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Post by proyas on Nov 6, 2018 20:12:16 GMT
Hello,
I'm new to this forum and came here because someone said you guys were the ones to ask what a real-life space warship would look like.
I haven't played "Children of a Dead Earth" and only heard about it today.
Please forgive my ignorance and perhaps my posting of a thread to early. Without violating any known laws of physics, what would be the optimal design for a space warship that would be designed to operate within our Solar System?
What are some common design elements to the best ships in Children of a Dead Earth? What are those elements? Would they pertain to space ships built for the same combat roles in real life.
Thank you.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Nov 6, 2018 21:47:39 GMT
Hello, I'm new to this forum and came here because someone said you guys were the ones to ask what a real-life space warship would look like. I haven't played "Children of a Dead Earth" and only heard about it today. Please forgive my ignorance and perhaps my posting of a thread to early. Without violating any known laws of physics, what would be the optimal design for a space warship that would be designed to operate within our Solar System? What are some common design elements to the best ships in Children of a Dead Earth? What are those elements? Would they pertain to space ships built for the same combat roles in real life. Thank you. That's actually a good question. The answer can be split into two parts: - It depends. It depends on things like technology level (naval warships, for example have changed dramatically with time - triremes, age of sail ships, broadsiders armed with cannons, increasingly powerful turreted cannon ships culminating with dreadnoughts, submarines, carrier groups - they're all real life sea warships, completely different from one another and using completely different tactics), the theatre (near orbital combat ship will be completely different from belt one, which will be completely different from something designed to operate around gas giants - the distance from the Sun will count as well), whether or not the civilization still mostly sits at the bottom of a deep gravity well (most of CDE backstory is pretty much the excuse to get it out of there and move the entirety of warfare into space, the rest is to allow indiscriminate nuke slinging), the scale and intensity of the warfare along with any treaties that might be present.
- After all that - we actually still don't know. CDE was kind of created to answer this question. Unfortunately, for practical reasons it had to make its own assumptions, some of which were later invalidated and usually lifted, for example:
- Hulls will generally be convex and mostly cylindrical, with some taper - that's not unreasonable, for many reasons, but it turns out non-convex hulls, flattening, and angular design all have use cases not allowing just dismissing them up front. A lot of trade-offs are likely to ultimately depend on available large-scale manufacturing techniques.
- Ships are going to be radially symmetrical - again, not unreasonable, but you really can do interesting things with asymmetrical layouts and you might actually make case that they are the way to go based on how orbital intercepts end up looking.
- Ships are going to be just stacks of internal components with armour and external modules (RCS, weapons, radiators) surrounding them - there actually are many reasons to not just do that - for example surrounding critical modules with less critical ones to let them take hits instead.
- All sorts of assumptions limiting technology to what we already have and what actually has enough information floating around in the public to allow detailed modelling of it in game.
- Assumptions regarding how ships will generally manoeuvre and aim - for AI reasons.
Additionally, the game also hit some limitations regarding what can reasonably be done:
- Missile swarms are insanely computationally expensive
- No simulation is perfect and players are unusually good at reaching corner cases where it breaks down in their pursuit of optimization
- Some models are inaccurate, guesswork or otherwise broken, because accurate models might be unavailable or impractical for something that's supposed to run in real time on a desktop
That said, I really consider this game to be a must have for any self respecting sci-fi nerd. It might not answer this question in the end but it is probably the only one to at least go some way in that direction, using very conservative estimates for technology and expose all kinds of non-obvious factors as you try to answer this question yourself by designing ships (and you can design stuff down to what material and diameter of wire you use in your coilguns and how many times do you wind it). Plus how many games do you know that make an earnest attempt to model near future space warfare with minimum preconceptions about it and down to individual material properties and orbital mechanics minutiae? |
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Post by proyas on Nov 6, 2018 22:29:24 GMT
Thank you for that detailed reply.
It might be easier to ask: Which simulated space ships have performed very badly in space combat, which have performed very well, and what are the design differences explaining the disparity?
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Post by thorneel on Nov 6, 2018 22:33:52 GMT
In addition, there are great websites that tackled this question based on what has been written, theorized and the current state of science and technology. Atomic Rocket is the resource to go for anything related to hard-SF and anticipation, updated weekly by the website's author. Mandatory reading for anyone thinking about writing or commenting hard-SF or attempting to anticipate possible directions for the future. Tough SF is a blog mostly tackling this question in addition to civilian spacecrafts, written by matterbeam and that, among other interesting things, explored the concepts of laser weapon web and the polemic Hydrogen Steamer, the only known stealth spacecraft concept that may (or may not?) work. Rocketpunk Manifesto started as a blog dedicated to Rocketpunk, that particular brand of SF from the decades before modern, compact superfast computers made much of the need for space crews obsolete, but most of it is relevant to hard-SF in general. And many others, you will find more links on Atomic Rocket. |
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Nov 6, 2018 23:01:18 GMT
Thank you for that detailed reply. It might be easier to ask: Which simulated space ships have performed very badly in space combat, which have performed very well, and what are the design differences explaining the disparity? Why don't you get the game and find out?
Stock designs generally perform badly, largely due to being very conservative in their assumptions (even with all stock modules I can usually achieve around 5:1 to 10:1 superiority over analogous stock design while staying within the same mission envelope, mass and budget). Some of the stock designs perform much worse, often due to using modules with some crippling weakness endangering the whole ship or perilous design decisions.
What performs well is an open question even if you limit yourself just to stock modules, moreso if you actually roll your own. It's not a question that can be answered in a concise manner in a forum post. Want an answer? Get the game. You will be able to experiment and look at other people's experiments (the game has Steam Workshop support and import/export functionality independent of that).
Also, regardless if you get CDE, do read Atomic Rockets, the other sites mentioned and developer's own blog posts regarding CDE, its assumptions and its basis in reality - this should be interesting if you are into this stuff and might be helpful deciding whether you want to get CDE or not. |
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Post by doctorsquared on Nov 7, 2018 4:56:53 GMT
I would argue that given: - The fragility of human life (radiation tolerance, requirements for a pressurized atmosphere with a regulated temperature, inability to sustain high-G acceleration forces for long periods)
- The ineffectiveness of armor (1m of Graphite Aerogel or Whipple Shields will stop light, high-velocity projectiles, but heavier armor to stop heavier projectiles has a major dV cost)
Missiles and Drones would be the more efficient option for fighting in space given that they have a superior thrust-to-mass ratio, have no crew to be killed, and can present a smaller cross-sectional area than crewed ships.
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Post by airc777 on Nov 7, 2018 5:31:13 GMT
I would argue that given: - The fragility of human life (radiation tolerance, requirements for a pressurized atmosphere with a regulated temperature, inability to sustain high-G acceleration forces for long periods)
- The ineffectiveness of armor (1m of Graphite Aerogel or Whipple Shields will stop light, high-velocity projectiles, but heavier armor to stop heavier projectiles has a major dV cost)
Missiles and Drones would be the more efficient option for fighting in space given that they have a superior thrust-to-mass ratio, have no crew to be killed, and can present a smaller cross-sectional area than crewed ships.
I'd agree in a general sense that ideally we wouldn't want humans fighting the war, but I don't think we would want an entirely automated system making decisions that could be the start of a war. I think we would want humans within a few light seconds to maybe a light minute who have the equipment they need to make that kind of decision, even if said equipment is drones and said decision involves ordering drones around. But my assumptions are based on hypothetical logistics, if minutes or hours long response times are acceptable then you could potentially fight the whole war from a bunker under a mountain on earth. |
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Post by linkxsc on Nov 7, 2018 16:17:26 GMT
>What would a real-life space warship look like?
Dunno. As others have said, the game is a bit of a starting point to think about it. But the game also has a number of limitations in its simulation, how you can design a craft can be laid out, armor scheme, weapon design, physics. So do not take it at face value of "All ships are going to look like this".
Even over the dev cycle of the game, the creator has had to go back over his initial assumptions on things, like say armor design. Convex hulls. Initially thought to be the most mass saving. But often being heavier than a concave hull. Circular crossections seemed to be optimal... but the prevalence of spike noses, and their slopes increasing effective armor leads to... well how can we slope the side of the hull of a ship. Which leads into "Well hexagonal hulls sometimes gain a bit of mass... but that extra 15% armor thickness when the ship is rolled the right angle does help out quite a bit. Also in some cases, you save mass on armor, because the flat areas aren't curved. Also IRL this would be a hell of a lot easier to manufacture... and more reasons"
Personally I see another major shift in "what works" for the playerbase if we could stack modules in lines, rather than in rings. And stack modules of different types together. There's so much that could be done.
We the guys in the civil war when the ironclads just had their first encounter at Hampton Roads, speculating on what battleships would look like in WW2.
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Post by proyas on Nov 7, 2018 16:57:14 GMT
In addition, there are great websites that tackled this question based on what has been written, theorized and the current state of science and technology. Atomic Rocket is the resource to go for anything related to hard-SF and anticipation, updated weekly by the website's author. Mandatory reading for anyone thinking about writing or commenting hard-SF or attempting to anticipate possible directions for the future. Tough SF is a blog mostly tackling this question in addition to civilian spacecrafts, written by matterbeam and that, among other interesting things, explored the concepts of laser weapon web and the polemic Hydrogen Steamer, the only known stealth spacecraft concept that may (or may not?) work. Rocketpunk Manifesto started as a blog dedicated to Rocketpunk, that particular brand of SF from the decades before modern, compact superfast computers made much of the need for space crews obsolete, but most of it is relevant to hard-SF in general. And many others, you will find more links on Atomic Rocket. Thank you. Atomic Rocket is really interesting. The author describes some basic design principles for future space ships, such as: -Bridge will be positioned deep inside the ship for protection, and not on the outside as some kind of vulnerable "hood ornament". -Even if the space ship is assembled in space and thus never experiences air friction, it will have an oblong, rocket-like shape. A "Borg cube" makes no sense. -Significant structural protrusions perpendicular to a space ship's longest axis (rocket nozzle to tip) are almost always thanks to heat radiators or rotating "habitat modules." -Most of a space ship's volume will be devoted to fuel. Do the best ships in Children of a Dead Earth have those design elements? |
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Post by treptoplax on Nov 7, 2018 17:05:39 GMT
Thank you for that detailed reply. It might be easier to ask: Which simulated space ships have performed very badly in space combat, which have performed very well, and what are the design differences explaining the disparity? There are threads for screenshots, and for posting designs, you might want to peruse some of those. Even within this engine, a lot depends on political assumptions about what a warship is for; a coast guard cutter designed for inspection and chasing improvised pirates ships looks different from a ship designed to kill enemy warships, looks different than a warship designed for power projection against an opponent with no fleet. A couple things that don't come up in popular fiction that are clear: if a warship is using weapons other than missiles/drones/chemical guns, it'll have huge power requirements, which means huge, glowy, and likely fragile radiators. No way around it. And scale matters. Because of square/cube law, dodging is easier for small ships, armor is easier for large ones. There is considerable doubt whether armor is very practical at all, but YMMV. Drones are a very compelling option if computer technology and/or political considerations allow them. You might like this old but still relevant tournament thread: childrenofadeadearth.boards.net/thread/1543/coade-officially-unofficial-tournament-thread?page=1 , which also has some nice shots. Note that in operation most of those radiators will be glowing orange-yellow. That said, and allowing that the engine has limitations, we can describe a few general classes of designs that keep recurring: Laserstars. A spindly structure tens or hundreds of meters across, slow, unarmored. Enormous thin glowing radiator panels to shed the heat from their tremendous nuclear reactors, powering a array of lasers focused and aimed through an array of dozens of large (meters across) mirrors. They have no armor to speak of. Their engines are efficient, giving them gigantic range, but acceleration is terrible. But when you can vaporize any opponent who dares approach within a thousand miles what does that matter? Broadside ships. A cylinder-ish shape with railguns/lasers on port side, radiators on starboard. Engines at the back make random dodging maneuvers while it blasts away. Carriers. Manned motherships - which aren't necessarily that large, a 15x70m cylinder is not atypical, but they might be a large and fragile as the laser stars. They launch and control dozens, or hundreds, or tens of thousands, of drones and/or missiles. Missiles may only be a few kilograms; personally, I prefer gun drones about the size and mass of a human in large numbers; but a handful of bus-sized drones each with a single hundred-megawatt laser is perfectly viable also. Needleships. Direct guns, facing opponent with a sloped, armored nose surrounded by a ring of guns. Radiators behind are parallel to minimize the ability of a facing enemy to shoot them off. That's probably too crude and missing some things, but it's a start. |
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Post by proyas on Nov 7, 2018 17:21:39 GMT
Laserstars. A spindly structure tens or hundreds of meters across, slow, unarmored. Enormous thin glowing radiator panels to shed the heat from their tremendous nuclear reactors, powering a array of lasers focused and aimed through an array of dozens of large (meters across) mirrors. They have no armor to speak of. Their engines are efficient, giving them gigantic range, but acceleration is terrible. But when you can vaporize any opponent who dares approach within a thousand miles what does that matter? Broadside ships. A cylinder-ish shape with railguns/lasers on port side, radiators on starboard. Engines at the back make random dodging maneuvers while it blasts away. Carriers. Manned motherships - which aren't necessarily that large, a 15x70m cylinder is not atypical, but they might be a large and fragile as the laser stars. They launch and control dozens, or hundreds, or tens of thousands, of drones and/or missiles. Missiles may only be a few kilograms; personally, I prefer gun drones about the size and mass of a human in large numbers; but a handful of bus-sized drones each with a single hundred-megawatt laser is perfectly viable also. Needleships. Direct guns, facing opponent with a sloped, armored nose surrounded by a ring of guns. Radiators behind are parallel to minimize the ability of a facing enemy to shoot them off. That's probably too crude and missing some things, but it's a start. Laserstars: Sounds similar to the "orbital defense platforms" I see in many sci-fi series. Turn them towards the planet, and they can fry people below. But I guess you could also turn them outward to fry incoming ships. Broadside ships: But if they're designed to fire broadside, aren't they presenting an enormous target cross-section to their opponent? Wouldn't a Needleship be superior thanks to its much smaller profile to the enemy? What advantage would a Broadside ship have? |
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Post by treptoplax on Nov 7, 2018 17:44:46 GMT
Laserstars. A spindly structure tens or hundreds of meters across, slow, unarmored. Enormous thin glowing radiator panels to shed the heat from their tremendous nuclear reactors, powering a array of lasers focused and aimed through an array of dozens of large (meters across) mirrors. They have no armor to speak of. Their engines are efficient, giving them gigantic range, but acceleration is terrible. But when you can vaporize any opponent who dares approach within a thousand miles what does that matter? Broadside ships. A cylinder-ish shape with railguns/lasers on port side, radiators on starboard. Engines at the back make random dodging maneuvers while it blasts away. Carriers. Manned motherships - which aren't necessarily that large, a 15x70m cylinder is not atypical, but they might be a large and fragile as the laser stars. They launch and control dozens, or hundreds, or tens of thousands, of drones and/or missiles. Missiles may only be a few kilograms; personally, I prefer gun drones about the size and mass of a human in large numbers; but a handful of bus-sized drones each with a single hundred-megawatt laser is perfectly viable also. Needleships. Direct guns, facing opponent with a sloped, armored nose surrounded by a ring of guns. Radiators behind are parallel to minimize the ability of a facing enemy to shoot them off. That's probably too crude and missing some things, but it's a start. Laserstars: Sounds similar to the "orbital defense platforms" I see in many sci-fi series. Turn them towards the planet, and they can fry people below. But I guess you could also turn them outward to fry incoming ships. Broadside ships: But if they're designed to fire broadside, aren't they presenting an enormous target cross-section to their opponent? Wouldn't a Needleship be superior thanks to its much smaller profile to the enemy? What advantage would a Broadside ship have? The main advantage of broadside is that you can use the main engines to dodge (in theory perhaps a needleship could do this, but the game engine doesn't support it very well and the mechanics are in fact somewhat awkward), and you can hide at least some of your big, fragile radiators behind the body of the ship itself. Also, a needleship may have issues actually getting all its weapons placed in such a way they all have line-of-sight forward. Another good, more recent thread with a nice variety of designs (albeit all relatively small ships) and screenshots is here: childrenofadeadearth.boards.net/thread/3376/challenge-750-ton-wonders |
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Post by linkxsc on Nov 7, 2018 18:30:02 GMT
Laserstars: Sounds similar to the "orbital defense platforms" I see in many sci-fi series. Turn them towards the planet, and they can fry people below. But I guess you could also turn them outward to fry incoming ships. Broadside ships: But if they're designed to fire broadside, aren't they presenting an enormous target cross-section to their opponent? Wouldn't a Needleship be superior thanks to its much smaller profile to the enemy? What advantage would a Broadside ship have? The main advantage of broadside is that you can use the main engines to dodge (in theory perhaps a needleship could do this, but the game engine doesn't support it very well and the mechanics are in fact somewhat awkward), and you can hide at least some of your big, fragile radiators behind the body of the ship itself. Also, a needleship may have issues actually getting all its weapons placed in such a way they all have line-of-sight forward. Another good, more recent thread with a nice variety of designs (albeit all relatively small ships) and screenshots is here: childrenofadeadearth.boards.net/thread/3376/challenge-750-ton-wondersCourse this just makes me think. Instead of your ship's engines being mounted inline with the long axis... why not have them mounted facing out the ventral direction. Now your main engines can still dodge, but they can evade fire with less deltaV (a ship can easily be over 200m long, but only 30m in diameter. Quicker to move 30m up, than 200m ahead) |
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Post by proyas on Nov 7, 2018 20:50:08 GMT
The main advantage of broadside is that you can use the main engines to dodge (in theory perhaps a needleship could do this, but the game engine doesn't support it very well and the mechanics are in fact somewhat awkward), and you can hide at least some of your big, fragile radiators behind the body of the ship itself. Also, a needleship may have issues actually getting all its weapons placed in such a way they all have line-of-sight forward. Another good, more recent thread with a nice variety of designs (albeit all relatively small ships) and screenshots is here: childrenofadeadearth.boards.net/thread/3376/challenge-750-ton-wondersCourse this just makes me think. Instead of your ship's engines being mounted inline with the long axis... why not have them mounted facing out the ventral direction. Now your main engines can still dodge, but they can evade fire with less deltaV (a ship can easily be over 200m long, but only 30m in diameter. Quicker to move 30m up, than 200m ahead) At the very least, it makes the case for having maneuvering thrusters that can move your ship in all three dimensions. |
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Nov 7, 2018 23:02:21 GMT
Thank you. Atomic Rocket is really interesting. The author describes some basic design principles for future space ships, such as: -Bridge will be positioned deep inside the ship for protection, and not on the outside as some kind of vulnerable "hood ornament". -Even if the space ship is assembled in space and thus never experiences air friction, it will have an oblong, rocket-like shape. A "Borg cube" makes no sense. -Significant structural protrusions perpendicular to a space ship's longest axis (rocket nozzle to tip) are almost always thanks to heat radiators or rotating "habitat modules." -Most of a space ship's volume will be devoted to fuel. Do the best ships in Children of a Dead Earth have those design elements? Uh, you could answer all those questions yourself by just as much as looking at some screens or videos - including official trailers: - There is no point whatsoever to have an exposed bridge. There is actually no point having windows either - all they do is provide structural weaknesses and expose you to laser/nuclear eyeball frying. You either put your crew modules in central location (makes it harder to move them out of the way of incoming fire, but gives them thickest possible protection and prevents rapid spins (controlled and uncontrolled alike) from killing the crew), distribute them along the ship (helps ensure *someone* will still be alive even in badly mangled ship - unless it enters a rapid spin, of course) or stuff them into heavily armoured nosecone without anything to compromise the armour there (good protection at minimal mass, but it will usually get spun-up instead).
- Most of the ships are long flying cans, usually with tapering nosecone to maximize armour slope
- Apart from turrets, possibly verniers, and a lot of glowy hot radiators (oh, and droptanks) you'd be hard pressed to find one that wouldn't be a featureless space-can
- You literally can't get anywhere in space without that
I would argue that given: - The fragility of human life (radiation tolerance, requirements for a pressurized atmosphere with a regulated temperature, inability to sustain high-G acceleration forces for long periods)
- The ineffectiveness of armor (1m of Graphite Aerogel or Whipple Shields will stop light, high-velocity projectiles, but heavier armor to stop heavier projectiles has a major dV cost)
Missiles and Drones would be the more efficient option for fighting in space given that they have a superior thrust-to-mass ratio, have no crew to be killed, and can present a smaller cross-sectional area than crewed ships.
I'd agree in a general sense that ideally we wouldn't want humans fighting the war, but I don't think we would want an entirely automated system making decisions that could be the start of a war. I think we would want humans within a few light seconds to maybe a light minute who have the equipment they need to make that kind of decision, even if said equipment is drones and said decision involves ordering drones around. But my assumptions are based on hypothetical logistics, if minutes or hours long response times are acceptable then you could potentially fight the whole war from a bunker under a mountain on earth. I would expect there to be whole spectrum of viable strategies largely depending on two factors: - Willingness to go all out with nuke slinging
- Clarity of the situation and actions required
On one end of the scale you have stuff like "slag this body and everything within 10 light seconds radius" where human crews would mostly just get in the way, on the other "determine if there are any clandestine operatives hiding among civilian traffic and react accordingly", where they would be indispensable.
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