[Ultra Tech] Shortening Range

[Dutch_Wolf]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

[...]

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.

Indeed this last part is a world building concern, since depending on how IQ 10 works (and how much self-awareness is needed) these IQ 10+ warbots might not be as easily replaceable as pumping them out of nano-facs (for example maybe the neural net they are running on is not (easily) copieable and they need to learn just as humans do) and might be characters in their own right, or it might be that the IQ 10+ robots are that more expensive then well trained (and maybe gen enhanced) humans, or it might be that AI is forbidden by intergalactic treaty (like in mass effect or in Dune). Now of course the above are only examples and I bet you can come up with many more then I just did in this short time.

What this leaves is why the humans on the ground don't use these long ranges weapons and/or nukes. I think the first step is to get rid of tele-operated drones more useful then the drones we have right now (at TL8), part of this is to have no easy FTL communications (limiting range) and adding better radio jamming, so for communications we are left with laser which needs line of sight. The next step is to make sure most if not all combats take place in place with limited line of sight* (think dense forests, urban, certain types of factory complexes, etc). The last step is a reason why that forest, city, factory complex is not nuked from orbit and this can be civilian presence, needed infrastructure, need to exfiltrate important personnel or even again intergalactic treaty.

I know this is a repeat from my previous posts, but I hope this is somewhat clearer that I indeed mend mostly world building types of solutions. Also note that in my mind high IQ AI can be used as characters in their own right (think Legion and EDI from Mass Effect, the R2-D2/C3P0 from Star Wars, Data from ST:NG, the Doctor from ST:V, etc)

*Although it might be fun once in a while what the ultra tech equipment is truly capable of

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Dutch_Wolf

I know this is a repeat from my previous posts, but I hope this is somewhat clearer that I indeed mend mostly world building types of solutions.

Well, I was repeating my concerns because someone asked, but I think the thread has already come up with quite some solutions:

• Have excellent jamming in place, making extremely long-range attacks difficult
• Have some kind of shielding that makes long range attacks (especially orbital attacks) difficult or impossible
• Reduce the effectiveness of AI, remove it completely, or make it as precious as humans
• Have your fights primarily in cluttered areas, like forests, cities and the interior of spaceships, not on featureless plains.
• Have social pressures that remove the ability to use massive destruction against your foes

I have no real reason not to use mini-nukes and anti-matter rounds, though, outside of social pressures, which just means the bad guys are more likely to nuke people. I suppose I could introduce nuclear dampers.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

I have no real reason not to use mini-nukes and anti-matter rounds, though, outside of social pressures, which just means the bad guys are more likely to nuke people. I suppose I could introduce nuclear dampers.

Or make nukes and antimatter extremely difficult to get, which they pretty well have to be.

[Dutch_Wolf]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

[...]

I have no real reason not to use mini-nukes and anti-matter rounds, though, outside of social pressures, which just means the bad guys are more likely to nuke people. I suppose I could introduce nuclear dampers.

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.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

• Reduce the effectiveness of AI, remove it completely, or make it as precious as humans

Or you can make Complexity scale non-linearly. That way you can get AIs on stationary computers, but not on drones. This also helps cut down on the intelligence of homing missiles and other micro-thinkies. Good for a retro feel.
(For the record, ÆS has exactly one AI in the whole setting, and no player complained so far. OTOH, a single player did complain about not being able to trivially get a voice-to-text + translation software into a setting's high-end laptop. Life's hard.)

Originally Posted by Mailanka

• Have social pressures that remove the ability to use massive destruction against your foes

I have no real reason not to use mini-nukes and anti-matter rounds, though, outside of social pressures, which just means the bad guys are more likely to nuke people. I suppose I could introduce nuclear dampers.

Or you can abandon nukes entirely. Again, I have no nukes or nuke-equivalents in ÆS, and nobody complained. Having no nuclear power plants does result in a somewhat weird infrastructure for a world where extracting fossil fuels is a thing of the past, but life goes on.

[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.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Well, I was repeating my concerns because someone asked, but I think the thread has already come up with quite some solutions:

• Have excellent jamming in place, making extremely long-range attacks difficult
• Have some kind of shielding that makes long range attacks (especially orbital attacks) difficult or impossible
• Reduce the effectiveness of AI, remove it completely, or make it as precious as humans
• Have your fights primarily in cluttered areas, like forests, cities and the interior of spaceships, not on featureless plains.
• Have social pressures that remove the ability to use massive destruction against your foes

I have no real reason not to use mini-nukes and anti-matter rounds, though, outside of social pressures, which just means the bad guys are more likely to nuke people.

Make the high-power weapons expensive. This makes them harder for most combatants to get, and easier for governments (or whoever takes that role) to restrict. If the mininukes are super-duper expensive, then even the bad guys will only use them when cheaper options won't work.

(This could be realistic, too, for both mini-nukes and antimatter. Plus, antimatter is inherently dangerous in a terrene environment, it defaults to disaster with pretty much anything going wrong with the technology.
I could readily imagine that most people, bad guys included, would be reluctant to be close to it. Kind of like carrying bottles of sulfuric acid as weapons, it might work but is it worth the risk?

Social pressure can cover a range of things, too. If it's just social disapproval, the bad guys might not care. If using the forbidden weapon means that everybody feels free to shoot at you for it, or even that your former friends and allies won't trade with you, take your money, or the like, that's something else. In the real world, there are some actions that will make even hardened criminals violently hate you. In a future world, using mininukes or other forbidden weapons might fall into that category.

Still, there's no getting around some of the problem, the regular 'in your face' battles of pop sci-fi just don't make realistic sense. You can fix some of it with various solutions, but there's no plausible way to make it really realistic on all fronts. It's not hard to come up with specific situations where an in-your-face battle happens, but I've never seen a plausible situation where it happens as a routine thing with the SFnal technologies.

[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.