Realism, Gameplay, Aesthetics and Canon

The most appropriate place for Questions, Queries, and Quandaries regarding the nature of the Vega Strike universe and its past, present, or future history. Home to the occasional unfortunate RetCon.
pheonixstorm
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Re: Realism, Gameplay, Aesthetics and Canon

Post by pheonixstorm »

Yeah, railguns will rule until the next gen missiles are created.. or our navies start using some other exotic weapon system. Energy based? Not likely but who knows...

On the issue of hardpoints. A hardpoint does not qualify as a structural point to mount whatever you want. Each hardpoint will only allow for a certain type of payload it was designed for. Each hardpoint will only have the connectors, supports, and connective machinery (wiring, ammo storage, etc) for a given class or range of weapons.

Larger cap ships will be using the largest weapons that can be fitted to a given hardpoint simply due to the fact that some other cap ship the same size will have the armor protection strong enough to nullify anything used by smaller fighter sized craft.

Now, planetary defenses on the other hand can be 10x as large as anything mounted on a cap ship. Same goes for a orbital defense fortress to some degree.


Cap ships will need cap ship sized weapons (and missiles) to pound each other flat or for planetary bombardment.
Escorts will have mixed light cap ship and point defesne weapons to handle other escorts, small cap ships, and fighters. Maybe some type of anti missle system as well.
Fighters etc will fill a role of bomber/interceptor using the smallest class of weapons.

Have other ideas but baby is crying...
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chuck_starchaser
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Re: Realism, Gameplay, Aesthetics and Canon

Post by chuck_starchaser »

There's two things going against capship-capship engagements: One from a realism point of view; the other from gameplay:

Realistically, capships are pretty much dead on the water, right now. Battleships and battlecruisers are probably never going
to be built again. Carriers are still very useful, but only in minor conflicts, such as the US versus Iraq, or the Whole World
versus Yugoslavia; but in a confrontation between the US and Russia or China, the concensus is that carrier fleets would
last about 15 minutes. Not sure space would be much different; though in space you kind of need space to put all the
subsystems you need, not just for flight and combat but air, food, water, cooling, etceteras. The bigger the ships, the less
the % proportion of overhead; and carriers would be particularly desirable, since small, maneuverable ships are anathema
to long range fuel storage.

From the point of view of gameplay, capship to capship battle implies taking responsibility for the outcome out of the
hands of the player; --unless the player is commanding a capship, which comes with its own set of problems.

This doesn't invalidate your point of having capship sized weapons for capships; as there would have to be some exceptions
to the rules to spice things up; but I just wanted to inject that use of such weapons should be planned to be exceptional.

By the way, the US defense (or attack) planners have been pretty quiet about it, but if you look at appropriations data,
for the past decade the emphasis has been on lasers. The next real war will see heavy use of lasers. Before the first gulf
war, I was telling people that the new smart weapons were going to mean decisive victories and nobody believed me,
and then it happened. In the next big war, missiles will be taken out seconds after they launch. That's where your tax
dollars are going, if you wondered. The US is going down as an economic power; but it will remain a military superpower
for a long time yet; 50 years at least.
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Re: Realism, Gameplay, Aesthetics and Canon

Post by Neskiairti »

mmm laser defense platforms.. there is one being built in israel.. cant recall off the top of my head if its in testing or still being built.
then ive got friends in the military who share juicy (non classified) information about shit going down..
those laser systems have been awesome. Only need enough time on the missile to detonate the fuel or throw off its guidence. (ruin its stabilization fins?)
then things like phased arrays.. take that out of radar and advance it to higher frequency light... defenses that could potentially melt bullets before they hit.
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Re: Realism, Gameplay, Aesthetics and Canon

Post by Deus Siddis »

chuck_starchaser wrote: Realistically, capships are pretty much dead on the water, right now. Battleships and battlecruisers are probably never going
to be built again.
Not a good prediction to make now methinks; the railgun is coming and it could even invert this situation. It'll hunger for the energy output of large nuclear powered warships, and hit targets at missile-like ranges, faster, cheaper and with less or no interference from point defense. And it could eventually be used as a superior point defense against missiles and aircraft itself.

Also unlike lasers it isn't defeated by reflective armor, fog and smoke, or the curvature of the earth (it's trajectory isn't flat like lasers).
From the point of view of gameplay, capship to capship battle implies taking responsibility for the outcome out of the hands of the player; --unless the player is commanding a capship, which comes with its own set of problems.
That's only if capships are the best weapon to use against other capships. And very common. They could be expensive and rare, so taking them out with smaller craft is preferable. In fact I think this is how the game is supposed to work even now in it broken state (I can take out a 2km aera 'destroyer' with a 30 meter pacifier).
This doesn't invalidate your point of having capship sized weapons for capships; as there would have to be some exceptions
to the rules to spice things up; but I just wanted to inject that use of such weapons should be planned to be exceptional.
So what about weapon sizes/types in the 20-200 meter long combat ships that are presumably player-playable? Should hardpoints for craft this size be all the same or have different size and type limitations?
By the way, the US defense (or attack) planners have been pretty quiet about it, but if you look at appropriations data, for the past decade the emphasis has been on lasers.
. . .
The US is going down as an economic power; but it will remain a military superpower
for a long time yet; 50 years at least.
If we're going to be a military power for the next 50 years, we're going to need to spend some more of our research focus on systems that can't be defeated by low/no-tech mirrors and jammers (referring to lasers and unmanned combat vehicles, respectively).
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Re: Realism, Gameplay, Aesthetics and Canon

Post by klauss »

The idea that weaponized lasers are defeated by mirrors is sooooo sooooooo wrong that it should never be mentioned. Ever.

Here's why
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Re: Realism, Gameplay, Aesthetics and Canon

Post by Neskiairti »

ouch, yeah... you can reflect a laser with the right material.. but more likely you would want to use some form of prismatic surface to scatter the laser.. spread out the beam so it doesn't concentrate the heat in a single point.

anyway.. as to the hunger of railguns.. they don't require as much energy as you think. the bigger problem is the rails themselves. just a thought but id think a weaponized laser would use more energy than a rail gun.

as for the curvature.. most laser battery systems would be used on ships or on surface as either anti-aircraft, anti-sat, anti-missile... or mounted on planes, where the plane gets high enough to ignore the curvature. Were talking 10 mile kill range or more... thats pretty fucking high and far for a near instantaneous hit. plus with the focusing mechanism.. it can switch through a dozen targets in a second or two. also 10 miles, unless you're trying to fire through a cloud, isnt going to degrade the power of the laser much. actually in a high future sense.. with a high enough powered laser.. it will cut through the air, exciting molocules to the point where they hit the plasma state and expand.. creating a vaccuum for the laser. (and a lovely thunder crack afterwords)
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Re: Realism, Gameplay, Aesthetics and Canon

Post by chuck_starchaser »

klauss wrote:The idea that weaponized lasers are defeated by mirrors is sooooo sooooooo wrong that it should never be mentioned. Ever.

Here's why
Good point. Hadn't thought about that. The most common reflective materials used in reflective telescopes, silver (when not oxidized) and aluminium (even when oxidized), I think I remember their reflectivities were like 95% and 93% respectively. But that 7% or 5% that is absorbed, if the energy is huge, would evaporate the reflective layer so fast it wouldn't add much to the time required to soften the missile's structure. By the way, in that interview the guy says that the point is to melt through the missile's skin and cause the fuel to explode; but if what I've read is correct, that would be the goal on a lazy day; it's enough for the laser to just soften the missile's skin on one side, if the missile is boosting, as that causes its frame to collapse and fold, and lose its aerodynamic stability.
Still, I would think missile fashions will soon change to have mirror-like specular coatings, even if the likelihood of survival this adds is fractional. And probably the metal of choice for missile plating will be iridium, which is not only a good reflector, and a nobler metal than gold, but also a metal of high strength and extremely high melting temperature; --I believe the highest melting temperature of any metal in the periodic table, like more than 3000 Celsius.
Neskiairti wrote:ouch, yeah... you can reflect a laser with the right material.. but more likely you would want to use some form of prismatic surface to scatter the laser.. spread out the beam so it doesn't concentrate the heat in a single point.
LOL, that's even worse than mirrors. Best case (minimum) absorption by transparent materials is a lot greater than best case absorption in reflectors. Your prismatic surface material would vaporize instantly and leave a dark residue, helping laser absorption :D
anyway.. as to the hunger of railguns.. they don't require as much energy as you think. the bigger problem is the rails themselves. just a thought but id think a weaponized laser would use more energy than a rail gun.

as for the curvature.. most laser battery systems would be used on ships or on surface as either anti-aircraft, anti-sat, anti-missile... or mounted on planes, where the plane gets high enough to ignore the curvature. Were talking 10 mile kill range or more... thats pretty fucking high and far for a near instantaneous hit. plus with the focusing mechanism.. it can switch through a dozen targets in a second or two. also 10 miles, unless you're trying to fire through a cloud, isnt going to degrade the power of the laser much. actually in a high future sense.. with a high enough powered laser.. it will cut through the air, exciting molocules to the point where they hit the plasma state and expand.. creating a vaccuum for the laser. (and a lovely thunder crack afterwords)
Well, I think Deus was talking about an anti-ship weapon. That laser on the 747 might do enough damage to a missile or to a plane; but probably not to a battleship; I could be wrong. A battleship, with foot thick armor, might take that 747 to have to sit that laser on one spot and work on it all day to get it hot enough to fry an egg. Then again, making a plane to explode on deck aboard a carrier can cause some operational delays. But anyhow, the advantage of being able to hit a carrier with a piece of metal weighing half a ton and traveling at Mach 10, from hundreds of miles away, is not easily dismissed. If this technology becomes available, we might indeed see battleships again, on water and in space; but they wouldn't be battleships in the classic sense, more like a cruising gun.
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Re: Realism, Gameplay, Aesthetics and Canon

Post by Deus Siddis »

Okay so reflectivity isn't good enough for laser-armor. But what about materials with very low thermal conductivity like ceramics?
chuck_starchaser wrote:But anyhow, the advantage of being able to hit a carrier with a piece of metal weighing half a ton and traveling at Mach 10, from hundreds of miles away, is not easily dismissed. If this technology becomes available, we might indeed see battleships again, on water and in space; but they wouldn't be battleships in the classic sense, more like a cruising gun.
Not necessarily, the ability to train and stabilize weapons, using turrets and gyros and such, separately from a big ass ship on the high seas makes a giant gun not always the best option. In a space game where an FTL technology exists that allows an opponent to close the distance very rapidly, while not enhancing rotational maneuverability, turret mounted batteries again become useful.

Also, to keep the rails from overheating, there would probably be more than one such weapon system on a seriously designed railgun-battleship, with power possibly being set to one of these railguns at a time, while the others cooled off or had their contact surfaces replaced.
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Re: Realism, Gameplay, Aesthetics and Canon

Post by klauss »

Deus Siddis wrote:Okay so reflectivity isn't good enough for laser-armor. But what about materials with very low thermal conductivity like ceramics?
Then you have explosive vaporization and eventual shattering.
It would make a good ablative armor if you had layers upon layers of the stuff. But costly, and not a lot better than regular armor.
Deus Siddis wrote:Also, to keep the rails from overheating, there would probably be more than one such weapon system on a seriously designed railgun-battleship, with power possibly being set to one of these railguns at a time, while the others cooled off or had their contact surfaces replaced.
In the future, I'd expect contactless railguns. There's a lot of research into those technologies already.

Magnetorheodynamics could also be used, theoretically, to produce a magnetically sensitive propellant to be ejected along with the slug. In essence, magnetorheodynamic gels stiffen in the presence of certain magnetic fields... a slug submerged in such a gel could have the same gel act both as lubricant (when outside the field's hotspot near the slug), and propellant (near the slug, where it stiffens and reacts to the magnetic field). Once outside the railgun, the gel liquifies again and separates cleanly from the slug.

The technology doesn't exist, but I had read somewhere it was attempted (quite unsuccessfully though). It's only a matter of time before they succeed.

In fact, if they could create a highly conducting gel of those characteristics, they'd be set.
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Neskiairti
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Re: Realism, Gameplay, Aesthetics and Canon

Post by Neskiairti »

@chuck
the plane mounted lasers are actually quite a bit more powerful than that. from what i read though, the primary target would be missiles and aircraft but could take out ground targets such as automobiles and people too. so generally fleshy targets, not heavy armored warships :p the plane mounted ones are actually in testing as well.. found this real quick.. doesnt give much detail though http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/26/high ... ng-the-te/

the one I was pointed to by my friend was mostly discussing the air to surface capabilities.. and then the surface to air capabilities of the one being worked on in Israel.

ah found an example of that too :P http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfmEUqmgsK4

and the wiki article on that plane.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1

and reading that article.. well.. here i'll quote a bit
If the ABL achieves its design goals, it could destroy liquid-fueled ICBMs up to 600 km away. Tougher solid-fueled ICBM destruction range would likely be limited to 300 km, too short to be useful in many scenarios, according to a 2003 report by the American Physical Society on National Missile Defense.
also, as to the refraction armor.. it depends on what is soaking up the heat. if you can spread the beam out enough that your soaking material doesn't burn, it will be fine. the prisms themselves as long as they are very clear, are less likely to burn out.
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Re: Realism, Gameplay, Aesthetics and Canon

Post by Deus Siddis »

So getting back on topic. . .

What do we want to do about weapon-hardpoint types? Currently they can be spinal or turreted, gun or missile, normal and/or special and light/medium/heavy/light-capital/medium-capital/heavy-capital. Do we want more or less or different kinds of categories for what kinds of weapons can go on a given hardpoint?
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Re: Realism, Gameplay, Aesthetics and Canon

Post by Neskiairti »

personally id say 3 varieties of hard points, and then a little more variety in how each is used.
hard mount, turret mount, internal mount.

a hard mount then could be used in several ways depending on the scale of the weapon vs the scale of the ship. if its say 20% - 50% of the scale of the ship.. the only thing you can do with it, is spinal mount it. and unless your ship is rather differently shaped, its only going to have a single spine. under 20% its just a gun mounted at a specific vector, it doesn't auto track, but would be the cheapest to build. most likely used for fighters.

turret mount would be the most versatile of mounts, requiring less internal machinery, and less structure simply because the turret itself would probably have recoil compensation (think about a howitzer's mounting) it can also aim in many directions. Downside would be, it can be blown off.

Internal mounts would be the torpedo and missile tubes or internally mounted weapons (think the weapons in you're average star trek ship.. cant think of many that were externally mounted until recently) cant be blown off.. but take up alot of space in the ship.. and they should be able to autotrack. (or home in the case of missiles)

then just base the restriction of whether a ship can mount it via the ratio of volume.. like hard mounted weapons can take up to 20% normally or 50% spinal and internal weapons can only take up a max of 5% the volume of the ship.. while turrets can go up to 15%

might add a factor in there of modifying the ships handling depending on how much 'extra' is added to it.

and also could say a weapon is more powerful depending on its size.. so its a balance between hardest hitting weapons for your ship and handling.
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