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Post by beta on Oct 17, 2016 23:17:26 GMT
Why the hell would you have centralized life support controls? That seems like an absolutely terrible idea for any position that would need to consider the threat of attack from hostile forces. Decentralized control for vital systems would likely be common.
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Post by wafflestoo on Oct 17, 2016 23:23:24 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. In response to A) You are missing two parts of the argument; one limitation of accuracy against the incoming projectile is worse than shooting at a planet (smaller target with a less well known orbit/trajectory), and two is you have a time-limit to stop it; the person lobbing these at you doesn't. Furthermore, did you notice how much you are expending to stop just one of these? Rockets and guidance systems to make a mobile "whipple shield", missiles, etc. You very likely have way more than one on the way. If they're more expensive to stop than they are to deploy then it still makes some amount of sense from a harassment standpoint. And if you miss one? Well, that settles the matter In response to B) That's actually a smallish Brigade (which is the smallest operationally deployable element anyway; you don't really deploy individual Battalions), and still probably an optimistic force size for seizing full control of a colony the size of Themis. But we'll go with it. I'm genuinely curious to see if a ship could be designed for a reasonable cost (both upfront and operationally) with that mission in mind. I don't know that you'd need full crew modules... I'll have to see what the mass requirements would be when I have some time to do some more research. Transport ships capable of carrying 800 - 900 Espatiers each doesn't seem like they'd be completely out of the realm of reason or possiblity...
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Post by ross128 on Oct 17, 2016 23:42:21 GMT
Why the hell would you have centralized life support controls? That seems like an absolutely terrible idea for any position that would need to consider the threat of attack from hostile forces. Decentralized control for vital systems would likely be common. _______________________________________________________________________________________ How practical that is and to what extent the controls can be spread out would depend on the size of the rock in question. There's still likely to be hubs that control clusters of rooms around them, because decentralizing to the point that every single room has its own life support controls would be expensive. And if they're all networked together, it would be potentially difficult to secure against hacking. Control hubs are likely to be networked together, because being able to remotely control the life support of a section you recently lost is rather useful. Or, in more routine use, it's useful if other hubs can pick up the slack when one breaks down. The main difference is the principle would be applied on a per-section basis for rocks big enough for multiple life support systems rather than being one-and-done. On a small rock with only two or three hubs, the difference wouldn't even be particularly noticeable. It would present two additional complications for the attackers: first, because the defenders are likely to lock out any section they take so they can control it remotely, the attackers will need to allocate time and resources to cut the section they take off from the defenders' network and establish control over it (which may require physically cutting and splicing wires, or even require repairing/replacing stuff, including air tanks, if the defenders go scorched-earth on them). Second: any sections they haven't taken yet can be a launching point for a counter-attack, so they will need to defend sections they have taken. The good news for the attackers though, is any section they do take will allow them to regroup and resupply there. They likely aren't going to want to spend too much time doing that though, due to the second complication. If the rock is really big and extensively built-up, it could theoretically have enough sections that it starts to resemble fighting on a planet with an atmosphere more than a space-station.
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Post by wafflestoo on Oct 17, 2016 23:46:29 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. I don't know about 'only options are...' For the defenders it's going to mostly come down to how decentralized their air supply system is while for the attackers it could come down to 'how secure is our bridge-head?" If the air supply system requires large numbers of nodes to be seized before the system as a whole can effectively be shut-down then they have retreat options. If the attackers have a good, secure bridge-head then they can keep units rotated out to keep them supplied with expendable material. I'm not going to just assume you won't suffer from partisan warfare after the rock is secured either; I've had enough total bat-brained nutjobs come and try to kill me to convince me that some people not only don't fear death but feel the sacrifice of entire cities worth of people to be justified in the grand scheme of their world view... and that's just over football teams. ;p
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Post by nerd1000 on Oct 18, 2016 0:58:57 GMT
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. In response to A) You are missing two parts of the argument; one limitation of accuracy against the incoming projectile is worse than shooting at a planet (smaller target with a less well known orbit/trajectory), and two is you have a time-limit to stop it; the person lobbing these at you doesn't. Furthermore, did you notice how much you are expending to stop just one of these? Rockets and guidance systems to make a mobile "whipple shield", missiles, etc. You very likely have way more than one on the way. If they're more expensive to stop than they are to deploy then it still makes some amount of sense from a harassment standpoint. And if you miss one? Well, that settles the matter In response to B) That's actually a smallish Brigade (which is the smallest operationally deployable element anyway; you don't really deploy individual Battalions), and still probably an optimistic force size for seizing full control of a colony the size of Themis. But we'll go with it. I'm genuinely curious to see if a ship could be designed for a reasonable cost (both upfront and operationally) with that mission in mind. I don't know that you'd need full crew modules... I'll have to see what the mass requirements would be when I have some time to do some more research. Transport ships capable of carrying 800 - 900 Espatiers each doesn't seem like they'd be completely out of the realm of reason or possiblity... for A) If we assume the incoming projectile is a 'dumb' 30 tonne rock or metal slug we don't actually need to intercept it at all, because our rock has a mass driver and mass drivers have recoil. All you need to do is consistently fire your mass driver (loaded with cheap regolith) in one direction, nudging your asteroid out of the projectile's way. If, on the other hand, it is a missile with the ability to perform course corrections then you would need to hit it with a small cheap missile at a long distance, destroying its guidance systems and either forcing a miss or allowing you to employ the aforementioned mass driver recoil trick to dodge it.
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 18, 2016 1:17:28 GMT
Honestly I mean if you are shooting dumb lumps of steel across interplanetary distances you will be VERY VERY lucky if even one of them hits a single darn planet! Let alone a small space rock. I mean if you just send out a dirt cheap missile and smack the rock that might if it's lucky hit your planet then it'll miss. I mean when you have months between launch and impact you can rest assured not a single one will hit and if one by some miracle is on a collision course just send a dirt cheap flack missile at it if you hit it just a bit it'll then miss the planet from a miniscule velocity change because it has so far to go. I mean interplanetary missiles could be used but again far cheaper missiles can be used to intercept them.
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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 18, 2016 1:23:38 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. Okay, I was going to write something else before but I couldn't let this go unaddressed. Perhaps I'm thinking of cities while you're thinking of outposts here (for which this makes more sense IMO), but this also seems like a common idea among hard-SF portrayals of massive space stations like O'Neills and Kalpanas and so forth so I think the following is relevant to the general discussion of defending space invasions. With that in mind, nobody who needs a large habitat for any economic purposes is going to build it with absolutely centralized controls nor storage. Popping mushrooms into the air vents only works so long as that section of the air vent network isn't closed off from the others. Poisoning the water supply only works so long as the pipes aren't shut off, which defenders undoubtedly would if that section of the station were compromised. And so on. It isn't that hard to fit a station/base with emergency detectors linked to automated pipe and vent shutoffs. Obviously you can locate strategic essentials deep underground, but if bombardment is already penetrating deep enough to destroy life support systems located closer to the surface, the bombardment is already penetrating deep enough that the loss of life support in those sections doesn't make any difference. People in that sector are already dead. Something as massive and immobile as a station is going to have lots of redundant systems for power, air, etc. Air in space is going to be managed like any other utility, and different districts or perhaps "city blocks" of the station will have their own life support. Heck, they may even have their own smaller nuclear power plants, as a backup if nothing else. There will be systems in place to isolate blocks from one another. (You'll want this to control epidemic outbreaks, too.) And there will be survivalism, there will be shelters, there will be enclaves that are better prepared to handle a disaster or an invasion than the rest of the station. Canned air and personal softsuits are likely to be hot-ticket items, as will be self-sealable housing units and personal LSS controls. Defending military forces are definitely going to have big bottles of air stockpiled for war. If anything, I would envision space habitats as being divided up something like this. Scale as needed; I'm assuming something on the order of say, 1 LSS per maybe 50-100 people? In total a city of 100,000 might have 1000 self-containable life support units as a tentative example. I don't buy into the notion that the doctrine of "we'll just space them all if we can afford to take out all the LSS" will dominate all major space warfare. The value of a habitat is at least largely in having people there who can do things that you need to run whatever economic or military operations you want out of that rock. If you intend to capture an economically important habitat, why would you destroy everything that makes it valuable? If it's expensive to ship a fleet of military vessels in there, are you really willing to pay the cost of ferrying thousands to millions of your own people to re-inhabit the thing? Even in the most all-out battle I'm sure there will be at least deliberation over the matter, so long as the situation doesn't slip to MAD. Another edit: It appears I've once again missed a fair amount of the thread due to the time taken writing this post, lol. I see our opinions on the matter are more congruent than I had assumed. Still, the last point stands, I think, but again perhaps I'm generally thinking bigger habitats than you are.
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Post by Dhan on Oct 18, 2016 1:26:01 GMT
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. Shooting down an incoming projectile that's probably traveling 10 km/s (and possibly more if you consider the orbital mechanics that could be involved) is easily several times more difficult, targeting wise, than shooting big gun emplacements from nearby planets or moons. And who knows, the projectiles being fired could be slightly more than just slugs. They could use some cold gas thrusters for very small mid course burns. Or maybe they'd have some armor plates of their own in front of them to deflect counter munitions. Also don't forget that it isn't going to be only a single projectile you'd have to deal with. Even if the mass driver has a reload time of minutes, that still equates to many, many projectiles coming your way after a weeks worth of bombardment.
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 18, 2016 1:35:06 GMT
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. Shooting down an incoming projectile that's probably traveling 10 km/s (and possibly more if you consider the orbital mechanics that could be involved) is easily several times more difficult, targeting wise, than shooting big gun emplacements from nearby planets or moons. And who knows, the projectiles being fired could be slightly more than just slugs. They could use some cold gas thrusters for very small mid course burns. Or maybe they'd have some armor plates of their own in front of them to deflect counter munitions. Also don't forget that it isn't going to be only a single projectile you'd have to deal with. Even if the mass driver has a reload time of minutes, that still equates to many, many projectiles coming your way after a weeks worth of bombardment. Ah yes but you see very few of those projectiles are going to come close to the planet if they don't have enough delta v for maneuver burns. And you don't need to shoot down the projectile. Just change it's velocity a bit. That'll be enough to prevent any dumb projectile from hitting your planet and even a small flack fragment when hitting at around 20km/s is going to royally screw up the incoming projectile. In fact pretty much all of the in game flack missiles could be heavily down sized have their guidance changed and then be used to shoot down anything in coming. And don't forget the amount of energy you are talking about to launch multiple tons at 10km/s. And the whole issue of making a propulsion system that can survive being launched. That is a whole kettle of fish that the game doesn't really talk about allowing us to fire anything out of anything no matter the g forces.
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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 18, 2016 1:55:14 GMT
Agree with Captinjoe. Even if the critical systems of the impactor are sufficiently buried in its 30 tonnes of metal so as to make them mostly impenetrable, you don't need to destroy the systems, just run the thing out of delta-V, which it probably will not be carrying a whole lot of if it was launched from a mass driver. If it's built and launched like a regular missile, full of fuel, then it is vulnerable to kinetic attacks/Kirklin mines/etc. Either way, you don't necessarily need extraordinary amounts of mass and equipment per warhead to counter a doomsday attack.
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Post by wafflestoo on Oct 18, 2016 4:29:12 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. Okay, I was going to write something else before but I couldn't let this go unaddressed. Perhaps I'm thinking of cities while you're thinking of outposts here (for which this makes more sense IMO), but this also seems like a common idea among hard-SF portrayals of massive space stations like O'Neills and Kalpanas and so forth so I think the following is relevant to the general discussion of defending space invasions. With that in mind, nobody who needs a large habitat for any economic purposes is going to build it with absolutely centralized controls nor storage. Popping mushrooms into the air vents only works so long as that section of the air vent network isn't closed off from the others. Poisoning the water supply only works so long as the pipes aren't shut off, which defenders undoubtedly would if that section of the station were compromised. And so on. It isn't that hard to fit a station/base with emergency detectors linked to automated pipe and vent shutoffs. Obviously you can locate strategic essentials deep underground, but if bombardment is already penetrating deep enough to destroy life support systems located closer to the surface, the bombardment is already penetrating deep enough that the loss of life support in those sections doesn't make any difference. People in that sector are already dead. Something as massive and immobile as a station is going to have lots of redundant systems for power, air, etc. Air in space is going to be managed like any other utility, and different districts or perhaps "city blocks" of the station will have their own life support. Heck, they may even have their own smaller nuclear power plants, as a backup if nothing else. There will be systems in place to isolate blocks from one another. (You'll want this to control epidemic outbreaks, too.) And there will be survivalism, there will be shelters, there will be enclaves that are better prepared to handle a disaster or an invasion than the rest of the station. Canned air and personal softsuits are likely to be hot-ticket items, as will be self-sealable housing units and personal LSS controls. Defending military forces are definitely going to have big bottles of air stockpiled for war. If anything, I would envision space habitats as being divided up something like this. Scale as needed; I'm assuming something on the order of say, 1 LSS per maybe 50-100 people? In total a city of 100,000 might have 1000 self-containable life support units as a tentative example. I don't buy into the notion that the doctrine of "we'll just space them all if we can afford to take out all the LSS" will dominate all major space warfare. The value of a habitat is at least largely in having people there who can do things that you need to run whatever economic or military operations you want out of that rock. If you intend to capture an economically important habitat, why would you destroy everything that makes it valuable? If it's expensive to ship a fleet of military vessels in there, are you really willing to pay the cost of ferrying thousands to millions of your own people to re-inhabit the thing? Even in the most all-out battle I'm sure there will be at least deliberation over the matter, so long as the situation doesn't slip to MAD. Another edit: It appears I've once again missed a fair amount of the thread due to the time taken writing this post, lol. I see our opinions on the matter are more congruent than I had assumed. Still, the last point stands, I think, but again perhaps I'm generally thinking bigger habitats than you are. I just wanted to say that I really enjoy your ability to whip these diagrams out
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acatalepsy
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Post by acatalepsy on Oct 18, 2016 15:48:23 GMT
I think the big problem, the one that CoaDE basically sidesteps, is intercepting interplanetary transfers. And there's a lot of complexity there, that gets into places where the simulation is weak, at the edges of its assumptions on speed, sensor resolution, etc. If you damage or destroy the by-necessity-unarmored propellant tanks (the "invasion stages") before the craft has completed their braking maneuvers, you've mission killed that spacecraft for the purposes of anything other than a flyby; it's going on a nice long trip to nowhere...which suggests that (multistage) flak missile swarms are a reasonably effective anti-invasion defense. Even forcing incoming spacecraft to spend time and dV dodging missiles threatens to make their mission a failure by simply missing the target or not having enough dV to orbitally insert (or fight against ground fire if they do).
This depends of course on how accurate missiles can be against targets closing at speeds greater than 10 km/s. But I don't think this an utterly insurmountable problem with properly designed missiles and good targeting algorithms; point defense can be rendered basically a non-factor by sheer speed. The best defense is dispersion and possibly countermissiles or drone defense screens, but these things could detonate/fragment at fairly extreme range and still be reasonably accurate.
There's also the borderline - the place *where* the incoming fleet needs to decelerate to do an insertion burn. This almost the perfect place to attack, especially with long range weapons like lasers, drones, and missiles that can try to shoot the exposed, vulnerable engines while the braking is going on and manuevering options are limited (or even do so with long range coilgun/railgun bombardment, aimed at preventing a successful braking maneuver). Or send out combatants (with tankers, etc) to try to intercept and match the incoming fleet on the way in, again to force the incoming fleet to do breaking manuevers early and waste lots of dV.
Not to say that countermeasures to this don't exist. It's possible fuel tanks will be sufficiently self-healing that fragments can't really damage them or reduce dV. Or that (multi-stage) drone interceptors with extreme dV might be able to engage and destroy the command vehicle for a missile swarm, or that dispersion across distances of hundreds to hundreds of thousands of kilometers makes interception threats difficult or counterproductive. But it's a fertile field that pushes the boundary of what the simulation can do.
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 18, 2016 16:48:53 GMT
I think the big problem, the one that CoaDE basically sidesteps, is intercepting interplanetary transfers. And there's a lot of complexity there, that gets into places where the simulation is weak, at the edges of its assumptions on speed, sensor resolution, etc. If you damage or destroy the by-necessity-unarmored propellant tanks (the "invasion stages") before the craft has completed their braking maneuvers, you've mission killed that spacecraft for the purposes of anything other than a flyby; it's going on a nice long trip to nowhere...which suggests that (multistage) flak missile swarms are a reasonably effective anti-invasion defense. Even forcing incoming spacecraft to spend time and dV dodging missiles threatens to make their mission a failure by simply missing the target or not having enough dV to orbitally insert (or fight against ground fire if they do). This depends of course on how accurate missiles can be against targets closing at speeds greater than 10 km/s. But I don't think this an utterly insurmountable problem with properly designed missiles and good targeting algorithms; point defense can be rendered basically a non-factor by sheer speed. The best defense is dispersion and possibly countermissiles or drone defense screens, but these things could detonate/fragment at fairly extreme range and still be reasonably accurate. There's also the borderline - the place *where* the incoming fleet needs to decelerate to do an insertion burn. This almost the perfect place to attack, especially with long range weapons like lasers, drones, and missiles that can try to shoot the exposed, vulnerable engines while the braking is going on and manuevering options are limited (or even do so with long range coilgun/railgun bombardment, aimed at preventing a successful braking maneuver). Or send out combatants (with tankers, etc) to try to intercept and match the incoming fleet on the way in, again to force the incoming fleet to do breaking manuevers early and waste lots of dV. Not to say that countermeasures to this don't exist. It's possible fuel tanks will be sufficiently self-healing that fragments can't really damage them or reduce dV. Or that (multi-stage) drone interceptors with extreme dV might be able to engage and destroy the command vehicle for a missile swarm, or that dispersion across distances of hundreds to hundreds of thousands of kilometers makes interception threats difficult or counterproductive. But it's a fertile field that pushes the boundary of what the simulation can do. These are some excellent points I feel. One thing that could be done to aid in getting into orbit is making the braking burn at a long distance from the target and inserting into a highly elliptical orbit. Not only would this make interference with the burn more difficult it would also give the greatest flexibility to the invasion fleet to decide what their final orbit will be. In addition the final breaking stage of an invasion stage could be fairly well armored to protect against this type of attack.
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Post by RA2lover on Oct 18, 2016 17:19:04 GMT
A point is haven't seen being discussed much here is how the gravity field puts attackers at an advantage in terms of energy required to achieve a certain interception speed.
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acatalepsy
Junior Member
Not Currently In Space
Posts: 97
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Post by acatalepsy on Oct 18, 2016 18:53:14 GMT
These are some excellent points I feel. One thing that could be done to aid in getting into orbit is making the braking burn at a long distance from the target and inserting into a highly elliptical orbit. Not only would this make interference with the burn more difficult it would also give the greatest flexibility to the invasion fleet to decide what their final orbit will be. In addition the final breaking stage of an invasion stage could be fairly well armored to protect against this type of attack. Yes, armored (from the front at least) 'final' invasion stages are a decent idea. I've been considering how you could armor a nuclear rocket from behind- it's not easy, but it is possible, especially if the number of places that they can shoot at you from is limited, and your main concern is lasers rather than solid projectiles. Another one is to go on offense, with at least one (unarmored, unmanned) craft filled with missiles and maybe a few drones that doesn't decelerate at all, but rather exists to destroy and disrupt any placed defenses or attempted intercept during the braking manuevers. I think the question of "how soon must they brake to avoid taking long range fire" is a very interesting one, especially since it's at the edge of what a lot of questions the simulation isn't set up to avoid answering. If they do it too early, they're not even in an elliptical orbit, and will need to spend real thrust to get to where they need to go. If they break too late, they're exposed to all sorts of nastiness - including defensive (potentially stealthy, at least until the last possible minute) railguns, pre-placed missiles and drones, very big lasers, and more - when they absolutely cannot afford it. Prudence suggests erring on the side of caution, and bringing a (relatively) armored, manueverable tanker so you can fight your way in slowly. It's worth noting that, in terms of fighting near most belt bodies, I imagine there's no such thing as a "safe" ellipitical orbit (simply too little gravity). Another thing worth considering is reinforcements. An interplanetary invasion many not be not "one and done", but a whole stream of attacks launched as logistics and construction are completed back at home. Having a fleet in a high orbital gives you time to assess the opponent's strength in detail, direct waves of hypervelocity attacks coming in behind you, and shoot down-well at targets of opportunity while the rest of your reinforcements come in. I don't know if an "orbithead" could be a real thing, but I don't see why it couldn't be.
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