11-18-2018, 04:28 PM | #51 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
I am not sure they are really that expensive compared to their utility. At 1,000 km, they are beyond the range of anything but the most specialized ground weapons, and they can be taken out by orbital missile strikes.
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11-18-2018, 05:53 PM | #52 | |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
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If, on the other hand, you want to be able to cover from 60 degrees north to 60 south from an equatorial orbit, your altitude needs to be around 4,000 miles, and your lasers range needs to be almost 7,000 miles. In the Spaceships system, this calls for a 3GJ laser, which costs $50 million dollars and weighs 450 tons. The complete platform probably costs much more than that—there's launch costs, powering the thing, and of course the cost of defenses (the platform is going to be an eggshell armed with a hammer regardless, but you don't want to be a complete sitting duck). I'm not saying there are no circumstances in which something like that would get built, but it's a bit like building massive battleships just to provide fire support on the shore. |
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11-18-2018, 06:09 PM | #53 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
Well, the designs that I was imagining would have sufficient delta-v for interplanetary travel (at TL10), so they could simply move to a different orbit when required. A TL10 fusion rocket would give them 60 mps of delta-v, which would be more than enough for them to change orbit a dozen times. When required, they could retreat to L4/L5 for resupply and return in a couple of days. I would personally use a small group of SM+4 AKVS for defending the platforms from attack, but that is just my preference.
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11-18-2018, 07:25 PM | #54 | |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
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11-18-2018, 10:13 PM | #55 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
Well, a SM+10 tertiary laser is 100 MJ, which possesses a maximum range of 10,000 miles (16,000 km). It is only dealing 5d(2) damage at that range, but that is sufficient to punch holes in soft targets, and it does give it the option to engage soft targets from MEO. At an orbit of 10,000 km, it could reach any target on a hemisphere, as it covers a radius of over 12,000 km. If you had a network of twelve such platforms, you could quite easily support any battle with four of them.
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11-19-2018, 09:51 AM | #56 | |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
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11-19-2018, 01:43 PM | #57 | |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
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Playing around with some of the optional rules for Spaceships from Pyramid #3/34 makes me think this is feasible—though a more rigorous approach would involve taking Vehicles 3e and tweaking the assumptions for consistency with 4e. And the result should have similar survivability in a TL10 threat environment to an M1 Abrams in 2018. Great powers might plan to use mininukes against such tanks in the event of WWIII, but as long as mininuclear proliferation is kept under control, that won't be an issue for the 22nd century version of Operation Desert Storm or whatnot. |
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11-19-2018, 01:50 PM | #58 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
No, S/L is the range category for 100 MJ lasers, and that translates to a range of 3000/10,000 miles. As for orbital missiles attacking targets, the average damage for an orbital strike would be around 6d×35 Ddamage (5 mps), which would deal an average of 7,350 points of normal kinetic damage. A tank is nothing more than missile bait at that point.
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11-19-2018, 02:36 PM | #59 | ||
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
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11-19-2018, 03:43 PM | #60 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
I imagine that the accuracy of missiles will be much higher at TL10 than TL8, as they would have improved computing, designs, and materials. When it come to reentry, there are more than a few methods to maximize velocity, most of which revolve around creating a dart like shape for the warhead. As it stands though, the basic rules is Spaceships are what I would use for such a scenario, which suggests some very destroyed tanks.
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