns though highly energy efficient, are produced in materials that are prohibitively expensive, or ammunition that doesn't harm the barrel is, or their maintenance might be staggering or require a great deal of expertise whereas a chain gun or simple gunpowdered weapons might not. In any case, I don't know whether any of my objections are true on this point, so I'll concede this part of the argument .

On a pointless realism point of order gunpowder technonolgy dosnt work in space because of the lack of oxeygen, you have to use self feeding types of propelent or compressed gas weapons. Energy weapons are one of the few things which become more practicle in space because there is far less obsticles (mostly micro scopic) to disapate the beam potential.

It was surprising to me when I found out, but apparently gunpowder contains its own oxidizer as well as many other explosives. C4 for instance. We may not get the shockwave and the sound may not travel all that far in a vacuum before its dissipated, but igniting a charge inside a barrel where the discharge is focused and sheltered away from the vacuum the bullet will fire; guns will work perfectly well in space (potential tweaks may be needed, but the theory is the same ).

[pigreko]

I found another fun anti-fighter-multi-barrel gun design:



kinda like how Mel armed that deck gun in the final arc of Serenity.

first serenity quote I see in 6 years of love for that series.

[pigreko]

Hm, it is all about efficiency. I am pretty sure that the theoretical energy efficiency of a railgun should be much higher then that of powder weapons, i don't see where large energy losses would be absolutely necessary. So if you have a sufficiently efficient energy source, the fuel + bullet for a railgun should take up a lot less space then powder + bullets for a powdered gun.

However, i think one important factor should also be style. A railgun feels far "cleaner" than a powdered gun, where you are basically producing a lot of additional unwanted trash in the form of shell hulls, gases, additional heat, and so on, when compared to the railgun which basically takes a lump of metal and energy and without a lot of byproducts accelerates the bullet.

You raise a very good point, if rail-guns do one day become efficient, weapons relying on gunpowder discharge to function may well go away. I guess I'll have to appeal to the lore to prop up this argument. Given how many high-technologies have been on the decline for many centuries, the ability to produce or maintain railguns might have become too expensive for everyone without a functional government backing them. Thus powder discharge weapons might make a comeback due to how easy it might be to produce these types of rounds and barrels. Although, since I've not known anything about the lore that specifies this, I think I'll leave this point to speculation .

I don't really agree with this. If you have efficient railguns, they should be more effective then gunpowder weapons in pretty much any situation. Worst case, you need another additional reactor (or a larger one) for the additional power, but since you also need a lot less space for the bullets (you don't need bullet hulls and powder, just good shaped pieces of metal), that should balance out to still having more space left over. Also, i am pretty sure that heat, or more specifically getting rid of it, is a very important aspect in space combat. And i just can't see a railgun ever producing more excess heat than a gunpowed weapon. Sure, you have pretty high currents to induct the necessary magnetic fields, but as long as you have good enough conductors that should still work out. Using superconductors might be problematic because of the formerly mentioned heat problems, but it is pretty easy to increase the conductivity of any conductor by simply increasing its size.

Some areas may become efficient, and others may be stagnant. Perhaps these rail-guns though highly energy efficient, are produced in materials that are prohibitively expensive, or ammunition that doesn't harm the barrel is, or their maintenance might be staggering or require a great deal of expertise whereas a chain gun or simple gunpowdered weapons might not. In any case, I don't know whether any of my objections are true on this point, so I'll concede this part of the argument .

On a pointless realism point of order gunpowder technonolgy dosnt work in space because of the lack of oxeygen, you have to use self feeding types of propelent or compressed gas weapons. Energy weapons are one of the few things which become more practicle in space because there is far less obsticles (mostly micro scopic) to disapate the beam potential.

It was surprising to me when I found out, but apparently gunpowder contains its own oxidizer as well as many other explosives. C4 for instance. We may not get the shockwave and the sound may not travel all that far in a vacuum before its dissipated, but igniting a charge inside a barrel where the discharge is focused and sheltered away from the vacuum the bullet will fire; guns will work perfectly well in space (potential tweaks may be needed, but the theory is the same ).

Railguns generate an insane amount of heat, therefore I can imagine them being used to deliver powerful killing blow and nothing more.
I'm surprised weapons like mass drivers, also known gauss cannon or coil cannon, that are actually already famous, are often misjudged as conventional weapons. These weapons are on the same league of rail guns, and are better then them under many aspects... like having the projectile suspended all the time in a magnetic field, therefore nullifying any kind of heat for friction with the barrel. They are also very easy to realize and to operate energy wise.

So whenever I see a gauss cannon, I suppose that kind of tech was developed instead of the rail one.