[Ultra Tech] Shortening Range

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Dutch_Wolf

Of course the above is only true when fighting something that is not a 'total war' (a war wherein every resource is made available for the war effort).

In short to have relative close and personal combat with normal high or ultra tech equipment the following seems to be needed:[LIST][*] Some reason why a place can't be shelled/nuked/shot from orbit reasons can be[INDENT][LIST][*] Civilians in the area (when it is illegal or otherwise not a good idea to destroy them)[*] Infrastructure you intent to capture and use(like harbours, airfields, spaceports, etc)[*] Some defence mechanism that can only be destroyed by a small team of specialists (like the earlier mentioned shields)

Not just Infrastructure either.
You can have rescue missions for hostages or even liberating a POW camp or the enemy may hold prisoners in high value targets to discourage assault.

Also intelligence resources.
The location may also not be conducive to easily getting your long range weaponry on target.

[Jonas]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Not just Infrastructure either.
You can have rescue missions for hostages or even liberating a POW camp or the enemy may hold prisoners in high value targets to discourage assault.

On the other hand depending on the current culture, politics and the exact ratio of how valuable the target is vs the potential 'collateral damage' in a specific setting they might hit it with some form of fire support anyway. Of course that comes down to how far you want to move towards reality on the whole realism vs cinematic scale.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Dutch_Wolf

At least somewhat mobile warfare (trenches are not really the thing I am thinking of when I am imaging close and personal combat)

Actually, close and personal combat was an important part of trench warfare. The trenches may have good fields of fire, but to actually make progress against them you kind of need to seize the enemy trenches...and trenches are such good cover it's nearly impossible to force the defenders out without going in yourself.

[Dutch_Wolf]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Actually, close and personal combat was an important part of trench warfare. The trenches may have good fields of fire, but to actually make progress against them you kind of need to seize the enemy trenches...and trenches are such good cover it's nearly impossible to force the defenders out without going in yourself.

I stand corrected.

Anyway I forget something (at least for ultra-tech) there is a need for something to prevent telepresences (sp?) so there are no drones. Personally not to worried about AI because IMHO good enough AI could be PCs.

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

What remotely believable suggestions do you have for keeping ultra-tech combat to visual range?

Can you link us to a working example in popular media of what you're looking for?

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

Can you link us to a working example in popular media of what you're looking for?

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).

My latest source of inspiration, Warframe, does a pretty good job of what I'm talking about. They're clearly in highly advanced power armor of some kind (anything from a commando battlesuit up to a warsuit, depending on how you see it), with advanced and cool weaponry that the game tends to treat as powers. Their weapons of choice are: Pistols, rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles and melee weapons, thus they're highly advanced super-warriors who regularly fight at pistol range.

I can't actually think of any well-known sci-fi that actually has the push-button warfare you'd tend to see at Ultra-Tech TLs of 10+. If you follow the natural evolution of that warfare, you run into some of the problems people talk about here.

So let's see if I can paint you a picture: It's a world where people go to other worlds in spaceships and then take highly elite soldiers/jedi/tenno/space marines and send them into battle, rather than just nuke crap from orbit, nor do they send drones in (and if they send drones in, the drones are considered disposable, while the elites are considered, well, elite). These elite warriors represent, for whatever reason, the pinnacle of technology and often have very expensive toys at their disposal. The nature of these toys vary from setting to setting, but they're always very cool and they're always iconic to the setting (the jedi with their lightsabers and the force, space marines with their power armor and their bolters, tenno with their warframes, solders of Mass Effect with their armor and their set of four weapons and possibly biotic powers and engineering toys). These elites then engage their enemies at a close enough range that they can physically see their opponents. An elite might try to keep his range and snipe people, stay at middle range and use a combination of assault rifle, submachine gun, shotgun or pistol to defeat his foes, or he might close range and attack his foes with melee weapons (light sabers, space katanas or chainswords, or just punch them as in Mass Effect). The battles are terribly flashy and exciting, the player in the battle is always worried that his character might die, and feels awesome as he mows down lots of bad guys (possibly said disposable drones).

This, as opposed to a much more sensible approach of mounting up your War Bot with IQ 10 (doable at TL 10), then a missile launcher with mini-nukes (for when you want them super-dead), ETK sniper-rifles (for when you want something very precisely dead and you want very little collateral damage) and some kind of stunning weapon (for when you want to take your enemy alive), and sending wave after wave of these perfectly sensible warbots to fight your enemy for you.

How do you justify action heroes in space? How do you justify battles that are face to face, as opposed to much more strategic struggles of "My nanofac is producing Warbots faster than his nanofac!"?

This is, frankly, less of a tactical concern and more of a world-building concern. While I doubt my players will up and ask why robots can't go into battle in their place while they lounge around drinking space-cola all day, but I'd still like to understand what persuades a TL 10+ civilization to put valuable, PC-like heroes on the front lines of whatever battle, special ops, or secret mission they have.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

How do you justify action heroes in space? How do you justify battles that are face to face, as opposed to much more strategic struggles of "My nanofac is producing Warbots faster than his nanofac!"?

I think a big problem is that in games where the focus is on the first-person action, you don't get to see much in the way of infrastructure works. And in games with a strategic element, you do see nanofacs producing units again and again.

The only game which at least tries to describe the strategic side of things in any reasonable level of detail, while focusing on third-person action - Mass Effect - is essentially 99% SpecOps, so of course it's all about situations where deploying more than a dozen warbots is not an option. (And Shepard doesn't afraid [sic] a dozen warbots.)

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I think a big problem is that in games where the focus is on the first-person action, you don't get to see much in the way of infrastructure works. And in games with a strategic element, you do see nanofacs producing units again and again.

The only game which at least tries to describe the strategic side of things in any reasonable level of detail, while focusing on third-person action - Mass Effect - is essentially 99% SpecOps, so of course it's all about situations where deploying more than a dozen warbots is not an option. (And Shepard doesn't afraid [sic] a dozen warbots.)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Shepard optionally a military hero at the beginning of the game and, while I have yet to play ME3 after all its bad reviews, doesn't he lead armies of sentients into war? The ME3 universe doesn't generally make use of warbots outside of a few really lame drones, though the setting explains that by having all the volitional warbots turn on their masters.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Shepard optionally a military hero at the beginning of the game and, while I have yet to play ME3 after all its bad reviews, doesn't he lead armies of sentients into war? The ME3 universe doesn't generally make use of warbots outside of a few really lame drones, though the setting explains that by having all the volitional warbots turn on their masters.

He sort of leads the big (well, as big as was possible to land) ground offensive in the end of the game. But of course there are some problems and screw-ups, and you end up playing all combat scenes with just your friends and you on the 'good' side and a wave of mooks intermixed with more serious opponents on the 'evil' side (by now I'd say the Reapers are acting out of WellIntentionedExtremism rather than ForTehEvulz; almost like the Kzer-Za, even).

You get some fire support when you meet some in-combat triggers, but that's about it. You don't even get to shoot out of your cool ATV like you did in ME1.

And if ME doesn't use warbots, then just what are e.g. the Colossi?

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Shepard optionally a military hero at the beginning of the game and, while I have yet to play ME3 after all its bad reviews, doesn't he lead armies of sentients into war? The ME3 universe doesn't generally make use of warbots outside of a few really lame drones, though the setting explains that by having all the volitional warbots turn on their masters.

Geth, being a bunch of infomorphs, as far as I can tell do use armies of mass-produced sentient warbots.

Other than that, yeah, everything is manned. And there are space fighters.