Post by apophys on Aug 16, 2018 13:03:38 GMT
There are other threads for stealth, but here's a quick rundown, anotherfirefox :
- Laser comms can't be jammed or spoofed in any practical manner. So you'll see those instead of radio.
- Data links are indeed not fast. In particular, any data from distant sensor platforms will be minutes or hours old due to light lag and image processing time. Not enough to aim your weapons, just enough to know something's in the area. You need sensors with your fleet to refine the detection, for aiming.
- Directional stealth will not hide you from distant sensors, but will make it significantly harder for the enemy fleet to shoot you.
- In order to make use of directional stealth, you need to cool your front surface down to about the boiling point of hydrogen (~20 K) or less. Of course, you need radiators to reject your waste heat from doing this; you'll have those in the back.
- Directional stealth is screwed once it gets in laser range, by an active scanning laser. Heating up (or flash vaporizing) the surface will render it visible.
- Directional stealth is also screwed by nearby nuke detonation, due to causing a shine of x-rays and warmth from the otherwise-stealthy craft.
- Laser-heavy fleets are naturally sensor-rich. Laser weaponry already carried can double as active scanning sensors. The aperture for those lasers can be used as a telescope for passive scanning when not firing. The fleet can spread out and share swarm data to become a single large synthetic-aperture telescope with the same radius as the formation.
- Missiles/drones with sensors and/or nukes can be sent ahead to sweep for contacts, in the direction designated by distant sensor data.
- Once a solid detection is achieved, it is not going to be lost if you have any lasers in range to fire at it.