#railguns need recoil

70 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

runic yacht
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I’m a bit of a new player but I can already see railguns being completely overpowered if you make a small army of small ships with long railguns and engines to retreat.

It would be great if they had a significant recoil for small ships that throws them im to the side and backward. This would also ensure they have to readjust to aim.

silver vapor
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bruh

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they have recoil

dusky vector
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Have you tried doing that yet? The downside is, those railguns are going to cost more than the entire rest of the ships, and without sufficient protection they are extremely fragile.

silver vapor
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your thrsuters are counteracting it prob

dusky vector
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Making a swarm of railgun fighters is a really good way to end up losing a ton of money.

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It isn't unviable, but it is very risky. If your opponent has missiles or ions prepare to get wrecked.

deep rain
runic yacht
deep rain
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instant building is going to be "changed" the option will still exist tho

runic yacht
covert gazelle
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A railgun would have recoil, no? Equal and opposite reaction and all that? The fact it uses elecomagnets and not gas propellant does not change that

cunning sandal
silver vapor
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it can be used for discussions

runic yacht
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Ok thanks! I guess the recoil might need to be based on the size of the barrel

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Unless it already is

covert gazelle
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I think it is, but I have not tested it as I rarley use smaller railguns

deep rain
sacred lance
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Well yea

unborn rivet
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The recoil irl exactly the same as if it were thrown by any other method

sacred lance
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That's how recoil works

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Your launching something at a high rate of seed, if a object is moving one way it has a equal but opposite reaction pushing the other way

pallid harness
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they have recoil already

deep rain
deep rain
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it needs to be very powerful not too powerful tho

pallid harness
# deep rain it's very weak tho

fair but on big ships you really shouldint get any recoil the only thing that gets recoil from it its small ships currently and thats fine with me as why would a big ship get recoil form a railgun?

runic yacht
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I mean shouldn’t a huge gun produce a huge recoil

deep rain
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yeah but it won't matter when the ship is heavier than a neighbourhood

pallid harness
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; )

runic yacht
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Fair. I mean our ships are like the size of a city block based on how long it takes people to walk in them

pallid harness
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also most small ships / fighters are the sizes of houses so i think the recoil is fair currently

pallid harness
runic yacht
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It’s a give and take

deep rain
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imagine a railgun the size of a railway

runic yacht
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And it shoots trains?

deep rain
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yes to expand the factory

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factorio factory

runic yacht
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The ship factory must grow

untold spoke
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it won't be removed, fades from discussion

deep rain
deep rain
untold spoke
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👻 Gostly sounds: only you can stop the spread of misinformation 👻

pallid harness
spring hound
covert gazelle
ocean lark
# deep rain it wouldn't be realistic, how can launching something using electromagnetic fiel...

https://youtu.be/T9EyG29EKDo?t=74
Like this. :P

YouTube
US Military Power
US Navy tests its crazy electromagnetic railgun

The future of naval warfare will give you chills. The US Office of Naval Research posted a video demonstration last week showing a multi-shot salvo test of its electromagnetic railgun.

Here's the Navy's sobering description of what the advanced weapon can do: "The revolutionary railgun relies on a massive electrical pulse, rather than gunpowde...

▶ Play video
hollow turtle
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tested it, railguns have the same recoil regardless of accelerator amount. the weight of the railgun itself can nullify most of the recoil at larger sizes.

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given the accelerators increase projectile speed, they probably should increase recoil proportionally

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so it's not that the railguns have no recoil, the recoil just doesn't scale appropriately

ocean lark
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Not a physics expert, but there should be "less" recoil as the gun wouldn't be pushing air out of the barrel.

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But that's all guns in space :P

dusky vector
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It isn't the air that makes the recoil lol. It's usually the explosive force slamming into the back of the chamber, then propelling the projectile out the front

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The displaced air adds to it sure, but negligibly.

ocean lark
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It matter more for a rail gun. MUCH higher velocity.

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SO theoretically there would be a more noticeable difference in performance between a cannon and a railgun in space and on earth.

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In terms of recoil.

dusky vector
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Ask the Russians. They're the only one thus far to fire a gun in space.

humble tusk
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wait

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why not just instead have the accelerators create recoil as the projectile passes through

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that could be a cool and realistic way to do railgun recoil

unborn rivet
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It's the momentum of the projectile and any other mass (exhausted gas, sabot jacket, railgun armature, etc.) being thrown out the barrel

A 2 kg slug being thrown at 5km/s (think Rocinante's rail gun in The Expanse) will have an energy of 25 MJ (about the same energy of a fully loaded tractor-trailer moving at 80+mph/130+kph, just concentrated into a really small cross section).

The recoil experienced by the gun will be exactly the same, it just has a whole lot more weight to push against. It will always be exactly the same, for every gun of any type ever to be made. It's half the mass of the projectile multiplied by the square of its velocity.

Incidentally, Rocinante is estimated to weigh about 250 metric tons, so the railgun shot would actually only accelerate the ship backward about 1 cm/s, and that is a completely realistic model of an actual spinal mounted railgun on a fairly realistic spacecraft. Visible and obvious recoil on a ship of any size is just not going to be a thing

safe remnant
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Or said differently: every accelerator adds the same amount of energy to the projectile (in reality probably even less..) but also adds the same amount of mass to the ship. So a longer railgun fires faster projectiles, but is also heavier.

deep rain
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The answer is given by the conservation of momentum equation:

Q= Mproj x Vproj = Mgun x Vgun

So depending on the projectile you fire and at which velocity, you will get a certain amount of momentum to absorb.

If you want a ‘ball park figure’ (as no railguns have been fielded yet, and only experimental testing has been done): current experiments have accelerated approx. 10kg packages to approx. 3–4km/s, giving you a momentum of 30–40.10^3 kg.m/s (on average: there have been tests with bigger masses at lower velocities and vice versa).

For matters of comparison: the ballistic package for the M829 family of long rod projectiles (sabots + long rod) for the M1 Abrams MBT weighs approx. 9kg and is accelerated to approx. 1500 m/s. This gives you a momentum of 13,5.10^3kg.m/s. So our ‘average railgun’ from above would have a recoil 2 to 3 times as high as what is seen by the M1 Abrams when it fires an M829 round if you only consider the ballistic package. In the case of the Abrams you however have also additional recoil due to the acceleration of the powder charge/combustion products and the flow out of the combustion products from the muzzle. This means that in reality the recoil of the M1 Abrams is more around 20.10^3kg.m/s. So your railgun would have approx. the double of that, as it does not have any contribution from the acceleration of the powder charge and the flow out of the combustion products.

Now if the US is going to develop long range naval artillery based on railgun technology, you could expect the ballistic package to go up to minimum 30–40kg (to have the same metal hence fragment mass as a 155mm artillery projectile) and velocities in the range of 2–3km/s. This would give you a recoil impulse of approx. 80–100.10^3kg.m/s. This will normally require a recoil brake and recoil mechanism to be absorbed.

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i copy pasted the source