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space battles theory (OT)
shadowsword
Trainee
in Babylon 5
i was driving to my dad's house the other day and was thinking about some sci-fi stuff iv'e been working on (it's a very long, boring drive). okay, assuming that the universe was more like starwars where fuel supply didn't matter and they don't turn off their engines, the only real limit to how fast ships could go would be how many G's of acceleration the pilot and ship could take, right? so if it was a very long battle, and some ships had PHENOMENALLY high acceleration rates, they could theoretically undergo relitivistic effects, right? so my question is this, How would this affect a battle, especially if fighters had 3 times (or more)the acceleration of capitol ships?
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"Use our information or
not, but is it sensible
to shoot the messenger?"
"When the messenger won't
tell you what the hell
the messege is, my
trigger finger gets twitchy."
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"Use our information or
not, but is it sensible
to shoot the messenger?"
"When the messenger won't
tell you what the hell
the messege is, my
trigger finger gets twitchy."
Comments
In B5, the ship would have to travel for like 70 years for it to be noticable.
You have to move at around 0.6C for it to become very noticable, going on memory [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/smile.gif[/img]
[b]I fantizied about doing that in ITF, ramming a ship and suddenly seeing my own ship expload ahead of me, than pull away at the last second.[/b][/quote]
ROFL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That was too funny [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/wink.gif[/img]
I'm hoping B5:ITF space combat is going to feel like Elite, and be as fun as that. No space combat game since really has been as much fun [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/frown.gif[/img] *sniff* *sudden burst of need* I NEED THIS GAME!!! GIMME!!!!
[This message has been edited by MageWolf (edited 06-05-2001).]
*Stares dreamily at a poster on the wall while recently purchased Christopher Franke music blares in the background*
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Never eat anything bigger than your own head.
The Balance provides. The Balance protects.
"Nonono...Is not [i]Great[/i] Machine. Is...[i]Not[/i]-so-Great Machine. It make good snow cone though." - Zathras
What effect would the ability to accelerate to incredible speeds (over a period of time) have on a battle?
A:
None.
While any ship could accelerate in a straight line for a long period of time on maximum thrust (with acceleration up to maximum survivable G's / thrust limit), no-one would ever bother to do so.
1) There is no tactical or strategic advantage to be gained by such a manoever. (So a fighter can do a flyby on a cap ship at 10000 km/s - this results in a time on target of 0.0005 seconds).
2) After acceleratin to such a high speed, only 4 manoevers can be realistically performed.
- Do a really really long reverse thruster burn to resume normal speeds.
- Ram something. A fighter of mass 100 tonnes at 10000 km/s has kinetic energy of 10000 MJ (mega joule = million J), and momentum 1 M kgm/s. That plus any remaining fuel = a big dent/crater in whatever it hits.
- Use a planet / moon's gravity to slingshot around and travel in a different direction.
- Keep moving on the same course. (Not technically a manoever).
3) The waste of fuel / reaction mass (as discussed in the topic "Omegas slowing down in ITF"), and more importantly for fighers life support consumables, far outweighs any advantage.
Plus of course there is a limit (though not a very restrictive one) of velocity, at the point where friction from interstellar hydrogen = thrust; the craft stops accelerating.
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Live long and.. um..
Have a Beer!
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[b]Freejack: The Theoretical Subatomic Particle[/b]
I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is
southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.
Hamlet
<*>
B5:ITF
That said, your point still stands. [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/biggrin.gif[/img]
[i][edit]corrected spelling mistakes[/edit][/i]
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Live long and.. um..
Have a Beer!
[This message has been edited by eamonmca (edited 06-05-2001).]
In his model, there are "intertial dampeners" (to protect the soft, bag-of-protoplasm human inhabitants) and the ships can accelerate at up to 600 G's.
He gets around time dialation by imposing a speed limit of .8C (radiation shielding issues). He also has a FTL drive model and hyperspace "currents" which can be rode with "sails" across interstellar distances.
His model stresses capital ship battles over fighter-type engagements. Long range combat with very high-g nuclear or nuke-pumped x-ray laser missiles; short range with several types of energy weapons (lasers, plasma torpedos, gravity lance).
Armor: The drive creates an impenetrable "wedge" along top and bottom of the ship. Ships have "sidewalls" which are basically shields to protect the other two sides, but they can be penetrated. The bow and stern, however, cannot be protected other than with physical armor.
The result is a fun tactical model which creates interesting situations. It would not adapt well to film, however, since the battles often take place at light-second and light-minute distances with tenth-of-C relative velocities between combatants. I remember a quote from one of the books: "With a range of only 150,000 km, he was at point-blank range."
Good stuff; I highly recommend it. [img]http://216.15.145.59/mainforums/shad.gif[/img]
I like how Weber emphasied that importance of starships. There was little use for the army, because the ships could simply drop things on the planet.
[This message has been edited by Black&Gold Vorlon (edited 06-05-2001).]
[b]It would be nice to see a game based in the Honorverse, but it doubt we'll ever see one. The ranges are simply to great.[/b]
[/quote]
Range isn't the real problem, engagement length is. As long as you are willing to stick with starship-only combat (i.e. no one man fighters) you can put together a fun simulation of Weber's combat model. You wouldn't be able to see all the ships at the same time, but so what? You couldn't see all the ships in a Star Trek or B5 battle half the time either.
The main display could be a Homeworld style tactical view, and you could call up cameras that focus on any individual ship or fleet component that you want. You could also render the ships much larger than they actually are to regain the ponderous feel of naval combat.
No, the major problem I see with doing a game like this is that the combat is pretty dull in real time. Honor is perfectly willing to spend eight hours in a stern chase half-way across a star system before getting to firing range, but a typical game player would not be. Also, most of the excitement in the battle takes place inside the ship - tactical officers reprogramming the ECM pods on the fly, engineers trying to keep the fusion reactors from going critical, bosun's mates hauling missiles from one magazine to another because the launch tubes have been damaged in combat.
I think it could be done. I thought about doing it in Starshatter, but I didn't want to give up the fighter combat.
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--milo
[url="http://members.home.net/milod"]http://members.home.net/milod[/url]
[b]Q:
What effect would the ability to accelerate to incredible speeds (over a period of time) have on a battle?
A:
None.
1) There is no tactical or strategic advantage to be gained by such a manoever. (So a fighter can do a flyby on a cap ship at 10000 km/s - this results in a time on target of 0.0005 seconds).
[/b][/quote]
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be assuming that both sides are willing participants in the battle. What if one side wanted to avoid combat entirely? Wouldn't it be a big advantage to the defender to be able to run away?
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--milo
[url="http://members.home.net/milod"]http://members.home.net/milod[/url]
However, in answer to you question:
The ability to continue acceleration over a long period to attain higher speeds would be of assistance while attempting to disengage. More important are the [b]relative[/b] rates of acceleration of the forces involved (since this ability is common to each force in battle).
An example to clarify:
Forces A and B are in battle. Force A has acceleration (acc) of 10ms-2, and Force B an acc of 15ms-2.
If A attempts to disengage, B maintatin (at 2/3 acceleration) a [i]relative[/i] velocity of zero, and pound A into tiny pieces from the stern. Force A knows this, so must find another way to disengage (such as hyperspace).
If B attempts to disengage, A may give chase but at a 5ms-2 accelerative disadvantage. In 30 seconds force B will be 2250m away, with a velocity 150ms-1 higher. They escape.
The disengaging force can only flee in normal space if they can accelerate faster, then maintain higher velocity (subject to limitations in my initial response) than the force giving chase.
"We can't outrun them in normal space"
Weapons officer to General Ryan.
Clarkstown vs Alexander battle (Severed Dreams)
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Live long and.. um..
Have a Beer!
[This message has been edited by eamonmca (edited 06-05-2001).]
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Never eat anything bigger than your own head.
The Balance provides. The Balance protects.
"Nonono...Is not [i]Great[/i] Machine. Is...[i]Not[/i]-so-Great Machine. It make good snow cone though." - Zathras
here's a few things i came up with over the last several days (some of these may be lack of sleep induced stupidity)
1)getting squished wouldn't be a problem, either through inertial dampening or species resilency (one of them is silicon based)
2)running out of room- i hadn't thought of that, but how bout this- since my interstellar drive is based off of the Alderson Jump Point system in 'The Mote in God's Eye', a fleet would apperear fairly far out in the system to be attacked (i.e Neptune/ Pluto to Earth). planet launches its very high acceleration fighters and capships at the same time, the fleet is moving in and launches it's fighters ahead of it and there is a big dogfight, with the winners going on, at a very high velocity toward the now fighterless fleet. At this piont all the ships are coming toward each other very fast. however, since the ships are still many light minutes (or even hours) awayneither side could know EXACTLY where the other sides ships where (this would get worse if there were fast attack craft on both sides too). this would mean that a tactical map would have to look like a bunch of those electron clouds from physics, with bigger clouds going to faster ships, right?
3)So, the winning fighters are going head to head with the enemy ships, both accelerating at each other across an (unrealisticly) large space, and from the ships POV the fighters (what? speed up? slow down? start to vanish?) now, the fighters have relativly large targetsand (in theory) still have some missiles with tactical nuke sized warheads, they COULD shoot at the fleet, with a chance of success, but what about the fleet? would they even be able to shoot at the fighters?
I remember reading that there was once a B47 pilot who found himself on a collision course with some other B47's, but by the time his brain proccessed the image his eyes saw, he was past them (miraculesly, no-one got hit), the same heald true for the other pilots.
would the same hold true in the fleet situation?
Finnaly) the other fleet, the side with the winning fighters, would be resigned to waiting for their fighters to come back, or slow down, to find out if the fighter attack was successful, then (if the B47 story held true) turn around and chase the remainder of the enemy fleet, huh?
i guess that would mean that the only way for the fleets to engage each other or the fighters would be with wide area explosives and other such fighter-pilot health hazards.
And that has been migh latenight rant. feel free to pick at it. i obviously have a few things to re evaluate (luckily not to much, this is just the beginning)
and if any of you have read 'Mote', or 'The Gripping Hand' and have any ideas concerning the Alderson Drive method of travel, let me know, it's giving me headaches.
------------------
"Use our information or
not, but is it sensible
to shoot the messenger?"
"When the messenger won't
tell you what the hell
the messege is, my
trigger finger gets twitchy."
The basic idea behind this theory (not my own) is that capital ships do almost all the fighting. They have energy weapons in case they get close to each other, but most of the time they stay great distances apart, we're talking lightminutes to lightdays here. The main weapon is intelligent, highspeed missiles. These missiles are launched towards their target, and will fly there as quickly as possible, doing everything they can to hit the target. There are different kinds of missiles, from high-speed small-yield missiles to low-speed high-yield missiles to stealth missiles.
The use of missiles as the primary weapon brings about the primary defense: anti-missile missiles. These are similarly intelligent missiles that will either destroy the missile they are told to or hunt down the nearest enemy missile and destroy that. Some may even check all enemy missiles it knows about and destroy the one it determines presents the greatest threat to the ship and it has the greatest chance of hitting (a balance between the two).
Smaller craft are also used, but they tend to hang around their mothership and destroy incoming missiles. If the ships get too close, then they get to spend time shooting other fighters.
The main idea behind this theory is that the ships fight over huge distances.
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Never eat anything bigger than your own head.
The Balance provides. The Balance protects.
"Nonono...Is not [i]Great[/i] Machine. Is...[i]Not[/i]-so-Great Machine. It make good snow cone though." - Zathras