Empty space is 3 or so degrees above absolute zero, so it'd be a bit trickier than that. Also, assuming it wants to maneuver, it's going to have to emit gasses or photons out the tailpipe.
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"In literature as in love we are astounded by what is chosen by others." Andre Maurois
Onii7/Frinkruds and his funky forums
macgamer.net
Propulsion by reaction drives probably isn't a very efficient way of propelling oneself, so I don't think that far-future starships (should they exist) would use reaction drives to power themselves. We've all read the nitpickers guides to star trek and we know that the Impulse drives would never be able to push a ship like the Enterprise around without the ship itself being mostly fuel.
There are other alternatives to propulsion. First, I would recommend everyone here to go and read David Weber's Honor Harrington books. They are very well written military sci-fi books and have lots of good uses of tech and tactics that make sense. Missiles by the way are used extensivly as standoff weapons, and pack a good punch besides... anyways.
The propulsion in the Honorverse (as it is called) is handled by gravity impeller wedges, which basically place the ship between two large gravitic distorsions that squirt the ship forward at a very high acceleration. This has some interesting military dis/advantages in that the impeller wedges are impenetrable to weapons fire due to the tremendous warping of space-time.
Another method of propulsion is gravitic induction. Since gravity consists of gravitons, and since gravitons are particles they could pushed around to go where you want them to go, or graviton particles can be created using futuristic technology. Where there are more gravitons, there is more gravity. So, you could create gravity slopes to propel a craft by having it "fall" in whatever direction you desire.
I think that reaction drives would not be the method of choice as far as propulsion goes, but rather manipulation of gravity would be far far better in terms of efficiency. As far as stealth goes... there won't be any emissions save for the gravity distortions caused by the ship moving around. I'm sure that futuristic sensor systems could pick up stuff like that. To truly run silent, a ship would accelerate along a vector, turn off all active systems and coast while hoping that your prey does not deviate from its course.
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"That was quick."
"Well you know, when you don't do it right it doesn't take as long."
The cloaking idea is nice to use without stealth fields like in Star Trek, because it demonstrates how you could be slightly like WW 2 or so far, using the equivalent tactic subs use (which is to run silent, go underwater, etc...) Underwater doesn't of course exist in space but I imagine effectively covering oneself is similar.
If we do have cloaking fields, then this is what I envision - a drive that doesn't have a visible emission, and a light-bending field. I think you could actually have vulnerabilities. Tell me darkk, is it possible to design lasers/beams in EVN or just sprites that can't hit cloaked ships? I know you can do this with missiles, of course, I was just wondering if you could get the shot to go overhead. Even in EVN an enemy cloaked ship (in normal evn) isn't much a threat, even if it fires without needing certain additions...
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There are only 3 kinds of people; those who can count, and those who can't.
(This message has been edited by Joveia (edited 03-23-2003).)
Well, how far in the future do you want to go?
And, btw, missiles are horrible for the reason you mentioned - they'd have to be mostly fuel to even have a chance of hitting a target that changes direction. If the ships have gravetic drives and the missiles don't, the they're useless.
Besides, a good laser can have intersteller range (although not effective range) and all the energy that would be put into fuel can be converted into punch.
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"In literature as in love we are astounded by what is chosen by others." Andre Maurois
Onii7/Frinkruds and his funky forums
macgamer.net
I think that some weapons will use fuel, some others will use beam. In fact, I think that normal beam weapons won't, since have their own energy sources, but that hypermodded (super versions of lasers or whatnot) would, as well as being illegal.
Damage amounts - in our universe it can go 3 ways: EV frozen heart, where ships are destroyed almost before you realise you're under attack, to EVN, to some other kind of universe where damage is very slow.
It would affect the storyline I predict. If it behaves like Spanish War Galleons, so it takes almost forever to destroy a ship, the universe will behave alot differently.
this post is of rather inferior quality
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There are only 3 kinds of people; those who can count, and those who can't.
I still say there's virtually no good reason to use a missile. If you can't see where they are, then there's no reason to fire a missile because it probably won't see them either. If you can see them, shoot them with a laser until they die.
As for damage, EVN got it fine. Anything longer would take forever.
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"In literature as in love we are astounded by what is chosen by others." Andre Maurois
Onii7/Frinkruds and his funky forums
macgamer.net
I've decided that it's quite good. However you could say that Ares was perfectly balanced, and I find that my plugin, which has by alternatives faster or slower deaths to be more interesting.
I guess I'll have to vary the races so that a player can taste some quick and short battles.
My thinking is this; some races will focus on very quick contentment, using missiles with only enough space to pack a few, and then dash. These races won't concentrate on armour either, they'll be all firepower. They will probably also make use of weapons that are spinal mounted, because they don't believe you need turrets if you're swarming.
Another race will be able to stand viable in combat for a longer time. Possibly energy weapons. After a while they obviously just don't have enough energy and at that time they pull out. These races will concentrate more on turrets and create more battleships (race 1 wouldn't necessarily see any advantage in a battleship.)
Race 3 will be some kind of engineering expert race. They'll create titanic ships (Think SSD) with amazing numbers of turrets, shielding and obviously they'll focus on very effecient energy weapons. These ships should be mobile space platforms able to go for years without sight of habitation, and will have thousand + man crews easily.
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There are only 3 kinds of people; those who can count, and those who can't.
Future Weapons?
LASER, however cool sounding, will probably never reach the efficiency required to destroy anything.
The primary weapons will probably be long range cruise missiles, probably not very maneuverable though. In space, these missiles would nearly always be loaded with nuclear warheads or something more powerful.
Plasma/Energy weapons could be possible, however, their range would be short and limited. The plus side is being able to take out specific targets, say the bridge of a hijacked craft.
The problem with most games nowadays is that they fail to take in the one-shot-kill policy. With todays missile technology, anything can be wiped out with a single hit from a missile. The size of the missile may vary, but usually, when your hit, your dead. I would imagine it to be the same way in space, one hit and your dead. However, that presents a problem as it makes gameply un-fun.
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"...yet gradually we recovered, venturing cautiously back into the void of space afraid of what we might find there."
Am I going to need to repeat myself until the end of time?
Missiles. Are. Bull****.
They're inefficient and just too slow. Lasers could fire across intersteller ranges (although they'd have trouble hitting non-planet targets at that distance). Missiles are MONUMENTALLY INEFFICIENT because they expend too much energy on propellant. You can shoot a missile down. While you CAN reflect a laser, it's vastly impractical to do so, given that the smallest cracks in your mirror could render it useless.
The only good reasons to use lasers over missiles would be for homing purposes - but considering the acceleration of any theoretical non-faster-than-light engine vs the speed of light, at any reasonable distance, dodging a laser would be impossible.
Oh, and the one-shot-one-kill thing might not be true. Depending on the relative power of the laser and size of the target (as well as how well compartementalized the target is) it might take a little bit of exposure for a fighter's laser to melt enough of it.
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"In literature as in love we are astounded by what is chosen by others." Andre Maurois
Onii7/Frinkruds and his funky forums
macgamer.net
(This message has been edited by Fleet Admiral Darkk (edited 03-29-2003).)
Lasers don't have to be reflected. Light can be bent by gravity waves, so a ship could simply be sheathed in a gravity field that will bend any incoming laser away from the ship. In any case, I agree with Skyfox that lasers are probably VERY inefficient at long ranges because of the loss of power due to 1/r^2. This fall-off of strength is very small (today, we can hit targets far far away with a laser and still get a reflection back.) but on a weapons laser, it would lose its hitting power the further a target got until it was no more than a bright light hitting them. (NOTE: I know **** about lasers, so I'm probably wrong. Oh well.)
Also, how are the lasers doing damage? Heating up the skin of the target? Or blasting it with hard radiation? There is a negligible amount of kinetic energy in light, and the amount of energy that would have to be pumped into a laser in order to do some kinetic damage would be astronomical (many many times the output of the sun). Radiation shielding that can block solar flares would attenueate lasers that blasted their target with hard radiation. And a ship skin that could efficiently transfer heat away from an impact point would further reduce the effectiveness of a laser weapon.
Plasma weapons might be a different story for directed energy weapons. They actually send a lump of superheated charged particles through space. Though not a light speed, they move awfully fast and would probably hit a target before the have time to react even if they did detect it coming at them. Also, you would have a significant amount of physical punch behind the plasma that impacts something because it has an appreciable amount of mass moving at a very high speed.
And let us not forget of course the vernerable rail gun. Pitching dust at someone at near light-speed will probably waste their ship rather quickly.
Your disparagement of missles is very unwarranted though. The smaller mass of a missle means that it can accelerate much faster than a warship can, and reach a much higher terminal velocity. While this doesn't matter much to your lasers, the TRACKING systems on the other hand need to target and track guns onto a very small, and very fast moving target. If the missle still has manueverability left in its engines, itself can make evasive manuevers to make it even harder to hit. Also, placing a nuclear payload on a missle will undoubtedly be much more powerful of a bang than a laser at range would pack. OR, if you don't like making hard contact, the missle's explosion could power a blast of lasers that would be fired at effectivly point-blank range into the ship.
And the final note is that you seem to be assuming that the missle is using a reaction drive to power itself. There is no reason for the missile to be using a reaction drive if ships are using reaction drives. I'm quite certain that reaction drives are NOT going to be the future. Gravity manipulation is a much more efficient and faster way to get around both in sublight and superlight speeds.
P.S. Nobody's silly enough to suggest that you can dodge a laser any more than a person dodges a bullet. In reality, a "dodging" person is trying to second-guess the targeter.
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"That was quick."
"Well you know, when you don't do it right it doesn't take as long."
(This message has been edited by El Spamo (edited 03-29-2003).)
Quote
Originally posted by Fleet Admiral Darkk:
Am I going to need to repeat myself until the end of time?
Missiles. Are. Bull**.
They're inefficient and just too slow. Lasers could fire across intersteller ranges (although they'd have trouble hitting non-planet targets at that distance). Missiles are MONUMENTALLY INEFFICIENT because they expend too much energy on propellant. You can shoot a missile down. While you CAN reflect a laser, it's vastly impractical to do so, given that the smallest cracks in your mirror could render it useless.
The only good reasons to use lasers over missiles would be for homing purposes - but considering the acceleration of any theoretical non-faster-than-light engine vs the speed of light, at any reasonable distance, dodging a laser would be impossible.
Oh, and the one-shot-one-kill thing might not be true. Depending on the relative power of the laser and size of the target (as well as how well compartementalized the target is) it might take a little bit of exposure for a fighter's laser to melt enough of it.
**
Even if we did have major advances in the energy department, the ratio of damage to energy required for a LASER makes them impratical. Lasers, also, would be limited to light speed, whereas it could be possible to mount a tachyon/warp drive on the missile. Lasers could come in use to melt incomeing missiles that are traveling STL. That would be one of their uses, also Lasers could be used for welding stuff over a long distance, but that doesn't seem to be an advantage unless the enemy ship has their fusion reactor lines open to space.
Hmm, thats anouther idea, if humanity ever discovers teleportation, is warping an explosive charge right into the enemy ships interior. 100% kill rate as there is no way to protect the inside of a ship. That would totaly change the way wars would be fought.
Considering how modern warfare has evolved down through the ages, would you settle for anything that fell short of killing your enemy in the first shot?
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"...yet gradually we recovered, venturing cautiously back into the void of space afraid of what we might find there."
Would you settle for something that couldn't even make it to the target?
At range, a ship could outrun a missile. And they're getting more efficient all the time - laser pointers would have been laughable only a couple decades ago. What's inefficient is the charging system - it's bulky and time-consuming. But the air force is experimenting with ones that can shoot down ballistic missiles. Why? Because they're better than missiles at any decent range.
Assuming any large difference in velocity between the target and the platform, a missile could easily be unable to acelerate to the velocity required.
And let's leave warp out of it. I could just say they'd make tacyon(sp?) lasers.
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"In literature as in love we are astounded by what is chosen by others." Andre Maurois
Onii7/Frinkruds and his funky forums
macgamer.net
Why would a warship outrun a missle? At relativistic (revalistic?) speeds, there wouldn't be much in the way of engagement anyways since the amount of time that opponents spend inside each other's engagement envelopes would be very small, missiles or no missiles. To actually engage an enemy craft, the relative velocities would need to be moderate to small. Missiles would certainly be able to make it to their targets due to the fact that they have a much higher capability of accelerating due to their smaller mass. A fleeing ship of course does have the capability of outranging the missiles, just as it can run away and outrange the attacking ship. La de da. At such high speeds, acceleration is everything and the ability to cram in a little more acceleration means the ability to manuever. Missles would probably accelerate like mad (several hundred thousand gravities) before burning out, giving a high terminal velocity (to catch running ships), or accelerate less in exchange for a greater time being able to manuever and track a target (manuevering ships).
But there is no good reason that a missile would be too slow to reach its target. And futuristic computers would most certainly be able to compute firing solutions to hit ships moving a high relative velocities at odd trajectories. Missiles will always have their place in naval combat, no matter what the setting.
ADDENDUM: I do recognize the extreme usefullness of having a weapon system that does not rely on magazines. Energy weapons do have the advantage of not running out of ammo as quickly, if they lack somewhat in the raw power department.
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"That was quick."
"Well you know, when you don't do it right it doesn't take as long."
(This message has been edited by El Spamo (edited 03-30-2003).)
Spamo. Imagine two warships on perpendicular courses. Not only would the missile have to null its velocity forward, it would then have to raise its velocity to equal that of the other ship. Intercept is the word I should be using, since space combat will likely feature ships with little ability to halt or turn around. Imagine a fleet of solar sail ships going at it!
Also, I submit that lasers could be used to shoot down missiles (the Air force is testing this right now with Anti-ICBM missiles mounted on 747s - I've got pics somewhere...). Therefor, as a laser cannot be shot down, it would be superior.
Further, ships could easily be made very large to minimize the impact of single missiles. Imagine a 17km radius sphere of bubble foam with a small core for habitation and booms going out of it to hold the solar sail.
Nuclear missiles lose a good deal of power in space due to their reliance on expanding atmospheric gasses to deliver damage.
IMHO lasers just can't cut the double-acceleration problem, the defenses problem, or the range problem.
BTW, a missile with small size would maneuver just as well as a ship with large size, assuming the engines and thrusters were porportional - so the missile would have a hard time there too. Air to air missiles are fast because they're desinged for speed at the expense of all else (like range).
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"In literature as in love we are astounded by what is chosen by others." Andre Maurois
Onii7/Frinkruds and his funky forums
macgamer.net
I don't think missiles would be crap. One reason is that they would be immensely useful in precision targeting in orbital bombardment. Lasers and plasma would be diluted by the atmosphere.
Another reason is that they would be easier to manufacture en masse than equip a ship with a power generator capable of firing a laser powerful enough to hit targets across the solar system. If you could have an accurate enough hyperjump, you could jump very close to an enemy ship and use thousands of thousands of miniaturised missiles to swarm their laser defenses and shoot them down.
Missiles actually do have a large advantage in speed. They can accelerate at more than 1 G's without worrying about killing the passengers (whereas 1 G in space locomation is very slow, that is what we're talking about for human ships, because of gravity.)
I believe that cloaking technology will be in use very widely at this time. It would be like being on a battlefield with alot of wreckage. In many ways, one hit one kill, and so you want to hide behind a piece of scenery or a broken wall. The cloaking field would be like that for ships.
Computers unfortunately cannot operate in a cloaked state, and most ships would be phasing in/out very quickly to get off shots, so the computers are ineffective at targeting because ships are constantly trying to evade shots by disappearing.
(*note this optional. I plan on doing a test of it and seeing how fun it is. But it does support putting humans on spaceships.)
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There are only 3 kinds of people; those who can count, and those who can't.
Well, if you're making it up, you're making it up.
And missiles still don't have enough of a speed advantage if the ship's initial speed is high enough - and it very likely will be, unless you want to use drive systems "not yet on the drawing board". Of course, this is the EVN engine, so acceleration/velocity ratios will be much higher than IRL.
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"In literature as in love we are astounded by what is chosen by others." Andre Maurois
Onii7/Frinkruds and his funky forums
macgamer.net
Are you familiar with anti-matter? Apparently a few grams is enough to propel a rocket across from one end of our solar system to the other. Imagine how fast a rocket would go with 50 kilograms of the stuff.
I think the greatest problem might actually be getting the rocket to go that fast without disintegrating. So to put it bluntly I completely dismiss your idea that rockets can't go fast enough. Clearly this is the quick acceleration alternative that makes them possible.
The most effective weapons seems so far to be these:
antimatter
railgun
Nothing else really comes close. Antimatter doesn't really need that much in the war of lasers. Lasers are hot, granted, but antimatter is infinitely more powerful. As long as you can 're-scan' the atoms to be anti-matter... you'd have effectively limitless power, weapon range etc...
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There are only 3 kinds of people; those who can count, and those who can't.
You missed something, Jov. Antimatter makes photons. Laser beams are made of photons. Use the antimatter to produce a laser beam instead. And even antimatter wouldn't be enough to overcome some of the acceleration problems. In the Physics of Star Trek, Klauss calculates a ship (or missile) using antimatter as a fuel would need to carry 3 or 4 times its mass in reactants to accelerate to .25 lightspeed. Ooops.
That speed could easily be achieved by laser-powered solar sails, our current best guess for how to build a starship, due to the fact that they don't carry their own powerplants.
Also, the laser would be able to use energy that would have been wasted moving the missile, and thus need considerably less antimatter.
Railguns WOULD be somewhat fine, because at the high end they become sorts of "matter lasers". They would, however, have tremendous recoil (assuming they were firing >=.80c bullets) and be rather cumbersome compared to lasers.
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"In literature as in love we are astounded by what is chosen by others." Andre Maurois
Onii7/Frinkruds and his funky forums
macgamer.net
(This message has been edited by Fleet Admiral Darkk (edited 04-01-2003).)
(This message has been edited by Fleet Admiral Darkk (edited 04-01-2003).)
