01-23-2019, 05:20 AM | #61 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: Orbital Lasers
From my understanding, it is the rarity of tritium, an essential component of thermonuclear weapons, that makes decoys worthwhile. When you require 10 grams of tritium for the thermonuclear reaction in a three stage bomb, you only produce 20 kilograms per year, and half of it decays every 12.5 years, you have a rather sharp limit on how many thermonuclear warheads you can support. You either turn to pure fission and accept that you will have larger mass warheads with more fallout or you pack the MIRVs with decoys so that your real warheads can survive antimissile fire.
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01-23-2019, 05:35 AM | #62 |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Meifumado
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Re: Orbital Lasers
With the head-on approach vector, perhaps the decoys could be just thin disks with the same 2D profile as the warheads. Spin them so they remain horizontal.
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01-23-2019, 06:13 AM | #63 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: Orbital Lasers
Quote:
Note that tritium was/is common and affordable enough that it was and is used in night vision devices, and as the energy source of luminous displays and such.
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01-23-2019, 08:34 AM | #64 | |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: Orbital Lasers
Quote:
Certainly, we can just assume that saturation works, so that's the way for the PCs to go. The valiant humans need a way to defeat the evil alien oppressors, after all :) Assuming the conclusion is the fasted way to end the speculation and get on with the game. (Well, for the OP anyway. The rest of us don't get to play, so we'll be left behind on the forum to keep on speculating to no end...) My point is merely that it's not as simple as saying "the attacker would just use decoys" as a clear IWIN strategy to argue that no sensible alien oppressors would ever build an orbital laser ship (If saturation is such an obvious and easy tactic, why did the aliens build such an easily defeasible terror machine in the first place? They've conquered their way across the galaxy, but humans are the first to come up with the obvious and easy idea? No one ever thought of it at all, because humans are uniquely ingenious when it comes to war? Earth is the first place they've had a chance to try their new toy, so naturally it has some teething problems that have yet to be worked out? Or is it that decoys must not be so easy and obvious after all? Assuming saturation works calls for a little more world-building thought, or else increasing the level of WSOD so the table agrees not to poke that assumption so hard that it breaks.) |
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01-23-2019, 09:28 AM | #65 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Orbital Lasers
Quote:
A serious centralized military threat is not the best choice of plot for an RPG - a background story against which the PCs are doing something else sure, and just maybe it can be the final boss, but the central plot focus needs to be something that can be fragmented into staged goals.
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01-23-2019, 10:31 AM | #66 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Orbital Lasers
Quote:
The more plausible version of that replaces the PCs with a bomb. |
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01-23-2019, 10:41 AM | #67 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Udine, Italy
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Re: Orbital Lasers
Quote:
The battle station gets hosed by the radiation (and instant heat on its armor) of several near-miss nuclear explosions, and also pummelled by a dozen small-sized kinetic projectiles that punch many holes in it. It is no longer operational, or a threat. It's a wreck. But it still is a very big thing, an irradiated thing (apart from our nukes, there are those reactors that will have been damaged), possibly with some aliens still barely surviving aboard it... on a quickly decaying orbit because of those failed evasive maneuvers. Do we still have some vehicle that can bring up there a team of very brave operators? They should place demolition charges on the main structure to make sure the thing is destroyed in fragments so small they'll burn on entry. And before that, they could try and gather useful intelligence, because a second station might be coming. And they should do so quickly, because it's nearly a suicidal mission due to the radiations. And if they can bring back a live alien, so much the better. |
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01-23-2019, 10:50 AM | #68 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: Orbital Lasers
How are you doing all of this to a spacecraft in GSO? Try designing a TL8 spaceship using Spaceships that can achieve 8.5 mps (minimum realistic delta-v for surface to GSO) and you will see what I mean.
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01-23-2019, 10:53 AM | #69 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Udine, Italy
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Re: Orbital Lasers
Quote:
One could object that those were weapons systems of the same TL. Punji traps were low-tech devices of admirable simplicity. The US soldiers in Vietnam had higher tech than that, were entirely aware of the threat, and yet punji traps remained effective. |
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01-23-2019, 10:53 AM | #70 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: Orbital Lasers
My conclusion is that a TL10, SM+15 spaceship such as this, in a GSO orbit, is a plot device.
Something to be shot at, or otherwise messed with, will be smaller, and in a lower orbit.
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