Space combat?

In theory, at least, a siege ship could be useful (if not in plane space). Assuming top priority was given to one or two capital ship killer guns, and the entire ship hull was built around them, they could be relatively small and cheap to produce. however, this means you'd be sacrificing protection and mobility. Think of em as self-propelled artillery, i guess?

Oh, and Almael, while propulsion can be used as a weapon, why do that and expose your means of moving through space by showing the enemy the stern of your ship, when it would be just as efficent (if not more) to just use guns? Ah well, not a huge deal, haha i was just contributing what i thought would be a good idea

To make sure, this tactic is a low tech tactic where you don't have good shields.
There are at least two scenarios where you use propulsion as a weapon.
1: you cannot use weapons or play dead and activate it by surprise
2: you make a swift attack, and use your propulsion to give a final blow, saving munition and maneuvering time for the next target. [it's deadly poop ]

Or like Lafiel, and you dump anti matter fuel on your enemy and let them breathe empty space.

true, but doing that consumes more anti-matter than its worth. however, if used like almael said, as a sort of coup-de-grace, then it could be useful. i just have more faith in gunnery than jury-rigging propulsion as a weapon i guess

Propulsion is in a way a weapon for free. No jury-rigging necessary. It's like a big continuous particle cannon.
The deadly zone can vary depending on exhaust velocity/tech; if we say a one second range:
normal chemical rocket would be 20 km
ion/fusion 100 km
antimatter 1 light second
Of course the total engine power have to be considered, but if both ships are equal sized there shouldn't be a problem.

spoor356 wrote:Hello there Alext,

The vessel you speak of I do have in mind. It is not a fortress per-se, but it is a heavy long range capable vessel, able to fire from a distance. I wanted to call it a so-called "Sniper Vessel" In which if could have one exceptionally large weapon capable of bombarding areas as you would like or to precisely deliver ordinance on specific targets.

I would say that this is just one huge cannon ship or something with a range that may even exceed mine/torpedo range. Granted that idea I've not thought of or worked on remotely as long as my large battleship idea.

Then again this may be in the vein of things that are bad ideas for me. This battleship I thought of, for my story would become unique to the United Mankind due to their history. They would develop it for the purpose that in the even all mines or spent, they would have a brawling advantage . . but more on that when I actually write the story.

Ok, but then how many guns it should have? And do you feel like it's pyramid type i tried to describe (but better looking) type? I like the idea because it gives best cover possible

It seems like we have 2 types of ships/platform here - one is artilery/sniper/long range type and one is like a flying bunker you want to have right in the middle of the action.
I'd say that both are good but require totaly different approaches. No rear turrets for sniper type platform and maximum coverage for gunship type.

So far we seen more "gunships", but should sniper type look the same?

Almael, propulsion as weapon would require some serious manuvering i guess... for both - keeping friends safe and to damage the enemy. So if propulsion is so destructive then how entire fleet manuver without damaging each other?

That's a military secret.
You have to consider that the exhaust isn't as focused as a weapon and will disperse much quicker. Other than that it's the size of the formation. Because of the velocities the formation is usually big.
Remember the Top Gun movie? The same problem applies to jets. Why do not the hundreds of fighters, bombers, helicopters not collide over the batlefield? Space is vast!

As to platform or sniper design it depends on what you want. Although, I personally like the sattelite idea for defenses, I know they are easy to destroy.
A sniper or longrange weapon ship is only feasible if the shot is so fast that the enemy ship at distance cannot escape. Or the explosion big enough to catch the avoiding ship.

Anyway, the pyramid with 4 base edges is not the ideal design but the tetrahedral. (read on in my Akira doc )
As to sniper, well it's simply a weapons ship. Big gun and nothing else. Of course you have to use intelligent munition or you will just waste them and hit nothing.
Also the detonation energy has to be cubed depending on the detonation size, so you can't just have any size. For example if you need 1 energy unit for 1m radius detonation, then for a 10 m radius you need 1000 energy units.
You see real combat has many variables to fix which leads to many tricks.

I am back with the idea.

I do not like the pyramid of the satellite idea. What I'm thinking the heavy sniper vessel would look like is something that is almost entirely composed of its barrel. The rearward section can house what crew, and propulsion needed but below it will be the giant magazine needed to load this thing. . . now granted what I'm imagine I understand to even sound impractical, but we wanted an artillery platform and I presume these ships will almost be to the rear with supply ships that may ferry its ammo (much like the M109 or PhZ-2000).

Then again I cannot draw well in the first place, but I think if . . . no one else is doing it I will provide more Microsoft Paint images later.

Since you asked...

1: electromagnetic cannon barrel with 4 heat radiators
3.6 km long
mass refer to normal barrel 2.1 million tonnes
but we are going to shoot 12x more massive munition so it will be heavier
also we need structural reinforcement
total barrel mass can be anywhere between 2.5 to 5 million tonnes or more
The heat radiator can be very big; it wouldn't be strange if it were 100 km^2
2: munition magazine; serves as shield
3: crew section with shock absorbers
4:machinery
5:fuel tanks; a lot of fuel; serves as shield; may be placed behind crew section
6:propulsion
The ship can shoot munition up to 0.06 c towards targets.
I'm too lazy to make all the serious calculation but I'm pretty sure this is approaching the weapon-munition efficiency for fusion warheads.
Weapon-munition efficiency is something that makes a weapon shine and something the users are happy with without knowing why.
The ship shoots a package with 12 sub missiles.
The enemy will know t=distance*((1/18000)-(1/300000))s before the munitions arrive.
At max. nominal fusion speed of 100000km/h the enemy will have moved
s=t*100/3.6 km in straigt line or 0.7*s at 45 degree in any direction.
Example:
distance 300000km
The enemy will know 15.7 s before the first missile arrives.
He will have come 436.1 km closer or 305.28 km closer and 305.28 km of line. The missles will have to cover an area with a radius of 305.28 km to catch anything. OR each missle will have to cover an area with a radius of 88.1 km.
I hope this gives you some idea how long range battles are happening.

Edit:
Let's go a bit into details as an example which can be projected onto other systems.
Let's look at the energy the weapon needs. We will assume the weapon uses superconductors, however, it has a 1% waste energy due to the magnetic field, e.g. heating the surrounding matter.
For a light weight package with 12x2 ts missiles the weapon needs 1.01*0.5*12000*v^2 (simple kinetic)=1963440000000000000 J = 1963440 TJ (Tera Joules)=1.96344 EJ
Waste energy would be 19.6344 PJ.
If we use the best heatradiators (high temperature radiators, only good at high temperature) and a dissipation time as long as the firing rate of the weapon (5 seconds).
This would mean a 3.92688 PW radiator.
We also consider the best possible theoretical radiation emission.
Then we get a radiator with an area of
4328571428.571 m^2=4328.571 km^2.

Edit: Ooops I calculated for 12 tonnes. Double all the numbers above.
And still no warranty we will hit anything.

Now if we take a laser weapon as comparision and assume we need 1 hit for a kill and a hit ration of 10% and the laser rated at 1PW.
For a normal 10% efficient laser we need 100PW.
90PW waste energy. This is 2 times the cannon we have.
For a new laser with max 50% efficiency we need 20 PW.
10PW waste energy. This is 1/4 the cannon we have.

That's some serious calculations So what we get in the end? I Fail to imagine how this thing gonna look - are proportions you used for your schematic correct?
I have concept in mind that would look cool...but should this thing should be straight or some parts can be above/below line of the main barrel?

These are by far no serious calculations I can do them in my sleep.
No, the proportions are not to scale, but roughly about how the parts are to each other.

The result is ... long range attacks are normal for space battle but very complicated and not easy.

Well, you can design as you want, but consider that high magneticism or engine radiation is not healthy for the crew.

As far as Lafiel's tactics were concerned you have to remember she was basically outgunned(I think what she was using was unarmed or lightly armed at best)which was why she resorted to dumping the fuel.

If you look in space animes there's other ships that match a similar description.
Basically the body being not much more than a barrel with a propulsion system and targeting array.

Even so ML... can you imagine the damage of a "anti-matter fragmentation mine" ?
Base it on the same idea as a grenade - except it explodes and throws hull eating particles in all directions?
It'd depend on the life of the anti-matter after leaving it's container though.

oh I understand Lafiel's decisions regarding the unique circumstances that came along with a battle between an unarmed ship and what was essentially a heavy fighter. However, the antimatter-dumping maneuver was a method of last resort, and had her shuttle been equipped with weapons, I would be willing to guess that she would have used them instead. I don't deny that antimatter propulsion "wake" can be used as a weapon, I would just guess that using antimatter wake as an offensive tactic would be of dubious value compared to using weapons if a ship were equipped with them. If used like Almael said, as a sort of coup-de-grace, then it could be useful (because you're repositioning for the next battle while simultaneously destroying your previous target), but using tactics like this would be risky (exposure of propulsion unit, a relatively unarmored part of the ship) and inefficent unless the enemy had no means of fighting back anyways.

Almael wrote:These are by far no serious calculations I can do them in my sleep.
No, the proportions are not to scale, but roughly about how the parts are to each other.

The result is ... long range attacks are normal for space battle but very complicated and not easy.

Well, you can design as you want, but consider that high magneticism or engine radiation is not healthy for the crew.

Huh, now i know why i had a good sleep most of the time, especialy in university on physics and math classes Oh well - ignorance is a bliss, how am i gonna watch star wars and dozen of other sci-fi movies now?
Laser cannon seem to be best idea since this type of weapon is widely used in Seikai anyway.
As for the crew - it's UMK we're talking about...good old USSR approach But is there no way to shield that crew section? It's relatively small it seems...
And there's another idea - such a cannon can be controlled remotely though i'm well aware of dangers...

Anyway it's good to see such schematics, make more! I'll try myself at drawing a few ships in color on May holidays.
Sadly - noone is teaching (tech) concept design in my city, at least i haven't found yet - i'd take a few after finishing all of the basics...

If you want to combat space battle aces you better improve your math and organization skills.
These guys plan it precise to the seconds. And their first shot usually determines if you win or lose.

Anyway, here's the perfect simple defense satellite or defense platform with multi weapons.

The propulsion is at the bottom. I colored the turrets.

I'm working on it
You know - i've been playing Mass Effect again and it has this build in encyclopedia where space battles of that game's universe described - you'd love it, it's just like you say - probably the most realistic description i've seen in any sci-fi game.

Looks efficient. There's always something deadly about design based on primitives. But maintaining such clean spheres is not too important, right? Slightly more complex shape would be better for the looks, though i don't understand what type of priopulsion it uses...magnetic drive something or trusters?

I already have laser gun in my head Can't wait for holidays to do some progress cuz right now we're working on a new contract and it's driving me crazy from morning till night.

Really? Well, I can't get Mass Effect working. I know my graphic card is good enough but it still won't work.

Propulsion isn't that important as it doesn't need to fly long distances, but I would say a mix of propulsion and thrusters and four of them for good control. One on each "side".

Here I will describe another example of design and space combat. This is related to the most recent modding stuff I did for Star Trek Bridge Commander. BC has no fighters and the only shuttle it had was using a phaser as powerful as an Akira class starship, which is ridiculous. So I took a fighter by someone to see how to do things. As it turned out the fighter was as powerfull as a starship despite the "micro" weapons. So I went down resized all the weapons to 1/10 as should be. In the end it's firepower is less than the stock shuttle with slightly better alround shield, but the strongest shield is equal to the strongest shuttle shield.
I also cleaned up the power usage mess the original author had. Now it's power usage is equally balanced as other ships but with the usage of a small craft not a starship in a small shell. Further I tweaked weapons fire rate so that it does fire as we see on TV screen 3-4 shots and not a bunch of 10+ as before. In the end, with less firepower and slightly better protection it can take on two stock shuttles and kill them.
Yep, like most of my designs the performance is different than it looks. *remembers old galactic wars*
So what happened?
Although, the fighter was weaker and slightly better protected, although not really better in terms of absolute values, it performed better because it could bear more firepower in the long term. It's full firepower is less even at max usage until energy depletion, but it could fire more often. The stock shuttle uses a starship class weapon, had more firepower but needed longer to recharge.

Lesson: Never under estimate a weakling.

Unfortunately weaklings are underestimaged in Seikai for a reason, thanks to those stupid shields In order to do any damage you need firepower > shild's capacity as far as i remember. I always hated the fact that there's no fighters in Seikai...

I've been thinking about this whole "superweapon" thing and it seems like it can make Seikai space combat more exciting...if only it was some space game
While concentrated firepower is the only thing that can make expotential growth of fleet's efficienty according to it's size and concetration in certain area possible. Just like artillery changed modern warfare it would make Abhs split their fleets into smaller tactical groups for things like flanking maneuvers. Usualy we'd add tracking speed factor to that sniper gun so that it can't turn quickly because of it's mass and amount of trust/inertia dampening needed, blah blah ... but if we're talking about space distances then amount of correction needed is very small, even for gun that weight a lot so no ship can "evade" it's shot.

The only other thing i can think of is how often that thing can fire, it's recharge rate and how much energy it require. The attacking side would want to get as fast as possible to the enemy. And then i though - why not to make giant shield as well? So attackers are hiding behind giant shield and try to get as close to enemy as possible where it's long range sniper cannons won't be effective Then we'd have good old fashioned space combat

The reason why there is no fighter is simple, too small, too little energy reserve, low battle endurance, not much fire power. I really doubt that there ever will be fighter in space combat except you got star trek tech, and even then the disadvantages to a starship are insurmountable.

Yes, from a distance the adjustent is little, but you can't cheat space. The volume that has to be covered is the same no matter what. Also the missiles have limited fuel, and they need it all to divert their course. There won't be enough to make a second correction.

Space is my best friend in space combat. Making a big shield is a waste of resources and just make the enemy shoot at you. On way to win is or lose is to waste or spend resources for naught. From the defending side it's much more efficient to counter and avoid the long range shot than the attcker. So a big gun is actually a waste. If you want to increase fleet efficiency you tart with the little things not the big ones.

Almael, although i agree with you about 60% of the time, dodging enemy fire isn't guaranteed, while shielding/armor are guaranteed. Sorry to bring in a largely tangential reference, but back when i would play Armored Core (robot fighting game on ps2), I would always opt for more armor over more agility, mainly because there is no guarantee that your agility will be 100% efficient (aka you will never dodge every shot). However, unless the enemy has a magical armor destroyer, your armor will always be 100% efficent to the stress point it is designed. Maybe its a personal philosophy thing, and it's probably different with the vast distances in space, but I'm a believer in armor over agility

Almael, how can you dodge laser cannon? And if you can't - it guarantees that your fleet is in major disadvantage at range...So small things wont' help you - that's why you need something just as big to couter it
The way i see it - big gun's real con is that it's heavy and slow - bringing these things to battlefield is not always possible due to time shortage so they'll be mostly defending newly conquered systems. But no matter what - loosing your biggest and very expensive ship to one shot of some big cannon at range where you can't even respond - is a bad news...

Lt. you know, i always rely on agility in any game Of course if agility vs armor is balanced enough. It depends on your style i guess - if you got quick reflexes then it's better to evade stuff because you evade % of damage that may be equal to what you tank with your extra armor but having agility means that there's a chance you avoid any damage when you realy don't need it at all. I always prefer skill over equipment

haha AlexT, i guess it would help you to know that in any game, regardless of genre, my favorite character/character that i play is the class/type/suit that can take lots of punishment and dish out lots of punishment. Back when i played WoW i play a warrior, in any "design your own" game, i design the largest and meanest, but slowest mofo around, and if given the oppurtunity to choose a small, fast thingy vs a slow, but heavily armored thingy, armor all the way. (PS: the one exception to this is the juggernaut perk in CoD 4 and CoD: WaW. I refuse to use this perk on principle)

And i mean, its not that i dont trust my reflexes/instincts/whatever. my hand-eye coordination is actually half decent from playing so much call of duty. Its just that i will NEVER be able to dodge enemy fire 100% of the time. Even the best can't dodge enemy fire all the time, so hoping that i could, and placing my survival in that hope, isn't very smart imo. Therefore, i put my faith in armor, something that will, 100% of the time, mitigate damage to the level it was designed. Haha, my AC in AC2 was a thing of beauty...though it didnt have much ammo...

ebil Sergeant: "Go back to the simulators, Cadets, if you want to command more than a corvette." *imaging Sgt R. Lee Ermey from 'Mail Call'*

You both are right and wrong.
The
aspects of armor and speed are more relevant to single ships than to a
fleet as it determines the survival of the ship and crew. For a fleet
the overal strategy is more important.

If a heavy armor and a
lighter but slightly faster one fight it out the heavy armor will win. However, this only applies if weapons are equal.
If the speed difference is more than double then the faster one could win. Again weapon performance could change the outcome.
The
situation on the battlefield can change so if you don't rely on any
side of the extreme you better have a balanced ship. And know when and
how to turn it to your advantage.

Me, i'm flexible. I prefer both. My battle proven design have always been tough and fast. And mostly won against heayly weaponized opponents.
-------------------------------------
Edit:
Lt. you seem very experience in single combat.
------------------------------------
This
is worth ten or more pages of documents on how to win against the super
weapon. To make it short I will go a bit into case 1: 'come as you are
and attack without preparation.'
Case 2&3 are with preparation or high tech, both will annihilate the defenders without losing many ships.
Note: This is my version.

I
would get my fleet into a defensive attack formation. With further
tweaking it should lower possible loses to 1/8. It takes 3 hours to get
to the weapon so there can be 2160 shots at 5 second intervals.
Even
if you don't have to move much to aim, the volume/distance covered by
the beam cut/hit area is vast, hence, lower total power if you don't
hit right on, but 'scratch' along the whole 3xx km.
As defender you have several disadvantages
1. you can't move far from your position
2. I know where you are
3. I know what you will do
So I can counter
1&2. bombard you while approaching
3. can avoid your shots
Then I can use other measures:
antimissile missiles to intercept your kinetic shots.
antilaser measures to reduce or avoid laser.hits.

Considering everything (once again, see AbhNation), it's not necessary a good thing to defend or fortify a planet, but a system.
A defended planet is easier to get destroyed.

Edit:
Some more scenarios and we can have a book on space battles here.