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 Laughing Man wrote:
Not really. Acceleration is just a matter of percentage of mass devoted to engines, and larger engines rapidly become more efficient than smaller ones (efficiencies of scale and all that jazz). A larger ship can afford to mount a larger percentage as engine, as the small ship has static costs (life support, etc.) as a higher percentage of its mass already.

There is an economy of scale to some degree, however, there is also the law of diminishing returns. To accelerate a large mass at the same rate as a smaller mass, you need to use significantly more energy. You can certainly mount huge engines on a bigger ship, however, the energy output of those engines will not necessarily give the same or better power to mass ratio as smaller engines on a smaller ship.

What you have to remember is that even if a small ship needs to devote a larger proportion of its internal structure and mass to "uncompressable" essential systems (ie systems which cannot be made smaller and lighter or be eliminated), it can also cut out a lot of the extra gear that will be required in a larger ship and also cut out a lot of the support structure.

A small ship which is 50% engines, power plant and fuel, 10% life support, 20% weapons and 20% superstructure (pulling numbers out of my butt) devotes a lot of mass and space to engines and power, certainly.

However, a larger ship would have to dedicate a lot of mass and space to things like corridors, crew quarters, mess halls, communication rooms, possibly FTL tech, more extensive superstructure, heavier armour (after all it is a bigger target and a much greater investment so you want to protect it) that you just don't need on a small ship where you might have a crew of 4/5 people all essentially living in a single room within a ship for much shorter periods of time. You might have something like 30% engines and power and fuel, 5-10% life support, 20% weapons and 40% superstructure.

And as I mentioned you will have a hell of a lot more mass and engines, that while powerful, will not accelerate the ship at the same rate as the engines on a small ship. Kind of like how aircraft carriers are slower than destroyers.

 Ratbarf wrote:
A ship firing speed of light weapons should always be able to hit a fighter or bomber at the ranges they are fighting at unless you can get inside of a firing arc or are going faster than the guns tracking speed relative to your position, which would mean you're literally right on top of them.

And a hull breach in a space ship with properly constructed bulkheads is actually less of an issue than a hull breach on a bulkheaded water ship. They just seal of the breach and continue on, all it does is deny them immediate access to that section of the ship, in all likelihood the electronics in the decompressed section would still work barring damage from the weapon itself.

It doesn't matter if your weapons fire at the speed of light, you need to be able to track your target. being off by even a thousandth of a degree at long range will result in a complete miss against a small target like a fighter. You give way too much credit to the computers of the future, and the equipment they are controlling.

Yes, a ship will have bulkheads so breeches arn't as big a deal, but they are still dangerous. And vital systems are all the more vital.

On a planet you only need to avoid the ship sinking, you won't die if your ship is simply dead in the water. But in space you need to keep the ship together, ensure your life support systems arn't taken out, and keep your mobility.

Fighters craft would still be a very valuable part of space combat.

That's a problem with all fiction though. Nearly every explosion which is survived on television or in movies should have killed the lot of them.

 Frazzled wrote:
1) in spacethere's no reason to think fighters would be faster than other ships.

In any kind of reaction based engine and many of the other types of "sci-fi" engine, the top speed of any ship will be determined by the amount of shielding it has to protect it from micro debris and is more or less irrelevant. Now, acceleration... that is a function of mass. Larger ships have more mass and so require more energy to accelerate at the same rate as smaller masses. Engines, generally, follow the law of diminishing returns - you can make an engine larger but you get to the point where it is not economical from an energy input point of view.

 SilverMK2 wrote:

 Laughing Man wrote:
Not really. Acceleration is just a matter of percentage of mass devoted to engines, and larger engines rapidly become more efficient than smaller ones (efficiencies of scale and all that jazz). A larger ship can afford to mount a larger percentage as engine, as the small ship has static costs (life support, etc.) as a higher percentage of its mass already.

There is an economy of scale to some degree, however, there is also the law of diminishing returns. To accelerate a large mass at the same rate as a smaller mass, you need to use significantly more energy. You can certainly mount huge engines on a bigger ship, however, the energy output of those engines will not necessarily give the same or better power to mass ratio as smaller engines on a smaller ship.

What you have to remember is that even if a small ship needs to devote a larger proportion of its internal structure and mass to "uncompressable" essential systems (ie systems which cannot be made smaller and lighter or be eliminated), it can also cut out a lot of the extra gear that will be required in a larger ship and also cut out a lot of the support structure.

A small ship which is 50% engines, power plant and fuel, 10% life support, 20% weapons and 20% superstructure (pulling numbers out of my butt) devotes a lot of mass and space to engines and power, certainly.

However, a larger ship would have to dedicate a lot of mass and space to things like corridors, crew quarters, mess halls, communication rooms, possibly FTL tech, more extensive superstructure, heavier armour (after all it is a bigger target and a much greater investment so you want to protect it) that you just don't need on a small ship where you might have a crew of 4/5 people all essentially living in a single room within a ship for much shorter periods of time. You might have something like 30% engines and power and fuel, 5-10% life support, 20% weapons and 40% superstructure.

And as I mentioned you will have a hell of a lot more mass and engines, that while powerful, will not accelerate the ship at the same rate as the engines on a small ship. Kind of like how aircraft carriers are slower than destroyers.

It may take a large ship longer to accelerate than a smaller one, but once its moving it will have inertia built up and then it only matters who has the bigger engine.

The only disadvantage a large ship would have would be when ever trying to increase or decrease your speed, or turn. And with a proportionally powerful engine to its mass could have just as much maneuverability as a smaller ship.


A large ship could easily simply turn on its center of mass and fire its engines in the opposite direction of travel to decelerate.

 Grey Templar wrote:
It may take a large ship longer to accelerate than a smaller one, but once its moving it will have inertia built up and then it only matters who has the bigger engine.

The only disadvantage a large ship would have would be when ever trying to increase or decrease your speed, or turn. And with a proportionally powerful engine to its mass could have just as much maneuverability as a smaller ship.


A large ship could easily simply turn on its center of mass and fire its engines in the opposite direction of travel to decelerate.

Top speed is irrelevant when it comes to manoeuvrability, and manoeuvrability is the key element in naval, air and land warfare and in most science fiction is also the key part of space warfare. Being able to react to your enemy, redeploy formations, etc... even the time it takes to get up to top speed are all more important than the actual top speed.

And as I have said several times now, larger engines don't necessarily give the same power to mass ratio as smaller engines as you hit the law of diminishing returns. If you have some kind of Star Trek drive, large ships apparently don't have this problem and are able to accelerate, turn etc at the same kind of speed as smaller ships. In more "near term" tech, larger ships don't have that kind of parity with smaller ships.

Yeah, which does reinforce my point that fighter craft will be viable.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yeah, which does reinforce my point that fighter craft will be viable.

And again, cool.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Same reason they do not have fighter craft in star trek, .

They do have fighter craft in Star Trek.

Part of the problem with single-man fighters in Sci-Fi is that they might as well be missiles.

The problem with comparisons to modern earth navies is that the aircraft carrier's strength over the battleship was that it could strike from behind the horizon...
...and in space there is no horizon.

So two ships standing off at 100,000km, one launches manned fighters and the other launches unmanned missiles - the missiles can steer and evade better since G-tolerance (and therefore delta-V) is higher, the missiles have a higher payload since they don't have a cockpit and life support, and the missiles have a longer range because they only have to make a 1-way trip.

See the problem?

Drones! Let the pilots steer them from inside the capital ships. If the communications are jammed, have the drones AI take over.

 kronk wrote:
Drones! Let the pilots steer them from inside the capital ships. If the communications are jammed, have the drones AI take over.

So basically human-steered missiles - the only reason for this would be if your artificial intelligence is stupider than people at maneuvering, etc.

Yeah, but you will still have maximum effective ranges.

At very long distances, missiles will be trivially easy to shoot down with counter measures because you have tons of time to track it and hit it. yes, you could put in evasive abilities for the missiles but that is just making your weapons more and more complicated(and thus expensive) which will hit a point where its not worth it.


Ships may be so far that there is plenty of reaction to to avoid in coming fire, you simply alter your course so you end up in a different place than they were aiming(because you need to lead your target)


And there are planets, moons, and other celestial bodies to consider. Fighting in an asteroid belt or the rings of a planet for example. Space is far from empty.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
the missiles can steer and evade better since G-tolerance (and therefore delta-V) is higher,

Shows like Star Trek and Star Wars get around G-force issues with 'inertial dampers'... so not really an issue there.

the missiles have a higher payload since they don't have a cockpit and life support

But can only hit once...

, and the missiles have a longer range because they only have to make a 1-way trip.

Which is only an issue if range is a problem. Super-duper Doubletalk engines in many cases make that not so.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Part of the problem with single-man fighters in Sci-Fi is that they might as well be missiles.

The problem with comparisons to modern earth navies is that the aircraft carrier's strength over the battleship was that it could strike from behind the horizon...
...and in space there is no horizon.

So two ships standing off at 100,000km, one launches manned fighters and the other launches unmanned missiles - the missiles can steer and evade better since G-tolerance (and therefore delta-V) is higher, the missiles have a higher payload since they don't have a cockpit and life support, and the missiles have a longer range because they only have to make a 1-way trip.

See the problem?

One of the common counters against missiles in fluff is the increasing sophistication of ECM, as well as the amount of hard radiation given out in nuclear weapons scrambling missile systems (since they don't generally carry as much shielding as even small ships) and laser point defence. Additionally, you get problems with C&C when launching large volleys over extended distances, especially when you throw in ECM/weapon detonations/etc.

Smaller ships may not be able to handle the G's of a missile, however, they can continue to operate even if cut off from the carrier/rest of the fleet and are generally more durable and can mount more defensive systems, as well as better/larger sensor and C&C systems.

Missiles are certainly going to be at the forefront of many engagements however, either launched from capital ships at distance, or from smaller cutters/etc at shorter range.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Part of the problem with single-man fighters in Sci-Fi is that they might as well be missiles.

The problem with comparisons to modern earth navies is that the aircraft carrier's strength over the battleship was that it could strike from behind the horizon...
...and in space there is no horizon.

So two ships standing off at 100,000km, one launches manned fighters and the other launches unmanned missiles - the missiles can steer and evade better since G-tolerance (and therefore delta-V) is higher, the missiles have a higher payload since they don't have a cockpit and life support, and the missiles have a longer range because they only have to make a 1-way trip.

See the problem?

Wait... there wouldn't be any "G-tolerance" issue for fighter planes in space...right?

My whole thing is that if you're advanced enough to build frick'n space ships... they stick some advanced weaponary on said ships. The. End.

I've always thought Stargate did pretty well with the whole 'avoiding annoying sci fi stuff' thing. Even the language barrier they were pretty happy to ignore with, "do you want an episode of 40 minutes of Daniel learning ancient language A, then 5 minutes of plot?"

The 4 person team thing was pretty much that most of the time they were doing the whole 'peaceful exploring' thing. - And they did have the MALP to make sure everything was safe.

And, if things were looking a bit dicey, they did usually have a couple of marine squads along with them as backup (this was mostly SG-3's job.)

If things were looking particularly bad, you would at times see several squads ready to rock. - I think the season 3 finale was a bit example, when everyone assembled to go help SG1.

Funnily enough, Stargate also did quite well in avoiding one of my pet peeves. Usually, as far as things goes, Status Quo is God. However, Stargate was quite good at avoiding that, with them regularly acquiring and making use of new tech. Everything from training tools, to some public medical advances to finally developing fully fledged starships and laser beams by the shows end.

Someone mentioned AI always being badly treated in Science Fiction, although I haven't read the books, I'd like to suggest Iain M Banks' "The Culture" series which explores both what it means to have a post-scarcity society and omniscient, rather beneficial AI.

Plus, the stories have the most awesome ship names ever.

 insaniak wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
the missiles can steer and evade better since G-tolerance (and therefore delta-V) is higher,

Shows like Star Trek and Star Wars get around G-force issues with 'inertial dampers'... so not really an issue there.

the missiles have a higher payload since they don't have a cockpit and life support

But can only hit once...

, and the missiles have a longer range because they only have to make a 1-way trip.

Which is only an issue if range is a problem. Super-duper Doubletalk engines in many cases make that not so.

So some sort of made up nonsense makes fighters practical - alrighty then. That's another thing for this thread that bugs me about sci-fi fluff, made up nonsense.

They can only hit once - but that one hit is much harder than two runs from a fighter of similar size that has to fire even smaller munitions.

Range is a problem, if you're trying to (for example) remain out of range of an planet's surface or orbital defenses.

EDIT:

As far as the other problems - radiation in space would fry a fighter's computer just as much as a missiles', unless you're going to claim you can fly a space fighter without any sort of computer at all. The same goes for ECM and point defense - anything that can scramble or swat a missile can scramble or swat a fighter. The missile, though, is significantly less likely to get swatted because it can make higher G maneuvers.

And G-forces certainly do matter in space - they exist any time there is an acceleration, and a human can tolerate ~12 Gs without dying. A silicone computer can tolerate ~12,000. That's three orders of magnitude more maneuverable.

Smaller ships != to one-man fighters - corvettes, for example, would be perfectly acceptable.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 kronk wrote:
Drones! Let the pilots steer them from inside the capital ships. If the communications are jammed, have the drones AI take over.

So basically human-steered missiles - the only reason for this would be if your artificial intelligence is stupider than people at maneuvering, etc.

There is a limit to AI, it takes time and effort to program it. And it only ever does what it is programmed to do.

Humans are preprogrammed, can think for themselves, and can adapt much quicker than an AI.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Humans... can adapt much quicker than an AI.

AI is generally thought of as being able to adapt and put into place solutions much faster than a human could. However, they don't tend to go through intuitive leaps to radical solutions as a human might.

 Grey Templar wrote:

There is a limit to AI, it takes time and effort to program it.

But you only have to program it once, and then copy it 1,000,000,000 times.

 Grey Templar wrote:

And it only ever does what it is programmed to do.

Which is great - I don't want my army operating in a manner that even I can't predict. And it's not like they're so inflexible as to be totally useless. Even modern missiles are smarter than that.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Humans are preprogrammed

Badly.

 Grey Templar wrote:

can think for themselves, and can adapt much quicker than an AI.

Of course humans can think for themselves but that's not necessarily a desirable trait. Actually the entire point of an AI is that it is able to adapt more quickly than a human. If it isn't adapting more quickly, then it's more like just a normal computer than an AI, and even a normal computer would have faster reflexes than a human.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
As far as the other problems - radiation in space would fry a fighter's computer just as much as a missiles', unless you're going to claim you can fly a space fighter without any sort of computer at all.

Of course, however, the point being that a small ship will have more mass dedicated to protecting against radiation, since it has a crew to protect and will be a larger mass anyway, giving it more "spare" mass to play with for shielding systems.

The same goes for ECM and point defense - anything that can scramble or swat a missile can scramble or swat a fighter.

Again, small ships have more spare mess to pack in more complex ECM systems than a missile, meaning they will, generally, be able to "see" better and "hide" better.

The missile, though, is significantly less likely to get swatted because it can make higher G maneuvers.

True.

And G-forces certainly do matter in space - they exist any time there is an acceleration, and a human can tolerate ~12 Gs without dying. A silicone computer can tolerate ~12,000. That's three orders of magnitude more maneuverable.

I entirely agree with this point (ignoring the fact that while computer chips may be able to survive that - you also have to remember the rest of the missile, as well as the power of the engines/thrusters it has).

Smaller ships != to one-man fighters - corvettes, for example, would be perfectly acceptable.

This is my thought when thinking of small ships - something akin to patrol boats rather than speedboats when capital ships are aircraft carriers.

 SilverMK2 wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
As far as the other problems - radiation in space would fry a fighter's computer just as much as a missiles', unless you're going to claim you can fly a space fighter without any sort of computer at all.

Of course, however, the point being that a small ship will have more mass dedicated to protecting against radiation, since it has a crew to protect and will be a larger mass anyway, giving it more "spare" mass to play with for shielding systems.

The same goes for ECM and point defense - anything that can scramble or swat a missile can scramble or swat a fighter.

Again, small ships have more spare mess to pack in more complex ECM systems than a missile, meaning they will, generally, be able to "see" better and "hide" better.

The missile, though, is significantly less likely to get swatted because it can make higher G maneuvers.

True.

And G-forces certainly do matter in space - they exist any time there is an acceleration, and a human can tolerate ~12 Gs without dying. A silicone computer can tolerate ~12,000. That's three orders of magnitude more maneuverable.

I entirely agree with this point (ignoring the fact that while computer chips may be able to survive that - you also have to remember the rest of the missile, as well as the power of the engines/thrusters it has).

Smaller ships != to one-man fighters - corvettes, for example, would be perfectly acceptable.

This is my thought when thinking of small ships - something akin to patrol boats rather than speedboats when capital ships are aircraft carriers.

In this case we're in agreement actually. When I say fighters in space make no sense, I am thinking of the one-man style fighters from Star Wars and several other series, not the few-man Federation attack ships from ST: DS9 (for example) or corvettes from Homeworld.

There aren't enough super powers in the far future. All of that radiation from WWIII should make super powers!

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

And G-forces certainly do matter in space - they exist any time there is an acceleration, and a human can tolerate ~12 Gs without dying. A silicone computer can tolerate ~12,000. That's three orders of magnitude more maneuverable.

Oh... hmmm, okay. For some reason I thought that the absence of gravity helps mitigates the G forces. o.O

Well, G-force is really inertia IIRC. Its simply measured in relation to earth's normal gravitational pull. sea level is 1 G.

The human body can survive up to 12Gs, or 12 times earth's gravitational pull.

The deceleration of a vehicle puts force equal to a certain number of Gs on its occupants.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Well, G-force is really inertia IIRC. Its simply measured in relation to earth's normal gravitational pull. sea level is 1 G.

The human body can survive up to 12Gs, or 12 times earth's gravitational pull.

The deceleration of a vehicle puts force equal to a certain number of Gs on its occupants.

Generally negative G's are worse for you than positive G's (ie G's which pool blood in the head rather than the feet), with -4G generally being the point at which you red out. 10G is generally the point at which most people would black out.

Yeah, there is some variation in what particular individuals can survive with G-forces. Blacking out also isn't always fatal AFAIK.

Blacking out is fatal if you can't respond to incoming weapons fire/etc

Meh, so is texting and flying