There is something to be said about actions taken prior to the engagement... Be that from sabotage or espionage all the way down to preventative maintenance.
Sorry guys, but because you didn't prepare properly for this situation all your characters instantly die and there's nothing any of you can do about it. So, let's start rolling up a new team? ... Not a great gaming experience.
This also assumes that whoever you're fighting is looking to blow the ship to smithereens without gaining anything from it. Pretty hard to get slaves and goods or recover intel or prisoners when you do that.
Have you been following the thread? There's little to no room for damaging ships without instantly killing everyone on board if the system is designed around modelling real physics. And once you move away from real physics you may as well actually make space combat an interesting and interactive part of the game. Because a half measure will piss everyone off on both sides.
Yeah, though I did lose sight of that, particularly poignant point after going back and forth with you a bit. I understand that in combat with the weapons we are discussing as existing in the Infinity universe or most space fantasy games the above would not be possible if you simply dumped them into a "real" physics universe. The only way I can imagine one would be able to achieve non-lethal "combat" would be forcing surrender with either a series of near misses or with a show of force. Not particularly likely in an engagement between two ships. I wonder if, in the near future, we could conceive of some realistic offensive LTL elements within the realm of possibility for the far future.
Part of the issue with current opinions of 'realistic' space combat is that we are trying to take current materials and scientific knowledge and project that forward. While it is fine to do so, it is important to realize how wrong we could be - there have been tons of times when science quite clearly indicated that things would be A: but they ended up being AB or just B. So a lot of this is an issue of 'we're all hypothesizing, and we may as well keep that in mind.' So if the setting has new materials with unusual properties (Teseum) having armor that can survive a hit is no longer 'impossible'. That's sort of the point. The entire setting is a 'what if'.
I love a good high level discussion like this! Fun read! As has been covered elsewhere, I think the only realistic approach is a lot of posturing, with no real intention of using the incredible destructive forces available. If a spaceship to spaceship battle where to happen, I don't know who the winner would be, but the loser would be whoever wanted to use that section of space for anything afterwards. Debris from a fight would be exceptionally deadly, unlikely to resolve itself on its own, and cleaning up the aftermath would probably cost several orders of magnitude more than the cost of the ships. If you wanted a realistic space ship battle, the only sensible solution would be a boarding action. A small team, smuggled aboard, to try an forcefully take the bridge, or engineering, or whatever. If your not worried about realistic, just grab whatever rules look like fun. Heck, the Star Wars universe, basically uses World War II dog-fighting mechanics. Just make sure all your players fully understand before hand, that there is nothing more than a superficial attempt at realism, or you will get that one kill-joy who will explain why everything is wrong.
This is true. Concerning points about fuel or heat dissipation and stealth. This has you working the wrong way, remember this is fiction so you are more then free to work backwards. If they have ships that can stealth then they MUST have a way of masking heat for example. It is easy to point out why Tie fighters should not fly like WW2 fighters, much harder to try and explain why this might be true.
Yes but science fiction is interesting, because it is grounded in science. It is a fun way to think about what might be possible, using the knowledge we have, or even more interesting, following the logical conclusions of heretofor untested theories. If we start with the end result we want, and work backward to make a justification, we might as well just say "space wizards did it" If we want a really interesting science fiction we have to start with what we know, or think might be true, and work our way forward. Of course, Infinity already has a healthy dose of quantum disguised wizardry, such as dog-soldiers and 'quantum' tesuem super armor. Maybe one of the unique properties of Tesuem is its ability to dump heat into an alternate quantum phase state where it is undetectable by mundane four-dimensional sensors. Of course then that quantum heat dump is lost to regular space, and rapidly contributes to the cooling of the universe inexorably leading to the big freeze. If employed on a civilization wide basis, the results could be catastrophic in the long run, and any sufficient advanced evolved entity would employ its 'meat world' operatives in an attempt to suppress or destroy any civilization using such unstable and dangerous technology . . . Huh, I went a little weird there for a moment.
Ah, gotcha. Those are not exciting actions, though. And roleplaying actions need to be exciting. You mean an end-run around the Laws of Thermodynamics. Ships in Star Wars fly like WW2 fighters because the guys at ILM were big fans of a game called Mustangs and Messershmidts, and used the M&M aircraft data for the motion-control rigs. Plus Lucas wanted to have a 'Dam Busters' attack sequence. ===== Yes, if you assume obscenely-strong armor (on the scale of being able to resist any nuclear explosion not directly in contact with the hull), you can have spaceship that survive more than one hit. It's called the Law of Unintended Consequences. Or, you look at what the laws of physics actually imply: As @Pen-dragon mentioned, realistic physics implies that anyone shooting up another spaceship is going to be creating all sorts of nasty navigation hazards. So I can easily see the rules of space combat in the Sphere being written to minimize the generation of navigation hazards. Lots of boarding actions, not a lot of slugging it out at thousands of km.
Doesn't nukes basically have to be in contact with a reinforced hull to be at all effective? I mean, no atmosphere and all that an explosion typically use to great effect. There's also the unknown constant. We don't know what is going to be effective in terms of detection and what have you. Being reductive about real life space combat not featuring any proximity battles at all might end up being as reductive as to say that long range ground-to-air missiles have made aircrafts obsolete in the early 21st century (as in right now). Just because in theory anyone could launch a 50+ mile range missile with close to 100% hit chance doesn't mean counter-measures didn't get developed nor that said missiles were actually effective or always at the ready. So with that in mind, who's to say?
If spaceship stealth is a thing then they have already done an end-run around the laws of thermodynamics. Maybe with the tech they have a new interesting way of cheating the system. I mean we already have interesting ways of masking ourselves from thermal cameras now. Who knows what tech and physics breakthroughs PanO has come up with. True and completely useless as a inworld explanation. Maybe small ships use some form of sonic tractor beam that has remarkably low power needs and is anchored around the fighters on "wings" that grab on to other large masses like starships eliminating the need for using fuel to make flight corrections or evasive actions. It's still bullshit but it is trying. Except here a space wizard DID do it and you have to explain how it was actually done with smoke and mirrors. Still my understanding is we have actually gotten more then a little real-world tech this way.
People used to say it was impossible to have FTL comms and yet our labs are already finding subatomic behaviors that could in future lead to a development like that - or not, we don't know yet. Night vision was 'impossible' and yet here we are. Again, point being, we don't know how tech will advance, but there are some perfectly valid theories that may or may not ever come true, and some 'stretches' of imagination that aren't that obscene.
You mask yourself from thermal cameras by making your temperature the same as background. That's not too hard when you're talking 10-20degC difference on a planet. That's nearly impossible to do when you're talking a 250+degC difference in deep space (and heaven forbid a 1500degC difference!). Still applies to that fancy IR camo the Swedes have been playing with that projects a false IR image (because the non-projected parts need to be at background temp to disappear!). Night vision works because someone found a frequency-doubler (or tripler?) that punts IR light up to green frequencies. (Note that this worked with freaking vacuum tubes, first IR deployments were right at the end of WW2). It's also how we got the first green lasers. Photomultiplier tubes (like in Starlight scopes) are more interesting, as they don't need an IR light source. But the physicists have a near-monopoly on the good PM tubes, they're needed for experiments to detect neutrinos. And these days, the cheapass digital camera chips they use in phones are sufficiently wide-range that they can show someone using an IR or UV illuminator. As the US found out to it's dismay in Afghanistan. FTL comms, as best I've found anyone able to describe, don't quite work. What you get is a scrambled signal via FTL and the decryption key via standard, STL comms methods. Yes, even if you are doing weird crap with flipping the spin/polarity of entangled particles. Because you'd better believe that the science guys are trying to make FTL comms work, there's a Nobel Prize for the person who figures it out. Which means eternal bragging rights. Damn that Einstein, he took all the fun out of things! Well, barring wormholes. Those don't do unspeakable things to relativity, but there's still a problem with how fast information can propagate.
FTL comms very likely work with real physics, let alone the "near world physics" of Infinity. It's literally the least of the issues with the setting in space. The Villar Boosters which are used for high-speed in-system deployment are probably the biggest "issue" from a real world physics perspective.
I was referring to the missiles both parts send away, trying to mess their IFF systems. And you can feign more mass by cleverly using the engines (less potency= more sluggish). If the enemy can't get a good look, and there is nothing to use as scale... it *could* realistically work, I think. Nah, the idea is that the lasers will make "small" holes, and the water will have enough time to plug the hole before freezing. You will lose water to heat on the impact point, but all the water on that "reservoir" will flow to the hole, thanks to the vacuum effect, and eventually freeze the hole, allowing to make some repairs from inside. Mind you, space combat should be made with the ship empty of oxygen, so the water would rush on both directions (to space and inside the ship). Speed is relative. While traditional dogfight would only be possible while engaging targets that are on the same vector (that means, coming from behind and overtaking the target), it also means that projectiles do not need to reach lightspeeds... if the target ship moves at a speed X and the missiles going for it move on an opposed direction (but otherwise on the same vector) Y, then the total speed perceived by target and missile is X+Y... and in that same calculation, we have to include any initial speed the missile has thanks to the launching ship, let's call it Z... So for the target ship, the object is coming at X+Y+Z speed (more or less), which can very much equate to a very meaningful fraction of c... Also, Space has almost no friction, so speed has to be countered, as you say... That means, however, that you can rotate the ship (more or less fast) and then fire the main engines to alter your vector (since your new bearing will be the addition of the speed you had and the acceleration you are getting) in a way even more pronounced that a big aircraft carrier does (fortunately, space is immensely more vast than sea). High gravity resistance helps in the way that you can go for higher acceleration here (since 1g = 9.8 m/s2...), so if you were at a speed of 100.000 m/s and rotate so you add a 90º thrust of 10g, you need much less time to change your bearing enough to escape from the enemy's cone of engagement (the enemy will see you, yes... but will it be able to catch you on time?). One of the hardest parts of the Saganami Island Tactical Simulator (aside from the asymmetrical targets: immunne on top and bottom, shields on sides, only armor on front and back...) was to add the speed vectors together so your ship would get into range with the enemy ship (and there were group actions... and fleet actions... in a full 3D game system with frictionless mechanics). To be truthful, a lot of "exciting" stuff in life are just moments that come at the end of hours to months or even years of dull preparation. War included. I'd like to point to http://www.aleph.se/EclipsePhase/EP naval strategy.pdf if you want to see some sort of combat strategy that takes that into account... just have in mind that, in Eclipse Phase, people "copies" themselves on robotic brains (or virtual realities) if they want to. A reference page for rocketry could be http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/index.php Out of Context Problems are, by definition, impossible to be prepared against until you encounter them... The idea here is, however, to try and come with a way to envision Infinity's space combat that is not "a wizard did it" ^^ I'd amend that to say that they need to be "meaningful"... and that players should have "pre-canned" processes for certain stuff that comes a lot, so they can just roll the needed dice and keep going (if at all, the GM can always assume they were successful). Infiltration and sabotage, however, could become the adventure in itself... in my experience, most hacking systems that do not rely on Zero-Day exploits either leave the hacker out of the combats while he does whatever, or require the hacker to prepare and run a mission to plant stuff beforehand (Mr Robot portraits a very realistic, for Hollywood standards, hacking situations, in case the people here wants to have a look). That would cover "main systems", not the fringe ones, though... and Piracy is one hell less of a problem when they have to board you to get the cargo, but any ship can be one-shotted easily. The idea tends to be a) come from the sun (so the star's radiation mask you... more or less) and/or b) make the ship so the prow is a bunch of armor closer to ambient temperature and provides a "shadow" for the ship. As you mentioned, the engines plume would be easy to spot, but if they are coasting instead... Also, covering the prow on ice could work. Which is another use for the water sandwiched between the two layers of armor, thermal regulation (in space, the problem comes from dissipation). So pre-arranged messages can still be used? I mean, if the scrambling is consistent, but unique to each message, you can sent the ships with a library of messages, after which is just a matter of picking the scrambled message that exactly resembles one in the computer.
Adjusting what parts get hot or cold could potentially disguise you as other objects. Here is a picture of a tank pretending to be a car for example. http://armyrecognition.com/weapons_...tem_for_land_and_aerial_vehicles_2307131.html Or you would not have to make your temperature the same as the background if you can instead beat the sensor. I have seen people do just that with simple glass at least temporarily. We know Infinity has TO Camo and ODD.
This reminds me of an old anime series, "Starship Operators". Although the series is not very good, I have fond memories of it because it had interesting space battles... I remember one episode where the main cast deceived the enemy just adding aditional boosters to their ship, so they acelerated much faster than expected and some of the enemy ships just couldn't engage on time.
If you want to check out an anime on the harder side of the science scale, check out a series called 'Planetes'. The basic premises, is the main cast's job is to clean up space debris in low earth orbit, to make space travel safer. I was thinking, due to the unintended consequences of blasting an enemy ship into thousands of deadly projectiles, combat weapons might be designed to incapacitate an enemy vessel but not destroy it. EMP weapons to knock out delicate electronics. Dispersed laser arrays, not to melt holes in the hull, but just to heat up the vessel, and cook its crew. An inventive weapon designer could come up with a lot of ways to make a spaceship unlivable, without reducing it to cloud of high velocity death.
