Enoki
SOC-14 1K
How accurate would you say this is?
http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/essay-on-realistic-space-combat-i-wrote.131056/
http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/essay-on-realistic-space-combat-i-wrote.131056/
A viable essay on space warfare?
- Thread starter Enoki
- Start date
Pretty good, really.
A few minor quibbles -
None of these invalidate the basic model shown. They do nuance certain elements of it away from the presentation.
A few minor quibbles -
- small-craft as targeters for missiles moves the comm-lag decision point closer.
- Piracy is more practical than she's giving credit for even when one's dock-point is detected
- historical piracy really was mostly privateering anyway,
- most cargo worth shipping is going to survive the breakup of your ship. The rest is people or luxury foods.
- You can't pursue if the pirate/privateer strongpoint is politically off-limits. Historical pirate havens were seldom unknown - they were just jurisdictionally untouchable.
- No means of keeping ships out of civil hands has worked historically - Eventually, even submarines have slipped into civil hands.
- ignoring the practical differences between lasers and PAW's, namely that a PAW is likely to disrupt the missile electronics with much lower energy on target than a laser, by virtue of secondary radiation, and that PAW's are not actually light-speed weapons.
None of these invalidate the basic model shown. They do nuance certain elements of it away from the presentation.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
I followed the link at the beginning of the article to the Strange Horizons article - that's worth a read too.
Amber Chancer
SOC-12
Yes, very interesting.
Though I don't "buy" the concept of space battles being fought at tremendous closing velocities and resembling drive-by shootings.
Battles will be fought only in those locations where ships on either side are likely to have low relative velocities - hence in the vicinity of planets or space stations where they tend to slow down and stop. And (subject to the question of whether or not every missile hit is likely to be a kill) the idea of lines-of-battle forming, facing off and slugging it out does not seem unreasonable to me. Although, of course, in 3 dimensions and zero G one should really try to think in terms of planes of battle, rather than lines ...
Though I don't "buy" the concept of space battles being fought at tremendous closing velocities and resembling drive-by shootings.
Battles will be fought only in those locations where ships on either side are likely to have low relative velocities - hence in the vicinity of planets or space stations where they tend to slow down and stop. And (subject to the question of whether or not every missile hit is likely to be a kill) the idea of lines-of-battle forming, facing off and slugging it out does not seem unreasonable to me. Although, of course, in 3 dimensions and zero G one should really try to think in terms of planes of battle, rather than lines ...
Until someone decided to reach out and touch them - the shores of Tripoli and all that. Piracy is possible where the will or resources to deal with piracy is lacking.
That depends on a lot of factors. Traveller gives us ships jumping to within a hundred diameters of a planet, circumstances that favor low-velocity intercepts unless there's a specific tactical advantage in racing through and being gone after trading a couple of broadsides. In the Traveller universe, you need to stick reasonably close to the objective you're defending, or the enemy could pop in and wreak havoc while you're too far off to respond.
However, one can imagine circumstances in which a high speed pass-through would be the optimal defensive strategy. If, for example, you were dealing with an Einsteinian universe (i.e., no exceeding C), had very good long-range detection, had a reasonable likelihood of disabling targets with a hit or two, and the consequences of letting that force get close to the objective were too great. Is not too good battling the Belter force in Earth orbit if it means Belter nukes are hitting your cities while you and he duke it out - better in that scenario to intercept in deep space if you've got a chance at executing the intercept and have a reasonable chance of crippling his force before he gets to Earth. Whether either is reasonable will depend on a myriad of circumstances: power output and fuel consumption of engines, effectiveness of weapons, effectiveness of ground defenses against orbital attack, and so forth, and so forth. Much unstated and decidedly speculative future-science involved in analyzing those circumstances.
I disagree with you, as I already posted somewhere I think battles would be exactly so.
If your fleet jumps at a GG to refuel and then proceeds to the main world in the system, accelerating to there, while the defender fleet accelerates to meet yours to avoid damage to the planet, at wich relative speed will you meet?
Even if the defender fleet wants to engage you at relative small speed, it has to acclerate to you, decelerate until they will met you moving to the planet to defend (and being catched, and quickly overpassed, by your superior speed fleet).
Yes, I envision engagements looking as medieval jousts, just making one or two attacks before overpassing the enemy fleet, only that, if one side tries to reach a planet and the other one trying to avoid that, one of them will not turn around to keep fighting, and the other will do it in so much time as te battle to be over until they meet again (probably at slow speeds then) near the planet to be attacked/defended.
Enoki
SOC-14 1K
Why jump in at the gas giant to refuel. Either you are going to win the battle or get your fleet destroyed. Far better to drop at the 100 diameter point on the main world (or your objective).
If you drop on the gas giant you are looking at about a day or two just refueling before you can start to close on the enemy fleet. At that point they will already know plenty about you and may even get the drop on you while you refuel.
Moving several orbits in or out to the objective will take more days to accomplish giving even more time. The worst possible scenario is that you are pushing a week and the enemy in system reinforces from other nearby systems.
Better a short sharp and surprised battle. If you win you have all the time you need to refuel. If you lose it won't matter anyway.
As your intelligence will be (at best) two weeks old, I guess you want to keep your retreat possibility.
If you jump directly at 100 diameters of the main world and you find the defender has been reinforced, they all your fleet is lost (and, as HG rules are, most of it captured, unless scuttled, as already discussed in other threads), as you have no retreat possible, while jumping at the GG to refuel wil ltake you about 3-7 days to reach the main world, even allowing jump capable enemy units to flee, but not to reinforce, as in this time news will, at best, reach the enemy fleet in nearby systems, who will yet to begin to jump to reinforce the battle, probably when battle is already over, and probably you've been able to make field repairs.
Amber Chancer
SOC-12
Interesting theory, but I don't buy it.
If you have an incoming enemy, and you want to eliminate or at least minimise his ability to damage your world, then a single shot or two in a high-speed drive-by as you head away from the world and he heads towards it is not your optimal strategy.
Assuming that he is aiming to slow down and stop in orbit, where he can get multiple shots at your world (rather than a single or two drive-by shots), or is intending to put ground forces dirtside, your optimum defensive strategy is to accelerate out on your enemy's bearing to part way and then decelerate to a stand; then to accelerate back towards your world on the same incoming bearing as your enemy, at a rate calculated such that your velocity matches his at the point of interception.
You then decelerate to match his deceleration on the world-approaching vector and slug it out with him all the way in, hoping that by the time you reach orbital distances you will have taken out enough of his offensive capability to prevent him doing too much (or preferably any) damage to your world.
Of course, if he is genuinely going for a drive-by on the world, then your computed intercept will not work. But at least he only gets a shot or two at your world in passing rather than a steady barrage.
So lines of battle are indeed where it's at ...
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But that will need for your enemy to allow you to match his acceleration. If he intends to limit the battle, he can vary his own acceleration pattern (even if it wil ltake a little more to reach the planet than constant acceleration) so to difficult your matching.
Only if your starting assumptions support such a model. Kinetic energy being kinetic energy, there are starting assumptions under which tossing a few ball bearings in his path as you do that high-speed drive-by are enough to pretty thoroughly ruin his day. Under those scenarios, it may be very difficult for him to plot a course that takes him to your world without getting a faceful of hypervelocity projectiles from your outbound defender. Of course, he's likely to do the same to you, but if the aim is to stop something from happening, then defender takes the win on that one - especially since defender doesn't need much more than a drive, the ball bearings, and a means of spreading them out, while the attacker is presumably inbound with whatever payload he's intending to use on the planet.
Much depends on your starting assumptions about drives, fuel use, detection, some means of absorbing or deflecting such attacks, and so forth. There's no "right" model until we get a clear idea on the nature of the technology being applied to the problem.
I think the assumptions on the lasers heating the missiles to the point of failure using a continous beam laser are not very good you can take the same energy and put it into a milisecond pulse and get energy densities that are going to cause material to vaporize from the surface, the inertia applied to the vapor is also applied to the wall of the ship or missile. Traveller Standard lasers with Gravemetric focussing are 20% efficient with a direct energy input of 250 MW for 180 seconds, that's quite a lot of joules applied in a very short time (TNE and T4 rules here) so the result will be a rather large transferrance of kenetic energy to the object (resembling a surface explosion with a block of explosive equal to the joules delivered times the absorbtion %) One could then calculate the effect of a breaching charge of that mass vs the material of the hull. Lasers using X-Ray frequencies deliver their energy into the volume of the material rather than the surface as if you were hitting a ship made of a smoky glass with a visible light frequency laser. The glass would still absorb energy from the beam but a larger volume of material is doing the absorption requiring much higher energy densities to disrupt the material.
One could also supply the inversion population of atoms needed to generate a laser beam by utilizing a chemical cartridge where the engertic gas is discharged overboard after the shot is fired thus not requiring the heat buildup assoiated with a multi MW power plant charging up a bank of capacitors. Using such a system would allow many more shots for the same heat buildup.
Any damaging hit be it a ball bearing, nuke or laser is going to have an effect on the attitude control of a missile or ship, disturbing the ship's pointing and perhaps causing it to vector in undesired directions.
One damage result or critical hit that is missing is damage to the attitude control systems of the target. If you can no longer control your roll, pitch or yaw axis of movement as well as you could before the damage, then your agility is not going to be as usefull. Real world chemical rockets have their exhaust nozles mounted on a gimbal with some few degrees of movement allowing for corrections to pitch and yaw (and with multiple nozzles one could also control roll, but that is not the case if a single nozzle is used) Such main engine attitude control system requires that the vessel be under thrust to be able to change attitude. Current spacecraft also have other attitude control systems which may be chemical rockets clusters with 5 nozzels mounted at several locations where they can be used under computer control to controll all 3 axis of motion. Other control systems may involve flywheels mounted at the center of mass to provide 3 axis of control. All such systems are possible points allowing a mission kill. We have lost spacecraft due to a runaway attitude control system before.
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