Science Fiction Setting Conceptualization: War Rats

[warty goblin]

The other day, during Yet Another Humanities Class on Plato, I found myself pondering science fiction warfare, because if nothing else it beat thinking about Allegory of the Cave for the fourth time in as many years. Specifically I was contemplating the problem of how to make infantry combat relevent in any setting with spaceships. Every time I've run through the problem it ends with a torrent of orbital fire and pretty much all the ground forces burned to a nice crisp. One gets the impression that it would only take one or two tries for most people to give this up as a bad job and go home. There'd be irregular warfare still, but that's about it.

I was also thinking about S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, which I had been playing the night before and has its own Allegory of the Cave. It goes something like this- you go into a cave and a psionic mutant rips your brain out your ass. Only it's not an allegory. As anybody who's played the game can tell you, there's something about the atmosphere, particularly the underground labs (I'm perfectly willing to admit X16 scared the hell out of me), that tends to stick with a person.

But anyway, rather than contemplate the Forms, these two concepts swirled around in my head, and produced the following result. I've been thinking about it for a while, and it seems to have some potential.

In the distant future, humanity has spread to other worlds, then fractured and started killing each other, as one would pretty much expect. There had been an Earth centered bureaucracy in charge of all the other planets, but the distances and times involved in interstellar travel made this impossible to maintain long term. Thus there were a series of bloody, but smallscale and relatively short wars of succession, and most planets gained their independance from the homeworld. Since that time interplanetary commerce and conflict has occured, but been limited by the relatively slow FTL drives available.

In the recent past, a revolution in FTL technology cut the travel times between worlds by at least half. This of course led to a boom in interstellar trade, and also in interplanetary warfare, as it was again considered viable to go conquering one's neighbors. Out of this period of conflict, several multiplanetary 'nations' were created, each with their own spheres of influence, and client worlds.

Now, twenty years or so later, war has broken out between several of these powers. For the first time in history, interstellar war is occuring between coalitions of worlds.

This of course involves some massive changes in the strategic reality of the war. Previously, when one planet wanted to conquer another, it sailed a big old fleet over, blew up the enemy's defenses, and then camped its fleet in orbit until everybody underneath was sufficiently orbitally bombarded or dead, and surrendered. In essense it is war between Greek city states prior to the Peleponesian or Persian wars.

Now this strategy has been rendered much less viable, since it is quite possible for a relief fleet to arrive during the 'camping in orbit' phase, and destroy the beseigers. Leaving the attacking fleet there more or less permenantly was also not a satisfactory solution, since warships are expensive, and furthermore simply letting them sit around greatly reduced attacking nation's ability to project force. On the defensive side it also became clear that leaving sufficiently large fleets to deter invaders in orbit around all of their planets was similarly non-satisfactory. After all a warship at home is a warship that's not carrying the fight to the enemy.

Hence the invention of fortress asteroids. The concept was very simple, and even reasonably affordable. Simply tow a large asteroid into orbit around one's planet, hollow it out, fill it with weapons, soldiers, and supplies. A reasonably large rock could easily match the firepower of a squadron of battleships, while being durable enough to require significant force to destroy. This liberated defending fleets to carry out strikes on enemy positions, and left the planets in relative security.

The first uses of the fortroids were unqualified successes, with entire Task Forces being stopped in their tracks, or taking such punishing losses that they were forced to retire. Then somebody had the bright idea of simply blasting the surface of a fortroid into dust, destroying all of its weapons, and then moving on to take the planet below it. It was much faster and cheaper than actually destroying the thing for certain. It also cut way down on problems like large pieces of asteroid crashing into the planet one was trying to 'liberate,' and pissing everybody off, not to mention damaging the place's economy and ecosystem severely.

The problem, which this bright individual had failed to forsee, was that the fortroid had guns tucked away inside of it. As soon as the fleet moved on, and the provisional government had been installed, these guns were wheeled out of the core of the roid, and pointed at the provisional government, all of whom suddenly remembered pressing engagements off planet.


Then some other bright individual had the genius idea of landing troops on, or more accurately in, a fortroid and taking it from the inside. This idea had of course been propossed immediately following the fortroid's appearance but been rejected as lunacy. Most of the people who had thought that were now dead however, and so the plan got greenlit.

So now we have fighting inside asteroids, and here the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. references come into play. Armored vehicles are of limited use in a tunnel, even if they fit there's no room to maneuver or dodge, and when they are destroyed they end up being more an obstacle than anything else. Thus combat is pretty much conducted by infantry alone. Of course this is infantry fighting in a warran of tunnels, with dubious atmospheric pressure, poor lighting and microgravity, all against an enemy who has had ample time to turn the entire rock into a deathtrap. It comes to be known as 'hell in heaven,' and those that fight there as "War Rats."

Thoughts? Glaring inconsistancies? Way too obvious WWI parallels? Let me know what you think!

[Eldan]

The first problem that occurs to me is, of course, how the hell to they land the troops? There's no stealth in space and weapons can target you from forever away, so the asteroid has a significant advantage. Any landing vehicle will have huge problems.

[Neo]

Also you have to remember that the asteroids are only effective as long as they have a stable orbit, an enemy just managing to push one into a decaying orbit would be able to wipe out millions of colonists without a massive fleet.

[13_CBS]

So... tunnel warfare IN SPACE? That's actually one of the more interesting premises I've seen in sci fi. :smallbiggrin:...





Hence the invention of fortress asteroids. The concept was very simple, and even reasonably affordable. Simply tow a large asteroid into orbit around one's planet, hollow it out, fill it with weapons, soldiers, and supplies. A reasonably large rock could easily match the firepower of a squadron of battleships, while being durable enough to require significant force to destroy. This liberated defending fleets to carry out strikes on enemy positions, and left the planets in relative security.


...however, I think that there might be a few kinks for you to work out.

1)What are the cost comparisons for finding the right asteroid, putting it and keeping it nicely in orbit, and hollowing it out (which must take a lot of time and energy, since it's probably solid rock and metal), vs building orbital platforms? Secondly, what are some specific advantages? That is, why an asteroid over orbital platforms?

2) Do people making fortroids frequently edit the shape of the asteroid? The advantage of having a defensive orbital platform is that you can design its structure and geometry, and thus optimize the placement of weapons, supplies, and other things, whereas on an asteroid that may not be possible.

3) How does one repair asteroids? As you said, people aren't seeking to blast one to pieces, but in case there is any major structural damage, how does one repair a big thing of rock? For a metal platform, the answer is obvious, but how do you put a rock back together? (Of course, this assumes that there will be sources of major structural damage at all.)

4) How are the asteroids that become fortroids towed into orbit? By physical means (towing cables, grabbing devices built onto ships, etc), or by fancy sci fi means (tractor beams, the works)? Depending on the answer, I was thinking...what if the invading fleet were to bombard the fortroid surface just enough to destroy the weapons, move some ships close to the fortroid, and just tow it back out of orbit? Of course, if fortroids are towed around by physical means, this is certainly not a viable tactic.



So now we have fighting inside asteroids, and here the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. references come into play. Armored vehicles are of limited use in a tunnel, even if they fit there's no room to maneuver or dodge, and when they are destroyed they end up being more an obstacle than anything else. Thus combat is pretty much conducted by infantry alone. Of course this is infantry fighting in a warran of tunnels, with dubious atmospheric pressure, poor lighting and microgravity, all against an enemy who has had ample time to turn the entire rock into a deathtrap. It comes to be known as 'hell in heaven,' and those that fight there as "War Rats."


I smell power armor, WH40K Terminator style. :smallwink: Termies were developed for this kind of job, after all, and it sounds reasonable enough in such environs: if you can't dodge, you gotta armor up so you can take on the chin.

Does the setting use energy weapons or is it still classic chemically propelled ballistics? And how big are the tunnels? Why not remote drones for the job?


Also you have to remember that the asteroids are only effective as long as they have a stable orbit, an enemy just managing to push one into a decaying orbit would be able to wipe out millions of colonists without a massive fleet.

Which I think is the beauty of these fortroids, and one of its greatest advantages: you can't shoot it too much, or you'll destroy the very thing you're trying to capture.


The first problem that occurs to me is, of course, how the hell to they land the troops? There's no stealth in space and weapons can target you from forever away, so the asteroid has a significant advantage. Any landing vehicle will have huge problems.

I'm assuming by suppressive fire and using a large number of drop ships? If you pepper the surface with light munitions, surely you could open a hole in its anti-fast-moving-ship defenses.

[warty goblin]

So... tunnel warfare IN SPACE? That's actually one of the more interesting premises I've seen in sci fi. :smallbiggrin:...

I rather liked it when it drifted across my mind.





...however, I think that there might be a few kinks for you to work out. Figured, that's why I posted it.


1)What are the cost comparisons for finding the right asteroid, putting it and keeping it nicely in orbit, and hollowing it out (which must take a lot of time and energy, since it's probably solid rock and metal), vs building orbital platforms? Secondly, what are some specific advantages? That is, why an asteroid over orbital platforms?
Mostly I'd imagine the main advantage to be one of durability. You can have a lot of mass in an asteroid, which makes it hard to destabilize, resistant to a lot of weapons, and generally just a pain to deal with. Plus getting stuff into orbit takes a lot of energy, so there's a lot to be said for using the material that's already in space.


2) Do people making fortroids frequently edit the shape of the asteroid? The advantage of having a defensive orbital platform is that you can design its structure and geometry, and thus optimize the placement of weapons, supplies, and other things, whereas on an asteroid that may not be possible.
I'd guess that asteroid editing would occur, but not at any large scale. I mean most asteroids that we have data on are *reasonably* close to spheroid, and in terms of weapon facing, you really just need to have a bunch pointed every which way. For external things like weapons emplacements, I'd imagine the slag from hollowing out 'roid to begin with would be quite useful.


3) How does one repair asteroids? As you said, people aren't seeking to blast one to pieces, but in case there is any major structural damage, how does one repair a big thing of rock? For a metal platform, the answer is obvious, but how do you put a rock back together? (Of course, this assumes that there will be sources of major structural damage at all.)
Bolt a bunch of steel to it? This is a good point, and one I've honestly not thought about all that much.



4) How are the asteroids that become fortroids towed into orbit? By physical means (towing cables, grabbing devices built onto ships, etc), or by fancy sci fi means (tractor beams, the works)? Depending on the answer, I was thinking...what if the invading fleet were to bombard the fortroid surface just enough to destroy the weapons, move some ships close to the fortroid, and just tow it back out of orbit? Of course, if fortroids are towed around by physical means, this is certainly not a viable tactic. Outright towing with cables or sci-fi equivilent is probably out, due to the insane energy requirements. Probably just FTL them into the general vicinity, then use maneuvering engines to get them into final orbit.

Of course this raises the question of why the attackers can't do the same thing, and simply FTL the asteroid someplace nice and convenient like the system's equivilent of the Kuiper belt or the sun. The answer that spring to my mind is some sort of interdiction field, which is pretty much a requirement to force meaningful space combat anyways. This actually has a nice feel to it, there's a big ol' interdiction generator at the center of the rock, which the defenders have to keep from being destroyed or disabled.



I smell power armor, WH40K Terminator style. :smallwink: Termies were developed for this kind of job, after all, and it sounds reasonable enough in such environs: if you can't dodge, you gotta armor up so you can take on the chin.
Power armor is of course possible, and to a certain degree neccessary. The interior of the asteroid would during non-combat times of course maintain an atmosphere but between bombardment, enemies drilling into passages, mining, counter mining and general mayhem, I'd suspect that a lot of the places where actual combat is occuring would be more or less airless. This of course requires people to fight in vac suits, which one would definitely want to be armored. On the other hand this will all be occuring in most likely micro gravity, so the power might not be as neccessary.


Does the setting use energy weapons or is it still classic chemically propelled ballistics? And how big are the tunnels? Why not remote drones for the job? Energy weapons would be a huge advantage in a micro gravity setting, since you wouldn't have to worry about being sent tumbling by the recoil of your own weapon. I'm thinking a mix though for the most part, with more or less conventional weaponry for most soldiers, and energy type heavy weapons. Remote drones would also be used quite a bit, but are probably more expensive than soldiers, and also simply less interesting to write about. (I've got another story idea involving robot soldiers, but I don't think it would mix all that well with this one).

Specifically I'm thinking the standard infantry gun would be a burst firing bullpup rifle using 9mm or 10mm armor piercing ammunition. Since most of the fighting would be at shortish ranges with little to no air and gravity, they could fire what amounts to APC rounds, but without the ballistic cap. Actual tissue damage would be less of priority, since putting a hole in somebody's vac suit is pretty much as good as a kill anyways.

Frag grenades are less popular, since there's no gravity and atmosphere, the fragments are nearly as deadly to the users as to the intended targets. About the best that you can do is DIME (Dense Inert Metal Explosive) weapons, which work by basically coating your explosive with tungsten dust. The dust of course doesn't lose its energy like they would in an atmosphere, but the energy concentration would still drop markedly with distance, and ricochets would be less of a risk.

As for tunnel size, it would vary. Ther service tunnels for the large surface guns would probably be quite large, to accomodate ammunition being carted up, so maybe the size of a three or four lane road. Most of them would be only large enough for what amounts to mining carts, so probably the width of a two lane road or so.



Which I think is the beauty of these fortroids, and one of its greatest advantages: you can't shoot it too much, or you'll destroy the very thing you're trying to capture.

That, and unlike what Star Trek might lead one to think, orbits don't, as a rule, decay all that rapidly. Bear in mind that it also takes a lot of energy to significantly alter the trajectory of something size of a nice big asteroid. Plus if the attackers wanted to destroy all life on the planet, they'd simply launch a couple million nukes or similar at it, and be on their way. Planets are about the only thing in space worth fighting for, and hence destroying them is probably not as a rule the wisest of ideas.



I'm assuming by suppressive fire and using a large number of drop ships? If you pepper the surface with light munitions, surely you could open a hole in its anti-fast-moving-ship defenses.

Something like this. You use a really large attack fleet, bombard the crap out of the asteroid and blow up all the surface guns, then land troops to take over the interior, or at the very least, make sure that everybody in the interior stays there. It'd be more or less like island assaults in the Pacific Theatre of WWII in a lot of ways. In fact Iwo Jima is overall not a bad model of this sort of combat

[13_CBS]

Outright towing with cables or sci-fi equivilent is probably out, due to the insane energy requirements. Probably just FTL them into the general vicinity, then use maneuvering engines to get them into final orbit.


So by tacking on a FTL engine to any object, you can accelerate it to FTL speeds? Or is it something different?



Of course this raises the question of why the attackers can't do the same thing, and simply FTL the asteroid someplace nice and convenient like the system's equivilent of the Kuiper belt or the sun. The answer that spring to my mind is some sort of interdiction field, which is pretty much a requirement to force meaningful space combat anyways.


Speaking of which, could you tell us the basic mechanics behind your FTL tech? What allows an object to go faster than the speed of light? What prevents it?




Energy weapons would be a huge advantage in a micro gravity setting, since you wouldn't have to worry about being sent tumbling by the recoil of your own weapon. I'm thinking a mix though for the most part, with more or less conventional weaponry for most soldiers, and energy type heavy weapons.


I'm wondering if infantry fighting with recoil weapons could have some sort of clamping devices on their feet (magnetic or hydraulic claws or something), or even be forced to keep one hand free so that it can brace the gunner when he fires. This could have a significant impact on how squad-level combat tactics work.



Remote drones would also be used quite a bit, but are probably more expensive than soldiers, and also simply less interesting to write about. (I've got another story idea involving robot soldiers, but I don't think it would mix all that well with this one).


Drones are certainly less interesting to write about, but if they're still a better alternative to soldiers in asteroid environments (and I don't think cost will be too much of an issue: the US military is already working on such projects, and by the distant future such tech shouldn't be too expensive), you must justify armies NOT using them, somehow (maybe asteroids contain electromagnetic fields that interfere with long range communications?).



Specifically I'm thinking the standard infantry gun would be a burst firing bullpup rifle using 9mm or 10mm armor piercing ammunition. Since most of the fighting would be at shortish ranges with little to no air and gravity, they could fire what amounts to APC rounds, but without the ballistic cap. Actual tissue damage would be less of priority, since putting a hole in somebody's vac suit is pretty much as good as a kill anyways.


I've never been in a firefight so I can't say for certain, but aren't weapons supposed to incapacitate as quickly as possible? Putting a few holes in someone's vac suit may not be enough, since people don't explosively decompress in space. I think the weapons would have to be able to stop someone from moving/fighting as quickly as possible, and AFAIK the best way to do that is massive tissue damage.



About the best that you can do is DIME (Dense Inert Metal Explosive) weapons,


If you ever come up with NICKELs, you can literally nickel & dime them to death. *badumpish*



As for tunnel size, it would vary. Their service tunnels for the large surface guns would probably be quite large, to accomodate ammunition being carted up, so maybe the size of a three or four lane road. Most of them would be only large enough for what amounts to mining carts, so probably the width of a two lane road or so.


What about in height? Would a person have to stoop to move around in the tunnels, or are they essentially urban streets minus the buildings?



That, and unlike what Star Trek might lead one to think, orbits don't, as a rule, decay all that rapidly. Bear in mind that it also takes a lot of energy to significantly alter the trajectory of something size of a nice big asteroid. Plus if the attackers wanted to destroy all life on the planet, they'd simply launch a couple million nukes or similar at it, and be on their way. Planets are about the only thing in space worth fighting for, and hence destroying them is probably not as a rule the wisest of ideas.



Something like this. You use a really large attack fleet, bombard the crap out of the asteroid and blow up all the surface guns, then land troops to take over the interior, or at the very least, make sure that everybody in the interior stays there. It'd be more or less like island assaults in the Pacific Theatre of WWII in a lot of ways. In fact Iwo Jima is overall not a bad model of this sort of combat[/QUOTE]

[nothingclever]

I think the anime Legend of Galactic Heroes handled infantry combat well.

Troops land and take objectives on the ground when airspace is secured so the spaceships don't end up bombarding everything and losing out on important documents, hostages, computer systems and other resources.

Many times soldiers patrol the homes of leaders and ambush other soldiers sent as assassins. The person sending soldiers to attack his enemy doesn't just nuke his home with a spaceship because he's the leader of country or nobility so you don't want to draw too much attention to yourself and there may be other important people with him.

Sometimes soldiers board ships that have already been captured or they capture them by sneaking inside disguised as a neutral party or the enemy's own forces.

One way melee combat is made practical is by people using grenades that spread zephyr particles into the air which will ignite and cause a large explosion if a laser weapon is fired in them. Since the show takes place in the future laser guns are the only type used. It's possible that since infantry wear full body armor suits that even if regular bullets were used the futuristic suits might just block them easily.

[Trizap]

.........can't the invaders just somehow make the fortress asteroid crash into the planet its protecting somehow, causing some super-explosion that would ruin the planet? I mean if you can some how tow an asteroid to a planets orbit and make into a fortress in your setting, then you can certainly make it crash into the planet........

[13_CBS]

.........can't the invaders just somehow make the fortress asteroid crash into the planet its protecting somehow, causing some super-explosion that would ruin the planet? I mean if you can some how tow an asteroid to a planets orbit and make into a fortress in your setting, then you can certainly make it crash into the planet........


Please read Warty's post.

The objective of warfare in this setting is capture and liberate planets without destroying their ecologies, populations, and infrastructure. You can't do that by crashing their defensive asteroids into their surfaces.

[Trizap]

Please read Warty's post.

The objective of warfare in this setting is capture and liberate planets without destroying their ecologies, populations, and infrastructure. You can't do that by crashing their defensive asteroids into their surfaces.

they can still do that though, just pointing it out, I mean I know that is the goal of the warfare in that setting, I'm just saying fortress asteroids do not seem like a good idea because of such a possibility, I mean the decision here is either letting your conquerors rule over you until you can overthrow them with a revolution or something or building a fortress inside an asteroid and putting said asteroid in your planets orbit, opening up the possibility of your civilization being wiped out by your own defensive fortress.

not a good idea, I'll pick the lesser of two evils

[warty goblin]

So by tacking on a FTL engine to any object, you can accelerate it to FTL speeds? Or is it something different?

Pretty much, you just turn the asteroid into a whacking big spaceship. As to how FTL works, I've not decided that yet, since I find it works better to add technobabble after I figure out what I want something to do.


Speaking of which, could you tell us the basic mechanics behind your FTL tech? What allows an object to go faster than the speed of light? What prevents it?




I'm wondering if infantry fighting with recoil weapons could have some sort of clamping devices on their feet (magnetic or hydraulic claws or something), or even be forced to keep one hand free so that it can brace the gunner when he fires. This could have a significant impact on how squad-level combat tactics work.
That is a seriously cool bit, the bracing gunners. I hadn't thought of that.



Drones are certainly less interesting to write about, but if they're still a better alternative to soldiers in asteroid environments (and I don't think cost will be too much of an issue: the US military is already working on such projects, and by the distant future such tech shouldn't be too expensive), you must justify armies NOT using them, somehow (maybe asteroids contain electromagnetic fields that interfere with long range communications?).
Fair point. I'll think about that some more.



I've never been in a firefight so I can't say for certain, but aren't weapons supposed to incapacitate as quickly as possible? Putting a few holes in someone's vac suit may not be enough, since people don't explosively decompress in space. I think the weapons would have to be able to stop someone from moving/fighting as quickly as possible, and AFAIK the best way to do that is massive tissue damage.
It certainly is nice to drop the target quickly is my understanding as well. However one has to consider that with a couple good punctures, you've probably got, at best, a minute or so before the vac kills you, and certainly not more than two before the suffocation does. This means that once shot, a person's first priority is patching up their suit, followed by getting out of the firefight and into atmo so they can get back out of the suit and deal with the holes in them.

Plus 10mm slug traveling at 800m/s is going to do plenty of tissue damage. I merely meant to indicate that in this setting it's more important to penetrate a target's armor than it is to blow a hole in them.




If you ever come up with NICKELs, you can literally nickel & dime them to death. *badumpish*
I'll work on that.

I also realized something like a thermite grenade might be useful, since if the particles it scattered were reasonably small the range would still be controlled, as well as being freaking terrifying.


What about in height? Would a person have to stoop to move around in the tunnels, or are they essentially urban streets minus the buildings?
Stooping would probably not be neccessary for the most part, although there would certainly be boltholes and sapping tunnells that would require crawling. On the other hand, crawling would not be that difficult in microgravity I'd think, since you could almost just wall hop back and forth.


they can still do that though, just pointing it out, I mean I know that is the goal of the warfare in that setting, I'm just saying fortress asteroids do not seem like a good idea because of such a possibility, I mean the decision here is either letting your conquerors rule over you until you can overthrow them with a revolution or something or building a fortress inside an asteroid and putting said asteroid in your planets orbit, opening up the possibility of your civilization being wiped out by your own defensive fortress.

not a good idea, I'll pick the lesser of two evils

This really isn't any additional risk, since if the invaders wanted to total the planet, they'd certainly be able to anyways. Even if they were in too much of a hurry to go grab themselves a asteroid for the same purpose, there's always the old standby of nuking every city on the planet. Not to mention any weapon useful at spaceship type engagement distances is going to raise merry hell with whatever planet it hits.

For the record, my ships are probably going to be armed with railgun or light gas gun assisted missile systems, meaning that they will certainly be capable of firing projectiles at very significant velocities.

[Oslecamo]

Question:

Why bother making those asteroid-fortresses in space?

Why don't build them under the surface of the planet itself?

If anything, in your initial conditions I picture warfare would develop into Vietnam-style. There's the attacking force with unquestionable air superiority, so the defending force literally holes itself up inside the ground to escape orbital bombardments.

So the attacking force could indeed blast the hell out of the planet and eventually the holed up defenders, but all that would be left would be an useless wasteland.

Infantry is the only thing left that can clear up those tunnels whitout too much colateral damage. Sure you'll end up losing some mens, but you'll make it back with salvaged resources and intelegence, plus the local population will be much easier to convert to your side if you didn't glass their home.

Main advantages of underground-fortresses over asteroid fortresses:
1-The ground is already there.
2-Much easier to ressuply and reinforce.
3-Much easier to retreat from to a better position.
4-Just as hard to conquer as the asteroid fortresses.
5-Cheaper as you don't need much life suport systems and to carry the defensive weapons to space.
6-Can actually be hidden from the enemy.
7-Much easier to make guerilla-warfare once the enemy has landed.

[JellyPooga]

Question:

Why bother making those asteroid-fortresses in space?

Why don't build them under the surface of the planet itself?

If anything, in your initial conditions I picture warfare would develop into Vietnam-style. There's the attacking force with unquestionable air superiority, so the defending force literally holes itself up inside the ground to escape orbital bombardments.

So the attacking force could indeed blast the hell out of the planet and eventually the holed up defenders, but all that would be left would be an useless wasteland.

Infantry is the only thing left that can clear up those tunnels whitout too much colateral damage. Sure you'll end up losing some mens, but you'll make it back with salvaged resources and intelegence, plus the local population will be much easier to convert to your side if you didn't glass their home.

Main advantages of underground-fortresses over asteroid fortresses:
1-The ground is already there.
2-Much easier to ressuply and reinforce.
3-Much easier to retreat from to a better position.
4-Just as hard to conquer as the asteroid fortresses.
5-Cheaper as you don't need much life suport systems and to carry the defensive weapons to space.
6-Can actually be hidden from the enemy.
7-Much easier to make guerilla-warfare once the enemy has landed.

Damn those ninja's...I was reading through this thread thinking exactly this and I get to the end and what happens? someone beats me to it!

It's true...I really like the idea of War Rats; expert tunnel fighters. Whilst having underground complexes takes away the "in space!" aspect (and thus the dangers of vacuum, microgravities and such), it seems to me to be more realistic development than "Fortroids". I'm seeing entire self-sufficient complexes buried within the heart of mountain ranges, fuelled and powered by geothermal energy, food grown on hydroponics, etc.

[Oslecamo]

I'm seeing entire self-sufficient complexes buried within the heart of mountain ranges, fuelled and powered by geothermal energy, food grown on hydroponics, etc.

Exactly! In an age of space warfare, the planets themselves would become the best defenses, while factories, cities, farms and other vital structures would move more and more underground. They could hold off an invading force for years if not decades!

After all, glassing the surface of a planet is one thing, and actually cracking the planet open is another completely diferent thing.

[warty goblin]

Question:

Why bother making those asteroid-fortresses in space?

Why don't build them under the surface of the planet itself?

If anything, in your initial conditions I picture warfare would develop into Vietnam-style. There's the attacking force with unquestionable air superiority, so the defending force literally holes itself up inside the ground to escape orbital bombardments.

So the attacking force could indeed blast the hell out of the planet and eventually the holed up defenders, but all that would be left would be an useless wasteland.

Infantry is the only thing left that can clear up those tunnels whitout too much colateral damage. Sure you'll end up losing some mens, but you'll make it back with salvaged resources and intelegence, plus the local population will be much easier to convert to your side if you didn't glass their home.

Main advantages of underground-fortresses over asteroid fortresses:
1-The ground is already there.
2-Much easier to ressuply and reinforce.
3-Much easier to retreat from to a better position.
4-Just as hard to conquer as the asteroid fortresses.
5-Cheaper as you don't need much life suport systems and to carry the defensive weapons to space.
6-Can actually be hidden from the enemy.
7-Much easier to make guerilla-warfare once the enemy has landed.

The point of the fortroids is to engage the enemy spacefleet in space, not to bog them down with infantry combat. Infantry combat just happens to be the best way to capture them. Engaging an enemy fleet from space is simply not practical due to atmosphere and gravity. Hence ground installations can only become relevant after the planet has already fallen. This strikes me as fairly poor planning, since by that time you've basically already lost the war.

[JellyPooga]

Why even bother protecting the space around your planet when you can hold out beneath the surface until kingdom come? Who cares if they have the surface, the sky and everything else when absolutely everything important is below ground? Even if you do have surface operations, they can be suspended until your own fleet returns to drive off the attackers.

[13_CBS]

That said, though, fortifying important planets with underground facilities also doesn't seem like a bad idea. Works for fortroids, why not planets?

Edit: ninjas.

[Foeofthelance]

Question:

Why bother making those asteroid-fortresses in space?

Why don't build them under the surface of the planet itself?

If anything, in your initial conditions I picture warfare would develop into Vietnam-style. There's the attacking force with unquestionable air superiority, so the defending force literally holes itself up inside the ground to escape orbital bombardments.

So the attacking force could indeed blast the hell out of the planet and eventually the holed up defenders, but all that would be left would be an useless wasteland.

Infantry is the only thing left that can clear up those tunnels whitout too much colateral damage. Sure you'll end up losing some mens, but you'll make it back with salvaged resources and intelegence, plus the local population will be much easier to convert to your side if you didn't glass their home.

Main advantages of underground-fortresses over asteroid fortresses:
1-The ground is already there.
2-Much easier to ressuply and reinforce.
3-Much easier to retreat from to a better position.
4-Just as hard to conquer as the asteroid fortresses.
5-Cheaper as you don't need much life suport systems and to carry the defensive weapons to space.
6-Can actually be hidden from the enemy.
7-Much easier to make guerilla-warfare once the enemy has landed.

I guess the return question would be: what's the point of wasting a planet's surface like that? The entire idea of seizing the orbitals is that you don't want to glass the planet's surface. You want the conveniently built cities, fishing areas, terraformed farms, etc. Tunneling under all of your planet's infrastructure is not only then inherently risky, but kind of pointless and invites the destruction of said infrastructure. And if you build everything under the defense tunnels, what's to stop an opponent from simply dropping rocks on your head till they collapse, and then digging the goodies out once you've been buried alive?

And can someone explain the "No stealth in space" bit? I don't know of any method of detection available to humans that we haven't already figured out how to thwart or spoof with bad info...

[Oslecamo]

The point of the fortroids is to engage the enemy spacefleet in space, not to bog them down with infantry combat. Infantry combat just happens to be the best way to capture them. Engaging an enemy fleet from space is simply not practical due to atmosphere and gravity.

Says who? If your weapons have enough punch to penetrate the enemy ships hulls/force fields/defenses, they surely have enough punch to breack trough the puny planetary atmoshpere and gravity.

It works both way. Altough ground based defenses will have an harder time hiting space ships, the space ships will also have an harder time targeting and destroying ground defenses.

Specially because as you point out so much, space ships have nowhere to hide. Planetary defenses have the atmosphere and planet itself to hide them.

So as the enemy ships aproach your planet, they can start shooting first. The planet can also afford a lot more ammo than the invading fleet. Any small penalty on acuraccy/effeciency atmosphere and gravity may incur will be covered up by the planet having a million time more dakka.

Sure you'll have to spend some money to develop those ground based weapons, but I think it would be much cheaper than trying to keep asteroids in controled orbit wich will need to be constantly ressuplied trough expensive transports from the planet.

[13_CBS]

Tunneling under all of your planet's infrastructure is not only then inherently risky, but kind of pointless and invites the destruction of said infrastructure.


Erm...why? If all or most of the planet's nicely built cities and factories are below the surface, you'd want to capture them, not destroy them. Also, if it's the distant future and they have FTL, surely they have the technology to construct elaborate underground facilities.



And if you build everything under the defense tunnels, what's to stop an opponent from simply dropping rocks on your head till they collapse, and then digging the goodies out once you've been buried alive?


Presumably because you want to keep the population alive. Warty mentioned that attacking armies wish to preserve the economy of the conquered planet, and that implies that the populace is left alive: you can't have an economy without people. Just taking their resources can result in lots of monies, but that's not what the attacking forces are going for.


Says who? If your weapons have enough punch to penetrate the enemy ships hulls/force fields/defenses, they surely have enough punch to breack trough the puny planetary atmoshpere and gravity.

To make any judgements on that matter, I think we need to learn more about how space combat works in Warty's setting.

Speaking of which...given how space combat will pretty much determine how fortroids/underground planetary defense facilities will work, could you give us more info on that, warty?

[Foeofthelance]

Says who? If your weapons have enough punch to penetrate the enemy ships hulls/force fields/defenses, they surely have enough punch to breack trough the puny planetary atmoshpere and gravity.

It works both way. Altough ground based defenses will have an harder time hiting space ships, the space ships will also have an harder time targeting and destroying ground defenses.

Specially because as you point out so much, space ships have nowhere to hide. Planetary defenses have the atmosphere and planet itself to hide them.

So as the enemy ships aproach your planet, they can start shooting first. The planet can also afford a lot more ammo than the invading fleet. Any small penalty on acuraccy/effeciency atmosphere and gravity may incur will be covered up by the planet having a million time more dakka.

Sure you'll have to spend some money to develop those ground based weapons, but I think it would be much cheaper than trying to keep asteroids in controled orbit wich will need to be constantly ressuplied trough expensive transports from the planet.

For one thing, ground based weapons can't dodge, which a ship can. Any ground based system is limited to moving in at most two directions: up and down latitude, and left or right longitude. A fixed position is in an even worse spot. Once it fires, the enemy knows not only exactly where it is, but exactly where it will be at all times. And you're inviting some rather nasty retalitions if you try, with bigger strikes the more things you try to hide behind. There goes you're entire planet's surface, and all your infrastructure. Even assuming you do managed to hold off against the planetary siege (And remember, if they hold the orbitals they can fly in resupply; you're limited to stock on hand, plus whatever can be produced in the middle of a long running firefight.) then you've got an entire slagged planet to rebuild, while they can just go home, rearm, and come back while you're putting up the first support beams.

Putting the asteroids in orbit not only provides you convenient ship yards and bases for your own navies, but keeps the other side from targeting your own means of support and logistics.


Erm...why? If all or most of the planet's nicely built cities and factories are below the surface, you'd want to capture them, not destroy them. Also, if it's the distant future and they have FTL, surely they have the technology to construct elaborate underground facilities.

Actually, I was referring to cities and factories built on the surface. Tunneling under everything just doesn't seem all that bright in the long run. Even major cities like New York don't have a subway tunnel running under every building.


Presumably because you want to keep the population alive. Warty mentioned that attacking armies wish to preserve the economy of the conquered planet, and that implies that the populace is left alive: you can't have an economy without people. Just taking their resources can result in lots of monies, but that's not what the attacking forces are going for.

Yes, but the more difficult you make it for the attacking force, the more likely they are to resort to extreme measures. If you make it so that the only way to get to something is extremely complicated, then either it doesn't become worth fighting the war in the first place, or it becomes much easier to do something like dropping a tunneling bunkerbuster loaded with chemical or biological weapons, preferably quickly degrading, and then landing your own colonists. If you make it too horrendously expensive to attack one way, then they'll just attack a cheaper way.

[warty goblin]

Says who? If your weapons have enough punch to penetrate the enemy ships hulls/force fields/defenses, they surely have enough punch to breack trough the puny planetary atmoshpere and gravity.

That depends entirely on what you build your spaceships out of. If you make them out of steel, depleted uranium and other extant materials, one certainly does not require escape velocity to penetrate them.


It works both way. Altough ground based defenses will have an harder time hiting space ships, the space ships will also have an harder time targeting and destroying ground defenses. The atmosphere cuts both ways, but gravity certainly does not. The space borne forces have a significant advantage simply because their projectiles are gaining energy, and the planet's are losing energy.


Specially because as you point out so much, space ships have nowhere to hide. Planetary defenses have the atmosphere and planet itself to hide them. Until you fire them, at which point they'll show up like the whacking great explosion that they'd be. They'd also have to be fairly large things, and would be easy targets.


So as the enemy ships aproach your planet, they can start shooting first. The planet can also afford a lot more ammo than the invading fleet. Any small penalty on acuraccy/effeciency atmosphere and gravity may incur will be covered up by the planet having a million time more dakka.
The penalty for being at the surface of an earth sized planet is very, very far from small. Escape velocity for Earth is something like 11 km/s. The fastest gun fired projectile I am aware of is a light gas fired round going 7km/s. Current railgun tech is pushing 3.5km/s. Gunpowder fired weapons really can't beat about 1.5km/s apparently. You would be looking at rockets almost certainly, which are expensive, big, and really, really easy to see coming.



Sure you'll have to spend some money to develop those ground based weapons, but I think it would be much cheaper than trying to keep asteroids in controled orbit wich will need to be constantly ressuplied trough expensive transports from the planet.

Keeping something in orbit is really, really easy. You literally have to do, well, nothing, if you set it up right. Getting the thing in orbit is hard, but as I pointed out, if you can attach an FTL drive to an asteroid, shouldn't be that much more difficult than building a ship. Supplies would be an expense, but let's face it, if one is capable of building a warship in space, one has pretty much already had to solve the problem of launching stuff into orbit.

[13_CBS]

The penalty for being at the surface of an earth sized planet is very, very far from small. Escape velocity for Earth is something like 11 km/s. The fastest gun fired projectile I am aware of is a light gas fired round going 7km/s. Current railgun tech is pushing 3.5km/s. Gunpowder fired weapons really can't beat about 1.5km/s apparently. You would be looking at rockets almost certainly, which are expensive, big, and really, really easy to see coming.



Missiles? Lots of them? Even today just getting something into space isn't too hard, just strap some rockets onto it and press the big red button (the difficulty arises in putting people in there or making it go to an exact spot in space).

[Graymayre]

So, I have two questions:

-How do your ships go FTL? (I'm not being a d-bag. Knowing this will be important for any interstellar war)

-What is the technology that allows you to produce your war machines? I would guess it to be nano-tech. If so, this adds a whole new level to the playing field. The possibilities can almost be unimaginable with the use of atomic level machinery.
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On asteroids, I'm not sure if it has been said; but not all are solid chunks. Many have porous insides. Find the proper size, and one could be made into a fortress with little work (especially using the afforementioned nano-technology).

Also, who's to say we would just be using missles and guns? There are always the more futuristic weapons such as high intensity lasers and plasma. Then, of course, let's not forget the Dr. Device (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Device#Molecular_Disruption_Device).

EDIT: I forgot to ask, do Ansibles (communication systems that send messages FTL) exist in this situation?

[Dervag]

The first problem that occurs to me is, of course, how the hell to they land the troops? There's no stealth in space and weapons can target you from forever away, so the asteroid has a significant advantage. Any landing vehicle will have huge problems.You use what I call a "Very Large Wavefront Missile."

Assemble a massive projectile (I'm guessing on the order of tens or hundreds of tons) and use a very long runup to accelerate it to high sub-relativistic speeds. Aim in the direction of the fortress asteroid. You start this at interplanetary distances, so the asteroid has no effective weapons to score a kill against your missile. At such a range, lasers or charged-particle weapons won't achieve the energy-on-target needed for a kill, and kinetic weapons are just too hard to aim over interplanetary distances.

Then, as your missile approaches the target, have it explode. Thoroughly. So that there are no remaining pieces massing more than, say, a few grams. You might specifically design it to fragment, like hand grenades.

Now you have an expanding cloud of small fragments travelling towards the fortress asteroid at semi-relativistic speeds. A fragment massing a few grams going at a few percent of the speed of light has a great deal of kinetic energy, but not enough that there's any real risk of the asteroid being physically destroyed. However, the impacts will turn the side of the asteroid facing your missile into a crater field, destroying anything that wasn't deeply buried... including sensor arrays, most likely.

The asteroid remains physically present, and it can be used by your forces if you can clear the interior of hostiles.

Or you could just plink the thing with a very large number of small mass driver projectiles. Again, your goal is to destroy everything on the asteroid to a depth of five or ten meters, causing massive superficial damage.
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Personally, I think the role of "infantry IN SPACE" will be that of special forces or occupation troops, whose purpose is to operate on the ground in situations where massive bombardment is impractical. And that need won't go away.

As a purely tactical example no politics, just tactics: the US is now trying to occupy two medium-sized countries. It has total air supremacy over those countries, and can drop as much explosives as it wants on them, any time it chooses.

Give the US a fleet of orbiting starships with mass drivers and the equation wouldn't change much. The orbiting starships wouldn't be able to do anything essentially different from what a B-52 can do; they'd just be harder to counterattack... when dealing with an enemy for which high altitude jet bombers are already unattackable.

And yet the US still has to use large forces of conventional, rifle-armed ground soldiers in both those countries to maintain some semblance of order and control.
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This of course requires people to fight in vac suits, which one would definitely want to be armored. On the other hand this will all be occuring in most likely micro gravity, so the power might not be as neccessary.It would still be extremely helpful, because that level of body armor is massive enough that it would make the user very clumsy. Clumsiness is not your friend in a firefight.


Energy weapons would be a huge advantage in a micro gravity setting, since you wouldn't have to worry about being sent tumbling by the recoil of your own weapon.Standard chemical rifles don't have unmanageable amounts of recoil, you know. One shot will not send you flying. Long, wildly uncontrolled bursts might, but if your fire discipline is that bad you don't belong in the Space Marines anyway.


Specifically I'm thinking the standard infantry gun would be a burst firing bullpup rifle using 9mm or 10mm armor piercing ammunition. Since most of the fighting would be at shortish ranges with little to no air and gravity, they could fire what amounts to APC rounds, but without the ballistic cap. Actual tissue damage would be less of priority, since putting a hole in somebody's vac suit is pretty much as good as a kill anyways.Small diameter holes in a vacuum suit can generally be patched before the wearer dies.


Frag grenades are less popular, since there's no gravity and atmosphere, the fragments are nearly as deadly to the users as to the intended targets.Huh?

That's common with grenades- you don't throw them while standing out in the open; you throw them around a corner or into a hole or through a window, then duck behind an obstacle. Any worthwhile grenade can kill you from farther away than you can reasonably hope to throw it.
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.........can't the invaders just somehow make the fortress asteroid crash into the planet its protecting somehow, causing some super-explosion that would ruin the planet? I mean if you can some how tow an asteroid to a planets orbit and make into a fortress in your setting, then you can certainly make it crash into the planet........They can, but they don't want to, because they aren't fighting a war of extermination. It's like asking why Superpower X doesn't just nuke Small Annoying Country Y into a uniform layer of trinitite and bomb craters. There are a lot of good and compelling reasons not to do that.

Moreover, anyone who can move asteroids can wreck your planet regardless of whether you conveniently place an asteroid near your home planet. It'll just take slightly longer.
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Why even bother protecting the space around your planet when you can hold out beneath the surface until kingdom come? Who cares if they have the surface, the sky and everything else when absolutely everything important is below ground? Even if you do have surface operations, they can be suspended until your own fleet returns to drive off the attackers.Because you don't want to live like Morlocks for years at a time? Because it's impractical to dig out enough subterranean living space for an entire planetary population, including the farms to feed them all?

The stuff you refer to as "absolutely important" basically amounts to "national leaders in bomb shelters, a few missile silos, and maybe some factories to make more missiles." It may all be underground, but it's like a reverse iceberg. There may be a tiny 'tip' of the country's military-industrial complex buried underground, but the civilization as a whole is going to be on the surface. And if the enemy can control the surface, the citizens stuck up there will be quite likely to force your underground bunker complexes to surrender and quit shooting at the orbiting fleet. It's easy to see why; the fleet always takes it out on them when you manage to kill one of their ships.
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It works both way. Altough ground based defenses will have an harder time hiting space ships, the space ships will also have an harder time targeting and destroying ground defenses.Spaceships have nowhere to hide, but surface gun batteries have nowhere to dodge. It balances out- the mobile ships have a major advantage in effective range.
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Missiles? Lots of them? Even today just getting something into space isn't too hard, just strap some rockets onto it and press the big red button (the difficulty arises in putting people in there or making it go to an exact spot in space).Orbit-capable rockets are extremely large, and require large, cumbersome machinery to launch. That makes them vulnerable to return fire; you can't expect to launch several missiles from the same site.

Moreover, a rocket expends many tons of fuel for every ton of payload that gets into orbit, and the enemy has several minutes to detect and destroy it as it climbs out of the atmosphere.

To build effective surface-to-orbit weapons that are useful against armed, maneuvering targets, you'll have to us some kind of gunlike weapon with a muzzle velocity several times the planetary escape velocity.

[13_CBS]

Orbit-capable rockets are extremely large, and require large, cumbersome machinery to launch. That makes them vulnerable to return fire; you can't expect to launch several missiles from the same site.


It's that difficult? Huh...but surely it doesn't require so much energy to launch a warhead similar in size and mas to a medium sized air-to-surface bomb...does it?


Also, a lot of this seems to assume that the level of technology in all fields is similar or the same as that of 21th century America's. Again, surely civilizations capable of going faster than the speed of light, which today is considered to be almost impossible can, say, develop a type of fuel that can easily get a missile to an orbiting (or even interplanetary) enemy spaceship.

[Oslecamo]

Spaceships have nowhere to hide, but surface gun batteries have nowhere to dodge. It balances out- the mobile ships have a major advantage in effective range.

Think again.

Your space ships will have living people inside them unless we're raping the laws of physics so much that you can have your ships be controled in real time at several light-years distance.

If they have people inside then you have a limit to how fast you can move with them untill you make all the crew faint due to the pressure.

My earth-space weaponry, on the other hand, doesn't need pilots. It can go as fast as technology allows. Wich will be much much faster than the speed the invading fleet.

So no, the invading fleet really can't dodge all that well.



Orbit-capable rockets are extremely large, and require large, cumbersome machinery to launch. That makes them vulnerable to return fire; you can't expect to launch several missiles from the same site.

Build them underground of course. We can make fortified launching sites with our current technologies. Imagine what we could do with futuristic one in that matter?



Moreover, a rocket expends many tons of fuel for every ton of payload that gets into orbit, and the enemy has several minutes to detect and destroy it as it climbs out of the atmosphere.

That's why we send several cheap decoys togheter with the real missiles. More dakka principle. The invading fleet can't afford to shoot down everything they detect coming out of the planet's atmosphere.

Plus the asteroid weapons didn't pop out of thin air. You would have to transport them from the planet to there anyway, so why don't cut the asteroid between and send the weapons directly to the enemy?



To build effective surface-to-orbit weapons that are useful against armed, maneuvering targets, you'll have to us some kind of gunlike weapon with a muzzle velocity several times the planetary escape velocity.

Wich will be piece of cake, since we can build rockets able to reach space moving targets with our current technology. But we still can't build space fleets able to reach other systems. Thus whatever technology is needed to build those uber space-fleets will allow us to create uber earth to space weaponry.

[Graymayre]

Also, a lot of this seems to assume that the level of technology in all fields is similar or the same as that of 21th century America's. Again, surely civilizations capable of going faster than the speed of light, which today is considered to be almost impossible can, say, develop a type of fuel that can easily get a missile to an orbiting (or even interplanetary) enemy spaceship.

Thank you,

I mean, the technology alone dictates that there would be a much more advanced creation engine for your war machines.

I mentioned it a little in my last post, but it's worth repeating to think about the very likely probability that a race this advanced would have access to Nanotechnology (http://www.crnano.org/whatis.htm). Especially since we should reach this capability around the year 2020.

This is the kind of tech that matches what magic can do. We're talking about making hundreds of rifles out of 1lb of fortified dirt and 20 bucks. There are capabilities of creating things that can cure any disease or injury, and even rewrite your genetic code. Hell, you can even make giant swarms of city-discombobulating nanites and structures that are as light as a feather, but as hard as diamond. I mean, anything is capable when you can form machines the size of atoms.

Not to mention, this gives us the easy capability of A.I. I'm not talking about HAL stuff either. We're talking about all the information that humanity has ever known, with thought capabilities that can defeat a hundred nations, that fits into a small cube (I really don't see why you would make something like this, I'm just throwing it out there. :smallwink:).

There was quote that I really can't find but it said something along the lines of 'You know when when a nano war has started. There would be no movement by either country for weeks, then suddenly, one of them would turn into dirt.'

Personally, I really don't see a place for soldiers in this situation when you can make bugs that can just rip apart anything they touch; or a fortress that can defend, and work, by itself. Maybe, if you could develop some type of repelling field around their personal suits then they would stand a chance, but then it would devolve into who can get the other guy's shield down first. The armor would be superflu- Wait! You could make armor, that discombobulated any machine trying to do the same to yours! People in this situation may be more possible than I previously thought...

Also, the whole asteroid fortress thing is an interesting proposal. You can easily drill out a fortress using this technology, and use the debris to make more machines. You could even go to other asteroids and break them down to make machines (or just use your enemies to do so).

[Dervag]

For the record: I don't deny that you could build surface-to-space weapons that would be effective against orbiting targets. What I'm trying to get at is that doing so puts you at a disadvantage, especially with chemical powered missiles. You need overwhelming numbers of launchers to offset the fact that the enemy has many minutes to track your missiles and maneuver against them them. Many of those launchers will get nuked or flattened by kinetic strikes during the battle (which means you might get hit with nuclear winter even if you win).

And if you use gunlike weapons instead of missiles, you're in trouble because the enemy has a big velocity advantage. Your shots are slowed by about 10 km/second just trying to get out of the atmosphere; those gain about 10 km/second. When muzzle velocities are about 10 to 20 km/second (already better than we can do today), you see the problem clearly.

With gunlike weapons that can get shots going at several times escape velocity, or missiles that use a technomagic drive and have much better performance than chemical-powered ICBMs, the equation changes a little. But you still need vastly more guns than the orbiting fleet, and you'll still take a lot of collateral damage from return fire.

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It's that difficult? Huh...but surely it doesn't require so much energy to launch a warhead similar in size and mas to a medium sized air-to-surface bomb...does it?

Also, a lot of this seems to assume that the level of technology in all fields is similar or the same as that of 21th century America's. Again, surely civilizations capable of going faster than the speed of light, which today is considered to be almost impossible can, say, develop a type of fuel that can easily get a missile to an orbiting (or even interplanetary) enemy spaceship.The problem with chemical-fueled rockets is that you're limited by chemistry. There are upper bounds for the efficiency of a chemical fuel that are determined by the laws of physics.

You can put a warhead into space using a chemical-powered missile; it's called an ICBM. But ICBMs are purely suborbital missiles, and even a relatively compact one (like the Minuteman) is about twenty meters long. And ICBMs wouldn't be all that effective against a maneuvering target in outer space- the spacecraft has too many directions to dodge, and too much time to watch the missile accelerate to orbital speed on its way out of the atmosphere.

Now, if you have some kind of engine technology that doesn't work by burning massive amounts of internal fuel, all bets are off. But you're still faced with the reality that you're getting into a rock-throwing contest with an enemy standing hundreds or thousands of miles over your head. It's a dangerous game to play.

And since the planetary surface isn't really any more immune to attack than the orbitals, I'd rather put weapons in orbit.

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Think again... Your space ships will have living people inside them unless [ansibles or strong AI that I trust to run a space war exist].

If they have people inside then you have a limit to how fast you can move with them...I have a limit on how fast I can accelerate. That limit is something like 2 or 3 times Earth-normal gravity, or about 20 to 30 meters per second squared.

If my ship can dodge by a distance of several times its own length in the time it takes your shots to reach me, you cannot hit me with unguided weapons at that range. Your effective range will be measured in thousands of kilometers, but not millions. And since you can't dodge, my effective range against you is longer than your effective range against me. You can do the math; feel free to do so. Do not take my word for it.

To hit me at longer ranges, you must use guided projectiles, which I can track and engage with ECM or point defense weapons.

I think we've covered that part before.

The weakness of using a purely static defense battery in space warfare is that planet-bound missile silos and surface-to-orbit mass drivers cannot dodge at all. Against opponents who can, this translates into giving the enemy a range advantage.

Moreover, planet-based launchers are far more vulnerable to proximity soft kills than my ships. If a mass driver round with kinetic energy in the kiloton range misses my ship by a few hundred meters, it misses by a few hundred meters. If an equivalent round misses your launcher by a few hundred meters, you're quite likely to lose the launcher to shock wave damage.
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Build them underground of course. We can make fortified launching sites with our current technologies. Imagine what we could do with futuristic one in that matter?We can't build fortified launch sites that can realistically hope to survive megaton-range direct hits; both Cold War powers figured this out decades ago. Fortifying your launch sites depends on either hoping the enemy will miss by several miles (not likely given modern or postmodern technology), or hoping the enemy doesn't have anything in the megaton range (not likely if the enemy is bombarding you from orbit).

So your best bet is to use very large numbers of expendable one-shot launchers- missile silos or their equivalent. But if you spread them out enough to get plenty of shots, you'll also give the enemy many targets. If they put a kinetic strike on each target, you end up getting dumped into nuclear winter.

In essence, by putting your defense platforms on the ground, you've chosen to fight a Cold War-style version of World War III... against an enemy who is far more resistant to your weapons of mass destruction than you are to his. If you want to survive, your only chance is to destroy the enemy before they even get to shoot.
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That's why we send several cheap decoys togheter with the real missiles. More dakka principle. The invading fleet can't afford to shoot down everything they detect coming out of the planet's atmosphere.For that to work, you have to use decoys that can impersonate an ICBM during the boost phase of the launch. Which you can do... but such a decoy won't be much cheaper than a real ICBM. You might as well put a nuke on it and call it another missile at that point.

=======


Thank you,

I mean, the technology alone dictates that there would be a much more advanced creation engine for your war machines.

I mentioned it a little in my last post, but it's worth repeating to think about the very likely probability that a race this advanced would have access to Nanotechnology (http://www.crnano.org/whatis.htm). Especially since we should reach this capability around the year 2020.Personally, I think that nanotech is overrated. There are serious engineering problems with using it to create macroscopic objects.

I predict that nanotech is going to have a huge effect on the future, but that it will mostly be used to do medical work and industrial chemistry. I expect that nanotech will not be used to dig tunnels. Or assemble stuff like rifles (let alone spacecraft) out of base materials. The technology we have now is quite good at those things, and will get better. Nanotech is likely to be used for things that macroscopic technology can't do, not to beat current tech at its own game.

It isn't a magic wand, and it doesn't bypass or ignore the laws of physics. Note that "laws of physics" doesn't mean "my imagination" or "the stuff we can do today." There's lots of physically possible stuff we can't do today. Nanotech will help us to do some of that, but it won't give us the ability to violate the very laws of physics and chemistry we used to design the nanites in the first place.

You're going to have a very hard time designing nanites that can land on a steel plate and chew it into dust. Or that can survive being hosed down with UV radiation by someone who's trying to 'disinfect' an area. Again, there are law-of-physics reasons for this.

I have reasons for believing all this, but this thread isn't about nanotech, and it would take me too long to explain, so I'll only do it if invited.

[Oslecamo]

For the record: I don't deny that you could build surface-to-space weapons that would be effective against orbiting targets. What I'm trying to get at is that doing so puts you at a disadvantage, especially with chemical powered missiles. You need overwhelming numbers of launchers to offset the fact that the enemy has many minutes to track your missiles and maneuver against them them. Many of those launchers will get nuked or flattened by kinetic strikes during the battle (which means you might get hit with nuclear winter even if you win).

And how do the fortresses-asteroids do any better job at this? They can be detected even more easily after all, and they can't dodge because they don't have super-engines of their own. And even if they dodge, guess who's taking the hits? The planet.

So all you really win with the fortroids is a bunch of people you need to feed and supply with air. Wich isn't actually an advantage.



With gunlike weapons that can get shots going at several times escape velocity, or missiles that use a technomagic drive and have much better performance than chemical-powered ICBMs, the equation changes a little. But you still need vastly more guns than the orbiting fleet, and you'll still take a lot of collateral damage from return fire.

And again, how would the fortroids be any better? They can't have more guns than the planetary defenses



The problem with chemical-fueled rockets is that you're limited by chemistry. There are upper bounds for the efficiency of a chemical fuel that are determined by the laws of physics.

The invading fleet travels faster than light. I'm pretty sure we're not using those engines.



You can put a warhead into space using a chemical-powered missile; it's called an ICBM. But ICBMs are purely suborbital missiles, and even a relatively compact one (like the Minuteman) is about twenty meters long. And ICBMs wouldn't be all that effective against a maneuvering target in outer space- the spacecraft has too many directions to dodge, and too much time to watch the missile accelerate to orbital speed on its way out of the atmosphere.

And where are they geting the fuel to make all that dodging and the ammo to shoot down all those missiles? We're talking an entire planet vs fleet wich had to travel several light years on it's own and has zero backup and had to burn space for basic life-sustaining systems. Of course the planet has a massive resource advantage!



Now, if you have some kind of engine technology that doesn't work by burning massive amounts of internal fuel, all bets are off. But you're still faced with the reality that you're getting into a rock-throwing contest with an enemy standing hundreds or thousands of miles over your head. It's a dangerous game to play.

You'll be playing it anyway if you use the fortroids. Earth defenses aren't ideal, yes, but the point I'm trying to make it's that they're still better than the fortroids.



And since the planetary surface isn't really any more immune to attack than the orbitals, I'd rather put weapons in orbit.

And how do you supply them? And the crews? Did you remember the harsh rigors of open space?

Plus the planetary surface it's actually more protected. The atmosphere will incinerate smaller projectiles due to atriction.



I have a limit on how fast I can accelerate. That limit is something like 2 or 3 times Earth-normal gravity, or about 20 to 30 meters per second squared.

If my ship can dodge by a distance of several times its own length in the time it takes your shots to reach me, you cannot hit me with unguided weapons at that range. Your effective range will be measured in thousands of kilometers, but not millions. And since you can't dodge, my effective range against you is longer than your effective range against me. You can do the math; feel free to do so. Do not take my word for it.


I can do the math that you have a much more limited fuel and ammo reserve than me.
I don't need to actually hit you, I just need to make you dance untill your fleets become lifeless husks as they run out of power.

Plus there's the shrnappel. To hit a fast moving plane you shoot explosives that shoot fragments in all directions. It shouldn't be that hard to make a anti-space equivalent.

And again, how are the fortroids any better? Dodging isn't a real chance for them anyway, as they don't have super motors of their own and even if they dodge the planet still takes the damage anyway.



To hit me at longer ranges, you must use guided projectiles, which I can track and engage with ECM or point defense weapons.

I think we've covered that part before.

Do you really have more defense weapons that I have offensive ones? It's my side wich controls the planet.



The weakness of using a purely static defense battery in space warfare is that planet-bound missile silos and surface-to-orbit mass drivers cannot dodge at all. Against opponents who can, this translates into giving the enemy a range advantage.

And the fortroids are basically static defense batteries. We're discussing wich one is better.



Moreover, planet-based launchers are far more vulnerable to proximity soft kills than my ships. If a mass driver round with kinetic energy in the kiloton range misses my ship by a few hundred meters, it misses by a few hundred meters. If an equivalent round misses your launcher by a few hundred meters, you're quite likely to lose the launcher to shock wave damage.

Annoying indeed, but if we can build earthquake-resistant structures, I think we can worck around that. It's not like I don't have workers to rebuild them. Can you rebuild your ships in open space?



We can't build fortified launch sites that can realistically hope to survive megaton-range direct hits; both Cold War powers figured this out decades ago. Fortifying your launch sites depends on either hoping the enemy will miss by several miles (not likely given modern or postmodern technology), or hoping the enemy doesn't have anything in the megaton range (not likely if the enemy is bombarding you from orbit).

So your best bet is to use very large numbers of expendable one-shot launchers- missile silos or their equivalent. But if you spread them out enough to get plenty of shots, you'll also give the enemy many targets. If they put a kinetic strike on each target, you end up getting dumped into nuclear winter.

In essence, by putting your defense platforms on the ground, you've chosen to fight a Cold War-style version of World War III... against an enemy who is far more resistant to your weapons of mass destruction than you are to his.

Yep sucks to be me. That's why I've decided that it's best to be living murlocks undergound than incinerated humans on the surface. The planet becomes the shield itself, and sudenly I'm actually much harder to breack down than your ships. Altough they can dodge, they'll eventually run out of fuel and ammo, and that's why I force a battle of atriction. Come down here and get me if you really want my planet!:smalltongue:

This is war. It's irrealistic to think that I can survive whitout sacrificing something.



If you want to survive, your only chance is to destroy the enemy before they even get to shoot.

Wich is kinda hard since WG decided my own fleet is away in some mission.

The fortroids don't have super engines to be able to intercept your ships, and making a perymeter defense is impossible in space as you can attack from anywhere in three dimensions so I can't watch everywhere all the time.

So I put the defenses on the place you're actually interested in taking. You won't be able to take control of the planet untill you systematically clean every undergound defense.

[Kane]

Well, this is quite interesting. (Didn't have time to read all the posts, though.)

A couple things: Don't orbital strikes on a planet's surface do damage to said planet? I figured in most settings, the reason you have surface combat in any form is because of how valuable colonizable planets are. (Anyone play Galactic Civilizations 2?)

Incidentally, I think that atmosphere and gravity do nasty things to weapon ranges; with current day tech (assuming we had a space ship) it would be possibly to park by the kuiper belt and peg certain towns on Earth. Seriously; it's just ballistics and gravitational modifiers. (And it's quite possibly much more accurate than that. I'm not sure how easy it is to predict how much an atmosphere would normally alter a projectile.)

By the same token, really, you could move your fleet with the planet, and shoot ballistic weapons at where the fortroid would be when your shots arrive. If it doesn't have any sort of way to dodge... And you could do this from beyond the range of the fortress, or at least where your ship can dodge anything the fortroid could throw at you, thanks to the distances involved.

[Dervag]

Well, this is quite interesting. (Didn't have time to read all the posts, though.)

A couple things: Don't orbital strikes on a planet's surface do damage to said planet? I figured in most settings, the reason you have surface combat in any form is because of how valuable colonizable planets are. (Anyone play Galactic Civilizations 2?)I agree with this 100%.


Incidentally, I think that atmosphere and gravity do nasty things to weapon ranges; with current day tech (assuming we had a space ship) it would be possibly to park by the kuiper belt and peg certain towns on Earth. Seriously; it's just ballistics and gravitational modifiers. (And it's quite possibly much more accurate than that. I'm not sure how easy it is to predict how much an atmosphere would normally alter a projectile.)It's trickier than that. You need a guided projectile at those ranges, because there are physics constraints on how precisely you can aim a gun. As an example, look at this image of Pluto (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pluto.jpg). That's the best picture we can get today; the pixel size is something like a hundred miles across because that's the resolution limit of astronomical telescopes at those distances.

I wrote an extended post about this some months ago. The board's search engine seems to be down (sort of), but I was able to find it on Google. Here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=97965&page=3) is a link to the page; my most relevant comment is the extended conversation in post #84, near the bottom.

Please note that I bear the city of Ouagadougou and the nation of Burkina Faso no ill will. The city was chosen as a hypothetical target for kinetic bombardment purely at random, in a grand tradition beginning with Heinlein and Buenos Aires.


By the same token, really, you could move your fleet with the planet, and shoot ballistic weapons at where the fortroid would be when your shots arrive. If it doesn't have any sort of way to dodge... And you could do this from beyond the range of the fortress, or at least where your ship can dodge anything the fortroid could throw at you, thanks to the distances involved.Yes. As I noted, effective range in space combat is limited by the target's ability to dodge, so effective range against mobile ships is far shorter than effective range against immobile platforms. This is, of course, false if the mobile ship can't make evasive maneuvers easily... but any ship without a drive good enough to dodge at accelerations at or around 1g has no business fighting a space battle against competent opponents. It certainly won't do so for long.

=======


And how do the fortresses-asteroids do any better job at this? They can be detected even more easily after all, and they can't dodge because they don't have super-engines of their own. And even if they dodge, guess who's taking the hits? The planet.Geometry is an issue here that you've overlooked; the fortress asteroid need not be placed in close planetary orbit, and need not be directly between the attacker and the planet.

That said, the asteroid is vulnerable to fire. However, it does have a few advantages:
-Even if it is completely wrecked by some kind of catastrophic attack (a high-mass relativistic missile, for instance), it's better than having the same attack hit planetary defense batteries. If your guns are on an orbiting weapon platform, the worst that happens is that you are forced to surrender; you don't have an immediate ecological catastrophe piled on top of losing the war.
-The asteroid fortresses not firing from the bottom of a gravity well up at the attackers; it is firing from closer to the top, especially if you put them out around geosynchronous orbit as I would.
-The asteroid fortress can use energy weapons more freely, as these weapons are greatly reduced in effect by passing through an atmosphere. Gigajoule antiship lasers mounted on the planetary surface will be badly effed up passing through the atmosphere, which will cut into their effective range.

Counterbalancing these points are the ones you raise:
-Building fortress asteroids will be more expensive per unit of combat power. On the other hand, we've got a setting that assumes cheap interstellar travel; it's quite possible that the logistics cost of keeping a garrison in an orbital fortress is small compared to the size of a planetary defense budget. Even innovations we can predict today (like space elevators) would help tremendously with that.
-Because they are isolated from the target of conquest (the planet), the attacker will feel more free to use their heaviest weapons against the fortress. This is a major concern if multiton relativistic kill vehicles are practical within the setting. Depending on what the setting's sublight space technology is capable of, that may not be a problem.


The invading fleet travels faster than light. I'm pretty sure we're not using those engines.In case you didn't notice, I was responding specifically to a question about chemical rocketry. Context matters sometimes.
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And where are they geting the fuel to make all that dodging and the ammo to shoot down all those missiles? We're talking an entire planet vs fleet wich had to travel several light years on it's own and has zero backup and had to burn space for basic life-sustaining systems. Of course the planet has a massive resource advantage!Weren't you just talking about how the invading fleet isn't limited by chemical rocketry? If we don't assume chemical-powered rocket ships, then it's difficult to imagine them not being able to keep up evasive maneuvers for an extended period (as in, long enough to suppress the defending fire).
_______


And how do you supply them? And the crews? Did you remember the harsh rigors of open space?I forget such matters exactly as often as one would expect, given my baseline level of education in the sciences.
_______


Plus the planetary surface it's actually more protected. The atmosphere will incinerate smaller projectiles due to atriction.Assuming you mean "friction," and not some other process unknown to science, that's not necessarily true. Solid projectiles designed to penetrate the atmosphere can, especially when launched to drop straight down into it, and not graze through hundreds of miles of atmosphere on a shallow trajectory. See Project Thor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment#Project_Thor) for an example of what I'm talking about.

Now, for a projectile the size of a golf ball this is a problem. For something more massive (the size of a large-caliber artillery shell, say)? Not so much.
________


I don't need to actually hit you, I just need to make you dance untill your fleets become lifeless husks as they run out of power.What happens if they park a fleet of tanker ships around Mars and use their FTL drives to hop on over and refuel as needed?
________


Annoying indeed, but if we can build earthquake-resistant structures, I think we can worck around that. It's not like I don't have workers to rebuild them. Can you rebuild your ships in open space?Can you keep construction workers operating in the battered hellscape of what's left of your planetary ecosystem?


Yep sucks to be me. That's why I've decided that it's best to be living murlocks undergound than incinerated humans on the surface. The planet becomes the shield itself, and sudenly I'm actually much harder to breack down than your ships. Altough they can dodge, they'll eventually run out of fuel and ammo, and that's why I force a battle of atriction. Come down here and get me if you really want my planet!:smalltongue:

This is war. It's irrealistic to think that I can survive whitout sacrificing something.You know, I don't really want your planet.

I'm thinking about your willingness to write off the entire planetary ecosystem, everyone living on the surface, and indeed everything that isn't at the bottom of a multimile mineshaft, all so that your planetary government won't have to say "uncle" to a fleet that controls the space around your planet. I shudder to think what kind of government and society you must have in order to keep the population willing to play along with this scheme.

It sounds like a cross between Sparta and North Korea, with many of the less endearing features of both. You can keep your planet, at least until your government is forced to become a totalitarian military oligarchy to stay in power... at which point it will most likely fall apart under its own weight.

I'm also not going to visit; it sounds like a horrible place. This fixation on all armed conflict as an apocalypse in which massive damage to your homeland is not only tolerated but courted leaves me a bit cold.

It's not even a case of Cold War-style mutually assured destruction. You're not threatening to destroy me if I attack you; you're threatening to sit there and let yourself be destroyed rather than surrender. Privately I doubt it would work any better for you than it did for Japan. But as public policy, I wouldn't want the deaths resulting from a war with you on my conscience unless you offered intolerable provocation.

[13_CBS]

You know, I don't really want your planet.

I'm thinking about your willingness to write off the entire planetary ecosystem, everyone living on the surface, and indeed everything that isn't at the bottom of a multimile mineshaft, all so that your planetary government won't have to say "uncle" to a fleet that controls the space around your planet. I shudder to think what kind of government and society you must have in order to keep the population willing to play along with this scheme.

It sounds like a cross between Sparta and North Korea, with many of the less endearing features of both. You can keep your planet, at least until your government is forced to become a totalitarian military oligarchy to stay in power... at which point it will most likely fall apart under its own weight.

I'm also not going to visit; it sounds like a horrible place. This fixation on all armed conflict as an apocalypse in which massive damage to your homeland is not only tolerated but courted leaves me a bit cold.

Which is an interesting notion for this setting. According to Warty's description of warfare in his sci fi setting, attackers seek to conquer a planet as wholly as possible: minimal damage to the environment and economy (which to me heavily implies that the civilian populations are also left relatively unharmed), and probably minimization of civilian casualties . Thus, in my mind, the people should, in theory, have little to fear from direct orbital bombardments (at least, if I were a civilian, I wouldn't), the same way that people in the real world today have little need to fear nuclear bombs falling on their cities, even though there are countries physically capable of doing just that--they simply won't happen, because if the enemy can't fathom doing such a thing.

Also , perhaps it's just me, but as long as there is sufficient technology to replicate most surface living conditions in the underground facilities (temperature, lighting, room, fresh air, decent internet connection, etc), then I could really care less whether I'm 500 meters above sea level or 5000 meters below. In short, if I can't really tell the difference between living indoors on the surface and living underground, then I wouldn't mind living underground until who knows when.

Edit:

Actually, before we go any further, I have to ask Warty...

What is the main premise of the setting that you want to keep? Is it just tunnel warfare, which can be replicated in tunnels dug into planetary surfaces? Or do you want tunnel warfare specifically in asteroid fortresses?

[Dervag]

Which is an interesting notion for this setting. According to Warty's description of warfare in his sci fi setting, attackers seek to conquer a planet as wholly as possible: minimal damage to the environment and economy (which to me heavily implies that the civilian populations are also left relatively unharmed), and probably minimization of civilian casualties . Thus, in my mind, the people should, in theory, have little to fear from direct orbital bombardments (at least, if I were a civilian, I wouldn't), the same way that people in the real world today have little need to fear nuclear bombs falling on their cities, even though there are countries physically capable of doing just that--they simply won't happen, because if the enemy can't fathom doing such a thing.I understand the logic, but it breaks down if planetary defense batteries are dotted all over the place firing up at orbiting starships.

If you shoot at the enemy fleet they will shoot back; counting on anything less is sheer insanity. And if you have enough planetary defense guns spread out over enough territory to pose a major threat to an orbiting fleet, the fleet will probably return fire with enough megatons to damage your planet. Or at least the ecosystem and the economy; we're not talking the Death Star here.
______

Historically, we can look to pre-industrial siege warfare for examples of how this might go. A fortress or walled city might very well hunker down behind the walls and try to wait out a besieging army. But in many places, there was a custom that the defenders would give up if the enemy managed to breach the wall or if reinforcements didn't arrive, even if they could theoretically keep fighting. Why?

The reason was simple: if the besieger was in a good enough position, they could simply attack the city through the defenses and conquer it. But that would involve massive casualties on both sides, and it was quite possible that the attacking troops would go berserk at losing so many buddies and start massacring people inside the fort. Neither side really wanted to see the fortress get stormed.

So after putting up a fight for some reasonable length of time, until the attacker reached a point where they could surely win the battle if they were willing to make the effort, the defender would surrender "to avoid a needless effusion of blood."

This was the opposite of the "total war" concept Oslecamo seems to be applying. It was based on the idea that losing a war didn't necessarily mean annihilation as a nation, a people, or a civilization; it was just a bad thing that happened to you once in a while. It wasn't worth fighting to the death and risking having your city sacked just to prolong the war by a few days/weeks/months. Once the outcome was no longer in doubt, you gave up.
_____

Likewise, if a militarized planet loses its ability to control the surrounding space, it might still be able to fight using ground based weapons. But unless we're talking about the Ravening Hordes from Beyond the Galactic Rim, who will kill and eat everyone on the planet or something, it's not worth it. Losing the war costs less than getting into a mass-driver duel with orbiting starships (and, quite possibly, still losing).

The flip side of this is, of course, that commanders will generally avoid causing mass destruction on the planet as part of the custom. If the enemy knows you're willing to commit large-scale massacres, it makes it harder to convince them to give up. Exceptions to the rule will be just that- exceptions, and shocking ones. The kind that people tell the historical equivalent of campfire stories about for centuries, like the Mongols.

"I heard that Tamerlane once killed twenty thousand people in this one town and stacked their heads in a pyramid because a merchant from the place insulted him!"
"I heard that Admiral Zagbo used relativistic kill vehicles to carve his initials into the primary continent of Zabriska IV, just to prove he could!"







Also , perhaps it's just me, but as long as there is sufficient technology to replicate most surface living conditions in the underground facilities (temperature, lighting, room, fresh air, decent internet connection, etc), then I could really care less whether I'm 500 meters above sea level or 5000 meters below. In short, if I can't really tell the difference between living indoors on the surface and living underground, then I wouldn't mind living underground until who knows when.

Edit:

Actually, before we go any further, I have to ask Warty...

What is the main premise of the setting that you want to keep? Is it just tunnel warfare, which can be replicated in tunnels dug into planetary surfaces? Or do you want tunnel warfare specifically in asteroid fortresses?[/QUOTE]

[Zeful]

So planets are likely to have some AA batteries for entry vehicles and maybe a dozen large cannons as a supplementary to orbital batteries? Due to the customs implied by the senario, the large guns will likely be ocean platforms, big, but relatively easy to remove from the equation, with minimal damage to the environment and allow for recovery. Further there's little real estate to waste on the ocean, making them ideal for densely populated, "capitol planets". I'd also guess that they would be big guass coils, particle accelerator big to allow for big, deadly shots on inbound ships, as well as precision drops of smaller scale ordinance to deal with enemy forces that get past the AA.

Due to the desire for little, small unit tactics becomes more important; after all it only takes one man to kill the leader of a nation, the governor of a planet. And killing or capturing the governor in this situation would be like "capturing the flag" a clear sign that the defender's lost, especially with the attackers fleet still in orbit. This would be rare though. Underground bunkers would not be common knowledge and ludicrously defended.

Oh, and for AP rounds mentioned earlier. Take a bullet and design it like a Burrs bit (http://img.alibaba.com/photo/51257603/Carbide_Burrs_Diamond_Mounted_Point_cutting_tool_p art.jpg), specifically the bottom three (it's a vacuum round, and doesn't need to be aerodynamic). Then hollow it out so that the walls are very thin. Then pack it with C4 and replace the tip with a time delay impact detonator. After it goes through the armor, it should explode sending the shrapnel through the occupant, resulting in death a very large amount of the time.

[Oslecamo]

Geometry is an issue here that you've overlooked; the fortress asteroid need not be placed in close planetary orbit, and need not be directly between the attacker and the planet.


That's even worse! In that case the invading fleet can simply use the planet as a shield and land whitout the fortroid ever being able to get a clear shot. There's no mountains or rivers watching your back, they can aproach from where they damn please, and your frotroid can't easily change places.

And even if it can try to shoot the invading fleet, the planet is basically held hostage. The invading fleet can land with little hindering, and if the frotroid guys get smart the fleet starts killing some inocents. Wich can't defend themselves because you put all the weapons on the fortroid.

Not to mention that since it's even more far away, ressuplying the fortroid goes from hard to almost impossible.



That said, the asteroid is vulnerable to fire. However, it does have a few advantages:
1-Even if it is completely wrecked by some kind of catastrophic attack (a high-mass relativistic missile, for instance), it's better than having the same attack hit planetary defense batteries. If your guns are on an orbiting weapon platform, the worst that happens is that you are forced to surrender; you don't have an immediate ecological catastrophe piled on top of losing the war.
2-The asteroid fortresses not firing from the bottom of a gravity well up at the attackers; it is firing from closer to the top, especially if you put them out around geosynchronous orbit as I would.
3-The asteroid fortress can use energy weapons more freely, as these weapons are greatly reduced in effect by passing through an atmosphere. Gigajoule antiship lasers mounted on the planetary surface will be badly effed up passing through the atmosphere, which will cut into their effective range.

1-Great,you've just wasted a ton of resources on a defence the enemy can easily ignore or destroy whitout regrets. How is that gonna acomplish anything?

2-We have engines faster than light. 300.000 minus 10 is still 299.990. Hardly any slowdown.

3-It can also be targeted by energy weapons more freely, as the atmosphere protects the ground defenses from the enemy own lasers.



Counterbalancing these points are the ones you raise:
-Building fortress asteroids will be more expensive per unit of combat power. On the other hand, we've got a setting that assumes cheap interstellar travel; it's quite possible that the logistics cost of keeping a garrison in an orbital fortress is small compared to the size of a planetary defense budget. Even innovations we can predict today (like space elevators) would help tremendously with that.


Space travel is one thing. Space travel while under fire of an enemy fleet is another thing all togheter. Even if you can get cheap transports to ressuply the fortroid, they are siting ducks against the invading fleet's weapons.
Specially if you're puting them far away from the planet. If you cannot assure a reliable protected supply line the frotroid will fall really fast.




Weren't you just talking about how the invading fleet isn't limited by chemical rocketry? If we don't assume chemical-powered rocket ships, then it's difficult to imagine them not being able to keep up evasive maneuvers for an extended period (as in, long enough to suppress the defending fire).

Wich reminds me of something:

You can dodge at what, 3 times the aceleration of gravity?
If we assume we have relatively cheap engines faster than light, then we can build a one shot budget version of them to put on rockets.

So by the time you detect the enemy has launched a rocket, the rocket has already hit you. You can't dodge if chemical engines are obsolete. Not whitout killing your own crew at least.



I forget such matters exactly as often as one would expect, given my baseline level of education in the sciences.

The fortroid defenders need to eat, to breathe, to go to the bathroom, to sleep, basic medic services. You need to keep a constant atmosphere and to block enviroment radiation.

Wich means a LOT of extra systems inside the fortroid that a ground battery would never need. Those extra systems make the fortroid much more expensive and/or vulnerable than a ground battery.



Assuming you mean "friction," and not some other process unknown to science, that's not necessarily true. Solid projectiles designed to penetrate the atmosphere can, especially when launched to drop straight down into it, and not graze through hundreds of miles of atmosphere on a shallow trajectory. See Project Thor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment#Project_Thor) for an example of what I'm talking about.

Now, for a projectile the size of a golf ball this is a problem. For something more massive (the size of a large-caliber artillery shell, say)? Not so much.

You can shoot ONE point on the planet reliably? Well that's excellent news for me! Or you could build sophisticated warheads wich make the calculations, but that makes them much mor expensive and much easier to shoot down by my own anti-missiles. You'll be easily outgunned by the planet.



What happens if they park a fleet of tanker ships around Mars and use their FTL drives to hop on over and refuel as needed?

I shoot them down of course. That's for what we have guided FTL missiles isn't it?



Can you keep construction workers operating in the battered hellscape of what's left of your planetary ecosystem?

I can keep them working underground on the artificial ecosystem



You know, I don't really want your planet.

Then I already acomplished my objective. The planet remains mine. Hurrah!



I'm thinking about your willingness to write off the entire planetary ecosystem, everyone living on the surface, and indeed everything that isn't at the bottom of a multimile mineshaft, all so that your planetary government won't have to say "uncle" to a fleet that controls the space around your planet. I shudder to think what kind of government and society you must have in order to keep the population willing to play along with this scheme.

And what kind of government you have? You're the one attacking inocent planets and willing to nuke them to make them submit to your belic empire! What do you tell your own population, hmm?

Keep the space. Do whatever you want with the empty cold. I'll be busy in my underground self-sustaining cities and gardens safe away from the barbaric space marauders who prefer war to trade.



It sounds like a cross between Sparta and North Korea, with many of the less endearing features of both. You can keep your planet, at least until your government is forced to become a to stay in power... at which point it will most likely fall apart under its own weight.

Excellent, then your government shall fall before you can conquer me, because you're exactly what you described, forcing other planets to join you by absolute force.



I'm also not going to visit; it sounds like a horrible place. This fixation on all armed conflict as an apocalypse in which massive damage to your homeland is not only tolerated but courted leaves me a bit cold.

'm also not going to visit yours thank you very much. A planet wich relies on the work of coqneured slaves to survive isn't really appealing to me.



It's not even a case of Cold War-style mutually assured destruction. You're not threatening to destroy me if I attack you; you're threatening to sit there and let yourself be destroyed rather than surrender. Privately I doubt it would work any better for you than it did for Japan. But as public policy, I wouldn't want the deaths resulting from a war with you on my conscience unless you offered intolerable provocation.
Hey, where do you think my own attack fleet is? Knocking at your home planet, wich by now should have surrended with all your french politics of "give up as soon as they shoot at you" . Welcome to the regime comrade!

Just as planned:smalltongue:

On the whole "destroyed ecosystem thingy":
It isn't as bad as you paint it.

Why? Because the chances of finding a planet with natural ecosystem suited for humans is, hmmm, zero. However, planets with the potential to develop natural ecosystems suited for us will be much more common.

Even with our current technology we can slowly transform a planet to better suit our needs. So in this future there probably will be developed technologies to develop sustainable ecosystems in the planets in short time, wich will really speed up the whole colonization process as it will be easier to terraform planets instead of looking for ones with perfect natural conditions for ourselves.

Plus while the planet is terraformed the colonizators will have built their own underground systems to start extracting ores and because underground it's easier to keep stable temperatures and evade harsh climate conditions that there will be in the beggining. Tunnels wich will then expanded to make underground cities, gardens and factories, already in prevention of expansionist military organizations.

So even if you glass the whole surface, once your puny fleet runs out of ammo and fuel and is shot down, rebuilding the planett's ecosystem will be no harder than rebuilding a war-ravaged city is nowadays.

[Kane]

It's trickier than that. You need a guided projectile at those ranges, because there are physics constraints on how precisely you can aim a gun. As an example, look at this image of Pluto. That's the best picture we can get today; the pixel size is something like a hundred miles across because that's the resolution limit of astronomical telescopes at those distances.

I wrote an extended post about this some months ago. The board's search engine seems to be down (sort of), but I was able to find it on Google. Here is a link to the page; my most relevant comment is the extended conversation in post #84, near the bottom.

Please note that I bear the city of Ouagadougou and the nation of Burkina Faso no ill will. The city was chosen as a hypothetical target for kinetic bombardment purely at random, in a grand tradition beginning with Heinlein and Buenos Aires.

I think that it's quite possible, especially if you aren't relying on 'seeing' the target; if you know which side of the earth is pointing where, and where the earth is, ballistics is all you need to plant your inter-planetary lawndart where you want it. After all, you're shooting where it WILL be, not where it is. And, I'm assuming that they will have geographical data of the planet they're shooting at, and know where on the planet their target will be. Every planet might have different GBS grids, but I assume you'd be able to look up this kind of thing. (Though maybe they're like Soviet Russia, and release deliberately skewed information. I hear that when the first orbital mapping satellites came on, Moscow was found to be about a hundred miles away from where Russian maps say it is.)

No worries about Buenos Aires. Yet to run into something that Heinlein started that I really object to.


Also, from a later post, I like your idea of the a planets orbitals being the equivalent of the town wall; until a particularly ruthless enemy (General Sherman) or innovative attacker comes along, it seems like that will be the standard of space combat.


Incidentally, to the orbital fort/ground fort idea, I think that firing weapons OUT of a planets atmosphere also has a negative effect on the atmosphere. Your lasers are burning their way through your air, and your missiles are dumping chemical exhaust up through your stratosphere. Probably not very significant, aside from the laser part, but worth keeping in mind.

[Zeful]

I think that it's quite possible, especially if you aren't relying on 'seeing' the target; if you know which side of the earth is pointing where, and where the earth is, ballistics is all you need to plant your inter-planetary lawndart where you want it. After all, you're shooting where it WILL be, not where it is. And, I'm assuming that they will have geographical data of the planet they're shooting at, and know where on the planet their target will be. Every planet might have different GBS grids, but I assume you'd be able to look up this kind of thing. (Though maybe they're like Soviet Russia, and release deliberately skewed information. I hear that when the first orbital mapping satellites came on, Moscow was found to be about a hundred miles away from where Russian maps say it is.) It's still a ridiculously hard shot to make, and your not likely to have a good margin of error. It may be accurate enough, as in, within a thousand miles from the target, which at the distances described is pretty good at less than one degree of drift, but shots like that would be rare and/or simply long distance planetary bombardment.

[warty goblin]

Ahem, apologies for my prolonged absence from my own thread. Between the girlfriend visiting, the bit where I had to prepare 60% of my final project for a class due to partner uselessness (why can't I have any of the people in this thread as partners??), and an unexpected and really quite painful ear infection, I have simply lacked the time/energy to address any of the excellent points raised.

Some setting details.

- Faster Than Light travel. Based on fictional 'discovery' that universe is in fact quantizable in both space and time dimensions- there is a fundamental smallest unit of space and another smallest unit of time*. FTL works by destabilizing the subject in both time and space, making their existance at some other quanta at this particular time more probable than their likelyhood of being where they are. Doing this carefully results in the object 'moving' in predictable ways within a margin of error. The error goes more or less factorially by distance traveled.

Thus while technically capable of instantanious movement of matter, the accuracy is so horrible that most ships simply 'skim' through FTL, making lots of small jumps per second to control error. Going 'faster' can be accomplished by making more jumps per second, or making larger displacements per jump. The first method is perfered, since it controls error better, but is limited by technology, the second is less accurate but essentially uncapped in terms of distance traveled- any ship can perform it.

Interdiction does not work on areas of space, but rather on objects in space, by simply keeping their probability of being where they in fact are, or very close to where they are near certainty. It uses, for all intents and purposes, the same machinery as FTL travel, although interdicting an object takes much less energy than FTLing it.

The machinery and computer power required to do this is of course insanely complex, large and expensive. Because ships skim through FTL, they must actually carry the generators, sensors and computational equipment that allow this process to occur.

Astute readers will also note that it is fully possible for a warship to be moving FTL and engage a target either in moving normally or FTL. I'm still working through the consequences of this.

*This is actually an avenue of thought I've been considering for some time now, based on the rather unsatisfactory justification for the existance of the real numbers such as they are. Among its more interesting side effects are a completely satisfactory resolution of Xeno's paradox, and some consequences for limits that I'm still not entirely certain of.

- The primary weapon of most spacegoing warships is a combination gun/rocket launcher. After some thought it struck me that most missile systems currently in existance are much less efficient than guns in terms of fuel used/momentum transfered, and I can't think of a good reason to postulate this no longer being the case. Velocity seems to me to be a primary factor in determining the effectiveness of a weapon in space, since the faster your projectile the smaller the volume of space your target can possibly be in by the for any distance between launcher and target. The more controlled this is, the better chances of a projectile hitting the target. Thus the greater efficiency of a gun type weapon with mass M yeilds a higher velocity for a given warhead mass than a missile system using the same warhead and total mass M. Gunpowder fired weapons however simply do not produce fast enough projectiles, so most (ship) weapons are either rail/coilguns or light gas guns.

On the other hand, even with disgustingly fast projectiles, the probability space occupied by any decently maneuverable ship at respectable ranges is simply huge. Thus guidence is quite useful, since it allows smart adjustments of projectile course based on target actions en route.

Hence gun rockets, which consist of a shell, guidence system, fuel and warhead. The warheads are typically hybrid types, composed of both an armor piercing shell in case of direct hit coupled to a fragmentation bomb or nuclear warhead in the more likely event of a near miss. The warhead only detonates the latter if the guidence system decides that a miss is quite likely. Specialized 'mono' warhead containing only AP or frag also exist.

-Warships are built out of more or less extant materials: steel, depleted uranium, some more advanced alloys and radiation shielding (not energy shielding though). Weapon velocities are usually high enough that Newton's Law of Penetration applies, and it becomes more about mass than hardness of material, which means that most ships employ lots and lots of armor.


Some political stuff:
- Most planets are relatively autonomous, although due to the afformentioned revelation in FTL travel (I'm thinking at this point more efficient programming allowing for more jumps per second), these are beginning to give way to interplanetary alliances and nations. Nevertheless it is still very much a pre-Peloponesian War Greece sort of situation, where the planet (polis) is the fundamental unit of politics.

- Most wars are fought for material gain and interest. Since planets are the greatest source of wealth in the galaxy, destroying them seldom makes sense. Destruction of cities has, and does occur, but mostly as a method of intimidation, and seldom at a scale much beyond a few per planet as a means of coersion.

[Dervag]

Some political stuff:
- Most planets are relatively autonomous, although due to the afformentioned revelation in FTL travel (I'm thinking at this point more efficient programming allowing for more jumps per second), these are beginning to give way to interplanetary alliances and nations. Nevertheless it is still very much a pre-Peloponesian War Greece sort of situation, where the planet (polis) is the fundamental unit of politics.From a military standpoint, there are some significant differences.

In classical Greece, breaking into walled cities was hard. Not only was there no artillery, but even the earlier muscle-powered siege tactics were in an early stage of development. Thus, armies often ended up camped outside the walls for very long periods of time. It was very difficult to truly defeat a city with credible walls. Witness
-The Trojan War (which recounted a long siege) as the Greek national epic; Homer was talking about stuff that he knew. Even if he exaggerated both the toughness of the Trojan walls and the ability of the Myceneans to keep an army outside the walls for ten years, the essential picture is valid.
-The Athenian failure outside Syracuse, which revolved entirely around their inability to break into the city before Spartan reinforcements arrived.
-The Athenian ability to hold out against the vastly superior Spartan land forces, primarily because the Spartans couldn't get over the Long Walls of Athens
______

By comparison, penetrating the space-based defenses of a planet in this setting may be costly, but it can also happen fast. With the right tactics, you can gain effective control over the high orbitals of a large planet in a matter of days or even hours.

Therefore, while the planet may be the basic unit of economic power, it does not provide anything like the long-term military security that the city walls provide to a polis. Indeed, with cheap FTL travel, interstellar governments are likely to become the norm. The only way to avoid conquest in the long term is to be able to make a credible threat that you will soon be reinforced in overwhelming strength.

Orbital defenses are likely to serve mainly as a deterrent against casual raids; a determined attacker can take them down if they're willing to put in the effort. Capturing fortifications will be preferred to destruction, but both options are totally on the table if it's important enough.

===========


I think that it's quite possible, especially if you aren't relying on 'seeing' the target; if you know which side of the earth is pointing where, and where the earth is, ballistics is all you need to plant your inter-planetary lawndart where you want it. After all, you're shooting where it WILL be, not where it is. And, I'm assuming that they will have geographical data of the planet they're shooting at, and know where on the planet their target will be. Every planet might have different GBS grids, but I assume you'd be able to look up this kind of thing. (Though maybe they're like Soviet Russia, and release deliberately skewed information. I hear that when the first orbital mapping satellites came on, Moscow was found to be about a hundred miles away from where Russian maps say it is.)The problem is that you still have to be able to see the target to confirm that your gun is pointed at the right place. Otherwise you're firing completely blind, and any error, however small, in your position data, will cause you to miss. Getting visual confirmation that the place your software thinks is "where Ouagadougou will be" really is in fact where Ouagadougou will be is going to be vital.

Remember, the problem of measuring astronomical distances to a precision of hundreds or even thousands of miles applies just as much to the instruments you used to gather the data your software is using. So from Pluto, you know "where the earth is," but only to within, say, a hundred kilometers or so. Obviously, you can't use simple geography to aim a gun more precisely than to within a hundred kilometers simply by knowing where the Earth is in that case.

As I mentioned in the linked conversation, the problem is the inherent limit of any position measurement over such extreme distances. It's much more efficient to use guided projectiles, or to fire from ranges short enough that you can get direct, precise observation of the target using normal telescopes.
________


Incidentally, to the orbital fort/ground fort idea, I think that firing weapons OUT of a planets atmosphere also has a negative effect on the atmosphere. Your lasers are burning their way through your air, and your missiles are dumping chemical exhaust up through your stratosphere. Probably not very significant, aside from the laser part, but worth keeping in mind.Lasers are the least of your worries- electromagnetic radiation in the visible or infrared range just isn't all that dangerous while passing through open air. Rocket exhaust and solid slugs are more of an issue because they leave material pollutants behind. High energy particle beams would be a definite no-no, because collisions with air would create major secondary radiation.

==============

Most of my replies to Oslecamo would be of no interest to the majority of posters here, particularly the ones who are comfortable with high school physics and geometry. Thus, I will reply only in cases where I think that the argument might be relevant to someone with that level of education.


That's even worse! In that case the invading fleet can simply use the planet as a shield and land whitout the fortroid ever being able to get a clear shot. There's no mountains or rivers watching your back, they can aproach from where they damn please, and your frotroid can't easily change places.Four words: Interlocking fields of fire.

It is a rare defense system that cannot be used in multiples. We should be thinking in terms of more than one fortress asteroid; two would probably be enough.


Not to mention that since it's even more far away, ressuplying the fortroid goes from hard to almost impossible.So let me get this straight: the kinetic energy cost of firing weapons up a planetary gravity well is irrelevant, but the kinetic energy cost of launching supplies up a planetary gravity well is prohibitive?


3-It can also be targeted by energy weapons more freely, as the atmosphere protects the ground defenses from the enemy own lasers.Yes, but for foreseeable technology, energy weapons are much shorter ranged than kinetic weapons anyway. The advantage of energy weapons is their accuracy, not their range; they're great at antimissile defense.
_________


Space travel is one thing. Space travel while under fire of an enemy fleet is another thing all togheter. Even if you can get cheap transports to ressuply the fortroid, they are siting ducks against the invading fleet's weapons.What, pray tell, makes you think that this kind of space battle is likely to settle down into a siege of the fortress asteroid where there's any danger of it being neutralized due to a supply shortage of all things? That's certainly not consistent with anything else you've said about the deadliness of weapons in space battles.
______


Wich means a LOT of extra systems inside the fortroid that a ground battery would never need. Those extra systems make the fortroid much more expensive and/or vulnerable than a ground battery.Do ground batteries not need food storage, infirmaries, and bathrooms? Maintaining all those facilities in an underground bunker under nuclear bombardment isn't going to be much easier than maintaining them in space.
______


And what kind of government you have? You're the one attacking inocent planets and willing to nuke them to make them submit to your belic empire! What do you tell your own population, hmm?I tell them you're using your civilian population as human shields for your government command bunkers and your military-industrial complex, and that I refuse to launch a war that will inevitably lead to genocide. As I said, I don't want your planet because I don't want to have to deal with deprogramming the people who live there.

And thus I do not attack you in the first place, for much the same reasons that no one attacks North Korea. It's not that anyone likes North Korea; certainly no one has reason to do so. But attacking North Korea is far more trouble than it's worth, given how much work it would take before you could even make a start on convincing the rest that you aren't a baby-eating tyrant out to kill them all.

It's not that you can't win; it doesn't really matter whether or not you can win, because there's nothing there to reward you that's worth the effort to try.
______



On the whole "destroyed ecosystem thingy":
It isn't as bad as you paint it.

Why? Because the chances of finding a planet with natural ecosystem suited for humans is, hmmm, zero. However, planets with the potential to develop natural ecosystems suited for us will be much more common.Terraforming consumes vast resources; a devastated planet is unlikely to be able to repair its own ecology on any time scale shorter than generations.


So even if you glass the whole surface, once your puny fleet runs out of ammo and fuel and is shot down, rebuilding the planett's ecosystem will be no harder than rebuilding a war-ravaged city is nowadays.Be warned: it can be hard to repair damaged infrastructure in a society that relied on the infrastructure. Central Asia still hasn't recovered from some of the infrastructure damage the Mongols did, and that was over seven hundred years ago.

[warty goblin]

From a military standpoint, there are some significant differences.

In classical Greece, breaking into walled cities was hard. Not only was there no artillery, but even the earlier muscle-powered siege tactics were in an early stage of development. Thus, armies often ended up camped outside the walls for very long periods of time. It was very difficult to truly defeat a city with credible walls. Witness
-The Trojan War (which recounted a long siege) as the Greek national epic; Homer was talking about stuff that he knew. Even if he exaggerated both the toughness of the Trojan walls and the ability of the Myceneans to keep an army outside the walls for ten years, the essential picture is valid.
-The Athenian failure outside Syracuse, which revolved entirely around their inability to break into the city before Spartan reinforcements arrived.
-The Athenian ability to hold out against the vastly superior Spartan land forces, primarily because the Spartans couldn't get over the Long Walls of Athens
______

By comparison, penetrating the space-based defenses of a planet in this setting may be costly, but it can also happen fast. With the right tactics, you can gain effective control over the high orbitals of a large planet in a matter of days or even hours.

Therefore, while the planet may be the basic unit of economic power, it does not provide anything like the long-term military security that the city walls provide to a polis. Indeed, with cheap FTL travel, interstellar governments are likely to become the norm. The only way to avoid conquest in the long term is to be able to make a credible threat that you will soon be reinforced in overwhelming strength.

Orbital defenses are likely to serve mainly as a deterrent against casual raids; a determined attacker can take them down if they're willing to put in the effort. Capturing fortifications will be preferred to destruction, but both options are totally on the table if it's important enough.

Oh I'm well aware of the military differences, and in fact I'm not really using that time period as a military model at all. However the idea of planet as polis I think has some merit, given how hard it strikes me as being to maintain anything like a nation across interstellar distances. Even with very rapid transport and instantanious communication, the experiences of one planet to another are almost certainly going to be so great that commonality is more or less impossible. Azimov has some great stories that touch on this idea, such as The Martian Way.

If one runs with this idea, the fundamental question becomes one of the character of planets, at least according to Thucydides- ergo it is sufficient to know where somebody is from, irregardless of who they are for the most part, Alcibides perhaps excepted. This in turn suggests a move away from the more homogenized sci fi of Star Trek or even Star Wars, and towards a greater emphasis on cultural differences, which lends itself nicely to touches of irony or low level ideological commentary, and also simply more fun with worldbuilding.




Most of my replies to Oslecamo would be of no interest to the majority of posters here, particularly the ones who are comfortable with high school physics and geometry. Thus, I will reply only in cases where I think that the argument might be relevant to someone with that level of education.

Four words: Interlocking fields of fire.
It is a rare defense system that cannot be used in multiples. We should be thinking in terms of more than one fortress asteroid; two would probably be enough.

Pretty much my thoughts exactly. So long as the two fortroids are in opposed orbits, that is always on opposite sides of the planet, they have, at worst, a very small deadzone near the poles (assuming an equitorial orbit). The problem with this is of course their inability to assist each other, so adding third or fourth forts at equal spacing around the equitorial orbit may have some merit as well, particularly for wealthy or important worlds.


So let me get this straight: the kinetic energy cost of firing weapons up a planetary gravity well is irrelevant, but the kinetic energy cost of launching supplies up a planetary gravity well is prohibitive?
I was about to ask this. I would also note that if one is capable of relocating the entire infastructure of a technologically advanced planet, including food production, underground, you can probably support a garrison of a couple thousand men using hydroponics in space. There'd be loss sure, but minimal enough it would not be unreasonable for them to endure blockade on a timescale of at least years.


Do ground batteries not need food storage, infirmaries, and bathrooms? Maintaining all those facilities in an underground bunker under nuclear bombardment isn't going to be much easier than maintaining them in space.
In some ways it actually might be harder. An asteroid, even a very large one, isn't going to have enough gravity to make collapses a major worry. Flooding isn't going to be a concern either, and heat disappation deap underground is, if anything, even harder than in space. Sure in space you are limited to blackbody radiation, but underground you really don't have that.
______


I tell them you're using your civilian population as human shields for your government command bunkers and your military-industrial complex, and that I refuse to launch a war that will inevitably lead to genocide. As I said, I don't want your planet because I don't want to have to deal with deprogramming the people who live there.

And thus I do not attack you in the first place, for much the same reasons that no one attacks North Korea. It's not that anyone likes North Korea; certainly no one has reason to do so. But attacking North Korea is far more trouble than it's worth, given how much work it would take before you could even make a start on convincing the rest that you aren't a baby-eating tyrant out to kill them all.

It's not that you can't win; it doesn't really matter whether or not you can win, because there's nothing there to reward you that's worth the effort to try.
If we really want to pull out the Thucydidian tricks, you could always pull an Athens, land troops and kill everybody, then just resettle if the people planetside refuse to capitulate. Not advisible, justifiable, or in any remote sense of the term right, but certainly plausible.




Terraforming consumes vast resources; a devastated planet is unlikely to be able to repair its own ecology on any time scale shorter than generations.

Be warned: it can be hard to repair damaged infrastructure in a society that relied on the infrastructure. Central Asia still hasn't recovered from some of the infrastructure damage the Mongols did, and that was over seven hundred years ago.
I honestly did not know this. That is most intriguing.

[Oslecamo]

Most of my replies to Oslecamo would be of no interest to the majority of posters here, particularly the ones who are comfortable with high school physics and geometry. Thus, I will reply only in cases where I think that the argument might be relevant to someone with that level of education.

I acept your surrender. Stating that there are weack points in someone else's argument and then failing to point and explain said weack points is more than enough proof that you simply can't counter them.

I can also only conclude that by "confortable" you mean "hardly scratches the surface of".

I'll bother to answer to your other replies when you admit you can't answer to my owns.

[Dervag]

Oh I'm well aware of the military differences, and in fact I'm not really using that time period as a military model at all. However the idea of planet as polis I think has some merit, given how hard it strikes me as being to maintain anything like a nation across interstellar distances. Even with very rapid transport and instantanious communication, the experiences of one planet to another are almost certainly going to be so great that commonality is more or less impossible. Azimov has some great stories that touch on this idea, such as The Martian Way.

If one runs with this idea, the fundamental question becomes one of the character of planets, at least according to Thucydides- ergo it is sufficient to know where somebody is from, irregardless of who they are for the most part, Alcibides perhaps excepted.Good point. On the other hand, there's no reason to assume cultural continuity within planets, either. The scientists of Planet X may have more in common with the scientists of Planet Y than they do with the corporate executives who run the government on Planet X.

Which is not to say that people on either planet will fully understand this fact until some prominent political philosopher points it out... which probably won't happen for quite some time after the advent of cheap FTL travel.


Pretty much my thoughts exactly. So long as the two fortroids are in opposed orbits, that is always on opposite sides of the planet, they have, at worst, a very small deadzone near the poles (assuming an equitorial orbit).That dead zone is small enough and close enough to the planet that it can be covered in a number of ways. Depending on the limits on reliable jump distance your FTL drive uses, it may not be possible to slip a ship into the dead zone without drawing fire from the forts. If hypervelocity guns (muzzle velocity significantly greater than planetary escape velocity) exist, then the polar regions can be covered by a small number of short range ground batteries. Or you can use a constellation of small defense platforms in polar orbits, which serve both to cover the poles against a landing force and to provide close-in defense against something too close to the planet to be fired upon.
______

Do ships using your jump drive retain the momentum they had before a jump after a jump? That would create an interesting problem similar to the one found in the novels of Doc Smith: a ship can use its FTL drive to flit from star to star, but it has to match its "intrinsic" velocity with that of the target before it can land safely.

========


I acept your surrender. Stating that there are weack points in someone else's argument and then failing to point and explain said weack points is more than enough proof that you simply can't counter them.I addressed numerous weak points in your argument, and could have addressed more with trivial ease. But I honestly don't think there's any point in our exchanging an endless series of long posts when you're willing to make mutually exclusive arguments even within a single post. So I chose to limit the number of weak points I tackle at any one time, and ignored the ones where I would expect the weak point to be obvious to an adult of baseline-level education in a developed country.

If you consider that a victory, go ahead. I wouldn't stop you even if I could.

[13_CBS]

I acept your surrender.

I wasn't aware that we were fighting a war. :smallconfused:

[Don Julio Anejo]

Short version of what I want to say: Dervag is right. Oslecamo is making too many generalizations based on total war - i.e. every single conflict is always to the bitter end and is a WWII style total war where pretty much everything is a fight with everything you've got and to the bitter end.

A few minor comments:

1. It's quite easy to conquer other planets and justify it to your citizens and the galactic community... Look at the real world. All you really have to do is win a propaganda war and label your target as a "potential evil doer." That's like handing yourself a carte blanche to wage war.

2. We're all still human (unless there's something you're not telling us, Warty). Which means that, given a similar technological level and decent communication between planets, they'll still be pretty similar. There will be less variation between planets than between individuals on a single planet. The only really major differences will be political or ideological.

E.g. look at US vs. USSR: despite being archrivals and having completely different societies on the surface, the countries shared much more in common than, for example, New England old money rich people and illegal Mexican immigrants. Whichever way you put it, people are still people and much of our psychology is hardwired. History also shows that we tend to form similar societies given similar technology levels and environment.

3. I think Greek poleis (sans the colonies) were used as an analogy to the political structure of the human worlds rather than a military one.


Do ships using your jump drive retain the momentum they had before a jump after a jump? That would create an interesting problem similar to the one found in the novels of Doc Smith: a ship can use its FTL drive to flit from star to star, but it has to match its "intrinsic" velocity with that of the target before it can land safely.
I would assume that they do, since you're never really completely stationary. You can be stationary in relation to, say, the planet you're orbiting, but when you drop out of FTL next to another planet, you won't be stationary anymore... That is you will be, but the planet will be moving in relation to you and the first planet. However, I can see this being compensated for during the mini FTL jumps.

[warty goblin]

Short version of what I want to say: Dervag is right. Oslecamo is making too many generalizations based on total war - i.e. every single conflict is always to the bitter end and is a WWII style total war where pretty much everything is a fight with everything you've got and to the bitter end.

Very true. Many wars aren't fought under a total war doctrine, because it suits neither side to do so.


A few minor comments:

1. It's quite easy to conquer other planets and justify it to your citizens and the galactic community... Look at the real world. All you really have to do is win a propaganda war and label your target as a "potential evil doer." That's like handing yourself a carte blanche to wage war.
A very good point.


2. We're all still human (unless there's something you're not telling us, Warty). Which means that, given a similar technological level and decent communication between planets, they'll still be pretty similar. There will be less variation between planets than between individuals on a single planet. The only really major differences will be political or ideological.

E.g. look at US vs. USSR: despite being archrivals and having completely different societies on the surface, the countries shared much more in common than, for example, New England old money rich people and illegal Mexican immigrants. Whichever way you put it, people are still people and much of our psychology is hardwired. History also shows that we tend to form similar societies given similar technology levels and environment.

Yes and no. They might have more in common in terms of material existance, but can be very, very different in terms of culture, political beliefs and so on. All of those are just as important as material conditions for determining political character.


3. I think Greek poleis (sans the colonies) were used as an analogy to the political structure of the human worlds rather than a military one.
Exactly. I think it's an interesting concept in some ways, particularly for a science fiction setting, where, at least in my limited reading, I don't see many parallels to existing work. Also it's an interesting political climate to try to replicate, and doesn't come off feeling like Modern Day Countries IN SPACE.



I would assume that they do, since you're never really completely stationary. You can be stationary in relation to, say, the planet you're orbiting, but when you drop out of FTL next to another planet, you won't be stationary anymore... That is you will be, but the planet will be moving in relation to you and the first planet. However, I can see this being compensated for during the mini FTL jumps.
Exactly. Momentum is conserved since the ship never actually changes velocity, it simply changes position. In fact the FTL system cannot change a ship's momentum, save for the mass burned in order to fuel the jump. Anything rotational has to be done with conventional reaction engines (it could technically be done with the FTL drive, but the calculations involved are sufficiently ugly it is faster to just fire off the rockets).

[13_CBS]

Alright, so it looks like fortroids are back on the menu, then.

Warty, are there any major changes you want to make to your original fortroid idea?

[The_Snark]

A few points on the fortroid/underground fortress debate:

1. A disadvantage nobody seems to have mentioned yet for the underground fortress is a more limited field of fire. An asteroid in orbit around a planet can easily cover more than half the area of the planet's orbit. A ground-based defense of similar size can't cover as much area, not without using missiles of some kind. One could spread out the weapons, but this has the disadvantage of requiring even more infrastructure, since each emplacement needs to be dug out.

More importantly, the fortroid's field of fire includes the planet; with the right orbit, or with engines installed, no location on the ground is permanently out of range. An underground fortress is an annoying guerilla base, missile silo, and impediment to shipping, but the planet could still be occupied around it. With an orbital fortress bombarding the planet, not so much. The defenders don't want to bomb their own planet much, but the fact that they might do so is an effective deterrent to any would-be invaders.

But more importantly...

2. Why are asteroid fortresses and underground fortresses incapable of both existing in the same setting?

I mean, it's rarely the case that all militaries work in exactly the same way. The idea of having underground missile silos certainly isn't a new one, and with the possibility of orbital occupation, I'm sure military strategists realized the potential benefits to having a functional surface-to-orbit defenses. As Warty has established, this didn't work out too well, probably because orbiting ships can move and ships can't, and it wasn't possible to build something that could avoid having the tubes collapse. Some might have even thought about building massive underground complexes, with lots of redundant weapons systems, but none of them made it past the planning stage, due to 3 factors: 1) the massive cost, 2) lack of need, and/or 3) the time necessary to build one. If a planet needed such defenses, it wouldn't be able to build them in time, and if it didn't foresee a need for them, there's no way the government would shell out the money for that.

Now that asteroid fortresses have proved effective, governments might be giving these superexpensive defense propositions a second look. Possibly some are in the works already.

There's no reason it has to be one or the other; I think people here have listed enough benefits for each that even if one is more effective than the other, the people in the setting might not be able to tell without testing it. Even if one is less effective, that doesn't preclude it—scared governments have done some pretty stupid things in the past. I'm assuming that these are fairly recent developments, just because it's more interesting when the paradigm is changing and nobody's quite worked out all the strategies and pitfalls yet.

[Dervag]

Short version of what I want to say: Dervag is right. Oslecamo is making too many generalizations based on total war - i.e. every single conflict is always to the bitter end and is a WWII style total war where pretty much everything is a fight with everything you've got and to the bitter end.

[quote]A few minor comments:

1. It's quite easy to conquer other planets and justify it to your citizens and the galactic community... Look at the real world. All you really have to do is win a propaganda war and label your target as a "potential evil doer." That's like handing yourself a carte blanche to wage war.You don't necessarily have to do that, either.

For most of history, you might have needed a reason to fight wars for the consumption of your own public, but you didn't need a reason for the consumption of anyone else's public. And a successful war would often justify itself, because people felt good about the idea that their boys were going off and giving the foreigners what-for and bringing back loot and teaching them to respect the Motherland.

Since the Second World War, that's changed. For small countries, the risk that foreigners will pile on your back if you attack your neighbor has gone through the roof- compare what happened when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1991 to what happened when, say, Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931. For large countries, the propaganda advantage of being well-liked in the many neutral nations is far greater than any advantage you can gain by invading a single country, so you don't want to attack country N without having a good explanation to satisfy countries N+1 through N+50.

But the current condition is not the universal order. Create a situation where transit times are longer and communication channels between countries are relatively narrow (and this almost has to be true over interstellar distances), and you recover the social context that made wars of conquest common and possible.


3. I think Greek poleis (sans the colonies) were used as an analogy to the political structure of the human worlds rather than a military one.I understand; I just thought the comparison would be useful.


I would assume that they do, since you're never really completely stationary. You can be stationary in relation to, say, the planet you're orbiting, but when you drop out of FTL next to another planet, you won't be stationary anymore... That is you will be, but the planet will be moving in relation to you and the first planet. However, I can see this being compensated for during the mini FTL jumps.Yes, but it also creates a limit on how close you can safely approach the target planet without matching intrinsic velocities with it.

[Don Julio Anejo]

For most of history, you might have needed a reason to fight wars for the consumption of your own public, but you didn't need a reason for the consumption of anyone else's public. And a successful war would often justify itself [...}
Since the Second World War, that's changed. For small countries, the risk that foreigners will pile on your back if you attack your neighbor has gone through the roof.
(quote shortened for brevity)
The most important change that's happened since then is that land is no longer a vital resource, unlike, say, 200 years ago. There's nothing really to gain by conquering a country anymore, you're going to be stuck with a bunch of people that hate you and a bunch of land you can't really use because there's a bunch of people that hate you living there.

It's cheaper and easier to simply buy what you need, especially for big countries. Need precious metals mines? Sponsor a hostile takeover by a company based in your country. Need oil? Same thing. Invasions only happen when you CAN'T do something like that nowadays. Case in point current political situation.

Also, you kinda DO have to justify it to other countries' people as well if you can't avoid war - as you've pointed out, being liked in N+1 to N+50 countries is quite important and potentially very useful.