Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - How to make space combat more survivable?

night-hunter · 07-10-2019, 04:09 AM

First of all, Spaceships, like conventional naval ships should be compartmentalized, such that if a compartment is penetrated by a solid, explosive device, or energy beam, then UNLESS the compartment itself is somehow a part of the integral structure of the ship or contains explosive components that would totally destroy integral components of the structure, then personnel and ship functions which are not destroyed would be operational. I.E. slicing the ship into quarters would probably destroy engines and maneuverability, probably cause the loss of artificial gravity, would cause the loss of ship wide life support (loss of atmosphere in portions), but probably would NOT cause the loss of compartmentalized life support nor would it cause the loss of fire power of missiles or cannon. Beam weapons may or may not have their own power supplies, thus may or may not be compromised. Energy screens are a significant problem however, and are one of the things I was hoping that some on this forum could address. IF one postulates an energy screen that detects and/or automatically deflects meteors up to and including say 10 tons (ie mostly small rocks, but not much over large boulder size) then most incoming cannon fire and missiles would NOT penetrate or even be noticed, unless the round/missile somehow detects and nullifies said screen or explodes, and either of those situations sets off alarms. It's even worse, if one postulates an attempt by boarders to do so clandestinely, as they would be unable to penetrate said screen undetected, particularly if said screen is also a mass density detector (which is CURRENT tech). The OTHER issue is that of the Speed of Light being the limiting factor for beam weapons means that ALL space combat is going to be really low velocity ships within about 90K miles of each other (ie extremely close) due to time to target problems. This problem gets enhanced when the detection system is ALSO limited by the speed of light, such that information on the target location is obsolete when the beam is fired.

07-10-2019, 04:09 AM	#9
night-hunter Join Date: Feb 2007	Re: How to make space combat more survivable? First of all, Spaceships, like conventional naval ships should be compartmentalized, such that if a compartment is penetrated by a solid, explosive device, or energy beam, then UNLESS the compartment itself is somehow a part of the integral structure of the ship or contains explosive components that would totally destroy integral components of the structure, then personnel and ship functions which are not destroyed would be operational. I.E. slicing the ship into quarters would probably destroy engines and maneuverability, probably cause the loss of artificial gravity, would cause the loss of ship wide life support (loss of atmosphere in portions), but probably would NOT cause the loss of compartmentalized life support nor would it cause the loss of fire power of missiles or cannon. Beam weapons may or may not have their own power supplies, thus may or may not be compromised. Energy screens are a significant problem however, and are one of the things I was hoping that some on this forum could address. IF one postulates an energy screen that detects and/or automatically deflects meteors up to and including say 10 tons (ie mostly small rocks, but not much over large boulder size) then most incoming cannon fire and missiles would NOT penetrate or even be noticed, unless the round/missile somehow detects and nullifies said screen or explodes, and either of those situations sets off alarms. It's even worse, if one postulates an attempt by boarders to do so clandestinely, as they would be unable to penetrate said screen undetected, particularly if said screen is also a mass density detector (which is CURRENT tech). The OTHER issue is that of the Speed of Light being the limiting factor for beam weapons means that ALL space combat is going to be really low velocity ships within about 90K miles of each other (ie extremely close) due to time to target problems. This problem gets enhanced when the detection system is ALSO limited by the speed of light, such that information on the target location is obsolete when the beam is fired. Last edited by night-hunter; 07-10-2019 at 04:19 AM.