Thread:Captain rudder guy Kevin1/@comment-12494172-20150725103513/@comment-27797576-20150727232919

Oi, a kenetic kill rod has no energy usage dropping it. And Oi, at orbital volicity impact speeds, any large mass(EG a large several meter long and wide tungsten(obviously longer than wide by a large marigin) rod wieghing several hundred thousand kilograms, if not millions)will virtually vaporize on impact, creating a nuclear bomb size explosion due to cratering the earth at that speed. And Oi, a rod is very efficient for the most part, because as the tungsten rod falls down, it has the front flake off material, making the rod more aerodynamic as it goes down. Aerodynamics only really matter once you get to around the lower statosphere-upper troposphere.

Oi, the biggest rail gun in RP is a 100in rail gun, which is used by isreal. The largest commonly used rail gun is 5", with some navies making larger railguns. Most of those 'over gunned' ships have nuclear reactors, which can handle the use of multiple railguns, MAC's, etc. Now the only weapon in RP that has projectiles traveling at relativistic speeds are particle beams(occasionally, but they have small particles, not a solid round) and lasers(well, dur). Most other weapons go below Mach 20, so yeah.

Oi, you have to remember that even the most advanced FCS can't be 100% accurate, nor is it garenteeded to hit a target. In fact, they could perform dodges to move away from said projectiles. Or they could simply just make a heat resistant, strong compound which 'catches' or deflects small amounts of rounds. You also have to compensate for speed of the aircraft, so for an aircraft going .2 the speed of light, you need at least .4 to get reasonable hit rates, and as the speed of the aircraft increases, so does the speed you need to propel the round. And IMO, your not even going to get a 47mm round to relativistic speeds on a normal ship(and a frigrate couldn't even accomitate the weaponry....).

And as said before, making things travel at relativistic speeds takes a TON of energy if it has any sort of mass to it. Even RP ships take a while to accelerate to sub-light speeds, and they have CONSTANT thrust. For yours, Oi, your talking about trying to accelerate a small projectile to sub-light speed.......... In the space of about 5 or so meters. You need at least several tens of millions of watts to even get a round to 0.01 the speed of light in a small, compact barrel. You basically need either a barrel spanning the length of a WHOLE ship, or you need like 20 fusion reactors to power a single turret. And you have to remember Oi, AIF has NO NEED for such weapons. Most aerospace aircraft go under a fraction of the speed of light, and the fastest one I know of is a sigh design with impulse drives, and they don't go even .1 the speed of light last time I checked. The next fastest is AIF's own personal fighter, the F-1500(or bomber, B/GF-1500), at Mach 10(which is the fastest in-atmosphere fighter in all of RP for the most part). AIF already has more conventional tech that can do the job. And they work in atmosphere too, as AIF has most of it's battles in an atmosphere, and has had only a few battles in actual SPACE.