|
Post by bdcarrillo on Nov 15, 2016 1:42:32 GMT
Survival in space demands pragmatism. Not chivalry. Pragmatism means if it's not practical to take prisoners, you do not. It means that the enemy will know that they are unlikely to be taken prisoner. Thoroughly agreed, however allowing an enemy to leave the battle after jettisoning munitions may be the most pragmatic solution as one does not risk facing an animal backed into the corner. I'd like to emphasize MAY.
|
|
|
Post by Durandal on Nov 15, 2016 1:54:15 GMT
Survival in space demands pragmatism. Not chivalry. Pragmatism means if it's not practical to take prisoners, you do not. It means that the enemy will know that they are unlikely to be taken prisoner. Somewhere on Atomic Rockets (and in the book Mote in God's Eye) there's a description of how ship capitulation works. Basically, when a ship signals its surrender the winning side sends over a volunteer ensign. The ensign has a nuclear device strapped to his body. He is allowed to board the surrending vessel and then chaparones the losing ship to a safe port where it can be decommisioned. Speaking from pragmatic terms, if an enemy ship surrenders why waste that hardware? That's more tonnage for your navy, or R&D on enemy tech (presuming they don't scuttle everything non-critical). You can sweep their computers for or interrogate the crew for intelligence. Use the crew as progoganda tools. Deploy the ship as a "Trojan horse" if conditions are right. That said, the setting in Mote involved fusion power and energy screen "Langston" fields. Chivalry has no place, but mercy has its uses.
|
|
|
Post by bdcarrillo on Nov 15, 2016 2:02:40 GMT
Excellent counter points. The threat of destruction during escort would probably serve as well as the sacrificial nuclear ensign.
Simply put, the enemy must use their own ship as a life raft or face death.
|
|
|
Post by tessfield on Nov 15, 2016 2:03:26 GMT
And that's where the question comes in, IS it practical to take prisoners? Why/why not?
|
|
|
Post by bdcarrillo on Nov 15, 2016 2:08:50 GMT
And that's where the question comes in, IS it practical to take prisoners? Why/why not? For spacecraft, it comes down to mass and fuel. Do you have adequate consumables such as food, oxygen, and water? Lodging? Security personnel? It's doubtful.
|
|
|
Post by tessfield on Nov 15, 2016 2:41:26 GMT
<snip> For spacecraft, it comes down to mass and fuel. Do you have adequate consumables such as food, oxygen, and water? Lodging? Security personnel? It's doubtful. For military spacecraft is doubtful, agreed. But what about the civilian infrastructure in place? A police shuttle if you will.
|
|
|
Post by dragonkid11 on Nov 15, 2016 2:45:43 GMT
We have seen one design of the coastguard patrol ship, the...appropriately called Patrol Ship.
It's basically decent for guarding a single planet or so and not much else.
Crew on those ships can easily get shore-leave back to the planet in just days or even hours via travelling.
|
|
|
Post by subunit on Nov 15, 2016 4:03:06 GMT
<snip> Makes me wonder what kind of society would be able to generate masters-degree-level educated people with near fanatical zealotry levels of nationalism to them in the quantities needed to prosecute a war on the scale shown? THIS. All the this. My argument comes down to, if crew is well educated masters-degree-and-such, it makes less sense they'd be fanatical zealots. Where do you get these people from? How do you create these people? Doesn't their education include history and such? Actually, the game actually makes it clear everybody knows it's war and we're doing whatever we can and we're desperate, so I guess that answers that: desperation. Kinda sad. On the other hand, we meet a lot of bloodthirsty people, or those who are trying to make a difference, so it rather looks like a combination of desperation and sadism? Technical education does nothing to instill virtue. Most of the architects of the worst atrocities of the last hundred years have been highly educated. There are all kinds of people with graduate degrees and no moral compass, there are all kinds of people with graduate degrees and fanatical commitments to particular socio-political formations (visit your local econ department). I don't really see a difference between what's happening in CoaDE and recent history.
|
|
|
Post by cuddlefish on Nov 15, 2016 9:16:22 GMT
The big time I can think of when large scale troop-transfers were significant was the early stages of the Diadokhoi wars - Alexander's successors all relied on the same body of highly experienced Macedonian infantry, the force he had used to conquer so vast an area in the first place.
They weren't a renewable resource - but they also had a sense of camaraderie with their counterparts under the opposing general, and weren't strongly tied to any of the states beyond whatever loyalty they had to the person of their ruler. In battle, the losing phalanx would often (though by no means always) surrender (signalled in combat by raising their pikes to vertical) and change sides as a bloc - sometimes as the conclusion of a battle, other times before battle can be joined if they decide the other general is a safer bet than their own.
It's not an uncommon sci-fi trope for Spacers to have their own distinctive culture and mutual respect - and often to be somewhat jaded and pragmatic with regards to the political ideologies of other (usually portrayed as lesser) people. In that instance, I could very much see surrender or coat-turning as a common endgame for battles - for example, if terminal-approach point defense is comparatively ineffective, it might become custom that a fleet outmaneuvered by the opposing missile salvo and unable to break it with their counter-missiles would offer surrender, having been fairly beaten by their adversaries and there being little desire on the other side for a whole lot of good men and women to die in the void out of bloody-minded spite.
|
|
erik
New Member
Posts: 34
|
Post by erik on Nov 15, 2016 9:32:44 GMT
And then theres all the negative effects of long term weightlessness... Although I think at least some ships could be spun for (partial) artificial gravity when theres no need to burn or maneuver for a while. Small ships with crew compartments at the bow could probably be spun to useful levels of "gravity" for the crew fairly cheaply in terms of propellant. Crew compartment interiors would need to be designed with that in mind though.
|
|
|
Post by dragonkid11 on Nov 15, 2016 10:39:04 GMT
Honestly, after nearly 2 centuries of living in space, I'm sure they figured out some way to fix syndrome from long term weightlessness
Or that human in Children of Dead Earth are all secretly look like alien.
|
|
|
Post by thorneel on Nov 15, 2016 10:45:19 GMT
In the campaign, your side explicitly deny surrender to enemy fleets and destroy them to the last in order to make a point. So fleets surrendering is not unheard of, though this may be before the engagement itself.
|
|
|
Post by jonen on Nov 15, 2016 11:25:15 GMT
Do not forget that there's a factor of cold war nuclear strategy style thinking going on.
Combat spacecraft - even fairly light ones - are basically nuclear platforms. While you may want to encourage the enemy to surrender, you also want to discourage your own side from doing so, and no superstate actor can abide losing control of their nuclear platforms.
I imagine if ships started surrendering en masse, everyone would in short order find an ominous, small, black box being installed in the crew modules.
|
|
|
Post by goduranus on Nov 15, 2016 12:28:25 GMT
I've added a poll so you guys can vote
|
|
|
Post by tessfield on Nov 15, 2016 13:25:23 GMT
Technical education does nothing to instill virtue. Most of the architects of the worst atrocities of the last hundred years have been highly educated. There are all kinds of people with graduate degrees and no moral compass, there are all kinds of people with graduate degrees and fanatical commitments to particular socio-political formations (visit your local econ department). I don't really see a difference between what's happening in CoaDE and recent history. Agreed. Though in current society it's impossible to get a purely technical education. The best public college in my country has a 1 year general education course before focusing on technical education, for instance. Propaganda machine and war needs would probably void this kind've thing though. Just hard to put myself in a to-be soldier. Is conscription a thing? The requirements just seem so high... How many people are actually in the military anyway in CoaDE? Perhaps all this is offset by the actual amount of people in the military being so low that you can actually get enough of the right amount of people
|
|