I been struggling for a new idea in space combat. And i think i got it. The real picture: Space is big relay big. You can relay see any thing in space well because the distances are so great and light travels so slow! Space ships are slow and follow well defined trajectories. Current space shuttle will not doge bluets any time soon. Current picture: Hundred of underwater submarines carry enough nuclear war heads to blow up a major city. They are hard to see because the ocean is so big. Sonars and stealthiness is the key. Current Hollywood space combat consists of ships flying couple meters chasing each together firing lazes and breaking all momentum conservation laws. You can even hear the other ships as they wiz buy you. It is all to unrealistic just like a nuclear submarine coming few meters a way form another sub and firing at it with nail gun. Ok here is what I think future combat in space will consists of managing one things effectively – detection. Here is the picture two ships flying through the voids of space hundreds of thousands kilometers apart. Now one ships detects the other ship through some kind of radar/hyperspace telescope. “We have a .1% lock on the enemy ship sir” says the radar man to the captain. Which means that if they fire their faster then light antimatter hyperspace-missile it would have .1% chance of hitting because of such large errors in the data they have this number could be far smaller. Captain says “Well we did not come to this star system for nothing fire!” The the hyperspace missile hurdles into space and comes out of warp several light seconds off. Boom large explosion all instruments pick it up everyone sees, everyone knows, computers start crunching. On the other ship “Master! We are under attack. Those pesky humans are at it again!” It is not surprising that the missile missed well it had 1 in a thousand chance of hitting. No one relay expected it to hit. 2 minutes later on the alien ship “Master we have analyzed all our data and estimate 1% lock on the human position. By firing at us they gave a way their position” Master wakes up form its hypersensitive trans “Fire 10 missiles and get them out of our space zone!” Ten missile thats 10 hyperspace signatures which like ripples in the water spread through space. Boom,boom,boom like fire crackers the 10 altimeter missile flash all around the human ship – but no one can hear them because there is no sound it just a lighting effect but the thunder never follows. Ten hyperspace signatures are enough marking to find the needle in the haystack it just has to crank through the computers to analyze and predict where the alien ship relay is. No one is relay hurt the missile have a small chance of hitting the ships but that chance rises every time the ship fires and every minute more the computers have to analyze the location on missile detonates close enough to the ship it melts it like butter. “2% 5% 7% and rising” says the officer to the captain as the computer reads in the results. “25%” and unheard number in space warfare! Computer orders automatic lunch of 4 hyper missiles even before the officer can say it and captain can blink an eye. Four missile each with a 25% chance of hitting hurdle towards the alien craft. It does not take a mathematician to figure out its chases are high – well 68.3%. Boom! “We detect a large explosion sir,” says the officer, “I think we got it!” “Lets get out of this zone we need to bring the fleet hear for some real hunting! Increase our detection accuracy!” Then end. What do you think about this type of combat? Rather then standard Hollywood movies or computer games? Please point out flaws or how to make this idea better! [Edited by - eiforall on November 28, 2006 7:59:32 PM]

I'm doing something like this. My ships(when I get into that) are designed to blast away at each other from ranges of 120 million meters, using drones, and other interesting bits of automation to deal with the 400 millisecond lag that you get at those ranges. My game will have lots of infrastructure management, however, so it will probably be a RTS game. Ships will have ridiculously fast and adaptive manufacturing capability, so they can reconfigure themselves as they learn more about each other.

However, not everything will be like that. Some rockets will be able to maintain a continuous thrust. With the human occupants of the ship immersed in fluorocarbon jelly that contains dissolved oxygen in large concentrations, they will be able to stand accelerations of 100 m/s/s or so. THis makes for a very cloe combat. with that kind of power, you notice each other's engine trails at 500,000 kilometers, and close very quickly, making short range weapons the order of the day.

What eiforall described is more like capital ship combat. What I think will occur will require fighter/interceptors and heavy fighters/bombers as well.

The capital ships are large targets and so would be slow to change velocities and also present a larger sensor image. This means that getting in close to the capital ship with another will be risky as the first ship to fire and hit the other has the major advantage. All you eggs are in one basket, so to speak.

However, if you used heavy fighters/bombers to attack other capitals, these ships would present a smaller radar image and also be more manoeuvrable than a capital ship. Also because these bombers are independent ships, they wont give away the location of you capital ship.

Tactically, the bombers also have another advantage. because they can accelerate and turn faster than a capital ship, the bombers can manoeuvre into the best position (to avoid firing arc from the target capital, etc) and so exploit weaknesses in the target. This gives them a massive advantage, and if 1 or 2 are lost in the battle, compared to loosing a capital ship, that is not too much of a cost.

So how can you counter a faster more manoeuvrable ship? Simple Use an even faster and more manoeuvrable ship: The Fighter/Interceptor.

The Fighter is perfect for destroying bombers as it can out manoeuvre the bomber, being lighter. It can dodge the missiles of the bomber and exploit the weaknesses in its defences, much as the bomber does to the capital. However, the fighter is not much use against a capital as to have such low weight (for acceleration and manoeuvrability) it would not have the capacity of the more powerful weapons.

Fighters also have the advantage of having a chance to intercepting long range missiles (maybe fired from a capital ship). This means that in a capital vs Capital fight, the Fighter/Interceptor acts as a defensive screen, giving that faction a powerful defence ability which would drastically tip the balance in their favour.

The other advantage of a Fighter/Interceptor is that, because they have a high acceleration, they make excellent scouts. If the weapons systems can be removed and enhanced sensor system installed instead, they can be used to scout large areas of space quickly and locate the enemy fleets.

Bombers could also be modified and act as Command ships relaying and processing the various sensor data from all the scouts in an area. Also, they could have large fuel tanks installed instead of weapons, which will extend the range and duration that scouts can operate in an area thereby further increasing the effectiveness of these tactics and strategies.

All of the above is based on the principles of combined arms. That is different "weapon" types with complimentary elements will be more effective than a single weapon type by its self.

eiforall, NIM, sounds much like part of my game. Put in the interior of the capitol ships and put NPC units inside taking care of business. Make it so that small fighter ships can invade enemy ships by drilling into the sides or such. Then have battles inside of ships. Then you can take over the ships instead of having to destroy them. :) Or if you don't want to have players multi-task with ships just dismantle the ship and have it give you items that can be used for upgrades and such.

Also one word, Rail-guns! Everyone loves hundreds of high velocity rounds flying through space.

On idea of fighters. Fighter is a small ship that is very fast and highly maneuverable. Just for the sake of argument say it weights 23,000 lb just as F-17 Cobra. I delivers 9,000 pound force in each engine totaling 18,000 pounds. So mas to power ratio is 23,000/18,000 = .72 so it outputs 72% of what it weight. Now consider Yamato battle ship waighing 72,802 tons. Wow now thats a lot. But say we design it to have the engines of F17 so in a since lets make a 72,802 f17. It would simply not fly. Why because the air will be to thin for it. But in space there is not air so it does not matter what shape your ship is. So what i am saying in space we don't have a problem and can build a 17802 ton ship to be just as maneuverable as 10 ton F17 provided we put as much size percent wize as the small ship.

It complicity wrong what you see in Hollywood. They just feed you that crap because of other shows before you did it. It just too late to change the idea that space being filed with gas called vacuum and that small mean maneuverable and large mean slow this is not air, or water where large objects drag more there is no drag!

A starship that is 1000 times larger made with same technology will fly similar to the tiny as long as 72% of their mass is in the engine.

Light speed weaponry is just ruled out. Its too easy to see, predict path and counteract. Space ships need some how to move faster then light to reach the gap between the stars (and much faster too 1000 times faster if you want ships to take a couple day trip between star systems)-other wise battle in space are almost ruled out – and this faster then light drive will be used in construction of missiles where 99% of it will be the engine if it has to be mounted or some sort of a hyperspace gun that can teleport bombs to correct location.

Take in over ships is also ruled out i think. My ships rely on detection. If you get too close to a star ship you become visitable – hey even a human could see you coming in to drill a hole. You will be destroyed if you come with in couple hundred miles – heck we can do it with present technology!

My point that future of space combat lies not in some fancy Hollywood effects but stealthenes and deadliness of modern submarines. When did you see little subs-fighters outmaneuver a nuclear bomb? O r little subs used to drill into another sub not as part of a rescue operation but a war strategy.

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So what i am saying in space we don't have a problem and can build a 17802 ton ship to be just as maneuverable as 10 ton F17 provided we put as much size percent wize as the small ship.

No, there is a slight problem of inertia. Yes you could have a ship with massive engines, but where then are you going to put the fuel? remember that for a rocket engine you need to expel mass to push the ship forward. So if 70% of the ship was engines, where then is the fuel that will be used in those engines. There is only 30% available for fuel storage, let alone anything else.

If you have a ship that weighs 18,000 tons, and 70% of it is engines (11,900 tons), that only leaves 5,100 tones, maximum, for fuel (it would in fact be far less than this).

Even with high efficiency engines, this is not going to get you very far.

Using F/M=A (Force/Mass=Acceleration).

Also if we take the values of the specs you provided:

The Fighter would be able to accelerate at: 18,000/23,000lbs=0.78

The capital would be able to accelerate at: 18,000/145,600,000lbs=0.000123

There is a reason it won't fly.

To get a capital ship with the same flight performance as the fighter you would need an engine that is 6,309 times as powerful (or larger) as the fighter engine.

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It complicity wrong what you see in Hollywood. They just feed you that crap because of other shows before you did it. It just too late to change the idea that space being filed with gas called vacuum and that small mean maneuverable and large mean slow this is not air, or water where large objects drag more there is no drag!

You are right it is not drag or a gas that would reduce the efficiency of capital ships, it is actually Mass.

Larger ships take more energy to manoeuvre and thus need larger engines. Also those larger engine need more fuel to push the ship around. So for larger ships that don't need to have high manoeuvrability, or will at least have a long time between refuling, smaller, more efficient engines and thus a slower acceleration and less manoeuvrability will be better. It is would be possible to build a capital ship that could fly like a fighter, but the fuel requirements would be so high that it would not last even 1 engagement without running out of fuel.

Without fuel, the capital ship is as manoeuvrable as a lump of rock.

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My point that future of space combat lies not in some fancy Hollywood effects but stealthenes and deadliness of modern submarines. When did you see little subs-fighters outmaneuver a nuclear bomb? O r little subs used to drill into another sub not as part of a rescue operation but a war strategy.

This is another reason to use fighters and bombers as a single capital ship would be a single target. You would be able to track the weapons fire back to them.

Using bombers and fighters, you could use them to circle around the enemy and attack it from any direction you want. This would not then reveal your main fleet (the capitals).

Also you could use fighters and bombers as decoys. You could give them some false sensor signal emitters that would make them look like a capital ship. This would then mislead the enemy into thinking that the capital ship is in one direction where as the fleet could be attacking from another.

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My point that future of space combat lies not in some fancy Hollywood effects but stealthenes and deadliness of modern submarines. When did you see little subs-fighters outmaneuver a nuclear bomb? O r little subs used to drill into another sub not as part of a rescue operation but a war strategy.

If we are looking at naval strategy as an analogy of space strategy, then you won;t see the Battle ship equivalent in space as the battle ship is rapidly becoming obsolete here on Earth. Carriers are the main stay of a naval fleet as they can launch bombers and fighters.

A carrier can launch AWACS that can even track down subs and then the bombers can then target them and destroy them.

This is the system I was proposing. You would have your Carrier (the capital ship) and then use modified bombers and fighters as AWACS to locate the enemy fleet. Then you would launch you fighters and bombers to attack that fleet from multiple angles.

All through out this situation, you would never have revealed you main fleet. Even if your attack was repelled, you could have tankers (modified bombers with fuel instead of weapons) to rendezvous with the surviving fighters and bombers and then, when the coast is clear, return to the main fleet.

If it is only Capital against Capital. Once you have engaged the enemy it is kill or be killed. If you fail in the first attack, you can not easily escape and hide again. You will be tracked and more force will be sent to intercept you. There is no hit and run tactics available, no harassment. It is all in or nothing. It severely limits your tactical and strategic potential.

Manoeuvrability is not just about turning and acceleration. It is also about how you apply those in the larger battle plan. Multiple ships are more manoeuvrable than a single one because you can deploy them in many different ways and attack and defend from many different angles. Multiple ships make the fleet more manoeuvrable.

Capital ships in space i think are out in my opinion. I was just trying to make a point that it is possible to build exact same maneuverability ship not mattering how big it is.

We talk about so much maneuverability here but the key to stelthenes is is not fast motion but not moving at all! So that ships that zip fast through space will be easy targets and will be shot down.

you missed the point with my calculation.

The Fighter would be able to accelerate at: 18,000/23,000lbs=0.78

The capital would have engines 6336 times larger and be able to accelerate at: (18,000*6336)/145,600,000lbs= 0.78

Why am i looking at naval war to simulate what will happen in space. Well i am looking at submarine underwater naval warfare because it is fought in an environment that is very different form own. I am not looking at air vs subs because they are different medium. Apples to oranges. The subs there move slow like foreseeable space ships and carry no real “guns” just nuclear rockets. Plus they need life support for the crew and use nuclear reactor to power them. I think they have the better analogy to space then Hollywood's carrier-fighter or battleships like engagements.

I think we will see space ships roughly same size depending what will be more profitable to make. If enganse can be made small then space ships will be smaller. If it hard to make 5 foot antimatter reactor then ships will be large with larger fuel sources.

strategy component to my theory ***

I think this theory give a far more interesting strategy then fighter/frigate/carrier rushes.
One detects a enemy space ship. The aggressiveness is set to 10% (meaning fire when that ship is 10% always visible.) But the enemy ship is hidden and remains at .1%. User decides to hyper space more ships. To hunt that enemy ship down. Enemy ship sees more ships hyperspaceing so it bring its friends. Now a cloud of our ships sitting among enemy ships every one watches the senors as they scan and rise the view of most ships to 1%-5%. Some one decides to sacrifice a ship and unhides it to like 25% ship fire and let them self to be seen becoming targets while the ship that are hunting the new ships also fire.
This a lot become like chess where you can eat some one with out yourself be eaten too. One also as to watch a rate of fire. Firing one missile does not expose you so much while fireing 10 at the same time could bring down your opponent faster you will expose your self a lot more you could hide yourself more by fireing 10 missiles – one missile every minute or some thing. Also hyperspasing in new ships as battle progress that are more hidden and hyperspacing old ships that are visible becomes also a valid strategy if hyperspasing does not leave a big mark on the scanners.

In my game the questions will be fire or not to fire... as more ships just like chess move into position.

One could still have classifications: fuel ships, command ships, war ships, radar ships, colony ships. It will not be fighter-carrier.

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you missed the point with my calculation.

Ah OK, I see what you were getting at.

Yes, it would be possible to have a capital ship with the manoeuvrability of a much smaller ship, but it would be impractical due to the fuel requirements and the massive engine sizes.

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Why am i looking at naval war to simulate what will happen in space. Well i am looking at submarine underwater naval warfare because it is fought in an environment that is very different form own. I am not looking at air vs subs because they are different medium.

But Air combat takes place in 3D, more so than subs, especially if the only weapon they have is Missiles.

Space combat will occur in 3D. This means that being able to change you velocity and headings rapidly will give tactical advantages. If some one launches a missile and you are able to detect it before it hits (through subspace sensors or whatever), and are able to move perpendicular to it then you have a chance to out manoeuvre it. This is the same with any kinetic weapons like rail guns (more so as these weapons have no manoeuvrability once fired).

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One detects a enemy space ship. The aggressiveness is set to 10% (meaning fire when that ship is 10% always visible.) But the enemy ship is hidden and remains at .1%. User decides to hyper space more ships. To hunt that enemy ship down. Enemy ship sees more ships hyperspaceing so it bring its friends. Now a cloud of our ships sitting among enemy ships every one watches the senors as they scan and rise the view of most ships to 1%-5%. Some one decides to sacrifice a ship and unhides it to like 25% ship fire and let them self to be seen becoming targets while the ship that are hunting the new ships also fire. This a lot become like chess where you can eat some one with out yourself be eaten too. One also as to watch a rate of fire. Firing one missile does not expose you so much while fireing 10 at the same time could bring down your opponent faster you will expose your self a lot more you could hide yourself more by fireing 10 missiles – one missile every minute or some thing. Also hyperspasing in new ships as battle progress that are more hidden and hyperspacing old ships that are visible becomes also a valid strategy if hyperspasing does not leave a big mark on the scanners.

I think that FTL (hyperspace) engines would enhance the Fighter/Bomber/Carrier system I proposed.

If you got a 0.1% potential lock on an enemy carrier, you could scramble some fighters to check it out. They would hyperspace in near it, scan the immediate area then hyperspace out.

If you had bombers on scramble standby, you could then launch and hyperspace them in if the target is confirmed. A heavy capital ship would not be able to leave and if it did enter hyperspace the fighters could follow and track it which would allow the bombers to lock on and attack.

Thush the game of cat and mouse would ensue. You would keep you capital on hyperspace standby as well as having a few wings of fighters ready to fend off any bomber attacks. All the while you would have fighters out patrolling the system looking for the enemy fleet. Your AWACS would then alert you to any targets or any incoming attacks. The capital would jump and launch the fighters. Any bombers that then try to attack, or any of the enemy fighters that are tracking you would have to defend against your own fighters.

If several carriers were in the system, then it does become a game of chess as you have to manoeuvre and send limited resource to scout out enemy positions. You could even have a carrier ready to jump in near the enemy capitals to launch a major bomber assault or use capitals with heavy fighter escorts as decoys as the fighter escorts would be able to hold off virtually all bomber assaults.

And on top of it all, launching an assault will not be as revealing as launching missiles as you can circle your assault teams around and attack from a different direction, thus not giving away the direction to your capital ship.

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In my game the questions will be fire or not to fire... as more ships just like chess move into position.

I don;t think this will lead to interesting gameplay. If the only choice you have is to fire or not and if you choice boils down to a gamble (that is it is down to chance whether your attack succeeds or not), then this does not lead to good gameplay. Also in a real world situation, a good general/captain would not base the success or failure of a mission on chance alone. Strategy and tactics are essential.

In your system you are focusing too much on what comes before the combat and not taking into account the finer details and what comes after the detection is made.

If you could put a Hyperspace engine in a missile, then what would be the most cost efficient would be to launch thousands of small sensor drones from outside the system along with hundreds of missiles. Both of these devices would have hyperspace engines and so rapidly find any ship in the system. Once a sensor drone has locked onto an enemy ship, the missiles would then jump to that location and target the ship.

But this is essentially identical to my Fighter/Bomber/Capital system. The drones are fighters and the Missiles are just bombers (although they don't survive the attack). Slowly moving around the system would be useless as if you remained in one spot too long you would be quickly found and destroyed.

Speed and fleet manoeuvrability become the most important aspects. As without them you slow moving, stealthy ship becomes a sitting duck that is essentially target practice.

The only effective defensive measure is to rapidly target incoming missiles and destroy them, this will require drones that can jump in where the missile will appear and destroy it before impact. So small, fast drones would be the key to this, again this is exactly what the fighters are.

The strategies and tactics available to a fleet that relies only on stealth and a few large ships can not counter the strategy of spreading out lots of smaller ships that can attack quickly and then move off. The slower stealthier ships will just not be able to manoeuvre fast enough without giving away their position (and therefore be attacked) to counter the fast hit and run tactics that the more mobile fleet would offer. And because the carrier could still then use the stealth approach, you would not be able to counter attack.

Why is hyeperspace technology relevant at all? isn't this a discussion of realistic space combat? FTL travel has no grounding in reality. None. Each hyperspace system is writer or designer specific, and thus requires different considerations in different stories. What rules are the hyperspace engines you use operating under?

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Why is hyeperspace technology relevant at all? isn't this a discussion of realistic space combat? FTL travel has no grounding in reality. None. Each hyperspace system is writer or designer specific, and thus requires different considerations in different stories. What rules are the hyperspace engines you use operating under?

This is absolutely true. The particulars of any FTL travel is complete fiction and so is purely up to the imagination of the designer as to how it would work.

This means that any discussion about how FTL might effect the strategies and tactics of space combat must be accompanied by a detailed description of how you envision it to work.

As for hyperspace enabled missiles, well if the minimum size for a FTL engine is 600m, then it would make it impossible to do this. But as that is dependant on what you, as the designer, envision as the mechanism of FTL, then you must state this.

I tend to classify the variously proposed FTL concepts into 4 categories
1) Fast Spin Up Unconstrained Topology: Basically this is just allowing ships to move where they want as fast as they want and ignoring relativity. This is the system that is used in Star Trek.

2) Slow Spin Up Unconstrained Topology: Like the previous category, this allows the ships to move how they want, but it take time for the engines to spin up (plot the course, etc) and allow FTL. This is the system used in Star Wars.

3) Fast Spin Up Constrained Topology: This system allows the ships to engage their FTL engines when they want, but they can only move to or from predefined points or along predefined routes.

4) Slow Spin Up Constrained Topology: This like #3 only allows the ships to travel along or between pre-set points/routes, however the engines can not be engaged at any time, they either take a long time to spin up or can only be engaged at key points. This system would be like having jump gates that are what the ships used to enter and exit hyperspace.

Of course you can combine them. For instance you might allow ships to have Fast Spin Up Unconstrained Topology for ships within a star system, but then require a Slow Spin Up Constrained Topology to travel between star systems.

Or, you might have Slow Spin Up Unconstrained Topology for large ships, but then allow Fast Spin Up Unconstrained Topology for smaller ships.

In my previous posts I had been using the Fast Spin Up Unconstrained Topology system as that was the one most closely matched by eiforall's posts.