Space opera fleet makeup

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Pseudovelocity drives limit the effectiveness of missiles, so you end up favoring beam weapons over kinetic weapons, as missiles have to depend on real velocity for inertia (which also favors nuclear missiles). Even with 10g acceleration, you really cannot have dogfights at velocities over 0.3 mps because it takes too long to change direction, so you would need 100g for every 3 mps of anticipated velocity to really have dogfights. Since you have superscience, just have gravity compensatory with a 99% effectiveness, so pilots risk blacking out when they do a 1000g turn.

I'm not sure I'm following the logic here. Mind, I'm not fully used to figuring out the miles per second; I'm more likely to use a variation of Mach or some other metric in these fights. I just know my head hurts when trying to eyeball fights at 100-1000G.

Mind explaining your conclusion in more detail?

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

- a 300-ton (SM +7) bomber capable of 2G, designed for assaults against larger craft and orbital stations, fielded by the Big Three human factions. Armed with a single 32cm spinal-mount missile launcher with 15 25KT nuclear warheads, three 3MJ beam weapons, seven 20cm missile launchers with 7 shots each, and three 300KJ very rapid fire beam weapon turrets aft for its protection. (The engine takes 1 rear hull module.)

If at all possible, weapons intended for self-defence and/or point-defence should be mid-mounted to give them a full field of fire. aft-mounted means they can't engage targets incoming from the front.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Pseudovelocity drives limit the effectiveness of missiles, so you end up favoring beam weapons over kinetic weapons, as missiles have to depend on real velocity for inertia (which also favors nuclear missiles). Even with 10g acceleration, you really cannot have dogfights at velocities over 0.3 mps because it takes too long to change direction, so you would need 100g for every 3 mps of anticipated velocity to really have dogfights. Since you have superscience, just have gravity compensatory with a 99% effectiveness, so pilots risk blacking out when they do a 1000g turn.

What's your definition of "turn fast enough"?

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by Rupert

If at all possible, weapons intended for self-defence and/or point-defence should be mid-mounted to give them a full field of fire. aft-mounted means they can't engage targets incoming from the front.

The weapons other than the spinal-mount missile launcher are meant for engaging craft coming from the front; the aft turrets were added to help protect faster-moving interceptors coming in from other directions.

That help?

[AlexanderHowl]

Something similar to aerial dogfights. A modern fighter jet going 1080 mph finds it difficult to engage in dogfights unless the pilot is willing to execute 10g turn (the jet uses air resistance rather than thrust to do such maneuvers), allowing a full reversal in around 10 seconds.

Now, intertialless systems might be able to turn off velocity in a moment, allowing then to stop on a dime, but a full reversal would still take time (and stopping is a good way to be a sitting duck against an enemy fighter). Accelerations of 100g per 3 mps of engagement velocity would replicate modern jet dogfighting capabilities (though per 5 mps would fit the scale in Spaceships better). If we went up to 100g per 5 mps, it would mean that close scale 20-second turns (which should be operating at 50 mps) would require 1,000g (though that would give a +100 acceleration bonus).

Now, if you were looking at something more like the Age of Sail action, 10g per 5 mps would probably be acceptable. At that point, a 100g fighter would be capable of doing a full reversal at 50 mps in a three minute turn, which would resemble to turning capabilities of a smaller warship during the 18th century. Of course, capital ships will probably be moving much slower, as they will likely not have 100g acceleration (though they might have 20g acceleration in such a setting).

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Something similar to aerial dogfights. A modern fighter jet going 1080 mph finds it difficult to engage in dogfights unless the pilot is willing to execute 10g turn (the jet uses air resistance rather than thrust to do such maneuvers), allowing a full reversal in around 10 seconds.

Okay, that makes sense if you're requiring a dogfight to work at the same sort of 'decisions/action per minute' as they do now. I think you can still have dogfights that develop a bit more slowly, more like the sorts of brawls small ships and boats could get into.

Now, intertialess systems might be able to turn off velocity in a moment, allowing then to stop on a dime, but a full reversal would still take time (and stopping is a good way to be a sitting duck against an enemy fighter).

Velocity/energy doesn't mean quite the same thing in space as in an atmosphere. Just moving fast doesn't make you hard to hit - you have to be accelerating in unpredictable ways.

Accelerations of 100g per 3 mps of engagement velocity would replicate modern jet dogfighting capabilities (though per 5 mps would fit the scale in Spaceships better). If we went up to 100g per 5 mps, it would mean that close scale 20-second turns (which should be operating at 50 mps) would require 1,000g (though that would give a +100 acceleration bonus).

Not necessarily. That 50 mps is the approximate cap on '20s & close'.

Now, if you were looking at something more like the Age of Sail action, 10g per 5 mps would probably be acceptable. At that point, a 100g fighter would be capable of doing a full reversal at 50 mps in a three minute turn, which would resemble to turning capabilities of a smaller warship during the 18th century. Of course, capital ships will probably be moving much slower, as they will likely not have 100g acceleration (though they might have 20g acceleration in such a setting).

Why do people insist that smaller craft go faster/accelerate more than large ones? Then, at the same time, talk about replicating age-of-sail, or ironclads, or WWI. Small craft were more agile, but not greatly faster (and sometimes not faster at all).

For example, a WWI battleship had a maximum speed about 21-22 knots. A battlecruiser managed 25-28 knots, and cruisers were about the same. Destroyers did somewhere around 32-36 knots, assuming fair weather (being small and with hulls designed for speed, not sea-keeping, they lost speed in bad weather). This is a difference in degree, not kind - in a space setting if a 'battleship' can do 4G, a destroyer should only be doing 6G, maybe 7G, and the cruisers should do 5G.

In an age-of-sail fleet, the speed differences between the ships of the line and the frigates was even smaller.

To reflect agility, Handling would seem the correct statistic. Unfortunately it's a fairly coarse stat, and across a likely range of sizes there's probably only going to be one step between a destroyer and a battleship.

And yes, I'm talking acceleration rather than speed, because the latter functions in SS like the former does in naval actions. However, if there's a top speed available that's obtainable in a reasonable time, the argument applies to that as well. When it comes to delta-vee, if we're talking enough for inter-planetary transfers and the like, then the destroyers would have less than the big ships.

[AlexanderHowl]

For fighters to have a place is space combat, they have to have greater acceleration than larger spacecraft (2-5 times as much). The extra acceleration would exist to give fighters an acceleration bonus that would allow them to dodge the short range weapons of the capital ships long enough to hit them with missiles. A capital ship may instead have force fields, hanger bays, and/or weapon batteries in place of the extra drives that a fighter would possess.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

For fighters to have a place is space combat, they have to have greater acceleration than larger spacecraft (2-5 times as much). The extra acceleration would exist to give fighters an acceleration bonus that would allow them to dodge the short range weapons of the capital ships long enough to hit them with missiles. A capital ship may instead have force fields, hanger bays, and/or weapon batteries in place of the extra drives that a fighter would possess.

For them to look much like 'aircraft' they need rather more than that. However, the real problem is getting the balance right so that there's actually a reason for both fighters and for huge capital ships - the existence of capital ships implies small craft can't hurt them, and the existence of carriers and fighters implies that they can destroy capital ships economically. One tends to exclude the other.

[Alonsua]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

For fighters to have a place is space combat, they have to have greater acceleration than larger spacecraft (2-5 times as much).

I strongly disagree. Large spaceships have their own limitations related to their size, such as operating (i.e. refuel) and building cost, and they are not omnipresent, so they cannot be at two places at once. Thus I support the book rules.

*Moreover they are much easier to notice, so little stealth ops for them.

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

Larger military craft
Unless specified otherwise, these craft have a single rear hull module dedicated to the engine. The smaller models use hot reactionless, while the larger models use standard reactionless with a waste heat signature. The largest, which are still under development, and older models use a rotary reactionless engine.

The ship designs are kind of interesting, but don't really address my question, which is why are people designing these kinds of ships?

As a for-instance, you have an engine capable of accelerating a 100,000 ton hull at 2 Gs, which means it can accelerate a 30,000 ton hull at 6 Gs, so why isn't the aerospace destroyer just a scale up of the 30-ton multi-role aerospace fighter? What does the small aerospace fighter do that the up-scaled destroyer couldn't do? Why have one and not the other?

I can come up with reasons why any of these ships might exist, and possibly even why these particular ship classes might exist. But until I have an idea what your reasons are, I can't really provide any guidance on the composition of a task force. GURPS Spaceships has a bunch of different options that will change the answer, and I think Rupert and AlexandarHowl are arguing past each other because they're assuming different things and their assumptions are possibly different than your assumptions.