|
Post by AtomHeartDragon on Feb 6, 2019 18:27:42 GMT
I don't believe in defensive orbits.
Hitting something (as in just achieving intercept rather than matching orbit and phase) is always cheaper than getting there, so technically you can always just drop a bunch of missiles or drones almost straight down by cancelling their orbital velocity around Neptune and bust a brain trying to figure out exact burns to achieve exact intercept at tens of km/s perpendicular.
When going places tends to take days to years busting brains is always going to be the more affordable and practical option than burning delta-v and drones/missiles don't need their return ticket - no one will get angry if you just drop them into Neptune after use.
If anything a defensive orbit would be the highest possible one, where you can wiggle your plane and apses cheaply.
Ok, for low-mass bodies low orbit might be a good defence as it allows physically hiding behind the body in question as the gravity is too weak to fix your trajectory if you don't want it to.
This is a bit outside the usual scope of the game but the more you go up in power levels the easier it gets to do perpendicular intercepts, because eventually the sphere of influence of your railguns and lasers become so large that it only really matters if you are on the same side of the planet as your target.
But on low, 'defensive' orbits: how would you go about attacking a stellar laser? Say your target is a pair of or small array of multiple kilometer wide foil mirrors in very low orbit of Sol using Sol's upper atmosphere as a lasing medium. Say this particular laser is on a scale where it has an effective range of something like 250 terameters (so Mars aphelion) with usable beam coherence and energy per meter squared. Say you've settled the Jovian system and the asteroid belt and you have a decade to develop a solution before a new array comes online and it becomes a serious threat. What do? It's amusing how often the solution to a "something sits at the bottom of a deep gravity well and causes me displeasure" kind of problem is "drop crap on it until it stops".
|
|
|
Post by airc777 on Feb 6, 2019 19:53:07 GMT
It's amusing how often the solution to a "something sits at the bottom of a deep gravity well and causes me displeasure" kind of problem is "drop crap on it until it stops". That is a long, long way to throw a KKV accurately, though I suppose the scale involved would make it equally difficult for the stellar laser installation to track the projectiles if they are small enough. Composition of the projectiles would also be a concern, I don't think a 1 gram kinetic slug punching a 1cm hole in a multi kilometer mirror is going to compromise it's effectiveness as just being a big reflective surface. Maybe a nuke, or a big cone of shrapnel? This is really just a question of effectiveness of detection and response times isn't it?
|
|
|
Post by AtomHeartDragon on Feb 7, 2019 16:51:45 GMT
It's amusing how often the solution to a "something sits at the bottom of a deep gravity well and causes me displeasure" kind of problem is "drop crap on it until it stops". That is a long, long way to throw a KKV accurately, though I suppose the scale involved would make it equally difficult for the stellar laser installation to track the projectiles if they are small enough. Composition of the projectiles would also be a concern, I don't think a 1 gram kinetic slug punching a 1cm hole in a multi kilometer mirror is going to compromise it's effectiveness as just being a big reflective surface. Maybe a nuke, or a big cone of shrapnel? This is really just a question of effectiveness of detection and response times isn't it? Why wouldn't you make course corrections? And yeah, bursting your KKV in the terminal stage is definitely the way to go.
|
|
|
Post by airc777 on Feb 7, 2019 17:52:49 GMT
That is a long, long way to throw a KKV accurately, though I suppose the scale involved would make it equally difficult for the stellar laser installation to track the projectiles if they are small enough. Composition of the projectiles would also be a concern, I don't think a 1 gram kinetic slug punching a 1cm hole in a multi kilometer mirror is going to compromise it's effectiveness as just being a big reflective surface. Maybe a nuke, or a big cone of shrapnel? This is really just a question of effectiveness of detection and response times isn't it? Why wouldn't you make course corrections? And yeah, bursting your KKV in the terminal stage is definitely the way to go.
Assumed the laser would be able to destroy any maneuvering systems on the KKV as soon as the KKV was both in range and detected, and assumed you would want the KKV to be as physically small and fast as possible to reduce the chance on detection.
The only other alternatives I can think of to disable it would be maybe a neutral particle beam targeting the lasers controls? Or definitely electronic warfare directed at the communications systems providing the weapon with targeting data.
Edit: Or I guess a KKV from an odd angle with poor surveillance could minimize the chance of detection, such as one launched from a high solar polar orbit, though that would take some significant resources and time to set up.
|
|
|
Post by AtomHeartDragon on Feb 17, 2019 10:12:56 GMT
Assumed the laser would be able to destroy any maneuvering systems on the KKV as soon as the KKV was both in range and detected manoeuvring systems don't need to be exposed from the laser's location, so it would need to burn all the way through the hard way. With a well designed mission and KKV this might be barely more favourable than ablating the whole impactor.
|
|
|
Post by AtomHeartDragon on May 1, 2019 6:04:22 GMT
Note to self: In the event I ever become world's dictator/God Emperor/similar mandate by law that all spammers and spambot authors caught should be summarily stuck full of anti-shock medications, skinned alive, then crucified.
|
|
|
Post by Pttg on May 14, 2019 19:45:19 GMT
Note to self: In the event I ever become world's dictator/God Emperor/similar mandate by law that all spammers and spambot authors caught should be summarily stuck full of anti-shock medications, skinned alive, then crucified. Going the merciful route, I see.
|
|
|
Post by thorneel on May 19, 2019 9:22:00 GMT
Note to self: In the event I ever become world's dictator/God Emperor/similar mandate by law that all spammers and spambot authors caught should be summarily stuck full of anti-shock medications, skinned alive, then crucified. Going the merciful route, I see. Yeah, you really shouldn't let them off so lightly.
|
|