space thread

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>>50182564
>Defence satellites and starforts, good idea? Or are mobile system defences better?

Depends. Most landed-based species are use to working with combat in 2 dimensions, rather than 3, so even in space when they have all 3 to work with they still have a habit to operate in 2. So, it's easy to take advantage of that train of thought, but it's not the end-all-be-all.

>>50182628
>so even in space when they have all 3 to work with they still have a habit to operate in 2.

What makes you say that?

>>50182564
>Defence satellites and starforts, good idea? Or are mobile system defences better?

I prefer the idea of big fucking orbital railguns, preferably with tubes for nuclear missiles or Casaba Howitzers bolted to the sides. Space CIWS optional.

Beside that, any Planetary Defense Force worth mentioning should have a fleet of dedicated system defense vessels. Failing that, Navy surplus should suffice.

>>50182659
Centuries, if not millennia, of being use to Naval and ground-based Warfare.

The closest thing we have to actual 3-dimentional combat are submarines and fighter jets, and even then those are rarely used in comparison to the rest of the military and people have to be specifically trained to take advantage of the 3rd available dimension. And even with that extra training we, as a traditionally land-locked species, have never had a natural avian predator so we've never had an imperative to take the 3rd dimension into account, except for idle curiosity and speculation.

>>50182564
>Starter question: Defence satellites and starforts, good idea? Or are mobile system defences better?
They're cool as hell, but when void warfare becomes an instituitionalised thing then mobile will take over. Or at least semi-mobile, with series of maneuverable platforms rather than one bigass station. This is assuming that space warfare doesnt immediately go down the colony drop route. Tossing planetoids at other planetoids will never end well

>>50182628
>so even in space when they have all 3 to work with they still have a habit to operate in 2
That would explain why I suck at ground-based videogames and shred assholes like it was my dayjob in flight sims and space games with 3D combat, I guess.

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>>50182564
Space?

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>>50182799
Space.

>>50182628

>Depends. Most landed-based species are use to working with combat in 2 dimensions, rather than 3, so even in space when they have all 3 to work with they still have a habit to operate in 2. So, it's easy to take advantage of that train of thought, but it's not the end-all-be-all.

Considering that battle between two individual space ships would be one dimensional, I doubt that.

When two ships meet, the only thing that decides the battle is range and your ability to move far enough from your initial position that you can introduce uncertainty regarding if the weapon will hit you or not.

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>>50182689
That reminds me of something I've wondered about before - might the ships of a system or planetary defence fleet (or depending on your space nation's style, an internal security fleet) benefit from having ships that are short-legged in their endurance capabilities, but have comparatively oversized weapons, armour and engines (and possibly communications, if it'll be tied to system defence and monitoring satellites)

As they don't have to travel very far and are always relatively close to base facilities, you could make them more powerful than equivalent ships designed for long cruises.

If they were to be used in an offensive manner they'd probably need a huge fleet train, compared to the regular fleet


Monitors, ships designed around a really big weapon but with little else, might also see use in some space fleets - they're a real thing, to boot

>>50182564

Defense sats are good. Even if an offensive force can pic them off before advancing, the fact that they HAVE to pic them off is to your advantage. They are a layer of defense that needs to be deal with. They can't risk trying to land ships while you have the ability to blow them out of the sky, and if you can shoot down incoming missiles that's good too.

Star forts are not really going to work, because without magic shields they are not durable than a ship is. If they get a clean hit on your 'fort' its scrap metal.

So what you want instead is area denial and suppression installations. They are not designed to be impenetrable, they are designed to have weapons that make approaching the planet dangerous.

Supplement this with ground-based defensive weaponry, and interceptors. Planetary defense is one of the few points where the idea of a 'space fighter' actually makes sense, because you can hide on the planet and then drop a lot of small attack craft into orbit fairly quickly. The fact that the fights have a short range doesn't matter, because if you are defending a world you are expecting the enemy to come to you. As long as you still have interceptors, they can't risk entering your orbit without you shoving a bunch of nukes up their asshole with a surprise wing of interceptors.

So really, the best way to defend a planet is to give it so many different layers of defense that its just a tremendous pain in the ass to approach it and try and hold orbit. You can't flat out stop them, but you can make them pay in blood until its not worth it anymore.

This, of course, presumes they actually plan on invading your world and taking it. If their goal is to just blow up the planet, all they need to do is get that weapon past your defenses. So that depends on what sort of weapon it is and whether or not you can intercept it. Nothing else matters, there.

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>>50183267
>because without magic shield
Some variant of shielding tends to be common in these sorts of things, which I think is okay - it gives more allowances for exchanges of fire than the one-hit-kill you'd see in harder sci-fi (unless you go the hollowed out asteroid route)

Incidentally, has anyone else here read A Confusion of Princes, by Garth Nix?

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>>50182564
What about something half way between a ship and a fort?

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>>50182564
How do you like your space forces?

Space Navy? Airforce+ ? Or completely new?


And what do people think about multi-nation planets?
They seem vanishingly rare in space fiction

>>50184985
I'm a fan of space Navy. When you enter onto the galactic stage things tend to condense from "land/sea/air" to just "space/planet".

Multi-nation planets tend to be the result of insurrections. Again, when you're on the galactic level, having political disputes on the planetary level is counterproductive. If there are multiple "nations" and they're not fighting each other, then it's because they're part of some planet-wide EU type thing.

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>>50182564

>>50184985

Multi nation planets are fine if they are homeworlds.

But colony worlds resulting from single colony ships/expeditions would have unified origins. There has never been a time in that planets history when their civilization didn't have a central power structure, and for a long time anyone who tried to operate outside of it would have failed simply due to lack of resources and infrastructure. Its hard to survive on your own when you can't breath outside the domes that are owned and operated by the government.

>>50184985
Something new would be neat. Don't know what would it be called, or its officers ranks, or if it'd be ships or crafts or what have you, or what its doctrine would be.
Otherwise, air force's always interesting just because it's different from the usual. Always works out the same in practice, though.

Multi-nation planets are superfine. I don't get what'd prevent different nations from landing ships on the same planet. No reason planets are common enough everyone can just fuck off in their own direction or that ship are cheap enough that everyone can have their own and not rely on other nations taking them through known routes, to a common planet.

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>>50185229
>is counterproductive
When has this ever stopped anyone?

I mean, your typical space empire usually takes a lot of inspiration from the age of sail, right? Where you had really close neighbours glaring at each other at home while their miltaries conquered shit all around the globe, often right next to someone else's shit, so why don't you get multi-planetary empires that nevertheless had to share planets

>>50185462
Habitable planets (assuming they are habitable straight off the bat) are often pretty rare - in the history of the setting why wouldn't two or more space-civs see it as worth sending someone to once it's discovered? (think bongs, frogs and spics all sending people to mainland America)

At least once things get full space opera, because the first people there presumably come with a navy, but I could still see nations co-habiting a planet happening - even in space opera habitable planets tend to be rare.
IDK, maybe I'm just a bit bored with a whole planet being considered all as one thing

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>>50185637
Messed that up

>At least once things get full space opera,
I could see mono-nation planets being more reasonable
>because the first people there presumably come with a navy

>>50185631
>Always works out the same in practice, though.
Yeah, expectations have being built already.
Stargate did Air Force I think, but I haven't seen it.

>>50184985
I prefer them to be their own separate service in my settings.

Still never thought of a good name for them though.

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>>50185713

You call them a Spacy, obviously.

>>50185789
Spacy is dumb

DUMB

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>>50185789
Yeah if you want them to be the butt of jokes and have the nickname "Kevin"

>>50185661
Stargate did do air force, but mostly we saw them use the stargate. When ships popped up, they rarely discussed organization (and like half the time, it's SG1/SGA1 running it all, just the four of them, lel). The air force did fly these spaceships though, same deal in Russia. But they don't talk about how they do it in other countries. I like the look of the BC-303.

>>50182860
THERE IS NO STEALTH IN SPACE. Your enemy knows where you are, what direction you are moving, and your thrust. Inertia means that is not a surprise factor. If someone can see you, and has the physical ability to hit you from where they are, then you live at their whim.

>>50184985
Multination planets are a failure to conserve detail. Space as age of sail means planets are ports or countries at best. If every planet has a dozen countries you have to care about, then its just a clusterfuck of space spanish and space Portuguese.

>>50186075

You misunderstand, anon. He isn't talking about hiding from you to introduce uncertainty. He is talking time-to-target evasion ability.

Any sublight weapons will have a window between when the target detects the attack and when that attack reaches them. The bigger the window, the better their chances are at getting out of the way and making the attack a clean miss. Given the distances involved, even a very small course deviations, or even just changing your acceleration, can turn a kill shot into a clean miss.

The most reliable way to increase that window for evasion is distance. So distance matters in a space battle.

Relativistic weapons make this much less of a problem but even a relativistic weapons, as long as it is not >= C, had a window. Its just that, within a certain range, that window is so small its worthless. But further out, that window becomes more significant.

Of course, relativistic weapons create their own problems. Getting anything going that fast in time for combat relevance requires either a level of magitech such that maybe space stealth DOES exist now, or a ship that will send itself careening off into the void/smash itself to pieces the first time it fires.

>>50185637
>Habitable planets (assuming they are habitable straight off the bat) are often pretty rare - in the history of the setting why wouldn't two or more space-civs see it as worth sending someone to once it's discovered?

Funding an extrasolar colony expedition is mad expensive. Orders of magnitude more difficulty to accomplish than the trip to America for ANY level of technology, even just using canoes.

Its only really worth it if you get an entire planet to yourself as a result. By the time someone is dumping the trillions of dollars into sending a colony ship, you can damn well bet that said nation is already claiming ownership of the planet. Only a few other superpowers will be able to contest the claim, and they can avoid the hassle just by setting their sights on a different world.

Even in the situation where multiple ships did get sent to a single world: not all such colony ships would survive to make successful colonies, and the colonies established by those ships would have to rely on each other to a much greater degree than either of them rely on their parent nation. It would take some serious hatred and xenophobia to prevent them from blending into a single nation as they grew, and if they hate each other that much one of them probably kills off the other in the early years anyway.

>>50186121
>If every planet has a dozen countries you have to care about, then its just a clusterfuck of space spanish and space Portuguese.
I think that sounds pretty rad - having just the Caribbean in space would be pretty rad, and you've got what, the Seven Years War and the Revolution that followed to draw inspiration from, and then there's all the shit in the East Indies as well.
And actual companies with private armies to add a bit of space megacorp flavour

But yeah, people just treat entire planets like ports or islands

>>50186284
>and they can avoid the hassle just by setting their sights on a different world.
Because worlds are so easy to get to and plentiful.

While they might merge a bit, you still get areas that are isolated but have two or more groups on them that have both failed to wipe each other out or merge totally - I can't see really big weapons being something packed in the colony ships, and planets are fucking big - you can just be on the other side or something.

When a planet is found I can see all of the powers capable wanting to get a colony there, and damn if anyone's going to stop them - not that they could, without starting a war and murdering the boatload of civilians going out to make the colony

>>50184985
My spacecraft service usually starts as a cooperation between a navy and an air force, and wet navy operations are increasingly relegated to a coast guard type service.

>>50186535
>Because worlds are so easy to get to and plentiful.

Honestly? Yeah.

The idea that we are going to find a planet already fit for human habitation is about as likely as waking up tomorrow to find out that you are secretly royalty of a magic kingdom and your wizard powers just came in.

Even if you find a world that has, by sheer stroke of random luck, habitable temperatures and low radiation and water? You are still going to have to build a planetary ecosystem from the ground up, and that includes inventing soil. None of your seeds from Earth are going to be able to grow in unprocessed alien rock. The 'dirt' we take for granted is the result of millions of years of continuous processing by microbes and animals.

The only difference between building a colony on the moon and building a colony on Tau Sirius 9 is that, 500 years from now, the colonist on TS9 *might* be able to go outside the archology without a breathing mask and have plants there they can eat the fruit of.

Not a lot of institutions have the timescale and resources to operate that sort of colony, and having multiple such colonies on the same world requires them to have their shit together otherwise their competing terraforming projects will fuck each other up.

Its cheaper and more profitable to build a colony somewhere else that you never plan to terraform, and just use it as a trading post/mining colony/strategic value point. Because you are building just the hab, not a planet.

>>50186213
Doesn't matter - any space weaponry at that point will not be "aim and shoot and hope you hit". No no, anon: space weapons at the point of 'no stealth in space' are "fire and forget" - they WILL hit the target they are aimed at, because that target, no matter how far away it is, is always easy to identify and track.

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>>50184985
I'm fucking boring, but in the book I'm working on Navy handles the ships and the crewing of them. Marines handle the defense of the ship and the fighters/bombers. Air Force handles moving the army and any planetary things. Army handles the normal stuff, but Rangers are the guys who board enemy ships and cause havoc.

>>50187141
You continue to misunderstand, no one is talking about stealth in space.

The original post talked about introducing uncertainty as to whether the enemy can hit you by putting range between you and them.

>they WILL hit the target they are aimed at, because that target, no matter how far away it is, is always easy to identify and track.

This is nonsense, what are you trying to say? That a 30kms railgun slug can not be dodged at sufficient range? That it can hit moving targets millions of km away?
Space combat vessels would be covered in manoeuvring thrusters and point defence, at a certain short range they are helpless to dodge or stop projectiles but beyond that they can dodge or otherwise avoid projectiles.

>lasers

Still doable at light second/minute or beyond ranges. Lasers also lose power massively via diffraction very, very quickly which is a problem if the space ships are armoured.

>>50182628
This must be why no airplane or submarine has ever been defeated in battle.

Much like dogs, war planners and field commanders can't look up.

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>>50184985
>And what do people think about multi-nation planets?
>They seem vanishingly rare in space fiction

While this is usually lazy writing, there is actually a "real" reason for this. In most sci fi, planets are assumed to be colonized by a relatively small number of people from a single source culture. This creates what's known as a "founder effect", resulting in a culture which is vastly more homogenous than you'd get on earth itself, because everyone on the planet is descended from the same stock. Even if you add immigration, immigrants would likely be self selected, or filtered by the receiving world, for cultural compatibility.

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>I affirm that next to the soul the most beautiful object in the galaxy is a spaceship!

-Alejandro Jodorowsky

>>50184985

The extension of the orbit guard; into the system guard. Since there's no chance in hell to get out of solsys in the timeframe of the setting, it works enough.

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>>50183081
You basically got what I had in mind. System defense vessels are exceedingly good at what they do, but they lack the "legs" to operate outside of the system they're charged with protecting. The vast majority of said vessels are constructed in-system and lack an FTL drive because that's just extra mass and energy that could go towards more armor or guns.

That said, most of the warships in setting mount some form of spinal armament, so monitors are definitely a thing. They range from purpose-built warships to little more than a gun with a ship attached.

>>50184985
>How do you like your space forces?

The Navy gets the space warships and any Marine forces, the Army gets to deal with planetary operations and occupations, and the Air Force gets folded into the aforementioned two branches. The only new branches are a separate command for dealing with planetary and in-system defense, and a unified special forces command.

There might also be a SAC equivalent for handling the KKVs and other such doomsday devices, but I haven't quite made up my mind yet.

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>>50192266
I like you already.

Describe this "Voidship" to me. Also the science behind your boarding torpedoes.

>>50183898
>A Confusion of Princes, by Garth Nix
Sell me on a book, Anon.

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>>50192942
1-of by Nix, if you know his other stuff.

I'd say the world building is probably the best but, but the interaction between the MC - who's really heavily augmented for the most part - and the regular humanity are pretty neat.
He's basically told that he's going to be Emperor of the galaxy, then is forced to realise that he's not alone in this.

It's pretty alright, nothing momentous or anything

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>>50182564
Did someone say ayylmaos

>>50184985

My breakdown of armed forces.
>Navy operates the big ships with the navy air arm operating the smaller craft off said ships
>Marines accompany the navy as the only way for them to attack and hold territory ground side. Reliant on navy for air support.
>Army does planetary defense work. Usually equipment, training, and supplies are left up to the planet/system.
>Air force is the same as the army. Some wealthy systems even have their air force run inter-system monitor ships.

To the multinational planet I can see coalitions or hell even a planet and system serving as a demilitarized zone.

>>50191001
Even then I think it's unlikely that there wouldn't ever be a disagreement concerning politics or cultural matters. Such disagreements would ultimately evolve into parts of the colony declaring independence from the rest. Such independent parts would either be allowed to create their own settlements, which would begin new countries, or would be eradicated, which would most likely lead to tyrranical world government with an underground resistance movement.
In my opinion any planet developed enough to have all its continents settled is very likely to have either multiple countries or an oppressive world government. Peacefully unified worlds should be an exception.

>>50192921
>Describe this "Voidship" to me

Well first things first, Voidships are how I got around the restriction of there being no real stealth in space. While the ships certainly have low-observability features to reduce detection in "real space", those mostly consist of advanced heat sinks and a hefty ECM suite. However, the primary "stealth" feature of the ships is their ability to navigate the void used for FTL travel. While all FTL-capable ships travel through the void, only dedicated spaceships are capable of properly navigating through it and hiding in it. In essence, they're the closest thing the setting has to space submarines.

However, unlike their naval equivalents, while voidships have dedicated sensor arrays capable of looking into real space, they cannot fire without re-entering real space, as FTL drives are large and power-intensive, making FTL munitions impractical at best. Anyways, unlike their counterparts in the Raumkriegsmarine, voidships are primarily missile armed, with a combination of nuclear missiles and thermonuclear shaped charge weapons. Both of which are primarily delivered out of the gauss-assisted missile tubes at the stem of the vessel. Most voidships also carry a few general-purpose guns and missile tubes for last-ditch engagements. They also aren't generally part of major fleet actions, as they'd get shredded by the gun armament of any decent warship.

As far as classifications go, Hunter-Killers do exactly what you'd expect, which is to say nuking orbital assets, space stations, and logistics vessels, as well as commerce raiding. Siege Voidships are basically SSBNs, and are typically tasked with taking out hard targets with really large nuclear weapons or kinetic kill vehicles, as well as sneaky bombardment of planetary bodies. Finally the Void Frigates (or Special Operations Frigates) are used for stealthy insertion and extraction of special operations units, as well as the transportation of said units.

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>>50182564

Daily reminder that everything harold white says is wrong.

>>50183173
this looks very close to good except for the stupid protrusions which make no sense than putting picatiny rails on your car

>>50199549
Looks to me like that segment can be rotated, presumably for artificial gravity. Probably as a manufacturing aid, or for during long travel.

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>>50199569
radius too small altho there is no scale.
you need at least 600m radius for artificial gravity to avoid vertigo. preferably more.

it also only works right if you stop the ship from traveling and then you could just spin the ship.

let me show you my design.

it assumes a couple of things: armor must be spaced and several meters thick because incoming projectiles will have so much kinetic energy you must give them time to annihilate themselves, the ship will either travel continuously with 1G to achieve good time or couple up with an other ship and spin around their central axis to provide artificial gravity in the same direction travel would.

the ship tries to provide as little surface to detection and hits as possible and most armor is on the front also non essential systems and storage spaces are in the way of incoming fire.

>>50199569

Rotating sections are always a bad idea. Too much added weight from the two massive electric motors used to rotate and counter rotate, not to mention that the gyroscopic precession acting on the hull would require the flight systems to be more complicated to compensate.

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>>50199637
here is an other layout that tries to better preserve firepower under enemy fire to keep the ability to retaliate.

the ship would turn it's frontal armor or at least it's thin armored beltside to the enemy. and fire missiles from vertical blocks. ship is about 10x30x150 meters and adheres to the principles of anything not accelerating in space is a sitting duck anyways so travels with continuous acceleration from 1-3G, carries hundreds of anti ship missiles (mostly relative speed kinetic cruisers) and more defensive ones (small nukes fired into volley or as chaff/smoke).

>>50199637
>>50199705
the more i think about it the less sense it makes for a spaceship to look anything else like a fucking brick.

>>50199718
cylinders are acceptable too.

>>50199739
yeah but from the point of armor you want to cover more with less. a cylindrical would have no weak spots but no strong sides either.

with a brick you can hide a lot of space behind thin sides and it's mostly against debris and nearby explosions from passing warheads anyways as you will be facing your enemy fire that can hit you head on with your 15 meters of frontal composite armor.

>>50199773

Considering the energies involved, tanking does not seem a likely strategy in space warfare. You cannot tank a nuke. Armor is just a waste of mass.

>>50199637
>it also only works right if you stop the ship from traveling and then you could just spin the ship.
You don't need to "stop" the ship, you merely need to stop accelerating.

>>50199508

>>50192921
>Also the science behind your boarding torpedoes.

This one isn't going to be as lengthy, but I hit the character limit in my other post.

Anyways, boarding torpedoes were developed for a far simpler reason than the voidship. The Raumkriegsmarine needed a way to insert marines into a hostile vessel, while keeping the enemies engagement window as short as possible. So, to that effect, the boarding torpedo was developed. The fact that they could be deployed from standardized torpedo tubes was just an added benefit, although most warships have dedicated launch areas for the weapons. Standard capacity for a torpedo is five power armored marines.

In any case, boarding torpedoes are normally launched in a 1:3 ratio alongside empty pods and other dedicated countermeasures, in order to minimize losses before the Marines can breach the enemy ship. Once launched, the torpedo receives command guidance from the warship it has been launched from, although it can also follow a preprogrammed route in case of a loss of contact with the launching vessel. On the way to the target, the torpedoes guidance system will move the weapon in an erratic manner, attempting to confuse enemy point-defense systems. 30 seconds before impact, a single-use gravity compensator - of similar type to the one used on drop pods fires, counteracting the shock of the pod suddenly decelerating. (It's a handwave, I know, but a wholly necessary one)

Anyways, now that the torpedo has made contact with the hull of the enemy vessel, several magnetic clamps make purchase on the hull, and the grinding ring on the front of the torpedo is used to cut through the hull. The ring is of a similar design to what would be seen on a terrestrial boring machine or an asteroid mining vessel, and can cut through most hulls in a fairly efficient manner. Once the hull has been cut through, a shaped charge throws the cutting ring forward, allowing the marines inside to begin their boarding action.

>>50199795
You can, however, intercept a nuke. I suspect actually getting a nuke to contact would be rare, and most hits would be from lighter railguns, with projectiles too small and fast to be effectively intercepted, and lasers, which you can *only* tank.

>>50199795
nukes work in space very differently than in atmo anon.
they mostly just burn intensely for a split second.
anything within a few hundred meters will be burned badly even shockwaves can form from escaping ions. a few km away it's only dangerous to sensors and small missiles.

>>50199850
>You don't need to "stop" the ship, you merely need to stop accelerating.
that's the same thing in space.
for a spaceship there is no speed only acceleration.

>>50199976
You said "stop the ship from traveling".
Nothing prevents you from coasting from the Earth to the Moon without accelerating all the time, yet, you're still clearly travelling.

>>50199773
If you want to cover more with less, a cylinder has a larger internal volume for the same surface area as a cuboid.

>>50200003
yeah but you put thinner armor on the entire surface larger profile for detection from a distance for same volume and heavier armor to the same effect.

for certain situations it would be better not to have weak side and strong for guided missile destroyers i think it would be just the thing that gives them an edge.

>>50200001
true, but you will get to anywhere a hell of a lot faster with continuous g and there is the problem of changing direction of g force from acceleration to sitting in place and rotating.

basically it would be a serious challenge in engineering to provide living spaces accommodating both direction lot's of redundancy or rotating rooms meh. my design only has one vector for g force it's like a skyscraper you can put the furniture in the same way too.

>>50199887

Sensors can be blinded, and if you fire enough ordinance or fakes you can over saturate any defense system. Nukes only need to be within a kilometer to vape ships, and that's only for lower yield weapons. Bigger boom = greater vape radius.

>>50199957
You act like this isn't common knowledge for space enthusiasts.

>>50200073
>continuous acceleration
Nice bullshitium engine, Anon.

>>50200107
it's the best sublight travel form.
you can reach insane v-s very fast. with nuclear torches or fusion drives it's actually possible to achieve that for years in fuel efficiency.

it's our best bet to conquer near space if we can't wiggle across some space magic barrier. actually achievable as our current understanding of physics goes today.

so your opinion is shit.

>>50200083
>Nukes only need to be within a kilometer to vape ships
That's just straight up wrong.

>>50200083
>You act like this isn't common knowledge for space enthusiasts.
then you should know that you can absolutely armor up against nukes as far as warships go. nukes are quiet flaccid in space. i mostly think of them as chaff burning out sensors or blinding them with various forms of radiation destroying missiles or swatting away debris. not serious weapons.

>>50200150
energy density is only enough to vaporize anything in a few hundred meters. the explosion itself is very different with no atmosphere to constrain it.

>>50200150

From we all know where:

>A one kiloton nuclear detonation produces 4.19e12 joules of energy. One kilometer away from the detonation point defines a sphere with a surface area of about 12,600,000 square meters (the increase in surface area with the radius of the sphere is another way of stating the Inverse Square law). Dividing reveals that at this range the energy density is approximately 300 kilojoules per square meter. Under ideal conditions this would be enough energy to vaporize 25 grams or 10 cubic centimeters of aluminum

Pretty sure the ship would crumple like a tin can. Impulsive Shock is a fucker.

>>50200214
>energy to vaporize 25 grams or 10 cubic centimeters of aluminum
so it would scratch the surface of the outer layer of the whipple shield... or not depending on ceramic coating and whatnot.

>>50200243

Spallation and shock will destroy the superstructure and kill the crew.

>>50200243

Again, from we all know where:

First off, the weapon itself. A nuclear explosion in space, will look pretty much like a Very Very Bright flashbulb going off. The effects are instantaneous or nearly so. There is no fireball. The gaseous remains of the weapon may be incandescent, but they are also expanding at about a thousand kilometers per second, so one frame after detonation they will have dissipated to the point of invisibility. Just a flash.

The effects on the ship itself, those are a bit more visible. If you're getting impulsive shock damage, you will by definition see hot gas boiling off from the surface. Again, the effect is instantaneous, but this time the vapor will expand at maybe one kilometer per second, so depending on the scale you might be able to see some of this action. But don't blink; it will be quick.

Next is spallation - shocks will bounce back and forth through the skin of the target, probably tearing chunks off both sides. Some of these may come off at mere hundreds of meters per second. And they will be hot, red- or maybe even white-hot depending on the material.

To envision the appearance of this part, a thought experiment. Or, heck, go ahead and actually perform it. Start with a big piece of sheet metal, covered in a fine layer of flour and glitter. Shine a spotlight on it, in an otherwise-dark room. Then whack the thing with a sledgehammer, hard enough for the recoil to knock the flour and glitter into the air.

>>50200282

Next, the exposed hull is going to be quite hot, probably close to the melting point. So, dull red even for aluminum, brilliant white for steel or titanium or most ceramics or composites. The seriously hot layer will only be a millimeter or so thick, so it can cool fairly quickly - a second or two for a thick metallic hull that can cool by internal conduction, possibly as long as a minute for something thin and/or insulating that has to cool by radiation.

After this, if the shock is strong enough, the hull is going to be materially deformed. For this, take the sledgehammer from your last thought experiment and give a whack to some tin cans. Depending on how hard you hit them, and whether they are full or empty, you can get effects ranging from mild denting at weak points, crushing and tearing, all the way to complete obliteration with bits of tin-can remnant and tin-can contents splattered across the landscape.

Again, this will be much faster in reality than in the thought experiment. And note that a spacecraft will have many weak points to be dented, fragile bits to be torn off, and they all get hit at once. If the hull is of isogrid construction, which is pretty common, you might see an intact triangular lattice with shallow dents in between. Bits of antenna and whatnot, tumbling away.

Finally, secondary effects. Part of your ship is likely to be pressurized, either habitat space or propellant tank. Coolant and drinking water and whatnot, as well. With serious damage, that stuff is going to vent to space. You can probably see this happening (air and water and some propellants will freeze into snow as they escape, BTW). You'll also see the reaction force try to tumble the spacecraft, and if the spacecraft's attitude control systems are working you'll see them try to fight back.

>>50200266
no it would be caught in the whipple shields next layer and there is no shock in space only what the structure would allow for which is designed to mitigate it.

>a few km away it's only dangerous to sensors and small missiles.

now gimme the figures for 3 and 5 kms!
guess what it would maybe burn your retina but that's it.

>>50200306
>there is no shock in space only

Impulsive shock. From the metal heating at supersonic speeds. The energy from the nuke hitting the hull causes it.

>now gimme the figures for 3 and 5 kms!

This is just for a 1Kt bomb. If you want to have a bigger radius, just up the yield. Defensive capability is limited by heat radiation surface area. You just make yourself a bigger, slower target and the benefits suffer from diminishing returns.

>>50200282
>>50200299
not going to work with 5 layers or composite armor designed to stop meteors the size of pebbles traveling with relativistic speeds.

and guess what there is actual vacuum between the plates so you don't get any shock forming whatsoever except between your ears right now.

>>50200343
>angry liberal intensifies

Can we not have a discussion without insults in this world anymore?

>>50200341
>If you want to have a bigger radius, just up the yield.
you can up the yield all you want add an other km and it's all the same. distance is a bitch in space. if you fire big nukes then small nukes will intercept them at safe distances.

the armor is really only for the "fallout" not to take direct hits.

>>50200360
where is the insult?
if i though there is vacuum between his ears i wouldn't suggest shock bouncing there from butthurt.

>>50200360
Wot

>>50200372
>if you fire big nukes then small nukes will intercept them at safe distances.

Using nukes as defense seems to be a bad idea mass-wise.

Whipple shield armor will be burned off by a single good nuke strike, and you can only defend yourself for as long as your heat radiators aren't oversaturated, and you just make it easier for the missiles to see you the longer you use your point defense.

>>50200386
>so you don't get any shock forming whatsoever except between your ears right now.

What's that supposed to mean?

>>50200413
it means the butt-hurt caused by realizing how the yield increases energy linearly but with distance it decreases by r^2 and a few kms away it's pretty much worthless as i stated is bouncing around in his skull making his ears ring i imagine.

have to go to sleep hope this thread will be around tomorrow.

Can someone explain why stealth in space is impossible ?

>>50200653

Thermodynamics.

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>>50199508
>>50199872
I like it. It's close enough to my setting that I'm getting a lot of unrelated ideas by reading about your stuff.

What's up with the Raumkriegsmarines?
And where did you come up with your ship image?

>>50200653
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect.php

>>50200933
I'm glad to entertain. Care to elaborate on your setting?

Anyways, the Raumkriegsmarine is the term for the interstellar navy. It's a mouthful and a half, but the name has grown on me. The marines themselves are just called marines and are part of the Navy rather than their own independent branch. If you're wondering why there's so much German, it's because the dominant faction in-setting (as in the faction that controls the sol system) is basically the interstellar equivalent of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Anyways, I drew all the ships with MS Paint and a little too much free time. Any similarities to LoGH are purely coincidental.

>>50200653
Starships are inevitably hot. Space is cold. There's nothing to hide behind. Therefore, IR cameras can detect any ship easily. Modern cameras can potentially detect the space shuttle firing its main thrusters as far out as Jupiter; future cameras will be much better, and any real interplanetary warship staggeringly hotter.

>>50201336
Space is more than cold, its nothing at all. Air is a is a wonderful heatsink, and without it there is very little background temp. Even weak thermal scanners would pick up a starship with ease, not to mention with nothing in the way and no air to diffuse the light you can also see in basically every direction from farther away than is easily comprehensible.

>>50199718
Bricks are actually like, the WORST shape for armor.

Cones and blades are best.

Is calling a ship/fleet Tender The Chicken a bit too corny?

>>50201612

why not "The Coop"?

>>50201656
The name is supposed to be a joke, I just wonder if its bad.

>>50201693

Why do people joke about the most important ship in the fleet?

>>50201747
The engineers need some humor in their lives that doesn't involve 'regular maintenance' on the HVAC in the captain's quarters.

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>>50201158
Unfortunately I'm a bit too busy at the moment and it would take several posts to run through it all. I'm still working on it but it's very similar to what you've shared so far, sans German empire. I'd be more than happy to share it with you once it's more coherent.

What I'm really stuck on is colonizing planets. I'm not sure if I want actually habitable worlds, terraformed planets, or just some sort of hard scifi sealed colonies. How do you do it?

Reveal unto me your secrets.

>MS Paint
Damn, that looks really good for paint.

>>50182564
Land Based defenses:
>Hardened underground bunkers
>silos of weapons
>large pyramid (with a flat top) shaped sensor stations giving 360 degree.
>Several bases sprinkled around the planet for limited coverage.

Orbital Based defenses
>Large numbers of sensor sats to give overlapping coverage of every speck of space ever.
>Several large defense stations armed with the biggest space gun you can find.

Mobile defenses
>several flotillas of fast combat warships capable of striking in and out. Fast Battleship groups, stealth ship flotillas, etc

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>>50202532
>How do you do it?

It's a mixed bag, really.

While terraforming exists, it takes centuries, so only the first terraformed colonies are only considered earth like (The setting's "current year" is 2300), while most of the other worlds have a lot of developing to do. Beside that, there are more earthlike worlds than there are in real life, entirely because a previous human empire terraformed a decent portion of the galaxy thousands of years ago, before collapsing. Naturally, conflicts have erupted over control of these worlds with the other various human inheritor states.

Sealed colonies tend to only exist in areas where terraforming is impossible, or on planetary bodies considered hostile to human life. Most notably the mining colonies that tend to emerge in the various asteroid belts across the known galaxy.

So all I can really say is go for whatever you like most.

>MS Paint

Thanks man, I have a lot of practice and a little too much free time.

>>50203078
I completely forgot about ground-based defenses.

I'll probably do a post on that soon.

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>tfw you will never be a debris hauler

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>tfw the customisation in this game

Everyone should get Children of a Dead Earth.

Hey space thread is it bad that I'm enthralled with the idea of nuclear directed energy weapons? They idea just seems so damned fucking cool.

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>>50204831
>TFW too dumb for orbital mechanics

I love everything space but this game just makes my head hurt

I fucking love it though I don't regret my purchase at all

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>>50204864
It would be bad if you weren't

>>50204935
Thinking of having them as a type of "shell" for the cannons of my vessels.

It's a sci-fi story and I'm fine with even having kinetics and what not but I wanted a fucking bad ass weapon for my actual navy vessels,

>>50204968
The problem with using them unguided is that they won't necessarily be facing the target when they intercept it.

>>50205053
You can make guided shells.

>>50205071

Was thinking more of they work like shaped charges right? Say you fire the weapon and focus the charge and make some sort of beam weaponry out of it.

>>50205086
Look up casaba howitzers, that's the one you want

>>50205117
Thanks fair late night anon.

>>50182799
The bigger the engine the harder to control the flow.
It will be smaller engines but lots of them.

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>TFW the only 'reasonal' designs for space ships in the setting are the weeaboos races.
I wonder if the designs were based on the alien ships from >>50182628 pic related or it was just a coincident?

>>50204864
yes they are good especially as mines.
a ship doesn't even have to hit one just pass by and get rekt by these small fuckers.

>>50205550
>reasonable

do those ships go into atmo? If not, why the swept wings? Why the cruise liner deck layout? At least Imperial ships have gothic cathedral style going for them, I find the tau ships really, really uninspired generic sci fi fare.

>>50201595
it's a tradeoff and sloping doesn't mean a goddamn thing at the speed and power we talk about.

you want to limit the surface to limit weight for the same protection but you want to allow for internal space as that is the main purpose of a ship.

bricks are best. cones and spheres and whatnot require a fuckton of armor to be protected from a specific direction.

>>50200653
it's not who said it is?
with a bit of distance a small enough profile will be undetected. and you can radiate heat directionally with you know heat radiators.

a ship can't be totally undetectable but you can make it stealthy from the enemies point of reference.

>>50205639
You can do this if your setting is not hard sci-fi, yes.

>>50199637
>>50199705
where is the reaction mass anon? and don't tell me you are using one of those meme drives

>>50205792
the spaced armor is also a compartmentalized fuel tank containing the fissile liquid propellant.

>>50205812
but of course you could always elongate it by a few stories and fill it with propellant, the only question is where you put it, near the drive is cheaper mechanically, but the fuel tanks themselves can act as armor if you place them on the front.

>>50205841
also note this is a small destroyer with very limited capacity for lone space travel, they are designed to engage the enemy from a distance in groups, the escorting frigates and freighters would carry the supplies and fuel for long term. or something like that is what i had in mind.

you can also attach external storage units that you detach before approaching the enemy.

>>50205812
>>50205841
>>50205855
that is a clever solution, do you have any sort of ftl in your setting? and do those ships have any weapon other than missiles?

>>50205871
no ftl, close in laser defense but that's almost worthless against ships.

i have tried very harrd to incorporate railgun batteries because i find them insanely cool but in every scenario they lose out to missiles except ridiculously short ranges..

>>50201336
>IR cameras can detect any ship easily.
I want to know how good the resolution is on cameras that are actually put on something that doesn't have the primary job of just being a camera - like, sure, you can build a camera on a satellite, link it up with others, and get a pretty good picture, but what about on a ship that can't rely on the computers at home to interpret it, and is emitting a ton of heat itself?

And, you know, is looking for a ship when there are, in fact, other ships, that maybe aren't the only one flying about at any given time and that we already know where it is.
Like the difference between finding a given car on a road race and finding a given car in big city rush hour.

>>50205911
stealth ships would have an umbrella (reflective foil backwards black front) that covers them from prying eyes and radiate heat directionally backwards or sideways. but if you blot a large enough section of the sky out telescopes will pick you up. so be small and keep your distance and when you are detected and want to run away you are fucked.

>>50205911
If you know that the bad guys are building ships in say mars you only need a heat camera looking at mars, and then you only have to track any dot, hot enough to be a ship, that leaves the planet

>>50205871
>that is a clever solution
well there is one thing in an engagement you don1t want anything other than empty space between your armor layers the fuel would carry shock to the inside of the ship, but for long travel to battle especially with a known distance and pace you can put a lot of reserves there 15000 liters or more. you probably don't need more than a few hundred tons of fuel to be honest with a good drive like a fusion drive.

>>50205943
What if there are also good guy ships on mars?
And neutral guy ships on mars?
And some of your ships near mars too?
And maybe a few orbital factories in martian orbit?
And the moon being something of a transport hub, with ships coming and going?

What I'm saying is, does the "no stealth in space" bit work when space is being used regularly?

>>50205963
or: small ships / sats that never leave mars paint your sensors with infrared lasers that cost $10 a piece kek?

>>50205963
of course there is stealth in space just adjust your travel to hide behind a celestial body or use drones to actively jam sensors. they shoot down your drones sure but they are cheap and plenty there is always more.

>>50205963
And what I'm trying to say is that you always know where the bad guys ships are, you can look at the transport hub logs for all the comercial ships and remove them from the equation, you know where your ships are and you can even use their sensors to track other ships, you keep tab on the neutral ships, factories are just enemy ships that don't move, and if the ship hide behind an asteroid you only have to track the asteroid instead of the ship
if you are asking if a lone ship with only one scaner can track the whole solar system then no, but you probably have more than one ship/satelite/camera
also if the stars don't paint our IRL sensors a 10$ laser pointer wont paint them neither, and the further you are the less effective the lasers are

>>50206030
lasers are much more efficient in transferring energy over long distances they can definitely be used to blind sensors. of course there will be filters against specific frequencies multi frequency projectors to counter it then better filters but they decrease the detection capability of your sensor, etc...

it's doable. when some aliens try to blind our telescopes with lasers so we can't tell when they arrive and it doesn't work then tell me about it!

>>50206030
>and the further you are the less effective the lasers are
yeah and scanners not... truth is your scanners lose efficiency with distance way sooner than lasers do.

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>>50206051
>aliens
if they want to kill us and they have enough tech to cross the galaxy they only have to use a kinetic projectile flying fast enough, is not like planets can dodge, that or they are some sort of self replicating nanomachines that feed on planets
>>50206057
the lasers won't have enough energy to blind anything, see pic related, and scanners only need a fraction of that energy to see the other ship

>>50206057
to give you a taste lasers lose efficiency with r^2 and scanners with r^4.

that's insane in comparison really. passive sensors are even worse than scanners.

>>50206100
>the lasers won't have enough energy to blind
moronic statement, use powerful enough lasers and two things about beam divergence one it's good to an extent because makes aiming easier two you can limit it by focusing the laser in between your target, basically you have a large emitter mirror that focuses a mere km from your target the beam diameter on target will be a few cms even if it's very far away.
it's how mil lasers work really.

>>50206030
>you can look at the transport hub logs for all the comercial ships and remove them from the equation
Because that data is always available.

And never lied about. Where would we be if people lied to each other, or kept secrets about military operations?

>>50206100
>yards

>>50206100
also pretty safe to assume that laser and optical technology will see insane progress way before space battles become a thing.

>>50206142
mil lasers don't work at multiple AU of distance see here >inb4 wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_beam
>>50206153
then you play the hacker and spies game

>>50205630
>cones and spheres and whatnot require a fuckton of armor to be protected from a specific direction.

and bricks require even more, the chance of a glance is worth it in reductions to cost of armour. if you're a brick you're just relying on the armour to tank it, which is just stupid

>>50206278
>and bricks require even more
no they don't where do you get this bullshit?

>>50206172
>mil lasers don't work at multiple AU
not yet mein neger but the principle works well enough.

>>50206278
>the chance of a glance
that's almost nonexistent even at hypervelocity produced by contemporary guns.

projectiles that come in at relativistic speeds won't glace from anything. at least not the way you would like. they would rather deform themselves and the the entire ship in a fluid collision and stuff like that assuming your ship is solid armor.

>>50206305
Maybe if we discover some sort of exotic material that can withstand the heat and the mechanical stress of such a lens but then you can build a cheaper conventional passive scanner.
but really by that time I bet a wacky terrorist organization will destroy the planet with some sort of hijacked space liner flying at near C

>>50206410
we shall see but my bet is we get lenses to perfect on the quantum level and thus able to form perfectly coherent beams before we get any meaningful space travel.

>>50206111
Yet a laser also needs much more energy compared to a scanner, and you can even find asteroids the size of car hundred of thousand km in space by simple looking at what stars it is blocking with modern equipment, to give you an idea.

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How do you like your starfighters? Sleek and aerodynamic? Bulky and powerful? FTL- and atmosphere-capable?

>>50207690
>How do you like your starfighters?
short answer: drones tehy can be remote controlled by comm lasers from the ships like today's drones are controlled on radio via sats or be automated or any mix of the two.

human body would be a huge limiting factor on a star fighter. we could conceivably build a starfighter that can put out 10-20 even 100Gs but humans can only take 3 for extended periods and 10 for short durations.

>>50208132
the limiting factor is comm speed unless you have some quantum entanglement / subspace channel based faster than light comm the drones are limited to be within one light second or the pilots reaction time will be shit.

>>50206502
>Yet a laser also needs much more energy compared to a scanner
well duh, ship drives would need incomparable higher levels (many many many magnitudes) of energy output than lasers to register on a sensor from a distance.

hell maybe we don't even want to burn out the sensors they would only replace them just fool them with decoys registering high energy output in a directed beam that would be nice.

>>50188765

not that anon but i believe it is you who misunderstands
He is talking about the kind of weapon that can change the trajectory of the projectile to compensate for targets evading manouvers.
It's XXIst century for god's sake, is the idea of guided missile really so abstract?

>>50208391
yeah i thought about using railguns instead of stage 1 booster motors for a ship to be able to carry and fire more warheads in total, but... railguns would require a reactor to be online or sap the main drives, they also limit the number of missiles fired per minute greatly as you have to dispense immense heat from friction and also the rails are a bottleneck compared to individual missile blocks.

so while it would be possible, it's questionable in effectiveness for ship to ship combat. the booster motors are not that heavy compared to the rest of the ship. not sure if the trade-off is worth it for smaller vessels like frigates and destroyers. maybe cruisers or larger class ships could have rail batteries, and to planetary bombardment reason and for disabled ships stations and other sitting ducks you can use the dumb unguided pebbles fired by railguns to great effect and very cheaply compared to missiles.

>>50208577
not to mention you need a sabot/carriage for firing missiles from a rail gun... which negates much of the weight and size advantage or the ammunition.

>>50207690
Small and agile. The pilot is little more than a guidance computer, he is plugged in and placed in a coffin that fills with special foam to keep him in place.
Sensor data is fed directly into the brain. Impulses from the body, like pain and hunger are blocked. The ship feeds him with IV tubes, along with data streams and combat-data

Some veteran pilots suffer from coffin-abstinence, and either have to go to therapy, find some other vice or find a way to fly again. Often taking up working as pilots for hire, forgoing monetary payment in favor of maintenance and munitions.

There are those who never leave their new bodies, finding it impossible to refuse the allure of flight, multi-spectra senor suites and smart munitions all wired into your brain, they spend years in their new bodies. Opting for biotech components that they gradually integrate into their airframe until their true body is little more than a brain and a spine hugged tight by crash resistant tissue and hundreds of cables and fiber optics.

>>50208677
>a coffin that fills with special foam to keep him in place.
i have wondered about this for a while now...
in water you float which means the gravitational force is anulled by the gravitational force affecting the water... which means no matter how you increase the g force you will still float.

and the inside of your body has very little air or empty space it can take great amount of pressure if it surrounds you we know this because scuba divers don't die.

so how much continuous g could a human body take in a tank of water (assuming no shockwaves)

>>50208677
>Small and agile
in space that's not how it works
the load (weapons your pilot life support, consoles, superstructure, other dead weight) needs a certain proportional size of drive and fuel to reach a certain G. so a single pilot craft has a minimum size to a certain level of agility and it's very vulnerable to any maintenance issue.

a larger vessel can have even better power to dead weight ratio with a small crew and still have better survivability and damage control capability.

that is the major problem with space fighters. and that they are probably very expensive as you will have to make everything extra small and light.

in space the fast attack craft / gunship (about 100-250 tonnes) with a crew of 5-7 is the smallest manned vessel practical with an operational range allowing standalone operations in shallow space even.

it could carry anti-ship missiles and even be escorted by drone fighter that it sends half a light-second out tops.

>>50208732
no, think of water as sand or jelly, floating means that instead of resting all your weight in your feet/floor you are using all your body/the water around you, when you accelerate instead of sinking to the bottom in normal gravity) you will sink in whichever direction you are accelerating, if you increment the Gs of acceleration you will sink faster and eventually hit the tank you are submerged in. You will feel the same as a a guy in a G seat plus the weight of X gallons of water multiplied by the Gs you are sustaining crushing you

>>50208894
>if you increment the Gs of acceleration you will sink faster and eventually hit the tank you are submerged in.
no you won't because the water is not immune to acceleration the forces that make you buoyant increase in proportions to the forces pulling you down. elementary physics really.

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>>50204882
Try Kerbal Space Program first?

>>50208912
the forces that make you bouyant will be pushing against you and will eventually crush you if you increase the Gs same way resting over a plank of wood would crush you.

>>50209016
>the forces that make you bouyant will be pushing against you and will eventually crush you if you increase the Gs same way resting over a plank of wood would crush you.

yes that would be the answer most people arrive to, but... no matter how i look at it the only thing increasing g forces would do is increase the pressure on your body all around and inside. basically you get normal pressure at 1G, and twice that at 2G and at 100G you get 100 times the atmospheric pressure right?
same thing if you go down a thousand meters under water.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_diving
so eventually the pressure would be too much, but you could theoretically go up to 30-50g no issues, the chamber pressure can compensate for acceleration pressure so your system doesn't get fucked up and you can compress and decompress at an even slow rate. you also have to breathe in special gas mix.

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>>50209000

>>50209127
if you can keep all the blood inside your body pumping in the right direction, maybe

>>50208391

The problem with missiles in space is that they will likely have to traverse a much further distance. To guide your missile you need fuel. The more you need to guide your missile, the more fuel will you need. At some point your fuel runs out because you can't carry around infinite amounts of fuel.

Having guided missiles does not change the initial premise of time-to-target uncertainty. It just improves the shooter's accuracy a bit. Time-to-target and uncertainty will still remain a factor when deciding effective accuracy.

>>50208863
My universe is not hard science.
Besides fighters are rarely deployed in open space, there's often cover in the form of debris, megastructures or colonies of various kinds. Open space is the realm of long range cruise missile swarms, FTL-nukes and railgun batteries.

>>50209127

The problem is that the fluids inside your body will go in the direction of your acceleration.

>>50209181
if you have a high pressure inside and out it does not affect the blood flow as it is only affected by difference in pressure (it will flow from high pressure to low pressure) and with continuous acceleration and immersed in water i don't see why you would have differences in pressure between your head and feet.

>>50208863
I hope that I may live enough to see the word "Lightsecond" become commonplace.

Also, since this is a space thread, what do you know about EMdrive? I only know its basic mechanics, as explained by https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBtk6xWDrwY&feature=youtu.be
and I'd like it if some anon with a better understanding of its functioning could explain its impact on the future of spaceflight.

>>50209228
>My universe is not hard science.
well that's okay altho soft science universes are plentiful and hard science is rare as fuark so i'm more interested. so far the series expanse is my favorite. but the execution sucks it screams that the footage was shot under gravity but i guess that is a budget issue.
>FTL-nukes
shiiiet that's nasty
>The problem is that the fluids inside your body will go in the direction of your acceleration.
that's not how fluid dynamics work think of your blood as colored water that has been carefully poured into a pot of water. no matter how much G you expose the pot it will not move anywhere as any force will have it's equal opposite.

>>50209253
well i know nothing about that hate to admit but newtonian physics is as far as my brain comfortably goes. i understand some of relativity and quantum physics but don't "feel" it the same way.

>>50209247
because instead of water you are using some sort of super fluid that can change its density at your will
>>50209278
then explain me how Gsuits work or why do you suffer blackouts or redouts

>>50208677
I played a character similar to this in a space opera campaign way back. The PC's were part of a squad in air/space superiority fighters that were using a prototype full imersion mental control system. We were in the middle of an expansive war with multiple sides.

About 3/4 into the campaign, our side had lost and we were now mercenaries, my character took a fatal hit to the cockpit and died. Then the GM revealed that the control system had an unexpected side effect of keeping a copy of his mind in its system. So I continued the game as a living air/space fighter.

It really cut down on the player interaction but opened up a lot of other situations. Also he attended his own funeral the other players held for him after finding a mechanic that was willing to climb into the living ship and remove the rotting, space exposed corpse inside that wasn't controlling it anymore.

>>50209303
>then explain me how Gsuits work or why do you suffer blackouts or redouts
a g-suit is an imperfect solution it does not provide equal pressure to your entire body. it does help a lot tho and works by the same principle. immersing you into fluid that is the same density as your body does what a g-suit does but faster and automatically and more perfectly.

>>50209315
Neat.
What kind of fighter was he? Did he get a robot body or something or did he stay as a ship?

>>50209278
Now that I think about it, I wouldn't call it soft either. Maybe crunchy? Soft but with chewy bits? I imagine a scenario or a piece of tech, like an engine that sucks reaction mass from another dimension and then I try to extrapolate from there, to imagine how regular people would use this tech I'd contrast this with star wars, where they don't think of the ramifications some of their tech has on the setting.

>>50209303
>because instead of water you are using some sort of super fluid that can change its density at your will
no what i said chamber pressure can be adjusted so you don't get sudden high-low pressure hits and gas bubbles won't form in your blood and shit.

basically you accelerate much then chamber pressure drops and water pressure rises as you cut acceleration chamber pressure rise and water pressure diminishes. kinda like again how g-suits work just reverse.

>>50209410
well i worded that badly water pressure remain the same it's just either provided by the chamber being put under pressure or the acceleration pressing the water to the proverbial bottom and the bottom pressing back.

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>>50209390
The GM described the ship as 'like a Panther from Wing Commander" The ship had 3 manipulator arms, left, right and underside, for various tasks including limited self repair and cargo retrieval.

My character stayed a ship the rest of the game. Two other players ended up joining him in the course of the campaign, as living spacecraft.

>>50209490
>and a new species emerged
kek must have been fun

>>50209213
>Having guided missiles does not change the initial premise of time-to-target uncertainty

But it does change it. As you stated before
>at a certain short range they are helpless to dodge or stop projectiles
The guided projectile will be on correct trajectory at any given moment in time (on the premise that we use continuous guiding). And in ideal conditions it will be closing on the target at any given moment. So no matter how many evading manouvers the target makes, there always will be that one moment when missile is close enough to render any dodging impossible.

All of above is of course very simplified scenario, that makes a number of assumptions, such as:
>missile can be faster than target
>missile can evade counter-missiles or point-defense
and many many more

>>50209512
>So no matter how many evading manouvers the target makes, there always will be that one moment when missile is close enough to render any dodging impossible.
assuming the missile can out accelerate the target dodging is impossible. countermeasures must either deal with the missile or force it off trajectory. if it misses hardly will have enough fuel for a deacceleration and a second go.

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>>50209161
Don't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.

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>>50209559

>>50209535
That's true of course and i've stated it in my comment.
Also i guess the eneral idea would be to fire more than one missile as to have better chances

>>50209573
yeah a salvo and some of the missiles can even sacrifice themselves to provide cover for their companions. like a nuke goes in front of the rest a few seconds and goes off approaching the countermeasures wrecking their sensors and making the ship to replace sensors or turn waste precious seconds doing so maybe and in the meantime the rest of the missiles crossed the interception envelope.

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>>50209559
>>50209572

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>>50205630
>you want to limit the surface to limit weight
>bricks are best

Have you not taken basic geometry?

Bricks are worse than cones and spheres when it comes to volume/area ratios. Like, I think it's literally the worst when it comes to basic shapes (Obviously you can do worse if you add wrinkles and shit)

Also, the point of sloped armor isn't to make the shot "Glance" off, it's to increase the relative thickness of the armor that must be penetrated. You have absolutely no fucking idea what you are talking about.

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloped_armour
>https://childrenofadeadearth.wordpress.com/2016/04/12/why-does-it-look-like-that-part-2/

Ships in Children of a dead earth are cone shaped because cylinders have a better surface area/volume ratio, and are tapered because sloped armor helps. Because they are long and pointy, when they point their narrow end to the enemy, they can present their most weapons, most armor, and least overall surface area (well the turrets in CoaDE have shitty angles so you need to broadside, but realistically they could be designed to rotate better)

A brick has none of those advantages.

>>50206300
Yes they do, you are wrong.

>>50209490
Must've been fun.
Did they get to dock with a thicc fuel-tankeress at some point?

>>50209926
>Also, the point of sloped armor isn't to make the shot "Glance" off, it's to increase the relative thickness of the armor that must be penetrated.
and that shows me you don't actually understand a goddamn thing about armor. go to /k/ get educated!

the point of a brick shaped ship is you only have to armor minimal surface to large volume. with a cone you have to armor a lot of surface to the same volume.

take a cone where frontal surface is Pi*r*s (where r and s increases with length)

take a rectangle where frontal surface is a*b and independent of c (length)

out of the 2 only the rectangular ship can be arbitrarily long to the same frontal armor weight. i can't believe i have to explain this like to a toddler.

>>50210337
No, you've already demonstrated that you don't understand anything.

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>>50210378
alright i will bite your low quality bait, here is your education.

sloped armor does not offer more armor it offers less volume behind it.

>>50209926
>Also, the point of sloped armor isn't to make the shot "Glance" off, it's to increase the relative thickness of the armor that must be penetrated. You have absolutely no fucking idea what you are talking about.
Actually, it's both, if we're talking in terms of solid projectile weapons like shells. Sloped armour both increases relative thickness and increases the chance of the round glancing off.

>>50210397
>sloped armor does not offer more armor it offers less volume behind it.
It uses less material for thicker armour, if you have a 40mm plate angled at 90 degrees, and another 40mm plate angled at 45, if hit "head on" the angled 40mm plate will be effectively thicker while also increasing the chance of deflection, at the cost of having less volume behind the armour.

>>50210397
You reduced the overall thickness of the armor, and the projectile still has to travel the same distance, if anything you just demonstrated that sloped armor DOES work.

Rotate that cube 90 degrees, would you rather hit it on the corner, or on a flat side? Showing a flat surface to the enemy makes it easier for them to penetrate that surface. Even if your ship is cube shaped, it would be best to angle yourself.

>>50210428
>It uses less material for thicker armour
no it doesn't that's the beauty of it, it doesn't just look at the goddamn pic. there was a reason behind sloped armor in ww2, but it stopped working not long after. today in a way there is still sloped armor plates in composite but again for different reasons (to induce stress in the long rod penetrator and bend it or break it) that wouldn't work with the high velocity projectiles in space anyways.

>>50210449
>You reduced the overall thickness of the armor
you did not reduce shit actually you reduced the protected volume but not the armor mass for the same protection from that direction.

>>50210449
>Showing a flat surface to the enemy makes it easier for them to penetrate that surface.
jesus dude... jesus, it's not ww1 low velocity ap ammunition we are talking about here. but stufff going crazy with 10-20% of light speed relative on impact. nothing will be bouncing off. matter will be annihilated. ablative spaced armor is your only hope.

>>50210482
You still haven't established how a cube somehow has a better volume/area ratio than a cylinder, cone, or sphere.

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>>50210460
My bad, rather, sloped armour uses the same amount of materials, but is effectively thicker at the cost of less space, due to being sloped.
See this pic, I copy pasted the same line, a straight shot to the unsloped armour only needs to go the red distance, whereas with the same line sloped, it needs to move through the red and blue distance to penetrate.

>>50210529
>See this pic, I copy pasted the same line, a straight shot to the unsloped armour only needs to go the red distance, whereas with the same line sloped, it needs to move through the red and blue distance to penetrate.
i see what you did there anon, now calculate the mass of the two armor plates!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2QqOvFMG_A
if you watch this video and imagine the plates tilted at 45 degrees making any real difference to the outcome, you don't know physics.

>>50210507
i always said directionally. from a threat you can face it does, not 100% all around. tanks use this principle too, they carry much much more frontal armor than side and rear and simply try to face threats.

>>50210529
Fun fact, space is the most plentiful resource in FUCKING SPACE.

There is nothing wrong with filling parts of your ship with vacuum. People who complain about the extra space left over when you try to pack things into a cylindrical volume are idiots. The extra surface area required to cover a cubical volume is more important if you are going to be covering the whole thing with heavy armor.

>>50210565
In space, an attack can come from any direction. And even if you have the luxury of a linear engagement, then a cylinder with heavily armored flat front and a lightly armored curved side is still better than a brick.

Cones represent a compromise between spheres and cylinders. They can deal with enemies on the front or sides, and place things which can't be easily armored (such as engines) in the back away from the enemy.

>>50210555
>i see what you did there anon, now calculate the mass of the two armor plates!
It's the same armour plate, so the mass are the same, although depending on how you want to design you do need more sloped armour for the same internal space (this was an issue on the T-34 for example).
>if you watch this video and imagine the plates tilted at 45 degrees making any real difference to the outcome, you don't know physics.
If the plates were tilted at 45 degrees they would function better than plates at 90 degrees, no matter how much you tilt 1mm of armour a 88mm shell is still going to go through it, but if you're at that disparity of weapon/armour technology, there's no real point in deploying armour at all and instead focusing on maneuverability.

>>50210612
>In space, an attack can come from any direction.
hat is simply not true, distance is a huge factor, and ships must stay close to each other to increase the effectiveness of their defenses. just like 2 dimensional ships they will move in formations. so an attack definitely can't come from anywhere unless you fucked up badly greatly outnumbered and flanked or walked into a trap. just forget this notion.
>The extra surface area required
you still don't get it do you?
>Cones represent a compromise between spheres and cylinders. cones are actually worse than spheres to be honest.

>>50210615
>It's the same armour plate, so the mass are the same
no lol no, the mass of a certain height of parallelogram of any degree of tilt even 90 degrees is only dependent on the base thickness, when you increase base width you increase the mass anon. there are no wonders in math and physics. you can't cheat geometry.

>>50209699
Hi David Weber

>>50210640
They are worse than spheres, but they make up for it by being a more useful shape. Spheres have higher moments of inertia, and you will still have to cut holes in them to mount engines and weapons, which will ruin the advantage.

>>50209699
And how does that first missile not also fuck up the rest of the missiles in it's salvo?

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>>50210653
But in >>50210529 I didn't increase the base width, I merely tilted the plate, it's not any thicker.
Now, if you wanted to say the tilted plate will not cover the same amount of space, you'd be correct, because it's tilted, as you can see in this image.
Again, those are exactly the same line, and are exactly as thick as each other, but the sloped one has a larger effective thickness due to how sloping affects the angle of impact (a frontal shot at 45 degree sloped armour is effectively a shot at 45 degrees, and as such it must go through more armour).

>>50210529
The volume of black is different.

Sloped armor is better in some circumstanced due to direction some of the projectile energy away from the plane of the armor. That's it.

>>50210682
time and distance, a small nuke going off far enough even just 10 or so kms will have no effect on the followers while on the ones barely 1km away it would have devastating effect.

i guess friendly missiles could also get a heads up and close their sensor lids for a moment.

>>50210709
>I didn't increase the base width, I merely tilted the plate
tilting the plate increases the base width in the original plane of impact. on your second picture here you tilted a plate but it also got shorter so it's the same mass (i won't count pixels fuck you if you trick me) but doesn't cover the same surface.

>>50210713
>The volume of black is different.
Yeah, that image was zoomed in on a segment of >>50210709 to show the properties of sloping, but it wasn't super well done on my part since it falsly implies the sloped armour covers the same vertical height.

>>50210713
basically, against most threats flat armor 90 degrees to the threat is better because the ballistic arc would not decrease but increase the effective thickness. only point blank shots would go 90deg in. sloped armor gets weaker and weaker against heat coming in in an arc, but long rod penetrators lose a lot of energy also to the better angle.

>>50210745
>the ballistic arc
I may be retarded here but why would there be ballistic arcs in space? Unless you're close enough to a planet for it's gravity to influence the path of the shot enough to actually have an arc which, considering how fast railguns go, would be extremely unlikely.

>>50210713
>Sloped armor is better in some circumstanced due to direction some of the projectile energy away from the plane of the armor.
it's mostly about how it is inducing pressure unevenly to the penetrating object as opposed to flat armor. these pressure waves are murderous and often wreck the projectile. after a certain speed is achieved the armor interaction becomes fluid dynamics totally different in nature.

>>50210790
sorry for a moment there i was talking about irl tanks my apologies.

When did we go full /sci/?

>>50205086
Check out nuclear bomb pumped lasers as well
>>50210837
You're surprised that hard science fiction is informed by science?

>>50210862
>You're surprised that hard science fiction is informed by science?
Well, 40kids are.

>>50210862
No, but this is more than usual for a spess thread.

>>50210816
Even there I would disagree with you, the point where the ballistic arc makes a 45 degree slope a "flat" impact would require distances at which the shell has already lost so much velocity that it can't penetrate anyway, which is why sloped armour was such an asset on tanks in WWII, with the T-34 being the principle example. Unless we're talking about modern HEAT rounds which don't rely on muzzle velocity (from what I understand of them), and as such don't really lose penetration based on distance. Either way, even with muzzle velocity not impacting penetration, the distances at which you'll be impacting 45 degree armour flat (when both tanks are on the same elevation, etc) would almost never occur in warfare if both tank commanders are competent.

Everyone look up capped armor peircing rounds.

At high enough velocities the shells in ww2 just started shattering so they put this kinda...cap thing on them to keep them from shattering on impact. Really interesting stuff.

>>50210901
>but long rod penetrators lose a lot of energy also to the better angle.
>the point where the ballistic arc makes a 45 degree slope a "flat" impact would require distances at which the shell has already lost so much velocity that it can't penetrate anyway
and where is the disagreement? it's not about the 45 deg, but if you have a sloped armor that offers the same effective thickness to a frontal (0 deg) shot than a flat armor, then if the projectile comes at 5-10 degrees in (realistic engagement distances for modern mbts), your sloped armor loses effective thickness and flat armor gains it.
>sloped armor gets weaker and weaker against heat coming in in an arc
>Unless we're talking about modern HEAT rounds which don't rely on muzzle velocity
very perceptive

>>50210922
i wonder if it would work for tungsten long rods, but they went to the direction of pyrophoric self sharpening du penetrators with special perfect crystalline structure that doesn't shatter instead.

>>50210992
Any special material you shoot can also be used for the armor you are trying to shoot through. That's why chemical energy payloads are so common.

>>50211012
yeah, du plate against du perpetrators we can see that trend. the density is more the key there i imagine they could use tungsten also.

>>50211039
IF we are talking realastic space battles: it won't be a battle.

You can't hide in space, so any weapons will just be people at peace holding guns to each other's head.

If anyone actually pulls the trigger then they are delivering a nuclear payload at .8C that won't miss, and won't leave large atoms of the target behind.

Real space combat is boring.

>>50211062
>Real space combat is boring.
it can be boring or it can be immensely suspenseful, depending the exact nature and level of technology.
the way i like to imagine space combat is the opposing forces won't just meet in open space but hurry for a strategic point in space like a planetary orbit a belt or something. and on the way they would execute astronomical maneuvers to either better time their arrival or be in a more defensible position.

and they would fire missiles at each other that go with hundred Gs from very long distances and counter missiles will be fired to intercept damage or distract them when their trajectory probability cone is narrowing in enough that any diversion from their course will result in a miss and stuff like that. lot's of math that must be done quickly computers will have a huge role in the execution of maneuvers and countermeasures, but maybe humans will be allowed or even required to do strategic thinking intuition and stuff like that.

battles can be won by overwhelming the defenses by missile spams, altho defensive actions can cause the attacking force (and their missile waves to be effectively blinded ie defensive nukes, chaff that creates hot gas and plasma clouds and metallic fragments in it that distract radar.)

all in all the one side that jumps the gun and releases too many missiles at once can run out of ammo and lose in the end, but if they can overwhelm the defenses and the point blank defenses armor will not do much to mitigate the damage.

yeah... i think it would be intense planning running simulations writing programs testing them debugging them then everything happens too fast for humans when the missiles arrive.

>>50211145
I mean it sounds cool and all, and I would love to watch a show with that in it, but it's just not practical.

MIssiles use chemical propellant, which is mass. EM field propulsion is just so much simpler and easier to use, and it uses voltage which is easy to supply with a reactor compared to non-nuclear chemcial energy.

There won't be countermeasures because by the time the information of the shot reaches you the actual projectile is already 80% or more of the way to you. We are talking electrical signals are too slow to properly trigger countermeasures.

And the payload is a boosted fusion warhead that will turn everything near you into atoms from just the EM radiation it produces. No feasible amount of "mass between us and danger thing" will protect you from that.

It's simple, easy, and possible with current technology.

It's also boring. I had a lot more fun with space before I got my masters.

>>50211201
>MIssiles use chemical propellant, which is mass. EM field propulsion is just so much simpler and easier to use, and it uses voltage which is easy to supply with a reactor compared to non-nuclear chemcial energy.
actually chemical coudln't support the missile speeds and ranges i had in mind simple nuclear torches would do, it would be a waste to equip missiles with fusion drives you can think of it as a jet engine on a plane versus a simple solid fuel rocket.

most electronic drives we actually have have very bad thrust. they are energy efficient and all and require little fuel mass, but they can't accelerate large masses for shit. they are fine for sats weighing 1 kg or 5 and all, not okay for warships in the thousand tonne range.

>There won't be countermeasures because by the time the information of the shot reaches you the actual projectile is already 80% or more of the way to you.

the detection range for enemy crafts is measured in light hours. if 80% of that would be taken by the enemy missiles you still have a day or two to launch your countermeasures. assuming you are a blind fuck and can't see the launch after a few hours.

>And the payload is a boosted fusion warhead that will turn everything near you into atoms from just the EM radiation it produces.

depends on how close it can get. up close in a few hundred meters sure no ship would survive that. if it must detonate 20km away because the countermeasures are about to get it, nothing much will happen to the ships.

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>>50210801
Different anon, but at the speeds that you have to deal with in space from stuff hitting you. Sloped armor becomes irreverent since we are talking possibly objects moving 1,000's to 10,000's mph and hitting your ship. In this case very thick but airy materials would be better like foamed metals and the like. Does anyone watch PBS? Nova had an episode about metals but at the end they talked about a new material made of carbon but only one atom thick. And if the talk is to be believed that stuff would be impossibly strong to piercing force like a projectile. I also hear this stuff could replace silicon in chip manufacture to make ultra thick circuits and allow core stacks of incredible density. This graphene stuff has some crazy sci-fi shit properties but it's actually real. Now the real question is can we take advantage of it before we all kill ourselves or society totally breaks down because of a global disaster?

>>50211279
and in space combat 20km is point blank basically well in the range of laser point defense and even railguns (if applicable)

your defensive missiles would engage enemy missiles a lightsecond out at the closest (10 second for the missiles to close in roughly) preferably more, you would fire them a few minutes before impact.

>>50211315
>Sloped armor becomes irreverent since we are talking possibly objects moving 1,000's to 10,000's mph and hitting your ship.
what i have been saying in about 50 posts

>>50211315
graphene has a slight problem, when you try to layer it it loses it's magical properties and becomes very much graphite which doesn't stop shit.

i think the best armor against relativistic velocity projectile fragments (let's assume you can break them up before they reach you or god help you) is whipple shield like ablative armor layered as many times as necessary. basically matter destroys matter at those speeds, and the internal shock from the intense heat breaks up the fragments further up to atoms and plasma in the end.

but tinfoil would not do it is good against sand-grain sized micro meteors, but against pebble or fist sized du/tungsten pieces you need some more matter. like a few inch thick ceramic-aluminium-du-aluminium composite panel and several stories of it. i'm unsure about the best distance between layers, i didn't quiet researched it to fullest.

>>50211498
I think the best distance between shields depends on the relative velocity between it and the projectile. Higher velocity = bigger gap I think.

>>50211576
probably altho i'm unclear on how the exploding material spread pattern would be influenced by it's speed rather than the speed of the explosion itself.

>>50211498
one thing maybe not clear the layered armor is also trying to protect from ionizing radiation like laser hits and nuclear blasts aluminum protects from em pulse while the du insert also protects from gamma and x-rays.

>>50205117
The ever so helpful projectrho tells that the minimum theoretical cone a Casaba Howitzer's shaped charge can have is 11.4°. It sounds less like a useful offensive weapon unless you can get it really close to the enemy, and more like a good defensive countermeasure to missiles, sort of like a massively more destructive, one-shot version of the Trophy active protection system used on Merkava tanks, that's basically just a turret mounted shotgun that automatically destroys anti-tank missiles and rpgs.

>>50211646
yeah i agree, to me casaba looks like the space version of the heat round to me but kinda sucks at that.
don't make it ship mounted because it cause lots of problems. mount them on missiles or fire them by railguns like aa and explode them well away from your ship.

>>50211498
>graphene has a slight problem, when you try to layer it it loses it's magical properties and becomes very much graphite which doesn't stop shit.
Really?! Funny I never hear people talk about the drawbacks to the stuff. Do you remember where you came across that bit of info? I kind of want to do a really exhaustive study of this stuff. It could help me do a little setting design for a future world building set. I don't know it seems most sci-fi settings have a wonder material but they never go into if it has a cost/negative side. Graphene appears to me the perfect thing to explore in this respect without having to make something up. I wonder how hard it is to mod the stuff once made and then recycle it? If this stuff is really hard to pull apart and break down then it could become a bigger blight than non-biodegradable plastics.

>>50210159
And now I have a new fetish, damn it tg.

>>50211786
>Do you remember where you came across that bit of info?
i think some guy talked about this on /k/ in a future armor thread posted links too i don't have them.
>If this stuff is really hard to pull apart and break down then it could become a bigger blight than non-biodegradable plastics.
nano materials are already a pollution problem that can cause future generations no end of grief.

>>50211786
Graphene is just a single layer of graphite. There is such a thing as bi-layer graphene, but most of the time more than one layer of graphene is just straight up graphite.

>>50211863
i think you can make nano tubes from single layer graphite that makes a really strong thread but if you wave them together it is more than likely getting fucked up and turns to pencil core from the slightest pressure.

>>50211895
Carbon nanotubes are just tubes of graphene, but since they are not a flat plane they are called something else (fullerenes).

>>50211786
>talk about the drawbacks to the stuff
I can help there - my physics background is strictly limited, but I assisted on a public graphene presentation a while back.

The two big problems are that being a molecule thick it's a bit shit strength-wise in some directions - proportionally strong, sure, but getting that in a usable scale is hard; this leads into the other problem - it's really hard to make in a large usable form.
We literally had primary school kids making the stuff (you can do it using sellotape) and looking at it under the microscope, but it's all in very small bits, and lab/industrial production is only a bit better.

>>50211498
>i think the best armor against relativistic velocity projectile fragments (let's assume you can break them up before they reach you or god help you) is whipple shield like ablative armor layered as many times as necessary. basically matter destroys matter at those speeds, and the internal shock from the intense heat breaks up the fragments further up to atoms and plasma in the end.
Honestly, once you can shot something fast enough, it become impossible to tank it. You either dodge it or literally let it just pass through your ship, surving it by making your ship over redundant.

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>>50204384
>tfw you will never be a space mailman

>>50184985
Really it comes down to scale for me. If we're talking about a smallish number of big ships, I prefer it to be a space navy. If we're talking about a largeish number of smaller ships, I prefer space air force (space force?). Realistically, any ships of ours would either be part of some new group or NASA would get expanded.

As for multi nation worlds, it really only works if you're talking about homeworlds or early colonies (Mars or Alpha Centauri kind of stuff), and only fairly early on. Once they start dealing with aliens they're going to either put aside their differences and work together or they're going to go to war and one side will kill or drive off the other.

As for instances in media, I've been rewatching Stargate SG-1 and there are a dozen or so that pop up. Most of them do so several times because it's an easy way of adding drama that's not "we are bad dudes that want to kill you" or "save us from the scary aliens."

>>50184985
>>50212055
Speaking of Stargate and the Air Force running the battlecruiser fleet...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Xb-oLS-cyY

>>50211985
>Honestly, once you can shot something fast enough, it become impossible to tank it.
the speed turns against the projectile too. basically the self sharpening properties of du penetrator only work up to a specific relative velocity above that, the projectile breaks up on impact and gets destroyed. the released energy is not focused enough for further penetration compared to how the projectile would in lower velocity.

this is the working principle of the whipple shield. i'm not saying it will be pretty, but the bigger mass will survive and that won't be the projectile when it meets the armor.

>>50212141
now the real problem arises when you realize how much potential energy mass has. the average human body has enough potential energy stored in it to give you the equivalent of 9 million tzar bombs enough to obliterate the earth surface many many times.

unsure how much is getting released on relativistic speed impact, it's possible that nothing would remain of the ship even if the armor "stops" or rather obliterates the projectile.

>>50199508
Have you ever seen Space Battleship Yamato? They make submarines in space by doing exactly what you're suggesting, and as campy as that sounds they pulled it off really well.

>>50211062
You just described modern warfare, the inclusion or exclusion of stealth does not change the fact that armies spend the majority of their time looking intimidating and hoping the enemy doesn't call their bluff.

>>50212221
i think in the future there will be more simulated battles also published and used for intimidation / propaganda reasons when it suits one party (usually it will suit both, good propaganda for one and defense budget increasing reason for the other).

>>50212221
That only applies to evenly matched powers with lots of powerful shit. Asymmetrical warfare and "low tech" warfare is still very much a thing (Middle East is the best example).

>>50212141
>this is the working principle of the whipple shield. i'm not saying it will be pretty, but the bigger mass will survive and that won't be the projectile when it meets the armor.
A 10 gram projectile going at 0.01c would have about 10.5 kT of TNT of energy ie about as much energy as a nuke, only that it is concentrated in ridiculously small area. You can just tank stuff like that.

>>50212285
*You can't

>>50212240
I like the idea of space battleships having their schematics published on spacegithub, along with a fork of the AI which controls it, programmed to tell anybody who asks exactly what it would do in any given situation.

Just so the enemy knows exactly how screwed they are if they decide to start shit.

Of course, there is always the possibility that the published schematics are a lie. And the AI may or may not know how trustworthy it is.

>>50212253
This too. The cold war had tons of opportunities for adventure and intrigue, anybody who says MAD makes warfare boring is an idiot.

>>50212285
>Projectile hits Whipple shield
>Whipple shield and projectile vanish in a puff of plasma
>Secondary shields catch any substantial fragments (There won't be many)
>Anything worth protecting is unharmed behind several layers of whipple shields
>Relativistic projectile successfully "Tanked"

Now if the enemy can rapid fire, then you are screwed. but people are kind of overestimating the power of relativistic projectiles.

>>50212355
>armor against relativistic projectile
>it hits your armor which slows it down so it can transfer energy into your craft rather than just zipping straight through it

It's about more than just the raw energy available. Same reason why bigger more powerful nukes weren't pursue, Tsar Bomba proved that the energy just gets wasted blasting away atmosphere into space, it's not being applied to the target.

>>50212221
Deception and maneuvering can still be useful in space war at the strategic level.

>>50212285
So break your battleship up into a constellation of a thousand microsats, then each shot will only kill 1/1000 of your capability at a time.

>>50212285
>A 10 gram projectile
i think an average anti-ship projectile would weight several kgs around a 100 is a good guess.

let's say 100kg depleted uranium going at 0.1c that's something that would reasonably destroy any ship if it hits.

of course like i said it will be intercepted and only fragments of it will hit the frontal shield.

it won't be pretty at all.

if you look at my designs: >>50199637
>>50199705
they have 15 meters of frontal armor to stop very small debris and larger stuff have to g through the storage levels the weapons and crew quarters to reach the citadel which is again strongly armored. lots of material to chew through and blowout panels make sure that the atmo in the crew compartment don't cause more damage than it should you can vent it for battles if you want to be sure and put the crew in the bunkers.

now this wouldn't survive a direct hit from the head i described but it could survive a nearby explosion and debris with power control and drive intact.

>>50212412
It doesn't slow down though, it fucking explodes. It can't tell the difference between a paper thin Whipple shield and your hull, it hits something, and all that energy is released in an instant. The only real way to prevent this is to increase the mass of the projectile, and the faster you are going, the less that matters.

>>50212518
Speaking of the energy, where did you plan on getting it from and how do you intend to pack it into the projectile? Some kind of moon-sized railgun?

>>50212431
>So break your battleship up into a constellation of a thousand microsats, then each shot will only kill 1/1000 of your capability at a time.
That is actually an interesting concept, albeit it could end up very inefficient because you would need every satellit to be a self-contained enity, so why keep them concentred over such a small region.

>>50212539
missiles dude space warfare is all about the missiles. the kinetic energy is an insane killer, nothing limits the missiles velocity like in atmo and they can also course correct harder than any ship packing softies on board.

of course where there are missiles there will be intercepting drones with either casaba howitzers or chemical lasers or be decoys or simply stand in the way of the incoming threat and let it get rekt in a glorious explosion when it hits..

>>50212587
Do you have any clue how difficult it is to accelerate anything to 0.1c?

>>50212553
I could see FTL technology leading to carrier warfare, where a large starship carries a bunch of disposable drones/missiles into the system, then disperses them into useful orbits. The drones them sit there waiting for the right moment to strike.

They aren't quite missiles, because you launch them before the start of combat, and if nothing happens, you could conceivably recover them, but other than that, they are more or less expendable single use weapons.

>>50212539
Coilguns have a higher maximum kinetic energy than raillguns, and they can be fired more rapidly. Sci-fi just hates using that word because it don't sound as cool as raillgun. Other times they'll give it a fancy name like Magnetic Accelerator cannon, but when they explain how it works, nine times out of ten it will be a Coilgun with the numbers filed off. Eg, HALO, Mass Effect, Ect.

>>50212614
it's not actually that difficult i ran the calcs.
lemme find that excel sheet and get back to you with exact numbers but in a few hours of continuous accelerations that are achievable by the fuel mass efficiency of nuclear torches and the payload will be enough to achieve relativistic kill speed.

>>50212620
coil guns are harder to do in the size of naval guns today that is why railguns are looked into hard. they just need a lot of energy no timing issues with that insane energy no saturation issues just light it up and let it rip. coilguns are more difficult and require ferromagnetic carriage or payload and stuff.

>>50205604
because they are the "generic aliens"

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50KB, 1703x524px

>>50212640

>>50212702
You are missing the mass ratio of the projectile from your calculations.

>>50212667
From what I understand, while there are technical challenges making coilguns non-competitive with raillguns right now, raillguns are ultimately limited by the max temperatures of the rails which must be in physical contact with the projectile. Coilguns can be improved with simple engineering, but there is no material that exists which can withstand the temperatures which would be generated by a raillgun reaching relativistic velocities.

>>50201336
>There's nothing to hide behind
You can hide near something though. Low orbit around stars can hide your ass if necessary. At least that's what I learned from reading Perry Rhodan

>>50212733
yeah that's not on it, that was a different calc, but you can achieve more in fact here i was trying to figure out practical flight times stages and deduct typical engagement distances from it. it only shows if you can achieve 10g with a fission-torch what it could accelerate, i don't even know where i put the calc that shows the missile dimensions and weight but it's similar to modern anti-ship missiles i remember that. that is how i decided on the 10m height for the anti-ship missiles with the booster being a big part of it and they would be about a ton in weight total without the stage1 booster.

>>50212734
>but there is no material that exists which can withstand the temperatures which would be generated by a raillgun reaching relativistic velocities.
yeah you can't do that what you can do is around 11k m/s for a ship long railgun assuming the 50g they can put out in the near future.

>>50212784
nah i remember now it's the calc that decided that missiles beat the crap out of railguns no matter what at practical engagement distances.

a 60G (kinda fantasy) 47,52 meter long railgun would only accelerate to 7.5k m/s while a short range missile would put 60k m/s into the same mass and it wouldn't even have a kick on the ship.

>>50212801
Exactly, in the near future raillguns will be useful for firing projectiles at speeds useful for naval combat (too fast and they will burn up in the atmosphere)

In the more distant future, coilguns will be used to fire projectiles at speeds useful for space combat (IE, anything slower than C)

In both cases, I think lasers will be most useful as point defense weapons used against cheap slow moving unarmored missiles/drones.

>http://toughsf.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-solution-to-long-range-space-combat.html
Here is an intresting article about coilguns vs raillguns, lasers, and particle beams. He concludes that 90 meter long coilguns are the best choice for long range combat, because they can spam large amounts of high velocity "pellets" which can overwhelm any form of armor or point defense, and saturate a given area of space enough to make any form of evasion difficult.

>>50212891
>In the more distant future, coilguns will be used to fire projectiles at speeds useful for space combat
that will most likely never happen you don't seem to have an appreciation how the coils must be placed no ship will be long enough for more than 3 stages. and 3 stages will not really outperform railguns.

>>50212891
you should have put the "high velocity" in quotation marks not the "pellets"

missiles can achieve higher speeds, but i could totally see this as a ciws if it was not for the fact that you need a ship sized gun to do it.

>>50212957
>Spaceships can't be big

nuclear propelled kinetic penetrators.
now to develop a gun barrel, projectile, and auto-loading system that can handle it.

>>50213019
they can be big sure, but exponentially grow for every stage you add, it's gonna have a practical limit very fucking fast.

>>50213029
>nuclear propelled kinetic penetrators.
yes exactly
>now to develop a gun barrel, projectile, and auto-loading system that can handle it.
it's called a missile any little fighter or gunboat can carry a few.

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4MB, 4268x5690px

>>50213038
Fuck u, I want giant space battleships with spinal mount coillguns and a secondary battery of lasers laid out like an age of sail broadside.

And hell, 90 meters long is still shorter than most real world warships, and fictional space battleships.

>>50213145
well i never said you can't have it, you can for sure, i just said i would like the coil guns for ciws more than offense, for on i think the armor of my ships is specifically designed to deal with threats like that and for second they would be very good answer to missile spam to fire lot's of little pellets so fucking fast. but the 90m long barrel is very prohibitive to me.

btw i wanted to put huge spinal railguns in my ships because i too thought it would be cool, but they would only be real useful in less than 3 seconds flight time (insanely close range) after that even the chemical boosters beat the crap out of them. now thee would be large mass projectiles, the little pepper gun described is not nearly as cool, but it does have merits for close range that i must meditate on.

>>50213145
an other thing to consider, you fire your pellets at the enemy while at combat acceleration (30m/s2) at long range, and in 20 minutes you run right into them as your speed surpasses theirs. that's kinda shitty deal. would never happen with missiles (unless they malfunction).

>>50213311
That's happened in air combat before, Fighter planes firing their guns in a dive, and then shooting themselves down as they catch up to their own bullets.

>>50213334
fucking stupid way to die
altho the only source i can find flied at mach1 definitely modern plane.

>>50211646
That WAS the whole point of casaba howitzers, missiles launched from a space station/orion battleship to intercept enemy nukes on their way to the US.

However, I've read a description that the power of a casaba howitzer is enough that, fired from space to surface, can seriously damage an aircraft carrier even with the atmosphere in the way

>>50213377
He landed safely, the relative velocity wasn't high enough to be immediately lethal. The real problem was that his engines ingested some of the bullets.

>>50213549
Well safe for him. He "Landed" a mile short of the runway and climbed out as the plane caught fire.

http://www.aerofiles.com/tiger-tail.html

Any landing you walk away from right?

>>50213503
>fired from space to surface, can seriously damage an aircraft carrier even with the atmosphere in the way
fucking ion cannon shit right there

>>50213503
what if we used a casaba howitzer to produce a tight ion beam and use a giant coil gun to shape it more compact and further accelerate it and used this as the ships main gun?

>>50213807
If you want to detonate a nuke inside your ship.

Then again, I could see an Orion drive spacecraft shaped like a giant tube with a ring shaped pusher plate behind it. Everything else is radially mounted. Casaba howitzer detonates behind the ship and the jet travels down the tube, where the electromagnets accelerate it.

As an added bonus, the coilgun can fire conventional projectiles in either direction, and serve as an auxiliary propulsion system.

>>50213145
>Fuck u, I want giant space battleships with spinal mount coillguns and a secondary battery of lasers laid out like an age of sail broadside.


Hello, can i interest you in a sperg as fuck fusion age homebrew run on suptg?

>>50214286
Shoot.

>>50214335
Well, wha do you wanna know?

The game is theoreticlaly set around the adventures of the starship apollo, and its earth coalition navy dealing with what looks to be the first interstellar corporate revolt over the colonies that more or less prop up and pay for earth in 2231.