Once again, that last post had an error. Joules per pound of TNT if that were true: (2.6*10^8)/128. I 128th of what I said before, but still too large.
-Roberts

I think lasers could also be greatly diminished in their effectiveness by deploying clouds of chaff controlled via magnetic fields. Of course, you''d have to do this after the attack begins because then you''d give yourself away in a heart beat. But a cloud of refelective chaff that could be positioned around a ship would make lasers virtually useless...and the defending ship could use outside drones for the eyes and ears of the ship, or just move the chaff around by the fields.

So I think you can still have virutally invisible ship, that could still be nearly invulnerable to lasers, which leaves other energy weapons and kinetic weapons as potential threats. As for minefields, I suppose you could do this with good enough IFF systems, but you''d have to be careful with merchant ships coming into system.

Personally, I''ve been looking into possibilites of FTL travel rather than realistic technologies that are at least technologically viable (if not economically) such as laser sails, antimatter engines, and the like.

I dug up some interesting stuff from NASA site (just do a google seach on "interstellar travel"), and am currently looking at some Quantam laysites as well. Personally, I''d prefer to FTL travel via teleportation. According to Bell''s theorem, something goes fater than the speed of light (this has been proven and is not theory), but it was neither matter nor energy...it was information. Some scientitsts used this and were able to teleport a single hydrogen atom....instantaneoulsy.

Granted going from atom to sapceship is a huge stretch, but if possible would make for some very interesting strategy. If it were possible to make calculations and just teleport across space instantly, then stealth really isn''t important anymore. And defenses like minefields would also be useless. Essentially, you could drop in system anywhere you wanted to. There''d be no way for the defender to prepare other than layer the system with orbiting bases and roving fleet patrols.

I like this concept much better than wormholes, spatial distortions, gateways, tachyon drives or warp space. This form of FTL makes planetary combat a more interesting and plausible scenario, and requires a lot of strategic forethought on the parts of the players.

One more quick aside....from the NASA sites, there is some research going on about reactionless drives. It''s a far stretch from inertialess drives, but basically these scientists say it IS theoretically possible to develop drives that require no reaction mass to be exerted from the ship for propulsion. One of the possibilities mentioned was a "space differential" and much more practical, laser sails. Essentially, photons DO have mass and they do exert a push. It is possible to create huge space sailing vessels that use lasers as their thrust. Interesting stuff...I''ll post a link up if anyone wants it

More details on the math:

mass-density(as oppposed to molar density) of nitrogen(approximates air) at room temperature I discovered by a quick google search to be 1.251 kg/m^3 (or g/L). Normal human total lung capacity, also discovered by a quick google search, is 3-5 Liters. The credibility of the site from which I got the calories to kiloton conversion is dubious, but a quick search revealed the exact measure to be less. The site I now receive my information from is:
http://www.astro.virginia.edu/class/oconnell/astr121/guide22-s02.html

Converting their 4E+16 ergs to joules yields 4E+9 joules per metric tonne of TNT.

Anyway, back to the math.

E=mc^2
c = 299792458 m/s
c^2 = 8.98755E+16 m^2/s^2

m = dV
V = 5 Liters
d = 1.251 kg/m^3
m = 0.006255 kg

E = 5.62171E+14 J (Joules are kg*m^2/s^2, btw)

E -> kt = 140543 kt. In other words, 140.5 Megatons.

For reference, the largest nuclear weapon ever made was ~100 Megatons developed by the Soviets. The largest ever made by the US was 25 megatons.

Thank you for pointing out my mistake.

Looking some more, apparently that page was reputable(see
http://www.milnet.com/milnet/nukeweap/Nfaq12.html
) But they used kilocalories instead of calories(kilocalories are what is on the backs of foods, often the distinction is nothing but a capital C)

I don''t really like the idea of teleportation. I really can''t see it working without a receiver on the other end. I personally prefer the idea of bending space so that by moving forward, it''s actually closer than it "should be"(with a feet or inches instead of lightyears magnitude)

Also, the lasers would not need large apertures(that''s for using large amounts of energy, not using the energy efficiently), they would need long barrels(aperture is width, barrel is length), and in order to use the energy they emit efficiently, the aperture to length ratio has to be small.

Also, I never even considered interstellar distances. I''m mainly concerned with the distances within the solar system.(for example, a war between denizens of the outer solar system for independence from the Earth/Mars empire.) But even if you did attack from another solar system, why decelerate? Why not just keep accelerating? A solar system strafing run. You could bombard a planet and still be moving at 60%c relative to them. Start coasting when you pass the offending planet.

-Flarelocke

For intrasteller distances my strategies have fewer benifits, but I still think ships are needlessly inefficent. Also, the idea for a strafing run is simply a few steps down from a missle. Why stop a ship and send it back on the many year long trip to refit? It would be cheaper just to have it smash into the enemy. As for intrasteller combat, say, between the moons of Jupiter and Earth, the use of ships would still be inefficent compared to simply recoverable missles. Using sufficantly well designed codes to avoid them being broken you could launch missles in looping orbits (from Jupiter) and pick them up later on the other side. It would be less effective for Earth since the missle travel time to target pass ratio would be less, but it would still be better than ships. Ultimatly, we all must admit that humans are not needed on spaceborn warships and to make cheap sucidal weapons rather than reusable towing weapons that can be destroyed more easily is simply a logical step. Also, lasers with larger apertures generally are coherant over longer distances, although more energy is wasted from non-parralel beams.

In order to create a universe in which at least one human participates as a pilot, one must necessarily imply the failure of software engineering that is reliable and intelligent enough for useful military application. That includes spaceborne missiles, unmanned drones, and large unmanned ships.

In your scenario, ships would then be a distributed network of missile launch and recovery facilities, to make saturation destruction less feasible. Planetary orbits are a fairly small volume, even when considered in aggregate. And industry would most likely concentrate in geostationary orbit, so saturating that to cripple production is likely policy.

Y''know, I just realized that we''re probably blowing the whole survivability thing out of proportion. There''s never going to be a scenario in which the gaming ideal, "just don''t screw up, and we won''t kill you off" is true. Examing comparable arguments we''re making to, say, an urban warfare scenario, and you''d come up with a mutually assured destruction conclusion, just like here. Another gaming ideal, the superiority of maneuver warfare over attrition warfare, simply doesn''t hold. The one with the most firepower, the biggest guns, the most people and the best targetting wins is the idea of attrition warfare. It doesn''t make the gamer feel as successful as he would with a smaller fleet, less technology, few weapons, and himself against a fleet.

-Flarelocke

Me idea for intrastellar "ship" combat is similar to what you said, but I suspect industry to be more concentrated in lower orbits (due to the fact that more would be launched to the factories than from, so energy would be conserved since not all of the material would need to be sent all the way up. Most would be in a lower orbit). Also, the asteroid belt would be good. Or, it could still be largely on the surface assuming space elevators.
Well yes, if we wanted to make a good but realistic game, I think the thing to do would be to falsify one technology. Have a spacial compression drive that takes huge amounts of energy but allows for transit to areas with a very small gravitational wells but allows transit at 100 times c or thereabouts (this would allow for the trip from Sol to Proxima Centauri to take about 13-14 days I think, which would make for general travel to be at time scales around that of ealy 19th Centuary naval combat), then just say somthing about stripping higgs-bosons (is that the mass particle? It think it is) and reducing mass (except for the mass of the fuel ejaculate [don''t snicker bartkusa]) to allow for near light speed flight for intrastellar distances (getting from low grav wells (LaGrange Points good candidates, like they did in Independance War) to targets). To control for obvious superiority of computers one would likely need to just screw around with EMP or somthing and hope no one minds. Then, with the game just have great point defense weapons and reflectice ships and say that for weapons to hit the enemy must get in close enough to beat the speed of the point defense weapons. Then you have science to support a game with only a few flaws. You could justify fast point defense by saying that rounds were directed with magnetic fields meaning that no barrels needed to be turned, they could be redirected in milli/microseconds. Now you have a game with enough science to usually satisfy and still all the things people want, and while fighters are still illogical, Indpendance War did a good job of eliminating fighters but still have a fun game. Still, you don''t really have a realistic game, you just have a game that took as much science as possible and dropped the bits that made it boring. You could have a good stratagy game based on ALL real science and technology that can be anticipated, but that has not really been the subject, or so it seems. If you want to discuss that just tell me, I have some ideas for such a game.
-Roberts