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Post by bigbombr on Jan 15, 2017 9:25:37 GMT
I can see four types of killsats being viable: 1) Orbital maintenance drones being co-opted in de-orbiting/smashing into enemy orbital assets 2) component satellites/drones of a lasernet 3) cassaba howitzers hidden inside telecom (and other civilian) satellites 4) orbital missile depots
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Post by newageofpower on Jan 15, 2017 9:30:09 GMT
My point was no sat without (at least) minimal dodging ability would be viable, though.
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Post by bigbombr on Jan 15, 2017 9:53:03 GMT
My point was no sat without (at least) minimal dodging ability would be viable, though. This seems obvious for any obviously military sat. The civ sats with cassaba howitzers wouldn't need this: either the enemy wishes to capture as much infrastructure intact as possible and takes several losses (from cassaba howitzers) or they wish to avoid casualties and are forced to destroy all orbital assets (as any over a few kg might contain a cassaba howitzer), meaning they have to rebuild the entire orbital infrastructure after conquest. This greatly slows down your opponent and drains them of resources.
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Post by caiaphas on Jan 15, 2017 9:56:01 GMT
My point was no sat without (at least) minimal dodging ability would be viable, though. This seems obvious for any obviously military sat. The civ sats with cassaba howitzers wouldn't need this: either the enemy wishes to capture as much infrastructure intact as possible and takes several losses (from cassaba howitzers) or they wish to avoid casualties and are forced to destroy all orbital assets (as any over a few kg might contain a cassaba howitzer), meaning they have to rebuild the entire orbital infrastructure after conquest. This greatly slows down your opponent and drains them of resources. I wouldn't say greatly. We're throwing around hundred-ton warships in-game after all, I'm sure they have appreciable spacelift capacity.
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Post by bigbombr on Jan 15, 2017 10:31:40 GMT
This seems obvious for any obviously military sat. The civ sats with cassaba howitzers wouldn't need this: either the enemy wishes to capture as much infrastructure intact as possible and takes several losses (from cassaba howitzers) or they wish to avoid casualties and are forced to destroy all orbital assets (as any over a few kg might contain a cassaba howitzer), meaning they have to rebuild the entire orbital infrastructure after conquest. This greatly slows down your opponent and drains them of resources. I wouldn't say greatly. We're throwing around hundred-ton warships in-game after all, I'm sure they have appreciable spacelift capacity. You still have the cost of the satellites themselves. 40+ satellites are fairly expensive. And this means that the enemy has a similar number of spy probes less available.
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Post by jasonvance on Jan 15, 2017 10:39:02 GMT
I wouldn't say greatly. We're throwing around hundred-ton warships in-game after all, I'm sure they have appreciable spacelift capacity. You still have the cost of the satellites themselves. 40+ satellites are fairly expensive. And this means that the enemy has a similar number of spy probes less available. Cost and what not is why I proposed re-purposing idle laser drones that are in storage / waiting on maintenance to be used to power / act as the defense satellites. Keeping idle drones inside bays / hangers doesn't really serve much purpose except to possibly increase deployment speed of a carrier by a small amount.
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Post by thorneel on Jan 15, 2017 22:17:55 GMT
Did... you even read the thread? Literally every argument you've just made has been said before on it... This is the first time my feelings about a particular person on this forum went beyond 'irritation'. There's 8 pages of it and I have no idea where the discussion you're referring to is in those 8 pages, so no. I may do so later as it's probably quite interesting on its own Atomic Rocket summed up the problems with Stealth in Space nicely hereThe only working stealth design I have ever heard of is described here (I expect Atomic Rocket to update with it in some time, but for now it isn't in it yet). I suggest to read those two entries in their entirety (and in that order) if you are interested in stealth in space. It is a subject on which many, many very smart people spent many, many hours, so pretty much all arguments have been consistently analysed.
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Post by Enderminion on Jan 16, 2017 4:21:36 GMT
the only killsat I would use is a box with a few missiles in it and then I have control of near orbit and (with more DeltaV) Lunar orbits as well (not just earth but the Gas Giants too)
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Post by caiaphas on Jan 16, 2017 5:15:58 GMT
the only killsat I would use is a box with a few missiles in it and then I have control of near orbit and (with more DeltaV) Lunar orbits as well (not just earth but the Gas Giants too) While I can see where you're coming from with that assessment, I still think that leaves you a little vulnerable to a microdrone swarm of a flight of coilgun-launched missiles, since both are (by definition and necessity, respectively) fairly small, cheap, and expendable, and have the added bonus of usually having such a high closing velocity that even sandblasters and lasers have trouble engaging them before they've cored your ship and splattered your crew (sidenote: it'd be nice if we didn't have to build dedicated drone launch platforms and could instead build remote-controlled warships that can be added in as part of a fleet so long as there's a control module on a manned ship). I mean, it's probably the cheapest and most robust method (no gigantic powerplants and radiators to hit like with a laser or rail-/coilgun), but I still think that appropriate countermeasures against it are deployed easily enough that you'd need to pair with with a couple other types of killsat just to be on the safe side.
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Post by amimai on Jan 16, 2017 7:22:09 GMT
Stationary orbital defences would make sense for protecting something like a shipyard, population center, or other stationary structure. It would also make sense to put them temporarily in a Lagrange point or other staging area during war, but the playing field is far too big for the investment to pay off for anywhere else, your enemy can simply go around with ease...
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Post by caiaphas on Jan 16, 2017 9:25:46 GMT
Stationary orbital defences would make sense for protecting something like a shipyard, population center, or other stationary structure. It would also make sense to put them temporarily in a Lagrange point or other staging area during war, but the playing field is far too big for the investment to pay off for anywhere else, your enemy can simply go around with ease... Well, yeah, but that's the whole point, isn't it? Force the enemy into approaching via more dV-expensive orbits: if they can't move, they're at your mercy.
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Post by Easy on Jan 16, 2017 18:56:54 GMT
I wouldn't bother with a killsat. You're just asking for it to get missiled or droned like that poor methane fuel station.
Why not just have a fleet that carries GW lasers, missiles and drones in missile silos on the body's surface and launch as needed? Mars is the only body in CoDE that has launch delta V worth planning for.
Kilsat range is sadly small due to beam attenuation (diffraction/beam quality) and issues with precise aiming. Not to mention the political problems of combat identifying a ship from so far out.
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Post by jasonvance on Jan 16, 2017 23:07:48 GMT
I wouldn't bother with a killsat. You're just asking for it to get missiled or droned like that poor methane fuel station. Why not just have a fleet that carries GW lasers, missiles and drones in missile silos on the body's surface and launch as needed? Mars is the only body in CoDE that has launch delta V worth planning for. Kilsat range is sadly small due to beam attenuation (diffraction/beam quality) and issues with precise aiming. Not to mention the political problems of combat identifying a ship from so far out. Why even bother to land at all? orbital repair and refitting drones would be easier and cheaper to work with and wouldn't present an easy target like a stationary surface installation would for saturation attacks. Your entire maintenance operation could be spread out around an orbit. This would reduce the amount of power required to move heavy objects into position and you wouldn't need to construct a clean room for dealing with dust sensitive materials since space is already empty.
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Post by Easy on Jan 17, 2017 1:52:42 GMT
Why even bother to land at all? All my stuff is there. Those fancy manufacturing gizmos, the technicians and tradesmen that make a living wage. I'm not saying ships shouldn't go out and do training cruises and patrols. Just that parking a few PetaWatt lasers in orbit and calling it a day is underwhelming at best. The reasons megalasers are underwhelming are again diffraction and aiming. And the difference between landed and orbiting, especially on the low mass moons and asteroids with hilariously weak hill spheres is academic. The political environment isn't such that you use a relativistic planet cracker for mass murder. And until the CoDE war went hot, warship funding was not the first priority of the independent governments.
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Post by Enderminion on Jan 17, 2017 2:05:29 GMT
missiles and drones would be the defensive sats I would use, don't even need a box just launch them out the ship and reload the ships, leave the missiles and drones till they are needed
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