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Post by ross128 on Oct 17, 2016 17:52:28 GMT
I would expect large-aperture lasers to be a strong contender for defending airless rocks from takeover attempts. No atmospheric problems, and none of the mass/power/heat restrictions that ships have. They don't enjoy the theoretically infinite range that missiles and mass drivers have, but if someone wants to board the station they have to get in laser range eventually.
Just build a laser the size of the European Extremely Large Telescope and hook it up to a reactor that puts out a few dozen gigawatts. You've got the whole rock to sink the heat into.
Missile silos are a good way to ensure second-strike capability though. Burying them deep underground gives them both excellent concealment and fortification. You'll need some way to suppress, bypass, or overwhelm enemy point-defense though.
Mass drivers of various sizes are generally all-around useful, have technically infinite range with a good firing solution, and aren't practical to intercept. Depending on the size of the rock they're on, you could also use them as propulsion. Depending on the situation though, you could just threaten to snipe the enemy's home rock with them.
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Post by wafflestoo on Oct 17, 2016 19:02:40 GMT
... Depending on the size of the rock they're on, you could also use them as propulsion... Christ, I have to stop reading these forums on the sly at work. I almost LOL'ed at this (which would have blown my cover ) Without ground defenses modeled in game it's difficult to gauge whether fortress rocks would be effective or not. But considering how effective nuclear missile salvos tend to be in my games I'm guessing concealed laser, drone and missile emplacements would be an effective deterrent to invading somebody else's orbital space.
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 17, 2016 19:13:22 GMT
Going off of the in game text it would appear that orbital nuclear bombardment is fully regarded by all parties to be the be all end all of orbital weapons. As for effective planetary defenses I would say having heavy duty anti space missiles would be a very effective system. Have the missile be command guided and use very large surface telescopes and sensors arrays would give enough resolution to guide a missile into a ship sized target. And with command guidance you would not have to worry about flare type systems. And a missile will always out perform a ship.
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Post by argonbalt on Oct 17, 2016 19:27:56 GMT
Of course they'd be trackable; but intercept-able? Going off of in-game railgun speeds you'd be trying to intercept a 30-ton rock with about a 10km/s speed difference from your colony. So what are you going to do to intercept it and what would you do to it even if you could? ...and since when are ICBMs 'slow and intercept-able'? That was the entire focus of the (largely failed) 'Star Wars' projects of the 1980's, lasers are too short-ranged and too easily defeated while 'smart rocks' do work, but have a low-hit percentage. The balance of terror was just that, each side of the conflict had the weapons to annihilate the other, there was no stealthy way to use them, and using them would guarantee return fire of the same magnitude. Not a very romantic way to look at warfare, no flashy ships or battles of maneuver, just guaranteed destruction. Pretty much EXACTLY like 'Interplanetary'.
Well firstly the ship mounted coil guns in game are broken as heck at the moment. So keep that in mind. I will go out on a limb and say all colony mass drivers will have superior range and stats to ANYTHING ship mounted. let me put this in basic, If a 60m coil gun on a ship can do 10km/s then a 100 km coilgun(if we still use Nausikaa 192) will DEFINITELY do better. The main issue for the system is not range or exit velocity but in making the two hit, this can be easily solved with mass driving a missile to correct it's course and guide to target( im assuming you are shooting a missile or large slug in the first place) the fortresses round doesn't even have to fully disintegrate the projectile, just slow it and brake it small enough for the potentially GW lasers you have to vaporise it when the bits get close. And i still disagree that everything would boil down to 'interplanetary'. Shit still takes a long ass time, even at 10km/s. For say you fired a shot from the closest point between earth and Mars, that distance is still 556000000 km's, 10 goes into that rough 5560000 times, that means that it would still take, from the closest point between the planets, no less than 64.3 days for your missile/slug/whatever to get there. And that is an extreme ideal, move the planets further apart and count for orbits and it only goes up. You could sleep off a week and still have time to cook something up It still pays a ton to have these giant guns as a precautionary weapons, and more usefully as cheap transport. A good way to think about is is like modern artillery. We have it, we have it good, so good it could hit other artillery, but does that mean all we have is artillery? no we have artillery mounted on ships, tanks are a form of mobile armoured artillery, even certain helicopters and planes have heavy calibre stuff. Most of it is way smaller than it could be built, but the mobility of these platforms makes up for that.
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Post by argonbalt on Oct 17, 2016 19:39:23 GMT
What would be the point of turning such an asteroid into a fortress? There's no reason for your enemy to attack it, since it has little inherent value, and they can always go around it to attack something else. If you're going to fortify something, it should be something valuable. Also, how would you aim a mass driver built deep into the asteroid? What would be the point of turning such an asteroid into a fortress? Uh because it is a strategic point and fuels supply depot, duh. It acts as a force extender by enabling your ships to move farther afield and faster knowing the can resupply. Likewise it is fortified because you want to use the fuel and resources and not have others use them duh. There's no reason for your enemy to attack it, since it has little inherent value, and they can always go around it to attack something else. If they try to go around they would have to deal with the fleets garrisoned at the fortress, fleets who are better provisioned and fueled than yours, giving them a statistical advantage. Even if you did go around, you would have to fight the forces of whatever you decided to attack, in addition to the forces you "went around" from the fortress. Same reason people did not simply "go around" enemy castles, you have to deal with them and the men inside in one way or another. . If you're going to fortify something, it should be something valuable. Yes like a resource asteroid, as previously stated. Even if it it'self was not a source of fuel, having a fortified gas station is very nice for thirsty space craft. . Also, how would you aim a mass driver built deep into the asteroid?Build it as parallel as possible with the orbital plane. Wait for the asteroid to rotate to an ideal fire position, accelerate a missile, missile can correct for final approach, wait the few hours necessary to be on target again, fire again, rinse wash repeat.
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Post by wafflestoo on Oct 17, 2016 20:02:55 GMT
(I try to never forget that actually...)
I'm thinking the flight times would range more into months than days; but the maximum range of the weapon depends essentially on the target's ability to get out of the way which for most planetary bodies is nil. It doesn't matter how long the round is in flight for, it's gonna hit. Granted, this gives the target ample time to figure out where it's going to hit and react accordingly but it's not like there's a lot of places to go to on an asteroid.
I guess what I'm not convinced of and the game hasn't answered is what do these spacecraft actually DO to influence foreign policy. Ground defenses aren't modeled so it's difficult to gauge how effective/ineffective they would be.
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 17, 2016 20:08:50 GMT
(I try to never forget that actually...) I'm thinking the flight times would range more into months than days; but the maximum range of the weapon depends essentially on the target's ability to get out of the way which for most planetary bodies is nil. It doesn't matter how long the round is in flight for, it's gonna hit. Granted, this gives the target ample time to figure out where it's going to hit and react accordingly but it's not like there's a lot of places to go to on an asteroid. I guess what I'm not convinced of and the game hasn't answered is what do these spacecraft actually DO to influence foreign policy. Ground defenses aren't modeled so it's difficult to gauge how effective/ineffective they would be. Ah that's where you are wrong. There are no weapons at all that are perfectly accurate. And if you do not get exactly the right velocity from launch you can end up anywhere at all. Even the most advance space probes need to make mid course burns and the same would have to be true of anything you launch across interplanetary distance. Not to mention all of the millions of things that will through off the final velocity and accuracy of railgun or coilgun rounds. I mean just look at how inaccurate all weapons in game are at even a few 100kms now take that and extend it to 100,000km and you are not going to hit anything at all even something as big as a planet. I mean even if a laser did not loose focus you would still have minute pointing errors that would need corrections. Now if you do have mid course corrections your round or missile rather can still be detected at long range and shot down before it arrives. Not to mention the issues with the limited impact the projectile is likely to have and the massive cost of the launch system and the non controllability of the round after you fire it.
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Post by ross128 on Oct 17, 2016 20:19:22 GMT
One thing to keep in mind is that defending from takeover and defending from destruction are two very different things. Defending from takeover is much easier because in a takeover, the enemy will want your rock in one piece (minus a few manageable holes) and at some point they will have to bring personnel to the surface, with everything that entails. Takeover also means they will have to bring ships, because those personnel have to get there somehow.
Defending from destruction is much more difficult, the enemy no longer has to worry about trivial matters like "overkill" or "collateral damage", and they no longer have to worry about putting boots on the ground. If they have the resources to build a sufficiently large mass driver, your best defense will be having really good spies so you can find it, determine that you're the target, and blow it up before they finish building it. Otherwise you'll probably get popped by the Longgunner of the Apocalypse with little recourse (beyond, perhaps, the satisfaction that your return fire will annihilate them shortly after you die).
Fortunately, for most factions with an eye for resource acquisition, takeover will be the preferred SOP. And a successful defense will not necessarily have to render takeover impossible, merely cost-prohibitive.
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erin
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Smash Mouth Plays From The Depths Of Hell As You Traverse A Deep, Rat-Infested Cave
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Post by erin on Oct 17, 2016 21:15:16 GMT
Among the reasons ICBMs are troublesome to intercept on Earth is because because they don't have to travel very far in rocketry terms; the average ICBM impacts its target within 30 minutes. In space, particularly interplanetary/belt warfare where you have weeks to months to intercept your enemy this isn't the case. You can station defenses at intervals far from your base: warships, drone platforms, and other installations. Unless your 30T impactor has active course correction, which can be taken out by intercepting drones or missiles/Kirklin mines, it will be susceptible to being knocked out of an impact trajectory even if it isn't destroyed completely.
Crowded moon systems, like those of the gas giants and the ice giants, might be more "ICBM-like" because of their closer proximity, reducing travel times to days or hours; even then there's a lot more distance across which to stage defenses than on Earth. Warships may be even more useful here as deterrents, with high access to propellant materials and high orbital perturbation. And even on Earth, conventional warmachines haven't been abandoned altogether.
As to the point of turning asteroids into fortresses -- if it's worth fighting over solar system resources at all, it seems to me that asteroids can have plenty of value. Aiming a mass driver built into the rock is a good question though, I feel like turreted installations would work best for this kind of thing, even if you're only mining space rocks.
edit: I guess I missed a fair amount of the thread, whoops! But I think these points are still relevant.
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Post by wafflestoo on Oct 17, 2016 21:35:58 GMT
Ah that's where you are wrong. There are no weapons at all that are perfectly accurate. And if you do not get exactly the right velocity from launch you can end up anywhere at all. Even the most advance space probes need to make mid course burns and the same would have to be true of anything you launch across interplanetary distance. Not to mention all of the millions of things that will through off the final velocity and accuracy of railgun or coilgun rounds. I mean just look at how inaccurate all weapons in game are at even a few 100kms now take that and extend it to 100,000km and you are not going to hit anything at all even something as big as a planet. I mean even if a laser did not loose focus you would still have minute pointing errors that would need corrections. Now if you do have mid course corrections your round or missile rather can still be detected at long range and shot down before it arrives. Not to mention the issues with the limited impact the projectile is likely to have and the massive cost of the launch system and the non controllability of the round after you fire it. This is a 'minute-on-the-angle' problem and yes, it would be a problem. But how many shots can you afford to make in the flight-time of one weapon, or ever for that matter. Corrections could be made either through saturation fire or correcting the lay of the gun based on the trajectory of previously fired projectiles you could just keep shooting. Still likely to be cheaper than spaceships. ...and how exactly are you going to 'shoot-down' a 30-ton rock (or a 30-ton steel armature for that matter)? At best you would want to try to deflect it but now you have the same aiming problem in reverse with a hard time-limit. (at worst you'd break it apart into a bunch of 5-ton gravel, spreading the damage around). One thing to keep in mind is that defending from takeover and defending from destruction are two very different things. Defending from takeover is much easier because in a takeover, the enemy will want your rock in one piece (minus a few manageable holes) and at some point they will have to bring personnel to the surface, with everything that entails. Takeover also means they will have to bring ships, because those personnel have to get there somehow. NOW we're getting somewhere. As Napoleon is credited with saying, "Amateurs discuss tactics, professionals discuss logistics." Let's be generous and assume that in order to defeat any defenders and put down any partisan efforts you need to transport 1% of a location's general populous. The smallest asteroid I can think of that we interact with in game has about 250,000 people living on it. So your Espatier force needs to be about 2,500 strong. So how much shipping do you need to transport the force, their equipment, and at least 6-months worth of supplies? That's 170 tons in meat alone; let alone beans nor bullets. And that's the smallest invasion and take-over force you would need, it only gets bigger. (side note; oh hey! CoaDE has a few entries in the Project Rho website!) Maybe that's why UFPR and USTA Space Forces resorted to simply nuking colonies from orbit; more from expedient necessity than either side having a space puppy kicking contest.
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Post by ross128 on Oct 17, 2016 21:46:50 GMT
Hmm, that may actually explain why they chose nukes in particular over kinetic impactors. Perhaps the idea was that nukes would cook/irradiate most of the people inside the colony, while leaving the physical structure of the rock more or less in one easy to mine piece. Any surface infrastructure would be pretty toasty, but it isn't likely to be anything the new owners can't replace.
Of course, how successful that approach is can depend very much on what the asteroid is made out of, and where the population centers are built. Surface domes would be very vulnerable to this kinds of attack, but a colony dug deep into a cored-out asteroid and surrounded by their water storage (allowing it to double as a radiation shield) would be highly resistant.
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Post by wafflestoo on Oct 17, 2016 21:59:03 GMT
Among the reasons ICBMs are troublesome to intercept on Earth is because because they don't have to travel very far in rocketry terms; the average ICBM impacts its target within 30 minutes. In space, particularly interplanetary/belt warfare where you have weeks to months to intercept your enemy this isn't the case. You can station defenses at intervals far from your base: warships, drone platforms, and other installations. Unless your 30T impactor has active course correction, which can be taken out by intercepting drones or missiles/Kirklin mines, it will be susceptible to being knocked out of an impact trajectory even if it isn't destroyed completely. Crowded moon systems, like those of the gas giants and the ice giants, might be more "ICBM-like" because of their closer proximity, reducing travel times to days or hours; even then there's a lot more distance across which to stage defenses than on Earth. Warships may be even more useful here as deterrents, with high access to propellant materials and high orbital perturbation. And even on Earth, conventional warmachines haven't been abandoned altogether. As to the point of turning asteroids into fortresses -- if it's worth fighting over solar system resources at all, it seems to me that asteroids can have plenty of value. Aiming a mass driver built into the rock is a good question though, I feel like turreted installations would work best for this kind of thing, even if you're only mining space rocks. edit: I guess I missed a fair amount of the thread, whoops! But I think these points are still relevant. This is kind of what I'm getting at; how would invading spacecraft fare in the face of ground emplaced missile, drone, and gun batteries (my guess is, not well). If spacecraft don't fare well AND are expensive then what alternatives are there? I was offering space rocks only as an example; they could be defeated of course, but the idea is to saturate the defenders without breaking the bank so-to-speak. We don't face any kind of ground-fire in game, we don't have to deal with any kind of logistics problems/nightmares in game. Without seeing the full picture I'm just not 100% convinced this is an accurate vision. (I still love the game for what it is though )
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erin
Junior Member
Smash Mouth Plays From The Depths Of Hell As You Traverse A Deep, Rat-Infested Cave
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Post by erin on Oct 17, 2016 22:22:58 GMT
Yeah I definitely agree in that I don't necessarily buy everything postulated by CoaDE's stock model of warfare. I mean, CoaDE is a spaceship arena right now, it really can't claim total realism imo without some major clarification of its ibfrastructural worldbuilding (not to mention all the bugs at present which arent QS's fault but do hamper things). I'll have more coherent thoughts when I'm home but just wanted to clarify I agree on that
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Post by argonbalt on Oct 17, 2016 22:28:03 GMT
This is a 'minute-on-the-angle' problem and yes, it would be a problem. But how many shots can you afford to make in the flight-time of one weapon, or ever for that matter. Corrections could be made either through saturation fire or correcting the lay of the gun based on the trajectory of previously fired projectiles you could just keep shooting. Still likely to be cheaper than spaceships.
...and how exactly are you going to 'shoot-down' a 30-ton rock (or a 30-ton steel armature for that matter)? At best you would want to try to deflect it but now you have the same aiming problem in reverse with a hard time-limit. (at worst you'd break it apart into a bunch of 5-ton gravel, spreading the damage around).NOW we're getting somewhere. As Napoleon is credited with saying, "Amateurs discuss tactics, professionals discuss logistics."
Let's be generous and assume that in order to defeat any defenders and put down any partisan efforts you need to transport 1% of a location's general populous. The smallest asteroid I can think of that we interact with in game has about 250,000 people living on it. So your Espatier force needs to be about 2,500 strong. So how much shipping do you need to transport the force, their equipment, and at least 6-months worth of supplies? That's 170 tons in meat alone; let alone beans nor bullets. And that's the smallest invasion and take-over force you would need, it only gets bigger. (side note; oh hey! CoaDE has a few entries in the Project Rho website!)
Maybe that's why UFPR and USTA Space Forces resorted to simply nuking colonies from orbit; more from expedient necessity than either side having a space puppy kicking contest.
In regards to A):In a matter you have already answered your question, you can stop a 30 ton rock with a 30 ton rock, Make it cone shaped or off a denser material and bang, sure the shrapnel might be even smaller, but a deflection works. In fact you would not even need to counter with another mass driver, you could simply fly a mass into the trajectory. Launch a few consequtive armour plates and viola! An impromptu but mobile whipple shield, slowing down any would be projectiles until it can be blasted to smithereens by normal flak rockets or coil gun rounds. This has the added advantage of the plates only needing to change alignment and orientation, where as your speeding projectile (if trying to avoid these plates) would have do drag all that consecutive momentum around. This all does assume a very destruction oriented approach to your target. And yes while being cheaper than ships, it is by far 1 dumber, unless you are strapping crew to these things, 2 slow and with only one very pre determined method of attack, and 3 Far easier to counter than a ship full of thinking breathing humans. Now in regards to B):
As a disgruntled peasant once said "Nique Napoleon!Il et un idiot pour prende tous les mervielle soldats francais entre le froi de Russie!" But seriously i think the idea of half a dozen battalions of troops is a bit overkill. Asymmetrical warfare will take precedent, and so fighting will more so be a matter of capturing and disabling vital systems like life support, power generation, etc. And yes while transporting 2500 men is insane i think we can all agree that nuking habitats to the point of sterility is a bit too far in the opposite direction. Once the enemy's primary infrastructure is crippled surrender or die are the only two options. Alternatively one could perhaps ransom the people inside, earning a profit without the need to cause severe damage. Other methods off the top of my head include offensive drills, in which you dig to within a few feet off the enemies colony and threaten to pop their dome/cylinder/whatever unless they surrender. Other methods could be irradiation of food supplies alone/farming sectors. This would put pressure on them to leave. Contamination of water supplies, hallucinogenic drugs introduced to the air circulation. etc.
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Post by ross128 on Oct 17, 2016 23:14:24 GMT
Honestly, I don't think an insurgency will be much of a problem once you've seized control of the life support systems. At that point, you can just pop the airlocks on anyone who gets uppity. The air supply in their EVA suits can only last so long. People will fall in line real quick. If they don't, whoever controls the air supply will space the lot of them.
Of course, the defenders are going to be well aware of this, meaning the life support controls are going to be the most heavily fortified position on the whole rock, likely buried deep in the center to protect them from bombardment (because if it was vulnerable to bombardment you could pop their life support, wait long enough for emergency air to run out, then send in janitors to dispose of the corpses). It doesn't have to be invulnerable, it just has to be hard enough to reach that destroying it via bombardment wouldn't leave much of the rock you're trying to take. I don't think there will be much in the way of long occupations or COIN in airless rock takeovers, unless the invaders have really big hearts and just can't stand the thought of spacing people of indeterminate combat status.
More likely is going to be a short, brutal fight for control of the air supply, followed by an ultimatum to surrender or suck vacuum. The invaders are going to be suited up of course, because otherwise the invasion would be over as soon as the defenders pop an airlock on them. The invasion itself, therefore, will be time-limited by the invaders' air supply. Once their air runs low, their only options are surrender, retreat, or suck vacuum.
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