Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - [Spaceships] How does large-scale space warfare play out (without superscience)?

Michael Thayne · 02-07-2019, 10:33 PM

I've been thinking about how large-scale space warfare plays out if you use the Spaceships rules. It's honestly sort of weird. In a non-superscience setting focused on Earth (and probably most other star systems) you probably have one planet that's friendliest to human life, which is going to be the focus of the setting. When fighting for control of said planet's orbit, the tactics are simplified quite a bit—no need to weigh the merits of complicated fighter-and-carrier setups. You can just have the fighters (or more likely attack drones). Whoever has the most drones "wins"... sort of. Here's where it gets complicated.

The most important weapons in Spaceships are missiles and point-defense lasers. By default, point-defense lasers can be very good, but not perfect. There's always at least a ~2% chance of failing totally to stop an attack. This is okay if the only things in orbit are your drones and the enemy's drones, but what if you also have spaceports or, god forbid, a space elevator? It's tempting for the weaker side to just throw everything they've got at the enemy's most valuable space assets—not the cheap drones—to make the other side's inevitable "victory" as costly as possible. This can work because the rate of bad point-defense rolls is roughly constant, and targeting the most valuable stuff maximizes the costs of a bad point-defense roll.

If one side is massively outnumbered, the "target the spaceports" strategy can be mitigated by assigning multiple point-defense lasers to every missile attack. But if one side is only slightly outnumbered, it's more of a "mutually assured destruction" situation. At least as far as I can tell. I'd be very interested in hearing strategies to make the destruction more one-sided when your numerical advantage is modest.

Now, in order for space warfare to matter much at all, the main world can't be the only thing in the system that matters. The battle for Earth orbit (or whatever) isn't the end of the story. Controlling Earth orbit lets you deny other people the use of space, but the other side might be able to get revenge by hitting you elsewhere. In the Transhuman Space setting, this is what happened in the Pacific War—China wiped out the Transpacific Socialist Alliance's presence in Earth orbit, but the TSA's long-range AKVs (drones) were able to cause headaches for the Chinese in deep space, and in fact continued to do so after the war ended. Again, the solution is plenty of point-defense lasers, and possibly some kind of convoying. During attempted high-speed intercepts of commercial ships, you have the advantage that relative velocity penalizes ballistic attacks, plus the fact that the attacker may only be able to fire off a limited number of salvos before you're out of range.

Thoughts on this set up? Anything wrong with my logic?

02-07-2019, 10:33 PM	#1
Michael Thayne Join Date: May 2010	[Spaceships] How does large-scale space warfare play out (without superscience)? I've been thinking about how large-scale space warfare plays out if you use the *Spaceships* rules. It's honestly sort of weird. In a non-superscience setting focused on Earth (and probably most other star systems) you probably have one planet that's friendliest to human life, which is going to be the focus of the setting. When fighting for control of said planet's orbit, the tactics are simplified quite a bit—no need to weigh the merits of complicated fighter-and-carrier setups. You can just have the fighters (or more likely attack drones). Whoever has the most drones "wins"... sort of. Here's where it gets complicated. The most important weapons in *Spaceships* are missiles and point-defense lasers. By default, point-defense lasers can be very good, but not perfect. There's always at least a ~2% chance of failing totally to stop an attack. This is okay if the only things in orbit are your drones and the enemy's drones, but what if you also have spaceports or, god forbid, a space elevator? It's tempting for the weaker side to just throw everything they've got at the enemy's most valuable space assets—not the cheap drones—to make the other side's inevitable "victory" as costly as possible. This can work because the rate of bad point-defense rolls is roughly constant, and targeting the most valuable stuff maximizes the costs of a bad point-defense roll. If one side is massively outnumbered, the "target the spaceports" strategy can be mitigated by assigning multiple point-defense lasers to every missile attack. But if one side is only slightly outnumbered, it's more of a "mutually assured destruction" situation. At least as far as I can tell. I'd be very interested in hearing strategies to make the destruction more one-sided when your numerical advantage is modest. Now, in order for space warfare to matter much at all, the main world can't be the only thing in the system that matters. The battle for Earth orbit (or whatever) isn't the end of the story. Controlling Earth orbit lets you deny other people the use of space, but the other side might be able to get revenge by hitting you elsewhere. In the *Transhuman Space* setting, this is what happened in the Pacific War—China wiped out the Transpacific Socialist Alliance's presence in Earth orbit, but the TSA's long-range AKVs (drones) were able to cause headaches for the Chinese in deep space, and in fact continued to do so after the war ended. Again, the solution is plenty of point-defense lasers, and possibly some kind of convoying. During attempted high-speed intercepts of commercial ships, you have the advantage that relative velocity penalizes ballistic attacks, plus the fact that the attacker may only be able to fire off a limited number of salvos before you're out of range. Thoughts on this set up? Anything wrong with my logic?