Small, maneuverable craft will be shot out of space like flies attacking a bug zapper.

Humans can pull 8gs. Missiles, thousands. Little human in his little 'fighter' flies up to 'attacking' range of big huge capital ship, lets say they fire missiles at the CS. CS fires counter batteries, destroy the missiles before they do damage, and just for kicks, fire a larger, faster missile up the tailpipe of your friendly little fighter.

Why would a capital ships guns have problems tracking small craft? It isn't like you are going to be firing you 10m anti capital cannon at little ships, you're going to use the little 80mm point defense weapons, with fast tracking speed, the ones designed to shoot down missiles and small annoying things.

Combat will be mid sized fleets of ships, likely similar to preaircraft carrier era, with dreadnought cored fleets backed up with smaller craft to fill other roles. Ideally you would want to be able to send your supply ships to somewhere a little safer than front lines, ships small enough to hide behind larger space debris, but large enough to pack enough firepower and defensive guns/missiles to stand a chance.

The difference is, weapons will likely be long ranged missiles, the goal of them being able to fire more at your target than they can shoot down. This does mean being able to send the missiles around to attack from different vectors, BUT on the same side so the ship can't engage with several defensive batteries. Why send out a 'fighter' when you can simply send a missile?

The 'aircraft carrier' is already a dieing breed, much like dreadnoughts were, they were a special thing that quickly died out. They're going to be quickly replaced by far cheaper and smaller done carriers, and missile cruisers. Why have a huge aircraft carrier, when you can have a hand full of slightly smaller cruiser sized ships doing more damage for less cost?

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Small, maneuverable craft will be shot out of space like flies attacking a bug zapper.

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

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Humans can pull 8gs. Missiles, thousands.

If missiles could pull thousands of Gs then no aircraft could ever avoid them. So why then do we have aircraft at all?

Missiles can not pull thousands of Gs. They might be able to pull 2 or 3 times what a human could, but even then it would still be possible to out manoeuvre them.

You have an even bigger problem once you get into space. To change your heading, you need an engine capable of putting that kind of thrust. A missile with an engine that can only put out 10 or so Gs, could not ever pull a turn of thousands of Gs.

besides, the fighters and bombers don't necessarily have to be crewed by people, a good enough AI would be perfectly serviceable.

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ships small enough to hide behind larger space debris, but large enough to pack enough firepower and defensive guns/missiles to stand a chance.

This would be the Bomber.

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The difference is, weapons will likely be long ranged missiles, the goal of them being able to fire more at your target than they can shoot down. This does mean being able to send the missiles around to attack from different vectors, BUT on the same side so the ship can't engage with several defensive batteries. Why send out a 'fighter' when you can simply send a missile?

Well until AI is much better, humans will be able to respond better than a missile could to changing situations.

Long ranged missiles can be detected and then a fighter squad sent out to intercept them. The missiles, to get any decent speed, will have to have powerful engines which will be more easily detected.

It would be better to have shorter ranged missiles launched from a mobile delivery platform (the bomber) as this would give the capital ship less time to react and scramble an intercept.

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They're going to be quickly replaced by far cheaper and smaller done carriers, and missile cruisers.

UAVs (uncrewed aerial vehicles) are still aircraft and a ship that launches them would still be classed as an aircraft carrier.

The missile cruiser would be the bombers I was talking about. Large enough to carry a sufficient payload, but small enough to out manoeuvre a larger ship.

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.

A smart missile would have a shaped explosive warhead to channel shrapnel (maybe even sub munitions) into the hull of the target. If it was targeted by a point defence system, it would automatically detonate early so as some of the shrapnel would impact the target. This system would make nearly any point defence system next to useless. The only defence is thicker armour and therefore slower ships, or faster ships (fighters) so that such approaches would be less likely to impact your ship (you can shoot it and then thrust perpendicular to it to avoid the shrapnel).

Self Reforming Reactive Armour. Basically think of a special Jello that can be hit by a high explosive, spread it over the length of the armour, and then flow back. This means you either need a LOT of high explosives to rip the armour face apart, or a good strike from a nuke.

This means shooting down missiles before they strike properly is key.

"Fighter" and "Bomber" suggest things that rely on speed, and are MUCH smaller than capital ships. (F-22 is 18.90 m compared to 332.8 for the United States Navy CVN-21 program "21st Century Aircraft Carrier")

Missiles just need to be a one way trip, so, their thrust to fuel storage ratio can be higher. (if you have 20L of fuel, you can burn more of it faster, you don't have a return trip) So defensive missiles are going to massively out preform your 'bombers'. If your bomber has a 95+% chance of being shot down before returning to your carrier, then why bother making them able to?

"Small" ships that can be hid easily would compare closer to Frigates or Destroyers (Halifax class frigate, 134.1 m. Iroquois class destroyer, 130 m), maybe as small as something you would call a gun boat. These wouldn't rely on moving out of the way of shots for defense, but rather stealth and simply not GETTING shot at.

Your bombers, they're going to be larger (carrying fuel for a return trip) so, how are they in anyway easier to hide than a missile that makes the one way trip?

Just like in modern air combat, there are no dog fights, you're not going to have your star fighters going out like WWI and WWII era pilots to fire at close range, it is going to be much closer to Submarine warfare, don't be seen, find them before they find you, shoot first.

The small ship that relies on moving out of the way is going to be killed by the larger ship that doesn't worry about moving fast. They can carry the payload of defensive and offensive missiles and cannon to shoot down what comes their way, and still fire back.

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

YeAh! Ships could be made of different components, and larger components will require more support components. The game simulate all these components, and make it so that large systems for motherships are orders of magnitude larger and more complex than drones. Launch a drone with a railgun, paint it black, cool it with liquid nitrogen, give it crushable armour for the landing. load a dozen into a delivery mechanism(like a railgun, or a drone with a railgun), and maxh thm into the enemy hull at 2000 m/sec. Some of them die, but the ones that survive a 1000 g deceleration start mining the hull, and bootstrapping itself into a serious problem. One that will defend itself against any kind of immune system the ship has(space marines are the most obvious immune system I can think of). It could land on an asteroid, and instead of being annoying, it could build a laser.

Railguns are a kick in the pants. They, unlike missiles, are difficult to deflect. A chunk of metal launched from a railgun traveling at relativistic speeds is going to be tricky to deflect. You can't shoot it down, cause its in space and there is no down. You can melt it or vaporize it, but it's still traveling in the same direction, at the same speed. You need to use just as much energy as was used to launch it as to stop it, and even deflecting it quickly enough is diffuicult, as you must displace it laterally by at least the radius of your ship inside of several nanoseconds warning you have that it was fired.

Fighters and bombers could be human controlled! It would be cheaper and less destructive, though, if your ship can pull more than 8 Gs, and doesn't have to have a life support system. Put the pilot on the ship, and control the thing via remote.

I like the idea that coming accross a sensor drone is the first clue that there's another person out there.

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If your bomber has a 95+% chance of being shot down before returning to your carrier, then why bother making them able to?

Of course if the bomber had the 95% chance of being shot down you would send it on the mission. The whole point of the bombers is that they are not easily shot down by the capitals. Also if you had a protective screen of fighters to intercept the incoming enemy fighters then this would dramatically increase the survivability of the bombers.

It would be an extremely foolish (and most likely dead) commander that just "throws" their ships at the enemy. you would use tactics and counter tactics to succeed at the mission.

One simple strategy is to launch a strike form the rear of the enemy. This would put you in a position to attack their engines and as the engines would take space (both inside and out side the ship) there would not be as many defences there.

The counter tactic to this is to turn the capital 90 degrees to present a larger defensive barrage to the attackers.

The counter-counter tactic (and this would be the main strategy) for the attackers, is to launch a second strike but from the new rear. To be sure of doing this you really need to attack from 4 directions at ones in a tetrahedron pattern.

If all you had were larger ships, the would be a massive waste of resources. Having to out number a ship 4 to 1 is not a good use of resources.

However, if you use a squad of fighters and a squad of bombers in each attack vector, this could be all handled by a single capital ship (carrier).

Not only that, but the resources (the fighters and bombers) would be available for reuse. A one way missile can not be reused either as a decoy, or as an actual weapons platform.

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Your bombers, they're going to be larger (carrying fuel for a return trip) so, how are they in anyway easier to hide than a missile that makes the one way trip?

A missile that uses it's fuel load to rapidly make the trip between the ships (this would be a long range missile, not a short range one as this would be a completely different situation). would put out a lot of heat and thus be easily detected.

If the missile decide to go slow and not accelerate fast, then the target ship could have moved off and the missile will have been wasted. All the resources used for development, the warhead, etc, will be lost on the one shot.

However a bomber, while being bigger, can travel to the target location slowly, and thus reduce the emission signature, then if the target is still there they can engage them or if they are not there, return and refuel. The only thing lost on a false target is the fuel.

If, to be sure of destroying the target, you need to send 100 missiles and the capital only carries 1000 missiles, then each false target you loose 10% of your stock. A cunning commander would know of this and exploit it with false sensor drones and such, then when your missiles are depleted, send in their actual strike force and you are left without any real defence. Game over.

The bombers on the other hand could launch strike after strike and even if 20 or 30 of them are false targets, nothing much is lost.

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"Small" ships that can be hid easily would compare closer to Frigates or Destroyers (Halifax class frigate, 134.1 m. Iroquois class destroyer, 130 m), maybe as small as something you would call a gun boat. These wouldn't rely on moving out of the way of shots for defense, but rather stealth and simply not GETTING shot at.

Yes. The bombers would not be all that manoeuvrable and rely in the fighters for their main defence. They would definitely try to avoid direct fire fights, but would have a few point defences and anti fighter systems. However, these system could be overwhelmed by enough fighters and good tactics if they didn't have the support of other ships.

This is the whole point. It is Combined arms. By them selves they have weaknesses as does any single design. But is you have designs to cover and exploit these weaknesses in the enemy, then you will be far superior than a fleet that does not use such strategies and tactics.

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Railguns are a kick in the pants. They, unlike missiles, are difficult to deflect. A chunk of metal launched from a railgun traveling at relativistic speeds is going to be tricky to deflect.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For each shot from your rail gun it will push the ship in the opposite direction. A missile will not do this.

If you have rail guns mounted on the front or rear of your ship and are firing them at a target to the side, the this will cause your ship to spin. This is not a good thing to have happen. It will throw of you targeting, and a single degree at a distance of even a single light second will make you completely miss your target.

Also a missile will be able to adjust for slight errors on the direct targeting where as a metal slug would not.

For close range fire fights, rail guns could be effective as they could have a rapid rate of fire and overwhelm their sensors (and so also act as a sensor screen for your real attack).

A single rail gun shot would not show up on sensors, but enough to cripple a ship would show up very clearly. Radar reflect very well off of metal and the rail gun slugs would have to be metal (or at least electrically conductive - which is what makes the metal show up so easily on radar). So rail guns, if used effectively, would not be stealthy in any form.

Another down side to rail guns is that to launch the slugs at relativistic speeds would require a massive amount of power. This would create all other problems like cooling, EM emissions, etc which would make the ship stand out.

With regards to the sound effects in movies and games, I think you should keep them.

I prefer to think of the sounds as having been generated by a computer on my ship so as to translate the experience to my very limited view inside a cockpit or command deck.

Also, what will you use to fill the gap you have opened by removing our sense of hearing as a tool?

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I prefer to think of the sounds as having been generated by a computer on my ship so as to translate the experience to my very limited view inside a cockpit or command deck.

They are already experimenting with this is aircraft (both civilian and military), so it would not be too much of a leap for them to consider this for space ships too.

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Original post by Edtharan Quote: I prefer to think of the sounds as having been generated by a computer on my ship so as to translate the experience to my very limited view inside a cockpit or command deck. They are already experimenting with this is aircraft (both civilian and military), so it would not be too much of a leap for them to consider this for space ships too.

I've seen experiments like this, but they all use more tones and stuff, not like a 'boom' sound or 'zoom' for something passing by at high speeds.

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Original post by Edtharan Quote: If your bomber has a 95+% chance of being shot down before returning to your carrier, then why bother making them able to? Of course if the bomber had the 95% chance of being shot down you would send it on the mission. The whole point of the bombers is that they are not easily shot down by the capitals. Also if you had a protective screen of fighters to intercept the incoming enemy fighters then this would dramatically increase the survivability of the bombers. It would be an extremely foolish (and most likely dead) commander that just "throws" their ships at the enemy. you would use tactics and counter tactics to succeed at the mission. One simple strategy is to launch a strike form the rear of the enemy. This would put you in a position to attack their engines and as the engines would take space (both inside and out side the ship) there would not be as many defences there. The counter tactic to this is to turn the capital 90 degrees to present a larger defensive barrage to the attackers. The counter-counter tactic (and this would be the main strategy) for the attackers, is to launch a second strike but from the new rear. To be sure of doing this you really need to attack from 4 directions at ones in a tetrahedron pattern. If all you had were larger ships, the would be a massive waste of resources. Having to out number a ship 4 to 1 is not a good use of resources. However, if you use a squad of fighters and a squad of bombers in each attack vector, this could be all handled by a single capital ship (carrier). Not only that, but the resources (the fighters and bombers) would be available for reuse. A one way missile can not be reused either as a decoy, or as an actual weapons platform. Quote: Your bombers, they're going to be larger (carrying fuel for a return trip) so, how are they in anyway easier to hide than a missile that makes the one way trip? A missile that uses it's fuel load to rapidly make the trip between the ships (this would be a long range missile, not a short range one as this would be a completely different situation). would put out a lot of heat and thus be easily detected. If the missile decide to go slow and not accelerate fast, then the target ship could have moved off and the missile will have been wasted. All the resources used for development, the warhead, etc, will be lost on the one shot. However a bomber, while being bigger, can travel to the target location slowly, and thus reduce the emission signature, then if the target is still there they can engage them or if they are not there, return and refuel. The only thing lost on a false target is the fuel. If, to be sure of destroying the target, you need to send 100 missiles and the capital only carries 1000 missiles, then each false target you loose 10% of your stock. A cunning commander would know of this and exploit it with false sensor drones and such, then when your missiles are depleted, send in their actual strike force and you are left without any real defence. Game over. The bombers on the other hand could launch strike after strike and even if 20 or 30 of them are false targets, nothing much is lost. Quote: "Small" ships that can be hid easily would compare closer to Frigates or Destroyers (Halifax class frigate, 134.1 m. Iroquois class destroyer, 130 m), maybe as small as something you would call a gun boat. These wouldn't rely on moving out of the way of shots for defense, but rather stealth and simply not GETTING shot at. Yes. The bombers would not be all that manoeuvrable and rely in the fighters for their main defence. They would definitely try to avoid direct fire fights, but would have a few point defences and anti fighter systems. However, these system could be overwhelmed by enough fighters and good tactics if they didn't have the support of other ships. This is the whole point. It is Combined arms. By them selves they have weaknesses as does any single design. But is you have designs to cover and exploit these weaknesses in the enemy, then you will be far superior than a fleet that does not use such strategies and tactics. Quote: Railguns are a kick in the pants. They, unlike missiles, are difficult to deflect. A chunk of metal launched from a railgun traveling at relativistic speeds is going to be tricky to deflect. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For each shot from your rail gun it will push the ship in the opposite direction. A missile will not do this. If you have rail guns mounted on the front or rear of your ship and are firing them at a target to the side, the this will cause your ship to spin. This is not a good thing to have happen. It will throw of you targeting, and a single degree at a distance of even a single light second will make you completely miss your target. Also a missile will be able to adjust for slight errors on the direct targeting where as a metal slug would not. For close range fire fights, rail guns could be effective as they could have a rapid rate of fire and overwhelm their sensors (and so also act as a sensor screen for your real attack). A single rail gun shot would not show up on sensors, but enough to cripple a ship would show up very clearly. Radar reflect very well off of metal and the rail gun slugs would have to be metal (or at least electrically conductive - which is what makes the metal show up so easily on radar). So rail guns, if used effectively, would not be stealthy in any form. Another down side to rail guns is that to launch the slugs at relativistic speeds would require a massive amount of power. This would create all other problems like cooling, EM emissions, etc which would make the ship stand out.

Acccording to http://www.oz.net/~coilgun/theory/electroguns.htm, railguns can accelerate a 16 gram projectile to 5.9 km/s along a 5m barrel. This gives a muzzle energy of approximatly 5.5 megajoules, or the equivalent of 1300 grams of TNT. This is in the modern day, the very infancy of railguns. I'm not sure if the navy is using railguns in ships that have been deployed, But I know they are working on it. Fast forward several decades, to when railguns have been in military and civilian uses for years. Suppose it's a 500 kilo chunk of scrap metal launched at 100 km/s(.3% of c), along a 15 meter barrel? Relativity aside, This would give a projectile energy of 5x10^12 Joules, or about 1.2 kilotons of TNT. This is the point where it starts impacting the trajetory of your ship. Although I think that it would be trivial to negate any spin with a calculated thruster burst, since you already know the momentum change of the projectile and your own ship, Sucha hit would be massive. All that energy is pure KE(I haven't gotten into the wasted energy...), so you have to absorrb that, and I doubt that your engines can compensate all at once for 5 terajoules It seems to me that it would be good to put such a weapon on a flexible armature, away from the ship so you can have lots of shock absorbtion. Also, if something goes wrong, the explosion and energy release are removed from you. The only issue that would create would be widening your profile, amking you seem bigger than you are, and therefor easier to see. OTOH, that extra profile could be alot of empty space for enemy bullets to pass harmlesslythrough, especially if you widen it even further with chaff.
The real problem would be getting hit with one. Such a hit would add an unknown (to you, the target) momentum to your ship, and force your navigational software to take a few moments to figure out what just happened. 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?

Edtharan, you talk about making the bombers/fighters drones, so how is that any different than two stage missiles? Long slow burn long to make the trip to the general area of the target ship, then a fast main warhead (or even more than one launched from a disposable first stage rocket.)

This can hardly be called a 'bomber'.

As for your idea of fighter screen to cover your bombers. 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, little fighter, sure it can use its lasers to shoot down missiles, but if the little fighter with its small reactor can shoot a little laser to shoot down missiles, well, the capital ship can put more on itself, AND bigger ones, shoot down whatever the bombers fire at it, the fighters protecting the bombers, AND the bombers themselves. Even without energy weapons, the fighters will run out of ammo long before a large ship. With the right stuff, the capital ship could cruise through an asteroid field, and MAKE more ammo while fighting.

As for things like railguns pushing the ships and throwing off targeting, well, they can correct for this with 16inch guns on battle ships, so, don't you think someone could come up with a solution in the future? How about counter thrusters mounted on the other side from railgun turrets?

Also, what stops your railgun shells from having their own guidance system and small thrusters for correcting shots?

Deploy sentry drones around your capital ship, for active sensors, maybe weapons platforms, these wouldn't have to move much, as the main firepower would come from the capital ship itself.

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. Engines don't have to take up all the space so as they are defenseless, think of a diamond shaped ship, half the sides could then fire behind itself, sure, there would be a small cone of 'dead space' directly behind the engines, but you just put them full ahead, and toast anything there.