Type-53 "Zàn" Anti-Vehicle Rifle
Making use of the apparent strength of the RGL action the Type-53 is a 15mm semi-automatic rifle. True to it's name the rifle is able to defeat light armor out long range although the able to use this is limited by our current lack of scopes. While destroying enemy walkers is common use the rifle should also be quite effective at taking out enemy helicopters. The rifle is more our less unchanged from the RGL outside of a lengthen barrel. If time permitts the rifle is to be fitted with a padded stock and muzzle break, if the heavens truly smile upon us the belt feed for vehicle use.
While I can see the benefit in having a dedicated anti-materiel rifle, I believe stealing their machine gun would bring a higher advantage in the same field while also having other uses. We could do one of two things - revision an autoloading 75mm cannon for our Hexapod and our ships, revision more efficient engines for everything - potentially bringing down the cost of the Qui-Chi, Xiwang Kezhi and maybe the Piāoqiè (depending on if we can drop from 3 to 2 Oil).
Sure, we could do other stuff too - further work on the helicopter, revision the Hexapod into a more effective light tank, make our own crank-actuated MG from our semi-automatic, develop a transport helicopter from the Zhish; but note most of this won't be as effective as the above listed revisions term of bringing an advantage to our side. The engine revision should, optimally, give us much more powerful, reliable engines for all our shit.
Therefore, I propose an engine revision:
Xi-53 Xìnlài de-series Turbine EnginesDevelopment time is dedicated to replacing the engines in our military vehicles (all of varying quality) with modern turboshafts so as to both increase their fuel efficiency exponentially (both via increased burn efficiency and incorporating more potential fuels, using experience from working on the Zhish). By incorporating inter-cooling, regeneration, and reheating the simple-cycle efficiencies of our gas turbines are expected to practically double, and by incorporating a combined-cycle the engine, where-in after completing its cycle (in the first engine), the temperature of the working fluid engine is still high enough that a second subsequent heat engine may extract energy from the waste heat that the first engine produced. By combining these multiple streams of work upon a single mechanical shaft turning an electric generator, the overall net efficiency of the system may be increased by 50-60%. Additionally, reliability improvements are also introduced based on the development of the turbine engine used in the Zhish, resulting in more reliable powerplants.
In a closed cycle gas turbine such as the Zhish, the exhaust gas is used in an heat exchanger, and as a result the working fluid is reusable. It is also a clean cycle as the working fluid is recirculated. Regeneration process involves the installation of a heat exchanger in the gas turbine cycle, which is used to extract the heat from the exhaust gas, which is then used to heat the compressed air. Intercooling is incorporated in the form of a heat exchanger which is used to cool the compressor gases at the time of compression. When the compressor involves a high and low pressure compressor, as it does in almost all gas turbines, the intercooler is installed between them to cool down the flow. This cooling process will decrease the work needed for the compression in the high pressure unit, resulting in a higher output per mass flow for the fuel. Reheating is applied in a gas turbine in such a way that it increases the turbine work without increasing the compressor work or melting the turbine materials. A reheater is applied in a gas turbine between the high and low pressure compressor and increases the turbine work without increasing the compressor work or melting the turbine materials. Generally, it's a combustor which reheats the flow between the high and low pressure turbines, again, improving the thrust-to-weight ratio. By itself, they would not necessarily increase the thermal efficiency, however, when intercooling or reheat is used in conjunction with heat regeneration, a significant increase in thermal efficiency can be achieved and the net work output is also increased. All three are simple concepts incorporated in early turboshafts to greatly increase their efficiency. A simple tuned pipe-type muffler (tuned pipe exhaust - also basically an aero turbine muffler) is also added to reduce noise levels, where-in the pipe has a resonant frequency of operation, and when the engine is operating at that speed, the muffler causes a timed partial vacuum at the engine's exhaust port, helping the engine vent exhaust gasses. The net result is a boost of power at that operating speed due to the engine breathing better, a couple of percent worth of fuel efficiency, as well as producing less overall noise.
The net result is cheaper (at least by 1 Oil), more powerful engines for all our military vehicles, with the Xīwàng Kèzhì, Piāoqiè guānsī and Qi-Chu having the most priority, but work is to be done on incorporating the new engine know-how to the Dogbite and Yāngē, since the same concepts apply and are easier to implement there due to their size.
Engines are to be listed as X53XLAI-A / L / N (Implementation Number, First letter of name), for example, X53XLAI-L1Q for the Qi-Chu and X53XLAI-L1P for the Piāoqiè. Same named vehicles have the second letter added to differentiate between them, as in X53XLAI-A1XI for the Xiwang Kezhi as opposed to X53XLAI-A1X for the original Xiwang (of course, since we won't be using the latter, the abbrevation XK is to be used for the Xiwang Kezhi).
tl;dr The goal of the revision is to create more fuel efficient turboshaft engines to reduce the cost of our stuff (!!!), by at least using the engine from the Zhish and refitting it to everything else, or alternatively by improving it via the above method to create both a more fuel efficient and more powerful engine for the same size.
Estimated Difficulty: Hard
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Topic: Arms Race: Iron Behemoths - Toskesh - GAME OVER (Read 47262 times)