[--Steve-O--]

You could just put chemical jets on the spinny bit and spin it that way :V:

yes...YES!! i like where this is going!
wait....lets think about the poor bastard that has to go out the and replace them when the burn out... having bad merry go-round flashbacks...

[-Norbert-]

Remember that breaking and starging system you mentioned in your previous post? That would be a good use for it, would it not?

[Destiny]

So how does the Karuna not roll to one direction without a counter-torque? I assume it could be a smaller spinny bit inside the big spinny bit, spinning in the opposite direction but a bit faster since it's smaller.

[Pred the Penguin]

Remember that breaking and starging system you mentioned in your previous post? That would be a good use for it, would it not?

No, no, we have to conserve the kinetic energy. Let the poor bastard go out while it's spinning.

[LordPomposity]

Probably not a big concern. Compared to the amount of energy required to fire a Karuna's kinetic kill weapons, starting and stopping the rotating section should be negligible.

[666maslo666]

(I think there might have been a specific reason for the spinny section, though).

Gravity?

"The most noteworthy design concept is the utilisation of a rotating section, creating gravity for those aboard the vessel. This greatly reduces the need for power hungry gravity plating, and serves as a platform for the ships medium range sensor arrays giving them an outstanding field of view. It also acts as a centrifugal power generator that powers most of the secondary subsystems leaving the main reactors free to deliver more power to the engines, weapons and other primary subsystems. - UEFg Karuna

How can it act as a power generator? Woudnt it take more energy to spin it up in the first place? Or have Feds invented perpetuum mobile?

EDIT: nevermind, already answered.

[headdie]

(I think there might have been a specific reason for the spinny section, though).

Gravity?

"The most noteworthy design concept is the utilisation of a rotating section, creating gravity for those aboard the vessel. This greatly reduces the need for power hungry gravity plating, and serves as a platform for the ships medium range sensor arrays giving them an outstanding field of view. It also acts as a centrifugal power generator that powers most of the secondary subsystems leaving the main reactors free to deliver more power to the engines, weapons and other primary subsystems. - UEFg Karuna

How can it act as a power generator? Woudnt it take more energy to spin it up in the first place? Or have Feds invented perpetuum mobile?

EDIT: nevermind, already answered.

I suppose if you twist the wording slightly the rotators could be considered more like a flywheel rather than a generator, so for normal running the ship uses the main reactors but in situations like combat where you need all the power you can get you hook up the secondary generator drive shaft to the rotating section and let the power generated from that power your minor systems.  When combat is over run the generator in reverse until the rotator is back up to speed and disengage the generator.

[General Battuta]

Or you could just ignore that tech description because it was never in War in Heaven.

[Luis Dias]

That was actually a neat idea, to use the momentum of the wheel as a battery back up.

If we imagine that the bulk of the mass of the rotating things are more or less at a radius of 60m, each with a thousand tons, we can have this neat formula:

E = 1/2 Iw^2

E = 1/2 ((m1m2/(m1+m2))d^2) * 16^2

E = 1/2((1 000 000^2/ 2 000 000) * 60^2) * 256

E = 230 400 000 000 J

E = 230 GigaJoules.

Pretty awesome. If you think that a barrel of oil has 6 gigajoules give or take, we can see that this entire design is utterly inneficient

[Droid803]

The first two lines are fine...its the assertion that it actually generates power that's dubious. If only it just read "The most noteworthy design concept is the utilisation of a rotating section, creating gravity for those aboard the vessel. This greatly reduces the need for power hungry gravity plating, and serves as a platform for the ships medium range sensor arrays giving them an outstanding field of view."...if only..

[Darius]

Argh stop it!

[LordPomposity]

Argh stop it!

That would release the energy that was put into starting it, but due to the inherent efficiency of all non-ideal systems, not all the energy would be in usable form.

[Colonol Dekker]

I've lways held on to the belief that for any "techy stuff", the assumption of "wizards did it with beany magic" pretty much covers any doubts I had.



I'm sticking to it

[Flipside]

Because having different coloured beams for different races looks cool. That's about it in my opinion.

[-Norbert-]

But the "blue beam users" are the same race and even faction as the "green beam users", just a new generation of ships with new technology.

[Luis Dias]

x-ray beams rocks. They can be visualized by having the target ship suddenly become a fried skeleton of itself.

[Flipside]

I seem to recall reading somewhere that particle beams are probably a better bet, thanks to the fact that E=mv²/2 gets closer and closer to E=mc² the faster you accelerate the particles.

[LordPomposity]

I seem to recall reading somewhere that particle beams are probably a better bet, thanks to the fact that E=mv²/2 gets closer and closer to E=mc² the faster you accelerate the particles.

Due to relativistic corrections, E=mv²/2 actually exceeds E=mc² at somewhere around 87% of the speed of light (the full kinetic energy equation for a fast-moving object is E=mv²/[2*SQRT(1-v²/c²)]). The chief disadvantage of particle beams is that they would lose cohesion much more rapidly than lasers and would therefore have a much shorter range. Still, by "short range," we're talking thousands of kilometers versus several light-seconds. Not really enough of a limitation to make trouble for FS2 combat.

[Luis Dias]

Rail guns.

[Kolgena]

Why is the Prometheus cannon green? Why does the Hercules have four engines and not six? Why do a lot of UEF ships a spinny section?

They're all design-related questions that likely had little "scientific" support and were merely chosen for aesthetic effect (I think there might have been a specific reason for the spinny section, though).

I can live with being a pawn if the game makes sense!

OT: For me at least, blue reminds me of amped up AAA beams, something like a tier up from ultraAAA. It gives precisely the impression of focus and penetration that Battutta mentioned, maybe not for the same reason.

OffT: The Karuna's pretty big. You don't have to fill the entire centrifuge with space that people are meant to say in. The tips would be filled with sensors, centrifugal generators (how is this intelligent? If you hook up an electric generator to the moving parts, all you do is increase the resistance on the engine running the spinning motion, for net energy loss compared to no generators), and gyms.