More Dakka [Spaceships]

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Most advanced militaries have satellite surveillance, so it is relatively easy to see targets on the ground, especially 'hot' targets like vehicles. Since missiles do much less damage at closer than Long range than guns at TL7-TL8, it is necessary to use guns rather than missiles. Now, the dynamics change when the enemy takes out the satellites, which is likely the first thing that an enemy with comparable capabilities will do.

Only if the only weapons available are from SS, and thus there are no HEAT or HE warheads available for missiles.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

In 2020, we can design very small guidance systems, so it would not be impossible to give a 2cm round homing capabilities.

It might not be impossible, but Spaceships doesn't offer any such option.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

The purpose of any lethal weapon system is to kill the maximum amount of enemy combatants for the minimum amount of cost.

That's incredibly wrong, though. Neither minimizing expense nor maximizing enemy fatalities is anybody's top priority in most combat situations.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

A $10 million weapon system that can efficiently and effectively kill enemy combatants is not necessarily a bad choice, especially when it can do so outside of standard SAM range.

It doesn't really do that, since it's only capable of killing enemies that are exposed, more or less stationary (what with the multi-minute flight time), and already spotted by another asset. That's not especially effective and it's only looking efficient because you're pretending that real-time satellite-based fire direction is free instead of so expensive nobody on Earth actually has it...

Also, it doesn't outrange itself, so it's quite vulnerable to being disintegrated by the enemy's magic space-guided hypercannon platforms.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

That's incredibly wrong, though. Neither minimizing expense nor maximizing enemy fatalities is anybody's top priority in most combat situations.

Well, minimizing expense might be, depending on how broad a definition of expense you're using.

[AlexanderHowl]

The purpose of the majority of military actions is to make it so that the enemy stops fighting back by degrading their capabilities. If you are obeying international laws, this means that you have to focus your activities on legitimate military targets, which is defined as military personnel (unless obviously out of combat), military installations, and military equipment, as well as civilian infrastructure in support of military activities. Of the four, degrading military personnel is by far the easiest way to achieve victory.

Now, this does not necessarily mean killing enemy combatants, crippling or wounding them during combat, either physically or psychologically, can be just as effective if not more effective, as it generally takes two able bodied soldiers to evacuate one critically injured soldier. Of course d-scale weapons are probably not going to only wound human targets, even on proximity blast, so a kill is probably the best result you can hope for. In that case, the more enemy combatants that you kill while avoiding civilian casualties the closer you come to victory.

Imagine a war between a China equivalent and a USA equivalent. The China equivalent would possess four times the population as the USA equivalent, so the USA equivalent would have to kill a minimum of four soldiers for every casualty that it suffers just based on numbers alone. The China equivalent would be an autocracy though, so it could tolerate more casualties than the USA equivalent, so the USA equivalent would likely need to kill a minimum of one hundred soldiers for every casualty to have the same impact on the China equivalent as each casualty has on the USA equivalent just based on government. Combine them together, and the US equivalent would have to kill 400 Chinese equivalent soldiers for every US equivalent casualty to have equivalent impact.

Of course, the US equivalent military could not afford $1 million per enemy KIA if it must kill 40 million enemy combatants, so it would need equipment that could kill massive amounts of enemies efficiently without endangering civilians or violating international law. As an added bonus, this would also likely destroy their military equipment and damage their military installations. The SM+6 helicopter is one possible design, though it is not necessarily the best design for that purpose.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

The purpose of the majority of military actions is to make it so that the enemy stops fighting back by degrading their capabilities. If you are obeying international laws, this means that you have to focus your activities on legitimate military targets, which is defined as military personnel (unless obviously out of combat), military installations, and military equipment, as well as civilian infrastructure in support of military activities. Of the four, degrading military personnel is by far the easiest way to achieve victory.

Actually, if you don't care about the state of the enemies economy afterwards, or their infrastructure, or your own public's opinion (or your public doesn't care about enemy civilians), civilian supporting transport infrastructure is often the easiest target - that's civilian airfields and ports.

Now, this does not necessarily mean killing enemy combatants, crippling or wounding them during combat, either physically or psychologically, can be just as effective if not more effective, as it generally takes two able bodied soldiers to evacuate one critically injured soldier.

This calculus, while popular outside the serving military is not one you hear serving military use much. It's too unreliable and too slow.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Now, this does not necessarily mean killing enemy combatants, crippling or wounding them during combat, either physically or psychologically, can be just as effective if not more effective, as it generally takes two able bodied soldiers to evacuate one critically injured soldier.

While a lot of military technologies are indifferent about killing vs maiming, there aren't really weapon systems designed to cripple, because

1. It's not that easy to design such a weapon system.
2. Crippled people are not necessarily unable to keep fighting.
3. It tends to be a PR nightmare.
4. If you win the fight, those people are now your problem, not your enemy's.

[AlexanderHowl]

Originally Posted by Anthony

While a lot of military technologies are indifferent about killing vs maiming, there aren't really weapon systems designed to cripple, because

1. It's not that easy to design such a weapon system.
2. Crippled people are not necessarily unable to keep fighting.
3. It tends to be a PR nightmare.
4. If you win the fight, those people are now your problem, not your enemy's.

I agree, but that has been one of the military benefits of banning poison bullets and small caliber explosive bullets, as they have reduced the lethality of small caliber weapons in combat. Deliberately crippling an enemy is against international law, but it is a fortuitous circumstance when it happens, which is one of the reasons why fragmentation explosives still exist. Fragmentation is more likely to injure than to kill modern soldiers, so it requires more resources to deal with the consequences than a straight KIA.

Of course, the problem with most weapons is that they are more likely to kill enemy civilians than enemy combatents. In the Iraq War, the US easily killed 3 civilians for every enemy combatent in direct attacks, which was quite inefficient and ineffective. Anything that decreases the civilian casualty ratio is a great improvement, as it reduces overall suffering during war.

This is one of the great things about the guided munitions of Spaceships, as they offer increased accuracy. A round that can hit a target from 100 miles away with no more penalty than 100 yards away is a round that is much less likely to miss. In addition, you could potentially tell the round to ditch itself if it goes past the target, meaning that the round will be less likely to potentially kill a civilian target.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Deliberately crippling an enemy is against international law, but it is a fortuitous circumstance when it happens, which is one of the reasons why fragmentation explosives still exist. Fragmentation is more likely to injure than to kill modern soldiers, so it requires more resources to deal with the consequences than a straight KIA.

Fragmentation has overwhelmingly superior effective radius to concussion, which has always been the point of it. That is mitigated by improving armor and might eventually cease to apply (if UT projections of 100% coverage suits happen) but it hasn't yet - at least for the people who procure most of the weapons.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

This is one of the great things about the guided munitions of Spaceships, as they offer increased accuracy. A round that can hit a target from 100 miles away with no more penalty than 100 yards away is a round that is much less likely to miss. In addition, you could potentially tell the round to ditch itself if it goes past the target, meaning that the round will be less likely to potentially kill a civilian target.

Showering hundreds of rounds onto targets you've only observed by satellite is not what I'd call a formula for minimizing civilian casualties. You might only be hitting the civilians that you aim at...

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

This is one of the great things about the guided munitions of Spaceships, as they offer increased accuracy. A round that can hit a target from 100 miles away with no more penalty than 100 yards away is a round that is much less likely to miss. In addition, you could potentially tell the round to ditch itself if it goes past the target, meaning that the round will be less likely to potentially kill a civilian target.

As an aside, at 1 mile per second, assuming no atmospheric drag and 1G acceleration from the planet you're fighting on, the maximum range of an unpowered shell is a little over 80 miles. So the shells might have enough guidance reactive mass and power for their guidance systems to reach 100 miles (or 300 miles, given that range 'C' translates to 100/300 miles in SS), but ballistics don't allow it. 2cm shells aren't going to get anywhere near that far on Earth, considering atmospheric drag. Even huge shells won't.

[Phoenix_Dragon]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

So, have you played around with designing vehicles with a more dakka? If so, how have you used them in your campaigns? How effective were they?

In my experience, the situations where very-high-RoF weapons (like miniguns) outperform much more moderate RoF weapons (like a traditional machine gun or autocannon) is very limited. They're only useful when you need a massive burst of firepower very quickly; fixed-wing CAS that only gets a few seconds of time on target each pass, fighters that need to saturate an area shotgun-like with their gun to maximize the chance of hitting a rapidly maneuvering enemy fighter, aircraft landing in a hot LZ that needs to suppress any enemy forces but has no need to last in a sustained firefight, etc. Those weapons tend to top out at around 100 rounds per second, because beyond a certain point you're just changing how high-pitched your weapon sounds when it fires.

Rotary-wing attack craft don't generally have those engagement limitations, so they almost always carry moderate RoF weapons of slightly larger caliber. Landing a round on (Or for unarmored infantry, close to) a target is generally enough, and being able to do so 100 times in a second on a single target is no more effective than doing so 10 times in a second. You don't kill targets by whittling down a health bar.

As an attack craft, your 80-gun vehicle isn't going to be notably more effective than a vehicle packing 1-4 in a single turret, and is going to be much more tactically limited than buying the same cost in those smaller vehicles. Or better yet, one that also makes use of missiles and/or rockets to be able to handle a wider range of targets better. Building an AH-64-alike with the same tech would produce a vehicle at 1/10th the weight and cost that's probably even more capable.