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Post by argonbalt on Oct 21, 2016 4:11:37 GMT
I think I may try to build one of these "assault ships" tonight. I'd assume it would be a large carrier, loaded up with smaller landing ships. What sort of weight ratio would you expect for equipment/supplies/troops? What's the smallest deployment unit for a landing ship? Do we need to landing ships to be atmosphere-capable so they're utilitarian or do we build them mission specific? Gamewise, has anyobe tried using a remote control and a crew compartmentry on the same ship? At work so I can't test it. Here's a rough new design for a mass troop transport. It was just a test to see moving a battalion of soldiers in terms of cost and expense. Not too bad over all, had enough Dv left over to mount a cannon for light defence. This is more for mass ferrying in the invasion fleet portion of the group, as for the assault ships some of my favourites are the Vaygr infiltrator frigates and their boarding pods, nice insulated little boarding ships that could fly to various points on the target body and bore into the crust or hull to unload troops. Toughly armoured and fast with a somewhat disposable nature.
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Post by argonbalt on Oct 21, 2016 4:23:08 GMT
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Post by Durandal on Oct 21, 2016 13:44:34 GMT
I think I may try to build one of these "assault ships" tonight. I'd assume it would be a large carrier, loaded up with smaller landing ships. What sort of weight ratio would you expect for equipment/supplies/troops? What's the smallest deployment unit for a landing ship? Do we need to landing ships to be atmosphere-capable so they're utilitarian or do we build them mission specific? Gamewise, has anyobe tried using a remote control and a crew compartmentry on the same ship? At work so I can't test it. Here's a rough new design for a mass troop transport. It was just a test to see moving a battalion of soldiers in terms of cost and expense. Not too bad over all, had enough Dv left over to mount a cannon for light defence. View AttachmentThis is more for mass ferrying in the invasion fleet portion of the group, as for the assault ships some of my favourites are the Vaygr infiltrator frigates and their boarding pods, nice insulated little boarding ships that could fly to various points on the target body and bore into the crust or hull to unload troops. Toughly armoured and fast with a somewhat disposable nature. View AttachmentView AttachmentVery interesting. I didn't get around to building a troopship (retrofitted the gunship to forum-specs instead). So that would be the main transport during the long haul to the target and the the "landing ship" as well? I agree on light armoring and minimal weaponry. I was thinking the "long haul" ship itself would be based on the passenger liner. There is precident for military forces using civilian ships as transports, and the passenger liner has a "crew" capacity if 2000 people, so around what I believe would be "regiment" sized. One thing I found disappointing was that we can't edit cargo bays (yet). These would be needed for supplies, equipment, provisions, ext, but they may also contain armored vehicles for fighting on a (extra)terrestrial servface. They may need prefabricated bases as garrisons. All of this would quickly swell to be a massive target. Therefore the ship would be designed as a rear-action vessel to be screened by escorts at the Orbit-head. The ship would have minimal armor to prevent a lucky drone from killing the invasion force in their bunjs, and maybe light PD missiles/weapons. Beyond that I'd see it as being fairly defenseless. But my idea would be for a regiment sized troop transport with the associated cargo holds and landing ships. The landing ships themselves would be similar to the Rosen-Ritter assault ship. (Much love for LoGH). I envision a versitile, company-sized boat able to get to a target quickly to deploy it's troops and to be able to get back out again. How that may work on a body with any sort of gravity (Jovian, Martian, ect) might require a more specialized craft, but for rock-raiding I see them as working. Light armament, heavy armor for the size, high dV.
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Post by coaxjack on Oct 21, 2016 16:05:46 GMT
You could probably get away with developing a standardized drive section with interchangable cargo/personnel sections, so that your combination lander would have similar performance regardless of what you stick on it. 150 tons of riflemen and 150 tons of water and MRE's, what's the difference? As long as you then, as mentioned, somewhat tailor your drives for whatever gravity you'd be landing in. Probably have a .5 G version, .75 G, etc.
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Post by jageriv on Oct 26, 2016 22:16:19 GMT
Yeah, I was also looking at the passenger liner (started thinking that when I saw the 2,500 needed min for an invasion). So, that one provides about 2,000 crew, weighs around 60,000 tons, with 8,000 in dry mass and about 5,000 tonnes going to the crew compartments.So, under the base design of 250 crew compartments, you have about 2.5 tonnes per crew. About 30 tonnes of full ship per crew.
However, since this is for crew, not merely human cargo, the assumptions of necessary space and equipment might be a good deal higher than it really needs to be. Plus, that's a generic crew compartment, so I don't know how much more efficient of a design you could get with something more specialize to holding a large number of crew in game.
How much each soldier will need varries, of course, with assumed kit.
A soldier with modern kit would have something like 50 kg. That generally includes body armor and I think some rations. Ammo by itself would get heavy: 1,000 rounds of 5.56 weighs something like 10 kg, and I'd probably like to have that at least for every soldier (ammo carried at any one time is about 200-300, i think).
Still, lets do a theoretical light infantry force of 1,200
Per-soldier weight:
Solider: 100 kg Warsuit: 100 kg (includes armor and life support) Basic arm (plus support equipment): 10 kg Ammo for base arm (1,000): 10 kg Grenades (10): 5 kg Water (30 days):100 kg Oxygen (30 days): 25 kg Food (30 days): 30 kg Other (radios, containers, etcetera): 80 kg
Total per soldier dropped: approx 450 kg (300 kg without sustaining resources) Total for 1,200: 540 tonnes
So, I would probably guess, for a light infantry force, assuming about 500 tonnes per 1,000 "dropped". Remember this is a light force and only counts resources deployed to planetside.
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Post by jonen on Oct 27, 2016 14:33:08 GMT
The stock 1kt cargo module can probably carry landers or lander components, probably military ground vehicles as well, if required. So a troop carrier should probably have at least one, plus refuelers for whatever remass works best for the landers. A necessity for operations, or at least troop recovery (and medevac?). Hatches, and mechanisms for that - would those be light enough you can get away with not adding anything, or just place a special armor layer to simulate the additional complexity and weight of a hatch? Or would the troop carrier even be armored in the first place?
Deployment and resupply ... Anyone fancy modeling a launcher - a Starship Troopers (novel style) troop deployment mechanism? Figure a big gun (coil, rail, conventional? Heck - hydraulic?) pushing a 500+ kg payload* out of orbit with a maximum acceleration of 3Gs?
* = Don't forget batteries and packaging: armor, insulation, decoys and countermeasures, and probably a heatshield just in case (even if it's not an atmospheric drop) - you're mighty exposed until you touch ground, wouldn't do for a single concealed infantry railgun or laser to be able to swat your invasion force out of the sky. Payload should probably have enough deltaV and thrust to make a soft landing after being deorbited as well. Enough deltaV to supply enhanced mobility on the ground would also be nice, but not strictly a requirement (unless maybe we're talking small rocks where every step'd send you on a suborbital trajectory without compensating thrust). Probably should have each suit come with its own bivouac as well - light inflatable emergency shelter, if you're going to be spending more than a few hours or days deployed.
If you're willing to throw around ordinance liberally, and your troops are highly mobile and got superior sensors... Dazzlers and HARM to blind enemy ground based sensors from orbit prior to going in? I'd assume anything on the surface that so much as looks hostile will be taking orbital fires before the Ground Pounders touch down. An asteroid raiding force could be fairly Heinlein - doesn't necessarily need to hold territory, just smash and grab anything on the surface and bug out. Either lure defenders into the open to be smashed from orbit, or encourage them to consider surrender, or do recce in force, sweep and clear a place to touch down with heavier landers and set up for subsurface or habitat operations for total conquest and occupation. You want to capture a body, you'll need to send people down the bugholes, for which you'll actually need numbers. That doesn't sound like a job for the guys in the asteroid raiding force. Tight close quarters tunnel fighting... If they do it, probably only enough to sweep unpressurized areas and secure airlocks (or attach their own) to then send in Habitat Combat Units (would these need more or less training than boarding parties?) - shouldn't need to weigh those guys down with full, bulky, armored spacesuits, just body armor and tactical gear, and maybe enough pressure suit to hopefully give the illusion of the possibility of survival and rescue in case of habitat failure and explosive decompression (and incidentally protection against enemies messing with the life support controls in contested habitats).
The troops actually going to be fighting in pressurized environments (or just handling occupation, if you're not bothering to capture anything pressurized that actively resists) can be ferried down in groups for economies of scale - a decently economical lander or crew transfer vehicle should suffice. Troop recovery vehicle for raiding force would probably be one the lighter side, if you assume that most of the raiding force will have reasonably intact suits at recovery, they can probably ride back to orbit before getting into a pressurized area (particularly for hot extracts).
Oh they've got no time for glory in the infantry... Well, that's my boat calling.
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Post by coaxjack on Oct 27, 2016 15:54:13 GMT
I think a good way to deal with potential suit breaches in an evacuation scenario is to have your CASEVAC teams be equipped with a very lightweight and simple plastic suit with a simple helmet (O2 included) that can fit over the armor of a wounded soldier. Instead of having to make sure an armor patch job or whatever actually works (not considering even the possibility of fragmentation wounds causing additional small breaches), just slap this plastic bag over the guy and get him out of there. Once you lift off with your casualties, presumably there won't be any need to transfer through vacuum to unload from lander to mothership. If so, buy a better ship before launching a ground invasion.
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Post by argonbalt on Oct 27, 2016 16:53:19 GMT
Here are some designs i've been playing with. So this mostly goes along with the "Single large ship" idea of combat. Were forces land and deploy from a major vehicle as opposed to the Heinlein-esque drop pod troopers. I think on any major moon and planet pod troopers would be great, but in an asteroid raiding operation breaching a landing bay and dumping troops into a crater-head is far more plausible(as the ship would not have the long vulnerable descent stage a large shuttle would landing on a planet). here is my take on the Assault ship stage craft. Assuming most of the exterior defences are taken out, or at least enough to open up a hole this thing would then select an entry and charge in: Basically the whole thing is built around a double Decker armoured cargo pod with roughly 120 square metres of room, should be enough for about 300 basic level 1 style troops with pressure suits and combat armour. Or about 50 powered armour units(i'm assuming you'd need technicians, maintenance equipment, weapon storage etc, or six ZG-APC's. The ship itself is equipped somewhat like a WWII bomber, two six barrel 30mm turrets for blasting away any interior resistance, backed up by two 120mm recoiless rifle/sabot penetration guns. Frontal mount of three two barrel 20mm for clearing forward threats. Deployment can occur through a frontal swing hatch, or through four rear facing protected hatches. The mid ship turret bulge helps to increase the protection on this deployment. Frontal cone has a hard cap ram for penetrating large hanger bulkheads. The frontal hatch would be able to be blown off or swing and twist in numerous ways to accommodate deployment diversity. Additional countermeasure canisters are diagonally attached. These could launch and deploy dozens of micro drone swarms. next up deployed from the Assault ship is these little guys, the Zero Gravity Armoured Personnel Carrier. Essentially it is pretty close in design to a modern APC, the wedge box just works, plain and simple. Arguably the hardest part to deal with in terms of design the huge variance in gravity and weight of such a landing ship. So RCS is already somewhat mandatory assuming you are not nicely poped into a 1-g hab centrifuge. In addition seeing as the gravity could be quite small, sub arms would be great for clear debris and performing dexterous tasks without jeopardising the crew. A magnetically tipped grappling launcher would be great should an explosion or strange terrain force an awkward movement up and into the air. The good old fashioned magnetised tractor treads are for movements into gravitational hab sections or potentially along the various roadways and track systems which would likely be built into the asteroid for mining and supplies movement. This was also just a fun excuse to draw power armour. As i see it the first wave of attackers will likely be unmanned drones similar to space combat. They can come in a huge variety of shapes and sizes with everything from mammalian quadrupeds to more insect like hexapeds or octopeds for infiltrating air ducts and smaller passageways. These would probably be launched in landing pods, seeing as g force is pretty much a non plus for artificial forms. Once this first wave has opened up a landing opportunity. This is when the star-ship troopers drop in, heavily armed and armoured and very much focused on smash and grab operations for critical areas. After that the more lightly armoured pressure suit tac squads can sweep through and occupy the colony, deployed from ZG-APC and not as bulky armoured.
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Post by jonen on Oct 27, 2016 21:01:17 GMT
Teeny tiny little Tachikoma ... The Eclipse Phase Reaper-morph may be an approach for a combat drone (roughly disk shaped with weapons on the flats and mobility systems and sensors on the disk edge). If we're constraining mostly to tried and proven technology like the main game, things are probably a bit less interesting than that... Space suit design would probably be the one thing - if anything - that'd advance by leaps and bounds just from the increased demand, and power armor should be doable (exoskeletons do exist). Given what we're seeing with quadrotor minidrones nowadays, a microgravity variant for mapping the insides of habitats and pressurized areas.
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Post by jageriv on Oct 28, 2016 0:57:56 GMT
Hm, that comes up with the interesting question, how much delta V does a landing craft actually need? The lunar lander combined (assent and decent) had about 5 km/s of delta V from a quick wiki search. However, most of the astroids have much, much less gravity than even the moon: Ceres, the biggest astroid you would deal with, has a surface gravity of .28 m/s compared to the Moon's 1.6 m/s, about 80% less. The next in line Vesta has 0.25, and the third largest asteroid Pallas has a surface gravity of 0.21 m/s. And with that you've covered nearly half the mass of the asteroid belt.
So, a landing craft might be able to get away with some very low delta v, especially if you started parked in orbit. I might have to experiment in game launching a missile to collide with Ceres from an orbiting mothership to see what kind of Delta V is necessary to first break out of orbit, followed maybe by a last minute thrust to try and reduce velocity to zero. That might give you an idea of minimum necessary Delta V.
However, 5 km/s Delta V has its advantages as well.
1) It lets you close with the target planet rapidly. This puts you in the dangerous close phase for less time, or it lets your mothership launch from a higher orbit.
2) Your landing craft may be able to act like attack helicopters, sorta. Let's say its 1 km/s closing then breaking, for a random number. with a gravity of 0.25, that 4 km/s remaining should let the lander hover for about 16,000 secounds, or 4 and a half hours. Thus, your lander could drop your troops off and then continue to provide close air support, a sorta Hind in space. It might make more sense than a dedicated IFV vehicle, which might not be practical in cere's gravity, though I don't know that for sure.
It might make more sense to act as a hopper: it has wheels or legs or whatever to move on, but can hop with its thrusters to go long distances or escape back to orbit.
3) With possible enemy fire, more maneuverability is always a plus.
4) Moving the troops is less of a concern post landing zone.
5) It's enough supposedly to go one way in or out of Mars. This is more a benefit because of who our player nation is with the Mars based capital. But, if 5 km/s is enough to let your craft act as a one-way shuttle on mars, it probably has enough for any other planet of note in system and can act aggressively in other planetary contexts. So you could have a standardized model that works as your "black hawlk in space" able to do combat insertions under almost every conceivable situation.
That kind of standardization would be quite valuable. And in situations where you don't need the extra delta V, you can probably just run the mission with more empty tanks and put that weight to transport weight.
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Post by argonbalt on Oct 28, 2016 3:07:31 GMT
Hmm that is a good point. I use 10 km/s based on the solar system Dv road map, it gets you into the ballpark for most of the system from Earth. Though i agree, for a lander 5 is acceptable.
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Post by jageriv on Oct 28, 2016 5:27:54 GMT
Hmm that is a good point. I use 10 km/s based on the solar system Dv road map, it gets you into the ballpark for most of the system from Earth. Though i agree, for a lander 5 is acceptable. Yeah, I'm working off the assumption of a mothership carrying landers in. I actually ran some experiments with Ceres shooting drones at it and having them kill off enough velocity not to immediately crash to simulate a breaking. Turns out it takes trivial delta V to actually move from orbiting to crashing on such a small body. It's the slowing down enough to land that causes issues. With this crude method, from the default orbital height, I found I needed about 600 m/s DV to simulate my "landing". This seems about right. I'm sure I could do it much more efficiently, but it seemed good. If I wanted something which could take off again though and then rondevue with the mothership, that used up almost all of the drone's delta V, about 3 km/s. Once again, I'm sure it could have been done much more efficiently, but, yeah. The other issue though was the low delta V method produced a long approach time, I think on the order of 10 hours, though I could be misremembering (my notes weren't great, more experimentation will be required). I next did a 1 km/s direct burn to the surface. In that case, the drone moved in more or less a straight line (relative to Ceres of course). This of course necessitated a 1.5 ish km/s burn to slow down at Ceres in the simulated landing, but my ship was on the "ground" one hour from launch. Still, I'd probably say as a rule of thumb a lander, especially a military lander, should probably have at least 1 km of delta v for astroid work.
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Post by jonen on Oct 28, 2016 12:33:42 GMT
Keep in mind, a minimum deltaV deorbit will probably take time to actually touch down, and fly over a lot of rock, and (unless you burn midcourse) it should be possible to estimate your landing zone.
Putting extra deltaV on the lander, or using a deorbit stage on the lander to get it out of orbit with most of it's deltaV still available, would be preferable just for getting on the ground fast, giving the enemy as little time as possible to prepare.
...
Say, have any of you read Seveneves? Part three has all kinds of nifty ideas - and while most are probably either impractical or not possible with the constraints of engineering posed on the Children of a Dead Earth verse, quite of few of them ought to be acheivable with todays technology when limiting oneself to operations over asteroids. In particular, using various clever arrangements of orbital skyhooks to deposit (or extract) troops from the surface without expending (much) remass.
A skyhook would take a bit of time to set up - if it's at all possible or practical on an asteroid, I'd assume it could work with the bigger ones at least - and require the invasion force to suppress any defenses on the surface... That is assuming there isn't a civilian or military set up already present for getting stuff off the rock cheaply that can be appropriated. But once you've got it up and running, just have your troop vehicles join with it on the orbital stage, endure some G's while swinging down towards the surface, and at the end of the line, you're basically stationary relative to the surface for a little while.
And, hey, we already know they've got skyhooks in CoaDE.
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Post by Durandal on Oct 28, 2016 13:27:56 GMT
I don't know the limits of the engine, but I believe qswitched mentioned ground based defenses at some point in the blog. I know he's got a lot on his plate right now, but wouldn't it be interesting if at some they were implemented? I could see them able to be targeted by specialized reentry warheads or troopships, with intercept vectors on the body's surface. As you pass over a tight enough orbit, your ships could go into a combat zone against them where this would take place and incoming fire would be a threat.
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Post by jonen on Oct 28, 2016 13:29:57 GMT
I don't know the limits of the engine, but I believe qswitched mentioned ground based defenses at some point in the blog. I know he's got a lot on his plate right now, but wouldn't it be interesting if at some they were implemented? I could see them able to be targeted by specialized reentry warheads or troopships, with intercept vectors on the body's surface. As you pass over a tight enough orbit, your ships could go into a combat zone against them where this would take place and incoming fire would be a threat. Siloship versus surface installations. Close only counts in horseshoes, handgrenades, and nuclear weapons.
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