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I guess, at the energy scale I'm thinking for the next few decades, it would take several shots to take down a massive ship. But it would have to be a HUGE ship to soak up 5 terajoules without disintegrating. mybe a large portion of it could be plain water. Latch onto a random comet and use it as armour?

Actually, the solution to this is not to make heavier ships to absorb the energy of the impact, but to make lighter ships that allow the shot to penetrate the ship and leave out the other side. That way you don't absorb the energy and it does far less damage.

All you need is a thin hull that offer very little resistance to the shell, but is capable of self repair (maybe memory metal, a 2 part foam, etc) and these powerful weapons are next to useless (however, missiles become the killer weapons as they spread their energy over a larger area).

To avoid hull breaches, all you need to do is evacuate the air from the ship and put everyone is space suits and connect the air supply directly from the ship's life support system to the suits (with a backup on-board supply with the suits).

You could almost perforate the ship and it would not reduce its effectiveness much. If all systems had several backups, then this kind of ship would not be taken down easily by rail guns.

Hmm, a lightly armoured ship, with weapons capable of taking out a heavier armoured ship, sounds like a bomber to me.

Ok. I think you are not quite understanding my point about the ships. Don't think of them as a fighter plane or a bomber plane. But think of them as a ship designed to take out a specific type of ship.

So you would have an:
Anti capital ship (this is the bomber)
An Anti-Anti capital ship (the fighter)
and an Ant-Anti-Anti capital ship (the capital ship its self).

If you have a capital ship, then the enemy will design a ship that is effective at destroying your capital ships. To counter this you will design ships that are capable of destroying their anti capital ships, and so on. Any arms race inevitably leads to combined arms.

The Fighter, Bomber, Capital is just the simplest one.

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A fighter/bomber zooming around dodging missiles and that from a ship to get close enough to fire off their shots isn't going to happen.

Again, you are not taking in what I am saying. The Bombers will not be "Zooming" around, they will form at a position outside the effective range of a capital. This would be at a point where their targeting/sensor system does not allow a clear shot at them. Remember at a distance of 1 light second (roughly the distance between the earth and the moon, not far really) being 0.1 degrees off target will mean that you would not be able to hit a decent size target (like a capital ship even).

A fast moving projectile (say a guided rail gun shell) could still be easily avoided if the ships can move fast enough. Also due to the time light takes to travel, the capital ship would see the bombers with a 1 second delay. So to stay out of the firing line, all they would have to do is strafe perpendicular to their target and change their heading ever second. This technique would even make them immune to lasers as weapons.

These missile boats/bombers would be able to stay at this range and use guided missiles to target the bigger and therefore less manoeuvrable capitals with ease and they would never have to "get in close".

How could a capital defend it's self against this?

They could launch their own guided missiles, but then the bombers could still employ counter measures, and being small enough targets, far smaller than a capital ship, actually avoid them. Also if the bombers had a screen of interceptor that could target the incoming missiles from the capital, this would further screen them from the counter attacks of the capital.

The only resort the capital has is to launch ships fast enough and manoeuvrable enough to close with the bombers (if the capital attempt to close, then bombers could just accelerate faster and re-establish their distance). These small fast/high acceleration ships would be able to get within range of these bombers and destroy them. These interceptor ships would also be useful for targeting incoming missiles from the bombers much as the fighter screen around the bombers protected the bombers from the capital's missiles.

So again, we come down to the Fighter, Capital, Bomber combination.

If all you had was a capital ship with missiles and point defenses, this fighter and bomber combination would obliterate you as the larger, more massive capital could not hoe to match the manoeuvrability of the bombers, and the fighters would screen the bombers from any slower moving ordinance that could be used to home in on the bombers.
What possible strategy or tactic could the slower capital have against this kind of coordinated attack. And remember at no time would these fighters and bombers get closer than 1 light second.

So it is not down to the power of the weapons. High speed weapons at that range are next to use less (as they will not be able to accurately target the ships due to the speed of light) and slower moving weapons are destroyed by the fighter screen. If fast moving weapons are out, and slow moving weapons are out, what is left?

These ships are not dodging bullets, but foiling the targeting systems of their target (you can't hit what isn't there - float like a butterfly, sting like a bee and all that).

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How many fighters do you plan to field? Small fighter, very limited amount of ammo, or do you plan to use some reactor based ammoless system?

Well that is dependant on the weapons type and the design of the fighter. As I have said previously, you could convert a bomber to act as a resupply for the fighters and so even with limited ammo, the strike force would still be able to have some staying power. But, the other advantage of having the re-usable weapons platforms is that once they have expended their ammo and fuel, they could return to the capital which would have a much larger store (or if you wish to keep the capital hidden if the fighters and bombers are tracked, then they could just rendezvous with a supply ship from a modified bomber).

So my capitals are harder to track, I can launch strike forces that can remain outside the effective weapon fields from you capitals and I can cover more areas with sensors (due to the fighters/scouts). Even if we were matched in number of ships (that is for each of my fighters or bombers you would have a capital), I would still hold the advantage simple because I can hit you and you can't hit back and I can find you much more easily that you can find me.

Yes, and my capital ship can shoot down all the missiles your small ships fire at me, AND fire lots of highspeed, guided missiles at your interceptor screen. How many missiles can they shoot down?

100?

1000?

10000?

1ls means active sensors are delayed by 2 seconds. This actually isn't a problem unless someone has faster than light weapon platforms and that. Your small ships hovering out at 1ls against a ship designed to engage ships at ranges far beyond that. Sensor drones would deploy, and collect data, beaming it back to the capital ship. This then is used to launch missiles, that then keep in contact with the sensor data streams, always updating.

You suggest larger, reusable multistage missiles, I suggest smaller, single use multistage missiles. Basically everything you have suggested can be done with a missile. Cruise missile anyone?

I think the most effective method of killing a large space battle ship once it is detected would be to surround it with several ships that shoot a veriaty of weapons: lasers, rail guns, nuke missiles, charged particles each from different ships.

The problem with missiles is they would be painfully slow (compared to c), easily detected if accelerating fast (heat, light), this also gives away the position of the ship they were fired from. But they could change course, and would only have to explode a few km from their target to cause damage. This also would make nuke missiles good anti nuke missiles. 1 could probably explode and destroy any number of enemy missiles if they were close enough.

I particularly like lasers (powered by fusion/antimatter generators) for shooting at a capital ship. The only defense against this attack is to constantly accelerate in random directions fast enough to accelerate 1/2 the length of your ship in the time it takes the laser to reach you. If they fire these lasers at a distance of 1 light second, you need to accelerate and move your ship out of the way in 1 second. For a 1 km long battleship they need to accelerate at 1000 m/s/s (102 g's) perfectly perpendicular to just miss the laser. Your engines would have to constantly produce that thrust in random directions (you wouldn't have to produce as much thrust in the other dimensions of the ship, if its only 100 m across, 10 g's would be needed.) To get maximum use of energy, you would need 6 large engines each capable of producing the needed thrust for their respective dimensions of the ship.

The problem worsens when you have more than one ship firing at you. If more than 4-5 lasers were coming at you from different directions, they could propably hit you often by random chance.

Obviously these accelerations are impossible, so to defend against a laser attack a ship would have to be able to detect and destroy any ship that gets even close enough to fire a laser effectively, probably 10 or 100 light seconds or more. Also, the mechanical systems to aim the laser could not always fire right where they aim and exact location of target would only be known to a few 10's of meters at best.

The best defenses would be to become smaller and more numerous, avoid detection, and possibly plating your outer hull with mirrors that reflect that frequency of lasers; however, this would make you easily detectable by that frequency of sensor and mirrors do not absorb 100% of light. If the laser was powerful enough that 1% or so would be enough to melt the mirror locally and expose the hull to 100% of the laser's power for a time.

Firing a laser does not give away your position to the target unless you hit the target and even then would get general direction at best. The laser and reactor would not be 100% efficient, so there would be heat radiation given off somewhere, possibly not in the direction of fire if designed right.

The strategies with using rail guns and charged particle guns would be similar to lasers, but they would be slower. Charged particles would be easier to aim since no moving parts would be needed, you can use magnetic fields, though, I'm not sure if they would even work over the distances we are talking here.


Again, like the OP said, it all comes down to detection. The more accurate you can locate your target the easier it is. The fewer number of targets you have, the easier it is. The most effective fleets would have:

1-good detection, through drones and sensors
2-use a variety of craft/drones with different strengths (some good at detecting, some near undetectable, cheap and dirty craft who house only weapons, fast, etc)
3-use weapons/propulsion/communication that don't give away their position (this pretty much excludes radio communication, lasers might work, and if you are staying in the realm of known physics, all propulsion technologies leave you open to detection (except maybe lasers somehow but the energies required are again outside the realm of known physics. We need reactionless drives! :)

The first thing I’d like to say is realistic space combat wont have anything besides long range torpedo launching space vessels. No fighters, no bombers, no escorts, destroyers, battleships or carriers.

Basically, nothing cool. Nothing we’re used to. Space combat is boring, slow, and involves little tactics.

It’s a shame really…lol

Check out this link.
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3t.html

now lets forget I mentioned that evil little link and get back to whats fun ;)

Edtharan, you said

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this is why I said that you would need a bomber to take out a capital. Fighters just could not cut it.

I would contend that a bomber could not do this either. Granted that a fighter or bomber is not a small craft like we have today for such missions (I see them as rather large but much smaller than a cap ship) but I still don’t think a bomber would be capable of destroying even the smallest cap ship. It simply cant carry the arms to do so.

In my capital ship combat game (what, is that 4 guys in this thread who are making a similar game?…lol) we have fighters and bombers as well. But the bombers are only used to disable and damage large capital ships. Hit the sensor array, the engines, some thruster packs, weapons etc. basically everything externally mounted is bomber fodder but actually getting through the armor, hull, super structure…I cant see that as happening.

Edtharan, said

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The biggest problem with certain point defences (like flak) is that they are an explosion. If this sends out shrapnel with enough velocity to destroy a missile, then, because there is no air resistance in space, that same shrapnel will impact the ship as well. Point defence systems would most likely be high powered lasers to evaporate the incoming ordinance.

You’re assuming, of course, that the armor of the flack spitting ship is as thin as that of a missile.

Point defense would be immensely useful! Be it lasers, bullets like the Phalanx systems, anti-missile missiles, or flack, PD would be useful. I think that the slight paint scratches a vessel would receive from debris would be an acceptable loss as opposed to tossing on a few more thousand pounds of armor plate! Take away some plate, substitute with lost of small PD systems and what happens? All of a sudden your ship accelerates faster, turns faster, stops faster etc.

Imagine what PD would do to a squadron of 10 bombers? Christ, some things simply have to be ignored to make a game fun.

Enough with the commenting on other peoples words…I don’t want to seem combative [wink]

Anyway, for the last 6 months or so I’ve struggled with our capital ship game. On one hand I desperately wanted something realistic because it’s never been done before. On the other hand the more realistic I made it the less fun it became!

Talk about a mind fuck!

I had to come to a compromise because it’s a game. It has to be fun. But it can still be fun and be a pretty realistic capital ship simulation. For example. Realistic: combat takes place way outside visual range. We had combat taking place from 100,000 kilometers to 5 million kilometers. Can you say boring? So we made a sacrifice and brought everything into just outside visual range to well within visual range. Eh..the things you forfeit for Gameplay.

Hey Edtharan, have you considered that a space vessel will give off a lot of heat? Think about it. everything inside the vessel generates heat. The circuits, the engines, the powerplant, even the crew.

What happens to that heat? It has to be exercised from the vessel otherwise the crew will cook and the circuits will melt.

This’ll mean the main form of detection will be via IR sensors. Has to.

That means that if you shut down and “run silent” you’ll effectively be invisible.

That brings back the “wet navy” tactics eiforall talked about…at least for subs.

We’ve imagined it. burn towards the enemy fleet. Shut your engines down, cover your heat sinks, mask your EM signature and coast toward the enemy. At the last second, when your close, turn everything back on, light him up with rail guns and missile batteries, and burn away fast.

Or, at a very long range, launch a lot of large torpedoes. They burn on a vector that’ll bring them close to the estimated enemy vector, then they shut down their engines and go ballistic. This also makes them silent.
When they get close to the enemy they turn their engines on and maneuver the last few kilometers. Hopefully they get somewhat inside the PD envelope.

Fleets:Battlespace
our game site.
One post down we have a little prototype of the game. Just a top down 2d thingy™ with blips that go blip and you can launch torpedoes at enemy vessels but it gets the idea across [wink]

In fact what we’re doing it applying all wet navy tactics to space and it’s working out really well.

Every once in a while this same discussion pops up here and in other places. I love it every time. Heh

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Yes, and my capital ship can shoot down all the missiles your small ships fire at me, AND fire lots of highspeed, guided missiles at your interceptor screen. How many missiles can they shoot down?

How many indeed. How many can the capital shoot down?

At 300,000km (1 light second) and an acceleration of 20g (very fast), your missiles would still take hours to even get close to me. Mean while, these missiles are burning at 20g and are releasing a lot of heat. I can detect them on sensors and fire my own intercept missiles. These would be smaller self guided kinetic weapons (probably about 5 to 10 times the size of a modern day rifle bullet).

My Fighters could each hold over 500 to 1000 rounds of these and my supply ship (modified bomber) could most like hold around 10,000.

From the time you launch your missiles, I have a leisurely couple of hours to hours to aim and fire off my counter strikes. Yawn...

Now, my ships are attacking from 4 direction (in a tetrahedron pattern). This means that you capital is having to co-ordinate assaults from more than one direction and these direction keep changing. You can't concentrate you sensors and "point defence" in any one direction. Any weakness in your ships fire arcs can be exploited.

If we are using Nukes as missiles (say 1KT minimum - actually nukes are not all that effective as a space born weapons as I'll explain later), then all I have to do is be lucky once. You have to be lucky at least 4 times. If our point defences are comparable, then if we are just considering the gamble 4 to 1 odds are much better. Not only that, but I would have reserve bombers still with my carrier that could re-enforce any bombers you shoot down.

You might have more missiles than me, but you have more targets to hit to neutralize me. I only have 1.

Also I can make hit and run attacks. If it takes your missiles several hours (it would be around 10 at least if not a couple of days) to reach me, then you would not be able to touch me. My ships could move in quickly, shoot, and move out again fast.

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I would contend that a bomber could not do this either. Granted that a fighter or bomber is not a small craft like we have today for such missions (I see them as rather large but much smaller than a cap ship) but I still don’t think a bomber would be capable of destroying even the smallest cap ship. It simply cant carry the arms to do so.

A Bomber could carry the same weapon types that a capital ship could so if a capital can have a long range missile, then a bomber could as well. The only difference is numbers.

Despite point defence systems, even today they do not attempt to "get past them" by firing lots of missiles. They use sensor jamming and other techniques to get through. Sure they still have to fire several missiles, but a bomber could easily carry this kind of compliment ratio.

A bomber could even be a small capital ship in it's own right, stripped of most of it's point defences and armour and loaded up with ordnance.

When I use the term "Bomber" I am only referring to a ship designed to destroy capitals. Weather this is a ship that is only 10m long or 100m long, it is the Role of the ship that is important.

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In my capital ship combat game (what, is that 4 guys in this thread who are making a similar game?…lol) we have fighters and bombers as well. But the bombers are only used to disable and damage large capital ships. Hit the sensor array, the engines, some thruster packs, weapons etc. basically everything externally mounted is bomber fodder but actually getting through the armor, hull, super structure…I cant see that as happening.

Well, destroying the weapons (or at least the long range attack weapons, not point defences) and the engines would effectively destroy the ship. No way to change course and no way to strike back, would make the capital a drifting coffin for the entire crew. You would need to do enough damage to the engines to destroy them, not just disable them.

Once you have disabled a capital ship like this, you would not have to give it too much more consideration. They can't strike back and they can;t, under their own power, return for repairs, so they are, for all intents and purposes destroyed. Vaporisation of a capital would not really be feasible not would it be good use of you military resources.

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You’re assuming, of course, that the armor of the flack spitting ship is as thin as that of a missile.

But that shrapnel will still damage external things like weapons ports, sensor arrays, communication equipment, etc, even if it doesn't punch through the hull.

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Point defense would be immensely useful! Be it lasers, bullets like the Phalanx systems, anti-missile missiles, or flack, PD would be useful.

Useful. Yes.

Able to be an effective shield for a slow moving ship. No.

remember, point defence for a capital either has to be 100% effective or you run the risk of a single hit obliterating your only weapon platform. With a fleet of bombers, even if the point defences and fighter shield is only 90% effective, they can still keep attacking with the loss of a few ships.

By using the capital ship as a weapons platform you are putting all you eggs into one basket. One hit, and it is game over.

Another "holywoodism" that many people fall into is thinking that since Nukes do so much damage and are so powerful (release a lot of energy) that they would make good space weapons. They would not make good weapons.

The reason a Nuke does so much damage here on earth is that the neutrons that are released by it when it detonates super heats the air. This causes a rapid expansion and the blast wave flattens the area around it.

In space there is no air for the neutrons to heat up. So the energy of the nuke is not direct into doing damage. Only the material of the bomb caseing is heated and accelerated by these subatomic particles and this mass is then spread out over the circumference of the blast.

Lets assume that the missile weighs 1 ton and the Nuke is detonated 1km from the target.

1 ton of material spread over a sphere 1km in radius. You would have to be very unlucky to actually get hit with a single atom from the casing. For the energy of the nuke to do damage there must be transference of energy from the bomb to the target. If this energy is not transferred, then no damage will be done.

Nukes would only be effective on direct contact with the target. Even then, it would more likely ablate the armour than vaporise the ship.

You could do nearly the same amount of damage by using a conventional warhead that uses a shaped charge that detonates moments before impact, firing shrapnel at the target's hull.

Even a conventional warhead that detonates clear of the target without the shrapnel will not do much damage.

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I had to come to a compromise because it’s a game. It has to be fun. But it can still be fun and be a pretty realistic capital ship simulation. For example. Realistic: combat takes place way outside visual range. We had combat taking place from 100,000 kilometers to 5 million kilometers. Can you say boring? So we made a sacrifice and brought everything into just outside visual range to well within visual range. Eh..the things you forfeit for Gameplay.

Yes. This is what I though of. This means that any slow moving ordinance, like missiles, are completely ineffective against targets that have high accelerations and high velocity ordinance, like rail gun slugs (guided or not) have a very high miss rate.

The slower your ships acceleration the, the greater the effective range of the attacker. This means that the bombers, being lighter and therefore a higher acceleration than a capital has a greater effective range against the capital than the capital has against them. They can sit in the optimum range and pummel the capital while being less prone to the return fire form the capital. The faster their acceleration the closer they can come, this is what will keep the size of a bomber from getting too big (because then it is essentially capital against capital and you loose the advantage of combined arms).

Visual range for space does not have the same meaning as it does in earth based combat. It is better to talk about effective range of the weapon against the specific target.

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Hey Edtharan, have you considered that a space vessel will give off a lot of heat? Think about it. everything inside the vessel generates heat. The circuits, the engines, the powerplant, even the crew.

Yes. A carrier can still operate quite effectively on minimal systems (if designed correctly). It would be able to launch fighter, bomber, scout, interceptor and supply ships without needing to power up their engines. So it could be launching offensives even while silent running.

Whereas the single capital gun ship, for it to make any course corrections (say to intercept a blip on the sensors, or to avoid a scout from the carrier) then it would need to power up its engines and release a lot of heat. If these blips were nothing but sensor ghosts, or even if they are a credible threat. Then any response by the gun ship would give away it's location.

The carrier would still be hidden and it could be launching offensives at this gunship and the gun ship would have no clue as to where the carrier is and so could not launch counter offensives. It is, once it responds in any way, a sitting duck.

The carrier, with it's bombers and fighters could destroy the gunship without the gunship ever knowing where the carrier is, they could never radio the carrier's location to other gun ships as they would never know it's location.

The carrier on the other hand, once the gunship is detected, could signal (through an AWACS so as not to reveal the carrier's location) to another carrier to join the attack. That is stealth. Attack without being seen.

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Or, at a very long range, launch a lot of large torpedoes. They burn on a vector that’ll bring them close to the estimated enemy vector, then they shut down their engines and go ballistic. This also makes them silent. When they get close to the enemy they turn their engines on and maneuver the last few kilometers. Hopefully they get somewhat inside the PD envelope.

That is the most effective missile attack strategy so far. Still, this requires you to first locate the target or you loose all that ordinance, and risk giving away your location.

IF you are still just a gunship, all your eggs are still in one basket. It is a weakness that a more mobile approach exploits.

This kind of strategy works just as well for bombers. The bombers could leave the carrier and drift off on a vector different to the carrier. When they are near the enemy, they launch their missiles, release loads of sensor chaff (it could be any sensor disruption tech like metal strips or up to holographic emitters - whatever your tech is). This prevents the target from locking their weapons onto the bomber and also interferes with the point defences.

After dropping their chaff, the bombers do a hard burn and return for rearming and another hit and run.

You can do the exact same trick with one use weapons, but the bombers can also be used in other ways and are so more flexible (tactically) than the one shots.

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That brings back the “wet navy” tactics eiforall talked about…at least for subs.

Yes, space combat will be a bit like subs, but it will also be a bit like surface ships, a bit like aircraft and also something completely different.

In fact, if you think about it, it should be like all of them as subs, surface ships and aircraft operate in a 3D space. Atmospheric modellers model the oceans as just another layer of the atmosphere. Remove the atmosphere and the oceans and you have a situation not unlike that of space (although near a planet).

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I think the most effective method of killing a large space battle ship once it is detected would be to surround it with several ships that shoot a veriaty of weapons: lasers, rail guns, nuke missiles, charged particles each from different ships.

And if all you have are capital gunships, this is a massive used (and waste) of resources. It would be a good idea to use small ships and resupply them as needed. This is the fighters and bombers.

You talk about the bombers with their fighter screens having the 'advantage' in that they have hours to see missiles coming at them.

It works the other way around as well. The large capital ship has hours to see whats coming at it as well. How many point defense guns can a ship that is 1km long and .25km wide and tall have on it? How many sensor drones can it launch? How many cruise missiles can it launch?

Those 'bombers' are going to have to return to their carrier at some point, how many years can they drift around in stealth mode if they're based out of a carrier? If they have a carrier that suggests a need for one. If they return, that means a stealth cruise missile can track them, once they return, that missile gets a lovely little lock on them, and slowly drifts in, looking like a chunk of space junk, or a sensor ghost.

Boom, your carrier has just died, and now all your extra eggs are cooked, and don't have proper resupply and support. If they can do without the carrier, then why have one in the first place? Why not make ships large enough to require only minor resupply now and then, for when they can't fabricate their own stuff? (warships should be able to put themselves down near resources, asteroids or send crews to a moon/planet's surface to gather resources)

your bombers have what advantage over fully self contained warships? Also, who said there was ONE capital ship running in the area? Can your 'bombers' cope being multi vectored by large capital ships? Your bombers are going to have to be larger than my cruise missiles if they have the power to return to reload, meaning their engines are going to have to either be a lot larger to move, or they're going to be slow. (I have more to put in here after I get back)

Also, nukes DO have a fairly good value in space combat, they would be used as a shaped charge, yes you can do that with nukes, just isn't worth it on earth. Use the nuke to shoot a narrow cone of material at the target basically, from rather extreme range, one nuke won't do much, but ten? twenty? 100? 10,000?

What about stealth? IT seems to me that your various drones could be part of the ship, with varying degrees of autonomy. A big ass laser, or missile launcher, or railgun, stuck in a turret, with a generator, thrusters, and a docking clamp. power and spare missiles come through the docking clamp.

When attached, It acts as a both a weapon, and auxilliary power generation, and a set of adjustment thrusters for the whole ship. Declamp it, and the thing moves off by a light second, or however far, and starts taking shots when it thinks(or is told) noone will notice it.

Do the same with active and passive sensors, decoys, etc. Sets your ship up to look like it's several light seconds wide. It's obviously not, but that's a whole lot of empty space to look through for a 1000 meter battleship that's running dead silent, or at least silent against the background noise of it's drones.

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Original post by NIm What about stealth? IT seems to me that your various drones could be part of the ship, with varying degrees of autonomy. A big ass laser, or missile launcher, or railgun, stuck in a turret, with a generator, thrusters, and a docking clamp. power and spare missiles come through the docking clamp. When attached, It acts as a both a weapon, and auxilliary power generation, and a set of adjustment thrusters for the whole ship. Declamp it, and the thing moves off by a light second, or however far, and starts taking shots when it thinks(or is told) noone will notice it. Do the same with active and passive sensors, decoys, etc. Sets your ship up to look like it's several light seconds wide. It's obviously not, but that's a whole lot of empty space to look through for a 1000 meter battleship that's running dead silent, or at least silent against the background noise of it's drones.

the segmented concept is interesting, of course it has strengths and weaknesses. The segmented concept could greatly sacrifice armour levels, and shielding for things like EM radiation from equipment and that.

From a game standpoint, that sounds like it could be cool but hard to control well.

There's a classic Star Trek episode that operates like a submarine hunt. It's the Enterprise's first encounter with the Romulans - fresh in my mind because it was recently shown on TVLand - The Balance Of Terror. The OP seems onto something.

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You talk about the bombers with their fighter screens having the 'advantage' in that they have hours to see missiles coming at them.

Yes, as they have the advantage of higher accelerations for less fuel costs.

The Bombers would be able to move off much faster and be more likely to have their weapon lock disrupting tech (chaff, flares, or what have you) be more effective. What if harder to break a lock on, a 25-100m ship or a 1km ship?

The bombers could also launch several missiles on silent running at a vector that would bring them very close, but not in direct contact with the gunship. When these stealth missiles were in close, the bombers would launch a high velocity missile.

If the gunship responds at all the stealth missiles could lock on and then vector in with a high burn. Suddenly the gunship is hit from multiple directions with lots of ordinance. Even the scrap and shrapnel from the missiles will do damage to sensitive external equipment like targeting sensors, communications, etc. If each missile was an MIRV then this sudden onslaught would overwhelm virtually any point defence.

However, the ordinance type can be optimised to take advantage of any strategy/tactics you care to think up. What is important is whether or not the strategy/tactics are any good.

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It works the other way around as well. The large capital ship has hours to see what's coming at it as well. How many point defence guns can a ship that is 1km long and .25km wide and tall have on it? How many sensor drones can it launch? How many cruise missiles can it launch?

Yes it does, hence my discussion on effective weapon ranges. In space this has a slightly different meaning that on Earth.

Effective weapon ranges are the weapon's ability to correct errors in aiming (it's homing ability) versus the target's ability to avoid the ordinance (manoeuvrability/acceleration, point defences, time to impact, etc).

Point defences are good, but they can be overwhelmed by a large amount of ordinance and also they are not 100% accurate so even a single shot has a chance to get past (and the more shots, the greater the change that one will get through).

The effective range of the bombers is greater against the capital gunship than the gunship has against the bomber (because it is designed to be that way). This means the bombers have a range that they can fire at the capital and have a higher chance of hitting the capital than the capital has a chance of hitting a bomber. Even if a bomber is hit, there are more incoming. Once the gunship is hit, then it is game over (depending on the design and armour, it could be 2 or 3 hits, but weapons, if they hit a critical point, they could destroy/disable the gunship in a single hit).

It is this disparity in effective ranges (even with identical ordinance it will exist) that make the bomber a capital ship killer. Regardless of the weapons, as long as there is a rough parity, there will exist this difference in effective ranges. Because this difference exists, the capital ship is vulnerable to attack and it can be exploited. This is the reason the bomber would be invented.

By having "something" to fill the gap in the effective weapon ranges, you can reduce the threat from this. This is the reason for the fighter.

It is simple. No one ship can be perfect in all situations. So any ship that is designed to take advantage of this weakness will also have a ship that exploits one of its weaknesses. But then this 3rd ship would not necessarily be any good against the 1st and the 1st ship's design would be evolved to take advantage of the weakness in the 3rd ship.

This is the exact reason that you will get a capital. Then a bomber to take advantage if the weaknesses in the capital ship, then the fighter will be created to take advantage of the weaknesses in the bomber. Finally the capital ship will be far better against the fighter as the fighter is not designed to engage it and the capital can have lots of weapons and armour.

In any arms race, this is the inevitable conclusion. It has occured all throughout the ages, from as far back as history and archaeology can extend. Why would this situation not be extended into the future?

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Those 'bombers' are going to have to return to their carrier at some point, how many years can they drift around in stealth mode if they're based out of a carrier? If they have a carrier that suggests a need for one. If they return, that means a stealth cruise missile can track them, once they return, that missile gets a lovely little lock on them, and slowly drifts in, looking like a chunk of space junk, or a sensor ghost.

As I said earlier, you would resupply with specific resupply ships to avoid giving away your carrier's position. Also if the carrier was detected, you would have to move you own gunship into effective weapon range and this would reveal your own ship. My ships with faster acceleration, even if launched after you have located my ship, will be in range of your ship, before you can be in range of mine. Boom! Your ship is dead before you have even fired a shot. Game over.

I have more "eyes" out looking, even with your sensor drones, my scouts are armed (not super effective weapons, but effective enough against sensor drones), so I am still blinding you as you look for me. I would be far more likely to detect you before you can detect me, even then, I have the flexibility to respond to this new threat very quickly.

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Also, nukes DO have a fairly good value in space combat, they would be used as a shaped charge, yes you can do that with nukes, just isn't worth it on earth. Use the nuke to shoot a narrow cone of material at the target basically, from rather extreme range, one nuke won't do much, but ten? twenty? 100? 10,000?

Which also makes manoeuvrable ships have an advantage over them. A shaped charge has only a limited line of effect (a cone extending from the detonation point in the direction of the shaped charge). If I move out of this cone, the weapon is ineffective. Also smaller ships have an advantage. If you detonate too early then the shrapnel will be too widely spaced to guarantee to hit the ships (although you still might get lucky), too close and the smaller ships are more effective at out manoeuvring the missiles. The fighters would be there to make sure they are detonated far too early or are disabled and can;t detonate at the optimum range.

For large, massive ships, this is more difficult. Also point defences would be almost useless against this kind of weapon. Too much inert matter would be travelling at high velocity from a short range (ie just before the point defence weapon hits the missile). This shrapnel will be absolutely devastating to the sensors and communication equipment on the outside of the gunship.

You would loose your ability to effectively track my ships, target your point defences and allowing me to get even closer. Just a couple of these types of weapons would disable nearly all capitals. Then I could be free to move in and take out your more armoured systems (life support, etc). Once life support is out, I can land a crew in space suits to capture the ship, take ordinance and fuel if needed, or send it back to my fleet yards to be rebuilt as a carrier.

So 1 nuke with a shaped charge would be very effective if used right. Now, deal with at least 4 of them coming from 4 different directions (or what about 8 or 16, etc).

If you need 100 or 10,000 nukes to take me out, that is a big problem for you. I only need 1.

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your bombers have what advantage over fully self contained warships? Also, who said there was ONE capital ship running in the area? Can your 'bombers' cope being multi vectored by large capital ships?

yes, multiple vectors is not too much of a problem. Space is large and my bombers have a better effective range over your gunships (as explained earlier). So this would, even though you out number me (in weight, there might be 10 or so bombers in a strike force), put you in the defensive position. I can then exploit that to open a hole in your perimeter and escape. My faster acceleration would mean that once I break through your perimeter you would have no chance of catching me. If there is fighters with this bomber strike group, then they can also defend the bombers from any ordinance you launch.

It might be even possible to take out one of your capital gunships at the same time. If you capital is defending its self from a massive missile attack, it wont be as effective at targeting my ship (EMPs from the nukes or just the sheer amount of metal flying towards your ship would cause interference, not to mention trying to manoeuvre to avoid the attacks).

If your close enough that you are within your effective weapon zone and I haven't detected you, then something has seriously gone wrong and it would be an exceptional circumstance (especially with a group of gunships large enough to effectively corral a group of more manoeuvrable bombers and fighters).

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Your bombers are going to have to be larger than my cruise missiles if they have the power to return to reload, meaning their engines are going to have to either be a lot larger to move, or they're going to be slow.

Yes they would be slower than your cruise missiles, but my fighters would be taking care of them. I don't need to be faster than your cruise missiles to be effective, just faster than your capital gunship.

{quote]your bombers have what advantage over fully self contained warships?
Manoeuvrability, multiple targets, multiple vectors, smaller targets, makes my capital less traceable, acceleration, smaller sensor profile, more flexible strategies and tactics... Need I go on?