11-20-2018, 07:09 PM | #91 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
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The other thing that you definitely need a fixed position for is your rear echelon. Logistics dumps, troop rest areas, equipment repair workshops, and medical facilities can be packed up and moved, but building a version that worked on the move would be fairly ridiculous. Any high-value fixed installation necessitates a point-defense network to protect it against massed missile attack. While that doesn't require off-site fixed positions necessarily, it's likely to be more efficient to have distributed fixed weapon and sensor sites than to have exclusively mobile ones or to place all the point defense hardware right on top of the facility to be defended. None of this is intended to be in contact with the ground battlefront, obviously. I think it's entirely plausible that fortifications could have a role there, but we have nothing resembling a consensus about what that front is so any detailed proposal will look stupid when somebody puts it in a totally different environment than it was conceived for.
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11-20-2018, 09:15 PM | #92 |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
It might useful to look at this through the lens of Mass Combat unit types. Some notes:
EDIT: I'm ambivalent about my handling of "armor" in this post. Mass Combat has a bit of a weak spot in the fact that armored cars and OGREs are both "armor". Maybe nuclear jet-engines could enable flying armored cars at TL10 without any superscience—should those be "armor" for Mass Combat purposes? I'm not sure there's a right answer. Last edited by Michael Thayne; 11-20-2018 at 09:25 PM. |
11-20-2018, 09:40 PM | #93 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
In addition to the above, we also have the cyber component of warfare. Nearly every major power will have enormous quantum computers, the size of small cites and costing one percent of GDP each, to allow them to tear through the encryption of their enemies (or to counter such decryption efforts). An arms race between militaries at TL10 may involve computers as much as it involves spacecraft and physical armies, as an enemy that can lock you out of your own nukes (or detonate them before they are launched) is an enemy with a vise around your tender bits.
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11-20-2018, 09:59 PM | #94 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
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The question is, what are small arms at TL10? If it's laser rifles or chemical slugthrowers firing solids, even a late WWII tank might still qualify as Armor, though lighter vehicles that could resist rifle fire but can't stand up to a .50 HMG might not. If everybody's firing HEMP bullets or gyrocs, or regular infantry kit features a partial exoskeleton and a portable railgun as battle rifle, not as much.
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
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11-20-2018, 10:20 PM | #95 | |
Join Date: Mar 2014
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
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Especially for communication with your nuclear forces. TL 7 could create encryption that resist planet sized TL 12 computers for that (though TL 12 forces could most likely compromise the low TL communication in other ways than directly breaking the encryption). Just use one-time pad encryption. Last edited by Andreas; 11-20-2018 at 10:26 PM. |
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11-21-2018, 07:27 AM | #96 | |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
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As a side-note on Mass Combat: I did some spreadsheet analysis to try to figure out what unit types are most cost-effective. If land-based C3I matters, the Super Tank wins. If everyone has gobs of air-based or space-based C3I, the Super Tank is "merely" on par with a mix of MBTs and heavy artillery. But if Super Tanks don't exist and MBTs are obsolete at TL10? There's a strong case for armored cars dominating the battlefield, at least according to Mass Combat! |
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11-21-2018, 08:34 AM | #97 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
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It should also be noted that artillery shells with HE are 90% casing by weight due to firing stresses while missile warheads are only 50% casing or less. A MOAB is only 10% casing weight. Artillery shells can therefore be the least efficient means of delivery to deploy at long ranges. This is even before you figure in the weight of the artillery piece and divide that weight by the number of shots it gets off before it is destroyed by counterfire. This gets to the core issue: unless you can make the artillery piece powerfully stealthy even when firing it will be destroyed quickly and easily by TL10 opponents. The history of fixed targets since the discovery of gunpowder is that they have been no more than engineering projects waiting for hostiles to get around to them. One way this might happen at tL10 is for space mobile forces to launch large KE munitions at ground targets from out of range of any ground-based lasers. Those lasers will have focal elements that can't be armored while they're ready to fire anyway. They themseves will be vulnerable to briliant missile attack.
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Fred Brackin |
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11-21-2018, 08:42 AM | #98 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
25mm underbarrel grenade launcher is the dominant "small armr" they and their ammo are cheapeneough that every soldier can and should have one.
The laser rifle they're attached to is for shooting poorly equipped insurgents. Rifles are not primnary combat arms for infantry at TL10. They don't pentrate armor well enough.
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Fred Brackin |
11-21-2018, 09:29 AM | #99 | |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
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11-21-2018, 09:44 AM | #100 |
Join Date: May 2010
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What does the TL10 battlefield look like
Note: the relatively good cost-efficiency of armored cars comes at the expense of having "motorized" mobility rather than "mechanized" mobility—basically they're not good at going off-road. So maybe light tanks dominate the Ultra-Tech battle field after all! Though this is a point where the abstract nature of Mass Combat creates some oddities. Armored Cars and Light Tanks have the same WT, WT 4. While it's true cold war and later armored cars weigh about what a light tank weighed in WWI, what Ultra-Tech calls "light tanks" weigh several times as much, and are SM+5 instead of SM+3! So IDK, I like my idea that the standard fighting vehicle is about 10 tons and has 120 DR (electromagnetic), but Mass Combat is not much help on exact vehicle loaded weights and DR values.
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