Antimatter rockets

[Eclipse]

Hi,everyone!
Is it possible to use antimatter weapons to bombard alien armies?I am tired of using nuclear weapons vs them. The new ice age is quite close and GDP drop is crazy.

[ulzgoroth]

Eclipse の投稿を引用：

ulzgoroth の投稿を引用：

What is "explosion power" in this putative calculation?

Nuclear yield in kilotons of TNT. Yeah cubic root, English isn't my native language. Point is that one 10 MT (10000 kt) warhead is actually way weaker than ten 150 kt warheads in terms of damage done to population.

No, nuclear yield is the thing you said explosion power scales as the cube root of. Without saying what 'explosion power' is.

Based on you saying it goes as the cube root, I think it might be the radius at which the blast wave achieves a particular strength level. That might vary that way. But of course that means that the area devastated scales as the square of the cube root, not as the cube root...


As for damaging the population it really depends how you distribute it. 10 'small' warheads all hitting the same spot does only a little more direct-effect harm than the first one. 10 small warheads laid out to efficiently cover a populated area might live up to your claim though.

[Eclipse]

ulzgoroth の投稿を引用：

Eclipse の投稿を引用：

Nuclear yield in kilotons of TNT. Yeah cubic root, English isn't my native language. Point is that one 10 MT (10000 kt) warhead is actually way weaker than ten 150 kt warheads in terms of damage done to population.

No, nuclear yield is the thing you said explosion power scales as the cube root of. Without saying what 'explosion power' is.

Based on you saying it goes as the cube root, I think it might be the radius at which the blast wave achieves a particular strength level. That might vary that way. But of course that means that the area devastated scales as the square of the cube root, not as the cube root...


As for damaging the population it really depends how you distribute it. 10 'small' warheads all hitting the same spot does only a little more direct-effect harm than the first one. 10 small warheads laid out to efficiently cover a populated area might live up to your claim though.

I don't know how it is implimented in the game,but I think warheads hit different targets or just deal huge collaterial damage even if you target allien armies. I guess it would be still a good solution to give a player a late/mid game option to pinpoint allien armies and destroy them with less or minimal damage. In one game they colonized China,so I had no way but to destroy a lot of their high lvl. armies with bad consequences to enviroment and population. Also it was my first game so I didn't expect that allien armies are so strong.

[gimmethegepgun]

Eclipse の投稿を引用：

I guess it would be still a good solution to give a player a late/mid game option to pinpoint allien armies and destroy them with less or minimal damage.

It's not less or minimal damage. It's still a warhead of comparable strength to nukes you can expect to have in the barrage, which means it will cause the same kind of collateral damage (albeit without the fallout effects). If you want minimal collateral damage you need a low-yield weapon that hits a specific target and not much else, which is what green lasers and kinetic weapons can offer you for bombardment.

[ulzgoroth]

gimmethegepgun の投稿を引用：

Eclipse の投稿を引用：

I guess it would be still a good solution to give a player a late/mid game option to pinpoint allien armies and destroy them with less or minimal damage.

It's not less or minimal damage. It's still a warhead of comparable strength to nukes you can expect to have in the barrage, which means it will cause the same kind of collateral damage (albeit without the fallout effects). If you want minimal collateral damage you need a low-yield weapon that hits a specific target and not much else, which is what green lasers and kinetic weapons can offer you for bombardment.

Not even necessarily without the fallout effects. Antimatter is potentially 'clean', but it can be very dirty if you have larger nuclei in the annihilation.

[Morti]

Cubic roots gives you an approximation of the range cubic root can we written ^(1/3) So if you have 300x power, you have 300^(1/3)r range
where x = power of Hiroshima's bomb and r = range of Hiroshima's bomb, so there, so it's around 6.7r, then if you want an idea of the area ( a not so bad idea of what you're destroying ) it's 6.7².
So using the ingame antimatter torpedo on earth wouldn't kill far less pop, but the good side of antimatter as a weapon, is that nothing on the theory force you to use as much antimatter, you can decide to make a few mg antimatter bomb, (instead of 300g from the in-game torpedo launcher ) just to destroy some bunkers, a part of a city, or something like this with, you were right,probably less side effects than nuclear bombs

[gimmethegepgun]

Morti の投稿を引用：

So using the ingame antimatter torpedo on earth wouldn't kill far less pop, but the good side of antimatter as a weapon, is that nothing on the theory force you to use as much antimatter, you can decide to make a few mg antimatter bomb, (instead of 300g from the in-game torpedo launcher ) just to destroy some bunkers, a part of a city, or something like this with, you were right,probably less side effects than nuclear bombs

Though, the problem with that is that it's not what the Antimatter Torpedo weapon in-game has. It would have to be something else entirely.
Maybe they should make some weapons that aren't really meant to fight ships, having much too slow velocity to be effective, but are excellent at bombardment. Like, they fire very quickly and deal a lot of damage due to a warhead (like a small antimatter warhead) or simply taking advantage of gravity to accelerate it, but firing them at velocities useful for ship combat would be too strenuous for that rate of fire.

[ulzgoroth]

gimmethegepgun の投稿を引用：

Morti の投稿を引用：

So using the ingame antimatter torpedo on earth wouldn't kill far less pop, but the good side of antimatter as a weapon, is that nothing on the theory force you to use as much antimatter, you can decide to make a few mg antimatter bomb, (instead of 300g from the in-game torpedo launcher ) just to destroy some bunkers, a part of a city, or something like this with, you were right,probably less side effects than nuclear bombs

Though, the problem with that is that it's not what the Antimatter Torpedo weapon in-game has. It would have to be something else entirely.
Maybe they should make some weapons that aren't really meant to fight ships, having much too slow velocity to be effective, but are excellent at bombardment. Like, they fire very quickly and deal a lot of damage due to a warhead (like a small antimatter warhead) or simply taking advantage of gravity to accelerate it, but firing them at velocities useful for ship combat would be too strenuous for that rate of fire.

That's basically what early nuclear torpedoes are...in space.

Bombarding Earth does seem short of dedicated solutions.

[gimmethegepgun]

ulzgoroth の投稿を引用：

That's basically what early nuclear torpedoes are... in space.

Bombarding Earth does seem short of dedicated solutions.

Yeah, I was thinking more Earth bombardment.

[Mistfox]

gimmethegepgun の投稿を引用：

ulzgoroth の投稿を引用：

That's basically what early nuclear torpedoes are... in space.

Bombarding Earth does seem short of dedicated solutions.

Yeah, I was thinking more Earth bombardment.

Pity no air force. I can see a few bomber carried high speed anti-ship missiles or bunker busters as the solution to some of their landing ships.

As for antimatter, do keep in mind that the production rate of antimatter is counted in pico-grams, which is 0.000 000 000 001 grams. It'll take a long, long, long time to produce any amount that is meaningful in a bomb.

[ulzgoroth]

Mistfox の投稿を引用：

gimmethegepgun の投稿を引用：

Yeah, I was thinking more Earth bombardment.

Pity no air force. I can see a few bomber carried high speed anti-ship missiles or bunker busters as the solution to some of their landing ships.

As for antimatter, do keep in mind that the production rate of antimatter is counted in pico-grams, which is 0.000 000 000 001 grams. It'll take a long, long, long time to produce any amount that is meaningful in a bomb.

A) You either made that up, or don't realize you're using a uselessly weak method of production. I dunno which.

B) As you apparently don't realize, antimatter missiles are an actual in-game technology.

[Eclipse]

Mistfox の投稿を引用：

gimmethegepgun の投稿を引用：

Yeah, I was thinking more Earth bombardment.

Pity no air force. I can see a few bomber carried high speed anti-ship missiles or bunker busters as the solution to some of their landing ships.

As for antimatter, do keep in mind that the production rate of antimatter is counted in pico-grams, which is 0.000 000 000 001 grams. It'll take a long, long, long time to produce any amount that is meaningful in a bomb.

This is a Sci-Fi game,if I’m correct antimatter warhead has 2 kg of antimatter. So in game this isn’t a problem if your tech lvl. Is high. But antimatter still is very rare even in late game.

[Mistfox]

ulzgoroth の投稿を引用：

Mistfox の投稿を引用：

Pity no air force. I can see a few bomber carried high speed anti-ship missiles or bunker busters as the solution to some of their landing ships.

As for antimatter, do keep in mind that the production rate of antimatter is counted in pico-grams, which is 0.000 000 000 001 grams. It'll take a long, long, long time to produce any amount that is meaningful in a bomb.

A) You either made that up, or don't realize you're using a uselessly weak method of production. I dunno which.

B) As you apparently don't realize, antimatter missiles are an actual in-game technology.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2891816751

You should check your resources and what units of measurement they use before mouthing off. The world's annual production of antimatter is measured in the pico-grams, go wiki it. The game uses femtograms as the unit of measure for antimatter if I recall correctly. With such low units of measure, you are not talking about Star Trek levels of antimatter. It's more likely that the technology used is what is called "doped" reactions where antimatter is added as an additive to catalyze other reactions than as a main reactant. That would be an AM catalyzed pure fusion bomb rather than a pure antimatter bomb, the amounts of antimatter measured in the game does not support the idea or production of pure antimatter weaponry.

[ulzgoroth]

Mistfox の投稿を引用：

ulzgoroth の投稿を引用：

A) You either made that up, or don't realize you're using a uselessly weak method of production. I dunno which.

B) As you apparently don't realize, antimatter missiles are an actual in-game technology.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2891816751

You should check your resources and what units of measurement they use before mouthing off. The world's annual production of antimatter is measured in the pico-grams, go wiki it. The game uses femtograms as the unit of measure for antimatter if I recall correctly. With such low units of measure, you are not talking about Star Trek levels of antimatter. It's more likely that the technology used is what is called "doped" reactions where antimatter is added as an additive to catalyze other reactions than as a main reactant. That would be an AM catalyzed pure fusion bomb rather than a pure antimatter bomb, the amounts of antimatter measured in the game does not support the idea or production of pure antimatter weaponry.

Yeah, so, you're thinking about a useless mode of production plus you're not even reading your own screenshot. Notice that it says the number is in micrograms per year? It's a small number, but it still comes out to nanograms per year, not picograms. Of course, you can drop that down to picograms by combining the useless production site with inadequate collection technology.

It is true that the game uses very small SI prefixes to measure antimatter. And literally every resource, though that's less often important.

First of all, collecting antimatter at Earth is pretty well pointless. That is indeed a very small number, even compared to the smallest use cases for antimatter. Around Jupiter you can get maybe-useful production, and around Saturn enough that it probably would let you use antimatter spikers quite freely.

Or you can research antimatter mass production and put super-colliders over Mercury and make the 'harvestable' antimatter into a rounding error.

As you can see, I have over a full unit - and that's with just one or two of the smaller antimatter generators (I got them before they got moved up the tech tree). I make more than half a milli-unit per day.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2891830991

[Morti]

c²=~9x10^16 m.s-1
E=2.247x10^16J m=2xantimatter mass ( m=matter+antimatter mass )
E/2c² = m = (9/2.247) = ~4.0kg
so the IG "nuclear torpedo" use 2kg of antimatter.
Nasa estimated that producing 10mg of antimatter (positrons ) whould cost around 250 millions. so, with enough money... why not : most of military programs cost way more.

https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/home/antimatter_spaceship.html
but it's a bit outdated ;)

[Mistfox]

ulzgoroth の投稿を引用：

........

And what is the unit of weight that is used to measure that amount of antimatter? I've seen femto and atto gram notations too so the amount of antimatter that is in the game is VERY small and way too insufficient to make anything like an "antimatter torpedo". What the "antimatter torpedo" really is, is an antimatter catalyzed fusion reaction.

So, can you check for everyone here on the thread, what weight notation does your antimatter stockpile use? I'm seeing an "n" there.

Then consider if that amount you stated can blow up anything other than a nose.

corsil once said here that antimatter explosions are just fantasy. This is what he means.

ulzgoroth の投稿を引用：

It is true that the game uses very small SI prefixes to measure antimatter. And literally every resource, though that's less often important.

Materials other than antimatter are measured in tons. You can see that from the global screen where it states clearly that the prices are for per deca-ton. That isn't "a small prefix".

Morti の投稿を引用：

c²=~9x10^16 m.s-1
E=2.247x10^16J m=2xantimatter mass ( m=matter+antimatter mass )
E/2c² = m = (9/2.247) = ~4.0kg
so the IG "nuclear torpedo" use 2kg of antimatter.
Nasa estimated that producing 10mg of antimatter (positrons ) whould cost around 250 millions. so, with enough money... why not : most of military programs cost way more.

https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/home/antimatter_spaceship.html
but it's a bit outdated ;)

If I recall correctly, 1 gram of matter/antimatter annihilation (50% matter, 50% antimatter) is something like 21 or 22 kilotons of TNT. You can scale up the estimates from there.