armour penetration & projectile speed

[poesel]

Slow days here on the forum lately. Time to ask more questions.

Armour penetration AFAIK depends on three things:

1) BasePenetration

2) angle of attack

3) speed of the projectile

My questions are about 3).

As I understand the speed of the projectile is reduced depending on the density of the atmosphere and the LossRate. How is that calculated? How much influence does each parameter have?

How does the (remaining) speed of the projectile modify BasePenetration? Would twice the speed double the penetration?

[Imperial Grunt]

I dunno, but it seems to me that alot of DT weapons technology has regressed to 21st century tech for the most part. I want tanks armed with hyper-velocity rail guns in addition to typical cannons.

A possible downside to railguns might be that they can only fire AP slugs. No HEAT or HE. No indirect fire as well.

[Hawkslayer]

Yeah I was thinking about sniper type railgun vehicles, small calibre, very high AP punch and near instant shot impact would make for an interesting game.

Add very long recharge rate after X slugs shot for balance. (like a big capacitor that needs to be recharged after firing shots) The internals of the vechicle would be very vulnerable to damage but no explosive ammo.. but a high possibility of crippling blows by damaging the gun, the ammo, or the large "capacitor" which would take up a ton of space.

These vehicles would be very likely slow, low armored, or with a very very low fire rate given their punch.. but stuff like pilot/gunner sniping could be an art some pick up, using this weapon like a scalpel, while learning to stay out of enemy fire.

Now that the engine is in place, and some solid units are made.. I'd love to see some higher tech stuff out there.

[Chilibird]

Hmmm...

Not a bad idea.. I wonder if I could work the whole 'capacitor' idea into the Ramses...

[Caseck]

Yeah, I'd like to see some sort of railgun. It'd have the drawback LASER weapons should have. (Capacitor recharge time.) Plus ammunition requirements, and reload time. High burst rate of fire, and the possibility for extreme velocity. It'd be interesting to have adjustable velocity that would dictate rate of fire. (Higher velocity=lower ROF.)

Larger internal volume and power requirements. The ammo is relatively small though, so you get good capacity for ammo volume.

[Hawkslayer]

I think the way to balance a high-penetration slug I see coming from a railgun would be to limit it's sustained rate of fire. A 3-shot burst would be nice, but anything more than that seems overpowered, unless balanced with a minute-long recharge time which would make the vehicle difficult and probably not very fun to play since the game is oriented to a faster paced form of combat. (quick respawn times, etc)

Variable rate of fire/velocity sounds interesting but difficult to do as a mod and would have it's own balance issues. A machine-gun effect for light vehicles while retaining a sniper like heavy armor functionality would definitely be impressive.

Here's an interesting article on railguns and supposed plans to integrate a railgun system in the new stealth-Destroyer for the Navy that's in development. Sounds like an impressive ship.

http://www.military.com/soldiertech/0,14632,Soldiertech_RailGuns,,00.html

And, to update my concept for a DT railgun game, it seems like "overheating" would be a bigger issue than need of capacitors, since it would use a direct energy system coming from the reactor thingies all these vehicles are using. I guess a simple way to implement that would be a slow ROF for cooldown. *shrug* Kinda like the ROF of the Quake 3 Railgun or something.

[Imperial Grunt]

I concur! We need a railgun equipped tank destroyer, maybe with a 14mm chaingun for close defense.

Railgun projectives would be traveling at velocities that would probably make some pretty cool vapor trails in atmosphere. Not so much in a vacumn.

If the heavy infantry squads ever get made, maybe the sniper can have a railgun style AT/sniper rifle.

More weapons that I would like to see are guided artillery rounds and "smart" ICM bomblets. Same with mines. Future mines should be "smart" and be equipped with an IFF device so that friendly vehicles can drive over them.