Huge Multicannon - Do you wish to see an alternative to the current weapon?

[Stigbob]

Huge burst cannon.

 

[Askorti]

Well, one question one would have to answer if FDev even want to make high-RoF guns at all. Wouldn't be surprised if the reason MCs have such low RoF would be technical issues. In which case no amount of theory-crafting or wishing on our part will change anything. What's more, I feel like FDev has its vision of how things are supposed to be and the only thing that could possibly change their minds would be a huge outrage. I don't think they care about normal suggestions in the slightest.

 

[Ozram]

So guys, would you like a high ROF alternative?
The discussion of the cooling effectivity is very interesting,
but we don't move forward to finding out if it would suit the game
and your playstyles to have another kinetic variant weapon.

I’d like the Shock cannons to be more readily available. Right now they hide behind a rather painful grind wall.

 

[Julio Montega]

Well, one question one would have to answer if FDev even want to make high-RoF guns at all. Wouldn't be surprised if the reason MCs have such low RoF would be technical issues. In which case no amount of theory-crafting or wishing on our part will change anything. What's more, I feel like FDev has its vision of how things are supposed to be and the only thing that could possibly change their minds would be a huge outrage. I don't think they care about normal suggestions in the slightest.

The hit detection could be flaky, yes that is why i suggested
to cluster multiple shot into a single hit detection frame.
That is achievable with high ROF and high projectile speed.

 

[Morbad]

another kinetic variant weapon.

I wouldn't mind seeing plasma repeaters and the CQC rapid cannon make it on to ships in the core game.

Not convinced we need a very high-RoF huge weapon though, unless it's essentially a group of smaller weapons on one mount, and I think the gatling cannons we have are depicted all wrong. Huge shock cannon might be interesting.

Then again, I do see the appeal of big rapid fire guns. ACs and RACs were some of my favorite weapons in the MechWarrior games. Some old examples from Mechwarrior Living Legends (a Crysis mod, now largely defunct, but the best MW experience I've had since MW2):

[video=youtube;0DuoICs_8V0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DuoICs_8V0[/video]

[video=youtube;4VYskif-wJ8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VYskif-wJ8[/video]

Both those AC10s and RAC5s were very satisfying weapons to use.

Anyway, were I to make a huge rotary cannon in ED, I'd probably make it a pair of shorter weapons in a shared cowling, and have the barrel assemblies function as counter rotaing impellers, both to negate any centripetal forces and to help circulate coolant around the barrels (to prevent excessive pressure loss in our hypothetical WEP cooling loop).

Wouldn't be surprised if the reason MCs have such low RoF would be technical issues.

They don't really model individual projectiles in any sort of detail, except for munitions like missiles. I don't think it would be a major issue to create higher RoF weapons, but I don't think it's a priority either.

 

[ShadowWolf Kell]

I wouldn't mind seeing plasma repeaters and the CQC rapid cannon make it on to ships in the core game.

Not convinced we need a very high-RoF huge weapon though, unless it's essentially a group of smaller weapons on one mount, and I think the gatling cannons we have are depicted all wrong. Huge shock cannon might be interesting.

Then again, I do see the appeal of big rapid fire guns. ACs and RACs were some of my favorite weapons in the MechWarrior games. Some old examples from Mechwarrior Living Legends (a Crysis mod, now largely defunct, but the best MW experience I've had since MW2):





Both those AC10s and RAC5s were very satisfying weapons to use.

Anyway, were I to make a huge rotary cannon in ED, I'd probably make it a pair of shorter weapons in a shared cowling, and have the barrel assemblies function as counter rotaing impellers, both to negate any centripetal forces and to help circulate coolant around the barrels (to prevent excessive pressure loss in our hypothetical WEP cooling loop).



They don't really model individual projectiles in any sort of detail, except for munitions like missiles. I don't think it would be a major issue to create higher RoF weapons, but I don't think it's a priority either.

ACs, UACs or RACs would all be great. I'd say the Class 4 Cannon is pretty close to an AC but we don't really have anything on par with UACs or RACs.

 

[Lori Jameson]

It becomes the optimal weapon for combined arms,
a la space to ground, megaship raids and used close up
and carefully a great module shredder like the large MC.

The frag sprays too much for my taste, and the
proposed huge gatling would not have that big a burst capability.
It needs also significantly more time on target than frags.

Hmm. What if instead of it being based on a Multi Cannon, it instead was based on a burst fire refit of a plasma weapon? Like a Plasma Repeater, but bigger. Plasma Auto-Cannon?

 

[Lori Jameson]

I wouldn't mind seeing plasma repeaters and the CQC rapid cannon make it on to ships in the core game.

Not convinced we need a very high-RoF huge weapon though, unless it's essentially a group of smaller weapons on one mount, and I think the gatling cannons we have are depicted all wrong. Huge shock cannon might be interesting.

Then again, I do see the appeal of big rapid fire guns. ACs and RACs were some of my favorite weapons in the MechWarrior games. Some old examples from Mechwarrior Living Legends (a Crysis mod, now largely defunct, but the best MW experience I've had since MW2):





Both those AC10s and RAC5s were very satisfying weapons to use.

Anyway, were I to make a huge rotary cannon in ED, I'd probably make it a pair of shorter weapons in a shared cowling, and have the barrel assemblies function as counter rotaing impellers, both to negate any centripetal forces and to help circulate coolant around the barrels (to prevent excessive pressure loss in our hypothetical WEP cooling loop).



They don't really model individual projectiles in any sort of detail, except for munitions like missiles. I don't think it would be a major issue to create higher RoF weapons, but I don't think it's a priority either.

MW4 Mercs was pretty great too. I miss my Shadowcat...

 

[Devari]

You keep comparing liquid cooling of one barrel to forced air convection of several and using the latter as an analog to radiative cooling. This is an enormous fallacy.

That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm telling you that liquid cooling of an autocannon barrel is quite simply not as effective as you seem to think it is.

Over the course of sustained firing, yes, that 300K initial temperature differential could likely be ignored.

That's utter nonsense. You can't ignore a 300 K difference when we're talking about cooling a weapon used in space.

A hypothetical weapon purpose built for use in a vacuum could not be a passively cooled rotary cannon and would use the heaviest barrel mass budgets would allow. In this case, it could be as massive as the entire barrel assembly of a gatling weapon and still be lighter overall because it wouldn't need as powerful of a motor and the cooling loop for a single barrel would be much simpler.

Again, you have no idea how firearms work here and are your ideas are based on a complete misunderstanding of how firearms are actually designed. For some reason you've completely ignored all of the real-world examples and comparisons I've provided for single-barreled vs. multi-barreled autocannons.

You still aren't comprehending that the total thermal capacity of each barrel is negligible to the total heat produced over the course of sustained firing.

It really isn't, which is why gatling weapons exist and predominate over liquid-cooled single-barrel autocannons.

Citation needed? Look up the rate of radiative heat exchange!

https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/radiation-heat-transfer-d_431.html

That link does nothing at all to support your nonsensical "rating scale" which was completely fabricated and has no actual science to back it up.

Generally, the burden of proof is on the one making ludicrous claims. The idea that radiative cooling is more than a small fraction of the cooling of a gatling gun operating on Earth is pure lunacy.

Except that I've already posted links describing that radiative cooling is a very significant cooling source for objects as they increase in temperature, an example was given for an object reaching around 1000 K, and a red-hot gatling autocannon barrel can exceed this temperature, easily 1100 K or hotter. Radiative cooling increases exponentially with temperature which you still don't seem to understand despite the link I posted.

This is a stupid assertion. I'd have a solid copper barrel sleeve with a helical water channel with several times the surface area of the barrel and I'd pump coolant through it at whatever rate was needed to achieve the temperature differential desired. A motor capable of rapidly accelerating a gatling gun barrel would make one hell of a water pump...we are likely talking many liters per second of fresh, cold, coolant...far more cooling than if you firing the weapon while it was simply submerged in a large quantity of water.

Sorry, but you keep trying to pretend that a simple water pump is going to keep a barrel magically cooler than what we've seen achieved in practice in real-world military application. A water-cooled design isn't going to magically cool your barrel by several orders of magnitude, it still has to obey the laws of thermodynamics and there are limits to what a water-cooled barrel can achieve which is very well demonstrated by their historical use in combat. There's a reason that water-cooled machineguns were quickly replaced by machine guns that were supplied with spare barrels that could be swapped-out in the field. A mechanically complex and heavy water-cooled system was simply not as efficient as simply changing out the barrel. A gatling autocannon avoids the need for barrel swaps entirely by using a rotating barrel assembly and sharing the heat buildup among several barrels, which is exactly why gatling weapons exist.

So why are you under the assumption that we wouldn't be using heavier barrels and more capable cooling systems if we we trying to make a weapon capable of sustained firing in a vacuum?

I've already explained this several times. The weight and complexity of a liquid-cooled barrel is less effective than a gatling weapon with multiple barrels. That is why gatling weapons exist and have replaced water-cooled autocannon barrels.

Gatling = rotary. And revolver cannon are pretty common.

I clearly meant revolver cannons, and no, they aren't anywhere near as common compared to gatling weapons. You're completely wrong here.

Radiation is a tiny fraction of the cooling of a terrestrial weapon system.

Not if your barrel is reaching around 1000 K, which is well within the temperature ranges seen with modern-day weapons from sustained firing.

It's not until you start to see it glowing that really significant levels of dissipation through radiation are achieved, and for radiation to be competitive with convection, you'd have to be well past safe operating temperature of what we can currently make barrels out of.

Maybe this would change in the far future, but if we had super alloys capable of retaining their strength while glowing white hot, we'd lose most of the incentive for rotary cannon anyway.

We can already get a firearm barrel to upwards of 1100-1200 K by sustained firing that turns the metal red-hot which is at a point where radiative cooling becomes quite significant. Given that Elite ships can fly through a star's corona without shields active and the metal components don't melt, or even become red-hot, they must have metal alloys that can easily withstand far more than the 1000-1200 K we can see today with a modern machinegun or autocannon barrel. That would readily allow radiative cooling, combined with a gatling design, to very easily handle the necessary thermal loads from sustained firing.

All you need to know is how much heat is produced, the thermal resistance of the metal between the barrel and the coolant, the temperature of the coolant, and it's flow rate. You could go into a lot more detail, if you had more details of the design, but the basics should suffice for the sake of argument.

Except that you need to actually do this calculation. You can't just make up numbers like you did in an earlier post.

You don't know how crappy radiative cooling is, or how I would cool a space based autocannon.

You clearly don't understand how much more significant radiative cooling becomes around 1000 K or higher.

You need to take a look at real-world firearm designs and understand that they weren't built to rely on radiative cooling.

You need to look at those same firearm designs and understand that a liquid-cooled barrel is still far less effective than a gatling weapon.

I think the weapon loop is attached to the primary ship cooling loop (which itself tries to stay within a certain temperature range by moving heat to and extending/opening high-temp/efficiency radiators) by heat exchangers and heatpumps that cool or heat the fluid as necessary to keep it within a tight temperature range (probably the peak density of the coolant).

Except that the game mechanics are not logically consistent with a separate weapon cooling loop, as I've described in detail in an earlier post about incendiary multicannon rounds. It's just a lazy game mechanic for the WEP capacitor which makes no logical sense with how the weapons should actually work in practice.

The heating of overly cold components would be quite intentional and desirable. Cool any of the weapons you've mentioned to near absolute zero and then try to fire them and you'd almost certainly destroy them in the process.

Except that we have other ship components that work just fine with temperature extremes in a hard vacuum. If the materials can't handle those extremes we would have our hardpoint components continually failing as they would repeatedly see large temperature differences when being deployed vs. stowed vs. deep space vs. flying through a star's corona. If the materials are that fragile your cooling loop is not going to function at all under those conditions and will fail long before the barrel itself does. In fact, if you look at what happens to a gas-operated machinegun that reaches a high barrel temperature the first failure point is often the gas tube and piston components, not the barrel itself, at which point the firearm will no longer function even if the barrel hasn't failed. Water-cooled machineguns have similar issues with reliability and this would be dramatically exacerbated by trying to design a liquid-cooled system to cool a barrel exposed to hard vacuum and the significant temperature extremes in space.

 

[Morbad]

For some reason you've completely ignored all of the real-world examples and comparisons I've provided for single-barreled vs. multi-barreled autocannons.

No, I've simply put them in context.

It really isn't, which is why gatling weapons exist and predominate over liquid-cooled single-barrel autocannons.

Wrong.

Rotary weapons predominate over watercooled single barrel weapons because of mass and complexity characteristics and because spinning multiple barrels through air generally cools them well enough.

In a vacuum, you are going to lose the overwhelming majority of cooling for a rotary cannon, especially if you are concerned with keeping it cool. Watercooling makes a lot of sense, especially when you have a high capacity loop for precisely this purpose on hand.

That link does nothing at all to support your nonsensical "rating scale" which was completely fabricated and has no actual science to back it up.

The rate at which objects radiate heat speaks for itself. At any remotely safe long term operating temperature, radiation is going to be a tiny fraction of total cooling.

Except that I've already posted links describing that radiative cooling is a very significant cooling source for objects as they increase in temperature, an example was given for an object reaching around 1000 K, and a red-hot gatling autocannon barrel can exceed this temperature, easily 1100 K or hotter. Radiative cooling increases exponentially with temperature which you still don't seem to understand despite the link I posted.

Stop mistaking disagreement for misunderstanding. From now on, assume I know at least as much as you do, and that I still disagree.

I am acutely aware of radiation becoming exponentially more effective with temperature, which I have myself commented on many times in other discussions about ship cooling. It's how the our ships radiators can even work.

Anyway, If you think 1100K+ is a desirable temperature for that minigun barrel, you are nuts. It may be acceptable when a combat necessity, or during a destructive test, but that barrel assembly isn't going to be allowed to get that hot more than a few times before being replaced or overhauled.

Even at 1100K, the bulk of cooling of the barrel assembly isn't radiative.

Sorry, but you keep trying to pretend that a simple water pump is going to keep a barrel magically cooler than what we've seen achieved in practice in real-world military application.

The real world military applications you are referring to are not remotely analogous to the applications we are talking about in this thread.

A mechanically complex and heavy water-cooled system was simply not as efficient as simply changing out the barrel. A gatling autocannon avoids the need for barrel swaps entirely by using a rotating barrel assembly and sharing the heat buildup among several barrels, which is exactly why gatling weapons exist.

All largely true in real-life, and all completely wrong when it comes to ships in Elite: Dangerous, which cannot swap barrels on their weapons at will and already have multi-megawatt weapon cooling systems ready to be plugged in to.

The weight and complexity of a liquid-cooled barrel is less effective than a gatling weapon with multiple barrels. That is why gatling weapons exist and have replaced water-cooled autocannon barrels.

Never. Ever. Once. Disputed. For terrestrial weapon systems.

You keep claiming that I've made claims I never have and taking my statements out of context.

We can already get a firearm barrel to upwards of 1100-1200 K by sustained firing that turns the metal red-hot which is at a point where radiative cooling becomes quite significant. Given that Elite ships can fly through a star's corona without shields active and the metal components don't melt, or even become red-hot, they must have metal alloys that can easily withstand far more than the 1000-1200 K we can see today with a modern machinegun or autocannon barrel. That would readily allow radiative cooling, combined with a gatling design, to very easily handle the necessary thermal loads from sustained firing.

Significant, yes, but still not predominant, certainly still no where near the same league as forced air convection or circulating water. Any fool with a torch can demonstrate this by heating something to red heat and seeing how long it takes to cool in different conditions. Go ahead, try it yourself. Take a nail, bring it to 1200K, set it on something fairly insulative that won't burn, then see how long radiation and passive convection (most of the cooling past the first few moments) take to cool it to the point you can pick it up. Now do the same thing and direct a fan over the nail; it will be significantly faster. The do it again, but drop the nail in a glass of water (which still wouldn't compare to spraying it with water, which is more analogous to an actual, high-performance coolant loop)...you'll be able to handle it near instantly. So, if you think radiation, even at 1200K, is able to replace forced air convection, much less proper water cooling, reason has abandoned you, and this argument is at an impasse.

There are also reasons for not wanting a weapon to operate at those temperatures. A barrel doesn't need to fail for it to expand to the point jams occur or soften to the point that wear increases dramatically.

Even if we have in-game alloys that retain their strength and hardness at high temps, which also have very low coefficients of expansion, they cannot be allowed to cool radiatively because that would render any sort of stealth impossible as long as the hardpoints were deployed. They have to be actively cooled so all that heat can be internalized, and then radiated through the ship's main radiators, channelled to heatsink launchers, or momentarily sequestered for silent running.

Except that the game mechanics are not logically consistent with a separate weapon cooling loop, as I've described in detail in an earlier post about incendiary multicannon rounds. It's just a lazy game mechanic for the WEP capacitor which makes no logical sense with how the weapons should actually work in practice.

By and large, I don't agree with your earlier post. There are a few effects that were bolted on after the fact that have played fast and loose with consistency, but WEP still best represents the weapon cooling loop.

Except that we have other ship components that work just fine with temperature extremes in a hard vacuum.

It's always seemed like a given to me that the temperature extremes our ships are exposed to are controlled by the ship's cooling systems.

I expect the skin has it's own cooling loop that moves any excess heat to the primary coolant/radiator system, which can tolerate elevated temperatures.

 

[Morbad]

I thought this argument was getting a bit repetitive, so I looked and found this: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...r-Arcade-Action-Cam-for-the-12-yr-olds/page98

Devari, you're still holding to the same misconceptions you were in that thread and don't seem to have a clear grasp of the difference between heat and temperature or radiation and conduction.

We both have our ideas of how things in the game work, and I'd argue that my version is both more realistic and less contrary to what's presented in game, though I know you'd disagree with the former.

Since I'm evidently not going to convince you of anything, and you sure aren't going to convince me, there doesn't seem to be any point in stretching out this circular argument any further.

Apologies to the other participants for allowing this tangent to continue so long.

ACs, UACs or RACs would all be great. I'd say the Class 4 Cannon is pretty close to an AC but we don't really have anything on par with UACs or RACs.

Class 4 MCs do fire two rounds per shot, though from different barrels, so are rather halfway between ACs and UACs.

Hmm. What if instead of it being based on a Multi Cannon, it instead was based on a burst fire refit of a plasma weapon? Like a Plasma Repeater, but bigger. Plasma Auto-Cannon?

Like a non-hitscan hammer?

MW4 Mercs was pretty great too. I miss my Shadowcat...

I have some fond memories of MW4, but I'm having difficulty recalling specifics of the weapons.

Will have to look up how it handled ACs.

 

[Devari]

No, I've simply put them in context.

No, you haven't done that at all.

Rotary weapons predominate over watercooled single barrel weapons because of mass and complexity characteristics and because spinning multiple barrels through air generally cools them well enough.

In a vacuum, you are going to lose the overwhelming majority of cooling for a rotary cannon, especially if you are concerned with keeping it cool. Watercooling makes a lot of sense, especially when you have a high capacity loop for precisely this purpose on hand.

No, it doesn't, for all the reasons I've already discussed.

The rate at which objects radiate heat speaks for itself. At any remotely safe long term operating temperature, radiation is going to be a tiny fraction of total cooling.

That is quite simply not true for the upper limits of a hot firearm barrel that reaches temperatures in excess of 1000 K. That is even more true for materials in Elite which are presumably capable of handling much higher temperatures.

Stop mistaking disagreement for misunderstanding. From now on, assume I know at least as much as you do, and that I still disagree.

Except you obviously don't understand what I'm describing here and are wrong on fundamental issues. It's not an "opinion" when you're flat-out wrong on fundamental concepts.

I've given real-world examples of single-barrel vs. multi-barrel autocannons, which you've ignored.
I've given real-world examples of the effectiveness of water-cooled autocannons and shown that liquid cooling is nowhere near as effective as you claim.
I've explained that radiative cooling increases exponentially with temperature and becomes quite significant around 1000 K.
I've explained that a hot firearm barrel exceeds 1100 k when overheating and that Elite materials should be capable of much higher temperatures.
I've explained that the complexity of a barrel cooling loop would be a significant point of failure that would likely fail before the barrel itself does.

I am acutely aware of radiation becoming exponentially more effective with temperature, which I have myself commented on many times in other discussions about ship cooling. It's how the our ships radiators can even work.

Yet you seem incapable of understanding that if the ship's heat vents can achieve adequate radiative cooling from a relatively small surface area, they must operate at a high temperature that is likely well in excess of around 1000 K to be effective. That means that the same radiative cooling process that allows the heat vents to radiate heat effectively, despite a relatively small surface area, would also allow a hot mutlicannon barrel to radiate significant amounts of heat directly into space as well.

Anyway, If you think 1100K+ is a desirable temperature for that minigun barrel, you are nuts. It may be acceptable when a combat necessity, or during a destructive test, but that barrel assembly isn't going to be allowed to get that hot more than a few times before being replaced or overhauled.

Except, as I mentioned, Elite mutlicannons would likely use alloys that could easily handle those temperature as we can do this today without barrel failure. The idea of an Elite multicannon having a barrel designed from an alloy that operates at a temperature where significant amount of radiative cooling can occur is quite an obvious solution to barrel cooling in space. In fact by definition these materials would need to form a significant part of the ship's hull, external components and of course the heat vent radiators themselves.

Even at 1100K, the bulk of cooling of the barrel assembly isn't radiative.

You seem to have completely ignored the link I posted for modelling of radiative cooling processes. It specifically neglected convection and conduction as cooling processes above 1000 K and considered this as reasonable given the much higher amount of radiative cooling that would occur at those temperatures. Here's the link again and a direct quote: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/cooltime3.html

"Other heat transfer process are neglected, namely conduction and convection. For temperatures over 1000K, this is probably justified. Conduction and convection depend linearly upon temperature, while radiation goes up according to the fourth power."

How is that still not clear that radiative cooling would be more than adequate to provide the primary method of cooling for an overheating autocannon barrel in space?

The real world military applications you are referring to are not remotely analogous to the applications we are talking about in this thread.

Sorry, but the physics involved in using multiple barrels applies equally well in space as it does on Earth.

All largely true in real-life, and all completely wrong when it comes to ships in Elite: Dangerous, which cannot swap barrels on their weapons at will and already have multi-megawatt weapon cooling systems ready to be plugged in to.

Those "weapon cooling systems" aren't necessary to cool the barrels of a multicannon, which can cool just fine from radiative cooling. They would be needed to cool weapons such as lasers and plasma accelerators that have components that operate at much higher temperatures. That is why multicannons have such a low WEP distributor draw, they only really need to provide power to drive the barrel assembly, gimbal servos, tracking sensors and ammunition feed which is a minimal amount of power. That is also why it would be ridiculous to share a mutlicannon cooling loop with a laser or plasma weapon, it would be counterproductive and heat the mutlicannon up rather than cool it down at normal operating temperatures.

Never. Ever. Once. Disputed. For terrestrial weapon systems.

Multiple barrels are still a far better solution that a single barrel with a liquid cooling loop. If anything this would be even more relevant in space, where the extremes of temperature and pressure would easily make the barrel cooling assembly an early failure point.

Significant, yes, but still not predominant

The link I posted and mathematics involved would disagree with that claim.

Take a nail, bring it to 1200K, set it on something fairly insulative that won't burn, then see how long radiation and passive convection (most of the cooling past the first few moments) take to cool it to the point you can pick it up. Now do the same thing and direct a fan over the nail; it will be significantly faster. The do it again, but drop the nail in a glass of water (which still wouldn't compare to spraying it with water, which is more analogous to an actual, high-performance coolant loop)...you'll be able to handle it near instantly. So, if you think radiation, even at 1200K, is able to replace forced air convection, much less proper water cooling, reason has abandoned you, and this argument is at an impasse.

There are so many things wrong with that comparison. First, you are just measuring the surface temperature of the nail and completely neglecting conductive processes to cool the interior of the nail and not simply the surface. An autocannon barrel would be the opposite, the heat is generated from the inside of the barrel and needs to be conducted to the outside where the coolant and cooling loop is. Second, you are using a small tiny nail and cooling it with a much larger fan or glass of water which weighs orders of magnitude more than the nail. You are not putting an Elite multicannon into a swimming pool or using a room-sized fan to to cool it, you are simply running a small, lightweight coolant loop along the barrel. This has to be small and light enough that the gimbal or turret tracing isn't slowed by excess weight. You can't use an example that doesn't scale at all with the real-world application in question. That is why I have specifically compared real-world liquid-cooled machineguns and autocannons with their multi-barrel or gatling equivalents. How is this still not clear?

There are also reasons for not wanting a weapon to operate at those temperatures. A barrel doesn't need to fail for it to expand to the point jams occur or soften to the point that wear increases dramatically.

Even if we have in-game alloys that retain their strength and hardness at high temps, which also have very low coefficients of expansion, they cannot be allowed to cool radiatively because that would render any sort of stealth impossible as long as the hardpoints were deployed. They have to be actively cooled so all that heat can be internalized, and then radiated through the ship's main radiators, channelled to heatsink launchers, or momentarily sequestered for silent running.

The radiative cooling of a mutlicannon barrel (or other operative deployed components) is still far less than the ship's entire primary coolant loop and the total thermal energy dissipated the ship's heat vents. There's also the issue that the ship still has hot plasma exhaust being expelled from both the main and maneuvering thrusters while it is maneuvering in silent running and can't possibly eliminate all EM emissions. That is why even in silent running you still have a small but detectable thermal signature.

By and large, I don't agree with your earlier post. There are a few effects that were bolted on after the fact that have played fast and loose with consistency, but WEP still best represents the weapon cooling loop.

It was only vaguely plausible prior to experimental effects, now with how they handle incendiary rounds, thermal vent and thermal shock effects it completely violates the laws of thermodynamics.

It's always seemed like a given to me that the temperature extremes our ships are exposed to are controlled by the ship's cooling systems.

I expect the skin has it's own cooling loop that moves any excess heat to the primary coolant/radiator system, which can tolerate elevated temperatures.

Which makes no sense for a thermally-isolated hull that depends on opening or closing heat vents to radiate waste heat. The hull is almost certainly composed of a layer, likely a ceramic compound, that has a very low thermal conductivity to prevent high external temperatures from affecting the ship's interior.

 

[Julio Montega]

I am absolutely pro plasma repeaters, plasma gatlings and such
and would not rule out to see laser gatlings, too.

But my main concern is with kinetics, especially
with great artwork and sounds that fit my style.
The huge MC is great in itself for what it is,
but i simply wish for a high ROF huge hardpoint.

Style is important.

 

[da_wae]

I am absolutely pro plasma repeaters, plasma gatlings and such
and would not rule out to see laser gatlings, too.

But my main concern is with kinetics, especially
with great artwork and sounds that fit my style.
The huge MC is great in itself for what it is,
but i simply wish for a high ROF huge hardpoint.

Style is important.

Yeah, that current *clunk clunk clunk* of the huge MC just doesn't sound nearly as satisfying as the glorious "PRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRBT" of a Minigun.

 

[Morbad]

Sorry, couldn't resist.

That means that the same radiative cooling process that allows the heat vents to radiate heat effectively, despite a relatively small surface area, would also allow a hot mutlicannon barrel to radiate significant amount of heat directly into space as well.

Yeah, if you assume that ideal ultra-high temp radiator material is also good rotary cannon barrel material, which is so far out there it hurts, and it's not even in the top ten most preposterous logical failings in your post.

Yet you seem incapable of understanding that if the ship's heat vents can achieve adequate radiative cooling from a relatively small surface area, they must operate at a high temperature that is likely well in excess of around 1000 K to be effective.

...

Our ship's radiators are, perforce, vastly hotter than the inside of the ship, because radiative efficiency is so dependent on temperature and the radiators are so small.

The radiators would have to be extremely hot to be able to cool the vessel purely by radiation

Between the ship's radiators, which have to be glowing hot to work efficiently

And I know you atleast pretended to read those because you quoted them a few posts later!

You've convinced me that rather than simply being wrong and not reading my posts that you've crossed the line into deliberately misrepresenting my statements. You either cannot or will not take my statements at face value and then hypocritically accuse me of ignoring yours.

There is no point in trying to refute your fallacies, false presumptions, or clarify my position if you are just going to interject whatever nonsense you've imagined.

So yeah, welcome to my ignore list.

 

[Devari]

Yeah, if you assume that ideal ultra-high temp radiator material is also good rotary cannon barrel material, which is so far out there it hurts, and it's not even in the top ten most preposterous logical failings in your post.

It's not just the heat vents themselves that need to handle high temperatures. The entire ship can handle flying through a star's corona which can reach over a million K. That tells you that the ship's hull, canopy, external sensors and other components are capable of withstanding high temperatures, not just the materials used in the coolant system, coolant loops and heat vents. Somewhere among all of those high-temperature materials that the ship is constructed from there must be an alloy they can fashion into an autocannon barrel.

And I know you atleast pretended to read those because you quoted them a few posts later!

I already posted specific information about the temperatures relevant for radiative cooling (around 1000 K), overheating firearms barrels (over 1100 K) and the calculations involved in modelling the cooling processes. I've provided far more specific details on the topic of radiative cooling, including the relevance for firearms barrels, than you have.

You've convinced me that rather than simply being wrong and not reading my posts that you've crossed the line into deliberately misrepresenting my statements. You either cannot or will not take my statements at face value and then hypocritically accuse me of ignoring yours.

There is no point in trying to refute your fallacies, false presumptions, or clarify my position if you are just going to interject whatever nonsense you've imagined.

So yeah, welcome to my ignore list.

Unfortunately, unless your ignore list also allows you to ignore the laws of thermodynamics all of the concepts and details I've been arguing about firearm cooling still remain valid and relevant.

 

[Riverside]

Yeah, that current *clunk clunk clunk* of the huge MC just doesn't sound nearly as satisfying as the glorious "PRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRBT" of a Minigun.

I would use it for the Brrt sound alone

I'd not want it to replace the current huge multi-cannon, but as an extra weapon choice.

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

Devari, you're wrong.
You are clearly ignoring the air vis a vis cooling on Earth.

 

[Devari]

Devari, you're wrong.

Am I now? The laws of thermodynamics would disagree with you here.

You are clearly ignoring the air vis a vis cooling on Earth.

You are clearly either trolling here (rather badly I might add) or simply haven't read my posts.

I haven't ignored the non-radiative cooling processes, in fact, I've specifically provided a link that describes a mathematical model for radiative cooling at temperatures around 1000 K. That model specifically neglects convective and conductive processes at these temperatures because of the exponential increase in radiative cooling with increasing temperature. I've also pointed out that a modern machinegun barrel can reach that temperature while overheating and will start to glow red-hot at around 1100 K and discussed real-world examples of liquid-cooled firearms in comparison to gatling weapons.

I've posted the link to the radiative cooling calculations more than once and have frequently referenced the concepts several times in my discussion in this thread. You're either deliberately ignoring it, which would mean you're trolling, or you haven't read my posts, in which case I would refer you to the concepts that I've already described in detail earlier in this thread.

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

Am I now? The laws of thermodynamics would disagree with you here.



You are clearly either trolling here (rather badly I might add) or simply haven't read my posts.

I haven't ignored the non-radiative cooling processes, in fact, I've specifically provided a link that describes a mathematical model for radiative cooling at temperatures around 1000 K. That model specifically neglects convective and conductive processes at these temperatures because of the exponential increase in radiative cooling with increasing temperature. I've also pointed out that a modern machinegun barrel can reach that temperature while overheating and will start to glow red-hot at around 1100 K and discussed real-world examples of liquid-cooled firearms in comparison to gatling weapons.

I've posted the link to the radiative cooling calculations more than once and have frequently referenced the concepts several times in my discussion in this thread. You're either deliberately ignoring it, which would mean you're trolling, or you haven't read my posts, in which case I would refer you to the concepts that I've already described in detail earlier in this thread.

And everything Morbad said is true.
The laws of thermodynamics also include the air you are ignoring.