E-mag weapons builder

[onetrikpony]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Curious about that myself. The laser rifle in UT is consistent with a 30 kJ weapon in Spaceships (and probably the mentioned design article, but I don't have that to check), and would get 8.3 shots out of a C cell (the D cell it normally uses holds 10x as much energy as a C cell, and gets it 83 shots). 30kJ * 8.3shots/cell = 249kJ/cell, implying that's how much usable energy you get out of it. Assuming electromagnetic weapons have comparable efficiencies to laser weapons, that would mean a 3 kJ* gauss gun (say) should manage around 83 shots out of a C cell. The_Ryujin appears to be assuming the electromagnetic weapon will only have around 70% of the efficiency of the laser weapon.

I'm assuming the issue is the efficiency of the projector / launcher. I've been thinking about my TL 10 setting in terms of projectile launchers being more efficient in terms of terminal energy than beams. Things would change a lot if that weren't the case.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Above 1600 meters per second pretty much any projectiles made from anything except but depleted uranium or materials like UT's "bulk amorphous tungsten" shatter and make shallow craters rather than deep penetrating hits.

Above 2200 mps even depleted uranium structurally fails. "Hyperdense might take you farther but how far depends on specifics. Traveller's "Bonded Superdense" at 2x as dense as steel but 14x as strong might take you to 3700 mps.

This concept is new to me!
Thanks Fred.
Where do I go to learn more? (even search terms would be OK) I'm guessing it has something to do with a threshold for energy transfer based on the (sheer?) strength of the projectile material?
This could definitely change my setting.