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Space Combat in the Human Sphere

Discussion in 'Access Guide to the Human Sphere' started by Shiwen, May 31, 2018.

  1. Shiwen

    Shiwen Commissar, Yu Jing Political Work Department

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    Rather presumptuous of me, but this is a topic I am very interested in seeing explored, and it is currently unfolding in a thread where it is a smidge off-topic, so I'm hoping to reposition.

    We've got some canonical information about spacefights and space doctrines, which can tell us a lot... militaries aren't always 100% correct in their planning, but these doctrines have been tested VS. the other Sphere powers and the Combined Army, if they weren't working they'd be abandoned. That lets us know, without needing to know any specifics of technology or engineering, WHAT technology can do, since if a technology would invalidate a functioning doctrine the doctrine wins... if that technology existed in Infinity, the doctrine wouldnt, and the doctrine does so for some reason that tech or that application of basic physics HAS to be ineffective.

    What are the doctrines? We can source them from the RPG core book: PanOceania uses mass numbers of small stealthed platforms. Yu Jing uses a small number of large heavily-armed platforms. Ariadna fills their system with as many railguns as possible.

    The doctrines of PanO and Ariadna tell us a lot just due to their mass numbers... if a single shot was a threat, you wouldn't need to build very many stations, the reality that they go for massive numbers requires there to be some sort of countermeasure that can stop a single railgun round, or stealthed high-tech beam weapon, or what have you... the large numbers are about overwhelming that defensive technology, but the counter proves the rule, and whatever technology it is, it is hard to imagine it doesn't also cover shooting down a suicide freighter or asteroid headed planetward.

    Yu Jing doctrine is stranger, because it is hard to imagine putting all your guns at a single point in space and having that survive, wouldn't the enemy just hit it, knock it out, done? But this is the doctrine, which has been tested in war and in the aftermath NOT subjected to a massive reform (and we definitively know that Yu Jing analyzes performance and institutes sweeping revolutionary changes to doctrines found wanting). To me this means that the level of point defense/interception technology in the Human Sphere needs to be extremely high... the scenario is a hundred PanO guns at different positions firing on a hundred Yu Jing guns mounted on one or two positions, and Yu Jing sees this and thinks 'yes, this is not a disadvantage, this is a scenario we can win', with that assessment a rational not delusional one.
     
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  2. Fyeya

    Fyeya Yakitori over a light flamethrower

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    I think the Dropfleet Commander universes logic seems to cross-pollinate fairly well here - there is no reason to think ships don't have the mobility and point defense to stop long range shots or avoid them outright, meaning fighting has to happen at closer ranges. This would then imply defenses are sturdy enough that ships doing so aren't destroyed in a single blow, likely due to either a combination of defensive weapons to break up projectiles, or some form of magnetic/gravitic shielding to redirect or deflect attacks, or perhaps some sort of active armoring, perhaps an energized teseum which might have abnormal ablative properties.

    Which comes back to the YJ model seeming to imply they are willing to bet on their larger ships holding out long enough to thin the swarm of Pan-O craft, giving them the advantage in a protracted engagement. Or perhaps they believe their ships will win on the alpha strike.

    As for Pan-O, given how they approach TAGs, using numerous small ships, possibly automated in part or in whole, to avoid risking larger crews being wiped out by lucky shots.
     
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  3. Shiwen

    Shiwen Commissar, Yu Jing Political Work Department

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    I think that maps well onto the engagements presented in Uprising... no distances are mentioned, of course, but to me they definitely read like closer-ranged encounters. I can't recall the battle, but there is also the NeoColonial War clash where the Yu Jing station takes out 60% of the PanO fleet in a suicide self-destruct rather than surrender, presumably that means a lot of the attacking PanOceanian ships were in close proximity to the station.
     
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  4. AdmiralJCJF

    AdmiralJCJF Heart of the Hyperpower

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    Well, we know a fair bit about the defensive capabilities of Infinity starships as well:

    [​IMG]

    Most vessels also carry a range of point-defence weapons. These are typically a mixture of rapid-firing cannons and missile launchers with ranges of less than a kilometre used to defeat nearby threats, such as missiles and fighters. A mixture of explosions, clouds of shrapnel, E/M bursts, and Infowar countermeasures (clouds of deflectors and signal jammers) disrupt incoming attacks and minimise what can reach the vessel itself.

    The best defence against all this firepower is not being hit in the first place. The most manoeuvrable vessels are the most difficult targets, able to evade enemy attacks at longer ranges. However, the heavier the armament and armour of a vessel, the greater its mass, which in turn makes the vessel less manoeuvrable as it struggles against its own inertia. Small vessels can be nimble and agile, but lack significant firepower, while the heavy-hitters of space combat cannot evade with such ease.

    As vessels grow larger, they rely more upon armour to protect them. Teseum-laced or Teseum-plated hulls are the standard across the Human Sphere, allowing the greatest resilience at the lowest mass. Even light civilian vessels have a degree of armoured protection to help protect against highspeed impacts from debris, micro-meteors, and similar hazards.

    Vessels also maintain a magnetic field generated by a lattice of apollonium filaments embedded in the hull’s outer plating which captures and diverts ordinary micro-debris. Larger warships can amplify this field to deflect larger, denser projectiles. This can only be done for a few seconds at a time, due to power consumption, heat generation, risk of damage to the filament mesh, and interference with the vessel’s other systems.
     
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  5. AdmiralJCJF

    AdmiralJCJF Heart of the Hyperpower

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    We know a fair bit about engagement ranges from the RPG too:

    When they do occur, space battles are short-ranged, brutal, quick, and localised around locations of importance like planetary orbits, Vila Boosters, and other key infrastructure. While the heaviest vessels can engage enemies effectively from thousands of kilometres away, smaller warships are often too manoeuvrable to hit at such ranges. Smaller vessels, with shorter ranges and more agility, close to distances of only a few kilometres, bringing maximum firepower before withdrawing to safety. The inability of a vessel to meaningfully decelerate during an attack run means that firing windows are brief and do not allow for mistakes.

    While all this is going on, vessels are generating heat. In the cold of space and the fury of battle, a warship’s heat cannot be dispersed quickly, threatening vessel systems and the lives of the crew. This means vessels must make their attacks as quickly as possible, for a prolonged battle is unsustainable, and even the most capable warship must withdraw and cool down. A key element of warship design is heat management, which translates directly into endurance.

    [​IMG]
     
  6. toaster

    toaster Modelling Madman

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    So to play it out what would we be looking at? I'm thinking Full Thrust using the optional vector movement rules, k-Guns, sub-munition packs and maybe salvo missiles, give CA grasers to represent their tech advantage. Possibly need to crop weapon ranges a bit to really get that hit and run feel.

    Robert
     
  7. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    I need to rant about stealth in space. There ain't none. You can detect the International Space Station from the orbit of Mars on thermal. You can detect the Space Shuttle's OMS burns from about the orbit of Jupiter. Not the re-entry burn, that's detectable from more like the orbit of Saturn. I'm talking orbital-correction nudges.

    You'd be able to detect a running power reactor from probably the orbit of Pluto.

    Why? Because the ISS is about 300K (Kelvins, a measure of temperature that starts at absolute zero), and the background radiation in the plane of the ecliptic (where all the planets orbit) is 50K. If you were somehow looking at an angle that wasn't in the ecliptic, your background temps are 5K. A power reactor is probably 1600K, and those OMS burns are ~550K.

    I've used a thermal imager before, and the cheapass ones the Navy uses for firefighting can clearly show facial features due to temperature differences of a fraction of a degree.

    Picking up a 250+K temperature difference is easy. Particularly when the energy is measured in megawatts.

    And this doesn't even get to the obscene amounts of energy in an actively thrusting drive. Everyone's favorite shitty little Martian ship, the Rocinante, has an estimated drive power of 15 terawatts. No, I did not stutter. This assumes a total wet mass of 1500 tons, when 1000 tons of that is reaction mass. You could pick up 15 terawatts from another star system.


    =====

    Describing weapons with "range" in space is a bit of a misnomer. After all, if you shoot that 20mm Phalanx gun at someone and miss, someone, somewhere will run into that shell unless it has an explosive charge to blast it into dust.

    And even sand or kitty litter will do a hell of a lot of damage at spaceship speeds.

    I posted it in the other thread, that a ship continuously accelerating at 1/100 gee (which is technically possible now, without a Vila Booster) from Earth to Mars, will have a midpoint velocity of 185km/s. That's for a 30-day trip to Mars. I'm going to assume that the Vila Boosters (picture the rings in Cowboy Bebop or the Relays from Mass Effect) give a better acceleration than that, but not crazy. Something that averages to 1/10 gee acceleration will get you to Mars in 12 days and gives you a midpoint velocity of ~560km/s. If you could somehow average 1 gee, Earth to Mars is about 4 days, and gives you a midpoint velocity of ~1,750km/s.

    Damn, I really wish my other computer wasn't dead, I had a whole spreadsheet of tables for things like travel times and targeting ranges.

    Now, back to weapons. http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php

    One analogy I really like is a policeman armed with a pistol, a shotgun, and a dog. The pistol corresponds to the laser in space combat, you can't dodge it but it can miss. The shotgun is like the kinetics, it's more likely to hit but with potentially less damage. The dog is the guided missile, it will chase you down until you shoot it (point defenses).

    For a projectile weapon, whether railgun or chemical-burner, your effective range for the weapon is likely to be whenever the projectile dispersion circle is equal to the smallest aspect of whatever you're shooting at. Because you don't want any projectiles to miss and hit something beyond your target if you can avoid it.

    For rifle shooters, this dispersion is described in minutes of angle ("MOA", 1/60 of a degree, roughly 1" per 100 yards) or in mils (milliradians, exactly 1m per 1000m). There are ~3.44 MOA per mil. Mils are much easier to work with at long ranges, so we're going to continue this discussion in mils.

    The Phalanx gun has a dispersion of 8 mils or so. This is honestly pretty crappy by rifle standards, but you actually want some dispersion for an AA weapon to help with the 'shotgun' effect. The big GAU8 that the A-10 carries is particularly accurate for a gatling weapon, it has a dispersion of 4 mils. So for a target 8m in diameter like the Dolly Dagger, the Phalanx CIWS could engage it at 1000m, but the GAU8 Goalkeeper could engage it at 2000m. Most modern antiship missiles are between 30 and 60cm in diameter, so modern guns are going to be engaging them at ~40 to 160m. That's just a bit too close for comfort for explosively-formed projectiles or nukes, nevermind nuclear shaped charges or bomb-pumped x-ray lasers.

    So your kinetic PD guns need better accuracy, down in the bolt-action rifle range of less than 1 mil. Actually, really good bolt-action rifles can have dispersion down in the 1/10 mil range, but that's firing a single shot at a time. Rapid fire gets into barrel oscillations, which enlarges your dispersion. But let's say 1 mil dispersion for rapid fire. Now your PD kinetics can hit those 30cm diameter incoming targets at 300m, which should be good standoff for even nukes. Technically, they could even hit another PD gun shot at 20-30m!

    I'd guess that the big spinal mounted railguns are down in the 1/10 mil dispersion category, so they could hit a 30m smallest-aspect target like a warship at ~300km. Ouch.

    Note that all this is without guided projectiles.

    Guided projectiles in the atmosphere are easy, they use fins and dump energy into the atmosphere to turn. Guided projectiles in space get complex. They need relatively powerful thrusters and sensors that will survive to get close. There's also a certain minimum size involved for guided projectiles, too, and that's ~50mm diameter, which probably eliminates our PD guns. Assuming that we can get the same improvement in accuracy in space that we do in atmosphere, we're talking about a 10x increase in can't-miss range. Or better. But 10x is probably the most reasonable guesstimate.


    For lasers, absolutely needing to hit the target is less critical, since they lose power with distance. This makes stray shots less dangerous for most lasers (with an exception below). But lasers are far, far more accurate than an unguided kinetic. This equation is a bit more complex, because a laser beam spreads over distance. The formula subtracts half the beam diameter from the pointing dispersion. You want the shortest possible wavelength (highest frequency) for your lasers because they spread as a function of wavelength. So, IR lasers bad, Green lasers 3x better, UV lasers are about 3x better than green. Higher than that won't penetrate atmosphere and are a pain in the ass to point in the right direction. The bigger your targeting/emitter mirror, the better, but it's a linear function of the mirror radius. 2m mirror is twice as good as a 1m mirror.

    It's been a really long time since I did the math, but I remember something like 180km can't-miss ranges for deep IR lasers and 3000km for extreme UV. For a 1m diameter target and a 1m diameter emitter mirror.

    If you get into X-ray lasers, well, those are ravening death-beams of stupendous range, even with a 1m emitter mirror and a wimpy 10megawatts of beam power. I'm talking "carve your ship like a ham" at more than a lightsecond. We could technically make such a weapon now in the real world, the only problem would be the x-ray source. Free-electron lasers can technically do it, but the particle accelerator would need to be over 1km in diameter. That's a bit too big for anything but maybe a Circular.

    But I'm going to guess that most navies don't use x-ray lasers due to the risk of hitting someone way outside the battle area. Light-minutes (plural) outside the battle area. They'd still be dangerous at a light-hour due to radiation. The beam would be about 18m in diameter at said light-hour, but 10 megawatts is a lot of ionizing radiation and would likely kill anything it hit.


    Missiles will be relatively complex things, as they're basically a spaceship drive and sensors that you're planning on throwing away.
     
  8. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    Full Thrust is the easy way. Squadron Strike if you want to really go full 3d.

    Add submunition packs or More Thrust missiles, too. Needle missiles would be laser heads. Probably beam weapons as dual-purpose mounts.
     
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  9. xagroth

    xagroth Mournful Echo

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    I vote "misdirection is key" here: while detecting a ship is easy, that same ship throwing a module with just gas props to adjust course (and compensating for the loss of speed that comes from launching something), with said module filled with sleeping agents, with materials that absorb all known energies used to detect stuff in space (and turning that heat into energy, venting the excess with a bunch of radiators in the shape of a rope, trailing behind and hide by the module itself from observation on the front) could be possible.
    That means slow travel, though, and that whoever is inside the module will be in a suspended state of life... the Shasvastii do that all the time, incidentally, with their "egg deployment" as we can see on Hasht's fluff history (at least, on the old one: he traveled a lot inside an egg, as a disembodied mind training non-stop in a VR space).

    In battle, I'd say "stealth" is more "let's convince the smart projectiles the enemy throws that we are not their target/we are allies" than "let's not be detected by the enemy".

    I mentioned before that I assume space weapons do have a "range", even if it's a programmable one. In this case, maybe a mobile point (instead of "hollow point") and an explosive charge, if the mobile point does not move, it acts like a "space antiship bullet" that explodes on impact, but if it does not explode, after a time the point moves, the explosive detonates and the explosion stops the debris of the projectile as much as possible while turning the other part into dust (that is well within hull tolerances of human spaceships).

    A usual piece of gear in Star Trek is the Deflector, to deflect precisely those. On a Hard SciFi setting like the Honorverse (Honor Harrington collection, by David Weber) the ships just have heavily armored prow (the front end,, in case I'm using the wrong name) and the bits that go there (sensors and the like), but have armored hulls aswell, since the biggest hits are head-to-head.

    A question should be made about those rings, regarding more details: are they catapults? Or acceleration/deceleration rings installed where the ship has little to no control on speed or direction?
    In any case, against kamikaze attacks I would use two deterrents: first, a no-nonsense policy in which planet-busting is a career with a worst than hell retirement plan (the would-be terrorists would be dealt in so harsher manners even a Morat would have nightmares... Cubes allow for really cruel "afterlife" care packages). Second, really strict "no fly zones" and "speed limits", coupled with some active sensors in a depth deployment net, should allow for a really safe control (firs warning: stop. Second warning: engines blown off, tugs sent to change course forcibly).
    The Expanse has a really good system in place, shown in the past seasons to reorient the Naboo (the "generational ship" made for the Mormons that they sent against Ceres), and in this latest season (3rd) to kill its momentum and reorient it (the tugs are little more than cushioned missiles that gently touch the target hull, then engage as some sort of external thrusters... they use thousands at once).

    Actually, I thing hitting a nuclear bomb and made it to detonate prematurely or in a misaligned state means a much lesser yield, to which we need to add Space's lack of transmission medium for the concussive force (depth charges are greatly effective because water is a medium that transmits a lot of the concussive force, those same charges in space would have an effective range so crappy, you might need to touch the target to damage it at all).
    The real damage a nuke would do would be the irradiation of the hull, but I'd bet that if nukes are being used in space warfare, there are a good water deposit sandwiched between two layers of hull armor (that also serves to disperse lasers, if they are used, and flash-freeze means that you get some defense even if the laser penetrates, plus you can get some weak seal on the hole with luck).

    I'd suggest you to have a look at the Honorverse novels, while the first books have "basic" space warfare (missiles are kinda useless, since they are just nukes, and they use the ship's Lasers and Grasers to hit the enemy, at light-minutes distance! It's an Horatio Hornblower homage, however), the later books advance heavily the missiles: while they, indeed, are "small ships" (sensors and engines) with a kamikaze function, some are nukes (wide surface damage) and others are X-Lasers (using a nuke explosion with some focusing systems to channel all the rays they can in the enemy's direction). There are even schematics on the books, but everything starts with the "futuretech" they use for space travel (an engine that generates two heavy gravitational wedges to impulse the ship, so they might be using gravitational tech to focus the explosion, I don't remember atm).

    As for how space combat works in Infinity, I doubt Aleph bothers with piloted ships at all, meaning great G resistance and maneuvering ability, extra acceleration and deceleration, and probably deploying ancillary systems if she goes for maximum efficiency: a cargo ship that throws out pods with weapons, sensors and the like, that use the main momentum and maneuvering thrusters to change position during battle, and then being recovered by the main ship (the "cargo ship") for further deployments.
    Or they might go for a Star Trek feel, with battles at distances the captains can spit to each other (the Star Trek Online MMORPG sets maximum distance to be 10Km... oh my! XD), in which case it's just a "rule of cool" kinda stuff.

    For the RPG, if people is interested, at this moment I would use precisely Star Trek's rules for starships, since at least is the same gaming system /shrug.
     
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  10. Mahtamori

    Mahtamori Well-Known Member

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    Unless you get close to relativistic speeds, at which point you'd need look outs several light-hours that can send an accurate reading via faster-than-light comms to defence stations. Even then, calculating exact trajectories is a bit difficult.

    I think Alastair Reynolds wrote a short story (Science Fiction rather than Science Fantasy, the latter nearly always being the case) where humanity had devolved into a mono-gender race (because female anatomy could take acceleration better and any tiny advantage in dogfights was worth bio-engineering the entire race for) hiding in tiny military bases among asteroid fields, where if an enemy base was found you'd blow a few hundred relativistic railguns (because a railgun is single-shot, then you need to replace the rail) in their direction and hope one of them graces the target. As was noted, something travelling at about 0.8x speed of light or more was basically impossible to detect if you're in the wrong 180 degree arc.
     
  11. chromedog

    chromedog Less than significant minion

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    There may be a language unfamiliarity thing at work, but it's the Nauvoo not the Naboo (Naboo was the gungan planet that should have been blown up by the first death star as an example in SW). Mormons did get a bit annoyed, but they don't remain an issue for long.

    They also used construction drones (manned and remote op) AND remote engine packages, not just missiles to catch it, flip it and slow it down, and then did the refit on the burn (it plays a large part in books 3+). The belt sent a shipbuilding refit FLEET to catch the nauvoo. Most of which had been used to build it in the first place.
     
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  12. Shiwen

    Shiwen Commissar, Yu Jing Political Work Department

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    We've got some examples of space combat in Infinity, particularly in Outrage and then in Uprising, which might tell us a bit about how space combat plays out in practice.

    Dagger in the Heart of Bayram Caravanserai
    Combatants: Dolly Dagger (modified vessel used for clandestine Hexahedron operations) vs. a station (armament 14 missile turrets), 3 fighter drone REMs.
    Result: Station damaged but not destroyed, 3 REMs destroyed.

    Outrage spoliers to follow in a breakdown of the engagement.
    1) Attacker infiltrates close to target alonside legitimate commercial traffic
    2) Attacker launches Repeater to begin hacking attack.
    3) Attacker opens fire.
    4) REM drones launched against attacker.
    4) Attacker assumes control of station missile turrets.
    5) Attacker uses missile turrets against station.
    6) Attacker uses combination of superior maneuver and heavier armament to destroy 3 REMs
    7) Attacker inflicts further damage to station. It is not destroyed, but its destruction was not the intended objective.

    Now, this was definitely an exceptional engagement with an attacking crew and vessel likely well above the norm, but it does give us some material to work with in terms of how a space combat might play out. While you could say the hacking attempt was wholly exceptional, this is Infinity, hacking is probably ubiquitous. In principle military spacecraft ought isolate their networks, but so should TAGs, so should Heavy Infantry, and yet they are hacked nonetheless, I'd hold this to be just as true for spacecraft. If weapons can be hacked, sensors can be hacked, and thats probably where a whole bunch of 'stealth' comes from, doesn't matter if you're emitting heat up the wazoo if their readings are unreliable and they cant sort the gibberish or distinguish your heat sig from ten false ones. Likewise, while slugs and rocks arent affected, long-ranged missiles are weakened because the longer the time to target, the greater risk they get turned around.

    Likewise, having a flight of REM drones seems like it would be a common thing. They didn't seem very effective in Outrage, but given what they were facing they probably arent anywhere near as terrible as they look, I can imagine them being useful to deter pirates in a repurposed freighter or intercept shuttles with boarding parties. The one thing we didn't see is the infrastructure for supporting them, do they require a large capital ship or station or is it small enough you could have freighters with a couple drones mag-clamped to the hull that detach in the event of an attack?

    Operation Yama's Fury
    Combatants: PanO Attack Fleet Amphisbaena vs. StateEmpire Haigui-9 Orbital
    Result: Defeat of Yu Jing station, which chose self-destruct rather than surrender. Blast and debris from the self-destruct destroy 63% of the Aphisbaena fleet.

    Blockade of Kinkakuji
    Combatants: 'a ring of StateEmpire ships' vs. a station, tactical deployment and assault ship Yuushi, several 'hidden' freighters.
    Result: Direct combat is prevented by station presence in a commercial zone, where such fighting is banned by O-12, neither side breaks this regulation. Yuushi remains contained within the Yu Jing ring, but its crew and several freighters escape the blockade for operations elsewhere in the system.

    Attack on Fuki Base
    Combatants: 'a small group of StateEmpire light torpedo boats' vs. a repurposed freighter and an armoured freighter.
    Result: StateEmpire forces repelled, armoured freighter destroyed.

    First Battle of Kibo Station
    Combatants: An Imperial Service patrol ship vs a station.
    Result: Surrender of the station after light bombardment by naval artillery.

    Second Battle of Kibo Station
    Combatants: An Imperial Service patrol ship vs a light repurposed freighter.
    Result: Imperial Service ship destroyed.

    Attack on Tsukuba Station
    Combatants: 'a small group of StateEmpire light torpedo boats' vs. a station, a repurposed freighter and an armoured freighter.
    Result: StateEmpire forces repelled, no vessels reported lost.

    Attack on Supankoru Base
    Combatants: A StateEmpire light torpedo boat vs. a station, a freighter.
    Result: Station taken by boarding action, freighter completely destroyed.

    Battle of Yamashita-1
    Combatants: 'several Imperial Service ships' vs. a small station.
    Result: Station boarded and captured.

    Human Edge Sweep
    Combatants: StateEmpire Armada forces in Human Edge vs Japanese shipping in Human Edge including at least three corvettes.
    Result: An operation seemingly consisting of several separate engagements. Four Japanese ships lost, three victories scored by Japanese forces (presumably damaging or destroying Yu Jing vessels).



    The common tread across these engagements seems to be how limited they are. There are no Star Wars/40k fleet battles of hundreds of ships, engagements seem to take place between only a couple of vessels on either side, and losing three or four ships is a severe blow.
     
    #12 Shiwen, Jun 1, 2018
    Last edited: Jun 2, 2018
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  13. AdmiralJCJF

    AdmiralJCJF Heart of the Hyperpower

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    On scale of engagement, and significance of losses, as well as engagement ranges we are told:

    While a staple of fiction, the cultures of the Human Sphere try to avoid fleet battles where possible, in part because they are extremely costly in terms of lives, materiel, and scarce resources. Fleets posture and skirmish, relying on displays of force to dissuade would-be enemies rather than engaging in battle directly. However, battles have become more and more common with the encroachment of the Combined Army, who seem not to have the same qualms about expense.

    When they do occur, space battles are short-ranged, brutal, quick, and localised around locations of importance like planetary orbits, Vila Boosters, and other key infrastructure. While the heaviest vessels can engage enemies effectively from thousands of kilometres away, smaller warships are often too manoeuvrable to hit at such ranges. Smaller vessels, with shorter ranges and more agility, close to distances of only a few kilometres, bringing maximum firepower before withdrawing to safety.

    [​IMG]
     
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  14. Shiwen

    Shiwen Commissar, Yu Jing Political Work Department

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    Proper self-criticism, while I knew space combat in Infinity was at smaller scales, I'd let my view of it get coloured by apparently-incorrect preconceptions... I'd thought that they were describing space combat engagements as essentially battles of Infinity the Game but in space... small numbers of 10-14 ships, mostly small patrol craft/torpedo boats (LI/MI) and frigates (HI) with an occasional larger cruiser (TAG), short range and intense (three turns on a 4'x4' tabletop). At one point, in designing a narrative campaign that would include space rules, I'd looked at creating an Infinity-inspired ruleset and when wondering at how to ensure balance so it was fair my conclusion had been it would be easiest to let CB do all the work and just refluff a game of regular Infinity with ship models instead of ground-troop miniatures, asteroids and dust clouds instead of buildings, comm-satellites instead of antennae/consoles. When I eventually have to go back to it, if each side has a list of three ships not ten, thats a whole different ballgame and demands more work than just changing the nameplates.

    Trying to draw lessons from the examples of actual engagements, we can see that in general ships beat stations (sensible, stations are limited in ability to maneuver), small warships beat freighters, small warships facing freighters that have been modified for combat are much more evenly matched, and blockades are effective vs larger vessels but permeable to smaller ones.
     
  15. xagroth

    xagroth Mournful Echo

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    I know the ship's use beyond... here... ;). As for the drones/engine packs: those are missiles without exploding heads, in the end XD

    That one is totally "Heroes Vs Mooks"... and at a point where the comic had lost detail on the drawings, so kinda meh as a useful example -.-

    Those are from Outrage? Anyway, ships are plentiful to a degree, the limit is the Minotaur Drives that are stated the Circulars carry, but the nations install those on their navy, but the data I lack is regarding the way the nations do things: drives for huge ships that carry smaller ones, military circulars, or one per any ship?

    Certainly, the ships are expensive, and they carry a lot of people. However, it all depends on size and roles. And the CA would not be as shy as humanity regarding space combat.
     
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  16. dicehex

    dicehex New Member

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    Thanks for this thread, fascinating. If anyone is interested "Isaac Arthur" is a youtube channel with lots of discussion on the science of space combat. I found it worthwhile.
     
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  17. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    Most space sensors are passive, they are detecting you by the multiple gigawatts your power reactors are cranking out. By the multiple megawatts of your lifesection heat. And, if you do light off your main drive, by the multiple terawatts or petawatts in the drive plume. Like I said, the Rocinante has a drive that generates about 15 terawatts. That's about the same as the total power generated on Earth in 2013. From all sources.

    You can see something like that coming from clear the hell in another star system, light-years away.


    It's worse than that.

    The enemy can tell what ship is coming at them. They can tell that your ship masses X tons with a drive power of Y. Which means that your tactical decoys need to be just as heavy as the ship that launched them. So you might as well build a whole 'nuther ship with guns on it.

    You can't even pretend to be a merchant ship, because merchies are likely to be far heavier than a warship, and yet have far less lifesection heat (much smaller crews).



    Well, the rings in Cowboy Bebop are actually FTL, and it's my understanding that the ship goes in at one end of the line and gets dropped into a channel where FTL is possible, but if the exit gate closes you will be stuck there in hyperspace forever.

    I think the Mass Effect relays are more like catapults.

    Dunno how Corvus Belli wants their system to work. I approximated it to simply be a solar-system wide arrangement of maglev train tracks for my examples.


    More like no boom but the conventional one, which is rather miniscule. Even for an aircraft bomb.

    Ever seen the George Clooney movie "Peacemaker"? If you don't get a perfectly symmetrical implosion, all you get is a dirty bomb spraying plutonium dust all over the place. And in space, nobody really cares about some extra dust if it's not going sufficiently fast.


    Dunno if the water would help protect against a laser, since water ice sublimates directly to water vapor in a vacuum at normal hull temps. But the water would be good to have for radiation control in general, in addition to allowing people to live nicely (with regular-length showers instead of the "get wet, turn the water off, get soaped, rinse off" of a Navy Shower(tm). Yes, they're about as much fun as it sounds).




    cee makes for one hell of a long lever. 300,000,000m/s. I don't want to do the damn lambda math to see just how much energy you'd need to throw into something to get it up to that speed, but IIRC your effective mass has doubled at 0.8 cee (240,000km/s). Which means the railgun needs twice as much power to get a projectile that fast. You will still see the launch flash, because if relativistic railguns are a thing, you'd better be investing in enough telescopes to cover a full 360x360 constantly. On every ship.

    And I'm going to laugh at the idea of spaceships dogfighting. I know one-man fighters get Rule of Cool, but let's do some mission analysis real quick: A manned fighter needs to spend enough delta-vee (think fuel, it's close enough) to get to the target, stop (assuming well past the target, since you can just coast), come back, and stop at the carrier. An unmanned missile/drone bus only needs to get to the target. That means a manned fighter needs at least twice the delta-vee as an unmanned missile, and that's only if the carrier comes and gets the fighters. A typical fighter mission needs 4x the fuel of a missile. And fuel/reaction mass for a spaceship is NOT a small thing.

    Remember the Rocinante? Most people assume that she has a mass ratio (loaded mass:empty mass) of about 3. The Roci weighs in at 500 tons empty, this is canon info. A mass ratio of 3 means she carries twice her own weight in reaction mass. 1000 tons of hydrogen takes up a hell of a lot of space, liquid hydrogen is 70 grams per liter. You'd need more than 9 Shuttle External Tanks to hold that much liquid hydrogen.
     
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  18. AdmiralJCJF

    AdmiralJCJF Heart of the Hyperpower

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    At some point you basically have to accept that starship combat will lean towards the "fiction" end of "science fiction".

    Otherwise it's crushingly dull.

    "Real science" space combat is ok for drama/thriller style tension (think Hunt for the Red October) but little else.

    I, for one, am glad that Infinity leans further away from "real science" than the likes of The Expanse, while still retaining just enough to "feel" good.
     
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  19. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    Just having ships that can survive more than one impact puts things into the fiction end of scifi...

    Half the tension of Hunt for Red October was "where the hell is she?" and that is not an issue in space. There's not really a good analogy for space combat, since you can see everyone coming for weeks ahead of time but can't really maneuver much. Age of Sail has issues with ship sizes and repairability from damage, but the visual range versus weapon range isn't bad. Not to mention the relative lack of maneuverability.
     
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  20. AdmiralJCJF

    AdmiralJCJF Heart of the Hyperpower

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    You miss my point with the Hunt reference. It's the type of story you can tell with real physics space combat. Other types of story do not work.

    But you see the problem. Nothing players do will ever alter the outcome of a real physics space combat, except maybe avoiding ever being in one, and that's shit for an RPG.
     
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