Kick ass Sci Fi setting

[An Enemy Spy]

Hello Playground! I have had this universe sitting in my head for a frightfully long time. It takes place in an unspecified time in the distant future. Mankind has colonized a substantial portion of the galaxy. Humanity is divided into 3 major factions. The Confederacy (No, not that confederacy), The Argos Republic (No, not that republic), and the Empire (No, not that empire). While no side is really the good guys, the protagonists are members of the Confederacy (well, at least some of them). The Cons and Reps are engaged in a seemingly endless war, while the Empire is doing everything it can to keep this war going. There are a few alien races, but they are more of a nuisance than a legitimate threat to humanity. What I want to know is how to get this on paper without making it a Star Wars knockoff. Help me Playground, you're my only hope.

[Emperor Ing]

Two things I think you may need to look at.

Weapons: Get really creative. Not lasers or rockets. Too scifi cliche'd. I always liked the ideas of guns that fired tiny rifts into another dimension as projectiles. :smallwink:
Setting: Could you make it look a bit LESS like the Imperium of Man? Adding a few alien races that assimilated into human society could work

[Vuzzmop]

Remove elements of space western from your setting, and it shouldn't feel too similar to Star Wars. I would also advise fleshing out this whole "three factions" business, it could be interesting, but at the moment it sounds cliched. Also, I would personally make the aliens non-humanoid, and add elements of lovecraftian horror into their appearance or aims, just to differentiate your setting from most scifi.

I think something interesting could be made of this. Good luck:smallsmile:

[Emperor Tippy]

First step is too decide on an FTL travel method and what kind of tech you have. Because it effects a ton of other things.

[kamikasei]

It doesn't sound like Star Wars to me. The important thing is to think carefully about the tech - especially whatever "magic" tech (FTL etc) there is - and all the effects it may have. Then make sure your societies and history make sense given that tech and its implications.

The surest way for your setting to be cliche is to have a bunch of features that work just like some other setting... in a way that's not defined... simply to enable it to be like that other setting.

[Piedmon_Sama]

You could, perhaps, try highlighting the different ways of life between your factions? Maybe the Confederate worlds are rough, hostile places that bred a fierce and independent people, hence their hatred of centralized government (which the Empire, and to a lesser extent the Republic, represent). Meanwhile maybe the Imperial worlds are heavily urbanized, with all the modern conveniences you'd expect--but they're terrified of the thought of those barbaric Confederates or Republicans ever moving in on their precious little island of civilization. Best to keep the barbarians constantly warring with each other, so our citizens can live in peace.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Sounds more like an anime called Legend of Galactic Heroes (aka War and Peace IN SPACE) than Star Wars to me. I think if you keep fairly hard and non-fantastical technology, it shouldn't become too much like Star Wars. Play up the international conflicts and differences (and similarities) as well. The typical sci fi setting has humanity as one monolithic government (even if there's resistance against that government, it's still all the same culture).

Summary: keep the tech hard and the nationalism prominent, and it should be fairly different from at least the more famous science fiction.

[TheEmerged]

Weapons: Get really creative. Not lasers or rockets. Too scifi cliche'd. I always liked the ideas of guns that fired tiny rifts into another dimension as projectiles. :smallwink:

Just try to avoid a Lensman Arms Race. By the end of that series they were firing antimatter planets at each other...

[kamikasei]

Partly building on and partly responding to Piedmon Sama and Nerdo, I would urge you to avoid having monolithic cultures, even one per faction. Planets with different cultures bound together by common ideology or central authoritarian rule make more sense, much more sense, than any single culture spanning multiple planets. Give a thought to language, too. (Of course, what tech and what kind of travel times you have will affect this, too.)

[An Enemy Spy]

FTL is the type where you essentially rip a hole through space and fly through it. It is possible for other ships to also go through this hole, so it isn't always the most practical way to escape a fight. Opening a hole requires a massive power surge that causes the ship to lose power for a few minutes. You essentially open the hole and drift through it.

[kamikasei]

FTL is the type where you essentially rip a hole through space and fly through it. It is possible for other ships to also go through this hole, so it isn't always the most practical way to escape a fight. Opening a hole requires a massive power surge that causes the ship to lose power for a few minutes. You essentially open the hole and drift through it.

Does it have limited range or can you travel between any two points instantaneously? Is there a limit to how close it can be used to a star, planet, or other mass? Is there a minimum size for a ship that can generate a rift (so that smaller vessels are interplanetary at best under their own power, relying on carriers or icebreakers to open paths for them over longer distances)? Is there a maximum size (the rifts can only be grown so large, so it's behemoth ships which are limited to in-system)? Can stationary platforms generate rifts for use by others, giving you a jumpgate system?

[Dervag]

Just try to avoid a Lensman Arms Race. By the end of that series they were firing antimatter planets at each other...No, that's what they were doing in the next to last book.

In the book after that, they upped the ante again. Don't ask. You don't want to know.

[An Enemy Spy]

Does it have limited range or can you travel between any two points instantaneously? Is there a limit to how close it can be used to a star, planet, or other mass? Is there a minimum size for a ship that can generate a rift (so that smaller vessels are interplanetary at best under their own power, relying on carriers or icebreakers to open paths for them over longer distances)? Is there a maximum size (the rifts can only be grown so large, so it's behemoth ships which are limited to in-system)? Can stationary platforms generate rifts for use by others, giving you a jumpgate system?

Jumps can't take you incredible distances. You can go several stars away with a single jump, but it is wildly inaccurate and can't be used for short distance jumps. Fighters can not generate the amount of power needed to jump and need a carrier.

[warty goblin]

FTL is the type where you essentially rip a hole through space and fly through it. It is possible for other ships to also go through this hole, so it isn't always the most practical way to escape a fight. Opening a hole requires a massive power surge that causes the ship to lose power for a few minutes. You essentially open the hole and drift through it.

If I can do that, there's no need to run from a fight. I'll just open a hole in front my ship that dumps out in my enemy's ship. I've got unbreachable shielding, and don't even need a gun to kill my enemies with. I also have guns naturally, but I don't need them.

[An Enemy Spy]

If I can do that, there's no need to run from a fight. I'll just open a hole in front my ship that dumps out in my enemy's ship. I've got unbreachable shielding, and don't even need a gun to kill my enemies with. I also have guns naturally, but I don't need them.

It isn't really accurate enough for that. And ships are manuverable enough to avoid going through an unwelcome hole. And then they can pound your powerless ship into spacedust.

[Piedmon_Sama]

How long could a hole remain open, though? I wouldn't be totally dismissive of using this as a weapon if it can create more interesting tactics. For example, if you have the power to create an event horizon in the middle of one quadrant of a battlefield, you've limited your opponent's possible destinations by 25%. You could have ships use FTL portals to "herd" their enemies into kill-zones, or erect them as shields.

Well, I think it'd be cool anyway.

[An Enemy Spy]

They remain open for less than a minute, and you have to wait a few hours for your ship to regain the power to open a new one. They vary in size, but they tend to be a few hundred feet across.

[An Enemy Spy]

A long time ago, when humanity was still just begginning to colonize the solar system, they were attacked by a fleet of aliens. After a short war, they defeated them and began to emulate their technology. They discovered FTL travel, teleportation and other things. (Teleporting technology is not very reliable by the way. This ain't Star Trek). Mankind began to spread across the stars and eventually conquered the aliens who attacked them in the first place. They created a vast empire and destroyed many alien races. The humans were by no means united however. Massive rebellions shook the Empire every few decades. Most were put down but one in particular was very influential to the future of mankind. A lone rebel ship called the Argos, escaping a large battle, crashed on the surface of a planet outside of Imperial space. This world was unknown to the Empire. From there, the remnants of the crew were able to contact their allies and slowly built up a civilization on this planet, called the Argos Republic. Centuries later, they invaded the Empire, and cut a swath into it. Before their conquest was finally ground to a halt, they had captured almost a third of Imperial space. Already engaged in a costly war against aliens and even more rebels, the Empire had no wish to continue fighting the Republic and made peace with them. The Republic agreed, for the war was no longer going anywhere. They directed their attention against the Aliens and destroyed them. A faction of the Empire was displeased that the Republic had gained so much territory and that the Empire had stopped trying to regain it. A large section seceded and began fighting the Republic. This war between the Rpublic and Confederacy is still going in a bitter stalemate.

[Dervag]

They remain open for less than a minute, and you have to wait a few hours for your ship to regain the power to open a new one. They vary in size, but they tend to be a few hundred feet across.On the other hand, this is a valid tactic for situations like "Ohmigod there's a Macross Missile Massacre (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MacrossMissileMassacre) coming our way!"

If a whole lot of deadly missiles are coming your way, powering down your ship to generate a hole that will conveniently teleport the missiles somewhere far away is a reasonable thing to do.

[Jayngfet]

Unless it's absolutley necessary to the plot and can't be done in any way, I'd get rid of teleportation. A setting like that could teleport thousands of low quality missiles, lose half of them, and have them wind up landing in an enemy atmosphere, still enough to decimate the planet.

[Solaris]

I second- er, third? fourth? fifth? the idea of having a humanity divided. Total globalization might happen, but only so long as it takes for us to escape Earth. After that - heck, I can see different governments on individual planets.

I wouldn't discount the idea of only being open less than a minute - in a ground battle, that's forever. Battles can go for hours, but they say war is hell for a reason. I wouldn't use it for a shield so much as a back door, though. Ghost a ship in with a couple of others, then have it hang around and wait for the opportune moment.
I take it fleets make use of massive carriers to haul their vessels into war, so that they can make with the shootin' and blastin' right away rather than hanging around for a couple of hours waiting for systems to come back online?

Jayngfet, in pretty much any setting you're capable of cracking a planet like an egg with a relativistic kill vehicle. Simply propel a piece of rock at relativistic speeds in the direction of your enemy. You really don't like him, send a few more. Honestly, teraporting in a buttload of missiles seems kind of piddling in comparison - but it is handy for taking a planet reasonably intact.

[An Enemy Spy]

Unless it's absolutley necessary to the plot and can't be done in any way, I'd get rid of teleportation. A setting like that could teleport thousands of low quality missiles, lose half of them, and have them wind up landing in an enemy atmosphere, still enough to decimate the planet.

Their teleportation systems are crap. They break down easily. They're unsafe. They're wildly inaccurate and they sometimes kill you when you go through. And you can't really fire big meteors through them anyway.

[The Glyphstone]

Their teleportation systems are crap. They break down easily. They're unsafe. They're wildly inaccurate and they sometimes kill you when you go through. And you can't really fire big meteors through them anyway.

All you need is a small meteor going fast enough. And being inaccurate is even more of a problem, because now it's quite possible for them to obliterate a planet they were trying to capture by accident.

[Dervag]

Their teleportation systems are crap. They break down easily. They're unsafe. They're wildly inaccurate and they sometimes kill you when you go through. And you can't really fire big meteors through them anyway.If they work reliably enough to make interstellar travel something sane people do, they're reliable enough to use as a weapon. At which point you get military applications like using them to bombard a distant target- or to divert enemy bombardment into a random sector of space.

[An Enemy Spy]

If they work reliably enough to make interstellar travel something sane people do, they're reliable enough to use as a weapon. At which point you get military applications like using them to bombard a distant target- or to divert enemy bombardment into a random sector of space.

No no no. Your confusing FTL with teleportation. It's different technology

[warty goblin]

No no no. Your confusing FTL with teleportation. It's different technology

In what sense is teleporting instantly from A to B not faster than light?

[An Enemy Spy]

FTL in this world is ripping a hole in space and flying through it. Teleportation is reducing something to atoms and sending it somewhere else.

[Emperor Tippy]

FTL in this world is ripping a hole in space and flying through it. Teleportation is reducing something to atoms and sending it somewhere else.

Ok, so how reliable is ripping a hole in space and traveling through it? And do you have any other means of FTL communication?

[kamikasei]

FTL in this world is ripping a hole in space and flying through it. Teleportation is reducing something to atoms and sending it somewhere else.

How do you put it back together? What other implications come with a technology that can perfectly disassemble and reassemble an object?

[warty goblin]

How do you put it back together? What other implications come with a technology that can perfectly disassemble and reassemble an object?

Generally the ability to disassemble a lot plutonium then reassemble it as a critical mass inside your enemy's ship/vehicle/head. If you've got even better control, just use hydrogen and dump enough of it into a very small space for it to fuse, or at least explode violently outwards.

I have teleportation technology in my setting, but the range is very limited, and the teleporting device needs to go along with whatever is being sent. Needless to say I made the teleporters really very large and expensive to manufacture, so it's not a cost effective weapons delivery platform for the most part.

[An Enemy Spy]

How do you put it back together? What other implications come with a technology that can perfectly disassemble and reassemble an object?

That's the reason that its dangerous. It isn't very refined. It's also pretty short range.

[Emperor Tippy]

The problem with teleportation tech is the kind of manufacturing it allows you to do. Unless you have truly hideous power generation you have to be converting matter to energy and back again and doing so at least reasonably efficiently. Well once you can do that nothing stops you from altering the pattern that it gets turned back into. So you can turn dog **** into titanium without any more energy input than it takes to teleport dog **** from point A to point B.

[An Enemy Spy]

They have trouble recreating it as its original form, much less creating something entirely different.

[KnightDisciple]

I think he's saying that if they have any capability at all, it has wide-ranging effects. Unless it's so unreliable that it's more efficient not to use it and put it on ships.
Either it works well enough, and often enough, to bring up these implications, or it works so rarely, and so poorly, that no one uses it. While not a fully binary condition, there is a point of diminishing returns and the like.

[hamishspence]

original form is pretty hard to recreate- every atom- position and motion. Information required is immense. and what about "downloading" a file that big?

[Emperor Tippy]

They have trouble recreating it as its original form, much less creating something entirely different.

If they can recreate it in it's original form at all then it's just a question of trying until you get what you want.

Teleporting is a multi step process:
1. Scan the item to be teleported at the atomic level.
2. Save a copy of the scan.
3. Convert the item to be teleported into energy.
4. Send a copy of the scan to the destination.
5. Send the energy to the destination.
6. Reconvert the energy into the item based on the scan.

So what you do to turn dog **** into titanium is scan a brick of titanium and save another copy of the scan. Then you convert the dog **** to energy and have it reconvert into the titanium based on the scan.

You don't even need to actually teleport the item, which should reduce the failure rate.

And if you don't get what you want just keep putting the resulting item through until you get the item you want. If the problem is in the scan, just keep rescanning until you get one that works and then save that scan and use it from then on. While this won't work for teleporting objects it does work for transmuting objects into other things.

[An Enemy Spy]

Thats a good idea. Lets talk about something else. Teleportation was never supposed to be a big deal anyway.

[Emperor Tippy]

Thats a good idea. Lets talk about something else. Teleportation was never supposed to be a big deal anyway.

What are you doing for weapons?

[An Enemy Spy]

I like the idea of energy weopns but I realize that bullets are sometimes better. So most soldiers have an energy rifle, a pistol that fires both energy blasts and bullets, a combat knife, grenades and one charge that sticks to things and makes a massive explosion. Useful for taking out vehicles and walls on buildings.

[AgentPaper]

For the pistol, what if it used energy technology, but didn't fire lasers. Instead, it just accelerates whatever the hell you put in the barrel very, very fast. And silent. There's probably a billion and one uses the soldiers have found for this, from shoving in nails or rocks or anything they can get their hands on to use as ammunition in a desperate situation, to applying a poison by pouring it into the gun, and then firing it into an assassination target from right next to him into his bloodstream, silently, to filling it with horse poop and the low power setting and using it to humiliate their comrades.

You could do this for the rifle as well, but I think that one should be more of a high-power high rate-of-fire killing death machine.

Oh, and for the knife - Keep it a simple sharp blade. Maybe some soldiers get "enhancements", but most just have it as a low-tech reliable tool.

[An Enemy Spy]

I like your idea for the pistol. And knives are just simply knives. Some Imperial troops use swords, but they are mainly for show. I wouldn't recomend getting close to them though.

[Emperor Tippy]

Pistols like that wouldn't be silent. Anything going faster than the speed of sound will be quite loud because of the sonic boom.

And does power armor exist?

The one thing you have to realize is that ground combat isn't really a problem. He who controls the orbitals controls the world. You can seriously garrison a planet of billions with control of the orbitals and a few thousand drop troops.

[An Enemy Spy]

Yeah, but an invading army is trying to capture the planet, not destroy it. And along with orbital defense stations, surface to orbit missiles, and the fact that an enemy fleet may soon be coming to help, sitting in orbit blasting away isn't always the best idea. Orbital bombarding is a major part of ground battles, but it isn't the end all-be all.
The Imperials have a sort of power armor, but only the very best soldiers can use it. Think along the lines of Spartans. No energy sheilds on these though. So maybe theyre more like space marines. Damn its hard to be original!

[Halna LeGavilk]

Well, no single idea in Sci-Fi is truly 'original' at this point. If you write it, it's probably been done. The originality comes from putting your different ideas together in an original way.

Hmm... can you try the Brotherhood of Steel way? Like, having the power armor itself be not expensive to produce, but it takes lots of difficult training to actually wear it?

[warty goblin]

Yeah, but an invading army is trying to capture the planet, not destroy it. And along with orbital defense stations, surface to orbit missiles, and the fact that an enemy fleet may soon be coming to help, sitting in orbit blasting away isn't always the best idea. Orbital bombarding is a major part of ground battles, but it isn't the end all-be all.
The Imperials have a sort of power armor, but only the very best soldiers can use it. Think along the lines of Spartans. No energy sheilds on these though. So maybe theyre more like space marines. Damn its hard to be original!

The wonderful thing about orbital bombardment is that the amount of damage you can do with it varies from 'small artillery piece' to 'thermonuclear blast' and upwards of that, all depending on how big of a thing you drop, and how hard you throw it. It's like really really good close air support that's nearly impossible to jam, isn't worried about AA, and costs very little. Building full of enemies? Drop large metal things on the roof. Enemy armor? Drop large metal things on them. Enemy infantry? Drop small pieces of metal on them.

As for surface to orbit missiles, it's seriously non-likely to be relevant. Assuming the technology to blow them out of the sky doesn't exist, then the technology to stop the slugs fired at nastily high speeds from outside the powered missile envelope doesn't exist, and any commander worth the protons he's made out of will simple blow all your surface to orbit missiles up from somewhere conveniently far away like the moon. If the technology to shoot down the slugs exists, then the missiles will be lucky to get out of the tube before being killed.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Orbital bombardment isn't all that precise unless you're throwing powered, guided missiles out, you know. In that case you could just as easily use suborbital stealth aircraft and avoid the probably-massive planetary defense weapons. Strategic orbital bombardment is much more feasible.

On the other hand, if the surface of the planet has mass drivers or lasers or the like that can hit things in orbit, your orbital attackers are in serious trouble, since surface-mounted guns are always going to have more potential power available than battleship-mounted guns, and sitting in orbit makes you a very obvious target. Then again, it's unlikely the surface guns can cover the entire orbital sphere, so the goal will be to get the battleships into areas not covered by the guns that can still hit important strategic targets or drop aircraft into the atmosphere.

[An Enemy Spy]

And don't forget the orbital defense stations. Plus, any planet worth the dirt covering it is bound to have a fleet of ships around it.

[Emperor Tippy]

Orbital bombardment is very precise. It's simple math. If you know your orbit, the planets rate of rotation, and the distance to your target then you can figure out the specifics and hit it.

And taking out a kinetic energy projectile dropped from orbit isn't easy. Lasers and current gen AA won't effect it at all thanks to the plasma sheath that the projectile generates.

You are also assuming that accuracy is all that important. You want a pacified planet, if they no that any revolt or rebellion will be met with an orbital bombardment response and that it isn't terribly accurate then they are unlikely to attempt said revolt.

Also the infrastructure to target orbital weapons will always be more difficult to build than it will be to just destroy it.

[The Glyphstone]

But if we're taking orbital bombardment, that means the bombardier already controls those orbital defenses and has wiped out the ships. Heck, it's his ships in orbit, and he's probably using the captured orbital defenses to do the bombarding with! The point is that if you own everything in orbit, you also own the surface, since you can attack anywhere you want with very little chance of repercussion.

On the flip side, this means that once you have orbital dominance, keeping it is very, very important, because if you lose the orbitals, there is no longer anything keeping the people down on the surface from ROFLSTOMPing your puny garrison.

[An Enemy Spy]

In this universe, I'v always thought more about ground combat than space combat. Major cities have shield generators around them that can go up in case anyone shoots the city from the sky, but require far too much power too defend from ground attacks, due to the fact that that they would have to be up continuously.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Orbital bombardment is very precise. It's simple math. If you know your orbit, the planets rate of rotation, and the distance to your target then you can figure out the specifics and hit it.

And taking out a kinetic energy projectile dropped from orbit isn't easy. Lasers and current gen AA won't effect it at all thanks to the plasma sheath that the projectile generates.

You are also assuming that accuracy is all that important. You want a pacified planet, if they no that any revolt or rebellion will be met with an orbital bombardment response and that it isn't terribly accurate then they are unlikely to attempt said revolt.

Also the infrastructure to target orbital weapons will always be more difficult to build than it will be to just destroy it.

No, KE orbital weapons are much more complicated than that due to atmospheric turbulence. The larger the object, the more wind will effect it.

However, with lasers (or sufficiently small and fast projectiles), this isn't as much of a problem. On the other hand, if you have lasers that can hit the planet from orbit, the planet will have bigger lasers that can hit orbit from the ground. Simple logistics; fortification weaponry will always be more powerful than mobile weaponry, assuming parity of technology. And they can fire support for the friendly fleet during initial fleet action.

And accuracy is important for tactical uses of orbital bombardment. If you just want to strategically blow crap up to pacify the planet, then by all means, fire wherever.

[warty goblin]

But if we're taking orbital bombardment, that means the bombardier already controls those orbital defenses and has wiped out the ships. Heck, it's his ships in orbit, and he's probably using the captured orbital defenses to do the bombarding with! The point is that if you own everything in orbit, you also own the surface, since you can attack anywhere you want with very little chance of repercussion.

On the flip side, this means that once you have orbital dominance, keeping it is very, very important, because if you lose the orbitals, there is no longer anything keeping the people down on the surface from ROFLSTOMPing your puny garrison.

I agree with your second point, not with your first.

It's easy to bombard a planet from ranges far beyond the engagement ranges of spaceships, for the simple reason that the planet's motion is known, so leading any target on the planet is doable. A ship on the other hand can and will alter course, making long range engagement with dumb-fire projectiles problematic.

Hence defending a planet is an exercise in paranoia, the enemy can hit the planet without much risk of retaliation, and drawing off anything in orbit for defense leaves the planet even more vulnerable.

[Nerd-o-rama]

But planetary strike weapons are either guided/powered, in which case they're slow enough to have a chance of shooting down, or line-of-sight, which means firing them gives your exact position to the enemy, and still lets them potentially have a countermeasure (since An Enemy Spy said they had city-scale energy shields).

Unless you use teleportation or FTL to just dump something somewhere in the gravity well, which will be terribly inaccurate per AES's descriptions but an effective paranoia weapon.

[Emperor Tippy]

No, KE orbital weapons are much more complicated than that due to atmospheric turbulence. The larger the object, the more wind will effect it.
Agreed. But it's relatively simple to compensate for and the projectiles will be moving fast enough that it isn't much of a concern. The US Air Force was projecting accuracy greater than that of laser guided bombs when they looked at it. And that's with current tech.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Agreed. But it's relatively simple to compensate for and the projectiles will be moving fast enough that it isn't much of a concern. The US Air Force was projecting accuracy greater than that of laser guided bombs when they looked at it. And that's with current tech.I take anything the military claims about a weapons system with a grain of salt until I see it in action on the news.

The principle of "anything a ship can shoot, a planet defense weapon can shoot more and bigger" still applies no matter what.

[The Glyphstone]

I agree with your second point, not with your first.

It's easy to bombard a planet from ranges far beyond the engagement ranges of spaceships, for the simple reason that the planet's motion is known, so leading any target on the planet is doable. A ship on the other hand can and will alter course, making long range engagement with dumb-fire projectiles problematic.

Hence defending a planet is an exercise in paranoia, the enemy can hit the planet without much risk of retaliation, and drawing off anything in orbit for defense leaves the planet even more vulnerable.

I suppose I should have been more specific. Bombardment with the intention of genocide or simple massive destruction is easy, because, as you pointed out, planets have a rather critical warfare design flaw: they can't dodge. For surgical bombardment, on the other hand, you need to have total control over the orbitals to be effective.

[Emperor Tippy]

But planetary strike weapons are either guided/powered, in which case they're slow enough to have a chance of shooting down, or line-of-sight, which means firing them gives your exact position to the enemy, and still lets them potentially have a countermeasure (since An Enemy Spy said they had city-scale energy shields).

I can launch a tungsten telephone pole when in orbit around Pluto and accurately target the Empire State Building. It's simple math. And detecting and destroying the c fractional telephone pole is not anywhere near as easy. Not to mention that I won't be in the same location when you detect the weapon.

A ship is infinitely more mobile than a planet.

[Nerd-o-rama]

I can launch a tungsten telephone pole when in orbit around Pluto and accurately target the Empire State Building. It's simple math. And detecting and destroying the c fractional telephone pole is not anywhere near as easy.Unless they know you're there and what to look out for, in which case they'll detect it easily if it's known weapons technology. Actually shooting it (or, more easily, throwing up an area-defense field) is a little more iffy, and will depend on sensors, targeting response time, and actual weapon used as a countermeasure.


A ship is infinitely more mobile than a planet.This, I cannot deny.

[An Enemy Spy]

How about ships are constantly patrolling systems to search for enemy ships? Also, there are bound to be long range sensors on asteroids and moons.

[warty goblin]

I suppose I should have been more specific. Bombardment with the intention of genocide or simple massive destruction is easy, because, as you pointed out, planets have a rather critical warfare design flaw: they can't dodge. For surgical bombardment, on the other hand, you need to have total control over the orbitals to be effective.

That really comes down to specific numbers. Using some sort of railgun launched rocket guided projectile you should be able to maintain accuracy and reasonably small payload size for a significant distance. It's not going to work for blowing up armies, but roads, bridges and munitions stores are all perfectly killable, since their location can be calculated for very long times, and compensating for weapon innaccuracy over long range shouldn't be too much of a problem. If nothing else simply design the round so it can break itself into smallish pieces before hitting the atmosphere and then burn up if it is going hopelessly off course or there's a change in the theatre of operations that makes the destruction of it's target no longer desirable.

[Emperor Tippy]

How about ships are constantly patrolling systems to search for enemy ships? Also, there are bound to be long range sensors on asteroids and moons.

Range is relative. The first thing one needs to grasp is just how big space is. And just how empty. I chose pluto for my example but you can choose any point, even out into the interstellar void. So long as you know your position and velocity relative to your target you can hit it if it is stationary on a planets surface. Planets are predictable. At X time and date your target will be at Y position. If your projectile is launched at X time and date from position Y then all you have to do is solve for Z (the velocity to fire your projectile at). If you have a set velocity then you solve for X or Y.

Sensors (unless they are FTL or similarly exotic) have numerous problems as well. A radar system in orbit around mars won't detect a projectile launched from pluto for a very long time. The inverse square law rears it's ugly head.

[An Enemy Spy]

Range is relative. The first thing one needs to grasp is just how big space is. And just how empty. I chose pluto for my example but you can choose any point, even out into the interstellar void. So long as you know your position and velocity relative to your target you can hit it if it is stationary on a planets surface. Planets are predictable. At X time and date your target will be at Y position. If your projectile is launched at X time and date from position Y then all you have to do is solve for Z (the velocity to fire your projectile at). If you have a set velocity then you solve for X or Y.

Sensors (unless they are FTL or similarly exotic) have numerous problems as well. A radar system in orbit around mars won't detect a projectile launched from pluto for a very long time. The inverse square law rears it's ugly head.

I know that space is rediculously huge. It's just that if I were had to choose between coolness and realism in a fictional world, then watch out physics! I'm gonna eat you! I like realism, but sometimes it gets in the way.

[warty goblin]

Although it is worth noting that a really fast moving projectile, even a ballistic one, is likely to be rather hot and hence visible passively before it shows up on RADAR or similar. This obviously depends on the temperature of the projectile, and hence the launch mechanism, but as far as I can tell, it should be plenty visible if it's much over absolute zero.

[chiasaur11]

You know, Tippy, I'm pretty sure if the only differences between a Sci-Fi setting and our world was better staplers, you'd work out about fifty ways the technology would totally rewrite warfare.

Seriously, you do seem to think these things out more than most people.

[Emperor Tippy]

Although it is worth noting that a really fast moving projectile, even a ballistic one, is likely to be rather hot and hence visible passively before it shows up on RADAR or similar. This obviously depends on the temperature of the projectile, and hence the launch mechanism, but as far as I can tell, it should be plenty visible if it's much over absolute zero.

Yeah. But a projectile moving at .5 c has already halved the detection time. The heat is only radiating away twice as fast as the projectile is coming towards your world.

And these things are cheap. You can launch enough so that the person effectively has to be able to shield the entire planet to stop them all. This is of course assuming that you just want the planet neutralized.

---
As for coolness vs. realism, it depends on what you are doing and why. Directly going against physics doesn't tend to work out well. Which is why good sci-fi tends to stick to the grey areas of physics.

You need to find a way to get around the laws of thermodynamics so you come up with something like grabbing energy from a higher energy universe and dumping waste heat into a lower energy universe. You use gravity manipulation to make things work. Pick things that we really don't understand now and you can get away with a lot more if you use the given tech reasonably competently.

Like you want ground based weapons. Go with gravity guns. They accelerate a metal sliver up to around 1000 mp/s by making the bottom of the barrel generate an antigravity field strong enough and directed enough to do that. Sure, it's probably impossible to manipulate gravity like that but it's not as impossible as ignoring the second law of thermodynamics or the inverse square law.

[An Enemy Spy]

I didn't actually mean I would do away with physics. that was a bit of an exaggeration.

[Thiel]

I can launch a tungsten telephone pole when in orbit around Pluto and accurately target the Empire State Building. It's simple math. And detecting and destroying the c fractional telephone pole is not anywhere near as easy. Not to mention that I won't be in the same location when you detect the weapon.

A ship is infinitely more mobile than a planet.

Actually, destroying it, or just nudging it off course, shouldn't be that hard. The same math that allows you to aim it allows me to calculate where it's going to be. All it takes is a few readings and since the projectile is moving at c-fractional speeds spotting it won't be hard. All I need to do then is target it with a reasonable sized nuke and boom. I don't need a direct hit, I only need to get close enough to nudge it a small fraction of a degree.

[warty goblin]

Yeah. But a projectile moving at .5 c has already halved the detection time. The heat is only radiating away twice as fast as the projectile is coming towards your world.

And these things are cheap. You can launch enough so that the person effectively has to be able to shield the entire planet to stop them all. This is of course assuming that you just want the planet neutralized.

---
As for coolness vs. realism, it depends on what you are doing and why. Directly going against physics doesn't tend to work out well. Which is why good sci-fi tends to stick to the grey areas of physics.

You need to find a way to get around the laws of thermodynamics so you come up with something like grabbing energy from a higher energy universe and dumping waste heat into a lower energy universe. You use gravity manipulation to make things work. Pick things that we really don't understand now and you can get away with a lot more if you use the given tech reasonably competently.

Like you want ground based weapons. Go with gravity guns. They accelerate a metal sliver up to around 1000 mp/s by making the bottom of the barrel generate an antigravity field strong enough and directed enough to do that. Sure, it's probably impossible to manipulate gravity like that but it's not as impossible as ignoring the second law of thermodynamics or the inverse square law.

Yep, they are cheap I fully admit that, and harder to see, but not invisible. Also something capable of accelerating a tungsten telephone pole to .5c is not going to be either small or cool, and probably will be significantly easier to see than Pluto.

I also suspect that hitting something at those sorts of distances is decidedly non-trivial. Pluto is about 39 AU from earth. To get your projectile into an area ten kilometers on a side (so a hundred square), you need a gun accurate to about 4.93x10^(-8) degrees*. Modern artillery seems to be accurate to about half a percent of range, which for your proposed Plutonian artillery would mean an area of about 3 million square kilometers. This indicates a need to increase accuracy by about 29 thousand times. Plausible, but by no means a given.


*Take with grain of salt, I didn't have a calculator with sufficient accuracy to calculate the hypotenuse, so I just used 39AU.

The other way to deal with this is to write sci-fi that just doesn't care about technology all that much. Look at Time Enough for Love, all one really knows about the technology is that it is possible to avoid aging permanently via use of clones, there is some form of faster than light travel that allows for time travel, very powerful AIs exist, along with building material that can form itself into chairs. That's really about it. Still a very good story.

[Dervag]

FTL in this world is ripping a hole in space and flying through it. Teleportation is reducing something to atoms and sending it somewhere else.But if my FTL drive works by ripping holes in space, what's to stop me from using it as a de facto teleporter. After all, if I can rip a hole in space and jump through it, I can rip a hole in space and chuck something else into the hole. Voila! Teleportation gates!


They have trouble recreating it as its original form, much less creating something entirely different.Yes, but there are still nasty weapon applications. After all, with a chunk of plutonium it doesn't really matter what its form is as long as I can get it to arrive in one solid chunk. If I build an array of teleporters to send 1000 plutonium marbles, each weighing 100 grams, to the same place, I have just assembled 100 kilograms of plutonium in that place. Cue the city-shattering kaboom.

The best solution is to use teleporters that require both a sender and a receiver. That way, I can't teleport anything to someone who isn't expecting it, and the only weapon application is to smuggle unexpected material (explosives, poison) into a teleport shipment that someone is expecting. Which is still a problem, but at least it is a problem of limited scope, and one that you can hope to defend against.


Thats a good idea. Lets talk about something else. Teleportation was never supposed to be a big deal anyway.Teleportation automatically becomes a big deal whenever it is available, because it has so many potential uses. But sure.
___________


Pistols like that wouldn't be silent. Anything going faster than the speed of sound will be quite loud because of the sonic boom.

And does power armor exist?

The one thing you have to realize is that ground combat isn't really a problem. He who controls the orbitals controls the world. You can seriously garrison a planet of billions with control of the orbitals and a few thousand drop troops.Yes, if you use the Ghengis Khan approach: "If your city does not do as we wish we will destroy everything within half a mile of where you are standing. Including your grandma and your nephew and your little dog, too."

But that's not always a smart or prudent approach to use. Think about it this way (no politics, just math). On Earth today, there is a nation of roughly thirty million that has been invaded and is now occupied by somewhere between 150 and 300 thousand armed men. The occupying force has absolute air supremacy over the entire territory, and owns precision munitions that are roughly as capable as tactical orbital bombardment weapons can be.

And yet, this garrison force has not been sufficient to restore order in the occupied country. Why? Because the garrison force is not using the Ghengis Khan approach. This limits its ability to dominate the region by overwhelming bombardment power.

If the garrison force acquired orbital bombardment weapons to go with its existing orbital surveillance tools, it would not have all that much more bombardment power than it has now. How would it be able to scale back its deployment of ground troops just by having orbital firepower on call?

And if it could not, then how could it hope to occupy a much larger area (a whole planet) with even less troops ("a few thousand drop troops?")
____________

This is a serious problem. Unless you are willing to play Ghengis Khan with tungsten telephone poles, there is a limit to how much control you can exercise over a conquered population using only bombardment weapons.
___________


Orbital bombardment is very precise. It's simple math. If you know your orbit, the planets rate of rotation, and the distance to your target then you can figure out the specifics and hit it.You're forgetting something very important. Precision.

Precision limits are a big factor in all kinds of machinery, including the machine that launches your bombardment weapons. For example, space-based telescopes have a minimum resolution on the order of 0.05 arc seconds, or about five millionths of a degree. You can't aim your tungsten telephone pole more precisely than that for a simple reason: your gunsight won't be able to tell you what you're pointing at precisely enough.

How much error this introduces depends on how far away you launch your poles. If you're launching from Pluto, this is an error of about 150 miles (do the math if you don't believe me). You have no idea where in a 150-mile circle your pole will land, because even for the most advanced astronomical telescopes, you can't tell the circle from a geometric point. Features inside the circle are blurred together, so you can't pick them out.

And that assumes absolute perfection in your machine. You need perfect velocity control (there is no question of whether you launch the pole at 5000 miles per second or 5000.01 miles per second). You need a machine that is either perfectly temperature controlled or immune to the effects of thermal expansion. You need to know that the projectile will not be deflected by even one part in a million by anything it encounters en route, including the atmosphere of the target planet.

To be blunt, you haven't got that capability, and even if you did, you'd still run up against the telescope problem.

Therefore, you need a terminal guidance package. You need thrusters to steer your telephone pole in flight, just as space probes have maneuvering thrusters. You need something on the ground for the pole to home in on, so that when it gets close enough to the target to see it in acceptable precision, it can make minor corrections.

You can still do it, of course. You just can't do it using a giant crowbar with no guidance package. Launched over interplanetary ranges, a giant crowbar is literally as likely to land on your own men as it is to land on the target.
___________


You are also assuming that accuracy is all that important. You want a pacified planet, if they no that any revolt or rebellion will be met with an orbital bombardment response and that it isn't terribly accurate then they are unlikely to attempt said revolt.That depends on how big your projectiles are. Using powerful projectiles (say, nuke-yield sized) would intimidate the planetary population, but if you actually have to use one they're likely to damage things.

Also, in that situation, bombardment is all-or-nothing. If the planet rebels against your rule, you launch projectiles that destroy kilometer-sized stretches of land chosen at random. If the planet assassinates one of your occupying officials, you destroy kilometer-sized stretches of land chosen at random. If the planet's mine workers have a sit-down strike and refuse to dig out more uranium for your starfleet, you destroy kilometer-sized stretches of land at random. If they start publishing subversive literature and broadcasting it to the galaxy, you... you get the idea.

Using smaller projectiles allows you to scale the amount of destruction you cause to the amount of offense the planet has given you. But it also reduces the intimidation factor.
__________


Hence defending a planet is an exercise in paranoia, the enemy can hit the planet without much risk of retaliation, and drawing off anything in orbit for defense leaves the planet even more vulnerable.Unless shield generators exist. At which point the planet can take care of itself using basic DEW radar.
_________


Agreed. But it's relatively simple to compensate for and the projectiles will be moving fast enough that it isn't much of a concern. The US Air Force was projecting accuracy greater than that of laser guided bombs when they looked at it. And that's with current tech.Of course, they were planning to drop from low planetary orbit. Which works better, but then it's a lot more realistic and reasonable than "launching from Pluto."
_________


I can launch a tungsten telephone pole when in orbit around Pluto and accurately target the Empire State Building. It's simple math.No, you can't; it's even simpler math. You can't see the Empire State Building from Pluto. You can't even see Manhattan Island from Pluto. Therefore, you have no way to get visual confirmation that your telephone pole launcher is in fact pointed in the right direction.

Well, OK, if you use something a lot better than the Hubble Space Telescope for a gunsight, you could do it. If you have perfect machinery.
______________


*Take with grain of salt, I didn't have a calculator with sufficient accuracy to calculate the hypotenuse, so I just used 39AU.Given the size of Earth's orbit compared to the size of Pluto's orbit, you can use the sin(x)=x approximation and treat the hypotenuse as being equal to the longest side of the triangle. It will give you two or three significant figures.

[hamishspence]

even with precision, don't quantum effects come into play- just can't measure some things that accurately?

[tribble]

Planets are predictable. At X time and date your target will be at Y position. If your projectile is launched at X time and date from position Y then all you have to do is solve for Z (the velocity to fire your projectile at). If you have a set velocity then you solve for X or Y.



Um... no? you also have to factor in Gravity, for one. you need to do more calculations or your tungsten pole is going to get yanked off course by a moon or another planet or something. it doesn't have to yank it off even a single degree, at those distances a fraction of a degree is the difference between hitting Sydney, Australia, and sticking a tungsten pole in the Great Barrier reef. at least.

[Thiel]

Um... no? you also have to factor in Gravity, for one. you need to do more calculations or your tungsten pole is going to get yanked off course by a moon or another planet or something. it doesn't have to yank it off even a single degree, at those distances a fraction of a degree is the difference between hitting Sydney, Australia, and sticking a tungsten pole in the Great Barrier reef. at least.

Well, those factors are easily corrected for. We are after all sending probes the other way.

[Dervag]

even with precision, don't quantum effects come into play- just can't measure some things that accurately?Quantum effects are much smaller than the gross physical factors like the limit of telescope resolution, the limit of precision in velocity measurement, and so forth.

They wouldn't be a problem in a Pluto-to-Earth telephone pole attack.


Um... no? you also have to factor in Gravity, for one. you need to do more calculations or your tungsten pole is going to get yanked off course by a moon or another planet or something. it doesn't have to yank it off even a single degree, at those distances a fraction of a degree is the difference between hitting Sydney, Australia, and sticking a tungsten pole in the Great Barrier reef. at least.A fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a degree, rather.

Thing is, factoring in the positions of other planets or moons isn't hard for a good computer these days. You have to do it, but you can do it, so it doesn't get in the way of your accuracy.

Whereas the telescope resolution problem does.

[hamishspence]

quantum mechnical resolution problem more applies to teleporting, true. Point is- a telescope big enough to guide something that far would be perhaps a little Too big (maybe a load of mini ones, in formation?)

[Emperor Tippy]

The telescope problem only arises if you need to aim like that. If you no the exact position of your projectile and of your target then it is relatively simple math. If you are trying to see your target from the position of your projectile that is a whole different situation.

This does assume the ability to know both locations with incredibly extreme precision though.

[The Glyphstone]

Which isn't a guarantee, if the enemy has a fleet or other defenses keeping you from getting a ship/probe close enough to get the information you need. Which brings us back to square one...

[Emperor Tippy]

You use the equivalent of google to find the GPS coordinates of the target. :smallwink:

Granted this isn't really relevant because from ranges within earth orbit you can get the needed precision with your telescope.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Well, those factors are easily corrected for. We are after all sending probes the other way.Yeah. And we keep missing with them. Have you looked at the Mars program lately?

[Emperor Tippy]

Yeah. And we keep missing with them. Have you looked at the Mars program lately?

Depends on who you define as we. NASA has pretty consistently actually gotten their stuff to work. The ESA and various other agencies, not so much.

[An Enemy Spy]

Wow. I asked about a sci fi setting and got a lesson in astrophysics. Lets get back on topic people!

[Emperor Tippy]

We can steer a lot of our probes that are in space anyway. You can't steer an orbital bombardment.

You don't have to unless you are going for truly absurd ranges (as in Pluto or the like). Planets don't dodge.

But since you have city shields it's not particuarly relevant. In which case, how good are your bio weapons and your genetic engineering tech?

[Flame of Anor]

This sounds really cool, Spy. But have you noticed that the setting is pretty much exactly the American Civil War? The Empire is the British Empire, the Argos Republic is the (republic of) the U.S.A., and the Confederacy is the Confederacy. Think about it: Empire colonists rebel to form Republic. Confederacy rebels from and fights Republic while Empire encourages. I could be talking about either one.

[hamishspence]

And who brought up the "launching a tungsten pole from Pluto"?

A ship wich has just arrived "edge of the system" might not have all the info needed to aim a perfect shot from that far out- it takes time, and gathering of info.

[Dervag]

The telescope problem only arises if you need to aim like that. If you no the exact position of your projectile and of your target then it is relatively simple math. If you are trying to see your target from the position of your projectile that is a whole different situation.

This does assume the ability to know both locations with incredibly extreme precision though.Yes, and that's one heck of a big assumption. I'll grant you the ability to do the math, but there's more to the problem than that. Here's how an exchange between you calling for space-based fire support and me on the tungsten telephone pole launcher on Pluto goes. We'll assume that I don't need to worry about the math at all- I just point the launcher and push the button and the target automatically dies, because the computer can take care of all the aiming details with absolute perfect precision.

Also, assume that my gun optics are about six times better than the Hubble Space Telescope in terms of their resolution.
_____________

"I need Ouagadougou vaporized. Send in the relativistic kill vehicle."

"Let's see... Ouagadougou is in West Africa. Let me get the latest imagery from my uber-Hubble. Yeah. OK, I see West Africa. Gee, Ouagadougou is hard to find. Are you sure I can't just drop this pole in the Sahara a few hundred miles north? I can see the Sahara just fine."

"What are you, blind? This is a city of like a million people we're talking about! It covers a hundred square miles!"

"Have you tried taking imagery of planets four billion miles away lately? Finding something that size from Pluto is like spotting a gnat on the ground from low Earth orbit. The whole planet Earth is about four hundred pixels wide. Burkina Faso is four pixels across, and I'm using a frickin' upgraded model of the Hubble Space Telescope out here."
______________

"OK, OK. I'll give you its exact GPS coordinates. You can use that to aim with. It's at 12°21'26"N 1°32'7"W."

"Huh? What does "1 degree 32 minutes 7 seconds west" mean?"

"That means that it's about one and a half degrees west of the Prime Meridian, which is defined as a line running north to south from pole to pole through Greenwich, England."

"Yeah, and I see England. That's the triangular blob northwest of Europe, right? So where's Greenwich?"

"... Oh. OK, let's try identifying Ouagadougou relative to the surrounding terrain features. It's on a big plateau, it's surrounded by green on the north, south, and west, it's... [long description based on satellite imagery and stuff]"

"Sorry, but the country of Burkina Faso is a blurry greenish-tan patch on the edge of the Sahara from where I'm sitting. I couldn't begin to guess where all those things you're talking about are. And now there's a cloud formation moving in. Great."
______________

"Damnit, there's got to be some way for me to specify the exact location of Ouagadougou!... maybe if I give it to you in terms of where it relative to the Sun, you can use that for the coordinates. We can all see the Sun, right?"

"Yeah. Only one problem. How far am I from the Sun?"

"You mean you don't know?"

"Sure I know. I'm 3.72 billion miles from the Sun. But is that 3.72000 or 3.72001? It makes a difference, you know. I don't want to shoot at Ouagadougou and accidentally hit Lagos over in Nigeria, now do I?"
_________

"Look, if you don't figure out a way to blow up Ouagadougou soon, the coup attempt will succeed and we'll have to fight a guerilla war just to reinstate our puppet government! We are in a HURRY down here!"

"Well, I could just launch like ten thousand poles and vaporize everything within a hundred miles of the city. But that would throw up so much dust and junk it's start a nuclear winter. Which, incidentally, would muck up my ability to aim this stupid thing even worse.

"Or I could use tungsten telephone poles with a terminal guidance package that can, y'know, steer their way to Ouagadougou. I mean, I can point this thing at West Africa and let them do the rest when they get close."

"That would be great!"

"Oops. Sorry. Can't do that. You guys decided not to spend the money on guided missiles for your space bombardment cannon, because you thought I could aim this thing from Pluto."
__________

Put simply, there is no way to specify the absolute position of an object in space relative to other objects in space more precisely than you can measure the distances involved. And you can't measure the distance from my cannon on Pluto to your target in Burkina Faso precisely enough to hit the target, except by hitting so hard that the entire country vanishes in a smoldering crater field. In which case you trigger the next round of extinctions like the ones that killed the dinosaurs.
__________


You use the equivalent of google to find the GPS coordinates of the target. :smallwink:

Granted this isn't really relevant because from ranges within earth orbit you can get the needed precision with your telescope.We saw the problem with GPS coordinates- they're defined relative to other positions on or around Earth, and they aren't nearly as precise as what I need to hit Ouagadougou from Pluto.

And you're the one who was bragging about being able to launch ballistic kill vehicles from Pluto and hit targets on Earth with pinpoint precision. I was calling for putting the launch platform closer in (to make aiming easier) or for using guided weapons. But would you listen? You would not.

[hamishspence]

added to which, it takes more than a few light-hours for a beam of light to get there. A relativistic projectile is even slower. in the time taken for projectile to get there (ballistic, and does it have a self-destruct, and would it matter anyway?) the whole issue could have been solved.

Then reignited, big time, with a plummeting projectile.

[KnightDisciple]

Um, on the GPS map bit...couldn't you have a stored map of the surface of the Earth on your computer? With GPS markings or whatnot, such that you type in the coords they feed you, and it shows the exact point on the map?
This doesn't address potential issues with degrees of speed and distance and such, but...seriously, why would you not have high-quality maps at least on the computers? It's, like, free. Or really cheap.

[The Glyphstone]

Wow. I asked about a sci fi setting and got a lesson in astrophysics. Lets get back on topic people!

thank you for visiting, I hope you enjoyed your stay on teh internets...

[An Enemy Spy]

This sounds really cool, Spy. But have you noticed that the setting is pretty much exactly the American Civil War? The Empire is the British Empire, the Argos Republic is the (republic of) the U.S.A., and the Confederacy is the Confederacy. Think about it: Empire colonists rebel to form Republic. Confederacy rebels from and fights Republic while Empire encourages. I could be talking about either one.

Actually, the Confederacy seceded from the Empire, not the Republic. So it's really more like if Scotland and America started fighting.

[The Glyphstone]

Actually, the Confederacy seceded from the Empire, not the Republic. So it's really more like if Scotland and America started fighting.

Sorry, but I just burst out laughing when I read that for some reason.

[Dervag]

Um, on the GPS map bit...couldn't you have a stored map of the surface of the Earth on your computer? With GPS markings or whatnot, such that you type in the coords they feed you, and it shows the exact point on the map?
This doesn't address potential issues with degrees of speed and distance and such, but...seriously, why would you not have high-quality maps at least on the computers? It's, like, free. Or really cheap.Oh, you could. No problem.

But that just brings us back to the "where's Greenwich?" problem. Knowing the exact longitude of Ouagadougou doesn't help me find where it is on the Earth if I can't find the Prime Meridian that longitudes are measured from. Which I can't, because the upper limit on my uber-Hubble's resolution is about two degrees of longitude when I'm looking from Earth to Pluto.

The same problem goes for finding the Equator. Given my equipment's resolution, I can't find the Equator precisely enough to nail down the latitude of the target to a precision of more than a degree or so.

The key thing to understand is that GPS coordinates as we know them are relative coordinates, defined relative to lines and points on the Earth's surface. If I can't see those lines and points, I can't use the GPS coordinates.

It's like saying "drop the bomb 100 yards north of me." If you don't know where I am, that's a useless piece of information. It's equally useless to say "drop the bomb 1 degree 32 minutes 7 seconds west of the Prime Meridian" if you don't know where Greenwich, England is. You've specified the target point with immense precision, down to less than a mile, but only in terms of a coordinate system I can't use.

I have to know where the target is relative to me to be able to hit it, and from Pluto it would be really hard to build equipment capable of measuring the target's location. I can hit the Earth any time I want, and if my guns are perfect I can reliably hit the same point over and over. But I don't know where that point is, which places a limit on my accuracy.

[An Enemy Spy]

Oh, you could. No problem.

But that just brings us back to the "where's Greenwich?" problem. Knowing the exact longitude of Ouagadougou doesn't help me find where it is on the Earth if I can't find the Prime Meridian that longitudes are measured from. Which I can't, because the upper limit on my uber-Hubble's resolution is about two degrees of longitude when I'm looking from Earth to Pluto.

The same problem goes for finding the Equator. Given my equipment's resolution, I can't find the Equator precisely enough to nail down the latitude of the target to a precision of more than a degree or so.

The key thing to understand is that GPS coordinates as we know them are relative coordinates, defined relative to lines and points on the Earth's surface. If I can't see those lines and points, I can't use the GPS coordinates.

It's like saying "drop the bomb 100 yards north of me." If you don't know where I am, that's a useless piece of information. It's equally useless to say "drop the bomb 1 degree 32 minutes 7 seconds west of the Prime Meridian" if you don't know where Greenwich, England is. You've specified the target point with immense precision, down to less than a mile, but only in terms of a coordinate system I can't use.

I have to know where the target is relative to me to be able to hit it, and from Pluto it would be really hard to build equipment capable of measuring the target's location. I can hit the Earth any time I want, and if my guns are perfect I can reliably hit the same point over and over. But I don't know where that point is, which places a limit on my accuracy.

Hiss! *Sprays water on* We just got off that subject. Don't bring it back up!
Anyway, I was thinking that the religion will be virtually all Christian, but it will have devolved pretty much until it's like the middle ages.

[Dervag]

Hiss! *Sprays water on* We just got off that subject. Don't bring it back up!OK, fine, as long as you promise not to claim that I can aim ballistic artillery from Pluto.

[Emperor Tippy]

Anyway, I was thinking that the religion will be virtually all Christian, but it will have devolved pretty much until it's like the middle ages.

How many years in the future is this taking place and what happened to cause this?

[An Enemy Spy]

Like I said, It is an unspecified time in the distant future, that is all.

[Emperor Tippy]

Like I said, It is an unspecified time in the distant future, that is all.

Yeah but it would require pretty drastic action for that to occur. What happened to the Muslim world? I mean if you limited the FTL tech to a modified US (or similar) nation that was already pretty much uniformly Christian and it didn't share that tech with anyone else then I suppose you could end up with it being the primary religion after a few thousand years when those other planets have built up respectable populations. Assuming the the knowledge of FTL travel was kept from everyone else. But beyond that or some fairly drastic wars it just won't happen.

[Piedmon_Sama]

Knight Templars in Space is overdone... make them Space Buddhists.... militant Space Buddhists...

[An Enemy Spy]

Knight Templars in Space is overdone... make them Space Buddhists.... militant Space Buddhists...

I'd much rather stick to a religion I can understand

[Knaight]

As for christianity, what you could have would be the Christian colonization of Mars, funded by a private sector company, that was getting a grant from the government to deal with a homeless problem in Christian countries(the CEO refuses to help anyone of any other religion). So they take a whole bunch of homeless people to Mars. A couple centuries later Mars has a huge population, after the overpopulation of the Earth leading to mass starvation, as well as loss of technology. At which point the entirely Christian mars declares war on Earth, and nukes it from orbit(around Earth). This leaves christianity ahead, and puts humans on a small planet from which they will be forced to leave quickly to deal with overpopulation.

As for other ideas, one that I have been toying around with is the replacement of humans with robots in warfare, leading to perpetual warfare instigated by whoever has the robots, and with human casualties extremely low most people don't care. Add to this robots built with near sentience, capable of stealing information and creating more robots, you could have a robot rebellion, with some robots advocating the total and utter destruction of humans, some wanting to just be accepted as equals, etc.

[Emperor Tippy]

As for other ideas, one that I have been toying around with is the replacement of humans with robots in warfare, leading to perpetual warfare instigated by whoever has the robots, and with human casualties extremely low most people don't care. Add to this robots built with near sentience, capable of stealing information and creating more robots, you could have a robot rebellion, with some robots advocating the total and utter destruction of humans, some wanting to just be accepted as equals, etc.

Bad idea. If robots with strong AI go all out they would win. Humans simply don't stand a chance.

And it also assumes utterly incompetent human programmers. Robots and AI that can rebel will not be built. And as they are hardware and software you can both provide software and hardware checks to keep them from doing so. To the point where the very concept of rebelling is impossible for them to form. If they would think it, the thought is simply erased from their minds. And robots with even human level AI in war, especially ground warfare are utterly superior to humans in every way. They can link and communicate, fighting effectivily as one. Their reflexes move at light speed, unlike human reflexes. They need far fewer supplies. They are stronger and faster. Basically every trait that you can think of is one that a robot built with current tech (barring a power source and AI) would be superior to any human.

And if you throw in truly strong AI it tilts even farther in the AI's favor.

[An Enemy Spy]

I don't like the idea of Earth being attacked. It is the only planet in the entire galaxy that no human would even consider attacking. It's kinda like Mecca on steroids for these people. And any robots used in warfare are unintelligent war machines.

[Flame of Anor]

Actually, the Confederacy seceded from the Empire, not the Republic. So it's really more like if Scotland and America started fighting.

Sorry, but I just burst out laughing when I read that for some reason.

Me too! :smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

[hamishspence]

Dune already did the Militant Space Buddhists thing. Well, part buddhist, the other part- muslim. And its not just KJA & Brian Herbert- the term: Buddislamic, goes back to the first Dune book.

[Eita]

Their reflexes move at light speed, unlike human reflexes.

Lolwut? The human brain is fastest computer in the known universe. In order for robot reflexes to move at 'light speed' the information would have to be processed that fast, which is a lot faster then the brain can. That's not even mentioning the delay implicit in the transfer of new data to a processor and the time it takes for the processor to send orders to act accordingly. There's a reason organic technology is the big thing in sci-fi now-a-days, it works.

Also, even if we found a way to make computers that fast, we'd still just put it in humans just as soon as we could, and then we'd put those humans in giant robot suits, because "there's no substitute for a man in the field".

As for the other points, especially considered Asimov's Laws of Robotics, why yes, that's all true.

Also, also, and I apologize to the OP to this with all of my heart, but I just got to this thread and would really like to add in this little comment. Your tungsten telephone pole, in order to have 100% accuracy would have to be fired with corrections in its launch plan concerning the wind and other aspects of the weather, things that can't be seen a few years in advance. Takes a while for things to travel that many AUs.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Also, even if we found a way to make computers that fast, we'd still just put it in humans just as soon as we could, and then we'd put those humans in giant robot suits, because "there's no substitute for a man in the field".Medium-size robot suits (or possibly giant tanks). No need to start up the Humongous Mecha argument again.

[Dervag]

Lolwut? The human brain is fastest computer in the known universe. In order for robot reflexes to move at 'light speed' the information would have to be processed that fast, which is a lot faster then the brain can. That's not even mentioning the delay implicit in the transfer of new data to a processor and the time it takes for the processor to send orders to act accordingly. There's a reason organic technology is the big thing in sci-fi now-a-days, it works.Let me put it this way:

I work with machines that can keep track of which nanosecond something happened in. Using computers. Nothing made out of meat can do that.
____________

The brain is a massively parallel processor, in that it has many computing elements all operating at the same time. That allows it to do certain things very quickly. And a good thing, too, because the individual elements in the brain are slow. They make the old 1950s vacuum tube computers look speedy.

If I stick a tack in your foot, it will take you about a tenth of a second to notice. If I stick a tack in a robot's foot, assuming it has the sensors to notice it at all (which you do), it will notice within a time measured in millionths of a second.

[warty goblin]

Let me put it this way:

I work with machines that can keep track of which nanosecond something happened in. Using computers. Nothing made out of meat can do that.
____________

The brain is a massively parallel processor, in that it has many computing elements all operating at the same time. That allows it to do certain things very quickly. And a good thing, too, because the individual elements in the brain are slow. They make the old 1950s vacuum tube computers look speedy.

If I stick a tack in your foot, it will take you about a tenth of a second to notice. If I stick a tack in a robot's foot, assuming it has the sensors to notice it at all (which you do), it will notice within a time measured in millionths of a second.

As is so often the case, you said exactly what I was going to, only a whole lot better.

For the battlefield role I'd also note the following, if one has AI good enough for the role, one has AI good enough to have really sickening accuracy. Just use a radar ping to find distance to target, sensors to pick up wind speed, and the robot will be accurate up the mechanical limit of the gun, easily pushing 80% I'd guess. A human who's not sniping is lucky to get about 30% hits IIRC.

[Emperor Tippy]

As is so often the case, you said exactly what I was going to, only a whole lot better.

For the battlefield role I'd also note the following, if one has AI good enough for the role, one has AI good enough to have really sickening accuracy. Just use a radar ping to find distance to target, sensors to pick up wind speed, and the robot will be accurate up the mechanical limit of the gun, easily pushing 80% I'd guess. A human who's not sniping is lucky to get about 30% hits IIRC.

Beyond that. The calculations are relativily trivial. And a robot can factor in the weight of the projectile, the wear on the barrel, the wind, the exact range, the barrel temperature, and thousands of other minor factors when calculating where to aim. And physically it has inhumanly steady hands and can be built to take the recoil without effecting the aim at all. A robot missing should be an incredibly rare occurrence.

And your percentages are off. 95% is much more likely for the US military. Short, aimed, controlled bursts are the best way to shoot and they don't miss often.

[warty goblin]

Beyond that. The calculations are relativily trivial. And a robot can factor in the weight of the projectile, the wear on the barrel, the wind, the exact range, the barrel temperature, and thousands of other minor factors when calculating where to aim. And physically it has inhumanly steady hands and can be built to take the recoil without effecting the aim at all. A robot missing should be an incredibly rare occurrence.

And your percentages are off. 95% is much more likely for the US military. Short, aimed, controlled bursts are the best way to shoot and they don't miss often.

Fair enough.

The one problem I would see with a robot is endurance and functioning after taking damage. The second should be fairly simple to resolve, but the former has some problematic implications, particularly for lowscale warfare. A smaller, rather more organic force could conceivably skirmish with a robotic one, keeping them from recharging for extended periods of time until a large number are incapacitated, then finish them off.

This is naturally always possible even with all organics, the problem is that pretty much all existing machines are fairly binary in their states, they are either on or off. Keep a robot force from recharging for long enough and they will simply stop working, and even a highly exhausted human force well below optimum fighting potential will run roughshod over a bunch of non-functional machines.

[Eita]

Let me put it this way:

I work with machines that can keep track of which nanosecond something happened in. Using computers. Nothing made out of meat can do that.
____________

The brain is a massively parallel processor, in that it has many computing elements all operating at the same time. That allows it to do certain things very quickly. And a good thing, too, because the individual elements in the brain are slow. They make the old 1950s vacuum tube computers look speedy.

If I stick a tack in your foot, it will take you about a tenth of a second to notice. If I stick a tack in a robot's foot, assuming it has the sensors to notice it at all (which you do), it will notice within a time measured in millionths of a second.

Forgive me for my earlier statement. I got my information without calculating in the fact that most of your brain is doing some other stuff, namely keeping your heart beating and lungs breathing.

[An Enemy Spy]

I've never been especially fond of robots that think. AIs like Cortana are pretty cool though.

[Ravens_cry]

I've never been especially fond of robots that think. AIs like Cortana are pretty cool though.
They don't have to think, they only have to think that they think. All this messy consciousness stuff, while nice for woeful tales of existential angst, isn't really necessary in an AI. An AI is a machine, it only has to do its job. A well programmed AI would allow flexibility in how it solves its problems, and what problems it solves, but there is no need to be all Pinocchio about it.

[Dervag]

As is so often the case, you said exactly what I was going to, only a whole lot better.

For the battlefield role I'd also note the following, if one has AI good enough for the role, one has AI good enough to have really sickening accuracy. Just use a radar ping to find distance to target, sensors to pick up wind speed, and the robot will be accurate up the mechanical limit of the gun, easily pushing 80% I'd guess. A human who's not sniping is lucky to get about 30% hits IIRC.This kind of thing has been going on since the Second World War, when the Germans started throwing their V1 cruise missiles at London. V1s could only fly straight, level, and a few thousand feet in the air. When the US Army brought in some batteries of radar-guided AA guns firing radar proximity fuzed shells, the V1 bombardment became a sort of elaborate pulsejet-powered skeet shooting exercise.

And this with "AI" made out of a few armloads of vacuum tubes and gears...
___________


And your percentages are off. 95% is much more likely for the US military. Short, aimed, controlled bursts are the best way to shoot and they don't miss often.How does that percentage hold up in combat?

In theory, that level of marksmanship is entirely possible. The difference between theory and practice is that in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
__________


Forgive me for my earlier statement. I got my information without calculating in the fact that most of your brain is doing some other stuff, namely keeping your heart beating and lungs breathing.Ignoring that fact shouldn't change anything. The real problem is that brain cells do not compute as fast as microchips. The brain makes up for it by having many, many brain cells and using all of them at the same time.

For mathematically simple operations like aiming a cannon, a computer will do it much faster and more precisely than any human being. It's more or less inevitable. It will also react to stimuli faster- if you have a robot controlling an AA gun, it can receive a radar contact and begin to turn the gun to point at the target in milliseconds. If you use a human for the same job, the human will need at a minimum about 1/10 of a second just to realize there's a blip on the radar.

Radar screens were only invented in the first place because the technology didn't exist to create an AI capable of interpreting the radar data.

[Emperor Tippy]

How does that percentage hold up in combat?

In theory, that level of marksmanship is entirely possible. The difference between theory and practice is that in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.

Based on the data I've seen and what I've read it actually holds up pretty well. It's one of the main reasons that massively outnumbered US forces have defeated insurgents with minimal casualties. 10 vs. 50+ has been done and resulted in no hits against the US soldiers. Admittedly that has more to do with the incompetence of the enemy (failure to use cover, failure to aim, failure to properly ambush, failure to use maneuver) than with the aiming ability of the US soldiers.

But spray and pray does not work. It's fun as hell but you don't hit your targets. If you ever get the chance, take an AK to a range and try and hit a target at 40 meters (or even 10) on full auto. Then try the same thing using aimed burst fire. You will be amazed at the difference.

[Dervag]

My question is what percentage of shots fired are in fact precisely aimed bursts. Assume that precisely aimed bursts are 95% accurate, fine, but what about the bursts that aren't so precise?

To quote Solaris (I think):

"If you fire three rounds and miss, you're a lousy shot. If you fire thirty rounds and miss, it's suppressing fire."

[Emperor Tippy]

My question is what percentage of shots fired are in fact precisely aimed bursts. Assume that precisely aimed bursts are 95% accurate, fine, but what about the bursts that aren't so precise?
For US special forces it's pretty much identical. They don't miss very often in a standard fire fight (and even more rarely when clearing a building). For regular soldiers it depends on the person and how they handle the stress and adrenaline. The most dangerous shots are those who don't get stressed or excited. I've seen studies done of SEALs in combat and in the middle of a raging fire fight most of them don't even have an increased heart rate.

The US is pretty good at training it's people to stay calm and control the adrenaline but it really depends on the individual solider.


To quote Solaris (I think):

"If you fire three rounds and miss, you're a lousy shot. If you fire thirty rounds and miss, it's suppressing fire."
If you fire the 30 rounds and actually tried to hit something but missed every shot then you are a horrid shot. :smallwink:


In regards to your question though, it really does depend on your training. Cops, for example, aren't trained in how to really fight in a gun battle. Which is why you get stories about 2 cops firing a hundred shots at a man 15 feet away and hitting 5 times.

[Kcalehc]

How about ships are constantly patrolling systems to search for enemy ships? Also, there are bound to be long range sensors on asteroids and moons.

Patrolling is one of the main elements of infantry training, behind actual combat. As infantry take and/or hold ground it seems likely that this would apply to space fleets too (defending a relatively fixed location like a planet). In the absence of sensors like those in star trek, patrolling is really the only reliable way to defend a system.

Scout patrols range far out, even beyond the edges of the system, and where necessary into enemy territory to gather intelligence - they are small and do not engage in combat unless they absolutely have to. Some patrol routes are set and regular, others are randomly assigned and patroled.
Standard patrols cover most of the local space 'ground', mid sized they can hold their own long enough for reinforcements to arrive.
Fighting patrols are large, and go looking for fights, they reinforce the standard patrols, and act on the intelligence from the scouting patrols to find and kill the enemy.
Along with scouts and standard patrols you have a platoon harbour, a mobile place where they patrol from within your territory - with sentries to control incoming movements. No less than 1/3 of the force is left in the harbour at any one time, to act as garrisson should it be detected, allowing time for patrols to be recalled to assist or to evacuate.

If your ftl stuff is big ships only, then a carrier type craft will carry smaller patrol craft and act as the harbour for patrols.

And to the accuracy thing, alot of fire is deliberately missing, supression fire is used to keep their heads down - the idea isn't to hit them, but to stop them hitting your buddies as they sneak in closer to lob a grenade on the enemies head. One round every 3 seconds or so from each of 4 soldiers in a fire team, is enough to convince most combatants to not poke their head out of cover; while the other half gets in close for a kill. This is in open country, not urban warfare - that I don't know the tactics for.
But as Sun-Tzu said, "do not attack prepared defences, do not attack their fortified cities." City combat sucked, still does. ;)

[Thiel]

Patrolling is one of the main elements of infantry training, behind actual combat. As infantry take and/or hold ground it seems likely that this would apply to space fleets too (defending a relatively fixed location like a planet). In the absence of sensors like those in star trek, patrolling is really the only reliable way to defend a system.

Scout patrols range far out, even beyond the edges of the system, and where necessary into enemy territory to gather intelligence - they are small and do not engage in combat unless they absolutely have to. Some patrol routes are set and regular, others are randomly assigned and patroled.
Standard patrols cover most of the local space 'ground', mid sized they can hold their own long enough for reinforcements to arrive.
Fighting patrols are large, and go looking for fights, they reinforce the standard patrols, and act on the intelligence from the scouting patrols to find and kill the enemy.
Along with scouts and standard patrols you have a platoon harbour, a mobile place where they patrol from within your territory - with sentries to control incoming movements. No less than 1/3 of the force is left in the harbour at any one time, to act as garrisson should it be detected, allowing time for patrols to be recalled to assist or to evacuate.

If your ftl stuff is big ships only, then a carrier type craft will carry smaller patrol craft and act as the harbour for patrols.

And to the accuracy thing, alot of fire is deliberately missing, supression fire is used to keep their heads down - the idea isn't to hit them, but to stop them hitting your buddies as they sneak in closer to lob a grenade on the enemies head. One round every 3 seconds or so from each of 4 soldiers in a fire team, is enough to convince most combatants to not poke their head out of cover; while the other half gets in close for a kill. This is in open country, not urban warfare - that I don't know the tactics for.
But as Sun-Tzu said, "do not attack prepared defences, do not attack their fortified cities." City combat sucked, still does. ;)

Unless you're going to put those ships in orbit, maintaining those patrols is going to be immensely expensive. And besides, you don't need StarTrek-ish sensors to spot a spaceship, since they have a tendency to be far far hotter than surrounding space. Basically they stand out like road flares on a dark night.

[Dervag]

In space, patrols aren't a very useful tool. Most things that you can see from your patrol boat would be just as visible if you sat in orbit with a slightly bigger sensor. And since a stationary detector array can be much bigger and more sensitive than a mobile one, it will see more and see it farther away. Moreover, it won't cost you fuel.

Patrols are only necessary if:

-The setting contains technomagical "stealth" that allows ships to mask all signs of their presence from long-range detection by sensitive instruments. That has to include heat, which is almost impossible to hide for very basic law-of-physics reasons.

Note that the "sensitive instruments" in question can be the equivalent of the Hubble Space Telescope and other instruments designed to do stuff like take pictures of planets in other solar systems or galaxies on the far side of the universe. Such things cost millions of dollars, but it's totally worth it to get good detection and early warning capability on your space battleship.

-The environment being patrolled is so cluttered that dangerous objects can only be distinguished from innocent ones at close range. Example of this include a planetary surface (you have to have sensors in orbit to identify small surface features). Or possibly an extremely dense concentration of dust or rocks. The only place in the Solar System where such a concentration exists is the rings of Saturn, so far as I know.

[hamishspence]

problem with sensitivity is- it tends to be correlated to narrow field of view. Hubble has never imaged an extrasolar planet- the tech needed requires much bigger effective lens- hence the telescope fleets working together that will be the next generation scope. in visual light, it just isn't possible to get clear pic of things too far out, with a normal sized scope. Image resolution.

[Jorkens]

Mankind has colonized a substantial portion of the galaxy. Humanity is divided into 3 major factions.
A nitpicky point, but do you have a realistic sense of quite how big this is going to make your factions? There are an estimated 200 to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way so a confederation in control of a substantial proportion of that is going to be able to marshall some really serious resources. And require some really serious administration.

Another random question - if you've got a fair amount of war going on, what are its primary motivations? What do people care about enough to risk lives and sink vast resources to try to get more of it? Is everyone in favour of war, and if not, how do the people who are in favour of it keep it going in the face of objections? I don't know, maybe it's just me but I tend to get annoyed with writers who spend ages working out how to make their weapons systems mechanically plausible and then use social and political dynamics that would look excessively naive in an elementary school history textbook...

[warty goblin]

problem with sensitivity is- it tends to be correlated to narrow field of view. Hubble has never imaged an extrasolar planet- the tech needed requires much bigger effective lens- hence the telescope fleets working together that will be the next generation scope. in visual light, it just isn't possible to get clear pic of things too far out, with a normal sized scope. Image resolution.

The thing is you really don't have to be very sensitive to see hot stuff floating around your solar system. It'd take a significant investment, but it would be one time, whereas patrolling would cost a disgusting amount continously, and spread your forces thin making them easy pickings for any enemy who did show up.

[Dervag]

problem with sensitivity is- it tends to be correlated to narrow field of view. Hubble has never imaged an extrasolar planet- the tech needed requires much bigger effective lens- hence the telescope fleets working together that will be the next generation scope. in visual light, it just isn't possible to get clear pic of things too far out, with a normal sized scope. Image resolution.You don't need resolution for detection and early warning, though.

I don't know if Hubble can even detect long enough wavelengths to spot the infrared emissions of a spacecraft, but if it can detect those wavelengths at all it can see any spacecraft in the solar system. It may not be able to tell you the spacecraft's size or shape, but it can alert you to its presence.

Of course, Hubble does have a narrow field of view. But it's entirely psosible to build an infrared telescope designed to pan rapidly across the sky scanning for IR sources. Since the distant IR sources (stars) are more or less fixed and have specific, very hot emission profiles, they can easily be filtered out of the background noise.

For fire control you need resolution, which is why combat ranges in space are much shorter than detection ranges. It's easy to detect things in space because space is even emptier than it is big, so to speak.

[Avilan the Grey]

I like this setting.

I would find it more interesting if any other religion (maybe a new religion?) was the dominant one however. Just because.

Also I would agree that "a significant part of the galaxy" is maybe a little too big. It sounds cool, but with the level of tech you describe it does not sound plausible to me. Dominating 10% of the galaxy would still be enough to cover more planets than you'll ever need to invent...

[latwPIAT]

Planets, eh?

How planetal orbit going to work? You said you wanted to focus on planet-borne combat, which is right. Land forces, infantry in particular, is the alpha and omega of combat. They can capture enemy shipyards, take down anti-space weapons, fight off guerrilas and the alike.

In order to land forces, you need some form of drop ship. Drop ships would either be controlled-crash-landing-style ships that could only take you down, which is downright suicidal if your forces aren't strong enough, because they will be unable to retreat. If they are cappable of leaving the planet's surface, they would be really valuable, because leaving a planet's gravity field is extremely expensive in terms of fuel.

Which brings us to the next point: How easy is it to land? Since any and all forms of Stealth will be out of the picture, you'd probably have to fight your way in/out. How do you do that? Do you enter orbit with a battleship and use it to cover the drop ship? Do you nuke the atmosphere and slip through a hole in their defences? How cappable are ground-to-orbit weapons?

Also, you said you wanted cities to have shields to protect themselves from attacks, neccessitating ground forces. How can the ground forces pound the city more than a battleship can? If we say our battleships carpet bomb the shield once every 24 hours (polar orbit) or about 3-6 hours every day (Molyina orbit) how can ground foces do more damage than this? If were talking raw physical power, they'd have to have a lot of high-explosive bombs or even nukes to do continious damage for over 6 hours. It sounds downright unrealistic that a shiled could keep that up. On the other hand, if you say that missile defence installating are in the city, keeping the battleships from attacking because they can't get through/don't have enough weapons to overwhelm the defences. That way, ground forces would be needed to keep take the city, since it can't be attacked by space forces.

My worhtless coinage.

[Emperor Tippy]

Planets, eh?

How planetal orbit going to work? You said you wanted to focus on planet-borne combat, which is right. Land forces, infantry in particular, is the alpha and omega of combat. They can capture enemy shipyards, take down anti-space weapons, fight off guerrilas and the alike.

No, they really aren't. Land forces have already been made irrelevant for true warfare. If you ever see a real war fought by the US you will understand.

Ultimately, the objective of any war is to remove the enemies ability to resist your demands. That is accomplished with the completion of two separate but equally important objectives. The first is to remove the ability of the enemy to resist. This is accomplished by neutralizing their weapons systems and industrial infrastructure. Second, you must remove their belief that they stand a prayer of a chance of resisting you or your demands and replace it with the belief that it is physically impossible for them to resist.

Air power can already take care of the first objective. You simply can not field an army anywhere on the face of the earth that the US could not destroy at will while using only the Air Force and Navy (and not using nukes or other WMD's). The weapons systems exist to flatten entire tank divisions with impunity and no ground based system exists that can hold off said air power. And buildings are even worse off.

The second objective means that you do not want to deploy infantry at all. To stop an insurgency you must make the populace believe that they can't score even minor victories and that none of their actions will ever control or compel a response from you. Soldiers can be killed. IED's, snipers, ambushes, etc. Any committed enemy can kill at least some of your soldiers. And tanks can be destroyed or neutralized (more difficult but still doable). But an insurgency won't take down air power. It's members won't be able to kill your forces.

That's the point that makes orbital control so important and effective. You can effectively ignore the ground forces and just wait for the population to surrender. You don't replace the police or even most of the civilian government. You just tell said government that you want X (where X is whatever you wanted) and let them worry about meeting your demand.

---
If you want to debate this in more detail, IM me (AIM screen name in profile) as it touches pretty close to real world politics.

[hamishspence]

Heinlen would disagree. Air power, useful as it is, simply can fulfil "man on the ground" type jobs. If you have a mixed population, some hostile, some not, the way to deal with it is not to devastate the whole lot.

Similarly for many other issues, where totally destroying the place in order to take control of it unopposed may be an unacceptable price to pay.

Infantry will always be needed, by this line of thinking.

[Emperor Tippy]

Heinlen would disagree. Air power, useful as it is, simply can fulfil "man on the ground" type jobs. If you have a mixed population, some hostile, some not, the way to deal with it is not to devastate the whole lot.
Heinlen died before seeing what current tech can do. Project even a decade out and it's even more pronounced. The US, right now, can keep an entire nation under continuous, 24/7, video surveillance and hit anyone or anything in said nation with a Hellfire missile in under 10 miniutes (and that number is dropping rapidly). And the tech being prototyped and tested right now, and other stuff on the drawing boards for deployment by 2050, will improve that capability to an amazing extent. Missiles that can fly through a specific window and kill everyone in the room while not hurting those outside of the room already exist.

And when you look at some of the stuff that directed energy weapons could do it's even more pronounced. As in boil the brain of a single specific individual from a hundred and fifty miles away with no real chance of missing and no collateral damage.


Similarly for many other issues, where totally destroying the place in order to take control of it unopposed may be an unacceptable price to pay.
You do not need to destroy a place to take control of it. And special forces are different from regular ground forces.


Infantry will always be needed, by this line of thinking.
No. Special forces will always be needed. People who can clear buildings will always be needed. Infantry won't. Outside of Urban Warfare and cave fighting they already aren't really needed.

[hamishspence]

going by the training and equipment, Heinlen's Mobile Infantry Were sort of Special Forces.

Infantry, in this context, means Men on the Ground.
And how are you going to take over any city, Without a certain amount of urban fighting? Which makes up a lot of modern warfare.

[warty goblin]

I would note that all of this is propagated on the theory that air power will remain reasonably safe from ground weapons, something that I am hesitant to take as axiomatic per say. I agree that for the short to medium term, air power is key. Give it a hundred years though, and the possible advent of laser or particle beam weapons and I think things may very well change significantly, for the simple reason that as potent a force projector as an air force is, it also costs an unholy amount to operate.

Once you are able to induce even moderate casualty rates on aircraft, maintaining an air force becomes even more difficult. A F-22 costs $137.5 million to produce, and that doesn't count weapons or operational expenses. If ground based technology capable of scoring even semi-reliable kills on aircraft come into being, I'm hard pressed to see why anybody would keep using them.

[Emperor Tippy]

going by the training and equipment, Heinlen's Mobile Infantry Were sort of Special Forces.
The MI were a combination of lots of different things.


Infantry, in this context, means Men on the Ground.
And how are you going to take over any city, Without a certain amount of urban fighting? Which makes up a lot of modern warfare.
You don't need to take over any city. You just need to convince those already in control of the city to do what you want. And when their choices are "Do what I want or I will just kill you and tell your replacement the same thing" and said leaders have no chance of even inconveniencing you, you will eventually get a leader who will go along.

Ultimately, what are the reasons for going to war?
1) To defend yourself from an enemy
2) To take stuff that someone else has

If you are defending yourself then you really don't need anything that the person you are fighting has. Except, possibly, land to set up forward bases.

If you are trying to take their stuff and can't convince them to just give it too you then it's easier to just kill them all and move in excess population from your own nation or world.

[hamishspence]

Or, maybe, to support an ally dealing with an insurrection, or aid a rebellion against a tyrant you want gone. In both of these cases, the native population will be very annoyed if you threaten to, effectively, slaughter both sides.

There is a continuum between home defense and invading enemies, between All Out War and police actions- a graduation of violence needed. Sometimes orbital bombardment is like punishing a baby by hitting it with an axe- massive overreaction.

[Emperor Tippy]

I would note that all of this is propagated on the theory that air power will remain reasonably safe from ground weapons, something that I am hesitant to take as axiomatic per say. I agree that for the short to medium term, air power is key. Give it a hundred years though, and the possible advent of laser or particle beam weapons and I think things may very well change significantly, for the simple reason that as potent a force projector as an air force is, it also costs an unholy amount to operate.
Maybe. Although I doubt it. For various reasons. And then you get into orbital weapons.


Once you are able to induce even moderate casualty rates on aircraft, maintaining an air force becomes even more difficult. A F-22 costs $137.5 million to produce, and that doesn't count weapons or operational expenses. If ground based technology capable of scoring even semi-reliable kills on aircraft come into being, I'm hard pressed to see why anybody would keep using them.

That's not actually really accurate. The reason that the F-22 costs so much is the relatively small number built.

And you assume that you can even detect the aircraft. Complete invisibility to both radar and visible light is at least theoretically possible. And they are already nearly invisible to IR. And you can't destroy things that you can't target.

[Emperor Tippy]

Or, maybe, to support an ally dealing with an insurrection, or aid a rebellion against a tyrant you want gone. In both of these cases, the native population will be very annoyed if you threaten to, effectively, slaughter both sides.

There is a continuum between home defense and invading enemies, between All Out War and police actions- a graduation of violence needed. Sometimes orbital bombardment is like punishing a baby by hitting it with an axe- massive overreaction.

No, there really isn't.

There is war and there is everything else. Police actions and the like are not war and are not the job of a military. Even though it's what militaries have been mostly used for, for the past 50 years or so it is not their job.

Any reason to use military force fits into either defending yourself against an enemy (not necessarily the group you are using force against) or taking stuff.

[warty goblin]

No, there really isn't.

There is war and there is everything else. Police actions and the like are not war and are not the job of a military. Even though it's what militaries have been mostly used for, for the past 50 years or so it is not their job.

Any reason to use military force fits into either defending yourself against an enemy (not necessarily the group you are using force against) or taking stuff.

So the even though militaries have been used for police actions more than anything else in the recent past, that's not what they are for because they are for something that they don't get used for? That seems like some mightily tenuous logic to me.

[hamishspence]

well, who precisely does come to the aid of a nation torn by civil war, when one side calls for aid and you are obliged by treaty to help (or just a fear of disorder)? last I checked, it wasn't the national guard.

There are graduations between "Total unrestricted warfare" and peace.

To paraphrase Heinlen

"maybe someday some genius will devise a weapon that can go down a hole, pick out the opposition, and force it to surrender or die- without killing that gang of your own people they're got imprisoned down there. I wouldn't know; I'm not a genius."

[Emperor Tippy]

So the even though militaries have been used for police actions more than anything else in the recent past, that's not what they are for because they are for something that they don't get used for? That seems like some mightily tenuous logic to me.

Their job is to keep their nation secure against it's enemies. Police actions and the like don't do that, historically.


well, who precisely does come to the aid of a nation torn by civil war, when one side calls for aid and you are obliged by treaty to help (or just a fear of disorder)? last I checked, it wasn't the national guard.
Why do you have the treaty? Because it makes you more secure (or at least did when you signed it). Why do you choose to honor the treaty? Because doing so makes you more secure than not honoring it does.

And an outside power intervening in a civil war is historically a very bad idea. And it's why very few treaties don't specify that the signatories aren't obligated to aid in civil wars or insurrections.


There are graduations between "Total unrestricted warfare" and peace.
Not really. There is war. Meaning that both sides need to not loose if they are to survive. And then there is everything else. Everything else covers all situations where at least one side doesn't need to not loose.

War is one thing and if fought based on one set of principals and with one set of strategies. Everything else is fought under another set.

Ground forces (excluding special forces) don't have a place in war. They can have a place in everything else, but that place is pretty limited.

[hamishspence]

and why are we excluding special forces? What are they, but superbly trained soldiers, with extra training?

when the enemy is on your terrain, same principle applies- you can't exactly blow them away from high altitude when they have prisoners, are inside your own cities, and there are civilians everywhere.

[warty goblin]

and why are we excluding special forces? What are they, but superbly trained soldiers, with extra training?

when the enemy is on your terrain, same principle applies- you can't exactly blow them away from high altitude when they have prisoners, are inside your own cities, and there are civilians everywhere.

That depends entirely on whether or not your name happens to be 'Stalin.'

[hamishspence]

either way- in the case of a medium sized stellar federation/empire, blowing away your own planetary populations every time they get conquered leads quickly to rebellion from the unconquered ones.

[Storm Bringer]

is it possible to invoke Godwin's Law with a stalin reference, rather than a Hilter one?

[hamishspence]

No Idea. hence the focus on the issue- are footsoldiers, of any kind, utterly obsolete, or not, in the Far Future?

[Storm Bringer]

No Idea. hence the focus on the issue- are footsoldiers, of any kind, utterly obsolete, or not, in the Far Future?

Mu. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(negative))

we are speculating on a point in future so far ahead that the tactical particulars are can change to whatever we want them to be.

the question is not 'Are footsoldiers obsolete in the Far Future?', but 'Do we want footsoldiers to be obsolete in the Far Future?'

if so, we have to arugements to show why, if not, we have the counter arguements to show why. we can debate this endlessly, but it really boils down to which we think is 'cooler' or 'more suitable for the setting'.

[hamishspence]

true- but change between, say, bronze age and modern day is immense, and we still have ships, footsoldiers, etc. Tactics and tactical problems may not change all that much.

[warty goblin]

is it possible to invoke Godwin's Law with a stalin reference, rather than a Hilter one?

No, attempting to so will result in your immediate execution for conspiracy against the Motherland. You may however invoke Godwinovitch's Glorious Law of the People's Revolution, because in the end, everything boils down to Comrade Stalin.

[Storm Bringer]

true- but change between, say, bronze age and modern day is immense, and we still have ships, footsoldiers, etc. Tactics and tactical problems may not change all that much.

indeed, but trying to draw valid conclusions about the effectivness of the Spanish Armarda, based on the combat proformance of the Persian fleet at Salamis,is going to go Badly Wrong.

[hamishspence]

true- I was thinking more generalizations- was have had soldiers since time immemorial, we will continue to have soldiers. Holding a conquered country is next to impossible without some form of men on the ground, and "stop rebelling or we'll kill civilians and rebels alike" simply won't work all the time. Someone calls the bluff. Prove that its not a bluff- massive outcries, more rebellions.

[Storm Bringer]

the thing is, you can look at history and see generalizations that have stood for thousands of years change.

For example, until a 150 years ago, the fastest a message could travel was the speed of the man carrying it, be that of the horse he rode or the sailing ship he traveled on. if one was careful to keep one's preperations quiet, you could travel as fast as the messenger and attack himbefore he knew you were coming.


However, since the invention of telegraph and other electical communications means, it now possible to inform someone on the far side of the world about something seconds after it happens. Any plan needs to account for this, which seriously changes the way you go about planning a war, and how you execute it.

[hamishspence]

good point- i was thinking- why do we have Feet on Ground, in wars, of various kinds, and what are the logical consequence of not having feet on ground, or withdrawing them too early?

And, if you claim soldiers are obsolete now what's doing the job they used to do?

[Dervag]

Ultimately, the objective of any war is to remove the enemies ability to resist your demands. That is accomplished with the completion of two separate but equally important objectives. The first is to remove the ability of the enemy to resist. This is accomplished by neutralizing their weapons systems and industrial infrastructure. Second, you must remove their belief that they stand a prayer of a chance of resisting you or your demands and replace it with the belief that it is physically impossible for them to resist.This is a delusion propagated by the modern descendants of the strategic bomber advocates of the Second World War. It isn't as bad an idea now as it was then, but it still isn't very good.

The vast majority of wars in history could not have been "won" in any true sense of the word by using weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear strikes or orbital bombardment. "Victory" depends on more than removing the enemy's ability to resist your demands using organized, armed force, but on creating a favorable postwar environment.

Killing virtually everyone who isn't you doesn't always qualify.
____________

The threat of an annihilating bombardment can win some wars that the bombardment itself could not. And it can prevent wars that might happen. But such a threat is unstable. It only lasts until the enemy prepares a defense or counterattack capable of doing unto you as you threaten to do unto them. The result is not victory, it is mutually assured destruction- a horrible spasm of unstoppable attacks in which both sides lose.
____________

For these reasons, having bombardment power does not make infantry obsolete. It makes infantry obsolete for a specific purpose- destroying things for which destroying them by bombardment is a rational strategy. Killing armored divisions is an example. Taking down guerilla leaders is not.


That's the point that makes orbital control so important and effective. You can effectively ignore the ground forces and just wait for the population to surrender. You don't replace the police or even most of the civilian government. You just tell said government that you want X (where X is whatever you wanted) and let them worry about meeting your demand.This strategy predates the invention of orbital bombardment. Ghengis Khan and his Mongols used it frequently.

When taken to extremes (you occupy orbit and ignore the ground except for making demands), it has drawbacks. Because you have no real presence on the ground, anything that interrupts your control knocks you back to square one. If the Invincible Armada of Ming the Merciless starts blasting its way towards your capital world and you have to withdraw the garrison fleet in orbit over Planet of the Subjugated Civilians, you may well return to find that they've become Fortress World IV while you were away.

This kind of empire works, but it has no internal cohesion. As soon as an outside force capable of disrupting the ruler's ability to launch punitive attacks shows up, everything dissolves into chaos.
____________


Not really. There is war. Meaning that both sides need to not loose if they are to survive. And then there is everything else. Everything else covers all situations where at least one side doesn't need to not loose.If that's so, then "war" is defined so narrowly as to be an almost irrelevant term. You have now correctly analyzed how what you call a "war" will be fought in the future. But it doesn't matter, because what you call a "war" will be a small fraction of future conflicts, just as it was a small fraction of past conflicts.

You've predicted how people will fight wars (if they need to fight the kind of war you call a 'real' war). Which isn't quite as bad as if you had accurately predicted how people would ride unicorns (if they could find a unicorn).

[Storm Bringer]

good point- i was thinking- why do we have Feet on Ground, in wars, of various kinds, and what are the logical consequence of not having feet on ground, or withdrawing them too early?

And, if you claim soldiers are obsolete now what's doing the job they used to do?

I'm not claiming footsoldiers are obsolete. I'm claiming that the nature of conflict in a hyphthetical future war are defined as the nature we want it to be, to suit our personnel viewpoints and bias.

If we felt that PBI vital to the war we'd like to think future war is fought, then we'd adjust the parameters of the future war to insure that we were right and that you'd need footsoldiers to fight that war.

If, however, you felt that guys running around on foot were not what 'The Future' is all about, then you can just as easily adjust the parameters of the future war so that infy are useless and a outmoded arm.

it really is a case of which you think is cooler.

[Avilan the Grey]

No, they really aren't. Land forces have already been made irrelevant for true warfare. If you ever see a real war fought by the US you will understand.

Ultimately, the objective of any war is to remove the enemies ability to resist your demands. That is accomplished with the completion of two separate but equally important objectives. The first is to remove the ability of the enemy to resist. This is accomplished by neutralizing their weapons systems and industrial infrastructure. Second, you must remove their belief that they stand a prayer of a chance of resisting you or your demands and replace it with the belief that it is physically impossible for them to resist.

Air power can already take care of the first objective. You simply can not field an army anywhere on the face of the earth that the US could not destroy at will while using only the Air Force and Navy (and not using nukes or other WMD's). The weapons systems exist to flatten entire tank divisions with impunity and no ground based system exists that can hold off said air power. And buildings are even worse off.

The second objective means that you do not want to deploy infantry at all. To stop an insurgency you must make the populace believe that they can't score even minor victories and that none of their actions will ever control or compel a response from you. Soldiers can be killed. IED's, snipers, ambushes, etc. Any committed enemy can kill at least some of your soldiers. And tanks can be destroyed or neutralized (more difficult but still doable). But an insurgency won't take down air power. It's members won't be able to kill your forces.

That's the point that makes orbital control so important and effective. You can effectively ignore the ground forces and just wait for the population to surrender. You don't replace the police or even most of the civilian government. You just tell said government that you want X (where X is whatever you wanted) and let them worry about meeting your demand.

---
If you want to debate this in more detail, IM me (AIM screen name in profile) as it touches pretty close to real world politics.

I don't think we need to get into "real world politics". I can point out to you how wrong you are anyway :smalltongue:.

Point one: Time and time again all the "fancy" weapons have been proven either far less effective in practical use than in theory and exercises, or just not working as intended. It does not help if the technology is deployed in inefficient ways.

Point two: The tactics you describe above in this and other posts are only practical if you do not care about who you kill; basically they are only truly effective if you are in an all-out war against an enemy that you have no interest, ever, to normalize relations with (like Sovjet Union in the 60ies, perhaps?). To try to win the hearts and minds of people you have firebombed to oblivion does not work that well (usually. Japan might be a special case).

Point three: "24/7 video surveillance" sounds cool, but if the US have this possibility, and it is a valid tactic in real life why isn't it used? Why does the most impressive war machine the world has ever known struggle so, and is spread so thin? Maybe because, again, what you propose does not work in a real world.

Point four: "Police action" does not exist. It is a fallacy. You are either at war, or you do not use your regular military forces in another country. The country you are "policing" definitely views you as an invader at war, not a traffic cop. As have been pointed out above these so called "police actions" are the most common form of war between nations, period. To discount them in your argument and only talk about a type of warfare that (thank God) has not been seen since WWII (and really has only been used in WWII, ever) is not fair, I feel. Not if we claim to argue about relevant scenarios.

Point five: Full scale Country against Country wars are very rare (see point four). Usually it involves rebels / terrorists / freedom fighters / other people who feel they have no choice but to fight. In these cases (a good 95% of all armed conflicts in the world after WWI, my estimate) bombing the ¤&(&(# out of a capital for example to force the hand of the government (who possible has no real power, or might not eve exist at all) is pointless. Your choice is: Ground forces and a long-term engagement, or kill every living being in the country. I have yet to see a resistance movement / terrorists / freedom fighters that ever gives up because of military force. Diplomacy, on the other hand...

Point six: The most important point: Political fallout. Outrage not only among your enemies, but your allies, is a bad thing in a world where you without trade and diplomatic connections have nothing. If you have a resource that is desperately needed (natural gas, oil) and is powerful enough, you can buy loyalty to a large degree, but for countries that don't being the new black sheep in the club is something that they cannot afford.

[hamishspence]

stormbringer, my comments were aimed at tippy, sorry.

You're right about the evolution of warfare- but- is the rate of change of the last two centuries the sort of thing that will continue, or is it more likely, that technology will start running into The Laws of Physics and start slowing down its advancement?

[Avilan the Grey]

stormbringer, my comments were aimed at tippy, sorry.

You're right about the evolution of warfare- but- is the rate of change of the last two centuries the sort of thing that will continue, or is it more likely, that technology will start running into The Laws of Physics and start slowing down its advancement?

My bet is that physics will have it's say; sooner or later there will be a limit to what can be done, built and used. Another problem will probably be lack of resouces. Food, metal etc might have to be prioritized away from the military, or dictatorship will be required (in poor countries, the only countries with a very strong (proportionally) military are those ran by the military, directly or through a figure head).

Another problem is that even though it is easy to come up with new and improved ways of killing people, these ways might not be practical in the most common types of conflicts. wether it's microwave cannons, sound cannons, guided missiles, bombardment from space, genetically coded viruses (that only attacks males, or females, or a specific subset of humanity) etc etc.

[Emperor Tippy]

I don't think we need to get into "real world politics". I can point out to you how wrong you are anyway :smalltongue:.

Point one: Time and time again all the "fancy" weapons have been proven either far less effective in practical use than in theory and exercises, or just not working as intended. It does not help if the technology is deployed in inefficient ways.
And a large number of them have been proven to work.


Point two: The tactics you describe above in this and other posts are only practical if you do not care about who you kill; basically they are only truly effective if you are in an all-out war against an enemy that you have no interest, ever, to normalize relations with (like Sovjet Union in the 60ies, perhaps?). To try to win the hearts and minds of people you have firebombed to oblivion does not work that well (usually. Japan might be a special case).
Actually that's not particuarly accurate. The only occupations that have worked out particuarly well were after wars that were downright brutal. Japan wasn't a special case, it was just an occupation done right. An absolutely brutal and shocking strike that broke the populaces spirit followed by a 20+ year occupation where the occupiers take over the school system and start to indoctrinate the next generation while simultaneously rebuilding the country and showing them the benefits of being a friend.


Point three: "24/7 video surveillance" sounds cool, but if the US have this possibility, and it is a valid tactic in real life why isn't it used? Why does the most impressive war machine the world has ever known struggle so, and is spread so thin? Maybe because, again, what you propose does not work in a real world.
Actually it is being used. And struggling? It's not particuarly. The total number of US dead and wounded is less than the number in peace time that die in training accidents. The US is seen to be "struggling" because a short war was promised when any half way competent person could have told you that an occupation takes decades. If you want to get into more detail about this point IM me.


Point four: "Police action" does not exist. It is a fallacy. You are either at war, or you do not use your regular military forces in another country. The country you are "policing" definitely views you as an invader at war, not a traffic cop. As have been pointed out above these so called "police actions" are the most common form of war between nations, period. To discount them in your argument and only talk about a type of warfare that (thank God) has not been seen since WWII (and really has only been used in WWII, ever) is not fair, I feel. Not if we claim to argue about relevant scenarios.
Actually not really. Police actions (or whatever you want to call them) are when military force is used to occupy a country with no intention of conquering the country, no intention of staying particuarly long, and no particuarly reason to remain if it goes bad. And most wars up until WW2 were very close to total wars in regards to the tactics used. They didn't care overly much about civilians or the enemies rights. They burned cities, ports, and looted shamelessly.


Point five: Full scale Country against Country wars are very rare (see point four). Usually it involves rebels / terrorists / freedom fighters / other people who feel they have no choice but to fight. In these cases (a good 95% of all armed conflicts in the world after WWI, my estimate) bombing the ¤&(&(# out of a capital for example to force the hand of the government (who possible has no real power, or might not eve exist at all) is pointless. Your choice is: Ground forces and a long-term engagement, or kill every living being in the country. I have yet to see a resistance movement / terrorists / freedom fighters that ever gives up because of military force. Diplomacy, on the other hand...
Look at history. Almost every war fought until 1950 was a real war. You are only looking at a very short period of time. And a very unique period of time. If we go until 2050 or so without any major real wars then you may have a point, but only 50 years isn't really relevant. Look at the Pax Romana and the Pax Americana.


Point six: The most important point: Political fallout. Outrage not only among your enemies, but your allies, is a bad thing in a world where you without trade and diplomatic connections have nothing. If you have a resource that is desperately needed (natural gas, oil) and is powerful enough, you can buy loyalty to a large degree, but for countries that don't being the new black sheep in the club is something that they cannot afford.
Again, only a recent point of concern. And whether it lasts is very debatable.

----
The problem is that you are basing you points on a very, very, rare time period in human history. And the odds of this current period lasting particuarly long aren't that great.

[Dervag]

Look at history. Almost every war fought until 1950 was a real war.Not by your standards it wasn't.

It has always been very rare for the loser in a war to face total annihilation as a country. Look at the back-and-forth warfare in Europe during the 1500s, 1600s, and 1700s. A large number of nations were duking it out back and forth across the entire continent. There was a war on somewhere roughly as often as there wasn't. But the only significant power that actually disappeared off the map in all that time was Poland.

It is very rare that a war will have one side powerful and confident enough to to outright annex the other side.

You are too heavily influenced by the World Wars- a very, very, rare time period in human history. Go back to the 19th century and earlier and you see a pattern much like the present one, dotted with occasional wars of annexation.

In most wars, you hit the enemy until they are tired and bloody, but you aren't really trying for absolute destruction. Absolute destruction makes people nervous and puts their backs against the wall, which is when they will start trying to destroy you absolutely. Unless there's a really major disparity of force involved, they have as much chance of annihilating you as you have of annihilating them. And whatever you decided to attack your enemy about probably wasn't worth risking total annihilation.

There are, of course, exceptions. But those exceptions only occur when one side is so confident in its invulnerability that it can afford to make everyone else in the world think they're genocidal bastards.
_______________

Avilan is right that one of the big concerns in war is the postwar environment. Look at Clausewitz if you don't believe me- and he was writing long before the 'modern' era you dismiss as an irrelevant anomaly.

In any era, you start fighting a war for a reason, and you don't want to end up embroiled in endless war because sooner or later someone will get past your guard and do to you what you tried to do to them. You cannot separate the act of violence from the purpose of violence.

So this idea of a war fought with no limits and with unstoppable god-weapons that shatter all who stand against them is a fantasy. It's such an extreme case that it winds up ignoring the reality- which is that fifty years from now, your grandchildren are going to be dealing with the grandchildren of the people you defeated. Unless you want the region to look like the equivalent of the Balkans, with endless blood feuds that force all to war on all, you have to limit what you're willing to do to win the war.

[An Enemy Spy]

Quite a lot of Confederate and Republic territory really is just a blasted wasteland. But when a battle hasn't been fought in a certain area for long, the land can start to take over again.