Subject:
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Re: Combat strategies and tactics in space. Was: Jormungand Carrier Strike Craft
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.space
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Date:
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Tue, 19 Oct 2004 19:42:37 GMT
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Viewed:
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1328 times
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On 14:28 10/19/04, DedmanWalkin wrote
> If you are capable of long distance space travel, then you are capable of some
> sort of FTL travel. FTL travel basically allows the battlefield to be as
> big or
> as small as each side wants it to be. FTL weapons change the name of the
> game as
> the battlefield could be a minimum of 30,000,000m in distance and still have
> near instantaneous impacts. Without FTL weapons, the battles could take place
> wherever the invading faction chooses. The battlefield, in space, will be
> determined by the aggressor not the defender, as it is on Earth. With FTL, the
> invader could blow passed any defenses in between them and their intended
> target.
Unless there were some way to force an invader out of FTL or otherwise
interact with them while they are in FTL. Perhaps FTL does not work within
a distance of a gravity well??
If both sides have FTL weapons, the defender then wants to place a picket
to detect when the invader passes then fire at the expected emergence point.
If both sides have FTL, the attacker still has reason to want to interact
with the picket vice blowing past. If the attacker blows past, he will get
a few minutes or hours of time to attack the target, but then the picket
would be able to close and the attacker would have to deal with the full
defense force and would be surrounded (even more critical to avoid if your
FTL involves charge time or inertia or some other limiting factor).
The attacker would want to attack the outer picket of defenders where the
odds would be significantly in the attacker's favour. Once the outer
pickets were removed, they can move on to the primary target.
(this is all assuming that this is not a hit-and-run guerilla type attack).
> So unless the invading faction chooses to do battle in open space rather
> than around their intended target, open space battles won't occur all too
> often.
> Perhaps if some sort of web to slow down invaders existed then open space
> battles would be more fervent. The best thing to do would be to construct both
> ground-based and orbiting weapon systems to knock out invading space forces.
Without some way to force the invader out of FTL, the invader can simply
ram the planet at FTL speeds (unless your FTL involves some alternate
dimension interaction).
Open space battles can also be possible if the FTL involves a level of
inaccuracy plus a re-charge time. The attacker would want to jump to a
staging ground somewhere outside of the system and then take smaller and
more accurate jumps to launch the attack.
If the defender can detect the initial jump, they could stage an assault on
the disorganized attacking fleet before they can regroup and do the smaller
in system jumps.
> As weapons go, of course this is assuming that shielding does not exist, any
> rapid-fire kinetic weapons that fire projectiles at near-lightspeed are
> far more
> useful. Weapons utilizing heat could easily be negated or weakened by a super
> high-temperature superconductor.
But only for a time. Eventually the superconductor will absorb all the heat
it can and would not be able to radiate it out to space fast enough.
At that point the battle becomes more of hold the fire on the enemy as long
as possible until their shield overheats. Ships able to outmaneuver their
opponents ability to track weapons would become extremely valuable. As
would ECM that would make the enemy's weapons be unable to accurately hit.
Energy beams are always susceptible to just throwing out buckets of sand.
The beam would dissipate on the sand or ice and reduce the damage to the
ship. Also, if you know your enemy's weapon's profile, you can make your
armour partly reflective at that frequency.
Small projectiles will always have a use. Even uncontrollable bullets are
handy if you can pin-point your opponent and they are fast enough relative
to the scale of the battle (ie, closer to c if your battle ranges are big).
/someday I've got to write up the physics behind my .space force.
//then again, I've also got to get back to building my .space force too :-)
--
wubwub
aka stephen f roberts
wildbrick.com - Jain's Guide : Promoting more than just the MOC
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