Kadaeux

Various Scifi Weaponry and Destructive Potential

gamer5 said *Snips ignorance about lasers*

Yeah i'm not even going to both educating you on the fact that lasers lose intensity over distance in a vacuum.

Railguns are also good weapons - since they are electromagnetically accelerated projectiles there is no usual reaction to firing non-self propelled projectiles. They will also travel straight - the gravity of most worlds is just not enough to stop something traveling at Mach 6 or faster today while considering by the time we have space based railguns for long-range engagements their projectiles would probably achieve speed of few dozens of Mach more then enough escape gravity of most areas in space. In the quite realistic weapons of humanity in Halo their standard shipboard MAC cannon fire 600 t projectiles at 30 km/s (with the highest speed being 4% speed of light with 3000 t projectiles in the orbital MAC stations).

Railguns are in fact the single most viable weapon in space short of weaponising asteroids.

Missiles equipped with advanced guiding systems to evade getting hit with countermeasures, baits and limited AI would be also deadly weapons - they would be more like a really smart suicide robot then just a missile.But in all space battles there would be one crucial part - your computer systems which would calculate enemy ships positions in the future (and tell where you need to fire to hit them when your attack reaches them) as well as the maximal cone in which the enemy ship cloud maneuver (until unknowingly far inertia free engines are developed maneuvering a ship out of a barrage or railgun projectiles will take hours) and so on. In the end who has the best computer system and knows his enemy's capabilities the best wins AKA in the end it all comes to how good a brain (computer) and how much information about your enemy you have.

If your enemy has railgun point defence and adequate sensors missiles become literally useless weapons in space. Not just slightly useless but completely because their point defence can shoot down more missiles than you can launch and STILL have ammo to hole your ship with.

ASTA said I'm going to let you figure out the tactical flaws in fielding a spinal-mounted DEW in a three-dimensional environment.

If you haven't built your ship like a handicapped engineer who's idea of good design comes from popular science fiction your ship is able to rotate about all axis as fast as a turret could AND present a much larger weapon to the target. The same applies to railguns.

In short. There are no tactical flaws in fielding a spinal mount DEW or KEW unless you have SEVERELY fucked up in your starship design.

The irony is crushing.

Says the uneducated fool who thinks that a spinal weapon in space is in any way a bad thing.

Legend of Renalta 2: Reborn

Raven's Inn

---

Murderok noticed the cat's evasion of Gryffs bow-shot and grunted. He knew the risks and dangers involved and now push came to shove it was time to really shove. He ground his hooves in the dirt and began a charge at the cat roaring as loud as he could at the animal, he could even hear it behind him as Gryff holstered his bow and began a long charging gallop also screaming a blood-curdling war cry at the top of his lungs. Hopefully the Big Cat would get dog-piled by them and pinned down long enough for the tonic to do its job, or the trap get set off whatever came first.

Though as Gryff began his charge at the Cat timed to meet Murderoks own charge he reflected that this was perhaps not the best tactic. Big Cats were intelligent creatures and seeing two creatures that outmassed it considerably charging it the beast might decide to evade them and go for a much softer target, like the emerald-haired Mikan or the crazed dwarf, though he doubted the latter while animals like this did often go for carrion when it was available they generally preferred to avoid things that smelt like carrion but moved.

Legend of Renalta 2: Reborn

Smother? Drown?

Bloody amateurs. Just make the Tigers do the work.

*Injects a bunch of spare cybernetically enhanced tigers with enough anabolic steroids to make an elephant buff and sets Gat to their targeting routines.*

At least this we can put on Pay per View.

Various Scifi Weaponry and Destructive Potential

Asuras said
I see. Still, I question the intelligence of using iron-rich asteroids for weapons, as opposed to building other things. A million asteroids filled with iron would be quite wasteful, I think.

100% Hard Scifi is terribly boring and prevents any real space war from ever happening. So waging a war at all isn't a mark of intelligence to begin with :p

Various Scifi Weaponry and Destructive Potential

Asuras said
So there are defense systems mounted on the space rocks too now? Or are the ships escorting the space rocks?

Defence systems don't need to be.

Point defence weapons aren't going to scratch an asteroid of sufficient size to be used as a projectile. And your enemies heaviest weapons (assuming hard-scifi) will have to spend a lot of time bombarding each rock in turn, or be composed of some sort of warhead to drill into the asteroid to blow it up from within.

Add in that someone conducting a proper bombardment using rocks won't be picking snowballs or dirt rocks but nickel-iron rich asteroids and stopping them is even harder.

Whereas if you just deployed missiles your enemies entire arsenal could easily destroy them before they reached the target world.

Various Scifi Weaponry and Destructive Potential

Asuras said
Sure, a million space rocks would be difficult to stop. But to say you have the capability to fire all of them means you surely have the ability to make a lot more standard missiles. If you have a million space rocks (you'd need the rockets to propel them, likely many per space rock), then I'd have several times more explosive-carrying missiles. Stopping your space rocks would seem like much less of an issue, then.In the scenario you described, you say you "bring in your fleet" as if it were some freebie. If someone had the power to stop a fleet much larger than your own of space rocks, then I'd have to assume they have the power to take on a fleet as well. The protection of Earth from space rocks could occur from the planet's surface itself (or other Sol system planets); no space fleet required. With your rocks gone, you only have your fleet to use, which is now at the mercy of the Earth-borne fleet given you've "brought them in".

You have X number of Space Rocks. Each has 4 Rockets. (for simplicity) lets go with 1'000'000 Space Rocks. So you have 4'000'000 Rockets attached to your swarm of Space Rocks to conduct your bombardment.

Each Space Rock is 1km across at smallest. It would take the enemy their heaviest weapons to destroy your Space Rocks.

Person 2 just sends 4'000'000 missiles.

The Defender can destroy each missile with one shot from their point defence.

In the end it is infinitely more likely there would be big space rocks left over than missiles.

(OH, and the whole each rock has 4 Rockets is for maneuvering. As they ARE space rocks, you don't need more than a single rocket to get it moving. The others are only needed to adjust the course.)

Various Scifi Weaponry and Destructive Potential

mdk said Idunno, based on current technology, it almost seems like a waste NOT to outfit your fleet with solar/stellar/whatever capacitors and laser weapons. Even if only as defensive units.

Pretty much this. Lasers are an EXCELLENT choice for a secondary point defence. (Due to no ammo concerns, only power and head concerns.) And I say secondary because, just look at the equation above, point defence lasers will still be huge with 10 metre mirrors.

A more optimal "first response" point defence is either small-calibre railguns, or a railgun version of metalstorm.

Various Scifi Weaponry and Destructive Potential

ASTA said
They wouldn't be terrible in space, since hard sci-fi military ships wouldn't be the lumbering armor-clad WWII-knock off vessels most sci-fi portrays them as. They'd be light, so as to conserve delta-v during maneuvers---and to make it easier to accelerate, decelerate and alter their trajectory--- which means they'd have less mass for a laser to burn through. A sufficiently-powerful laser would easily burn through a ship's hull, compromising it and potentially dooming the crew inside. As for the speed, the thought of effortlessly dodging laser fire with a slow-than-light vessel (that obeys the laws of physics) is pretty much inherent to soft sci-fi where antimatter weapons, warp drives and phasers are the norm, as any ship packing laser weapons is going to have them mounted in fully-traversable turrets. While a space warship may be able to dodge one laser, the other 30 that are taking shots at it create an absurdly-large arch of inter-locking fire that simply cannot be avoided. And not only that, but as space lacks an atmosphere, lasers become even more dangerous, as there is nothing in their immediate path (or surroundings) to degrade or scatter their beams.

*Shakes head*

A: No, a ship mounting lasers for ANYTHING except point defence is NOT going to mount them in fully traversable turrets. It's going to mount it as a spinal weapon where they can get the most surface-area for the laser (Necessary, as your laser gets more powerful the size of the laser PROJECTOR increases with it.)

B: Your laser will be good, at MOST optimistic for a single light-second range. (299'792.458km) beyond that you're going to be less accurate than missiles (which in turn are terrible due to vulnerability at that range where any missile could be shot down so easily they literally aren't worth launching.) And as Brovo pointed out, the laser diffusing over range

The good ship Collateral Damage becomes aware of an incoming hostile missile. Collateral Damage has a laser cannon with a ten meter radius mirror operating on a mid-infrared wavelength of 2700 nanometers (0.0000027 meters). The divergence angle is (1.22 * 0.0000027) / 10 = 0.00000033 radians or 0.000019 degrees.

The laser cannon has an aperture power of 20 megawatts, and the missile is at a range of four megameters (4,000,000 meters). The beam brightness at the missile is 20 / (π * (4,000,000 * tan(0.000019/2))2) = 15 MW/m2 or 1.5 kW/cm2.

If the missile has a "hardness" of 10 kilojoules/cm2, the laser will have to dwell on the same spot on the missile for 10/1.5 = 6.6 seconds in order to kill it.

Figured another way, at four megameters the laser will have a spot size of 0.66 meters in radius, which has an area of 1.36 square meters. The missile's skin has a hardness of 10 kilojoules/cm2 so 13,600 kilojoules will be required to burn a hole of 0.66 meters radius. 20 megawatts for 6.9 seconds is 13,600 kilojoules. 6.9 seconds is close enough for government work to 6.6 seconds.

On THIS note...

And not only that, but as space lacks an atmosphere, lasers become even more dangerous, as there is nothing in their immediate path (or surroundings) to degrade or scatter their beams.

Go back to school and learn how lasers REALLY work.

Various Scifi Weaponry and Destructive Potential

Deepstrike101 said The battles happen in three stages: At distances of about 7.5 billion kilometers, close to the distance between habitable planets and the outer edges of a solar system, ships are arranged in a very loose formation (out of visual range of one another) and bombard the enemy with extremely destructive weapons.

At that range the enemy can annihilate anything you fire at will LONG before it gets near them.

The ships are equipped with extremely effective countermeasures, capable of jamming almost all incoming missiles and given the proper distance, diverting solid projectiles. They are also equipped with shields powerful enough to allow them to fly through the outer layers of a Sun like star. The weapons imperial ships mount include 500 tera-ton nuclear missiles and EMACs (ElectroMagnetic Accelerator Cannons).

500 Teraton Nuclear Missiles?

You do know how way over-the top it is right?

It makes the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs look like someone shooting a BB gun at the planet.

The smallest EMACs fire 30x10 meter cylindrical projectiles of solid depleted Uranium at just over the speed of light, resulting in about 8 x 10^27 joules kinetic energy (if I did my physics right).

You definitely did not do your physics right if you're firing a solid depleted uranium round at "just over the speed of light" in fact, at even 60% the speed of light it literally wouldn't matter if your projectiles were made out of spit and dirt or tungsten, when it hits it'll release its weight in antimatter as far as destructive potential goes.

Anyways, this is the sort of weapon, were I doing a nations roleplay, I would categorically forbid anybody from using. I am definitely rethinking and redesigning the power of this weapon, and I need your input. What do you think is reasonable for an ultra futuristic empire which spans several galaxies to put as the main armament on corvettes? Are even the 500 teraton bombs still over powered?

Overpowered, certainly, but most importantly. RIDICULOUSLY inefficient.

It would be cheaper, and much more destructively efficient, to use 500'000 1 Gigaton Missiles than 1 500 Teraton missile.

The Last Bastion: Bunker Chicago

@Maxim & Panda: You know you've probably gotten half our team killed right :p You've both "issued" contradictory orders that don't follow the only sensible set of orders given by Brucey over the squad channel to begin with :p