Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Thayne
So about that scenario where you've lost in Earth orbit but what to retaliate against your enemy's helium-3 mining operations (likely in Saturn orbit but possibly elsewhere). There are a number of possible ways you could structure a helium-3 mining operation, but relying on a station in low Saturn orbit (like Cassini station in Transhuman Space). The question of how you'd attack such a station is surprisingly complicated.
|
If you can be patient and your target is in a fixed orbit you can design a drone for stealth and launch it from a distance on a space probe-like trajectory.
In specific Spaceships terms you need to avoid the case where your opposition is observing your launching vehicle. That grants automatic detection of any missiles launched by that ship (even that is probably a not entirely realistic assumption for play balance and simplification). If you don't see the launching ship when it launches you need to spot the missiles themselves with their much smaller SM.
Your space probe-like impactor doesn't have to be much more than some tanks of cold gas for maneuevering/course adjustment, a small computer brain with a small battery and a lot of radar absorptive material. It could have a very low thermal signature.
For reasons such as this I tend to think that large stations in fixed orbits are a feature for settings with very low amounts of major conflict or even terrorism. Without superscicnee thay can be extremely hard to defend.
You could make your "stations" not stationary by giving them a propulsion system and making small random changes in their orbits at relatively frequent but allso random intervals. Doing this for rotating stations does get more complicated.