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Many missiles are much more than that. Tomahawk is $570,000.

A 155m shell is $1,000 but has only 1/50 of the explosive payload. You can still deliver the same payload for 1/10 the price.

Saying that, guided missile technology seems to be exceptionally rare and primitive in 40K

It looks like people talk about "future battlefield" as if it would be in a few years, using slight improvements on todays tec. Today artillery needs to be mobile. Today the guidance systems of missiles are horribly expensive. Today the abiltiy to cause damage is much greater than the ability to protect from it. Today we care quite a bit about not damaging civilians that might be in the same hemisphere as the target...

Well, how does this change in the FUTURE? Come on make some stuff up, it's sci-fi we are talking about :-)

Hi Mellon.
The thing is looking at offencive and defencive capabilities, they tend to develop at similar rates.

The power and range of effects tends to increase over time.

Far future weapons would probably let tactical artillery cover span of the entire planet.(Inter continetal ballistics, or orbital bombardment.)

Therfore the power and range of static emplaced artillery would have to be that great to make it worth while.I am thinking on the lines of the Death Star in Starwars.

So the weapon is in one place (a fortified and well protected planetiod).

May be a planetary defence laser battery might be in a fixed fortified emplacment , as the power of the weapons required to destroy space ships might require quite a large power source.(Geo-thermal energy maybe?)

So for normal tactical engagments below regimental level, static artillery emplacment would only realy feature as an objectve to be taken-destroyed.(IMO.)

Well, how does this change in the FUTURE? Come on make some stuff up, it's sci-fi we are talking about :-)

Im just waiting for China to get in the tango with America, or North Korea, really should have finished that one when it was started...

Hmm, how about moon artillery? If you put a Rail Gun on the moon it would be damn hard to hit but rather easy to fire out of.

Ratbarf wrote:
Hmm, how about moon artillery? If you put a Rail Gun on the moon it would be damn hard to hit but rather easy to fire out of.

That's a very good idea that has been explored in the awesome sci-fi book "the moon is a harsh mistress" by Robert Heinlein. There are lots of other good things in that book (clever relationships for example), besides the obvious fun of dropping rocks from that height :-)

In a similar vein. If a gun is placed at one asteroid in the asteroid field (in our solar system then) and then uses the sun and/or a planet or two to slingshot their payloads to their targets, it will be very hard to retrace the trajectory with enough precision to find the right asteroid to hit, while it is not at all as tricky to gain precision enough to hit the right planet. This could be considered a mobile gun emplacement since the asteroids are not stuck in place, but it would be an uncontrolled mobile. Same situation with two planets firing shots at eachother. Pretty much every shot will hit the intended planet, but pretty much every shot will miss the exact gun emplacements. Having guided missiles will not make it much more likely to hit the gun emplacement. This makes sense because the guns will only stop firing once there is no point in defending anything anymore, since everyone is dead, and it assumes there is very little interest in keeping material values on the targeted planet. Of course there would be the alternative that a spaceship with guns could be counted as "mobile artillery" and could take out the enemys gun emplacements.

Lanrak: I'm not quite sure about that similar rate thing. Mobile defensive capabilities have pretty much lagged behind capability of doing damage, but static defensive has sometimes has a pretty good lead, wich caused starvation tactics and wars of attrition rather than victory by force. But mostly I think the power level fluctuates as new technology is improved upon. For example: the foot knights where the apex of late medieval fighting. They had such good armor that they didn't even bother carrying a shield. They went out of style quickly once the gunpowder came around and turned fighting much more mobile and/or alpha-strikey.