[Spaceships] Missile shield vs. ramming: two questions

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Isn't that what Michael Thayne is fretting about? Isn't ramming the whole issue of the thread?

Somewhat, but didn't seem to consider that the attack drones could be entirely unarmed. You're right though that that's totally appropriate for the "dedicated suicide drones" mentioned in the OP.

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

I think the issue is how range scales. A 30,000x increase in mass (and more importantly, cost!) only yields a 10x increase in range. So I'm not super-excited about this strategy. It's maybe compelling when you're designing something to assault space stations, which can't close range.

Even if you have only moderately more range (never mind 10x more range) that's just fine if either your target cannot close that range fast (realistic rockets outside of a high-speed pass) or you don't need very many shots to resolve things (any moderate number of targets that aren't of similar size and massively armored).

But, to be fair, I do agree that the Big Gun strategy is likely to falter if you enable the Big Missile Swarm strategy, which leaves large ships facing off against thousands of KKVs and zero targets worth hitting with a 5000+ ton cannon.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Your theories about this do not match up with my experience of Spaceships battles. My experience is that superior range wins hands down and quickly too.

The only time I have seen drone saturation work was against a space station that could not get out of the way v. a massive number of targets that had a closing velocity of 70 miles per second. This speed also allowed the vessels carrying the drones to stay out of range.

Hardening the drones played no role. If you're going to saturate the target's defenses adding missile launchers instead of armor is a much better deal.

Can you say what rules you used?

Because you probably remember all the analysis of point defense vs. massed missile fire back when Spaceships was new.