Realistic spaceships, mecha, and other sci-fi goodies

[Foster]

You can tell where a turret is pointed 100% of the time as well... there's no difference. It's just as easy to tilt the angle of your nose a fraction of a degree as it is to aim a turret. Especially if your forward-mounted guns have as little as a 2 degree firing arc. You can't fight effectively at 2 light seconds anyway.. even a laser would miss most of the time when all you have to do is keep in motion. 2 seconds is plenty of time for that 450-foot sphere to move more than 450 feet.

Barely, if it can sustain a 10-G burn for over 4 seconds and your nearest smart-drone is 2 light-seconds away, and they don't bother with torpedoes.

Armor is pretty easy to understand. It prevents damage up to a certain extent. Enough force will pierce it. But a million 7.62mm rounds will never pierce tank armor. A single gun with the firepower of a million 7.62mm round will destroy it in one shot. There's a reason people don't shoot AK-47s at tanks, but shoot anti-tank guns at them instead.

I've provided mathematical examples that prove that the amount of weapons mounted on turrets are limited by an inverse-square cube law of surface area, while the size of internally-mounted weapons are limited only by the volume of the ship. When I build my ships to withstand 6 million cubic feet of heavy weapons, an equal-sized ship with nothing but turrets will never, ever be able to damage it with said turrets. Ever.

My passive electronicly scanned array XASER sez otherwise (central/spinal gun with drone-lenses making final-corrections on beam-path at point-blank, and multiple lens-ports on hull to fire from).

And people do shoot AKMs at tanks. Hell, the M16 can penetrate more steel-armor at any given range than a 7.62x51mm these days.(M855A2 Green-tip)

But for 5-AU engagements? VLS'd 100-ton anti-capship missiles.

[Kadaeux]

You can tell where a turret is pointed 100% of the time as well... there's no difference. It's just as easy to tilt the angle of your nose a fraction of a degree as it is to aim a turret. Especially if your forward-mounted guns have as little as a 2 degree firing arc. You can't fight effectively at 2 light seconds anyway.. even a laser would miss most of the time when all you have to do is keep in motion. 2 seconds is plenty of time for that 450-foot sphere to move more than 450 feet.

No it isn't. And your inability to understand that doesn't speak well of you. Tell me this.

Do you REALLY think it is as easy to move 1000 tons of starship a few degrees as it is to move a turret the same distance. If you answer yes go back to school.

You can tell where a turret is aimed yes. However when you have 20 turrets boxing you in you CANNOT account for all of them

And good luck shooting down a fighter with a 10 square foot turret. Oh wait... it can't. It's too small in comparison. A 10 square foot turret might be able to shoot down missiles... but not fighters. That 400-square foot turret is built with guns heavy enough to take down space fighters. Weaker guns won't work, when the fighter is built to sustain damage from guns that require a turret of that size. Unless your fighters use suck-tech. You can use suck-tech if you want, I'll use sci-fi tech in a sci-fi universe.

Science says you're wrong. Weaker guns will certainly work.

And the moment you handwave it away with "i'll use scifi tech in a scifi universe" the entire point of your discussion vanishes anyway and we're back to it's not even remotely realistic. (In fact, the moment you have manned space fighters you're back in the realm of very soft scifi.)

Armor is pretty easy to understand. It prevents damage up to a certain extent. Enough force will pierce it. But a million 7.62mm rounds will never pierce tank armor. A single gun with the firepower of a million 7.62mm round will destroy it in one shot. There's a reason people don't shoot AK-47s at tanks, but shoot anti-tank guns at them instead.

Yes. Armour is pretty easy to understand and you're failing at it miserably. This is space we're talking about, any munitions fired will inherit the firing ships velocity + adding the amount the weapon does to throw it. If Ship X is going at .1 Lightspeed and fires a projectile a 1 Kilometre per second (A very low estimate) that bullet won't be going 1 kilometre per second. It would be going 29980.2458 Kilometres per second. If you are on a closing course with the ship that shot at you then you ALSO add YOUR closing velocity to the kinetic rounds.

I've provided mathematical examples that prove that the amount of weapons mounted on turrets are limited by an inverse-square cube law of surface area, while the size of internally-mounted weapons are limited only by the volume of the ship. When I build my ships to withstand 6 million cubic feet of heavy weapons, an equal-sized ship with nothing but turrets will never, ever be able to damage it with said turrets. Ever.

And you have failed to do so completely. Not only have to failed to do so you've completely failed to understand WHY. If you build your ship to "withstand 6 million cubic feet of heavy weapons" then you've armoured it so much that it WILL be slower than a ship that has not, it will be incapable of accelerating the same, its turning speed will be negatively effected it ALREADY will never be capable of bringing its main guns to bear on a target and all an enemy has to do to "defeat" you is speed up and throw a pebble out of the airlock.

I've noticed a problem with high sci-fi people is that they see in black and white. "If it's not hard, it's soft." Wrong.

Soft sci-fi people often see in black and white too. "If it's not soft, it's hard." Also wrong.

Soft people call me hard, hard people call me soft. You know what? There's a middle ground. There always is.

No I don't see you as soft or hard. I see you as someone trying to reconcile the two and failing, not because of any mental shortcomings but because of the main problem people have.

Trying to use in-atmosphere solutions to space problems.

A "real" space war would be so radically different from any warfare humanity has ever employed that not one of our Generals, Admirals etc would be any good.

Air Force would try and use them the same way they do atmospheric fighters which wouldn't work.
Navy would try and use them the same way they do submarines which wouldn't work.
Army would be "fuck this shit get me a beer I didn't sign up for this shit."














OH yes. And Foster brings up one issue I DID forget to mention. The probability and likelyhood of weapons where armour means absolutely and literally nothing.

X-Ray and Gamma Ray laser weapons and warheads for one.

[Holeypaladin]

M16 rounds will never, ever penetrate tank armor. No matter how many of them you fire.

Those 20 turrets still mean nothing because they still can't deal any damage to their heavily-armored target. The weapons on them are just too dang small. And yeah, you can rotate a few degrees quite easily... that's what maneuvering jets are for. You won't shift your whole motion, but you can easy shift your nose as much as 90 degrees in a half-second if you have decent, non-craptech maneuver drives.

Speaking of non-craptech maneuver drives.. 10 Gs isn't much to ask for when you're thinking high technology. But you need some sort of inertial dampening technology (which also isn't much to ask for when you have freaking FTL engines). If you have the technology for FTL, everything else I've mentioned is small fry in comparison.

Try shooting a .50 MG at a tank. See how that works out for you. Oh wait... it won't. Yeah, space fighters are at least as heavily armored as a tank. Meaning you need tank guns in order to take them out. You can't fit a tank gun on a 10 square foot turret.

.1C is ridiculously fast for a spaceship. They'll more likely be travelling at much slower velocities. Kinetic rounds are effective, but they're also slow velocity, comparitively speaking. A sci fi railgun projectile might fire at what, 26 miles per second or so? That makes it faster than any railgun we've invented so far on Earth. If you're talking about a range of 2 light-seconds, you're talking about 4 minutes for that railgun shot to close the distance to the target. But even a laser is ineffective at 2 light-seconds... it's just too easy to move out of the way, just by travelling unpredictably. And lasers do not make powerful offensive weapons. Railguns and particle beams do.

With advanced to technology come advances to weapon and armor technology. Are you assuming we'll be using carbon steel for everything? We're already past that point in existing tank armor. Exotic matter IS a hard sci-fi concept (diamond hard is a term used to describe diamondoid, a form of exotic matter), and exotic matter can easily provide the levels of durability required to make space armor capable of withstanding anything your turrets can throw at it. And with advances to armor come advanced to propulsion technology... in fact, advanced to propulsion technology are required if you're going to have any sort of FTL drive. Why shouldn't there be advanced to maneuver technology as well? When you're producing so much more force in your engines, you can compensate for the extra armor by simply having more thrust.

Xasers and grasers are so ludicrously advanced that by that level of technology, you already have force fields and thermal superconductors that render them useless in favor of equally-advanced weapons such as antiparticle cannon.

As far as missiles are concerned... yep. They can OHK a capship. I already mentioned that as a reason ships couldn't be THAT huge. Solution? Shoot them down. Get really, really good at shooting down missiles, because if you miss one, you're dead.

However... I'm not using atmospheric solutions to space combat at all. I have no idea where you got that idea. There aren't any atmospheric warships with spinal-mounted heavy weaponry.

[Kadaeux]

M16 rounds will never, ever penetrate tank armor. No matter how many of them you fire.

In an atmosphere this is true. In space it is not.

Those 20 turrets still mean nothing because they still can't deal any damage to their heavily-armored target. The weapons on them are just too dang small. And yeah, you can rotate a few degrees quite easily... that's what maneuvering jets are for. You won't shift your whole motion, but you can easy shift your nose as much as 90 degrees in a half-second if you have decent, non-craptech maneuver drives.

Congrats. You have completely failed to understand physics. Not just a little. But COMPLETELY.

Speaking of non-craptech maneuver drives.. 10 Gs isn't much to ask for when you're thinking high technology. But you need some sort of inertial dampening technology (which also isn't much to ask for when you have freaking FTL engines). If you have the technology for FTL, everything else I've mentioned is small fry in comparison.

This is a pointless comment.

Try shooting a .50 MG at a tank. See how that works out for you. Oh wait... it won't. Yeah, space fighters are at least as heavily armored as a tank. Meaning you need tank guns in order to take them out. You can't fit a tank gun on a 10 square foot turret.

Complete failure to understand physics again.

.1C is ridiculously fast for a spaceship. They'll more likely be travelling at much slower velocities. Kinetic rounds are effective, but they're also slow velocity, comparitively speaking. A sci fi railgun projectile might fire at what, 26 miles per second or so? That makes it faster than any railgun we've invented so far on Earth. If you're talking about a range of 2 light-seconds, you're talking about 4 minutes for that railgun shot to close the distance to the target. But even a laser is ineffective at 2 light-seconds... it's just too easy to move out of the way, just by travelling unpredictably. And lasers do not make powerful offensive weapons. Railguns and particle beams do.

The example was for an easy hard number.

With advanced to technology come advances to weapon and armor technology. Are you assuming we'll be using carbon steel for everything? We're already past that point in existing tank armor. Exotic matter IS a hard sci-fi concept (diamond hard is a term used to describe diamondoid, a form of exotic matter), and exotic matter can easily provide the levels of durability required to make space armor capable of withstanding anything your turrets can throw at it. And with advances to armor come advanced to propulsion technology... in fact, advanced to propulsion technology are required if you're going to have any sort of FTL drive. Why shouldn't there be advanced to maneuver technology as well? When you're producing so much more force in your engines, you can compensate for the extra armor by simply having more thrust.

Yes. And a Sphere with the EXACT SAME drives an none of that armour will have a measurably higher acceleration and ability to manoeuvre. Not just a little. But a CONSIDERABLE advantage.

Xasers and grasers are so ludicrously advanced that by that level of technology, you already have force fields and thermal superconductors that render them useless in favor of equally-advanced weapons such as antiparticle cannon.

You think that they're ludicrously advanced? Seriously.... wow. You....

Here is a hint. THEY ARE NOT.

X-Ray bomb pumped Lasers were part of idea behind the Star Wars anti-ballistic missile shield concept. Yes a Gamma Ray laser IS advanced and I don't THINK we've developed them. But they are NOT ludicrously advanced by any measure.

As far as missiles are concerned... yep. They can OHK a capship. I already mentioned that as a reason ships couldn't be THAT huge. Solution? Shoot them down. Get really, really good at shooting down missiles, because if you miss one, you're dead.

Yes. Until you enemy overwhelms you with a sheer volume of missiles.

You mentioned a reason ships couldn't be THAT huge. And completely failed in the reasoning and science behind it.

- - - Updated - - -

NOTE: I should note.

I am STILL talking from complete realism. I respect that you don't want 100% hard Scifi. Nobody does. Hell i've even experimented with a 85% Hard Scifi once before and it didn't take off at all. BUT the moment you talk about throwing it out Holeypaladin this entire thread is pointless.

The moment you begin introducing pure scifi reasons and solutions to issues the answer becomes "whatever the plot requires" and this entire discussion is pointless.

[Foster]

Holy... P-din...

Do you even understand what an electronicly-scanned array is Or even how high-energy lasers are manipulated without blowing the prisms up?
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Yes, bomb-pumps XASERS, thank you, it seems someone did some research into energy-weapons before posting here.

And what's this shit about particle-beams as long-range weapons? they have ionized-bloom and the energy-dispersion of a flamethrower. I've already linked to a page that goes quite in-depth why they're only suitable for CIWS from a centralized-array.
-That or to sucker-punch people that can't comprehend the difference betwenn 1km and 1 AU.
~~~~~~
Bomb-pumped XASER missile-spam FTFW.

[Holeypaladin]

You speak of a lack of knowledge of physics, without providing any sufficient backup. Not very helpful, and doesn't help your case.

It doesn't matter if a kinetic weapon is fired in space or in an atmosphere. KE will always = 1/2MV^2. Force will always = MV. The amount of force required to pierce a given amount of armor will always be the same, whether the vehicle is in space or on a planet.

Yes, lightly armored vessels are faster than heavily armored ones. It's a tradeoff that must be considered when designing ships. The people who designed man of war ships during the Age of Sail figured it was worth it to make their ships super slow, so long as they could take a broadside from a like-sized warship. Designers must decide whether they want fast ships that can't take a hit, or heavy ships that can take a blow but dish out just as much.

I was referring more to the grasers than xasers in the ludicrously advanced statement, but yeah, we still don't have xasers. They're about as advanced, maybe a bit more so, than particle beam arrays, which were also researched during the SDI program. Neither had any success.

Missilespam and the defense against it is why you have PD screens. You're right, defenses can be overwhelmed by missiles. That's why you put more PD turrets on your ships (like my previous example) and mount your main guns internally.

The reason ships can't be that huge? Proportionally less surface area, mean proportionally less point defense, meaning more vulnerable to equivalent volume of missilespam.

While WMD missiles can OHK ships with a nuclear/fusion/antimatter explosion, bomb-pumped xasers are still limited to that whole "need a big enough gun to get through the armor" thing. If it's small enough to fit in a missile, it's nothing compared to that 6 million cubic feet of main guns.

Charged particle beams disperse like a flamer. Neutral particle beams do not. Space-based particle beams are neutral particle beams.

[Foster]

Um... this is space, I can missile-spam Saturn Vs at you from a galaxy away if I develop the infra for it.

Particles and plasma still behave as a gas, space is mostly vacume (except nebulas and other shit) so it will still disperse.
-It's also horrendously inefficient. Please read the stinking link.

Stick with charged-particle beams routed through your ionic manuvering thrusters for CIWS and be done with it.
-If you're being spammed by something that an energy-weapon with enough recoil to accelerate your ship at greater than 1G in the opposite direction cannot counter*, you were hopelessly outclassed from the start.

*From, like, being rammed by something bigger and faster than you.

[Kadaeux]

You speak of a lack of knowledge of physics, without providing any sufficient backup. Not very helpful, and doesn't help your case.

It doesn't matter if a kinetic weapon is fired in space or in an atmosphere. KE will always = 1/2MV^2. Force will always = MV. The amount of force required to pierce a given amount of armor will always be the same, whether the vehicle is in space or on a planet.

Yes. However you have COMPLETELY failed to take into account the addition of velocity accrued by momentum in space.

An M-16 fired in space WILL have the added velocity of the object it is being fired from.

An M-16 round has a KE of 1797.4080000000001 Joules at 948 Metres per second.

If it is fired from a ship going 50 Kilometres per second towards the target we add that to the velocity of the bullet. (Stationary Target relative to firing ship for simplicity.) The bullet is now moving 50948 metres per second giving it a Kinetic Energy of 5191397.408 Joules giving it a total of 5 Megajoules.

Now we make it that the ship is moving at 150 kilometres per second. The Kinetic Energy is now 45 Megajoules.

NOW we make it that the ship is moving at 300 kilometres per second. Now its a Kinetic energy of 181 Megajoules.

A 4 gram bullet hitting at 181 Megajoules will have more than 10x the Kinetic Energy of ANY modern tank gun.

Yes, lightly armored vessels are faster than heavily armored ones. It's a tradeoff that must be considered when designing ships. The people who designed man of war ships during the Age of Sail figured it was worth it to make their ships super slow, so long as they could take a broadside from a like-sized warship. Designers must decide whether they want fast ships that can't take a hit, or heavy ships that can take a blow but dish out just as much.

The problem there is that, in space a Faster ship, by default will have more powerful weapons.

I was referring more to the grasers than xasers in the ludicrously advanced statement, but yeah, we still don't have xasers. They're about as advanced, maybe a bit more so, than particle beam arrays, which were also researched during the SDI program. Neither had any success.

Missilespam and the defense against it is why you have PD screens. You're right, defenses can be overwhelmed by missiles. That's why you put more PD turrets on your ships (like my previous example) and mount your main guns internally.

The problem is that doesn't work. You will be completely incapable of bringing a target to bear with main guns and your enemy will still overwhelm your point defence network.

The reason ships can't be that huge? Proportionally less surface area, mean proportionally less point defense, meaning more vulnerable to equivalent volume of missilespam.

Except that it has proportionally more internal volume and can pack an equivalently larger proportion of missiles and drones which would include point defence drones or missiles.

[Foster]

Post #33.
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Alright, I've been tearing P-din, now time to crit-hit Kade a little in this 3-way scuffle-truffle-shuffle.

Whipping and spinning a ship around like a top is completely possable. Accellerating with the main-engines while doing this is another matter. But to simplify, it turns normal turn&burn into Burn&turn&fire&turn&burnSomeMore.
-If I have VLS, I can just tell the missiles to turn towards the target on their own accord without manuvering my ship into harm's way.

Of course, this means epic manuvering thrusters devoted to attitude-control so I can make spinal snap-shots with minimal loss of manuverability, but I tend to offset this complexity with Jon's Law and use them as CIWS simply by firing whatever thrusters are pointed at the enemy. Too bad I don't use Orion-drives...

Also, with such thrusters, I have a more randomized Turn&burn performance envalope if things turn pear-shaped.
~~~~~~
And larger size means exponentially more volume for offensive missiles, remass, fuel, engines, crew-quarters, and CIWS-ammo.

All for an only fractionally larger target to laser-spam.

Also, more laser-spam means more unarmored radiator-space.

[Kadaeux]

Post #33.
~~~
Alright, I've been tearing P-din, now time to crit-hit Kade a little in this 3-way scuffle-truffle-shuffle.

Whipping and spinning a ship around like a top is completely possable. Accellerating with the main-engines while doing this is another matter. But to simplify, it turns normal turn&burn into Burn&turn&fire&turn&burnSomeMore.

Of course, this means epic manuvering thrusters devoted to attitude-control so I can make spinal snap-shots with minimal loss of manuverability, but I tend to offset this complexity with Jon's Law and use them as CIWS simply by firing whatever thrusters are pointed at the enemy. Too bad I don't use Orion-drives...

The problem is if the enemy uses the same technology you won't be able to make spinal snapshots ever because the enemy can see where your main gun is pointed at all times and will be able to move at all times to avoid being in front of it.

As for Orion Drives, not very effective for PD. (Decent Armour through.)

The problem with Nukes in space is you have to either get a contact hit, or detonate within a couple kilometres of the enemy hull.

The other problem with Orion Drives is obviously its limited stock of nuclear warheads. But more than made up for by its lifting capacity. (But the EPA is going to go ballistic )