[Ultra Tech] Shortening Range

[Mathulhu]

Mutually Assured Destruction prevented the deployment of nukes in the past. You can take that further.

The owners see a world is vulnerable to something and can provide a greater benefit than the cost of deploying them so to prevent what ever it is being deployed they start the diplomatic process; either find some friends who will have your back, get a deterrent of your own or surrender to the bigger boy and hope they don't take everything.

There is still plenty of lee way for personal conflict, spies, special forces, disposable mercenaries et cetera.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Dutch_Wolf

I am wondering if that is such a bad thing there are quite a lot of movies/books/tv shows about bad guys willing to use weapons of mass destruction and the heroes trying to stop them (often involving a race of time).

Also note that bad-guys still might need infrastructure (you don't blow up the mine/refinery/space port you want to use) or have important personnel they need to exfiltrate before they nuke the place.

On the other hand nuclear dampers work, so it depends.

The problem with mini-nukes is more local than that.

Let's take an extreme example, because it shows both how powerful these are, and how manageable.

A TL 12 antimatter round can fit into a 10mm round, which means you can fit it into a portable railgun. A portable railgun has +7 range, which we can easily increase to +9 with extended aiming. With a compact scope, that bumps up +4 to +13, and with a targeting program, that increases +2 to +15. If we brace, that's another +1, and if we go AoA, that's another +1, so we're at +17. We want to hit at least 3k yards away (which the portable railgun can easily do), which is -19. At skill 14, that still hits on a 12 or less. This attack will deal an average of 800 burning damage, and 20 million toxic/radiation damage. That's "nobody survived that hit."

Of course, we could miss... but even if we miss and we're off by, say, 3 yards, that steal deals 266 burning damage and 2 million toxic/radiation damage. Even if we're off by 100 yards, we still deal 8 burning damage and 2000 toxic/radiation damage. We're quite safe at 3000 yards away (no burning damage and ~2 tox/rad damage), but whomever was in our target area is vaporized. The cost of the antimatter in that round, by the way, was a mere $50.

Even if we back up to something reasonable, at TL 10, you can put mini-nukes in Infantry Missile Launchers. They get expensive ($10k a shot), but for the amount of damage they can do to the enemy, that's not really a problem.

It's not really a WMD at that point either. The loads are too low. These are, strategically speaking, pretty precise weapons: I can murder everyone in a 100 yard radius, but people a mile away are quite safe. You wouldn't want to over use those weapons, and you couldn't use it in a heavily populated area full of rich infrastructure you want to protect/conquer, but in any other situation (particularly if you're teleported onto an enemy ship and you just want to inflict some damage and then teleport out), you drop a single $10k nuke, and your problem is solved. It's an I-win button, and the need for skill and the value of elite troops with totally sweet power armor (which easily costs 10x the mini-nuke) vanishes like wisps of molecular dust in the blast wave of nuclear fireball.

This is the sort of thing that quickly puts a damper on action heroics. I'm not talking about a strategic nuclear device that someone carried in a backpack, I'm talking about a precise, tactical weapon that people load up in missile launchers, fire at the enemy, and then are perfectly safe from the resulting explosion thanks to having sufficient distance between themselves and their targets.

[Gnome]

You could invent a computer-controlled "defensive phaser band" technology that automatically shoots down incoming projectiles. A small base might have a fully comprehensive system that can stop any missile or cannon round, while a personal belt-mounted version blasts bullets out of the air before they hit you.
The only weapons that can get past defensive phaser banks are beam weapons, and diffusion makes them weak at long ranges. High-powered beam weapons might exist, but they use huge amounts of energy, are hard to transport and expensive to manufacture, etc.
Make EMPs a viable option to take care of the warbots and give people an interesting way to try to get past defensive shielding as well as the automated phasers.

[Dutch_Wolf]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

The problem with mini-nukes is more local than that.

Let's take an extreme example, because it shows both how powerful these are, and how manageable.

A TL 12 antimatter round can fit into a 10mm round, which means you can fit it into a portable railgun. A portable railgun has +7 range, which we can easily increase to +9 with extended aiming. With a compact scope, that bumps up +4 to +13, and with a targeting program, that increases +2 to +15. If we brace, that's another +1, and if we go AoA, that's another +1, so we're at +17. We want to hit at least 3k yards away (which the portable railgun can easily do), which is -19. At skill 14, that still hits on a 12 or less. This attack will deal an average of 800 burning damage, and 20 million toxic/radiation damage. That's "nobody survived that hit."

Of course, we could miss... but even if we miss and we're off by, say, 3 yards, that steal deals 266 burning damage and 2 million toxic/radiation damage. Even if we're off by 100 yards, we still deal 8 burning damage and 2000 toxic/radiation damage. We're quite safe at 3000 yards away (no burning damage and ~2 tox/rad damage), but whomever was in our target area is vaporized. The cost of the antimatter in that round, by the way, was a mere $50.

Have to give you that one, can't see how to make this close and personal without having some (other) exotic tech. (Especially if the goal is general destruction)

Even if we back up to something reasonable, at TL 10, you can put mini-nukes in Infantry Missile Launchers. They get expensive ($10k a shot), but for the amount of damage they can do to the enemy, that's not really a problem.

It's not really a WMD at that point either. The loads are too low. These are, strategically speaking, pretty precise weapons: I can murder everyone in a 100 yard radius, but people a mile away are quite safe. You wouldn't want to over use those weapons, and you couldn't use it in a heavily populated area full of rich infrastructure you want to protect/conquer, but in any other situation (particularly if you're teleported onto an enemy ship and you just want to inflict some damage and then teleport out), you drop a single $10k nuke, and your problem is solved. It's an I-win button, and the need for skill and the value of elite troops with totally sweet power armor (which easily costs 10x the mini-nuke) vanishes like wisps of molecular dust in the blast wave of nuclear fireball.

[...]

But the mini nuke in an IML should be able to be defeated by some form of point defence mechanism. Because 1. Missiles are relative slow (compared to bullets at least) and 2. Nukes are rather fragile (compared to a lot of other military tech).

If a nuke gets destroyed it is very unlikely that it blows up as a nuke at most you will get a very dirty nuke at a fraction of the yield, more likely it will just behave like a dirty bomb (a relative small HE warhead that scatters a lot of toxic materials around) and it can potentially turn into a dud. Since a mini-nuke will be a highly complex device it will probably also be susceptible to EMP and other ECM.

Also note that with some form of point defence the nuke will go off some way away from the intended site, making it even more survivable (at least for soldiers equipped with power armor).

Lets take (IMHO) a worst case scenario where a mininuke gets hit by point defence and goes off at half yield (a tenth or less is more plausible) at ~12yards (instead of on target, depending on targeting system and reaction speed of the pd it is more likely to be somewhat more (anything from 24 to about a 100 yards sound plausible to me)). At a 1 Kiloton original yield this becomes roughly 556 Damage on average (with about 1200 burn/Rad), which I confess is still not that survivable. But my point is that a mini-nuke is vulnerable.

Also you mention teleporters well the only show where those where regullary used and relatively save are in Star Trek and they use a lot of handwaving when a teleporter could solve the plot at hand in less then an episode. The other fictional example I can think of is 40K but in that case the port goes trough the warp in is thus fairly dangerous and often unpredictable. Many other shows do not use teleporters at all (and one of the reasons is the above).

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Dutch_Wolf

But the mini nuke in an IML should be able to be defeated by some form of point defence mechanism. Because 1. Missiles are relative slow (compared to bullets at least) ).

The Hunter and Seeker AI missiles may be slightly slow compared to bullets but the 100mm missile is fast even comapred tot eh msot extreme bullets. 2000 (TL9) yards per second is faster than a TL8 120mm tank gun and the tL10 figure is 50% faster than that.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Dutch_Wolf

But the mini nuke in an IML should be able to be defeated by some form of point defence mechanism. Because 1. Missiles are relative slow (compared to bullets at least) and 2. Nukes are rather fragile (compared to a lot of other military tech).

If a nuke gets destroyed it is very unlikely that it blows up as a nuke at most you will get a very dirty nuke at a fraction of the yield, more likely it will just behave like a dirty bomb (a relative small HE warhead that scatters a lot of toxic materials around) and it can potentially turn into a dud. Since a mini-nuke will be a highly complex device it will probably also be susceptible to EMP and other ECM.

Also note that with some form of point defence the nuke will go off some way away from the intended site, making it even more survivable (at least for soldiers equipped with power armor).

Lets take (IMHO) a worst case scenario where a mininuke gets hit by point defence and goes off at half yield (a tenth or less is more plausible) at ~12yards (instead of on target, depending on targeting system and reaction speed of the pd it is more likely to be somewhat more (anything from 24 to about a 100 yards sound plausible to me)). At a 1 Kiloton original yield this becomes roughly 556 Damage on average (with about 1200 burn/Rad), which I confess is still not that survivable. But my point is that a mini-nuke is vulnerable.

There's another consideration: If you have to fire a $10,000 warhead at the enemy with a reasonable chance of being shot down for pennies, then you run into the economic consideration of whether it's worth it, especially if other tactics would be just as viable (Though you need to be knocking 20+ out of the air pretty regularly before power armor starts to become cost effective). You could put it on a Striker missile, which has a reasonable chance of dodging the attack, but that increases it to $27,000. Might be worth it, but makes it even more of a silver bullet.

If you add the fear of social repercussions of even small-scale nukes, and these might become very rare weapons.

Would it be reasonable to just up and increase the cost or say that you can't miniaturize nukes by as much as people thought?

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Would it be reasonable to just up and increase the cost or say that you can't miniaturize nukes by as much as people thought?

Is it really problematic to just declare a setting where nukes aren't invented/possible, period? I'm guessing the somewhat-operatic setting is going to have other changes to the laws of physics, like FTL.

[Dutch_Wolf]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The Hunter and Seeker AI missiles may be slightly slow compared to bullets but the 100mm missile is fast even comapred tot eh msot extreme bullets. 2000 (TL9) yards per second is faster than a TL8 120mm tank gun and the tL10 figure is 50% faster than that.

True for the TML launcher but I thought Mailanka was talking about the IML (otherwise the mininuke costs $40k instead of $10k), which goes only 750 y/s at TL10. Anyway the fragility of these mini nukes still stands, and since this is for unguided missile speeds a cloud of shrapnel will do.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Dutch_Wolf

. Anyway the fragility of these mini nukes still stands, and since this is for unguided missile speeds a cloud of shrapnel will do.

I know of no launched weapons which can really be expected to still do their jobs after being hit. Aerodynamics makes anything travelling at supersonic speeds fragile .

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Pretty much all depictions of sci-fi in popular media? Would you like some youtube links?

Mass Effect is a game where even sniper rifles seldom fire farther than 100 yards, and most fights take place within visual distance, like any shooter game. Star Wars works the same way, with character trading potshots at pisol ranges, and even when they have massive, overland battles, they have them a WWI or WWII ranges. Star Trek also tends to have personal fights within visual range. Warhammer 40k gets silly with its ranges, and thus the tabletop game probably isn't suitable for our purposes, but the computer games based on it, like Space Marine, also takes place with combat at visual range (and Warhammer 40k is meant to be WWI IN SPAAACE

Most of those settings have some things in common. Their small arms are no more effective than WW II smallarms (I would give them a big armour divisor and possibly multiply damage against inanimate targets). There is often a technology of shields or force screens which greatly limits missiles. Artificial intelligence and remote control are strongly restricted by custom or technology. And most of them avoid telling stories about big battles. It is easy to see why there was ground fighting instead of orbital bombardment on Hoth or Endor, and as soon as DS9 got into military plots the inadequacy of Star Fleet as a ground force became clear.

Small arms ranges have been limited more by terrain, skill, and vision than by ballistics since the 1880s or so, and police don't customarily use mortars and machine guns when raiding suspected drug smugglers.

There isn't any rational justification for the role of edged weapons in 40k, but alien biology, cinematic rules, and supernatural powers can help. Orks are ridiculously hard to kill; Knorne chaos space marines are proof against most smallarms and should get some special protection when charging at someone with an edged weapon; Jedi can parry bullets (cough, blaster bolts) and usually fight in confined spaces.