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My interpretation of space combat.

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Wed, 2014-04-02 04:48

templariomaster templariomaster's picture

My interpretation of space combat.

Ok, so I was reading this http://www.rocketpunk-manifesto.com/2007/08/space-fighters-not.html Which basically says that spacefighters are nosense, and this: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php Which resumes space combat between rockets and lasers. Well but, what about drones? In EP there is plenty access to resources and a pretty reduced humanity to use them. That means, that you can make drones enought cheap for every ship efectively making them an offensive-defensive weapon for everyone. So I thought that the first phase of every space combat should start with combat drones as misiles, these drones would be launched from a railgun to add speed when they're attacking and just thrown out when they're defending. And I thought about them as this: http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2011/10/Drones3_pic-new_drones_01.jpg These drones should have somekind of gun on them. Space ships are fragile because in the future weapons are too much deadly, and even if they dont destroy the enemy ship incoming drones shooting from affar can work as a tactic so the enemy has to destroy the most dangerous ones first. But the idea of a combat dron, is overruning enemy ships defenses, by making them MIRVs http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/photos/080620-F-12... So when they're close enought to the ship they will separate in minor warheads, efectively overruning the enemy ships defenses at "close" range. Of course there would be countermesures, like lasers. But in space lasers arent exactly kill machines, the distances are BIG so every little error added to the firing solution is BIG in space so you have a distance limit where you might hit the enemy or not. And you cant keep your lasers firing continously, they would add heat to the ship at the point of damaging the equipment inside, and heat in space is pretty dangerous. Other drones could be launch to haunt the enemy drones as they come, this is a good idea because your drones can solve the imprecision problem and you obligate the enemy to engage those drones even if that means they have to waste all their fuel in the process. And of course, space hacking. You need to control those drones, so even if your ship close comunications before entering space combat, when the drones are out there you have to open those channels so you can recieve feed from the drones and give orders to them, but if the drones where launched offensively hacking them would just make them a bit useless because to attack the enemy ship they would need an engine powerfull enought to counter their momentum and add to it. In space every gram count and most of their fuel would be for maneuvers, as an EVA, maybe some fuel to add angle of attack for aproach tactics but not much more. And direct combat between ships I agree they would be with lasers, but as I said they will take hours to even take a hit, unless the ships are aproaching each other reducing the error of every laser fire, if we even add relativity to the equation efective space combat can only be at "close" range(so drones would be the first fase) but since we're in space I wouldn't expect that a ship could get enought close to see the other at visual range. Space cannons I reserve them as tools of destruction for slow moving objects. And their projectiles should have some maneuvering ability to reduce error in flight(if lasers aren imprecise kinetic-kill weapons cant be much better), maybe this weapons would be reserved for special ships, with powerful engines. Thats because they would be used at special moments, like attacking a large habitat and they would need a ship that can to counter the 3º law of newton when they shoot so it needs big engines(and in this way lasers and drones are innefective weapons for such targets so habitats can defend themselves) So, this is my interpretation of space combat in EP, which is yours?

Wed, 2014-04-02 12:35

Erulastant Erulastant's picture

Actually, semi-long-range

Actually, semi-long-range laser fire is a perfectly valid tactic. Lasers are light-speed, so there's no opportunity for the target to try to dodge. Diffraction will lessen the energy transfer at longer ranges, but once you are close enough that a shot could do damage, the possibility of taking a laser hit forces your opponent to start moving randomly, wasting fuel. Kinetic weapons usefulness isn't determined by their target's speed. They're determined by the target's acceleration. Depending on angle of attack, speed can have an effect (If you're shooting up their ass, but they're running at 20 KPS, your shot's going to do a lot less. If you're shooting into their face and they're barreling down on you at 20 KPS, they're toast unless they've got some sort of active defense.) Now, kinetic weapons also have much longer range than lasers, because they don't experience diffraction. But at long ranges, the target can see projectiles coming and specifically dodge them. Still, this again forces them to waste fuel. I forsee that most ship to ship combats will come down to who has better lasers. There are just too many ways to deal with drones. For one, the drones will necessarily have shorter range than the ships, so it's easy to pick them off before they get in range. They're also susceptible to hacking or jamming, which will be even more of a problem the closer they get to their target. And you only really need to hack one--Once you've got it, you can pick off most of the rest of the flock. Plus, of course, defensive drone deployments. Lasers, on the other hand, have much fewer countermeasures available, and assuming the two ships have approximately equal fuel reserves and acceleration capabilities, the ship with the better lasers can hold the range open just outside of the max effective range of the weaker lasers. Their opponent will be forced to spend fuel jinking to prevent an easy lock, and when they're out, they're toast. Of course, the other ship will know this, so they will do everything in their power not to get within range of the stronger lasers, which probably just means running away. If you can't retreat, it's most likely because you have to defend something--An injured companion ship, a cargo ship, a hab, or you don't have the accel they do. In the former case, you can just stick your nose at them and charge. They will have to either back off (And your charge is protected) or risk entering your range. In the latter case--The enemy is more maneuverable than you and has longer range--you're fucked. Sorry.

—

You, too, were made by humans. The methods used were just cruder, imprecise. I guess that explains a lot.

Wed, 2014-04-02 18:42

Undocking

I would recommend reading

I would recommend reading this file http://www.aleph.se/EclipsePhase/EP%20naval%20strategy.pdf by Arenamontanus. It is quite extensive and covers EP's space warfare options quite nicely. The main issue with lasers is that they are not very effective if your target is more than a couple thousand kilometres away from you. Mind, they are more useful than particle beams, which disperse way faster than lasers; they can punch right into a ship, instead of singing the surface, like a laser. ANI operated nuke missile swarms and weapon platforms would work wonders beside lancers. And once you fire off a drone, either passive comms or let an ANI control. QE comms completely change the flow of battle over large swatches of void due to no lag.

Wed, 2014-04-02 23:33

Erulastant Erulastant's picture

As I said, the primary

As I said, the primary purpose of long-range laser shots would be to force the opponent to waste delta v on evasion. Once you're in range that a hit [i]could[/i] do damage, your opponent [i]must[/i] start evading, which will both slow their approach (They are spending some of their acceleration sideways relative to you instead of going straight for you) and cause them to use up more fuel, which can be relevant in protracted battles. Since the energy diffuses slower than a particle beam, lasers are preferable to particle beams at long distances. As these will mostly be throwaway shots, lasers are also better than kinetic weapons in a certain range band--The mass requirement for the energy to fire a laser is pretty tiny considering the advancements in batteries and capacitors. (Plus antimatter's always good if you've got it). Missiles or drones are of course still preferable at truly long ranges, especially if either the missiles or local control platforms have QE comms for real-time interfacing with their mother ship (And thus far better penetration of EW.) (I keep forgetting about QE comms. They seem like cheating to me, especially given their gross low cost)

—

You, too, were made by humans. The methods used were just cruder, imprecise. I guess that explains a lot.

Sun, 2014-04-06 00:13

Chernoborg Chernoborg's picture

Having spent a LOT of time

Having spent a LOT of time thinking about the subject, the only thing I can say for certain is that space combat will be INCREDIBLY complicated! Survival depends on how agile your ship is and the range of engagement. At encounter range - about one light second- a ship could evade energy weapons with relatively gentle( 3-5 G) maneuvers. Such evasion wouldn't be deliberate, just continuous movement exceeding the ship's frontal area- assuming minimum aspect profiling. Imagine trying to hit a bullseye that moves around the dartboard with a two second delayed image! No matter what size craft we're talking about maneuvering is going to be a major part of any combat. Either in terms of getting out of the way of incoming debris (if your defenses have done their job) or making the targeting solution so uncertain that DEW fire is too much trouble . A more maneuverable craft can close the distance to the point where less agile ships cannot evade their fire. Of course that means a low mass craft consisting primarily of fuel and weapons - space fighters! EP gets around many of the points against fighters by eliminating the biological pilot for a cyberbrain/ server control system. The baseline fighter is the "strike" variant in my book. Take out the missiles and add fuel and extra ammunition to make the "interceptor" used as initial screen against enemy missiles( "railguns front ,lasers aft!" could be the interceptors mantra) or intelligence assets. Switch out the missiles and railguns for fuel and QE comms and you have a "scout" that would cut the targeting delay in half! What weapon are being used is also a factor. Lasers, particle beams, and railguns deliver loads of energy but are "dumb" in the sense that they can't adjust to changes in target position. Missiles can change course into a target but at cost in complexity, rounds available and price. Flight time becomes a factor at long ranges, consider that New Horizons took nine hours to cross the moon's orbit on its way to Pluto. Big weapons require lots of power so larger ships (Destroyers, Battleships, Dreadnoughts) would have better range on smaller ones( Patrol Craft,Corvettes, Frigates). Protection- I barely call it armor anymore- is about absorbing energy up to a certain point. There's simply too much being thrown at you even at this technological level. Combat would begin days before any actual contact with the deployment of scouts- boosted ahead by mass driver if possible to maximize fuel available at the target. As the combatants approach, they begin regularly shifting positions with budgeted supply of fuel and possibly slowing down via thrust reverser. When target solutions are available shots start getting fired at farthest range the weapons allow. Missiles streak in through a gauntlet of fighter screens and point defenses which seek to render them ballistic and thus easily avoidable . If available large DEWs fire in an effort to saturate the opposing ships potential target zone for a hit before exceeding their radiators dissipation rate . Close range combat is avoided by both sides as effectively suicidal. As the encounter ends,lingering fighters burn their departure fuel back to base ship which must start its own burn to either depart or enter orbit .

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Current Status: Highly Distracted building Gatecrashing systems in Universe Sandbox!

Mon, 2014-04-07 02:20

Teneroth

Something I've thought quite

Something I've thought quite a bit about is the use of fighters in space combat. In most Sci-fi settings it is true that fighters are largely a waste of time, a missile of the same size as the fighter has a longer range, more punch, and is all around more useful. However, there are several things that set EP apart from 'most sci-fi settings' that drastically changes this. First off, there is no energy shields, or deflector shields or whatever. If something strikes the ship it hits the armor, as there is no regenerating energy barrier to protect it. Second, fighters do not need a physical pilot, the use of forks and infomorphs, or even making a fighter that can be used as a morph, will allow vastly greater acceleration of the fighters. It removes the requirement for life-support altogether, meaning more room for fuel and weapons. Finally, antimatter can, and is, regularly used as a fuel or explosive. This brings me to my theory: You do not need a massive missile to destroy a ship, hell 10 grams of antimatter (a paltry amount by EP standard) possesses over 4 megatons of explosive potential. A direct hit from that would destroy the majority of ships in the EP setting, and seriously damage the larger military craft. Even indirect hits can do severe damage from the radiation and EMP generated by a matter-antimatter detonation of that size. A missile required to carry 10 grams (+1kg for containment) can be small, very small. The warhead might be no larger than a water bottle and can be on a missile around the same size as modern air to air missiles. Combine this with EP fabbers and the relative ease of antimatter production and you could easily have dozens, hundreds of these missiles on any given warship. So why fighters? because range. Yes you can launch these missiles from the ship, but put them on a mobile deployment platform and you can fire missiles at a longer range without putting your main ship in danger. Because the fighters a smaller and more robust in design, not needing the complex of maintenance tubes, repair robots and the like, it can sustain a higher acceleration, if lacking the endurance of the mothership. Space battles would devolve into the two ships, or fleets, spending days, weeks even maneuvering and looking for an opening, feinting and retreating, never actually getting close enough to launch fighters. Then eventually they get close enough, either one side catches the other off guard, or makes a mistake, or simple bad luck ensues, leading to a whirlwind of destruction which lasts moments. The battles would be either extremely one sided, with one captain catching the other off guard and getting his fighters in range without the other side realizing it. Or mutually destructive, with both sides vanishing in flashes of antimatter explosions.

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Game & narrative designer in training

Mon, 2014-04-07 11:53

MAD Crab

Personally I'm still not

Personally I'm still not seeing the value of fighters. At best, you'd have missile pods that you can deploy and retrieve. I'm also not convinced that antimatter would be the explosive of choice. Sure, it's compact and has high energy density, but every single containment system on your ship adds to the likelihood of a breach - and unlike the main drive in a courier, you can't pay particular attention to each and every missile you carry. A single warhead going off will of course set off every other warhead on your ship. Nukes on the other hand require so many things to go right that accidental detonation is almost impossible.

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Mon, 2014-04-07 12:03

bibliophile20 bibliophile20's picture

Fighters would really only be

Fighters would really only be best for deploying additional missile defense in depth; instead of dogfights, they're tied into the capital ship's point defense system to act as semi-autonomous nodes that can get different firing angles than the ship's own batteries can manage. Using them as bombers for force projection, as Teneroth postulated, is also a possibility.

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"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -Benjamin Franklin

Mon, 2014-04-07 12:49

MAD Crab

That's an interesting

That's an interesting interpretation. So an EP warship design might be a swarm of drones around a main ship, with the swarm consisting of laser and missile batteries. The swarm can be stretched out to attack or produce greater depth of defenses in a given direction. I still couldn't call these drones fighters, because they can't do the things that we think of fighters doing - dogfighting.

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Mon, 2014-04-07 13:35

#10

bibliophile20 bibliophile20's picture

Well, missile defense has a

Well, missile defense has a specific range of efficacy in which you can try to shoot down incoming missiles. Too far out and minor course corrections by the missile means that you've missed, either with lasers (speed of light delay), with chaff (ballistic, so you need to place it just right), with point-defense kinetic ballistic weapons (basically shooting down the missile with bullets, so the issue with lasers also applies), and counter-missiles with active drives are going to be your best bet, but they're heavy, expensive and finite. Adding disposable defense nodes helps for several reasons; first is the decreased range, meaning that they're in the specific range of efficacy for the defense systems, while the defense nodes themselves are typically not the primary target. They can be targeted, but then they're essentially ablative armor for the mothership. Second point is the target geometry. Missiles will be pointed directly at the target, presenting the minimal cross-section possible. But if they're not pointed directly at defense nodes, then the defense nodes have a wider cross-section to target, as well as (depending on your node emplacement) the chance to make broadside attacks when the missile passes by and is most vulnerable, although nodes emplaced in such a manner would make themselves into higher priority targets. Then there's the option of loading some nodes with QE comms, which cuts your command and control loop response time to just about nil, as well as giving valuable advanced intel for firing solutions; a single stealthed drone (launched ballistically, with radar absorbing materials and an advanced heat sink, loaded with a QE Comm and all of the passive sensors available) would allow the defenders to have an intense advantage, because they can now compensate for the evasive maneuvers of the enemy ship and its missiles in near real-time.

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"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -Benjamin Franklin

Mon, 2014-04-07 22:27

#11

Chernoborg Chernoborg's picture

Honestly, even modern

Honestly, even modern fighters now don't really dogfight anymore http://www.cracked.com/article_20991_5-reasons-flying-fighter-jet-way-cr... and the way things work in space traditional concepts don't really work anyway. When I'm feeling particularly ambitious, I've posited some unlikely systems as drone swarms. Stuff like radiators and large phased array lasers in order to improve survivability and maneuvering tolerances. In the case of the lasers the large panels unfold from the ship ( a literal death blossom!) and could fire while still on the ship's power grid or autonomously with power being beamed over from the core ship. Perhaps that's how warships will operate with the main body of the ship having essential systems that cannot be distributed - reactors,crew spaces, fuel storage, utility craft - covered in a layer of deployable assets- weapons, combat radiators, defensive nodes. These are heavy combat vessels, your destroyers and frigates, there could be others made to engage in different ways. If you have Fighters then a Carrier can't be far behind. A ship with extended mass drivers to give their attack assets a boost toward the target while staying well behind its escort screens. If you wanted to take a habitat, an Assault ship- essentially a mobile docking bay for a small fleet of OTV dropships- would be called for. Regarding antimatter, caution should rule the day. Warheads may have an arming facility by the engineering spaces and the live weapons shuttled quickly to nearby missiles. Then again, people walk around with enough antimatter to blow themselves up all the time without random "cooking off" accidents being commonplace!

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Current Status: Highly Distracted building Gatecrashing systems in Universe Sandbox!

Tue, 2014-04-08 10:50

#12

MAD Crab

Re: Antimatter

Really? Isn't it commented in the core book that a fast courier with an AM drive is often required to stand off from habs, just in case? Who's carrying this stuff around outside of games where an accidental detonation would end the campaign prematurely? Also, my point was that Antimatter doesn't have a safe state. You can contain it, but if anything breaks you go boom. This is in contrast to conventional explosives - which are fairly stable unless you hit them really hard - and nukes, where you're just not going to get a nuclear explosion unless everything goes off in exactly the right manner. "Arming" an AM warhead consists of either putting the containment vessel in the missile (and hence not solving anything), or putting the AM in the containment vessel. The latter solves some problems, but the additional plumbing required kind of freaks me out.

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Tue, 2014-04-08 21:25

#13

Chernoborg Chernoborg's picture

Yep, really!

Everybody who has an emergency farcaster is sporting 10 nanograms of antimatter all the time. And yeah, even that much gets a LOT of attention from the authorities. The stand-off distance is another wise step...I usually imagine the AM courier as an OTV on the front of an antimatter booster it gets as close as is allowed and pops off to finish the trip. For warships there could be an antimatter fueling depot where containment pods are loaded or removed and the ships are then moved around the system via tugs. After all nobody wants to hear that Liberty Station and a fair bit of Ganymede were blown to atoms after one quarter of the space force went up in a chain reaction! The warheads getting loaded in situ and sent to the missiles via ammunition scuttle was to keep the amounts of AM outside the containment facility to a minimum. As for why you'd use antimatter at all,there are a few reasons. Firstly, it provides a small performance bonus over Fusion, this could be as simple as the mass of AM and containment is less than that of the equipment needed to initiate fusion. For weapons, a warhead could be smaller and pack the same punch as a nuke or it could be of equivalent mass and much more powerful. Yes there is a risk, but people will take those risks to get the performance edge they desire.

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Current Status: Highly Distracted building Gatecrashing systems in Universe Sandbox!

Tue, 2014-04-08 22:36

#14

mikeb

Helfort's War

The Helfort's War series by Graham Sharp Paul paints an interesting picture of space combat. Everything takes on a kind of Age of Sail feeling, with ships slowly (relatively) moving in and out of position to broadside each other while minimizing their exposure to enemy fire. First of all, as mentioned above, there are no fighters. All of the ships mentioned follow traditional naval terminology (destroyers, frigates, etc.), and are appropriately huge. Intriguingly, this setting has artificial gravity, but they turn it off (and de-pressurize the ship) before battle to avoid complications from suddenly losing gravity (or pressure). Secondly, given the range of sensors involved, most fights occur from thousands of kilometres away. Lasers are used continuously to cook through armour and eventually cut into the interior. Missile and railgun salvos are much more damaging, but take minutes to reach their targets. This means the direction and spread of the projectiles is based on projections of where the target will probably be (even taking into account the target's own evasive manoeuvres). The author really emphasizes the nerve-racking tension of WAITING for an attack to land (or not). Third, given the distances involved and immense mass of these ships, speed and manoeuvrability feels awfully sluggish. Accelerating thousands of tonnes of mass in any direction is going to take a great deal of force, as will stopping (or changing direction). This means that once a ship is committed to a particular course, it cannot be quickly changed (a ship might find itself drifting right into a cloud of railgun slugs intended to intercept at that very point). Ships are constantly angling to expose an enemy's flank while protecting their own, and predicting an enemy's actions is the surest way to do so. Finally, all of the number-crunching is handled by AI-supercomputers. Captains will often dictate their strategy (or select one offered by the AI) and trust the AI to set speed and headings, calculate firing solutions, etc. This hands-off concept further exacerbates the tensions of waiting to see what will happen. It's very much like a strategic space sim...except for the whole death in defeat thing. For the most part, the crews in this series mostly served as data analysts, damage control, and boarding parties. The captain and the bridge officers brainstormed strategy (as well as coordinated repairs and whatnot), but control of the ship was always filtered through the AI, and feedback as to whether a course of action would work was often minutes in the waiting.

Wed, 2014-04-09 07:54

#15

MAD Crab

The Honor series by David

The Honor series by David Webber does something that has similar results, with gravity manipulation providing powerful side shields for ships that double as their propulsion system. The downside is that you cannot shield the bow and stern without immobilizing yourself. They use nuclear bomb pumped lasers as their main weapons - lasers disperse too quickly to be of much use on their own, and nukes require near hull contact to be useful in a vacuum. Physical projectiles get shredded by the shields and generally aren't much use unless you've got a perfect shot at the bow or stern. It's pretty clear that the authors are going out of their way to recreate old school naval combat. (As far as the Honor series goes, the author admitted he was trying to do "Horatio Hornblower in Space") Actually, the bomb pumped lasers are not a bad fit for EP. The problems of getting a solid hit with the nuke still stand, and lasers always will suffer dispersal/aim problems.

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Wed, 2014-04-09 13:33

#16

Erulastant Erulastant's picture

Bomb-pumped lasers are just a

Bomb-pumped lasers are just a good idea. The peculiarities of the Honorverse impeller wedge primarily influence how ships will position themselves relative to each other, encouraging broadside-to-broadside combat reminiscent of wet-navy engagements (Since you can shield your broadside but not your bow or stern, and can pack way more missile tubes and fire control into the broadside). They don't actually have much influence on the weapon systems used. Of course, honorverse allows FTL travel (via hyperspace) and limited FTL sensors, but no FTL comms (Until the later books, and even then it's really bulky, so no fitting it on a missile or drone.), which is quite different from EP which has FTL comms but no FTL sensors or travel. So the strategic doctrine is going to be pretty different. (For those who have read honorverse, think about what happened when Apollo was introduced. Pretty much that.)

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You, too, were made by humans. The methods used were just cruder, imprecise. I guess that explains a lot.

Fri, 2014-04-11 19:12

#17

Chernoborg Chernoborg's picture

Although ship to ship combat

Although ship to ship combat is not a big part of its story the Forever War has a good take on space combat. I especially like the observation that when it started ships were spidery and delicate and as time marched on the ships became compact and able to perform brutally high G maneuvers. The preparations to deal with such G loads for the crews are dealt with, as are the consequences of a failure of such. It's pretty much how I'd have any Jovian ships keep competitive vs. synthmorph or infomorph crewed ships. The only difference being the crew could jam onboard bots to keep active during battle.

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Current Status: Highly Distracted building Gatecrashing systems in Universe Sandbox!