First 'space combat' is likely to be an extension of terrestrial conflicts, with missiles and satellites playing an important role. So it's most likely to involve ballistic missiles, ASAT missiles, recon and communication satellites and perhaps the odd laser or kinetic rod platform.
Seems viable. However, the view I had was different.
2027, Musk's schemes are paying off and his launch vehicles control a large fraction of the actual revenue for orbital launches. Even though it was realized somewhere along the line that the hooplah about going to Mars to put footprints was fairly pointless, it still remains a "core theme" of the "Making Humanity a Multiplanetary species" shtick. More and more focus has been on prospecting asteroids, the real "booty" of space and the main thing that financiers on Earth (and middle class and rich people who want to become more rich) will take an interest in.
~2037: Let us say that Elon and Planetary Resources do a joint effort. They use Elon's launch capabilities to get a "Way station" of sorts built that can support a small crew, and MAYBE even has some farms and other self-sustaining capacities (though that is a side bar) . . . These guys are NOT going to put weapons on their stuff. Not happening.
So they use that prototype "Orbital factory and Depot" to start constructing the robot ships to go snag an asteroid that is not too big and seems promising enough. That takes them several years. So they bring it back to a near Earth orbit and they start mining it and dropping the contents down to Earth.
All the while the world is watching and waiting to see if it blows up in their faces. _MAYBE_ some of the other entities (multinationals, startups, non-state entities like terrorist groups, nation-states of every ilk) are making _some_ limited changes to the pace and direction of their existing "long-term plan for space exploitation" strategies. Maybe not. Most likely, until the bottom line is big, fat, green and juicy, most players will sit it out and see if the pioneer enterprises pan out.
But once a quarter or four of consistent operations and profit has taken place, all hell will begin to cut loose, and in an accelerating fashion. The North Koreans are gonna want in on the action, as are the Chicoms, the Russkies, and every other tinpot "faction" on Earth. I wouldn't be half surprised if the number of rocket tests and rocket launches and orbital missions would increase by an order of magnitude, maybe even TWO within a couple years of passing the "This is profitable!" threshold.
Now we have the "starting point:" many different players on Earth scrambling to get their piece of the pie and all launching from the foundational position of "no need for weapons in space, besides it is not really 'allowed' . . ." Of course, a few of those players WILL be putting weapons on their ships. In some cases it will be wise preemptive defensive thinking, in others it will be sheer paranoia (Russia comes to mind with their shotguns and machetes on their early manned orbital missions!), and in others it will intent to engage in malice.
I would predict that the first instance of space piracy will occur within 5 years after the fourth profitable and operationally sustainable quarter that the first pioneer space prospector is in operation. Whether it is the DPRK, China, Iran a terrorist group, a black flag op of some particular nature or whomever, SOMEONE will get a capsule of thugs up there and they will go and steal some shit. This will be boarding actions by ad hoc space craft against defenseless targets. The intell on wtf just happened to the "Musk Base" might well be quite sketchy and the delay in weaponizing the merchant ships and bases could be on the order of years. This means that the pirates and covert state-operatives will already be one step ahead of the prey, and it may well stay that way for decades. You'll note, the age of piracy in the Caribbean didn't just go away once it started.
The idea of the cavalry coming to the rescue in space just isn't going to happen either. The cavalry will be days, months or even years away. A lot will come down to detection and 'stealth', I know CDE says stealth is impossible but if there's a LOT of traffic up there in some new boom time scenario then there will be deception - running under false colors and the like.
For many merchants who operated during the period of the Age of Piracy, mere luck or the "herd effect" else the "small ship on a big ocean" were their primary defenses. That and the fall back position of: if we are approached by pirates we have a number of options: (a) jettison, aka "give away" cargo and hope that is enough to appease them; (b) just give up and let them take what they want and hope they do not kill us all: (c) flee. Fighting back with weapons was generally not a wise course of action, at least at many points in time during the age of piracy. That changed of course with the ebb and flow of wars and political rivalries but boarding actions remained a major factor throughout the period for the simple reason: the objective of piracy is not to destroy stuff it is to steal stuff. The ideal operation is you threaten/intimidate, they bend and give you access to the cargo decks. You take what you want, possibly even including the ship itself, and you set adrift anyone you don't want to press into service, enslave, kidnap and ransom.
However, if they fight back, then you murder them all, savagely and cruelly. It is part of a social process and it establishes norms. "Don't want to be killed by pirates? Then don't fight back."
Given the opening years and decades of the Age of Space Mercantilism as I've laid them out above, there will be far, FAR too many merchants/miners/freighters within a decade of the initiation of the period for any nation-state to have any hope to protect them all. Not to mention the difficulty of protecting distant bases/vessels at remote parts of their journeys where the required delta-V to rendezvous in a timely fashion may just simply be physically impossible.
Thus, whether or not boarding actions remain tenable and the extent to which they are used will not boil down simply to "ranges, accuracies and penetrating powers of readily available weapons" but to other emergent conditions.
So you can tote along a few small cannon that can pelter an incoming pirate ship a kilometer away, maybe even breach them. If that is the case, then how hard is it for the pirates to (a) armor sufficiently to mitigate such a circumstance; (b) heavily arm and pose the same normative threat which pirates posed since at least the 16th century: "Dont' want to die by pirates, then don't fight back."
I have to say, the blanket simple idea that stealth wouldn't work in space seems too rash. That said . . . even if it is rash from a "foretelling history" standpoint, I
cannot say I blame Qswitched for taking that position on the game; trying to accurate represent it could well multiply the scope of the game by a factor of 2 or 3. Nonetheless, I think that an expansion/sequel/update that sought to
more thoroughly flesh out stealth--or more inclusively "crypsis" Could be a winner.
Obviously, with nuclear reactors in cans flying around in space, concealing one's location will be difficulty and
work differently than within atmospheres. But there are many types of stealth; and stealth is only one type of operational crypsis. With
absolutely no heat sinks or radiation-absorbing/repelling/bending materials in the game, and no capacity to alternate the operational status
of systems and power plants the question of how crypsis might play in is not something which the game facilitates.
Nonetheless, assuming that crypsis can be employed in space operations and considering that we already suffer from all sorts of false flag operations
etc., there's no reason to assume it would stop in space.
Moving back to my main theme, that Piracy is likely to be the initial source of the militarization of space: if you have a rough idea of the design of target vessels then it's rather straightforward to design a vessel for capturing
such a vessel - say, it has a 20mm autocannon as only means of defense, you put up a forward plate that can withstand it long enough that
you can take out the weapon with a laser. Add features required by the false flag op and by the capture and hope that the target
doesn't have a self-destruct device.
Self-destruct devices could pose a big problem for space piracy.
During the opening phases of collective violence in space (the first few years if not the first decades), it seems unlikely that self-destruct will play much of a role. Also, any time crews who are not fiercely loyal to a cause are involved in the prey ship, it seems that destroying themselves in order to deny the pirates the ship would be questionable. It may also be that freight and primary production type equipment are largely automated which makes the self-destruct gambit more likely in some ways (though less likely in others: EMP to disable the onboard HAL 9000??).
I don't meant to suggest that we can assume that the opening decades of space militarism will be exact replica of the 18th century
Caribbean. But the likely social and economic dynamics which are going to act as the springboard for humanities rush to the heavens, along with the nature of 21st century international relations suggest to me that a "Pirates of the Belts" scenario is not any more speculative than any other scenario. Another factor that deserves to be considered is that, it could be extremely dangerous to target vessels belonging to a major power as such things can easily escalate back on Earth. It may also be quite
it is very difficult to fully exploit the cargo without fairly substantially covert nationally-sanctioned laundering schemes.
Again, these dynamics remind me of piracy in the Caribbean during its initial 17th century phases if not at its peak during the eras when major powers were engaged in sporadic wars back in Europe.
Even if one assumes my scenario has merit, it probably only gets us up to (a) the point where the space rush begins; and (b) 50 or at most 100 years into the Space Rush. By that time, things will have become so complicated and dynamic interactions between international conflicts on Earth and their "peripheral" manifestations out there (Seven Years War anyone?) that it becomes more difficult to predict.
But I dont' think this phase will be "skipped" and the first space warfare will be straight up nation-state versus nation-state turf wars. Nor do I think that "local unrest" will be the first thing. It will take us a long time to have infrastructure, the science and the resource caches off-Earth to facilitate true "colonies" that approach self-sufficiency. Perhaps within 100 years of the onset of the Space Rush? (totally just pulling a number out of thin air, but that does seem any worse than any other option) That leaves many decades during which people WILL have stuff to steal moving around up there--and often times (especially early on) woefully vulnerable to thieves--and thus plenty of reason for someone to arm themselves and try to steal their stuff.
The cataclysmic "Turn Earth into a smouldering Venus" scenario the game portrays as taking place a few hundred years hence might not be that far fetched. I can totally understand the design impetus to set the game that far ahead and that far "beyond" Earth playing any role at all. It "simplifies" things tremendously because if Earth were NOT abandoned, then every conflict portrayed in the game would almost inherently depend on what the player entities back on Earth were up to. Clearly a game in which Earth dominated most of the social, political and economic dynamics would be far more complicated, and in particular would likely behoove modeling of international relations and warfare back on Earth, topics that are clearly out of scope for the game's mission. I think it was a good design decision for the specific purpose of the game. But it is also highly artificial and probably fairly unlikely so the broader question of what space warfare will be like might well be insufficiently addressed by virtue of this design decision.