Wow this thread of mine has grown. The original aim was look at my idea what you think? And every one else basically said – no this is my idea of how this is gonna be. Well the thread still fights on. Now i propose use to describe how the space combat will not be fought. Lets look at things we can agree on.
1.it will have to be fought way way far a way behind visual range. I would say around 1au-100au ( 8 light minutes – 13 light hours) - but that is not some thing we can agree on.
2.It will be hard to see the other opponent. -- well can we agree on this? You talk about heat and stuff and the resolution things can be detected with.
3.Battle will be mainly computer controlled. -- this is very much like the current battles. But i can argue against it. If some one have read a short story Game of Rat and Dragon – there they used 6th since in cats to detect the dragons. That is they where not using computers but some “intuition” that we cannot identify.
4.we will not be using normal rockets. -- the anti matter missile i had in mind was relay FTL dron with a nuke. But i can see how 2 lazes crossed would do equal amount of damage. That is photons and other is anti photons – poof same anti energy explosions + spray of tiny black holes.

I like Talroth ideas – although he lunches way to many scanners... i would use a single ship with 5-15 person crew and slowly fly around with no real repair ability made out of plastic just the basics + lasers. But heavy on technology. I just make lots of one set of this unit. So it is cheap to improve and produce.

While Edtharan uses more standard fighter/boomer/carrier which is fine too – and has improved a bit with posts. I do wish you would stop using fighter-boomer and named them some thing different because of the mental baggage every one has about how they look and function.

But what i see here is more then i hoped for. I see here 2 races (well 3 if you include mine) set in a similar universe with drastically different weaponry that is being fleshed out with all the cool ideas – you know i see a potential for a game! It would be nice if you can get more specific on rules of the universe and more specific in design.

Why do I launch too many scanners? I'm covering an area of nearly 8000au^2, that will take more than a handfull to get clear readings ;)

As far as putting all this into a game, you need to figure out the answers to a few questions.
Single or multiplayer? Limited multiplayer?
Single or multiple star systems?
If single star system you can stick with 'standard' physics and just use time compression. Allow things to be played with a variable time, basically pausing either once a day/week, personally adjustable, or as soon as you get new information. This lets the player decide if he should follow his gut feeling and change plans (expecting to find something on long range scanners that isn't showing up, change course and all that)

If you have more than a small handful of players in a game at once, 8 or more, you'll likely want to skip 'standard' physics for some form of FTL.

If you want more than one star system, you are going to need FTL, spending 10+ game years traveling between stars isn't going to be fun in a real time game. Then you have to pick how you want your FTL to work.

Do you want your stars to be nodes in a graph, such as Wing Commander, or EVE online? Or do you want free space travel, like Star Trek?
Nodes means you have to deal with issues like, gate camping. Free space travel means you have to deal with technical issues such as updating and handling when and where people are entering/leaving solar systems.

Once you add FTL into the game, you have to deal with issues like, how do you explain NOT folding space and putting a nuke in their engine room? Personally, I like explaining things as, the way things naturally work, foldspace opens at a set distance from an object based on its mass. Warp drive will simply warp the object in the field around bodies of mass. Also makes things easier for things like, accidentally flying through suns and that.

"explain NOT folding space and putting a nuke in their engine room" - wasn't that the key to my original post? Hyperspace missiles? They would do that but they don't have a way of knowing where their ships is exactly! It only makes it self visible by firing.

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Why do I launch too many scanners? I'm covering an area of nearly 8000au^2, that will take more than a handfull to get clear readings ;)

Actually, all you would need is to cover the major resource locations. If you cover these, then it would prevent the opponent from exploiting them without your knowledge. So large numbers of sensor drones are not needed.

Hiding in empty space is not very effective. You will need to keep making course adjustments and thus reveal you location or you will eventually run out of consumables (water, food, oxygen, fuel, etc). Also because you are not near resources, any damage you suffer is depleting your stocks and you can;t replenish them.

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My 'wasteful' sensor drones aren't using fuel, there are millions of them, and if you want to get into quoting laws, Newton's First. I don't NEED fuel, just enough to change the path so you can't follow it back to me.

Giving more thought to this tactic, I realised that it would still lead me back to your general area. This means that recallable, "smart" sensor packages (the scouts) would be able to locate where these drones are coming from, then through statistical analysis, locate your ship. A scout could then be sent out to that location and then if no target was found, be recalled or sent to another location.

Having scouts that can be recalled allows for Smart scanning of the system and if you are covering a volume 8000au^3 (this is massive) then the brute force approach you are using will not be near as effective as a smart method.

I'll dump a few thousand "Can" sized sensor drones near major strategic locations and position my fleet so as to respond to any "blips" quickly, using a recallable scout ship to initially "scout" the area for direct conformation and then followed by my main strike force.

Sure, you can hang out in the "deep space" away from these locations, but then your self-sufficient ships will not have the resource to be self-sufficient, while all the time I am exploiting these same resource to build my fleet.

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How do I respond to all your blips out there? Simple, I don't. The amount of point defense and local sensors I have means your chances of hitting me even if you launch stealth missiles at me are low. And if you do hit me, I have the armour to take it. Compartmentalized ships, so even if you do make a hole in the armour you're not likely to take the whole ship out (it won't be pretty, and not fun, but it still isn't a one hit kill deal).

If you don't respond to the blips, what about the missiles that are just 1km away form hitting your ship? They are un-powered and would seem inert (just like a few chunks of rock - they may even be visually shaped like that). Their position is being tracked by dead reckoning and through other sensors they are alerted that they are near a valid target (your ship), next thing you know your sensor screen lights up with hundreds of blips, some of them are missiles that if it detonates within 3km of your ship it would cause serious damage (and they are within 1km). Some of them are inert targets designed as decoys.

There is no response you can make at this point to save your ship. If you fire your point defences at the missiles, they detonate and still damage your sip (though the closer they get the greater the damage).

However, if you had responded to these blips, you might have had a chance.

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I wait, I follow your activity, I analyze all those blips, eventually I have the data I need to make a clear strike. Lots of little ships moving around are more likely to be spotted than a larger ship staying still.

A lot of those blips would be deliberate attempts to confuse this exact strategy. False sensor images, deliberately misleading movements, and so on. You would have to spend a lot of time analysing this, and even then, you can;t be sure of your target. Brute force sensor use is not going to be all that effective. Smart sensor strategy will win out. Smart sensors will need more fuel and navigation system to visit more locations and thus will become my scouts.

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Space battles will be subject to Lanchester’s Square Law? Not true. This works well with entrenched units and fairly stable battle lines, but breaks down fairly badly past WWII. It also ignores far too many factors.

Yes, the final result will not be exactly as predicted by Lanchester's Square Law, but, in lack of a precise formula or tested method for determining space warfare, it is the closest we have.

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You also can't simply keep pumping out new factories and keep growth exponentially as there isn't enough resources in well hidden areas. Eventually you'll run out of safe spots to put new factories (and so will I) that won't see them hit before they produce something.

Actually factories in open location will cause you to reveal your self (or at least offer more positions for me to check out and narrow down your position).

Remember your gunships are 128 times the mass of my factory ships. So if I loose 1 or 2 (or even 50) it is not too much of a problem for me. If you loose 1 of your hips, it is a big problem for you. So, these factory ships sitting in open areas could be decoys, waiting for you to initiate a launch, just so I can get a lock on your position. Do you take that risk?

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Also, why do my warships have to be the ONLY factories I have? The main use of the on board factories in the gunship is for self repairs, and restocking ammo. If they could build a new ship on their own then that would be a bonus. You are however going to have problems attacking my production centers, as they aren't sacraficing defense for the idea of 'maybe we won't be spotted'.

But the same applies to me. I can have heavily defended factories, that are not part of my fleet.

We were only considering the battle fleets and assuming all else is equal.

Again, if we are equal in non fleet bound production, then I can be producing more ships than you and thus be able to cover much more "ground" than you.

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How much fuel are you going to need? You're burning a lot of it zipping around the solar system, where as I'm barely burning any. Where are you getting all this fuel? What are you burning? If I control the easy large volume fuel sources, then I win, you're using twice as much, if not more, than I am. (Sending ships there and back. I use missiles, one way trips use far less than half the fuel, unless you plan to tank up from my ship before returning you have to burn more fuel carrying all that fuel needed to get back)

Yes, my fleet is fuel hungry, that is it's main weakness. However, It is possible for me to assume the exact same tactics and strategies as you and just keep the fighters and bombers with the carrier and launch only if needed. This gives me the exact same "stealth" profile as you, but still allows me to respond with my more flexible strategies. I get the best of both worlds at a small extra cost in fuel. Or take on a more aggressive strategy, but burn a lot more fuel. You don't have these options.

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Also, don't forget VOLUME. Lets say we build our ships as cubes.

Spheres are better than cubes as they have a higher volume to surface ratio. Also I was assuming no wasted space in the ships.

So doubling the size will quadruple the surface area with 8 time (octiply?) the volume/mass. Sure you can make a ship with the same mass but double the size and have lost of wasted space, but what would be the point, it just increases your sensor profile.

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Now, lets double the size for my first ship, we need 24 armour plates to take the same punishment (4 times yours). But I have 7.2 for pay load. 8 times yours.

Higher volume does not mean better performance. Yes, you will be able to put more in your ships, more ammunition, etc, but the rate of fire will not go up by 8 time, it will, at best go up by 4 times. In a battle to the death, ammunition that is not fired is wasted, both in the resource and in the time need to make it.

My rate of fire scales much better than yours.

If we can have 1 gun (or just call it an arbitrary strength of weapon), for a certain amount of surface area (weapons that do not reach the surface of a ship can not fire), then as my fleet has a much higher surface area, I thus have a much higher amount of weaponry to volume ratio.

You might be able to store more ammunition, but I can deliver mine much faster than you can. If we look at it from a point defence perspective, then I will be able to launch more ordinance than you can launch point defences to counter it. I will get through your point defences, even if all I have to do is overwhelm it. And this also applies to my point defences (fighters) I will be able to launch more point defence weaponry against your attacks and at a higher rate. Your attacks are less likely to get through.

Your tactics would be better for long protracted engagements, where as mine are more for short, powerful attacks. If we were in an endurance battle, you would win. But that is only if I engage you in an endurance battle (long, constant firing of weapons).

Your ships can not hold off a massive, sudden strike (and remember "sudden" is a relative term and depends on a lot of other factors like FTL, weapon fire rates, warhead yield to armour strength, etc).

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now, remember, armour is NOT linear, nor is structure strength, I don't know where you got that idea. It is roughly cubic

If this is true, then why can't we just build supermassive structures. If the strength of a material scales as cubic, then we could build a structure twice as large if we just double all dimensions, including the support sizes. But we can't just simple do this. SO it can't be cubic, square, maybe, but not cubic.

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16 times the size of one of your small ships? 1536 plates, 3386.4PL. You need? 4096 ships costing you 24576 armour plates, and for that I can build 16 of these.

That is only if I want the same volume as your fleet. I was talking mass, not volume as I assumed no wasted space (the smaller the ship the smaller sensor profile it has). Also armour plates would be taken into account for the mass of the ship.

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My one ship, for the same cost can requires 4096 the force to destroy one even if you get a shot through the point defense. Even be nice and say to the power of 2.5 rather than 3, thats 1024 the strength. Lets downgrade the armour to 8 times, thats still 512 on the cubed strength, over 180 on 2.5, and now I have TWICE the firepower of you, can shoot down twice as much stuff.

Again, that is assuming that I have to vaporise every last scrap of your ship to defeat it. Just 1 nuke that penetrates your armour would destroy your ship. It doesn't matter how many armour plates you have covering your ship, 1 nuke is all it would take.

Actually it would take even less. 1 conventional missile in just the right spot (fuel storage) would end your ship. 1 missile in the right spot. You could have 10 million armour plates, but it still would just take that 1 missile.

This has no real effect on the out come of the battle, plus, volume is not related to the rate of fire, only surface area and as you nicely pointed out, I have the larger surface area.

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Don't forget, your ships are firing smaller missiles at mine, but closing to far closer ranges.

Yes, smaller, more manoeuvrable target that have less sensor profile can get in closer will less chance of being hit.

Which is easier to hit with a gun:
1) A soft drink can at 20m range or
2) A Car door at 20m range?

Also, I don't need all that extra volume on each missile for fuel and casing. The power of a missile is not how big an engine it has, but the size of the warhead. My missiles will be smaller, but we could still have similar sized warheads.

For you to have these kinds of missile will actually increase the volume and mass you have to carry, which would most likely be a large volume than I have as you are storing more of them (if you wish to take advantage of your higher volume to mass ratio and use the endurance advantage of your ship design - if you don't then I would exceed you in this as well and have a higher rate if fire as well as more ammunition).

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Don't forget, your ships are firing smaller missiles at mine, but closing to far closer ranges. Then again, I can use a multistage missile system so what is in point defense range is just as small as yours. But wait, you need 180 times the force to get through my armour. Problem for you: My missiles can be smaller than yours, harder to shoot down, you need yours larger. Sure, you have 4096 ships to my 2 for the same production costs, but yours are easier to shoot down, and far easiser to spot if they're traveling to 1 or 2 light seconds away to attack.

Multi-stage missiles take more fuel. Lots of multi-stage missiles will take up more fuel than a bomber would. Also, this means increased mass, due to the fuel and also to the housing (which you loose with each shot). It would probable work out as roughly the same mass to ammunition storage (depending on several factors).

I would not need 180 time the force to get through your armour. Remember, vaporisation is not necessary. Even if it is a cubed ratio for size to strength, 1 only need to get through 1 layer of armour, not the armour of your entire ship. This is, therefore, a small advantage for the increase cost (resources and mass). Double the thickness of the armour, and you also double the mass of the armour. Increase the mass of your ship, increase the amount of fuel used. Increase the amount of fuel used, reduce the operational capacity of your ship.

If I have 4096 to your 2 ships, then that easily is far greater than the 180 (your calculation - I say it would be far less) time the force needed to punch through your armour. This is therefore to my advantage. I don't need to send as many ships against yours and as it is surface area, not volume that determines the effectiveness of your point defences or my rate of fire, I also have the advantage.

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I have 256 times the cross section area of one of your ships, but guess what, for the same PL as me, you have 4096, plus spread over a broad area. Which do you think will be easier to spot?

Yours, as you need a higher resolution of the scanner to detect my smaller vessels. Yours, being in one lump would be easier to spot. Which is easier to spot: A single 747 jet, or an equal mass of Single engine planes spread over the whole radar range?

In fact as you have 256 time the cross-sectional area you only need a resolution 1/256th of what you need to detect mine, so you have to be in closer to detect me. I will detect you first.

Again, I was not taking the Payload size into consideration as this only applies to a drawn-out engagement, my tactics are hit and run, not endurance (although my strategy can be depending on whether or not we include factory ships).

Much of what you have posted here actually supports my fleet design. Volume does not determine the rate of fire, surface area does. As you demonstrated, I have the much larger surface area. But as this surface area is not all in one place, you might detect my ships easier, but not all of them. I only have to detect 1 of your ships and you have to detect hundreds of mine. If but 1 gets past, it would be enough to destroy you.

A single missile that gets past your defences can be enough to cripple or even destroy you. A single missile that gets past my defences destroys a single ship (or at best a handful), I have hundreds more. No big loss.

I can put more weapons into play for a given volume/mass than you can (surface area), I can afford to have less effective defences (although with more point defence weapons, I actually have a better defence than you do) as loosing a few ships is not a big problem. My ships are individually harder to spot (so even though, over al,l you are more likely to detect some of my ships, it is harder to detect all of them and this means that some will get past your sensors and into strike range). My ships are smaller and so can get in closer to your ships before having to fire (this is all about sensor resolution), also by being smaller they are harder to target (either it takes longer, or you are more likely to miss).

So I out gun you, out defend you, out number you and out manoeuvre you. All you have is a possible (as your multi-stage missiles will actually take up more space than my bombers) advantage in endurance.

The only way you could beat me is to enter a fight where we are constantly firing ordinance at each other, but I will be able to overwhelm you point defence.

Sorry for the double post, but my previous post is getting a bit long.

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Wow this thread of mine has grown. The original aim was look at my idea what you think? And every one else basically said – no this is my idea of how this is gonna be.

Yes. It started out as finding holes in the strategies and tactics your presented and has evolved into a discussion on differences in strategies and tactics.

It hasn't gone completely off topic, as we are still discussing the reasons behind the holes in the original post, but we are not directly discussing the original post.

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Lets look at things we can agree on. 1.it will have to be fought way way far a way behind visual range. I would say around 1au-100au ( 8 light minutes – 13 light hours) - but that is not some thing we can agree on. 2.It will be hard to see the other opponent. -- well can we agree on this? You talk about heat and stuff and the resolution things can be detected with. 3.Battle will be mainly computer controlled. -- this is very much like the current battles. But i can argue against it. If some one have read a short story Game of Rat and Dragon – there they used 6th since in cats to detect the dragons. That is they where not using computers but some “intuition” that we cannot identify. 4.we will not be using normal rockets. -- the anti matter missile i had in mind was relay FTL dron with a nuke. But i can see how 2 lazes crossed would do equal amount of damage. That is photons and other is anti photons – poof same anti energy explosions + spray of tiny black holes.

1) I don't think it will be fought at this range. 1 to 2 light seconds at most. At 8 light minutes, any non light speed (or faster) weapon will be useless, it would take months to get there (the war could be over due to diplomacy before your first volley hits its target).

2) Yes. It will be hard to see/detect your opponent.

3) Intuition, subspace sensors, etc. All the same strategically and tactically speaking. It all comes down to the resolution (how easy it is to spot a given size target at a given distance) and how fast they operate (non FTL sensors will also limit the effective engagement distance).

4) Photons are their antiparticle. There is no massive explosion when the two meet. The energy released by the collision of a photon and it's anti photon is the release of two photons with the same total energy as the orrigninal two photons... Not much of a boom, no black holes.

If a warp motor can be fitted to a missile, then it is even more imperative to not have large single ships. One ship, one missile, easy kill. If you have lots of ships, then it will take lots of missiles to do significant damage and it stops being a stealth scenario.

Also, if a warp motor can be fitted to a missile, then the smaller ships can also be fitted with warp motors. The best strategy is to "Zerg" rush them and gain the element of surprise.

This kind of warfare, where any ship can launch a missile that will destroy any other ship will more closely resemble the outcome of Lanchester's Square Law as it fits the situation more precisely. Therefore, if you get the first strike in, you have greater numbers and therefore more chance of victory.

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While Edtharan uses more standard fighter/boomer/carrier which is fine too – and has improved a bit with posts. I do wish you would stop using fighter-boomer and named them some thing different because of the mental baggage every one has about how they look and function.

Ok, I agree that Fighter/Bomber/Carrier are not the best designations of ship types.

How about:
Fighter = Drone
Bomber = Striker
Carrier = Mothership

As I have said, I don't care what they are called, it is their role that is important, so I will take what ever suggestions for names you decide.

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But what i see here is more then i hoped for. I see here 2 races (well 3 if you include mine) set in a similar universe with drastically different weaponry that is being fleshed out with all the cool ideas – you know i see a potential for a game! It would be nice if you can get more specific on rules of the universe and more specific in design.

That is a very good point. This thread is almost like a strategy game in its own right (and I have had a lot of fun too).

If we could take what is being posted in this thread and turn it into a game, I think it would be a very cool game.

We have even explored a kind of tech tree for the races, along with various ship components (eg: factory modules) and how these would effect the crew (even out of gameplay considerations) to develop realistic/plausible technologies.

This last point is, I think, important. Many sci-fi technologies are created to "fill in" plot (or in computer games - gameplay) holes without consideration as to how they could effect other technologies, or change the strategies and tactics available. This thread has been good in covering such matters.

As for nailing down the rules of the universe, I think we should start with "how things move". I posted earlier about the 4 categories of warp drives. Which type do you think would be used for the different ships (and weapons - if the drives can fit in them).

Non FTL travel might still use a variation of the rocket (ion drive, impulse engine, etc), or even be a space drive (no fuel/exhaust, just energy).

Next we should look at sensing technologies and how easy it it is to detect or use counter measures (cloaking, false sensor images, etc).

Once we have these we can determine what the likely range that a ship would be able to engage another. This will lead us to what kinds of weapons would be effective.

Once all these are established, we could start to think about the ships them selves and the strategies and tactics available.

Finally, we can then start to look at the various technologies used for support (construction, mining, repair, etc).

Edtharan, if you DON'T cover all that empty space then who you are fighting CAN hide in it. This is where mass mini scanners come in handy. No, you don't need many covering the vast areas, but you still need some.

How do you plan to follow my can scanners back to my ships? You do understand how orbits work, and how satellites can use air breaking to slow themselves down to get into a stable orbit. Now, if I launch straight from my ship and you pick the sensor up before it gets somewhere, then you can track it back. However, if the sensor can change its course even half a degree at any point, then you can't figure out where it came from. If I launch with a missile to get them aways from my ship before firing them off onto their ballistic paths then you can't narrow much better than picking at random.

All I have to do is find your fuel supplies and take that out, and your fleet and intelligence grinds to a halt.

I don't have to redirect any scouts, my grid after a few years (during peace times) already covers it all, I just have to fill in holes for anything that goes inactive, or get more coverage in areas I want.

Your scouts are going to be running around, large objects that carry weapons and lots of fuel, they're going to be HUGE. And they're going to have to return to your fuel sources eventually, or at least connect to a supply grid. Eventually I'm mapping your gird and then blow the snot out of it. You find one of my sensors, well, you might be able to guess it comes from orbit of that planet over there, then again, it might have just used it as a gravitational sling shot. Hell it might even be heading TOWARDS my ship after making a round trip (but it doesn't need to return, that might just have been part of the scan path) So, you send off your scouts to do what? Check EVERYWHERE?

As for the shape of the ships, yes, a cube isn't as efficient for space, but it made for much easier math. That was the only point to it.

As for my long range multistage missiles using more fuel than your bombers/Striker. How?!

Lets go back to basic physics. Move an object 1 unit in mass a set distance. Uses a set amount of fuel. Now lets assume that 1 unit is the warheads. I just have to move the warheads (with their guidance system) meaning all the fuel I need to carry is the fuel to get there.

You have to carry: The warheads, large ship, fuel to get back. Wait whats that? Fuel to get back? I don't have that, how much does that weigh? How much more are you carrying to let your Strikers get back for rearming and refueling?

How much does it take to build an engine and a fuel tank? (remember, space based missiles don't need a shell, only use a shell can have is to reshape it to make it harder to detect) At the cost of all that you have to build to attack me at range, how many more missiles have I made?

As far as you being able to launch faster than me, that doesn't matter too much if you are shooting one volley. If your volley fails then you've just LOST A FLEET. I have the ammo to knock you down as you're traveling back, (we're ignoring faster than light drives and all that as far as I know) you don't have a second shot. Plus, it isn't like instant firing is needed, You are out of ammo before your first shots hit. I have TIME to keep shooting. Or how close do you think you can get to my ship? Just how fast do you think I can fire? If I can fire once a second from each tube, how many missiles is that in space before yours get close enough to engage?

Now it is true that we can't keep making larger and larger ships, it is a matter of balancing it to a point where it is still hard to see from a distance, but as large as possible.

And remember, I'm out producing you in firepower. Does it matter if all your missiles are fired in one go? If I fire 10,000,000 missiles at you, does it matter if they've all been launched in 1 second vs 10 minutes?

Your warheads have to be larger to kill one of my ships, meaning they're either slower and easier to target, or have larger engines and are again easier to target. For the same sized missile as yours to get a one shot kill, mine can be a hell of a lot faster.

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Your warheads have to be larger to kill one of my ships, meaning they're either slower and easier to target, or have larger engines and are again easier to target. For the same sized missile as yours to get a one shot kill, mine can be a hell of a lot faster.

Yes. It is true, but it is not on the scale you indicated. I do not have to vaporise your ship. All I need to do is punch through your armour (and the more weapons you install the more holes in your armour - even if you can retract the weapons).

I could go for masses of small warheads and ablate your armour. 1,000 X 1 megaton nukes would be better than 1 X 10,000 megaton nuke if it can't get close enough to be effective (also if I have that much more missiles I can even use them as point defences and detonate them near your missiles to destroy them).

Yes. You would have the 1 shot, 1 kill against me. But even if you killed 100 of me before I killed 1 of yours, I am still on top. Numbers, they are a huge advantage.

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Edtharan, if you DON'T cover all that empty space then who you are fighting CAN hide in it. This is where mass mini scanners come in handy. No, you don't need many covering the vast areas, but you still need some.

But then I have the advantage of endurance. You could sit out there, but you will eventually need to refuel, rearm, or whatever. Without being able to come into a large resource supply, you have a limited time you can operate. Meanwhile, I am exploiting these resource locations and producing lots of ships and weapons. Once I have all these locations I can then start the search among the "empty" space for you.

My production capacity would be so large that one or two ships (or even a hundred of yours) would not be able to make a significant dent. You destroy an factory installation from a distance. I would have ships closer and plug that gap, re-establish my factory and you have not gained anything. If you attack too close and try to establish that location as your own factory, well, I know exactly where your are...

I have the advantages of virtually limitless reserves and an extremely high production capacity, while you, sitting out in the empty space have neither. You might avoid me for years, but I can wait. I have the resources to have that luxury.

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How do you plan to follow my can scanners back to my ships? You do understand how orbits work, and how satellites can use air breaking to slow themselves down to get into a stable orbit. Now, if I launch straight from my ship and you pick the sensor up before it gets somewhere, then you can track it back. However, if the sensor can change its course even half a degree at any point, then you can't figure out where it came from. If I launch with a missile to get them aways from my ship before firing them off onto their ballistic paths then you can't narrow much better than picking at random.

Well if I have scanners around a planet that you use for aerobreaking, then I can detect that (even with just a telescope, no high-tech sensors needed) and trace it back to it's origin.

If you launched your sensors with a rocket, then that rocket launch can be detected and it would reveal your location directly.

If you launched them with a low sensor method (eg: linear accelerator) and then they ignited their engines at a specified distance, then all I need to do is trace that back to where several trajectories meet and it give a location in which to focus my searches.

Even if you had them on different trajectories from launch, this is even better as it pin point your ship as the origin. Or if you didn't ignite them at the same time but launched them with the same initial vector, then where all the trajectories line up would point to your ship.

What is better is to have a mobile launcher that can be recalled. Then you can launch the sensor drones from any place you want, and as the launcher is it's self powered (an engine) that trajectory can be convoluted and not easily traceable. It would need to be able to be recalled as a single use launcher can be detected much easier than the sensors and this can then be used to give better locations for the potential target sites and even reveal where your sensors might be (making them easier to hunt down and destroy).

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All I have to do is find your fuel supplies and take that out, and your fleet and intelligence grinds to a halt.

But can you be certain, with the numbers I have, that you can get them all without revealing your own position. If you destroy my fuel supplies, I can still attack for a short period of time and if you don't get them all, I can rebuild.

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I don't have to redirect any scouts, my grid after a few years (during peace times) already covers it all, I just have to fill in holes for anything that goes inactive, or get more coverage in areas I want.

I would have enough sensor drones to cover all the important resource locations. So if you want to get resources you will have to reveal your position.

In peace time, I too could produce sensors and cover the entire system, just as well as you can.

With a limited number of large ships, you would not be able to respond to all my strikes on resource locations. You would only be able to respond to a limited number, where as I would be able to attack more individual target than you could. Thus, if I was invading, I would send small forces against each resource location, where I defeat you or encounter little or no resistance, I would establish my own base and then re-enforce the forces that were defeated. They could retreat if they are too out gunned (say several of your gunships) and remain at a distance where they can track your movements for later attacks with a larger force.

For this thread I am considering all thing equal, except the composition of our battle fleets. Neither of us are the invader or defender, we are both.

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Your scouts are going to be running around, large objects that carry weapons and lots of fuel, they're going to be HUGE. And they're going to have to return to your fuel sources eventually, or at least connect to a supply grid. Eventually I'm mapping your gird and then blow the snot out of it. You find one of my sensors, well, you might be able to guess it comes from orbit of that planet over there, then again, it might have just used it as a gravitational sling shot. Hell it might even be heading TOWARDS my ship after making a round trip (but it doesn't need to return, that might just have been part of the scan path) So, you send off your scouts to do what? Check EVERYWHERE?

No, I would first establish perimeters around the resources. I would close you off from them and establish factories there. The perimeters would be to keep any attacks you make from hitting them. And the factories would re-enforce the perimeters as well as producing more sensing devices.

I don't need to look every where, any military ship will be resource hungry (even mine) and need to refuel, repair, rearm, restock, etc. I would focus my sensor nets around these areas.

Smart sensing is better than your brute force approach.

My supply grid would be arranged like the Internet. You would not be able to disable it by targeting one location, or even several. You would need to take out a lot of locations to disable me. To do this would be a major strike on your part, and reveal your location. I would also be able to hold certain ships in reserve, not using them as part of the active grid, essentially hidden from your technique. These would then activate if you did enough damage to the active grid to cause major disruptions. You would have revealed your self, and I still have a working supply grid.

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As for my long range multistage missiles using more fuel than your bombers/Striker. How?!

not using more fuel. Taking up more mass. If each of your missiles is 1/10th of my Striker then you have to have 20 engines, fuel tanks, etc for each of my bombers. If you are using 2 stage missiles that is. 3 stage then its 3 times, the mass is starting to build up rapidly. and each kg you spend on engines, I can spend on warheads.

In both cases, fuel will need to be gathered almost constantly to supply the Missiles/Strikers, so I would not necessarily be relying on a stock pile (although I would use them). This makes the mass of the fuel trivial to the mass of the engines, fuel tanks and other accessories for a space borne vehicle (missiles or ships) when considering the mass needed to produce them.

Just look at the economics of today. It is cheaper to use reusable ships (like Space Ship 1), than it is to build entirely new rocket vehicles each time you want to launch something. It is more expensive to develop a reusable vehicle, but they are cheaper to run.

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How much does it take to build an engine and a fuel tank? (remember, space based missiles don't need a shell, only use a shell can have is to reshape it to make it harder to detect) At the cost of all that you have to build to attack me at range, how many more missiles have I made?

Individually, not much. But multiply that over a million missiles, how much is that?

The "Shell" would also include the connecting braces and the general structure of the missile, not just the outer casing.

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As far as you being able to launch faster than me, that doesn't matter too much if you are shooting one volley. If your volley fails then you've just LOST A FLEET. I have the ammo to knock you down as you're traveling back, (we're ignoring faster than light drives and all that as far as I know) you don't have a second shot. Plus, it isn't like instant firing is needed, You are out of ammo before your first shots hit. I have TIME to keep shooting. Or how close do you think you can get to my ship? Just how fast do you think I can fire? If I can fire once a second from each tube, how many missiles is that in space before yours get close enough to engage?

This is very dependant on actual numbers I will admit. But if I can have over 100 Strikers for each ship, I can fire them fast enough and get close enough, then I can overwhelm your point defences, even with a single volley, and hit your ship enough to disable it or destroy (not vaporise) it. I will only need a couple of hits to actually do this, 1 or 2, at most 5 to do enough damage to take that ship out of the fight for a long time (enough to rearm and wipe it out).

Also, I have the Armed Drones that I use as point defences for the Strikers that will have more ammunition than you have missiles (being much smaller) and can fire these at a higher rate than your missiles. These would be able to destroy all (or nearly all) your missiles you send to attack the fleeing fleet. Many of my ships would survive, rearm and come back to finish you off. you are out of missiles and point defence ammunition, mostly like damaged or disables and I know where you are.

Well at 1/16th the size of your ship, I present a sensor aspect 1/64th your ships aspect, so I could get in quite close before you could get the same chance to lock on to my ships as I would have with yours (at a longer distance).

What I could do is marshal my fleet where I can just see your ship on my sensors (at that range you could not lock onto any individual ship in my fleet, you might know that there are lots of ships there, but that doesn't matter). I would then, sending an initial "wall" (like a line but for 3d space instead of 2D battle field) of Armed Drones whose job it is to spot and track any incoming missiles sent form your ship.

The next group of Armed Drones are to destroy any of these attacks. They don't have to operate in a wall formation, and a more scattered formation would be better.

Next would come my Strikers. These would not be in a wall formation but in several small "wings" of 3 or so ships scattered over a large arc (although behind the Armed Drones still).

In reserve, I will have more Armed Drones to protect the supply ships which would remain at the marshalling area.

This would be repeated on the 4 sides of the tetrahedron.

Each Group (2 waves of Drones and 1 wave of Strikers) would do a fly past. The range would be just out of your effective point defence range (against my ships). This would be an optimal distance for me to launch my missiles as you would have very little reaction time. A mass launching with as much ordinance as I can in the limited time. Accelerating from the marshalling area, the velocity of my assault fleet will add to the speed of the missiles, further reducing their time to impact.

Once they pass your fleet, they will decelerate and match velocities with the supply ships from the opposite marshalling area, or the supply ships could also move to meat up with the assault group.

You would see this coming, there would be no stealth attack, but the speed and the fact that it comes form 4 (or more if I want) directions simultaneously means that you have no room to manoeuvre, very little response time and I have protective screens of Drones to reduce the effectiveness of your counter attack. The fact that the Drones are able to decelerate faster than the Strikers also means that I can cover my retreat to the waiting supply ships.

I will loose ships in this attack, but you will also loose your ship (or have it severely damaged/disabled) so that I can make a second run and be more efficient as you will have used up much of your ammunition and also be damaged.

If my first volley fails, I don't loose the fleet because I have the Drones to act as point defence. You don't seem to be taking these into account for your counter tactics.

As I said, my fleet design is better for hit and run attacks.

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And remember, I'm out producing you in firepower. Does it matter if all your missiles are fired in one go? If I fire 10,000,000 missiles at you, does it matter if they've all been launched in 1 second vs 10 minutes?

It is not missiles to missiles that is the comparison. It is missiles to point defence/drone rates of fire.

If you can launch 10,000,000 in 10 minutes and I can shoot down 10,000,000 in 1 minute, you aren't going to touch me, even if I can only launch 1 missile each minute. If you can only shoot down 1 missile every 10 minutes, I will still then destroy you.

So comparing missiles vs missiles rates of fire is pointless.

Because I have both higher rates of fire for point defence and for missiles, I can shoot down any you send at me and I can send more missiles at you than you can shoot down. I get a much better economy of scale with regards to rates of fire than you do (as I have more surface are to mount weapon ports).

You might have more ammunition (but this is debatable if you are using multi-stage launch vehicles and is very dependant on certain numbers like the mass needed for an engine, etc), but I have the greater rate of fire. Point defence ammunition is much smaller than the missiles, so I can store more PD ammo than you can store missiles, and I can fire it faster than you can launch your missiles.

Actually it is not PD fire rate that we need to look at it is PD kill rate (how many missiles it can shoot down in a given time). I can spread my PD over a larger volume than you, this means that I have more chances to destroy any missiles, and as I can have more PD cannons than you, this means I will have a vastly greater PD kill rate than you and because they are discrete ships, I can position then better and cover vulnerable angles or utilise certain situation (like orbits) better than you can which further increases my PD kill rate. I can position my PD Drones in a ring (like the letter "O") around my ships can cover front and rear with all my PD weapons, where as you can only bring their PD cannons on the side that I am attacking from to bear, effective halving your PD kill rate in one move.

My PD is far more effective than your, can fire faster than yours, and I can store enough PD ammunition to eliminate all your missile compliment. You can't touch me.

Few things you are missing here:

1. A multistage long range missile can carry several smaller short ranged missiles. These are my arm for reaching out and touching someone, These are what I use to turn earth into a smoldering ruin from pluto. These outpreform your strikers, their engines aren't meant for more than one burn and are cheaper to make than the engines of your strikers. They're making a one way trip. Your strikers have to be over twice the size of my long range missiles to fill the same role. You burn more fuel, and present a larger target. Assuming the smallest we can each see coming at us is your strikers, I can see your attack, you can't see mine.
2. Your drone wall sounds like something fun for rail guns to shoot down, or large shaped flak warheads of some kind. Small ships to hit with ultra high speed pellets. These attacks aren't going to be over in minutes, unless your ships are reaching speeds of 1,000,000km/s or more, in which case they're huge targets with their fuel. I don't have to shoot down your drones, I just have to shoot down what your strikers throw at me, and I'll be tracking every one of them before they get into striking range. Remember, I have a sensor net that lets me watch interplanetary space, where as you're apparently ignoring it for the most part. And since I would like to shoot down your drones anyway, I just have to run down the line, get their vector and shoot where they'll be, plus where ever they're likely to move. I have thousands of rail guns lining the sides of my ships, each likely able to fire at a very high rate. Your drones can't have that heavy of armour, or they'll lack the fuel for all their trips and have next to no ammo. That you attack me from 4 directions, that means I get even MORE of my weapons to start firing with.
3.Remember, I'm producing two ships for an equal amount of firepower as you, and I can set down just about anywhere there are resources to chow down on and restock my ships. Once they're fully stocked, they may even be able to start fabricating their own ships (likely would be a smaller scale ship than itself, a frigate for a battleship, but the theory is that it could copy itself given a bit of time) You attack my ship on 'equal' footing, and you find a second coming out of hiding to slaughter you from behind. Your suggestion of leaving point defense ships to guard your resupply, well, I open up at a point on the flank of your strikers, which have next to no point defense which is to be provided by your drones. You've just lost 1/4 of your offensive fleet. If you send more ships at me, then I'll have even more ships, I'm producing mine faster than you can for an equal firepower.
4. Your blinding yourself. Your scouts aren't any more effective than my sensors. You have to respond to new points, I'm already there. (I can just build and launch more to get clearer pictures, you can never have enough data! The more I have the easier you are to spot) If I'm hiding in deep space, does that mean I'm sitting there doing nothing? Or does that mean I'm heading your way following a massive missile barrage, (remember, my long range missiles are going to be a LOT harder to spot than your strikers for an equal payload. My payload is totally one way, for you to GET to a target, you have to carry your missile payload + return fuel + enough fuel to move the payload and return fuel, which means more than DOUBLE the fuel. Unless you plan to ask me for a fill up before heading home.)
5.All things being equal: I have the same production capacity remember. I've already proved my ships carry and launch more warheads than your fleet does. You build a carrier as a mobile resupply + strikers + drone fleet + warheads. For your cost of building a fleet with the firepower of ONE of my ships, I've made two. You built enough to equal my two? I've now got 4.
6.The more activity you have going on, the easier you are to spot. We start out with equal production remember? Sure you are churning out thousands of ships for each one of mine, but they're roughly an equal match. You send out swarms of large reusable launch platforms, scouts, attack ships, resupply. Eventually I spot something, and I trace it back to a position of something major in your fleet. You don't have that advantage, you have nothing to follow back. Even if you launch a strike and take out one of my ships, I have hundreds more launching more 'strikers' than you can.
7.You can't track the sensors back, even if I use another, first stage launch platform, how do you know it isn't a decoy? Launched from father away on a course to make it look like it was launched from somewhere closer once you find it? I just take a longer route to launch anything from, and if you see something coming from the left, you have no way to know if I launched it from there, or if I'm sitting behind a moon to your right and have been there for a year. If you launch massive strikes against all the places you've narrowed it down to, well your chances become the same as a lucky guess at any spot that I'm likely to be in the whole star system which puts you no farther ahead than if you hadn't even seen the sensors. You said you don't have to cover the whole system, just parts I'm likely to be hiding in. You leave yourself blind, I see your attacks coming because I remember to look for them, you aren't. I launch missiles the size of your strikers, but they're packing a hell of a lot more of a punch.

Main point: My missiles fill the same role you are filling with your strikers and drones, but mine do it better. For the same size mine can be faster, or stronger, or carry more weapons. My gunships get to do the same things your carriers and factories do, hit from afar. Only thing is, you suffer a loss when you lose a striker or drone, I don't, they weren't coming back anyway. If you can detect when I launch massive attacks from my ships, I can detect when you launch your fleet of ships. If your ships can go somewhere, wait and hide then attack to obscure where they came from, my missiles can do the same. But I'm out producing you, and my bases are stronger and better armed.

You launch stealth missiles at me, I launch them at you. My ships can move in and hold space better than yours can, they're stronger and have better defenses. If I catch any of your ships out of position they're easy to slaughter because they're overly specialized for no good reason.

Also, think of this: What is more valuable and cost effective? 1000 men with rifles and 1 bullet, or 1 man with a machine gun and 1000 bullets? Which takes less to feed? For the cost of feeding your 1000 men, how many more machine gunners and bullets can I afford?

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1. A multistage long range missile can carry several smaller short ranged missiles. These are my arm for reaching out and touching someone, These are what I use to turn earth into a smoldering ruin from pluto. These outpreform your strikers, their engines aren't meant for more than one burn and are cheaper to make than the engines of your strikers. They're making a one way trip. Your strikers have to be over twice the size of my long range missiles to fill the same role. You burn more fuel, and present a larger target. Assuming the smallest we can each see coming at us is your strikers, I can see your attack, you can't see mine.

This is essentially my striker. As you go on, you are becoming more and more like my fleet.

I do not need to carry enough fuel to return. All I need is to carry enough fuel to rendesvous with a supply ship. This supply ship can be sent on a completly diferent and low fuel use course. I don't need to return to my mothership, but even then, my mother ship can move and rendesvous with the assult fleet, even if they are out of fuel.

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2. Your drone wall sounds like something fun for rail guns to shoot down, or large shaped flak warheads of some kind. Small ships to hit with ultra high speed pellets. These attacks aren't going to be over in minutes, unless your ships are reaching speeds of 1,000,000km/s or more, in which case they're huge targets with their fuel. I don't have to shoot down your drones, I just have to shoot down what your strikers throw at me, and I'll be tracking every one of them before they get into striking range. Remember, I have a sensor net that lets me watch interplanetary space, where as you're apparently ignoring it for the most part. And since I would like to shoot down your drones anyway, I just have to run down the line, get their vector and shoot where they'll be, plus where ever they're likely to move. I have thousands of rail guns lining the sides of my ships, each likely able to fire at a very high rate. Your drones can't have that heavy of armour, or they'll lack the fuel for all their trips and have next to no ammo. That you attack me from 4 directions, that means I get even MORE of my weapons to start firing with.

Again, you are not thinking of the distances. Trying to shoot them down with a rail gun or hitting multiple drones with flack would be futile.

With flack, think of the volume of a sphere. The amount of shrapnel needed to fill a sphere 1km in radius would be massive. This would amke the flack shell so big and slow that I would be easily be able to shoot it down.

With rail guns, well fast moving target that is changing its vector rapidly (and randomly) would be almost be imposible to shoot down at any apreciable range.

Let us take a velocity of 100km/s (or 360,000km/h). If my fighter is even 360,000 km away then I have over a second to dodge that shot (time for the sensors and then for the shot to reach my position). You would virtually have to fill the entire cone with metal to be effective. This would deplete your stocks so fast that I could just wait it out and loose only a few ships (or you could not fire at me, giving me time to launch more ordinance).

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3.Remember, I'm producing two ships for an equal amount of firepower as you, and I can set down just about anywhere there are resources to chow down on and restock my ships. Once they're fully stocked, they may even be able to start fabricating their own ships (likely would be a smaller scale ship than itself, a frigate for a battleship, but the theory is that it could copy itself given a bit of time) You attack my ship on 'equal' footing, and you find a second coming out of hiding to slaughter you from behind. Your suggestion of leaving point defense ships to guard your resupply, well, I open up at a point on the flank of your strikers, which have next to no point defense which is to be provided by your drones. You've just lost 1/4 of your offensive fleet. If you send more ships at me, then I'll have even more ships, I'm producing mine faster than you can for an equal firepower.

You are not produceing more firepower /mass than I am. You are producing more ordinance per volume. But that is an entierly different thing altogether.

You have to set down your entier gunship to restok. This means that it is out of the fight, or at least limiting it's range of fire. If you are attacking me, then that ship can not be resupplying.

I can attack you at the same time that I am resupplying. My smaller factory ships (which my be my mother ships, a modified striker or it's own build entierly) will also be able to set down in more locations where your much larger ship can not. So i have access to more locations than you and I can multitask attacking and resuplying.

If you are going to prodece your frigates and battleships, then you are starting to enter the specialization fleet. You are adopting my fleet design. If you are doing this, then you are admitting that you fleet design is not up to the task of defeating mine.

The factories will take up mass on your ships. This means that you will have to give up some mass for missiles and storage space for them to house your factories and their storage compartments. My Strikers do not have to do this. Sure I have less of them, but this is a small sacrifice for the increased production capacity.

Let us assume that a class 1 factory takes up 1 mass unit (ton, kiloton, whatever) and can produce 1 Mass Unit every 1 Time unit (hour, day, week, whatever). A class 2 factory can produce 2 Mass units for every Time Unit but is 2 times the mass (ie twice the size - assuming a constant density needed for the factory - and twice the production capacity), and so on.

You Gunship is 4,096 times the mass of my Striker. Say you have 50% of it as engine and fuel (this would most likely be more), leaving 2,048 mas units. Assuming 10% of the full mass for armour and structural, this gives 409.6 mass units for armour and structural leaving 1,638.4 mass units for ordinace, factories and cargo (storage for the factories).

How much will you be putting into ordinance? Each factory you add will reduce the amount of ordinance you can carry.

So for higher production capacity you will not be producing twice the firepower as compared to me, but because you have to carry around you factories while attacking me, you will in fact be producing far less.

If I locate your ship and you have to move it. Because all your factories are in that one ship, as it moves to its new location, you are loosing a massive amount of production.

Take my Factory ship (at twice the mass of my Striker, but built off the striker frame). It only has 25% of its mass as engine and fuel (it does not have the need that your gunship has for speed and can afford to take time between locations). Therefore 70% of the mass can be factories (remember 10% for structural and armour - although I could eliminate most of the armour as this ship would not be in combat much so it would be closer of 5% for this ship).

I can produce 512 of these for every gunship you make. At 70% (or better) as factories, that give me a production capacity of 358.4 Mass units per time unit per ship. At 512 ships to your 1, this far exceeds your production capacity.

My Strikers and Drones are smaller than the factory ship and so would actually be produced much quicker than you could assemble a large Gunship.

You would have much less production capacity than I would. This assumption by you is wrong.

I can take advantage of economies of scale in the number of factories I can produce.

If you locate one of my factory ships, it can move without a massive loss to my prodiction capacity, where as you have to mkove your whole ship (not to mention the production loss you suffer for the loss of the ship).

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4. Your blinding yourself. Your scouts aren't any more effective than my sensors. You have to respond to new points, I'm already there. (I can just build and launch more to get clearer pictures, you can never have enough data! The more I have the easier you are to spot) If I'm hiding in deep space, does that mean I'm sitting there doing nothing? Or does that mean I'm heading your way following a massive missile barrage, (remember, my long range missiles are going to be a LOT harder to spot than your strikers for an equal payload. My payload is totally one way, for you to GET to a target, you have to carry your missile payload + return fuel + enough fuel to move the payload and return fuel, which means more than DOUBLE the fuel. Unless you plan to ask me for a fill up before heading home.)

Yes. I have admitted that, if we are only looking statistically, then you have a much greater chance of detecting any one of my ships that I have of detecting one of yours. But, if you locate and destry one of my ships, that is not a big loss to me. If I detect and destroy one of your ships, that is a big loss to you (assuming detection = destroy and not taking into account any other tactics).

If you are hiding in deep space, I have covered all the resource locations with sensor drones (not fighter drones - my sensor drones are the same as yours and I can produce just as many for the same production capacity). Next I have a strike fleet standing by ready to respond to your attempts at landing a factory at that location. Mean while I am producing lots of factory ships that will be scattered all over the system. Some of these factory ships will then produce more sensor drones to fill in the Deep Space areas. Others will be producing more Strikers and Fighter Drones to re-enforce my fleet. You, hinding in deep space, are not producing anything. Eventually I will have more shiops that you have missiles. Your destruction is inevitable.

Also, as I said above, my assult force does not need to return to my supply ships. The supply ships can come to them

With supply ships scattered throughout the system, they do not have to use the same supply ships more than once. This would negate your attempts to track the assult fleet back to the supply route as ther eis no one supply route.

The main problem with haivng large amounts of ordinance and not being able to fire it all quickly is that all it take is 1 nuke to impact your ship and it is all over. I do not have to vaporise your ship.

I do not need to hit your ship with 100 missiles to destroy you. I need to hit you with 1. I on the other hand will need 100s (if not 1000s or 10,000s) of missiles to stop me. You have to stop all my ships. I only need to stop 1.

You might have 1,000,000,000 more missiles than me, but if I have the tactics to get just that 1 missiles to hit (before you can shoot down all my ships). It makes absolutely no difference the number of missiles that you have (in fact it would make it easier as the containment on all thse missiles could be damages and they too could detonate - this would lead to vaporisation, but it still would only take 1 hit).

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5.All things being equal: I have the same production capacity remember. I've already proved my ships carry and launch more warheads than your fleet does. You build a carrier as a mobile resupply + strikers + drone fleet + warheads. For your cost of building a fleet with the firepower of ONE of my ships, I've made two. You built enough to equal my two? I've now got 4.

No. All tech being equal, I will have the higher production capacity as for each factory you need to have an entire gunship built too. I can change the composition of my fleet by changeing how many of each ship I produce. You can't.

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6.The more activity you have going on, the easier you are to spot. We start out with equal production remember? Sure you are churning out thousands of ships for each one of mine, but they're roughly an equal match. You send out swarms of large reusable launch platforms, scouts, attack ships, resupply. Eventually I spot something, and I trace it back to a position of something major in your fleet. You don't have that advantage, you have nothing to follow back. Even if you launch a strike and take out one of my ships, I have hundreds more launching more 'strikers' than you can.

You are likely to spot an individual ship of mine more easily, but I don't rely on just 1 ship.

We start out with equal production capacity and I just concentrate on producing more factories, thus gaining the resource bonus.

Look at most RTS games. It is the player who can gain the most resources the quickest that has the advantage (not nessesarily wins - but if they were equally matched then it would translate into a win).

You can't trace something back to something major in my fleet as there is nothing major in my fleet. You destroy a Mothership. Those ships (Drones and Strikers) assigned to it can just use another mothership. Destroying a Striker or a Drone is just like you looseing a Point defense turret or a missile tube.

If you can trace something back to my ships, then I can trace them back to your. It is the same for both sides. I have no major component to my fleet. You do. I can afford to have you trace back to a Mothership but you can't afford to have me trace back to your Gunship.

You might be more likely (and it is only a smaller chance really) to trace me, but the costs of me tracing you are far higher. If we look at it in a cost/chance analysis, this is a disadvantage to you. I can also resuply from different supply ships each time making any trace almost usless as it would not reveal anything and would be just as effective as your single use missiles.

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7.You can't track the sensors back, even if I use another, first stage launch platform, how do you know it isn't a decoy? Launched from father away on a course to make it look like it was launched from somewhere closer once you find it? I just take a longer route to launch anything from, and if you see something coming from the left, you have no way to know if I launched it from there, or if I'm sitting behind a moon to your right and have been there for a year. If you launch massive strikes against all the places you've narrowed it down to, well your chances become the same as a lucky guess at any spot that I'm likely to be in the whole star system which puts you no farther ahead than if you hadn't even seen the sensors. You said you don't have to cover the whole system, just parts I'm likely to be hiding in. You leave yourself blind, I see your attacks coming because I remember to look for them, you aren't. I launch missiles the size of your strikers, but they're packing a hell of a lot more of a punch.

Equal tech remember. If you can track me, I can track you.

I could use the same missile fireing tactic as you to mask the location of my Strikers, just as you mask your Gunship's location only because my Strikers are smaller, they would be harder to track. Also I can launch more warheads for a given timeperiod so you would be hit with more ordinance than I would.

If you can fire missiles at 1000/s (maximum - that is no point defences) and I can use 1,000 Drones to shoot down 1000/s and I can have 32,768 Drones to your Gunship. What chance do you have to get past my defenses with your missiles?

If I have 4,096 strikers to your gunship and can fire 4096/s (even though I have less ordinance in total) you would have to further sacrifice your rate of fire for your missiles to defend against this (meansing I can get away with fewer drones).

Can you see the problem now. In 1 second worth of firing, I can overwhealm you point defences )and I could most likely fire for more than 1 second - may be 1 minute and you might do 40 minutes), Your missiles can;t make it past my point defences, even with 32 Gunships, I could hold off that barrarge with the Drones equivalent to just 1 of your Gunships. Thus I have a 1:32 defence capacity (and that is assuming no defence on your part).

If we gave your ships a 50:50 point defence to missiles then I could hold off 64 of them. Mean while, my Strikers can overwhelm your ships 1 at a time needing only a minimum 125 Strikers (but I would may as well send in 300 of them to make sure) to overwhelm you (at 4 missilss/s for a Striker and a defence of you of 500). You haivng 32 ships and me haveing 4,096 strikers. I won't even need to resupply...

Sure your missiles may pack a lot of punch. But in the end, a missile only needs to be strong enough to destroy the ship it hits, no stronger.

SO your missiles might be the size of my Strikers, but they don'y need to be that big.

A 1kt nuke might be enough to knock your gunship out of the fight. Why then would I need a 10kt or a 100kt nuke?

I would rather fire 10 1kt nukes and be sure of haivng at least 1 make it past your point defences than fire 1 100kt nuke and know it can't make it past your point defences.

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Main point: My missiles fill the same role you are filling with your strikers and drones, but mine do it better.

Not really better. That is what the discussion is about.

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For the same size mine can be faster, or stronger, or carry more weapons.

This is true. But just having a missile with a bigger bang is not nessesarily better or more effective.

Yours might be faster. But mine can be where they are needed. If you are in orbit Earth and are fireing at my Mothership in Orbit of the Moon. Then it will take some time for your missiles to hit. Mean while I can have a Assult Fleet already in orbit of Earth (around the other side). Who will die first?

As a rough guide it take 90 minutes for the ISS to orbit the Earth and it took 3 days to reach the moon in the Apollo program.

I have time to land the ship and get all my people out of there...

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My ships can move in and hold space better than yours can, they're stronger and have better defenses.

No. You can either be stronger or have better defences. Not both. You only have a limited amount of mass for your ship (as per the production and factories). Therefore if you increase your mass to add more defences, I can just make more Strikers to overwhealm them and as the strikers increase fire rate faster than you increase point defence fire rate, this is ultimatly not to your advanatage.

Also I can hold space much better as I can have ships in more places than you. I can use them to defend an area, making it difficult for you to operate. Even if I don't have enough ships to destroy you, I can bring preasure on your ships and wear down your crew. I can launch skirmish attacks or even false attacks so that you won't be really sure if this is my main fleet just coming into sensor range or not. It will dull your ship's and crew's ability to respond to the ral attack.

In medival time the Knight was considdered worth 1000 footsoldiers, not because they could kill 1000 footsoldiers for each knight that fell, but because they could be where they were needed faster than the footsoldiers could be (in fact a squad of foot soldiers with pikes would be able to kill more knights in a straight out battle).

You might be heavily armed and have more amunition than me, but I have a much higher rate of fire for both missiles and point defence and can overwhealm your point defences and block your attacks. I can spread out my fleet and thus be in position (much like the knights could be) quicker than you.

You might be able to attack me with more total misisles, but that is not what will win the battle. You have to have your missiles actually hit for them to be effective. You have to overwhealm the point defences. This means rate of fire, not total ammunition.

My fleet has the advantage of rate of fire. I will be more liely to hit you, but you will be more liekly to see me. I wouldrather hit the enemy than just look at them... :D

From the start, my gunships have been missile carriers. I'm going to outline my basic core ship, in an overly simplified design, and the weapons it carries.

Ships are going to have 2 main weapon systems: Basic armoured missile port (rapid moving cover) likely around 2m di. These can be used to launch long ranged missiles, or smaller warheads mounted in a sabot (The same way they would be attached and launched on the long range missiles, can carry different warheads for different tasks), can also be used for launching the sensor probe system.

The second system is going to be a small bore railgun, less than 1cm. These things are going to be fairly small, mounted between missile tubes. These are rapid fire, highspeed. Mainly used to shoot down incoming missiles, and could also be used to saturate the space in the region of your drones. If I know the specs on your drones, I can take its point, and plot every point your drone would be in the time it takes my shot to get there, then simply shoot as much of it as I can. Sure, not easy, but when you consider (with rough numbers, using Metal Storm's fire rate for my railguns) I can fire 1,536,000,000 rounds per second, per side. (roughly, but this doesn't include in the design the problem of the weapons close to the edge, but that only cuts down a few hundred per edge) This should be 0.000,001,5% of total ship volume per second, per side. Throw in some super advanced tech for aiming the weapons so they don't interfere with each other, (Each gun would be part of a fire control system that includes the field of each weapon when firing to insure accurate fire).

Ignoring engine ports (which could actually be modified missile tubes) and other needed things taking up space on the sides of the ship, this should give space for roughly 25600 missile ports per side, and 102400 railguns per side. With railgun assisted missiles and sabot missiles, I could launch maybe, 20 warheads capable of taking out one of your ships. They would make part of the trip there on a short range sabot, then split off into 20 different independent missiles, this is all assuming that newer engines can be made, and missiles about the size of modern ones can be made to engage at useful speeds over 0.5 billion m or more. Assuming I can get a firerate of 2 sabots a second per tube, that gives me 1,024,000 warheads a second, per side.

Now, lets break things down into a rough group of volumes:
1,000,000,000m^3 for the whole ship:

250,000,000 for engines, fuel.
50,000,000 for a deployable refinery/factory system.
100,000,000 for pellets in my railguns. All guns firing, will take 3 hours. This gives me 1.0 × 10^14 pellets by the way.
100,000,000 for long range boosters that would have a number of Sabot attached to the front and fired at extreme range (Filling the role of your striker, in a rather small package, for cheap) gives me 500,000 long range boosters. They might not be fast, but they're hard to see and will pack a punch.
150,000,000 taking up space for structure.
50,000,000 for large warheads: The kind uses to blow holes in moons you're trying to set up a base on, packaged onto the same engine sabot with its own final stage booster. That gives me 1,250,000 of them, and I can get them all off in 4 seconds firing from all sides. These are more likely to be loaded on long range boosters however.
300,000,000 for smaller warheads packed in sabot, gives me 7,500,000 of them. In total I can unload them in 24 seconds.

So, your ships don't need space for LRB, as they ARE your LRB. We'll put your striker as 25% engines, 5% structure, 10% pellets, 65% warheads.

We'll again make your small easy to build ships as cubes (for easy math), you get a cube using 6 material on the sides, 0.05 other materials inside, and you carry 0.65 War heads.

I'll scale my cubes up to be 16x16x16, which then takes a whopping 1536 outer material and 614.4 inner material, but carries 1433.6 worth of war heads.

Now, at 0.65 war head space, you need a little over 2205 ships. That costs you 13236 outer materials, and 110 inner. For cost of your outer, I've made nearly 14 hulls, but I haven't finished around 1/6 of the inners. This isn't that bad, as hull plates are going to cost a lot more than inner structure anyway, I'm still ahead. So, you have 1 fleet with the firepower of mine, I have 12. All things being equal, you can produce more ships, but I get to hit a hell of a lot harder. I lose a ship? Not that big of a deal, I'm out producing you in launch platform capacity.

I put armour on 4 times as thick, I've still roughly built 2 ships that can take a hell of a lot more of a beating than yours. 2 ships that don't need ANY support after being launched, you still have to build supply ships and bases.


So, 'prewar' you build large numbers of factories with small numbers of ships, and once the shooting starts you are going to deploy those factories and start spamming your zergish small ships. Lets start a game of star craft on a custom map, Tell each other which corner of the map we're in. We'll each start with a prebuilt army, I'll take Carriers and scouts and a handfull of drones. You take a massive army of drones and a 4 scouts, and we'll see who wins. No starting credits either, you'll have to mine everything.


Yes, my ships do the 'same thing' as your ships, but mine don't have the major disadvantages yours do in that: They guzzle fuel. I launch a long range attack, I burn enough fuel to get the payload there, no more. Your ships have to carry enough fuel to move a payload there AND enough fuel to retreat and regroup. If you carry just enough fuel to GET the payload there, then what? You are a sitting duck, you can't move.

You expose your ships to a lot of danger in attacks, I'm attacking you from range, you're getting up close. Lets look at the example in the lounge of modern soldiers VS Alexander the Great's army. Poor Alex didn't fair that well.

Now, you talk about attacking from multiple vectors, this actually works against you by a lot, but I get to use it far better than you. Attacks are going to take time, and are likely to be noticed. You specialize your fleet, and spread it out for 'protection'. Everything my ship needs is right there with it. You split your fleet into 4 sections and attack. What does my one ship, 'caught' in the middle do? I rush you. I'm facing just one part of a tetrahedron rather than 4, I've cut 3/4 of your fleet out of the battle simply by moving my ship.

So, my giant cube, it is now rushing 1/4 of your fleet. What do you do? You're going to have to burn a lot of fuel changing direction of your ships (Remember, in space while things are often highspeed, they're usually very very low acceleration. The ships I rush, are they going to be able to stop their highspeed approach and then get going faster than my ship, while letting the far ones close enough to renew the attack?

With your fleet spread out, I can flank you. What does 1/4 of your fleet do if they are faced with 1 of my gunships running at them, head on AND has a second one vectoring in from the side?


As for flak and that, I have to worry about AREA, a highspeed bullet can cover an area, if I setup cone like attack patterns with railgun fire, I either deny you cover in an area (which I can fire missiles in) or I'm destroying your lightly armoured ships. Just how much can your drones manurer? I can place a pellet for every m^2 over an area at a rate of 4.5km^2 a second. And these are high energy ones, maybe even micro atomic warheads or something. I don't HAVE to sit there and be a pretty target for you, I can rush your small ships if they attack me. Will they have the fuel and thrust to about face and run faster than I can come at them?

As for factories, the ones my ships have are first and foremost simply things to allow full independence. Being able to build more things than ammo is a bonus, they'll have to be able to make repairs to the ship, and if they can make replacement parts for the ship, they can make a new ship if they have time. The main factories will be main factories, same as yours, producing at a rate the same as yours can.

You say that I forget time and space and how large they are in this issue, but in this case you are forgetting that BECAUSE of that, volume of ordnance IS firepower. Even with my ship being a cubic km, I can unload it with main missiles in a matter of minutes. When shots take HOURS to hit their targets even at fairly short ranges, taking 1/10 of a second to get all your ammo off isn't much of an advantage to taking a minute or two.

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With supply ships scattered throughout the system, they do not have to use the same supply ships more than once. This would negate your attempts to track the assult fleet back to the supply route as there is no one supply route.

You still have supply lines, that I can follow back to a source. Kill the source and I cripple you a little, and force you to rely on fewer sources, meaning for the same tactical actions you take the higher my chances of finding a source. My Capital ships can deploy its refinery systems (which would be compacted and stored while in combat. Designed to be retracted in a matter of minutes after dumping half finished production) fly though a random asteroid field and resupply itself. No source, nothing for you to trace back. Even if you take out all my factories, I still stand a better chance of final retaliation strikes. My ships still make great rams against cities, yours can be blow up enough to burn up in the atmosphere. :P