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Here are all the things I'd like to see on the battlefields of Dual Universe, whether in space or at your base.

 

-Weapons- 

  • Cannons
  • Lasers
  • Missiles
  • Mines
  • Flak
  • Electromagnetic Pulses (including ion cannons)
  • Railguns
  • Plasma 
  • Rockets
  • Corrosive
  • Cryo
  • Bombs
  • Tesla

-Defenses-

  • Solid Armor
  • Reactive Armor
  • Magnetic Shielding
  • Energized Armor
  • Deflector Shields
  • Absorbing Shields
  • Stealth
  • Self Mending Armor

-Mechanics-

  • Cannons require ammo and are versatile yet slightly less powerful than more specialized weapons, coming in all shapes and sizes from automatic rifle caliber guns to large mortars
  • Lasers require a constant input of energy and deal scaled damage over time with energy consumption, distance from the target lessens the effectiveness of the laser and absorbing shields will almost completely nullify it, however any light craft will be devastated by lasers
  • Missiles require more materials to produce and can be intercepted, however they are able to home in on enemies, deal a lot of damage, and be filled with different lethal ingredients
  • Mines are multipurpose bombs left in space or on a surface that can be used for ambush of an enemy, defense against projectiles, drones, fighters, or even restricting the movement of an enemy, the only downside to mines being that they sacrifice other factors for utility such as cost or movement
  • Flak are a subclass of cannon that is more costly for the ability to explode and still deal damage to nearby targets
  • EMP's effectively take the form of any weapon that is capable of disabling a ship's systems if they are unprotected, however, they take a lot of power to fire when emitted directly from the ship (in the form of an ion cannon), the advantage there being that they cannot be intercepted
  • Railguns take a lot of energy and a solid slug to punch through multiple layers of armor and do critical damage in a thin straight line
  • Plasma cannons accelerate a magnetically contained packet of super heated gas that bursts on contact, melting everything it touches, but coming at the cost of a significant amount of energy
  • Rockets are unguided missiles that are cheaper and capable of packing a larger punch than missiles
  • Corrosive elements can be added to any container of explosives for a less powerful explosion but a constant stream of damage over time
  • Cryo weapons work by filling a container with an extremely cold gas and dispersing it into small fissures in hard metals, causing them to become brittle and freeze up mechanical systems, allowing a followup shot of sufficient force to shatter the material, the trade off being that cryo weapons on their own do next to no damage
  • Bombs are powerful explosives that are cheap to produce and only work with the presence of gravity
  • Solid armor is extremely effective against smaller caliber weapons and lasers while not being that effective against piercing, explosive, corrosive, cryo, or melting weapons, with stronger armor materials allowing for higher defense against larger projectiles
  • Reactive armor is extremely effective against explosive and kinetic weapons but is partially used up in the process, allowing a few hits to be absorbed fully before becoming ineffective, meaning that lasers and high fire rate weapons can quickly use it up
  • Magnetic shielding protects against EMP's so long as it completely surrounds the system it is protecting, meaning that any large enough gaps will make that shielding ineffective
  • Energized armor is armor that is strengthened by a stored electrical charge, meaning that it will sustain all damage thrown at it by drawing on the charge of energized armor connected to it (the more damaging the projectile, the larger the area drawn from), weakening itself and the armor from which the charge was drawn from until becoming a very weak solid armor
  • Deflector shields are dome shaped shields that block all types of incoming damage at the cost of a lot of energy for every impact, meaning that large kinetic weapons do additional damage, whereas smaller weapons deal less
  • Absorbing shields nullify energy based damage (lasers and plasma) and conform to the shape of the object they are protecting, effectively reducing the overall damage of energy based weapons at the cost of a constant stream of energy scaled with the percentage of damage nullified
  • Self mending armor draws on a ship's power to mend itself (up to a fixed rate of health regained per second) and is otherwise a slightly less powerful solid armor
  • Tesla weapons fire arks of electricity that, while not so useful against enclosed ships, will devastate unprotected electronics and personnel

Feel free to point out any flaws with this and share your own ideas on what features space combat should have.  

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Not to be a nerd, but you have confused railguns with coilguns :P 
To put it bluntly in a way Second Amendment lovers could understand.

Railgun = Slingshot

Coilgun = Rifle (see Rifling on a barrel for more info).

So yeah, coilguns = armor penetration.
Railguns = Ye... well, it flings things.

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Not to be a nerd, but you have confused railguns with coilguns :P 

To put it bluntly in a way Second Amendment lovers could understand.

 

Railgun = Slingshot

 

Coilgun = Rifle (see Rifling on a barrel for more info).

 

So yeah, coilguns = armor penetration.

Railguns = Ye... well, it flings things.

 

coilguns have no rifling.

at least they dont need one, and from what i know the preferred variation of a coil gun is a contactless variant to eliminate friction and decrease wear that way.

 

and rifling also has nothing to do with armor penetration

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Uhm, sir, the coilgun provides torque, thus stability, like rifling provides torque.

 

errrrrrrr..... nope?

a basic coil gun just provides linear acceleration.

 

maybe some torque from edge effects around the coils, but nothing thats a distinct feature

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Not to be a nerd, but you have confused railguns with coilguns :P 

To put it bluntly in a way Second Amendment lovers could understand.

 

Railgun = Slingshot

 

Coilgun = Rifle (see Rifling on a barrel for more info).

 

So yeah, coilguns = armor penetration.

Railguns = Ye... well, it flings things.

 

What? I don't see OP confusing anything with his railgun statement.. Please elaborate. 

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Uhm, a coil goes in spirals sir. The spiral shape of the magnet provides torque. The railgun is linear only O.o

 

erm... only because its a coil doesnt mean that any effective torque goes in spirals in the coil.

there is some winding in the field because a coils wires arent in a perfect 90° angle towards the axis, but in general the angle is negligible.

the windings of a coil gun dont provide any notable rotational force in the projectile.

and as i cant find anything on field helicicisity inside a solenoid im not sure if theres maybe an effect that cancels the helical elements of the field inside.

 

the projectile doesnt follow the windings of the coils.

 

there are some hybrid rail/coil guns which are rifled, at least as far as i know.

 

 

edit: considering that they have to use external fields to twist the magnetic containment in tokamaks (which are mechanically very similar to a "coilgun" twisted into a circle) i doubt that the edge effects of the angle of the coiling has any effect

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Sir, coilguns are shaped and function like suspensions do in cars, only they are usually made of memory metal that expands with the flow of electric current and contracts in its absence. Such a coil is shaped as a cone-shape, that allows for stability on the bolt being projected and the spiral itself provides rotary motions, which turns into torque, which enhances forward momentum, which in the VACUUM of space, translates as raw power. I know so, I used to build magnetic slingshots with my father when I was younger. Not powerful sci-fi non-sense, but still, I have seen the effects of such devices in motion. 


PLUS, you can name your coil-gun arsenal out of snake species. Bola-shot firing coilgun? Whipsnake. Huge-ass boulder? Python.
Corrosive container? Viper.


See?


What are you gonna name railguns after? Choo-choo? Chugga-Chugga? :P


EDIT : Australian players may name a huge-ass railgun as "Road Train".

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i spent seven years learning electrical engineering, i know how solenoids look :P

and memory metal? expanding when under current? 

i dont know what kind of wiring you use, but my copper wires never deform when i put current through them.

yes, coils have a tendency to expand under high currents, but thats not from memory metal effects but because the magnetic fields push the wires apart.

 

and torque whichs rotational axis is parallel with the direction of flight never provides any linear momentum

 

also, if coil guns had any significant rifling effect on their own peope wouldnt design coilguns with rifling-like effects especially designed in.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/3109995_Helicoidal_electromagnetic_field_for_coilgun_armature_stabilization

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i spent seven years learning electrical engineering, i know how solenoids look :P

and memory metal? expanding when under current? 

i dont know what kind of wiring you use, but my copper wires never deform when i put current through them.

yes, coils have a tendency to expand under high currents, but thats not from memory metal effects but because the magnetic fields push the wires apart.

 

and torque whichs rotational axis is parallel with the direction of flight never provides any linear momentum

 

also, if coil guns had any significant rifling effect on their own peope wouldnt design coilguns with rifling-like effects especially designed in.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/3109995_Helicoidal_electromagnetic_field_for_coilgun_armature_stabilization

The keyword is stability. And when it comes to cone of fires, stability out of the "muzzle" makes or breaks a guns.

 

The way I understand them coilguns, they are essentially rail-guns (two tracks) that go in spiral to give the rotary motion to the projectile and torque (which would require a certain bullet architecture come to think of it). In any case, as I stated, a spirral magnetic field could be more effective as a mass-driving and ejection system. But since we talk about the vacuum of space, any given mass-driver would work as fine.

 

You may have a railgun that can fire with an X amount of acceleration, but if the projectile comes out of it without torque to makintain its stability on the trajectory you put it to, you'll end up with a wabbly chunk of iron that  goes illy-willy, losing momentum left and right. In any case, my opinion. The only real advantage I can see on railguns over coilguns is as particle cannons, as railguns could possibly maintain a stream of particles being ejected at high speeds for a prolonged period.

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The way I understand them coilguns, they are essentially rail-guns (two tracks) that go in spiral to give the rotary motion to the projectile and torque (which would require a certain bullet architecture come to think of it). In any case, as I stated, a spirral magnetic field could be more effective as a mass-driving and ejection system. But since we talk about the vacuum of space, any given mass-driver would work as fine.

 

coilguns function fundamentally different from railguns.

 

railguns have the projectile being part of the electrical circuit.

you have one rail as conductor "forwards", the projectile connecting them, and then the other rail transporting current back

with the whole assembly producing a magnetic field that expells the bullet from the assembly.

the projectile is locked to the rails and has to follow any form the rails have.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun (german wikipedia has a better work principle graph on the top)

 

a coilgun works differently.

a coilgun is basically a series of individually switched electromagnets that pull along a (ferro-)magnetic projectile.

the projectile does never touch the wires and isnt directly part of the electrical circuit

it can rotate more or less freely inside the barrel assembly

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coilgun

 

what you are describing would be a helically wound railgun, with the rails twisting around the lenght of the barrel working as rifling.

 

 

and railguns cant work in continous mode, because any conducting element in front of your projectile produces a magnetic field against your movement, removing all forward acceleration.

 

coilguns on the other hand would make better particle beam cannons as you could use them as high powered and focused MHD/MPD-like "engines" which expell the highly accelerated material in very rapid pulses.

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@Cornflakes


I guess you do have a point to that. A coil around the length of a railgun would work more aptly. And what I meant by parcle beams was using te railgun itself as a "hose" for plasma. A coilgun would simply make the stream of plasma denser (in an abstract way), but when it comes to ships, the name of the game is range. We'll have to wait and see how the weapons' attributes go in the game. Perhaps some maniac will make a giant moon with a penis'shaped railgun with a coil around it, pulling the ultimate dick-move when it comes to space combat. Who knows ? :P

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hm... im not sure if a railgun would be of any use for a continous particle/plasma weapon.

there are pulsed plasma thrower railguns, which replace a solid slug with a blob of gas/plasma and accelerate that.

but i think a full coilgun or similar approach would work better.

it would also avoid having to have parts of its assembly touching the plasma, plasma tends to do bad things over time.

 

 

and i already see the "ISKS FARK THE WORLD" destroying planets :D:P

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Well, plasma projectiles would need to act like raindrops, that have a particle of dust in their epicenter so the water can stick around it and drop, only with plasma, you replace the metaphorical dust particle with an overcharged piece of metal that its magnetic field contains the plasma until its delivery or fizzle out time comes (cause plasma ultra hot, vacuum ultra cold, hot goes to cold, yadda-yadda thermodynamics, science)..


Pulse-cannons though, let's keep them high-powered disco lights as laser weaponry :P

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well, there could be different variations of high powered disco lights.

 

some with "bullet" speed = light speed and slower ones.

 

with proper lasers behaving like in E:D, with arriving instantly

and technobabble particle/plasma cannons behaving like star wars laser shots 

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Well, I think some dev said something about cone of fires in the tab-targeting system, so I expect something like a space-jousting to take place when it comes to ships fighting. So perhaps there will be merit for all sorts of weaponry.

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ARC WEAPONS! :D WE NEED ARC WEAPONS!

 

(basicly the abbility to shoot lightning)

The problem with ark weapons is that electrical currents caused by lightning only travel along the outside of surfaces that they touch. Basically they just don't harm ships in space, however I could see them being added as an anti-infantry weapon and for overloading energized armor. The other problem with them is the immense energy requirements, but hey it's Sci-fi so who cares.

 

Tesla weapons are now on the list.

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Step 1 : Build giant mecha Pikachu.

 

Step 2 : Yell Pika Pika every time you kill someone.

 

Win.

I was more intending to create a giant ship and call it Mjolnir or something :D but that works too

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Will the combat itself play like BSGO, or EVE I they have said that you will lock targets to fire but do we know if the weapons will be in fixed positions or be able to orient.  I would prefer a combination of the two where which end of the ship is facing the target matters but giving the turrets firing arc the ability to shift a few degrees would be interesting.

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