ok, so you put out your armed scouts. How large are they? How fast are they?

I put out passive sensor drones, something small, cheap, hell they can even be masked as random space junk and launched, without engines. just drifting around space, maybe even as small as a pop can. It gets a launch point and a vector, and knows the position of relay station or two. Uses a narrow laser to beam data it collects to there. Base its own position on time and the location of the sun.

You've just lost your scout ships that can defend themselves. Why? Any kind of fleet/ship that could defend itself against more than a handful of missiles isn't going to be that stealthy. A remote sensor that is large enough to carry weapons is going to be a LOT easier to spot, they're also going to cost a lot more.

Any system you use with your scouts will need a similar relay system, so you can't 'counter' it by finding and taking out the relays any easier than I could yours.

Your resupply ships still have to form a chain of some sort. I send stealth missiles with some nice AI, they watch your bombers that have just failed on their first volley to take out my fleet. They resupply, missiles follow your resupply ships back. You might find a few, but eventually I find your carrier. Those pure stealth missiles might not be enough to take down your carrier alone, but now you have 10, 50, 100, gunships, all unloading long range payloads heading towards your carrier.

Carrier goes boom, then what? You have a few hundred non self contained ships with limited supplies floating around space without a home base. You'll need to find a new carrier. All I need to do is track your supply lines and keep blowing up your carriers, each carrier I take out is a MAJOR problem for you, it means either you can engage fewer targets (less resupplies in a given time) or you need more activity around your carriers, launching more resupply.

My ships are self contained for the most part, hell, they could maybe even build COPIES of themselves. I lose a Capital ship, I lose a capital ship, but all of mine are designed for independent action (Resupply is useful, so they can go back to low stealth combat rather than hiding somewhere to fab their own resupply, but not needed) so the rest of the fleet loses support, while not something that can be ignored completely, doesn't actually affect other ships in the fleet. You lose a carrier, well, you have a LOT more problems than I do.

Also, how much do I have to have on the outside of my ship? Why can't I have retractable sensors and com equipment? Put everything on an angle so the heavy armoured cover don't have to move far, and the lighter equipment can travel on a highspeed system to pop in/out. Incomming weapon's fire that didn't get taken out by point defense? I have time to figure out where it is going to hit, and close all ports on that part. With remote sensors and point defense missiles I can close off one side of my ship and still launch counter measures from the other side and still cover my whole ship.

My ships have regenerative armour, you blow a hole in it, and with just a few moments the armour is back in full. Your small ships might be able to move around a little easier with less chance of being detected, but your carriers will be just as big as my ships. If you include everything on your carrier that my gunships have, plus larger launch platforms (I use basically the same thing as your carrier, but everything is one way trips, less fuel and smaller missiles) Your carriers might be even bigger. The cost of a full carrier plus its smaller fleet, how much will that take? After you build all that extra stuff, how much farther ahead on my next gunship am I?

Your carriers are also going to be easier to find. If your ships NEED a carrier, then that suggests they're not meant for extended self contained missions, which my gunships are. My gunships can park themselves in some crater on some moon that never sees the sun, your carriers could do the same thing, but to be 'operational' all my ship has to do is launch more remote sensors when its net gets weak, what does your carrier do? Your scouts sound like reusable ones, that would return to the carrier at some point. If I ID your scout, then my net just has to track it, watch its route, then find where it disappears. I can then send probes after it. My net can be designed to be launched and then change direction at random after launch, making it hard to track, you might find my scouts, but they're not going back to ship, and you'll never have a clue where it comes from.

Once I ID your carrier position I can launch long range, small and slow speed tracker cruise missiles, they tie themselves into the sensor net, and correct for any changes in your position. You are easier to ID as you're relying on your armed scout ship patrols moving in and out of your ship.

Talroth, that is a very good and complete strategy. I like it. :D

But if we are assuming equal tech, just different applications of it, then I can use the same things in my ships too.

So my carrier would have point defence too (less of it), and my fighters would have the ability to extend this point defence for a larger effective range than your point defence can be (if you use armed drones as part of your point defence then they are fighters).

The larger point defence coverage means I have a greater chance of intercepting and eliminating incoming ordinance (if we are assuming that the point defences have the same effectiveness between us).

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I put out passive sensor drones, something small, cheap, hell they can even be masked as random space junk and launched, without engines. just drifting around space, maybe even as small as a pop can. It gets a launch point and a vector, and knows the position of relay station or two. Uses a narrow laser to beam data it collects to there. Base its own position on time and the location of the sun.

Yes this would be an effective scout tactic, but equal tech and all, I have the same thing so I don't need armed scouts and we come back to the same chances again, however, I do have some armed scouts, the unarmed sensor drones that I launch might detect your drones and then my fighters can be scrambled to intercept and destroy. Also, if you drones have no engines, I don;t even need to send out armed scouts. A ballistic projectile (from say a rail gun) would be able to intercept and take it out (but you could also use this against me). Even a small engine would remove this counter tactic.

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You've just lost your scout ships that can defend themselves. Why? Any kind of fleet/ship that could defend itself against more than a handful of missiles isn't going to be that stealthy. A remote sensor that is large enough to carry weapons is going to be a LOT easier to spot, they're also going to cost a lot more.

So I might instead use my scout ships to make decoy's against your sensors. You would be run ragged chasing all the blips.

A blip could be the my capital, or it could be a scout putting out a false signal. It could be a bomber strike force on silent running. What are you going to do?

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Any system you use with your scouts will need a similar relay system, so you can't 'counter' it by finding and taking out the relays any easier than I could yours.

Yep, and any thing you try I can counter. On this we are on equal levels.

The other thing about sensors without engines is that once they are launched they are very difficult to retrieve. This is a steady loss of resources (and yes, I am taking into account the mining operations you use later) and requires ever increasing amounts of computation resources to handle the data input.

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Your resupply ships still have to form a chain of some sort. I send stealth missiles with some nice AI, they watch your bombers that have just failed on their first volley to take out my fleet. They resupply, missiles follow your resupply ships back. You might find a few, but eventually I find your carrier. Those pure stealth missiles might not be enough to take down your carrier alone, but now you have 10, 50, 100, gunships, all unloading long range payloads heading towards your carrier.

10, 50, 100 gunships is a massive amount of resources. Not just in the hardware, but also in the crew and their training.

What if the resupply ships don't rendezvous with the carrier. You talk about mining for resource, why can;t I have a few bomber space frames modified to do this too. These mining/factories on your ship can't be too big as you wouldn't have room for crew, engines, fuel, weapons, etc. I could have half a dozen or more of these mining/factory ships scattered all around the system. That could resupply my strike fleets.

If you have the resources and tech to produce hundreds of ginships, why could I not have the same devices in a few of the bombers making carriers and bombers and fighters too?

A bomber would be much cheaper to make than a gunship, so by the time you make 1 gunship, I could have made dozens of bombers. Could you 100 gunships defend them selves against 1200 bombers?

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Carrier goes boom, then what? You have a few hundred non self contained ships with limited supplies floating around space without a home base. You'll need to find a new carrier. All I need to do is track your supply lines and keep blowing up your carriers, each carrier I take out is a MAJOR problem for you, it means either you can engage fewer targets (less resupplies in a given time) or you need more activity around your carriers, launching more resupply.

Equal tech remember, just different applications.

I have those same factory ships and can build another carrier, just as you can build another gunship.

We are not distinguishing between an invasion or defence of a system (the scenario could be both, or we could be two planets within the same system , or just two countries on the same planet).

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My ships are self contained for the most part, hell, they could maybe even build COPIES of themselves. I lose a Capital ship, I lose a capital ship, but all of mine are designed for independent action (Resupply is useful, so they can go back to low stealth combat rather than hiding somewhere to fab their own resupply, but not needed) so the rest of the fleet loses support, while not something that can be ignored completely, doesn't actually affect other ships in the fleet. You lose a carrier, well, you have a LOT more problems than I do.

Same here. I loose a carrier, I build another. I loose a bomber, I build another (in far less time than you can build a gunship). Hell, I initially spam hundreds of factory ships throughout the system and get them to build more ships. I just need a carrier to initially launch these factory ships, the rest is done only from these mines.

You still have to bring all your resources back to your gunships, I can launch an attack from a factory, and even if you trace it back, it has built at leas 2 other factory ships which will do the same. This is a much more advantageous tech for my fleet design as I rely on smaller ships which can be made easier (massive ships are more complex than smaller ships) and with less resources. SO I build my fleet faster and in more numbers than you do.

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Also, how much do I have to have on the outside of my ship? Why can't I have retractable sensors and com equipment? Put everything on an angle so the heavy armoured cover don't have to move far, and the lighter equipment can travel on a highspeed system to pop in/out. Incomming weapon's fire that didn't get taken out by point defense? I have time to figure out where it is going to hit, and close all ports on that part. With remote sensors and point defense missiles I can close off one side of my ship and still launch counter measures from the other side and still cover my whole ship.

Yes this would be more effective, but once you retract the sensors and communication equipment (so you no longer have access to your sensor network), you are effectively blind. I am striking from multiple direction, sop you would have to retract all these external devices. So you are now completely blind and I can move in closer and be more effective with my attacks. Yay, you just made it easier for me.

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My ships have regenerative armour, you blow a hole in it, and with just a few moments the armour is back in full. Your small ships might be able to move around a little easier with less chance of being detected, but your carriers will be just as big as my ships. If you include everything on your carrier that my gunships have, plus larger launch platforms (I use basically the same thing as your carrier, but everything is one way trips, less fuel and smaller missiles) Your carriers might be even bigger. The cost of a full carrier plus its smaller fleet, how much will that take? After you build all that extra stuff, how much farther ahead on my next gunship am I?

Equal tech again. I have this same armour. No advantage or disadvantage.

If you include every thing you have stated for your gunships: Massive point defence, 1000s of missiles, retractable sensors and other externals, high speed engines, fuel, ship factories, regenerative armour, thousands of sensor drones, the ability to withstand gravitational force while on a rigid body, and so on. You ship would be massive and completely vulnerable as it would be too massive to dodge anything. My bombers would have a field day against this behemoth. It would just be target practice.

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Your carriers are also going to be easier to find. If your ships NEED a carrier, then that suggests they're not meant for extended self contained missions, which my gunships are. My gunships can park themselves in some crater on some moon that never sees the sun, your carriers could do the same thing, but to be 'operational' all my ship has to do is launch more remote sensors when its net gets weak, what does your carrier do?

With all that mass and activity (your factories), you would be very easy to spot. If you go silent and switch off these devices, then you loose any advantage you might have had from them.

A self contained Gunship, that can't use these devices to keep it self contained, is just as vulnerable as mine.

As you will need to resupply your sensor drones, you ship needs more than just to be "parked" to be operational. If you don't use your factories to create more drones you will run out of them. If you use your factories, then you revel your self and are not self sufficient.

quote]Your scouts sound like reusable ones, that would return to the carrier at some point. If I ID your scout, then my net just has to track it, watch its route, then find where it disappears. I can then send probes after it. My net can be designed to be launched and then change direction at random after launch, making it hard to track, you might find my scouts, but they're not going back to ship, and you'll never have a clue where it comes from.
I can also use this same trick to hide where my scouts come from. I could launch them from the carrier under silent running, then when they are a good distance away form the carrier, the engage their engines in an initial random direction and then they can't be tracked from the carrier.

To the carrier is another story. Yes, you will find it easier to track them back to the carrier. But, regular patrols around the carrier area (or even in random spots to mislead you) would keep it clear of sensors, at least enough to reduce the risk of detection.

The fact that the scouts are reusable means I can keep this up with minimum usage of resource. For you to use non-reusable ships/missiles to do the same would be a much larger drain on your resource.

You are describing a war of attrition. In any war of attrition, resource use is critical. The one who uses less resource wins.

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Once I ID your carrier position I can launch long range, small and slow speed tracker cruise missiles, they tie themselves into the sensor net, and correct for any changes in your position. You are easier to ID as you're relying on your armed scout ship patrols moving in and out of your ship.

Again, if you can hack my sensor net I can hack yours, I just hack it to find out where all the data is going. Boom! I've IDed you position and I can attack. Because I can keep my sensor net without a central hub, you will not be able to do this to me.

Slow missiles can and will be detected, although much closer to the carrier. I have point defences and scouts out looking for these things. It would be quite possible for me to locate them and take them down long before they are a threat to my carrier.

As I have said. the scout would not necessarily have to return to the carrier, except after you have been defeated. They can be resupplied by specific supply ships and so do not need to return to the carrier.

If we have factory ships available to us, then I could have dozens of these factory ships creating supplies and the supply ships would never have to return to my carrier either. Thus I wouldn't reveal my position. I could use a factory in the carrier to make factory ships and so you could never wipe out my factory ships (even If I didn't have a factory ship in my carrier, the factory ships can still make factory ships themselves).

One of your factory ships would actually be the equivalent to my carrier anyway. The only purpose of the carrier is to be able to launch the fighters and bombers. A factory ship producing fighters and bombers would be exactly the same as my carrier.

Thus, my carrier could actually be not much bigger than my bombers are. This would make it very hard to detect.

But Power Rangers would win against Dragon BallZ, would they?

It started out as quite an interesting discussion. But somewhere in the middle you seemed to have lost the "computer game" focus. I can't see how you want to translate a "sensor war" into a game that is fun for the player. Interesting scenario, but more for a movie than a game.

Bye, Thomas

Edtharan, you do realize that you are cutting your carriers out of the picture and moving closer to 'gunship' style combat right?

Your bombers are being launched directly from factories, and resupplied from them. You need carries why?

And as for my cruise missiles 'tieing into the sensor net" that is MY sensor net updates your position to the cruise missiles.

Why can't I still run stealthy while operating machines? it is a matter of parking somewhere were the minor heat source isn't going to be noticed easily. If a running factory is easy to spot, then all of yours are going to be easy to find. How are they being protected? Fleet of patrolling fighters and bombers? Those sound like something easier to spot. My refineries and factories are all heavily armed, and just floating there, looking not much different than the junk they're refining. Your operations are sounding like rather busy things, with lots of activity going on around them.

Sensor drones don't have to be active, small popcan sized passive drones with limited redirection thrusters, fired from a railgun, then change heading. They don't meet up with anything, and if put into orbit can keep working for years with a small solar panel. They don't need weapons, how many hundreds of these can I make compared to your armed scouts with all the cool and fancy engines? How well can your scouts then hide? Mine are a chunk of metal floating in space, one of trillions, yours are larger, with engines, far more unique. How well can they defend themselves against attack? How many missiles can it shoot down before being hit?

If your ships are cheaper and can't land on a planet, where are you hiding them? I can hide better, and the structure of the armoured ship suggests that it would be able to stand up to the forces anyway.

Why do my gunships have to be fast? They don't need to, just my missiles need to be faster than your ships.

My cruise missiles fill the same role as your bombers, and I can even make them to act as your fighters. The difference? Mine aren't coming back, they're smaller, need smaller engines to get the same speed. Your ships are going on long patrols that return, they need larger systems. Why return them?

I'm sitting there, waiting for a good positive ID on a good target. Why shoot down bomber fleets? I might take pot shots at them or your scouts, but I'm targeting your carriers and factories.

Again, what do your carries do now? Why have two different ships, one to carry offensive missiles, and one to carry defensive stuff? Why not fleets of ships that do both? take half the defensive payload off one, and put it on the other. even easier to make, more things are the same, you could then pump out more ships.

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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.

I will not even try to divine what space combat would actually be like, but I do want to mention that you're in 3D, so even assuming primary directions only, it'd be six directions, not 4. And if the size discrepancy between the attacking forces and the attacked capital ship is great enough that an attack from multiple angles will be necessary, then there'd definitely be far more directions involved than the arbitrary cardinal ones that humans insist upon.

Ducking out now, because I fail at reality. That's why I play games. Interesting read, though. And thanks to the person who linked the space combat page.

There are six Primary dirrections, but if, as Talroth said, you attack from the corners of a tetrahedron, (a tetrahedron has four corners, and four triangular faces) there are four vectors of attack. If you can get the neccessary coverage that way, why not?

I think that since space is so big, and in order to be far enough away to be invisible, you REALLY need to be far away(several light-seconds, if not light minutes), and crossing those distances is difficult and slow, especially if you are trying to be silent, Space combat would be Really, Really slow. a single engagement could take days or weeks. No gamer is going to sit htere for that. So what do you do?

Time compression. Just make it so that a few eeks of game-time is the same as a few hours of real time. Such compression would make it considerbly more realistic.

Alot of space combat would depend on instrumentation, and calculation to make decision, rather than visual data. Most modern games are entirely visual. Mostly, they render to the entire screen, with just a transparent hud obscuring it. What would everyone think about a game where visuals were present, ut not as important?

I'm currently working on a trade based space empire game, with unique physics (several faster than light options: FTL-pulse, sort of warp like, pick a line, activate your pulse, and you are shot at several times the speed of light, useful only for getting around inside a star system, would still take weeks/months to get to another star. FTL-folding, Dune style high liner travel, here now, a star away next. Has a limit to have accurate your fold jumps are, energy and time requirements make it less than useful for local travel. Jump Gates, two way travel points, similar to fold drives, but always open. Smaller man sized gates can be useful for getting between a station and ground base, slightly larger ones for small freighters to quickly and safely cross a star system, or massive ones for huge ships to quickly travel across the star region. Lastly, still deciding if using 'slip stream' is breach of copyright, but the user opens a portal and enters a sort of tunnel system, at 'nodes' they have a choice, straight ahead is the next nearest star, or slide into the path to the second nearest star, once you enter the stream, you are never presented with the same option twice which would trap you in a loop. This last one would be best for long range travel of small to medium sized ships, and for balance reasons would release a large energy signature on the opening end and small one on the exiting end, where as folds would have a medium signature on both ends. Ships can use fold drive, or slip drives, and all have pulse drives and can use gates if the ship is small enough.)

This game isn't that likely to see the light of day for years, (toying with the idea of setting it up for MMO, EVE like) but the point will not be combat, but trading and running outposts and colonies. Warfare is going to be economic,... that thermal nuclear warhead is simply 'plan B'.

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Original post by NIm There are six Primary dirrections, but if, as Talroth said, you attack from the corners of a tetrahedron, (a tetrahedron has four corners, and four triangular faces) there are four vectors of attack. If you can get the neccessary coverage that way, why not?

Truth. My only point was that the number of attack vectors necessary for an effective assault on a larger vehicle given the engine-attacking circumstances given above would be variable dependent upon the comparative size of the attacking vehicles and their target.

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Original post by Talroth Edtharan, you do realize that you are cutting your carriers out of the picture and moving closer to 'gunship' style combat right?

Well the difference really is that your ships are generalists and mine are specialists.

As I said in an earlier post, the designations "Bomber", "Fighter" and "Carrier" are just one set of specialist roles. I can have any specialist roles I like as long they follow the Combined Arms theory.

Your ships are generalists. Each ship has to be completely independent of the others. Any tactic you use should not have to rely on other ships performing in only specific roles (ie you can freely swap any ship in your fleet with any other ship and it does not effect anything).

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Your bombers are being launched directly from factories, and resupplied from them. You need carries why?

The carriers would be any ship that can create or launch the other specialist combat ships. Thus a Factory Ship producing fighters and bombers would be the equivalent to a carrier.

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And as for my cruise missiles 'tieing into the sensor net" that is MY sensor net updates your position to the cruise missiles.

Ahh. Ok, I read it as "your", but I just reread it and you didn't use that word. My mistake.

Why can't I still run stealthy while operating machines? it is a matter of parking somewhere were the minor heat source isn't going to be noticed easily. If a running factory is easy to spot, then all of yours are going to be easy to find. How are they being protected? Fleet of patrolling fighters and bombers? Those sound like something easier to spot. My refineries and factories are all heavily armed, and just floating there, looking not much different than the junk they're refining. Your operations are sounding like rather busy things, with lots of activity going on around them.[\quote]
My fleet is a more active fleet. I am more likely to be detected by you (as you also have more sensors). You have the more stealthy fleet. But, I have many ships out there and you can't respond to all of them. Any of them might be the actual threat, but which one? If you try to respond to all of them, then you will reveal your position and the strike force will hit.

My stealth uses uncertainty to counter your masses of sensors. If you are getting hundreds of sensor "pings", how can you be certain that that "ping" is my carrier, of for that matter then mass of missiles bearing down on your gunship?

The activity around my factories would be sporadic, and would be scattered over many locations. Again, responding to all these without giving away you position to any one of them that you haven't detected (and thus could launch a strike against you) would be almost impossible.

Also I would have many factories, much smaller than your ship (they don't have to have all those missiles and other stuff), many of them could be running silent, only powering up once you have destroyed some of my other factory ships. These silent factories would be less detectable than your gunship as they would be much smaller and using the exact same techniques.

Sensor drones don't have to be active, small popcan sized passive drones with limited redirection thrusters, fired from a railgun, then change heading. They don't meet up with anything, and if put into orbit can keep working for years with a small solar panel. They don't need weapons, how many hundreds of these can I make compared to your armed scouts with all the cool and fancy engines? How well can your scouts then hide? Mine are a chunk of metal floating in space, one of trillions, yours are larger, with engines, far more unique. How well can they defend themselves against attack? How many missiles can it shoot down before being hit?

One thing you forgot. Fuel. A can sized sensor drone is not going to be able to carry a lot of fuel on board. Sure it doesn't use much to manoeuvre, but if it going to be changing direction a lot and covering interplanetary space, then it will need to have a lot of fuel on board. Also solar panels make large surface areas. The larger the surface area of the ship, the more chance it would be detected. Also if you are operating more than 4AU from the start (if it is like our sun) then the light from the sun would be too week to really be useful for solar panels, unless they are really big, bigger than my bombers even.

Also it is very difficult to create a solar panel that is stealthed. If you cover them with anything that will absorb sensors, then this will also stop the sunlight from reaching the panel.

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If your ships are cheaper and can't land on a planet, where are you hiding them? I can hide better, and the structure of the armoured ship suggests that it would be able to stand up to the forces anyway.

Double the size the mass is 8 times. Think about this. A smaller ship will find it much easier to land than a big ship. Also the smaller ship has the higher acceleration and can generate higher thrust to weight. A large ship, unless it has absolutely massive engines and burns massive amounts of fuel, will not be able to leave the surface as easily.

So my ships, being smaller will be able to land far more effective than yours. So hiding on planets and moons is much more feasible for me than you.

Structural strength goes up linearly, mass goes up exponentially. There is a slight problem here for you. You will need to assign much more mass to your superstructure as compared to your total mass just to be able to land on the planet. My lighter ship will only need a much lower ratio than yours. Landing is far easier for my small ships, than it is for your massive "all in one" ships.

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Why do my gunships have to be fast? They don't need to, just my missiles need to be faster than your ships.

If the missiles are faster than my ships, My fighters will engage and destroy them. By going in the opposite direction, it will take your missiles longer to reach an effective detonation distance, giving me more time to destroy them.

Eventually, I will reach a range where your sensors are ineffective and you can't get a good lock to launch you missiles at me. However, Your more massive ship will be easier to get a lock on (once having IDed it I can keep tracking it) and so, even though you can;t get a lock on me, I can still get a lock on you. I can still be firing missiles while running and you can't attack back. A little one sided there.

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My cruise missiles fill the same role as your bombers, and I can even make them to act as your fighters. The difference? Mine aren't coming back, they're smaller, need smaller engines to get the same speed. Your ships are going on long patrols that return, they need larger systems. Why return them?

Ahh now your fleet is starting to become a specialised fleet. Missiles as bombers. So you are using bombers now...

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I'm sitting there, waiting for a good positive ID on a good target. Why shoot down bomber fleets? I might take pot shots at them or your scouts, but I'm targeting your carriers and factories.

With the amount of activity I am presenting to you, it will be difficult to know if you have a good, positive ID on my Carrier and factory ships. And besides, you would have to be sure to get them all in one strike, or I will just be able to rebuild quickly, smaller ships mean that I can produce them faster than you can produce your gunships.

Let's examine this a bit:
Just say my bomber is a 1:16 ratio to your gunship. This is probably larger than I would expect, but I am trying to favour your fleet with this example.

So at 16 time difference, that is 16 times as wide, tall and long as my bombers that puts me at, volume to volume (or to keep it simple mass for mass), 256 bombers to your 1 carrier.

Also let us assume that a fighter is 1:4 of my bombers. So I drop 50 of these bomber and put them as fighters (200 fighters and 206 bombers). This, remember is for each one of your gunships.

Let us also assume that a factory ship is twice the size of a bomber and I want 50 of them. This now gives me: 200 fighters, 100 bombers and 50 factories. To your 1 gunship.

The equivalent of 50 factories in your gunship would take up so much room that you wouldn't have space for anything else. I am now at a higher level of production than you (and climbing - exponentially).

Space battles will be subject to Lanchester’s Square Law. That means that an N-fold increase in numbers, means an N-Squared increase in killing rate. I have the numerical superiority. This is the main advantage.

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Again, what do your carries do now? Why have two different ships, one to carry offensive missiles, and one to carry defensive stuff? Why not fleets of ships that do both? take half the defensive payload off one, and put it on the other. even easier to make, more things are the same, you could then pump out more ships.

Ok:

1) Flexibility. If you have a poorly defended target you can concentrate your offensive ships against it without sacrificing your own defences.

2) Numbers. Modern warfare (including space warfare too), is subject to Lanchester’s Square Law. Number are far better than toughness.

3) Smaller targets. Small targets are hard to hit. Halve the size and you quarter the target area.

4) Mass. Halve the size and you reduce the mass by an eighth.

5) Decentralised. You have to take out more targets to disable my ability to strike back. A single target (or a few) needs to loose less to have a bigger impact on your combat effectiveness (this relates to the Lanchester’s Square Law point)

6) Complexity. Multiple system on a ship require more complexity to handle them. It is not a linear progression, but an exponential one. Single purpose ships are simpler to make. So your claim of the general puropse ships being easier to make is wrong.

7) Scale. If it only take 3 hits to eliminate a larger ship, but 1 to eliminate a smaller ship, I only need to outnumber you by 3 to 1 to break even. The single purpose ships even if 1/2 the size means that I can make 8 of them for each 1 of yours. with only a 3 to 1 needed, you are completely outnumbered.

8) Survivors. If I defeat you in combat, but loose ships in the process, these survivors can join up with other fleets and re-enforce them. So unless the combat eliminates all my ships to your 1 ship. My forces will still be growing.

General purpose ships do have a role in a combined arms theory system. But it is a very limited role. The more uncertain of what your enemy has in store, the better the General Purpose ships will be, but they can never be as good at a particular role as a specialised ship can be. Jack of all trades, Master of none.

Few problems, I should explain the sensor system better. Small, self contained items, traveling in different orbits. I'm sure some other power source could work rather than solar panels, nano fusion reactor maybe? Doesn't matter, it is besides the point. Once launched, how much fuel did the large mars rover program burn?

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. So what if I can't redirect sensors, I just send new fresh ones to cover areas that are clearly lacking in sensors (if I don't have the coverage I want there, I send more to fill in gaps). All the while, your heavy, armed scouts are burning fuel, lovely beacons to follow back along your supply lines.

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).

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.

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. 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.

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'.

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)


Also, don't forget VOLUME. Lets say we build our ships as cubes. Lets assume you have ships that are 1x1x1. You have a space of 1, we'll pick 10% for fuel/engines, and say we get really small fuel and engines. We'll even assume your ship uses the same armour plates as mine. Your ship has 6 armour, and a volume of 0.9 for weapon play load and that.

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.

I've built a ship that can deal 7.2PL for 24, and you'll need 48.

3 times the size? 54 plates, 24.3PL. You need 27 ships for the same payload, 162 plates. for your 162 plates I've built 3. Remember, the main defense of these ships isn't armour, but in shooting down things before hand, armour is the last resort that you shouldn't need.

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.

Or, I can build ONE ship, with armour 16 times as thick as yours (now, remember, armour is NOT linear, nor is structure strength, I don't know where you got that idea. It is roughly cubic) 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.

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.

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?