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Bulhakov
2016-07-08, 05:04 PM
I've been browsing Atomic Rockets recently and I got into a discussion with a friend on how to best parallel spaceship combat on the ground. Naval combat is definitely not the best way to go, but if we do simplify things to 2D, we found that a "giant ice rink" seems an interesting parallel:
- everyone is riding crotch-rocket ice-capable motorcycles (you can go extremely fast, but slowing down or turning is limited so trajectories are somewhat predictable)
- there's no hiding - everyone is visible from miles away (assuming no special stealth technology)
- dips in the ice are gravity wells of planets (severely limiting movement if you go deep into one, but also one of the few places to hide)
- every motorcyclist can very precisely shoot sniper rifles (laser weapons)
- ... but it's very difficult to hit anything as everyone operates on a few seconds of lag unless they are really close (limits of speed of light at large distances)

Any comments on this parallel? Flaws? Additions? What strategies would stem from these assumptions? Would the motorcyclists simply head at each other trying to sniper-joust? Circle-strafe eachother? Try to lay traps/mines? Release self guiding drones/missiles?

Calen
2016-07-08, 05:14 PM
I would expect to see a mixture of jousting and circle-strafing. If the fleets want to engage* they would charge each other, as the fleets got closer they would probably start some maneuvers to help throw off aim, misdirect shots. The emphasis would be how to best present more weapons of your side compared to the weapons of their side.


*Barring one side having radically better movement tech than another, forcing a battle would be extremely difficult. You would have to threaten a planet or station to force a fight.

I would recommend the Lost Fleet series of books as a good take on this kind of space combat.

BayardSPSR
2016-07-08, 09:24 PM
It seems more similar to modern-day beyond-visual-range aerial warfare. That said, I don't know of any games (let alone RPGs) that implement modern day BVR air combat at all (let along well).

And yeah, the vast distance means that it would be comically easy to dodge or otherwise countermeasure incoming fire, unless that fire was somehow faster than light and maneuver and detection somehow weren't.

You might get a weird dogfight of extremely-long-range homing projectiles trying to hit their targets while maneuvering out of the way of countermeasures, but even then jamming would probably be the most weight-efficient countermeasure. That is, if a missile capable of reaching and hitting a target at space ranges weighs as much (or more) than a jammer capable of countering the missile, then just getting the number of weapons into space necessary to overcome predicted countermeasures is going to be cost-prohibitive relative to countering whatever the enemy throws at you. The tactical implications of this would be the opposite of present day air combat, though, where putting missiles in the air is far cheaper than putting maneuverable aircraft in the air.

Maybe this means we'll have eternal interstate galactic peace in the far future. That would be nice.

Or maybe this means that space combat would be more like WWI dogfights, relying on short-range kinetic or laser weapons due to the vanishingly low P(k) of long-range fire.

If communication is sufficiently fast relative to projectiles, you could also have comical situations where the first few salvoes of war are fired, and then peace is negotiated before they reach their targets. That would be weird diplomatically... and resemble some of the colonial wars between European countries prior to the telegraph (like how the War of 1812 ended before its last battles were fought).

EDIT: Also, the people in this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?493127-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-Armor-or-Tactics-Question-Mk-XXI) might be able to feed you some more ammunition (pun very much intended).

The Glyphstone
2016-07-08, 09:33 PM
It seems more similar to modern-day beyond-visual-range aerial warfare. That said, I don't know of any games (let alone RPGs) that implement modern day BVR air combat at all (let along well).

And yeah, the vast distance means that it would be comically easy to dodge or otherwise countermeasure incoming fire, unless that fire was somehow faster than light and maneuver and detection somehow weren't.

You might get a weird dogfight of extremely-long-range homing projectiles trying to hit their targets while maneuvering out of the way of countermeasures, but even then jamming would probably be the most weight-efficient countermeasure. That is, if a missile capable of reaching and hitting a target at space ranges weighs as much (or more) than a jammer capable of countering the missile, then just getting the number of weapons into space necessary to overcome predicted countermeasures is going to be cost-prohibitive relative to countering whatever the enemy throws at you. The tactical implications of this would be the opposite of present day air combat, though, where putting missiles in the air is far cheaper than putting maneuverable aircraft in the air.

Maybe this means we'll have eternal interstate galactic peace in the far future. That would be nice.

Or maybe this means that space combat would be more like WWI dogfights, relying on short-range kinetic or laser weapons due to the vanishingly low P(k) of long-range fire.

If communication is sufficiently fast relative to projectiles, you could also have comical situations where the first few salvoes of war are fired, and then peace is negotiated before they reach their targets. That would be weird diplomatically... and resemble some of the colonial wars between European countries prior to the telegraph (like how the War of 1812 ended before its last battles were fought).

More likely we'll have peace between fleets of interstellar ark ships harvesting asteroids, gas giants, and the remains of smashed planets. It was made as a very good point that to force a battle between fleets you'd generally have to threaten a high-value target like a planet, and the #1 tactical weakness of a planet is that unlike a ship, it cannot dodge. Its course is fixed, invariable, and predictable, so passive dumb projectiles can still hit it with 100% guaranteed accuracy if aimed properly.

BayardSPSR
2016-07-08, 09:43 PM
Another thing: in the absence of faster-than-light weapons, if you fired at a planet, its population (were they able to detect it) would probably have years, if not decades, to develop countermeasures to the attack. The weapons could become obsolete before they hit the target, and the party that attacked would risk being counterattacked with weapons they couldn't imagine when they first fired. There could be a balance of deterrence based on the possibility of technological development alone, and there could in practice be no cost to disarmament.

Until you get faster-than-light weapons, that is.

goto124
2016-07-08, 10:11 PM
That also depends on the distance between the planet and the weapon. I didn't think the weapon firing at the planet was THAT far away.

The Glyphstone
2016-07-08, 10:59 PM
And the specifics of the weapon. The classic example is a rock with engines strapped to it, that you accelerate as close as you can to lightspeed while aimed at an intersection point. This is about as low-tech as a planetkiller wepaon can get, and its effectiveness is determined solely by how much acceleration your engine can put out. At near-C, a planet would have, at best, hours to try and intercept the projectile, so to have a hope of blocking it, you'd need a method of detecting it while it was much further away, and thus still gaining speed. As it grows faster, the time window between detection and impact shrinks, so the acceleration rare is the critical factor.

Mando Knight
2016-07-09, 02:03 AM
- there's no hiding - everyone is visible from miles away (assuming no special stealth technology)

This is one thing that I think Atomic Rockets overthinks. Stealth isn't so much making yourself invisible to the opponent, but making them not realize that they're looking at an enemy. You're a tiny dot of heat among the background of a field of stars and planetary debris (particularly at the distances where the lightspeed lag is relevant), and it's very expensive (if at all possible) to run sensors that can deliver high resolution, wide viewing angle, and fast analysis all at the same time.

Now, once your opponent finds you, they can lock onto your trajectory and track you rather easily, but it's the "determine that this half-a-pixel dot is a target in the first place" bit that's the difficult part.

Bulhakov
2016-07-10, 04:16 PM
This is one thing that I think Atomic Rockets overthinks. Stealth isn't so much making yourself invisible to the opponent, but making them not realize that they're looking at an enemy. You're a tiny dot of heat among the background of a field of stars and planetary debris (particularly at the distances where the lightspeed lag is relevant), and it's very expensive (if at all possible) to run sensors that can deliver high resolution, wide viewing angle, and fast analysis all at the same time.
Now, once your opponent finds you, they can lock onto your trajectory and track you rather easily, but it's the "determine that this half-a-pixel dot is a target in the first place" bit that's the difficult part.

I think the main assumption here is just that you can expect to spot (and be spotted by) the enemy way before you can effectively engage them. This is because senor tech will always work at light speeds (i.e. detecting some form of EM radiation coming from the ships), but weapons will always be either sub-light speed (missiles/drones/projectiles) or relatively near-range (lasers need to be focused on something).

Strigon
2016-07-10, 05:45 PM
Depends largely on the path you're taking. "Hard" sci-fi would have one of two ways of doing things, in my book:
High-lethality, quick engagements with high casualty rates. This assumes ships are difficult to hide - missiles, mass-drivers and lasers tear opponents up very quickly, evasive maneuvers have little effectiveness. Even if you win, chances are your ship is heavily damaged. The jousting analogy seemed appropriate, and the term "rocket tag" has never been more so.

Slow, intense, stealthy engagements. This assumes ships are something like submarines; in the inky blackness of space, nigh-impossible to detect unless you either use active sensors, or it activates a radiation-emitting device, like its engines or active sensors of its own. Under these circumstances, 2 ships might be within kilometers of each other and never know; and often, the first sign of another ship is when you've got an incoming missile. Further reading (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kQUk3nJ6Pw)

Bulhakov
2016-07-10, 07:55 PM
Thanks for the submarine analogy, this might work out if some form of "space stealth tech" does become available (simulating dark matter?).

Maybe we could split this up into three possible scenarios:
- near present day tech - sensors > weapons, tracking drone missiles and lasers for both defense and offense, ships try to predict each-others trajectories and fire drones in the generic direction, lasers try to disable the drones

- future tech "stealth" - we might get the submarine analogy, even the most primitive weapons will be able to kill a ship that is unaware of enemy presence

- future tech "shields" - what then? stronger weapons need to be developed? radiation blasts? heavier missiles? even more "space jousting" but less lethal?

Any good books with a hard sci-fi approach to space combat?

Mutazoia
2016-07-11, 06:52 AM
Any good books with a hard sci-fi approach to space combat?

Most hard sci-fi approach space combat as "DON'T". The cost of building the ships and training the crews, only to have it all thrown away after one small hit....it's not worth it.

Firest Kathon
2016-07-11, 07:42 AM
And yeah, the vast distance means that it would be comically easy to dodge or otherwise countermeasure incoming fire, unless that fire was somehow faster than light and maneuver and detection somehow weren't.

Another thing: in the absence of faster-than-light weapons, if you fired at a planet, its population (were they able to detect it) would probably have years, if not decades, to develop countermeasures to the attack.

You do not need FTL weaponry, it would be enough if the weapon fires at the speed of light. For example, you have no way of detecting an incoming laser shot before it hits you (unless the weapon has a detectable "charging up" phase) because all the information about the shot (light, energy discharge, etc.) travels as fast as the shot itself.


Any good books with a hard sci-fi approach to space combat?
I really like the space combat as presented in the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. Spaceships in combat have to deal with all the problems physics present to you, including limited acceleration, deceleration and turning speed, limited detection ranges, max speeds far below c for ships (but not weapons) etc. The series has some elements which are not (yet) based in science (FTL travel, limited inertia reducers, gravity detectors and generators, [redacted for spoilers]), but I think the main factors are accounted for and (as far as I can tell) scientifically correct (except for gravity, which propagates instantaneously in-universe). For examples of single-ship engagements read The Honor of the Queen, for fleet engagements The Short Victorious War (even better: read it all from the beginning :smallbiggrin:)

CharonsHelper
2016-07-11, 07:48 AM
Its course is fixed, invariable, and predictable, so passive dumb projectiles can still hit it with 100% guaranteed accuracy if aimed properly.

I'm seen that before in fiction. I disagree entirely.

Yes, Fleet A can shoot a rock at planet B from extreme range. However, Fleet B could then easily poke it with another smaller rock to get it off course.

Active defenses would be the name of the game.

CharonsHelper
2016-07-11, 08:02 AM
At the OP - it all depends upon the technology involved.

Are there shields?

How fast are the ships relative to the speed of weapons?

How are the ships propelled? It may be nothing like modern rockets. I doubt that physics as we know it would apply to FTL.

What range are weapons relative to ship speeds?

How accurate are the weapons relative to ship dodging ability? Even lasers could miss from a couple of light seconds away if the ship is dodging fast enough.

You could have anything from hugely distant shooting matches, to close range broadsides which go by in a split second as ships pass one another. If the speed of ships are close to that of weaponry, boarding other ships might even be a viable tactic.

In an RPG context, I'd start with the sort of combat you want, and then come up with the sorts of technology which justify it.

For example - in the game I'm working on (Space Dogs), ships have gravity drives to travel within systems because warp travel doesn't work anywhere near a star's gravity. This allows me to keep combat 2d because you need to stay within the plane of the star system in order to keep top speed. You can go one step above or below the plane of the system, but all movement costs are doubled there.

Because of the gravity drives, you can 'catch the wind' of other ships which makes boarding other ships relatively easy once they're at all damaged. (Which pushes combat back to the personal level where the game thrives.)

ImNotTrevor
2016-07-11, 08:32 AM
I have been wondering about this for a few minutes and it strikes me that space combat would likely occur at distances no longer than a few hundred kilometers, at the furthest.

That, and combat ships would be as compact as possible, with the exception of maybe the bigger troop carriers. Which are your big meaty targets to go for.

I imagine that if I really wanted to cause trouble for the enemy, I would map their trajectory and launch my secret weapons:
FLYING ROBOT SPACE TORSOS
Well, basically a torso with arms and a sensor array head controlled by a person in an advanced VR setup. These little guys would be launched using magnetic rails or by emitting pressurized gas while turned off, after being well refrigerated to ambient space temp. Basically impossible to detect, moving quickly, and if they have little pressurized gas canisters they could even adjust their flight angles in case of enemy maneuvers. (And most likely the small fluctuation in temperature from the launch will go unnoticed)

They slow themselves down when they get close, latch on to the enemy ship, and just start tearing things apart. Throwing remote-detonation explosives into critical areas, actively shooting back at defenders, disabling guns, blowing holes in larger decks, etc.

That way you could disable without destroying and do so pretty reliably since the projectile is smart and human-controlled. Plus side, none of your own humans are put at risk.

Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part and maybe I just secretly want to say that I created the idea of launching flying robotic torsos as a weapon. Maybe it's just a really cool idea.

DigoDragon
2016-07-11, 08:41 AM
One thing about throwing large scale weapons around that I rarely see addressed (such as the large asteroid with engines) is that should the weapon miss its intended target, it does not simply stop and fade out of the picture. It'll continue sailing through space, drifting in trajectory as large gravity wells affect it until it hits something. Maybe not for years (or even centuries), but it'll eventually hit something and ruin that's target's day. :smallbiggrin:

Mass Effect 2 had a great line about why aiming weapons was important:

Gunnery Chief: This, recruits, is a 20-kilo ferrous slug. Feel the weight. Every five seconds, the main gun of an Everest-class dreadnought accelerates one to 1.3 percent of light speed. It impacts with the force of a 38-kilotomb bomb. That is three times the yield of the city buster dropped on Hiroshima back on Earth. That means Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-*itch in space. Now! Serviceman Burnside! What is Newton's First Law?
First Recruit: Sir! A object in motion stays in motion, sir!
Gunnery Chief: No credit for partial answers, maggot!
First Recruit: Sir! Unless acted on by an outside force, sir!
Gunnery Chief: Damn straight! I dare to assume you ignorant jackasses know that space is empty. Once you fire this husk of metal, it keeps going till it hits something. That can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in ten thousand years. If you pull the trigger on this, you're ruining someone's day, somewhere and sometime. That is why you check your damn targets! That is why you wait for the computer to give you a damn firing solution! That is why, Serviceman Chung, we do not "eyeball it!" This is a weapon of mass destruction. You are not a cowboy shooting from the hip!

Strigon
2016-07-11, 08:45 AM
One thing about throwing large scale weapons around that I rarely see addressed (such as the large asteroid with engines) is that should the weapon miss its intended target, it does not simply stop and fade out of the picture. It'll continue sailing through space, drifting in trajectory as large gravity wells affect it until it hits something. Maybe not for years (or even centuries), but it'll eventually hit something and ruin that's target's day. :smallbiggrin:

Mass Effect 2 had a great line about why aiming weapons was important:

Gunnery Chief: This, recruits, is a 20-kilo ferrous slug. Feel the weight. Every five seconds, the main gun of an Everest-class dreadnought accelerates one to 1.3 percent of light speed. It impacts with the force of a 38-kilotomb bomb. That is three times the yield of the city buster dropped on Hiroshima back on Earth. That means Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-*itch in space. Now! Serviceman Burnside! What is Newton's First Law?
First Recruit: Sir! A object in motion stays in motion, sir!
Gunnery Chief: No credit for partial answers, maggot!
First Recruit: Sir! Unless acted on by an outside force, sir!
Gunnery Chief: Damn straight! I dare to assume you ignorant jackasses know that space is empty. Once you fire this husk of metal, it keeps going till it hits something. That can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in ten thousand years. If you pull the trigger on this, you're ruining someone's day, somewhere and sometime. That is why you check your damn targets! That is why you wait for the computer to give you a damn firing solution! That is why, Serviceman Chung, we do not "eyeball it!" This is a weapon of mass destruction. You are not a cowboy shooting from the hip!

As much as I love that quote, and the ME universe, and agree with the general principle, most of the time it's going to be wrong. Chances are, it'll hit a star and have no effect, or hit an asteroid and have no effect, or pass through enough space dust to slow itself down and have no effect :smalltongue:

Doesn't change the basic principle that any missed round could, potentially, come back to bite you, though.

mikeejimbo
2016-07-11, 09:38 AM
One thing I rarely see addressed is that weapons and countermeasures would be pretty much automated. Targets would be detected automatically, and once a human pushed that red button under the molly guard, the firing system would perform all the calculations and fire. Likewise, defenses would be pretty automated - anything large and travelling fast enough would get blasted by point-defense lasers, the maneuvering system would fire to change trajectory, etc. The arms race would become one of programming better firing algorithms vs better defense algorithms.

I don't think anyone would let another ship get close enough for lasers to have enough energy to be effective. If they did, those *would* be easy to hit, because as has been said upthread, you can't detect it in time, and since trajectories are predictable it'd be a relatively easy calculation. Maybe tiny drones armed with lasers could be programmed to fire from just beyond point-defense range, but again, that's just a further escalation in the arms race.

We're already approaching the point where cost of automation is cheaper than training humans. Depending on what's going on in space, there might not even *be* humans there. Automated asteroid mining, automated exploring/scouting, heck, probably even automated construction.

The only thing I can really even see having humans in spacecraft for is transport, and for that to be feasible you either need FTL technology (and I don't know enough physics to consider the implications of FTL weaponry), or possibly generation ships.

Edit: Yes, I realize that this makes for dull games, or at least not exciting dogfight space combat.

CharonsHelper
2016-07-11, 10:05 AM
Edit: Yes, I realize that this makes for dull games, or at least not exciting dogfight space combat.


While perhaps not the most likely result in real life, for game purposes you could easily say that AIs are too susceptible to EMP and/or hacking to be used in combat.

Though, if you want to split the difference, you could go for Star Trek style combat where the computers do all of the targeting etc. but it's still humans who make the tactical decisions to avoid any hacking.

Edit: I know that the US army had drone issues because for quite some time they were (stupidly) using unencrypted channels, and the insurgents just watched where the drones were going on their laptops. And that's just remote controlled - not AI.

goto124
2016-07-11, 10:49 AM
One thing about throwing large scale weapons around that I rarely see addressed (such as the large asteroid with engines) is that should the weapon miss its intended target, it does not simply stop and fade out of the picture. It'll continue sailing through space, drifting in trajectory as large gravity wells affect it until it hits something. Maybe not for years (or even centuries), but it'll eventually hit something and ruin that's target's day. :smallbiggrin:


I wonder if a missed bullet (or laser, or equivalent) becomes a brick joke that returns to bite the PCs in the rear end later on... could be funny, or annoying, or both :smalltongue:

DigoDragon
2016-07-11, 02:12 PM
As much as I love that quote, and the ME universe, and agree with the general principle, most of the time it's going to be wrong. Chances are, it'll hit a star and have no effect, or hit an asteroid and have no effect, or pass through enough space dust to slow itself down and have no effect :smalltongue:

Doesn't change the basic principle that any missed round could, potentially, come back to bite you, though.

You know, considering that all the mass an energy of the universe that can interact with us only accounts for about... 4% or so of the universe, actual chances of hitting something might be pretty small. :3

But then again, in a fictional setting that would be a bit boring. :smallwink:

The Glyphstone
2016-07-11, 03:34 PM
I'm seen that before in fiction. I disagree entirely.

Yes, Fleet A can shoot a rock at planet B from extreme range. However, Fleet B could then easily poke it with another smaller rock to get it off course.

Active defenses would be the name of the game.

Hence why I mentioned the acceleration/speed being the crucial deciding factor. An active-defense projectile imparting detrimental dV is indeed the easiest way to deflect a killer asteroid, but that doesn't necessarily make it easy. The longer that rock has been accelerating, and the faster it's moving, the more counter-force is needed to deflect it onto a trajectory that won't still kill the planet/biosphere. So higher acceleration on your planetbusting KEW makes it harder to stop on two levels, the reduced time you have to mount a defense and the increased energy you need to throw at it to do anything.

But yes, you're correct that having a fleet (the most active of active defenses) is the only thing that'll protect a planet, since the planet cannot protect itself. The thing is, once you've got a fleet, why not just keep building that fleet until it's big enough to hold all your civilians too, rather than be tethered to a planet with no real value except sentimentality?




While perhaps not the most likely result in real life, for game purposes you could easily say that AIs are too susceptible to EMP and/or hacking to be used in combat.

Though, if you want to split the difference, you could go for Star Trek style combat where the computers do all of the targeting etc. but it's still humans who make the tactical decisions to avoid any hacking.

Edit: I know that the US army had drone issues because for quite some time they were (stupidly) using unencrypted channels, and the insurgents just watched where the drones were going on their laptops. And that's just remote controlled - not AI.

If your starships are being hacked, it's probably coming from inside the hull, so you have bigger problems.:smallsmile: You'd have to let tactical computers/AIs do the actual fighting, because everything in space is moving immeasurably too fast for merely human reflexes to react to. Keeping humans in the loop for tactical decisions and target selection is just common sense to avoid friendly fire, but once battle is actually joined it'll be up to the combat algorithms.

CharonsHelper
2016-07-11, 03:54 PM
Hence why I mentioned the acceleration/speed being the crucial deciding factor. An active-defense projectile imparting detrimental dV is indeed the easiest way to deflect a killer asteroid, but that doesn't necessarily make it easy. The longer that rock has been accelerating, and the faster it's moving, the more counter-force is needed to deflect it onto a trajectory that won't still kill the planet/biosphere. So higher acceleration on your planetbusting KEW makes it harder to stop on two levels, the reduced time you have to mount a defense and the increased energy you need to throw at it to do anything.

Why would it be accelerating much? A bit from gravity, but if you have interstellar propulsion, that's not very fast.


But yes, you're correct that having a fleet (the most active of active defenses) is the only thing that'll protect a planet, since the planet cannot protect itself. A space station could, and that's pretty much the same thing, especially if you have a space elevator to get to orbit. (likely common when space travel is common)
The thing is, once you've got a fleet, why not just keep building that fleet until it's big enough to hold all your civilians too, rather than be tethered to a planet with no real value except sentimentality?

Plus the atmosphere. And natural resources. And gravity. And foodstuffs. And...


If your starships are being hacked, it's probably coming from inside the hull, so you have bigger problems.:smallsmile: You'd have to let tactical computers/AIs do the actual fighting, because everything in space is moving immeasurably too fast for merely human reflexes to react to. Keeping humans in the loop for tactical decisions and target selection is just common sense to avoid friendly fire, but once battle is actually joined it'll be up to the combat algorithms.

Hacking would likely only apply if you had the ships/robots be entirely AI controlled, which some on here were suggesting. So long as people were on board making the tactical decisions & target selection it's a non-issue. (Though theoretically it might be easier to splice a probe/missile in to hack the ship physically than it is to actually destroy it.)

EMP or some other future technology might still be an issue though.

Frankly, there are far too many technological unknowns to make anything more than a best guess anyway. I was mostly just suggesting that, from an RPG/game perspective, shift all of the potential variables so that you end up with a fun game to play rather than necessarily the most likely option.

Anonymouswizard
2016-07-11, 05:26 PM
Most hard sci-fi approach space combat as "DON'T". The cost of building the ships and training the crews, only to have it all thrown away after one small hit....it's not worth it.

Oh no, the logistics will stop it. Your ship likely isn't carrying much in the way of additional fuel, so you can't afford to waste any evading attacks. The most likely outcome is both ships get hit by missiles causing extensive damage and loss of life, possibly being outright destroyed, before both losers limp off. But that's if the ship gets there on time in the first place.

Now orbital combat does feature in the game I'm writing, Infinity Drive. Ships have the choice to either fight back, flee into the system, or attempt to activate their FTL drive (which is wormhole based and has to charge). Ships tend to include lots of bulkheads and redundant systems or very heavy armour plating, although the object of the fights are always over access to the planet.

Mechalich
2016-07-11, 11:49 PM
Any good books with a hard sci-fi approach to space combat?

I like the Dread Empire's Fall series by Walter John Williams. It's reasonably hard: FTL exists only via wormholes that the people can't really actively control, ships have absurdly powerful anti-matter torchship drives but still have to find ways to handle acceleration, the primary kill weapons are anti-matter missiles and one hit = death in pretty much all cases, with even glancing detonations capable of crippling a vessel, there's no incredibly powerful computation devices, and the mechanics of things like time lag on detection, communication, and response are very important tactically (these torchships can build up to large percentages of c).

The thing is, Williams enforced his set of rules by making all the relevant factions splinter groups from beneath the heel of an incredibly dogmatic empire that had ruled them for millennia, thus insuring that everyone was playing by the same technological rules and that only minor variations in tactical approach would still matter. It's an important lesson is design for this sort of thing: you need to make sure of what technological capabilities you're playing with and then define what they'll do, because even seemingly subtle variations will chance the situation immensely.

Telok
2016-07-12, 01:11 AM
The Yerkes Observatory in Chicago has an automated telescope that you can use to spot asteroids out past Mars orbit. It's internet controlled and schools or individuals can buy time on it, I got to use it recently for a class.

So a 100 cm telescope can pick out a 100 m dull grey rock at a range of 250 million km. Today. The computer compensates for the movement of the Earth so the background stars are stationary and takes a series of pictures. It stacks the pictures and you look for streaks or you can time-lapse the images and watch for movement.

For reference the Space Shuttle was 56 m long and the speed of light is 300,000 km/sec. So passive visual sensors can assume a minimum of locating a 100 m craft at 8 light seconds without much difficulty and with today's technology.

The Glyphstone
2016-07-12, 03:30 AM
Plus the atmosphere. And natural resources. And gravity. And foodstuffs. And...

Atmosphere? Hydroponics generate breathable air from waste gas, and provide food to boot.
Natural resources? Asteroids, comets, and gas giants. Mine them suckers, cause 'aliens come to Earth to steal our liquid water' means those aliens are too dumb to close their airlock doors in the right order.
Gravity? Centrifugal spin. Wheeeeeee.
Foodstuffs? Hydroponics again. Om nom nom delicious space veggies.

Really, there is nothing a planet offers that you cannot duplicate if you've got the technology to build interstellar ships to begin with. Granted, it'll have some rather drastic effects on your species after a number of generations, but it's perfectly survivable and functional in theory.




Hacking would likely only apply if you had the ships/robots be entirely AI controlled, which some on here were suggesting. So long as people were on board making the tactical decisions & target selection it's a non-issue. (Though theoretically it might be easier to splice a probe/missile in to hack the ship physically than it is to actually destroy it.)

EMP or some other future technology might still be an issue though.

Frankly, there are far too many technological unknowns to make anything more than a best guess anyway. I was mostly just suggesting that, from an RPG/game perspective, shift all of the potential variables so that you end up with a fun game to play rather than necessarily the most likely option.

Yeah, I missed that was a response to other people in-thread. Though if hacking is a thing, counter-hacking protocols would be the appropriate defense, and it just becomes another layer of weapon vs. armor - I read an interesting essay by, I think, Orson Scott Card on this topic, regarding the evolution of weapons vs. "armor" all the way from clubs and animal hides up to modern-day drones and jammers, and presumably beyond into AI vs. EMPs and hack-borne viruses. Plenty of potential to keep the player characters of the game in question the most-relevant figures; using AI-driven drones to do their fighting is just a more distant or abstract version of using guns/swords/etc. - their role in combat becomes directing the drones and protecting them from interference by the other side's hackers, while the drones themselves go about the actual fighting.

CharonsHelper
2016-07-12, 07:27 AM
Atmosphere? Hydroponics generate breathable air from waste gas, and provide food to boot.
Natural resources? Asteroids, comets, and gas giants. Mine them suckers, cause 'aliens come to Earth to steal our liquid water' means those aliens are too dumb to close their airlock doors in the right order.
Gravity? Centrifugal spin. Wheeeeeee.
Foodstuffs? Hydroponics again. Om nom nom delicious space veggies.

Really, there is nothing a planet offers that you cannot duplicate if you've got the technology to build interstellar ships to begin with. Granted, it'll have some rather drastic effects on your species after a number of generations, but it's perfectly survivable and functional in theory.

You could, but not for free.

How much of your population are you going to have doing all of those things which are automatic on a planet? If 3/4 of your population is busy doing all that and maintaining the gear for it, wouldn't you be better off on a planet where basic needs are covered by 3-5% instead? Not to mention the initial costs involved.

It all depends on how the tech works and how much maintenance they take.

And that's ignoring all of the psychological issues of being cooped up on a ship 24/7 365.

And on a planet you could put some massive active defense weaponry, so it's not necessarily even safer to be on a ship.

Strigon
2016-07-12, 08:36 AM
You could, but not for free.

How much of your population are you going to have doing all of those things which are automatic on a planet? If 3/4 of your population is busy doing all that and maintaining the gear for it, wouldn't you be better off on a planet where basic needs are covered by 3-5% instead? Not to mention the initial costs involved.

It all depends on how the tech works and how much maintenance they take.

And that's ignoring all of the psychological issues of being cooped up on a ship 24/7 365.

And on a planet you could put some massive active defense weaponry, so it's not necessarily even safer to be on a ship.

All this, plus one little thing.
Your planet gets hit by a weapon, and everything's fine. Worst-case, it's a particularly large asteroid, and you have a few years to evacuate before the mass extinctions make it uninhabitable for humans.
Your spaceship gets hit by a weapon, and you die.

I think it's safe to say that a planet is more robust than a ship.[citation needed]

Storm_Of_Snow
2016-07-12, 09:08 AM
If your starships are being hacked, it's probably coming from inside the hull, so you have bigger problems.:smallsmile: You'd have to let tactical computers/AIs do the actual fighting, because everything in space is moving immeasurably too fast for merely human reflexes to react to. Keeping humans in the loop for tactical decisions and target selection is just common sense to avoid friendly fire, but once battle is actually joined it'll be up to the combat algorithms.
There might still be some decisions in combat that a human crew might have to make - for instance, targeting an enemy vessels engines and weapons to disable them for boarding to capture intelligence/high value personnel targets/the ship itself as a prize, rather than just blasting it into scrap. Plus I can't see too many people being happy with computers having complete autonomy over weapons, including the military themselves.


The Yerkes Observatory in Chicago has an automated telescope that you can use to spot asteroids out past Mars orbit. It's internet controlled and schools or individuals can buy time on it, I got to use it recently for a class.

So a 100 cm telescope can pick out a 100 m dull grey rock at a range of 250 million km. Today. The computer compensates for the movement of the Earth so the background stars are stationary and takes a series of pictures. It stacks the pictures and you look for streaks or you can time-lapse the images and watch for movement.

For reference the Space Shuttle was 56 m long and the speed of light is 300,000 km/sec. So passive visual sensors can assume a minimum of locating a 100 m craft at 8 light seconds without much difficulty and with today's technology.
A rock presenting a 100m aspect to you, when the people pointing the telescope know where it's supposed to be. Something presenting a much smaller aspect wouldn't be seen until it was a lot closer (*), you'd have to be scanning the sky constantly to spot it, and if they came in on the other side of the system to come past the sun, you'd have little chance of spotting them without seeding space with sensor satellites.

(*) As an example, the beam of a Russian Typhoon missile boat is about 1/4 that and something with that capability in orbit would be a significant threat. Obviously, whether you can get down to that size depends on what size your propulsion unit gets down to, but long and thin might well be a standard design for vessels to minimise their sensor image when approaching targets, or at the very least for fleet picquets, commerce raiders and first strike assault vessels.


Atmosphere? Hydroponics generate breathable air from waste gas, and provide food to boot.
Natural resources? Asteroids, comets, and gas giants. Mine them suckers, cause 'aliens come to Earth to steal our liquid water' means those aliens are too dumb to close their airlock doors in the right order.
Gravity? Centrifugal spin. Wheeeeeee.
Foodstuffs? Hydroponics again. Om nom nom delicious space veggies.

Really, there is nothing a planet offers that you cannot duplicate if you've got the technology to build interstellar ships to begin with.
Just to point out, if you're using hydroponics to provide both your food and breathable air, the more you eat, the less breathable air you're producing. It's also really inefficient in terms of the volume required and power requirements for the lights, and is a single point of failure for your vessel. That's not to say there wouldn't be such facilities on suitably large vessels, but IMO they'd be primarily for crew comfort and morale by occasional supplementation of the tinned, dried and frozen foods they took on board at their last port.

As for artificial gravity by centrifugal force - maybe. Depends if there's any other effects gravity has on our bodies that we've yet to discover and a spin habitat can't replicate, and to be honest, we won't know until someone puts such a habitat in orbit and gets it going. You'd also likely have to stop and potentially retract the habitats before going into combat (for instance, if they're separate blocks rather than a continuous circle), which may make them a liability, and a fully spun hull would make long term study of any object that's not directly on your flight path interesting :smallwink: .

CharonsHelper
2016-07-12, 09:27 AM
As to requiring centrifugal force for gravity - I know that in the Longknife series they solve gravity on ships by just having ships under constant acceleration. They have fusion, so they usually just keep acceleration at 1g. Merchants go as low as .7g to be more fuel efficient if they aren't shipping perishables, and military vessels can get up to 3g or so for short periods. (rough on both ship & crew) At the halfway point to their destination they simply flip ship and start decelerating.

Only stations use centrifugal force for their gravity in that setting.

The Glyphstone
2016-07-12, 10:02 AM
As to requiring centrifugal force for gravity - I know that in the Longknife series they solve gravity on ships by just having ships under constant acceleration. They have fusion, so they usually just keep acceleration at 1g. Merchants go as low as .7g to be more fuel efficient if they aren't shipping perishables, and military vessels can get up to 3g or so for short periods. (rough on both ship & crew) At the halfway point to their destination they simply flip ship and start decelerating.

Only stations use centrifugal force for their gravity in that setting.

Oh yeah, that works too - the only difference is the way you build your ship's internals, and your fuel situation. A ship generating gravity via acceleration would be 'stacked' to some degree so that the artificial gravity would push people 'down' (I'm not entirely sure how that works when the deceleration flip occurs with floors vs. ceilings). A rotational design, like an O'Neil cylinder, would use rotational force and build along the interior.

For a ship lacking something hyper-efficient like fusion, I'd figure a rotational design would make more sense to provide consistent, steady gravity, but I'm not enough of a physicist to be sure.



Just to point out, if you're using hydroponics to provide both your food and breathable air, the more you eat, the less breathable air you're producing. It's also really inefficient in terms of the volume required and power requirements for the lights, and is a single point of failure for your vessel. That's not to say there wouldn't be such facilities on suitably large vessels, but IMO they'd be primarily for crew comfort and morale by occasional supplementation of the tinned, dried and frozen foods they took on board at their last port.

They don't have to be the same plants, obviously, but a large hydroponics section would include both edible plants and primarily air-producing ones. And yeah, it'd be a major vulnerability for a ship, but so is a planet, which is where this whole thing started. Ideally this space-going fleet-civilization has drastically diversified its ship designs. 'Farm' ships' devoted entirely to being massive spacegoing food/air producers for the rest of the fleet could provide the source for all those tinned, dried, and frozen foods, with the more general-purpose and warships carrying smaller hydroponics sections for the comfort/morale aspect. They'd stay somewhere safe while the fighting ships scouted ahead, and even if one of them was lost to an accident, they'd have redundancy amongst themselves.

Beleriphon
2016-07-12, 11:56 AM
I've found the submarine combat pretty good as far as space combat as an analogy. Subs need to hide from each other, stealth is king, its is fought in three dimensions and mostly uses "missiles" (torpedoes are totally underwater missiles).

Telok
2016-07-12, 12:08 PM
A rock presenting a 100m aspect to you, when the people pointing the telescope know where it's supposed to be. Something presenting a much smaller aspect wouldn't be seen until it was a lot closer (*), you'd have to be scanning the sky constantly to spot it, and if they came in on the other side of the system to come past the sun, you'd have little chance of spotting them without seeding space with sensor satellites.

The point is that people with modest telescopes can find these things that emit no EM radiation with only reflected sunlight at that distance and the computers can track them easily. And we're spotting these through an atmosphere that adds distortion. A craft emitting IR, visible light, radio/microwave, and reaction mass is easier to see.

Any military craft in a combat situation will be looking with at least this level of technology. Anything that moves relative to the background stars a potential threat to track.

The only stealth in space is hiding behind something bigger than you are and spotting stuff is actually really easy. If you want to add handwavium cloaking tech you deal with the fact that people can drop rocks on cities with impunity. Just like adding high c inertia-less drives makes you deal with the fact that a baseball at 0.9c is a fusion bomb. The Atomic Rockets (http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/crossindex.php) site has been collecting resources on this for a very long time and from very good sources written by very smart people. Plus this week's highlight is the Casaba Howitzer (http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php#nuclearspear).

Strigon
2016-07-12, 12:44 PM
The point is that people with modest telescopes can find these things that emit no EM radiation with only reflected sunlight at that distance and the computers can track them easily. And we're spotting these through an atmosphere that adds distortion. A craft emitting IR, visible light, radio/microwave, and reaction mass is easier to see.

Any military craft in a combat situation will be looking with at least this level of technology. Anything that moves relative to the background stars a potential threat to track.


Correct. However, first off, there are far more people with instruments on Earth than there would ever be on any ship. Meaning that, without extremely advanced technology, we're still spotting them at uncomfortably close distances. And rocks don't try to hide; we already have materials that absorb RADAR, ways to hide IR, and numerous other stealth technologies - not to mention whatever might still be classified!
And you're still talking about massive objects. In order to be a potential threat, these things wouldn't have to be hundreds or even dozens of metres long; almost any sized object could be a disguised torpedo, missile, jamming device, scout probe, or any number of other things.
Then, even if you could spot it, you'd have to identify it - unless you plan on keeping track of every object within your neighbourhood (neighbourhood here meaning thousands of kilometres).

The Glyphstone
2016-07-12, 01:29 PM
Indeed. You don't need to handwave any cloaking technology, you just paint your rock with light-absorbent material, and make sure any betraying radiation goes out the back of the projectile. Now this still isn't 100% undetectable, since it's possible to pick up your rock by the shadow it casts against other stars, but it takes a really big and specialized telescope (run by computers) to spot something like that. And the smaller your projectile, again the harder it will be for even the computers to identify it as a genuine object instead of something harmless or even just a data error.

Telok
2016-07-13, 12:16 AM
What you guys are talking about is a total EM shadow shield. Which works, nuclear powered designs use a shadow shield to protect the crew from radiation without having to coat the entire reactor in useless mass. You're also talking about munitions where I'm talking about ships. But you're missing one thing, unless you use an inertialess drive you use reaction mass. Newton is an a** and unless you start ignoring physics anything with combat relevant delta-v is spewing hot gas or plasma out it's back end. Engines are bright IR flares and the reaction mass is just as bad and rapidly expanding.

Really, this has all been gone over by other people. Read up on it.

Storm_Of_Snow
2016-07-13, 03:09 AM
The point is that people with modest telescopes can find these things that emit no EM radiation with only reflected sunlight at that distance and the computers can track them easily. And we're spotting these through an atmosphere that adds distortion. A craft emitting IR, visible light, radio/microwave, and reaction mass is easier to see.

My point is we've been studying the sky with optical telescopes for hundreds of years and radio telescopes for getting on for a century, and there's a heck of a lot of stuff up there that we still can't track simply because we don't know where it is - while some of that may be because we're slightly ADD in what we want to look at, some groups want to look for planet 10, others - quite sensibly IMO - want to look for potential impactors in the NEO's, others are looking well beyond the solar system and so on, a big reason is most of it's too small to pick up.

Something with hostile intent trying to sneak close to launch an attack is going to be very hard to spot.

Firest Kathon
2016-07-13, 03:56 AM
Just like adding high c inertia-less drives makes you deal with the fact that a baseball at 0.9c is a fusion bomb. The Atomic Rockets (http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/crossindex.php) site has been collecting resources on this for a very long time and from very good sources written by very smart people. Plus this week's highlight is the Casaba Howitzer (http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php#nuclearspear).
The baseball at near-c velocity was even the first What if? article: Relativistic Baseball (https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/).

CharonsHelper
2016-07-13, 07:24 AM
But you're missing one thing, unless you use an inertialess drive you use reaction mass. Newton is an a** and unless you start ignoring physics anything with combat relevant delta-v is spewing hot gas or plasma out it's back end. Engines are bright IR flares and the reaction mass is just as bad and rapidly expanding.

Assuming that the tech is anything like what we have now - yes. IF they are currently accelerating and/or maneuvering.

I think there are even current designs for ships which get around with solar sails - basically riding solar winds instead of blasting around with rockets.

Besides, wasn't Einstein's whole thing proving that Newton was wrong?

Cluedrew
2016-07-13, 08:04 AM
Besides, wasn't Einstein's whole thing proving that Newton was wrong?Sort of, but Newton was close enough for day to day life. At least that is how I learned it.

Personally I don't think stealth would work in outer space. There is too little to hide behind and to much ambient energy in the background. For small objects you could pull it off, but for anything warship sized... probably not. Maybe if you use much smaller craft for the engagements itself.

If you have an FTL drive then I think a lot of it will come down to speed. Actually maybe you achieve stealth by arriving before the data that would tell them you are there? I like playing with the new ideas rather than scaling the old ones up. Although at a certain point they are hardly new.

Anyways, one of my favourite space battles centered around two weapons. The first was a long range cannon type weapon, they hand waved it (I think it was supposed to be an energy weapon) but my favourite exprination is you send a nuke through hyperspace and have it come out without slowing down. Sure this breaks the laws of physics which destroys the bomb, but this just makes an even bigger explosion as reality corrects. The critical shot with this weapon was about a light second off of its main target and still dealt enough damage to take it out of the fight. The other was FTL disruption, since so much depended on speed dropping them to mere near-relativistic speeds was almost a death sentence in it own right.

CharonsHelper
2016-07-13, 08:12 AM
Sort of, but Newton was close enough for day to day life. At least that is how I learned it.

Right. It's basically correct for are practical purposes on Earth. It's only significantly wrong when you start talking about huge distances & speeds... like in space! :smalltongue:

Strigon
2016-07-13, 08:14 AM
But you're missing one thing, unless you use an inertialess drive you use reaction mass. Newton is an a** and unless you start ignoring physics anything with combat relevant delta-v is spewing hot gas or plasma out it's back end. Engines are bright IR flares and the reaction mass is just as bad and rapidly expanding.

Really, this has all been gone over by other people. Read up on it.

Then it's a very good thing this isn't Star Wars and you don't have to have your engines constantly firing. You drift through space until you need a course correction, at which point you make a short burn and hope nobody sees you doing it.

CharonsHelper
2016-07-13, 08:46 AM
Anyone else amused at how personally some people seem to be taking a discussion which is

1. Purely theoretical.

2. Includes technology which doesn't exist yet.

3. We have no idea what other technology there would be and how they would interact with them.

Heck - 50 years or so before humans made it there, the best guess for how we would get to the moon was a giant cannon. I don't think that any of our guesses mean much from an accurate prediction perspective. Just extrapolating from current tech is perpetually wrong.

So - I'll reiterate what I said to start. In an RPG setting you should start with the sorts of space combat/conflict you want to have and then come up with various technologies in order to make it reasonable.

The Glyphstone
2016-07-13, 09:22 AM
Anyone else amused at how personally some people seem to be taking a discussion which is

1. Purely theoretical.

2. Includes technology which doesn't exist yet.

3. We have no idea what other technology there would be and how they would interact with them.

Heck - 50 years or so before humans made it there, the best guess for how we would get to the moon was a giant cannon. I don't think that any of our guesses mean much from an accurate prediction perspective. Just extrapolating from current tech is perpetually wrong.

So - I'll reiterate what I said to start. In an RPG setting you should start with the sorts of space combat/conflict you want to have and then come up with various technologies in order to make it reasonable.

Welcome to the eternal feud between proponents of 'hard' and 'soft' science fiction. Bring a snorkel, it gets deep down here.

CharonsHelper
2016-07-13, 09:34 AM
Welcome to the eternal feud between proponents of 'hard' and 'soft' science fiction. Bring a snorkel, it gets deep down here.

As long as it is internally consistent, you can do pretty hard sci-fi using my method above.

Sci-fi more than a few years in the future is inherently at least a bit soft. (Hard/soft sci-fi is more of a spectrum than yes or no.)

goto124
2016-07-13, 09:48 AM
Welcome to the eternal feud between proponents of 'hard' and 'soft' science fiction. Bring a snorkel, it gets deep down here.

You mean scuba gear, surely?

Anonymouswizard
2016-07-13, 10:18 AM
You mean scuba gear, surely?

No, he means a snorkel. Specifically a telescoping snorkel, we don't want anyone to run out of air.

CharonsHelper
2016-07-13, 10:49 AM
No, he means a snorkel. Specifically a telescoping snorkel, we don't want anyone to run out of air.

I'm not sure that I buy into that technology working. *shakes head seriously*

Storm_Of_Snow
2016-07-13, 11:24 AM
I'm not sure that I buy into that technology working. *shakes head seriously*
Agreed, aside from the fatiguing effects of having to pull air in down a long pipe, isn't there effectively a maximum depth that you can use a snorkel to before you can't get the exhaled breath out and fresh air in? :smallwink:

LooseCannoneer
2016-07-13, 11:45 AM
Agreed, aside from the fatiguing effects of having to pull air in down a long pipe, isn't there effectively a maximum depth that you can use a snorkel to before you can't get the exhaled breath out and fresh air in? :smallwink:

Maybe we can add an extra tube for waste gases and put fans in the tubes to create air circulation?

Telok
2016-07-13, 10:55 PM
Agreed, aside from the fatiguing effects of having to pull air in down a long pipe, isn't there effectively a maximum depth that you can use a snorkel to before you can't get the exhaled breath out and fresh air in? :smallwink:

It's somewhere around half your lung capacity in the tube. What I generally try to get at is that all this has been hashed over in more depth, at greater length, by people with more knowledge and experience.

The Glyphstone
2016-07-14, 02:27 AM
It's somewhere around half your lung capacity in the tube. What I generally try to get at is that all this has been hashed over in more depth, at greater length, by people with more knowledge and experience.

The problem, though, is that those answers are by no means infallible, and rely on specific details - for example, Ken Burns just flat-out admits one of his assumptions is that sensor platforms would be so cheap that any spacefaring civilization could saturate their system with vast numbers of such. Take even that away, and detecting incoming hostiles becomes a non-guaranteed factor dependent on your detection platform count. No one is trying to argue against ships somehow 'cloaking' while they're under active burn, and if you scroll down to the Dissenting View section on their Detection page, you'll see exactly the argument a lot of people here are making. No ship is entirely undetectable, but you can very easily employ measures to reduce the range at which a ship can be detected - and because that can't be refuted, the main writers then dive into semantics about how 'well that isn't actually stealth so we are still right'. In particular, the bit where he discusses projectiles is relevant, since they have grossly reduced heat signatures due to the lack of any need to sustain a crew.

Beleriphon
2016-07-14, 01:24 PM
As long as it is internally consistent, you can do pretty hard sci-fi using my method above.

Sci-fi more than a few years in the future is inherently at least a bit soft. (Hard/soft sci-fi is more of a spectrum than yes or no.)

I always view hard sci-fi as dealing with scientifically plausible outcomes of technology even if the technology is based on mumbo-jumbo. Soft sci-fi is less concerned about scientifically plausible results of the technology.

On the topic of "cloaking" a spaceship, clearly that's BS from any plausible science but stealth is not. How do we make things stealthy now? Reduce its outgoing broadcast signatures (heat, sounds, whatever) and making it hard to find through active scans like radar (absorb that radar wave!). The same principle applies to a spaceship, and really it should be easier since there a massive amount of space to actually try to find something relatively small.

wumpus
2016-07-14, 02:11 PM
Not an analogy, but I had a boxed set of "tactical board rules" for Traveller (original). As far as I can remember, it was pretty much the traveller space rules, but with a board [war] game and counters. The counters were where you were, where you are, and where you will be.

You place the original "where you will be" directly across (and just as far) from "where you were". You then get to move roughly as many hexes as you have acceleration points (you might also get pulled by gravity it you want to include that). Once that is done, you move to "where you will be" and start from there. This takes care of the frictionless velocity and acceleration. I suspect (hope) that it was included in later traveller editions, but have never heard it mentioned so I bring it up where appropriate.

CharonsHelper
2016-07-14, 02:31 PM
I always view hard sci-fi as dealing with scientifically plausible outcomes of technology even if the technology is based on mumbo-jumbo. Soft sci-fi is less concerned about scientifically plausible results of the technology.

Well - hard vs soft science fiction are rather ill defined.

I'll agree that those would be on the hard side of the spectrum, but not AS hard as say, a Michael Crichton novel which seem to be basically modern day with just one extra science/tech thing added in.

As I said above, I think of sci-fi hard vs soft as not either/or, but instead a spectrum. Michael Crichton and near future Asimov are pretty much as hard as you can get, while Star Wars is pretty much pure future fantasy. Everything else is somewhere in the middle. (Other than maybe some Final Fantasy games pushing the future fantasy spectrum even further than Star Wars does.)

BayardSPSR
2016-07-14, 03:15 PM
I always view hard sci-fi as dealing with scientifically plausible outcomes of technology even if the technology is based on mumbo-jumbo. Soft sci-fi is less concerned about scientifically plausible results of the technology.

That is, "soft" SF is inspired by "this is a cool thing, imagine if it could be done with technology" where "hard" SF is more like "this is a technological principle, imagine if it could do this cool thing," with all real sci-fi falling somewhere between those two Platonic ideals.

Max_Killjoy
2016-07-14, 03:38 PM
One thing about throwing large scale weapons around that I rarely see addressed (such as the large asteroid with engines) is that should the weapon miss its intended target, it does not simply stop and fade out of the picture. It'll continue sailing through space, drifting in trajectory as large gravity wells affect it until it hits something. Maybe not for years (or even centuries), but it'll eventually hit something and ruin that's target's day. :smallbiggrin:

Mass Effect 2 had a great line about why aiming weapons was important:

Gunnery Chief: This, recruits, is a 20-kilo ferrous slug. Feel the weight. Every five seconds, the main gun of an Everest-class dreadnought accelerates one to 1.3 percent of light speed. It impacts with the force of a 38-kilotomb bomb. That is three times the yield of the city buster dropped on Hiroshima back on Earth. That means Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-*itch in space. Now! Serviceman Burnside! What is Newton's First Law?
First Recruit: Sir! A object in motion stays in motion, sir!
Gunnery Chief: No credit for partial answers, maggot!
First Recruit: Sir! Unless acted on by an outside force, sir!
Gunnery Chief: Damn straight! I dare to assume you ignorant jackasses know that space is empty. Once you fire this husk of metal, it keeps going till it hits something. That can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in ten thousand years. If you pull the trigger on this, you're ruining someone's day, somewhere and sometime. That is why you check your damn targets! That is why you wait for the computer to give you a damn firing solution! That is why, Serviceman Chung, we do not "eyeball it!" This is a weapon of mass destruction. You are not a cowboy shooting from the hip!


I love that scene, and if you always rush through that part of the Citadel, you'll miss it entirely.

The Glyphstone
2016-07-14, 04:47 PM
For that matter, there's a few different definitions for hard sci-fi vs. soft sci-fi (I actually did a paper on this in college for an elective course).

The primary one is, as we've discussed, how close to current day science or extrapolations from current-day science you get - the looser you play with physics, the 'softer' your fiction is. Generally, made-up or physics-breaking technology makes you soft, but you can earn 'hard' points back by being internally consistent and logically extrapolating the consequences of whatever tech you've invented to serve your plot. Mass Effect is a good example here; it's entirely dependent on 'Element Zero' to drive nearly all of its stuff, but the mechanics of a mass effect field are consistent within the setting.

The other split, though, is science fiction focusing on the 'hard' sciences - physics, engineering, etc. vs. the 'soft' sciences - sociology, psychology, etc. To use Asimov as an example, in this definition his Robots novels would be Hard sci-fi, and the Foundation series would be soft Sci-fi, despite them both technically existing in the same canon.

Telok
2016-07-14, 05:55 PM
Of course you also have to separate what's made up from what isn't. Many people seriously undersell today's technology even before they start to think about 50 years out. Especially when it comes to stuff like astronomy and computing. I gave an example of a decent telescope, run on an ordinary laptop, that is used to locate and track non-emitting bodies at 8 light minutes. Most people won't think that that is available with today's tech. Most people assume 1960's level technology with huge radar dishes being used to find big, slow bombers or a simple satallite in orbit.

So lots of people start thinking about future tech and start by assuming obsolete stuff is state of the art. Then they "advance" a technology and it ends up being unimpressive. Battletech used to suffer from this pretty heavily, back in the 90's you'd get the occasional laugh out of comparing modern main battle tanks to the futuristic mechs. The tanks had better optics, communications, speed, computers, and other stuff. Because the authors had started with 60's or 70's tech and advanced it into the future, but those advances had been surpassed by reality in the 80's. Just think, today's cell phones have the power of a desktop computer from ten years ago, and integrated cameras better than most digital cameras from ten years ago.

CharonsHelper
2016-07-14, 06:35 PM
Battletech used to suffer from this pretty heavily, back in the 90's you'd get the occasional laugh out of comparing modern main battle tanks to the futuristic mechs. The tanks had better optics, communications, speed, computers, and other stuff. Because the authors had started with 60's or 70's tech and advanced it into the future, but those advances had been surpassed by reality in the 80's. Just think, today's cell phones have the power of a desktop computer from ten years ago, and integrated cameras better than most digital cameras from ten years ago.

Didn't Battletech have a lesser version of the 40k style 'lost tech' where their excuse for technology being random was that the knowledge of many sorts of tech were lost over the centuries etc.?

Max_Killjoy
2016-07-14, 06:54 PM
Didn't Battletech have a lesser version of the 40k style 'lost tech' where their excuse for technology being random was that the knowledge of many sorts of tech were lost over the centuries etc.?

Even the best tech they ever displayed was a combination of worse than real life 800-1000 years before the setting of the game, and just plain wonky, because they failed to really do their homework. It started out as a beer-and-pretzels game, not a serious attempt at a high-tech wargame or hard military sci-fi.

Examples:

Multi-ton targeting computers, as if carrying around Univac.
Gauss rifles that pop out nickle-steel bowling balls instead of screaming slivers of death.
Autocannons that lose range as they get larger.
Short-range lasers.

Beleriphon
2016-07-15, 01:24 PM
Even the best tech they ever displayed was a combination of worse than real life 800-1000 years before the setting of the game, and just plain wonky, because they failed to really do their homework. It started out as a beer-and-pretzels game, not a serious attempt at a high-tech wargame or hard military sci-fi.

Examples:

Multi-ton targeting computers, as if carrying around Univac.
Gauss rifles that pop out nickle-steel bowling balls instead of screaming slivers of death.
Autocannons that lose range as they get larger.
Short-range lasers.

Battletech also suffers from its entire premise of war machines being stupid to start with. They're awesome, but also very stupid.

Max_Killjoy
2016-07-15, 01:27 PM
Battletech also suffers from its entire premise of war machines being stupid to start with. They're awesome, but also very stupid.


Well, yeah, but I'm willing to let the "giant mech" thing go as the "central conceit" of the setting.

A bit more realistic would have been smaller mechs originally developed for urban combat and broken terrain, and as a bridge between infantry and armor, with tank-like vehicles still viable, and combined arms units.

CharonsHelper
2016-07-15, 01:36 PM
Battletech also suffers from its entire premise of war machines being stupid to start with. They're awesome, but also very stupid.

I will say, at a max of 100 tons, they're not nearly as silly as the size they seem to be in all of the video games where they tower as high as skyscrapers. After all - an Abrams is 66ish tons.

Frankly though, the only big mecha that seem to make sense (power armor style always makes sense for urban combat) to me vs. normal vehicles are the ones which hook into the pilot's nervous system etc. Then one could viably argue that it gives them superior reflexes vs a vehicle.

The Glyphstone
2016-07-15, 02:00 PM
On the other hand, their canon heights versus weights, where stated, result in all sorts of weirdness. Some are punching pile-driver holes into the ground with every step, others are approximately as dense as tissue paper.

And then there's stuff like their APCs, who can carry more infantry than a clown car relative to their dimensions.

Thrudd
2016-07-15, 02:00 PM
Well, yeah, but I'm willing to let the "giant mech" thing go as the "central conceit" of the setting.

A bit more realistic would have been smaller mechs originally developed for urban combat and broken terrain, and as a bridge between infantry and armor, with tank-like vehicles still viable, and combined arms units.

Actually, Battletech did have tank vehicles being quite viable, especially since they could go all the way up to 200 tons, iirc. Also, infantry units with power armor (at first only clans). And I believe the setting did suggest that the mech pilots were connected via some form of neural link.

There were also rules for aircraft performing strafing and bombing runs, and at some point even dropships.

The most fun in that game was to be had in huge mixed-unit battles in interesting terrain that includes some urban areas or at least buildings.

Though the point remains that the giant mech thing in general, and much of the specific tech the game presented, does still fail realism in many ways.

Telok
2016-07-16, 04:14 PM
I have recalled the the original Traveller has some decent alternate rules for space combat. It was 2-D and required fairly large peices of paper but it was reasonably accurate. Each ship was represented by a point and had a little arrow indicating direction and velocity, originally they used inches but using centimeters would save on paper. On a ship's turn you laid out a ruler and measured out the current velocity, then from that point you measured out the ship's acceleration (again, originally an inch per g). Then you lay the ruler from the original starting point to the new end point and that direction and distance is the new direction and velocity.

All munitions and countermeasures had the ship's direction and velocity when launched, and lasers had a range that I don't remember off hand. Missiles had to burn to change direction and velocity, they had a duration too so it was sometimes possible for them to swing around for another pass and sometimes not possible. In theory you could use unguided munitions, but only against targets that didn't change direction or speed.

Planets were represented by big dots (I recall, possibly incorrectly, that Jupiter was about equal to a dime) and at various distances you marked off rings. Each ring indicated a level of gravity. If a ship was within a ring then it added the acceleration from gravity towards the planet in addition to the direction/velocity and the ship's acceleration.

The nice thing about this method was that it was reasonably accurate without using any math and using only simple rules. To-hit and damage rolls worked normally as per whatever method was being used, this just took care of all the positioning and piloting.

Max_Killjoy
2016-07-16, 09:14 PM
Actually, Battletech did have tank vehicles being quite viable, especially since they could go all the way up to 200 tons, iirc.


AFVs had different rules than mechs, leaving them more vulnerable to crits and special damage (like fire) -- even if they were built using all the same tech as a mech.