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Post by anotherfirefox on Aug 15, 2018 8:43:08 GMT
Even though this game says itself a realistic combat simulation, it's not realistic at all when it comes to logistics and strategy.
You can't just spawn your skiff magically in the low orbit of enemy's planet.
For that you need typically need more than 10km/s dV with some leftover to maneuver in battlefield. That's what a skiff never can do.
In real life warfare, deploying your units to the battlefield itself is the most important and crucial part. This game totally lacks it.
Stop nagging, and some discussion: What would be an ideal solution for interplanetary fleet deployment?
You need a fleet with more than 30km/s dV(not to do super slow Hohmann transfer for several years, which leads to much more logistics needed).
Which fuel would you choose? What type of engine? Would your fleet be self propelled with their own tactical engines or be tugged by more efficient cruising engine?
Would the tug or refueler be expendable or would be protected against enemy fleet when your fleet arrived the enemy planet?
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Aug 15, 2018 10:40:26 GMT
Even though this game says itself a realistic combat simulation, it's not realistic at all when it comes to logistics and strategy. You can't just spawn your skiff magically in the low orbit of enemy's planet. For that you need typically need more than 10km/s dV with some leftover to maneuver in battlefield. That's what a skiff never can do. In real life warfare, deploying your units to the battlefield itself is the most important and crucial part. This game totally lacks it. Stop nagging, and some discussion: What would be an ideal solution for interplanetary fleet deployment? You need a fleet with more than 30km/s dV(not to do super slow Hohmann transfer for several years, which leads to much more logistics needed). Which fuel would you choose? What type of engine? Would your fleet be self propelled with their own tactical engines or be tugged by more efficient cruising engine? Would the tug or refueler be expendable or would be protected against enemy fleet when your fleet arrived the enemy planet? Apparently CoADE's answer to that question is "loads of tankers", but obviously there is more to it. Your tug, if used, would probably be propelled by some sort of nuclear electric drive, although given that MPDs are lightweight and warships are going to need a lot reactor power anyway it would likely be best to use dual propulsion on warships themselves. Apparently hydrazine was used with MPDs, so I wouldn't expect problems with hydrocarbons either.
Unless packing propellant for round-trip or doing something more complex than going from A to B, I would expect tankers to be expendable, but they wouldn't make worthwhile targets anyway. More, I would expect tankers travelling along with fleets (do note that they won't be the only tankers out there) to either be unmanned drones or combine tanker function with more general tender functions (and thus become non-expendable).
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Post by anotherfirefox on Aug 15, 2018 16:06:05 GMT
Problem is that two intensive burns you have to do is when you're departing and arriving, and arriving at target body means you're straight marching into enemies trench.
You have to spend several thousands of Delta V to take a capture burn, which would be beyond or seriously significant to average warship's dV budget. That means you have to carry the tanker to the very end, which makes it an easy and massive target.
The other problem is that if your fleet is self propelled, your fleet has various TWR, so arriving orbit would be spread all over the plane. You have to make a series of tedious maneuvers to get your fleet again. Your massive cruiser left alone without flak destroyers would be easily hunt down.
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Post by The Astronomer on Aug 16, 2018 7:27:08 GMT
Problem is that two intensive burns you have to do is when you're departing and arriving, and arriving at target body means you're straight marching into enemies trench. You have to spend several thousands of Delta V to take a capture burn, which would be beyond or seriously significant to average warship's dV budget. That means you have to carry the tanker to the very end, which makes it an easy and massive target. The other problem is that if your fleet is self propelled, your fleet has various TWR, so arriving orbit would be spread all over the plane. You have to make a series of tedious maneuvers to get your fleet again. Your massive cruiser left alone without flak destroyers would be easily hunt down. I think a bunch of MPDs might do the trick. Also, I don't expect real space warships to fly in close formations like in CDE? From my experience with my laserstars (currently the only available weapon in my meta since not even thousands of micromissiles work against them), the time the warships fly very close to each other is the second weakest formation, second only to flying practically alone with other allied ships far out of range. In that case, the enemy ship can always point their nose, weak parts hidden, without having to worry about the farside. I imagine that in a realistic scenario, each of my warship would try to fly maybe thousands of kilometers away from each other, and more powerful ships may even stay in completely different orbits. |
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Post by apophys on Aug 16, 2018 8:06:27 GMT
The clear solution is ion drives (like MPDs) for orbital maneuvers, on each of your ships, in addition to any high-thrust engines you may or may not have. Tankers have very limited dV they can provide to a fleet without getting stupendously expensive; you aren't realistically going to get 100+ km/s dV without ion drives (or fusion, but let's not go there), and you need as much dV as you can get. High dV is necessary to force the terms of an engagement, i.e. are you going to intercept fast (kinetics/missiles) or slow (lasers), how many weeks will it take you to reach the area (see the Homecoming speedruns), can you change your mission/destination while en route, can you disengage, can you do multiple encounters before refueling, etc. I would actually have a fleet consisting of only drone carriers that have exclusively an ion drive; they can use the most plentiful and cheap propellant regardless of its performance in thermal engines. CO2 is easily accessible in the atmosphere of Venus (96% CO2) and as dry ice in the belt and planetary moons; oxygen is a waste product of refining metals and silicon from rocks and structural carbon from CO2. Drones would all have ion drives (though less efficient than the carriers'), and may have thermal engines in addition (for close-combat dodging), so they may want methane. The carriers would never see combat (enough dV to avoid fights), so they'd be un-armored.
As for how I'd power the drives, I'd have concentrated solar thermal power where possible (mirrors are cheap), and nuclear elsewhere.
The other problem is that if your fleet is self propelled, your fleet has various TWR, so arriving orbit would be spread all over the plane. You have to make a series of tedious maneuvers to get your fleet again. Your massive cruiser left alone without flak destroyers would be easily hunt down. Differing TWR is not a problem, as long as you have the dV. You can throttle down to the lowest TWR of the fleet (as CoaDE does), or pulse higher-TWR engines to get the same effect. Alternately, you can accept a separation of the fleet and burn a little extra dV from the stragglers at the right time to compensate. Either way, you can guarantee simultaneous arrival at your destination. |
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Post by The Astronomer on Aug 16, 2018 8:33:13 GMT
Would reigniting a nuclear engine be as hard as chemical rockets do right now, I wonder. Probably not as hard considering that you don't need ignitions.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Aug 16, 2018 8:48:25 GMT
High dV is necessary to force the terms of an engagement, i.e. are you going to intercept fast (kinetics/missiles) or slow (lasers) In my experience the terms of engagement are completely dictated by higher acceleration party, while high dV can dictate if and where the battle happens. The fleet with higher acceleration can always change intercept velocity at the last moment or, if it is going to be intercepted at high velocity and doesn't like it, dodge the intercept without the low acceleration fleet having time to correct. That's true, however do note that high I sp propulsion is mostly of benefit to the attacker, the defender needs primarily to react quickly and can expect to have strong logistical base allowing them to refuel as the attacker takes their time executing orbital manoeuvres with their wimpy but efficient MPDTs. It's a pity this game doesn't feature strategic layer or at least more involved scenarios where those factors would come to play. It's an open question whether oxygen would be a practical propellant for MPDTs as stuff is downright nasty even in its base state. If you kick it hard enough to knock off a few electrons it's going to retaliate. Drones absolutely need some high thrust propulsion or they will never see combat on their terms (assuming they see any combat at all). The carriers are a legitimate solution, however you wouldn't be able to hold and capture territory that way. I imagine that in space gunships (of all sizes) would be an analogue of boots on the ground, so you'd have to put them in close orbits at some point after your drone based shock and awe. |
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Post by apophys on Aug 16, 2018 10:49:32 GMT
In my experience the terms of engagement are completely dictated by higher acceleration party, while high dV can dictate if and where the battle happens. The fleet with higher acceleration can always change intercept velocity at the last moment or, if it is going to be intercepted at high velocity and doesn't like it, dodge the intercept without the low acceleration fleet having time to correct. In my experience, there is a low threshold of acceleration (around a few milligees), above which any additional is very nice but unnecessary. MPDs on purpose-built, minmaxed craft easily exceed that by a fair margin. MPDs on stock craft do not.
Assuming minmaxed craft, the terms of engagement are in my view determined by MPDs - whether you come screaming in for a drive-by shooting at your interplanetary velocity of 50-100 km/s (before correcting the trajectory to something good enough, with high thrust if necessary), or cancel out most of the relative velocity in advance and slowly roast from a distance when you get there (my general preference). This decision is made days before the engagement in question, due to the distances and speeds involved, but a low-dV fleet is unable to do much about it, regardless of acceleration (other than hiding behind the planet, which is a failure of defense). Last-moment decisions by either party can only change relative velocity ~10 km/s if unopposed; less if opposed.
As the attacker reaches the defender, ion drive acceleration goes up significantly to a few dozen to few hundred milligees, since a large part of the propellant has been spent (likely the majority of total mass). The defender has much less time than you think with which to do anything impulsive.
Incidentally, I'd expect defenders to generally go out and meet attackers a short distance out rather than doing battle over the skies of the place they want to defend, where debris can do collateral damage. This being the case, the defender can choose the velocity of the intercept if he has the dV to do so; he doesn't have to spend as much dV to promptly move to the engagement area as the attacker does, so the defender has the dV advantage.
Not really open; it's being worked on right now:
Note that a fair portion of the atmosphere at that height is actually monatomic oxygen, iirc.
Pure laser craft will have a long enough damaging range to be able to dodge dumb kinetic projectiles with "mere" MPDs during combat (not easy to do in CoaDE, but possible and has been done, and the math checks out). Orbital corrections and pre-combat chases are peanuts compared to this, particularly since low-velocity intercepts are desired. So no, those don't strictly need high-thrust propulsion. You may be biased due to using stock-like modules often.
Kinetic craft do want high thrust, because otherwise laser craft would just walk all over them during an engagement. An extra ~10 km/s in relative velocity at the start of engagement isn't much, but helps.
Missile-bus drones want high-thrust propulsion in order to do last-minute corrections before dumping their load, and to be an extra missile themselves.
Leaving a drone fleet in a very high orbit secures the place just fine, if your goal is just space superiority in the region. If you want to support a land invasion with them, you can bring them closer, but that's not required (and not necessarily applicable depending on the planet/body; sandblasters do nothing through atmosphere, lasers want specific wavelengths, and missiles need to deal with aerodynamics and chemistry).
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Post by anotherfirefox on Aug 19, 2018 4:33:34 GMT
This reminds me of the evolution of aerial fight tactics. In WW2 age fighters had no bigger TWR than 1 so not losing your kinetic energy during tactical maneuvers, still try your best to get enemy's dead six was a matter. Modern days decent fighters have more than 1 TWR so they don't really worry much about kinetic energy, and since Beyond-Visual Range combat became dominant, getting enemy's ass is not that much important anymore. So both of you're right, it's just a matter of what tech do you have.
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Post by Apotheon on Aug 21, 2018 13:58:17 GMT
Even though this game says itself a realistic combat simulation, it's not realistic at all when it comes to logistics and strategy. You can't just spawn your skiff magically in the low orbit of enemy's planet. For that you need typically need more than 10km/s dV with some leftover to maneuver in battlefield. That's what a skiff never can do. In real life warfare, deploying your units to the battlefield itself is the most important and crucial part. This game totally lacks it. Stop nagging, and some discussion: What would be an ideal solution for interplanetary fleet deployment? You need a fleet with more than 30km/s dV(not to do super slow Hohmann transfer for several years, which leads to much more logistics needed). Which fuel would you choose? What type of engine? Would your fleet be self propelled with their own tactical engines or be tugged by more efficient cruising engine? Would the tug or refueler be expendable or would be protected against enemy fleet when your fleet arrived the enemy planet? If you play the CDE campaign, you'll know the ships in the campaign inject into systems with drop tanks and such that are ejected before the level starts. In order words, such "Total War" macroscopic considerations are up to the level author, just like in any military simulation. |
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Post by anotherfirefox on Aug 21, 2018 14:09:30 GMT
Even though this game says itself a realistic combat simulation, it's not realistic at all when it comes to logistics and strategy. You can't just spawn your skiff magically in the low orbit of enemy's planet. For that you need typically need more than 10km/s dV with some leftover to maneuver in battlefield. That's what a skiff never can do. In real life warfare, deploying your units to the battlefield itself is the most important and crucial part. This game totally lacks it. Stop nagging, and some discussion: What would be an ideal solution for interplanetary fleet deployment? You need a fleet with more than 30km/s dV(not to do super slow Hohmann transfer for several years, which leads to much more logistics needed). Which fuel would you choose? What type of engine? Would your fleet be self propelled with their own tactical engines or be tugged by more efficient cruising engine? Would the tug or refueler be expendable or would be protected against enemy fleet when your fleet arrived the enemy planet? If you play the CDE campaign, you'll know the ships in the campaign inject into systems with drop tanks and such that are ejected before the level starts. In order words, such "Total War" macroscopic considerations are up to the level author, just like in any military simulation. Here comes the friendly question again: Life support. True story that you can put some brutal force with kilotons of methane drop tank to minimize the planetary transfer down to 2 years (In this case we have no choice but use aerobrake: Which is not possible with given vessel shape and armor configuration. If you want to do powered capture, that goes into the deeper discussion below) but you can never, absolutely never haul 50+ people inside the small cabin that much. I'm pretty sure you haven't watched my suggested video depicting how much of space and supplies are needed to send just 6 crews to nowhere but Mars. Here's a good allegory in real life: We have navy and coast guard on ocean. If you want to engage on enemy's shore (which is ridiculously meaningless, just as combat over low orbit over enemy's asteroid is hillarious) you can never pull your coast guard ship all the way. If you do want, you have to bring supply ships for your fuel and foods, Aegis AA destroyers for essential anti air ability and extended habitability (Crossing the Pacific with such a coast guard ship would instantly make an uprising), and some more: Tada, you already have a well organized fleet! Get the hell away that coast guard ship which is never needed anymore. Sum it up: That macroscopic consideration given by the level author seems so unrealistic, that's why this thread exists. |
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Post by Apotheon on Aug 24, 2018 20:24:45 GMT
If you play the CDE campaign, you'll know the ships in the campaign inject into systems with drop tanks and such that are ejected before the level starts. In order words, such "Total War" macroscopic considerations are up to the level author, just like in any military simulation. Here comes the friendly question again: Life support. True story that you can put some brutal force with kilotons of methane drop tank to minimize the planetary transfer down to 2 years (In this case we have no choice but use aerobrake: Which is not possible with given vessel shape and armor configuration. If you want to do powered capture, that goes into the deeper discussion below) but you can never, absolutely never haul 50+ people inside the small cabin that much. I'm pretty sure you haven't watched my suggested video depicting how much of space and supplies are needed to send just 6 crews to nowhere but Mars. Here's a good allegory in real life: We have navy and coast guard on ocean. If you want to engage on enemy's shore (which is ridiculously meaningless, just as combat over low orbit over enemy's asteroid is hillarious) you can never pull your coast guard ship all the way. If you do want, you have to bring supply ships for your fuel and foods, Aegis AA destroyers for essential anti air ability and extended habitability (Crossing the Pacific with such a coast guard ship would instantly make an uprising), and some more: Tada, you already have a well organized fleet! Get the hell away that coast guard ship which is never needed anymore. Sum it up: That macroscopic consideration given by the level author seems so unrealistic, that's why this thread exists. I don't get it. Are you saying all CDE spaceships are unrealistic, because of life support? According to you, how much more massive and voluminous should, for instance, the CDE 25 crew module be in order to be reasonably realistic? If you have any hard data (because I haven't seen any from you and I know qswitched only accepts it), that could go into improving the game, or, we might DIY it by adding redundant crew modules and/or other modules to increase the volume and mass to a more realistic amount in the interim between patches.
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Prancer
Junior Member
Jousting in space. We're all Knights of the Stars.
Posts: 57 
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Post by Prancer on Aug 29, 2018 18:13:08 GMT
This reminds me of the evolution of aerial fight tactics. In WW2 age fighters had no bigger TWR than 1 so not losing your kinetic energy during tactical maneuvers, still try your best to get enemy's dead six was a matter. Modern days decent fighters have more than 1 TWR so they don't really worry much about kinetic energy, and since Beyond-Visual Range combat became dominant, getting enemy's ass is not that much important anymore. So both of you're right, it's just a matter of what tech do you have. You just articulated what I think is an extremely important point. |
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Post by Apotheon on Sept 7, 2018 16:55:26 GMT
I'm still interested if there's any hard data about how much mass or volume should be added for "life support" etc to be realistic?
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Post by phoenixzix on Sept 13, 2018 11:17:54 GMT
My take on this:
Excerpt from Phoenixian Orbital Strategy SOP(J2047,predates the war):
"The projection of Orbital Power requires that prudent measures be taken when dealing with interplanetary transits. For operating in friendly orbital volume, Standard Naval Fuel Depots stationed at orbital space will suffice for standard transit (Hohmann) of a single Task Group (2 Fleets,with logistics).
However, invasion is yet another matter. Our doctrine require we assume a 2:1 advantage (achieving such a asymmetrical situation is the scope of Strategy that is well outside the scope of this SOP), before we engage.
Prior to capture maneuver Orbital Battle Stations shall be identified and attempts made to degrade their operational capabilities, with dedicated laser star, Strategic nuclear weapons (such as the MIRV CSA Hope Void design with very thick ablative front, weighing almost 1kt) . SEOGD(Suppression of Enemy Orbital/Ground Defence) warfare will also be conducted at this stage to cold launch missiles that will impact enemy defences at high speed during combat between the Fleets to degrade enemy ground defense long enough for our fleet. This level of material superiority would require a extraordinarily large preparation bombardment fleet or a forward operating base with years of preparation.
A successful invasion hinges upon quickly forcing a decisive battle between the invader and the enemy. If an enemy cannot be defeated in time, it is most likely that the enemy will get more reinforcement from off world. SOP dictate that if the initial battle cannot be forced we will be forced to abandon such an attempt and burn home immediately. In case of success eliminating Enemy Fleet, Destroyers shall be detached to deal with potential straddlers and the enemy celestial be bombarded. The battle fleet shall orbit and break up further reinforcements from off world, whom we now out guns. Such an tactic entails that we bring enough supply for the initial battle with the fleet, and subsequent re-arming and refueling can be done with trailing freighters arriving in days. These can be diverted if the invasion fails.
For the initial supply, special "Invasion Stage" like the PNY Atlas class shall be employed. These ships are designed to trail the Invasion Task Group less it be engaged, with minimal armoring. These ship transports 10kt of mass with a MPD thruster, acc at 2mg and has a fueled dv of approx 50kms. Exact data varies with each individual ship and is classified. Note these ships are not meant for hostile or "gun blazing" insertion. It was assumed that the enemy faced with overwhelming odd would try to avoid combat but remain a deterrent, luring the Invaders into planetary and orbital defenses, instead of attempting a kamikaze by engaging the incoming fleet.
A invasion with 2 Fleets , consisting of:( with fire preparation made by planetary battery)
1.CSA/PNY Byzantium class *2 Battleships @20kt
2.CSA/PNY Kaguya, Polyus, Endymion class Missile/Drone Carrier *10 @20kt
3.PNY Long Night class Laser Cruiser *4 @ 16kt
4.PNY Menar, Menases, Panther class Destroyer *4 @20kt
5.CSA Benevolent Phoenix class Commerce Raider *4 @8kt
5.5 any other special support craft/drone , ELINT, misc,etc,etc
6.PNY Atlas *10 @50kt both decelerating friendly craft and also carrying ammo/prop with spare capacity
would require a staff of 2500~ staff and approx 100kt of fuel. (This would require years of preparation or dispatching fleets from different locations.)
with detached support element consisting of:
1.CSA Medusa Methane tanker *4 @17kt (Second Wave)
2.Cocier Class Auxiliary Collier *4 @17kt(Second Wave)
and later reinforcement of marines and / or special ground bombardment vehicle ( a variant on PNY Kaguya loading 50Mt salted bomb would work splendidly)
Such is the amount of military resources it takes to invade a planet, and noting that IF THIS FAIL A SIGNIFICANT PART OF CSA/PNY Combined fleet WILL BE IRRECOVERABLY LOST that invading a prepared planet has been seldom attempted. Past victories with the invasion of Pallas and Ceres(J2021,during the fall of Earth) depended more on the element of surprise and loading warships into civilian cargoholds, and masquerading among civilians, then raiding civilian shipping to provide fuel. Such tactics are reserved for the most desperate time only, and might not be politically acceptable to her Highness the Queen of the Phoenixian Empire under current situations. Further instructions will be given by your military leader. "
Well even if the game lacks it you can still role play it to your heart's content, hah?
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