Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 sebster wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
2) everyone can see everyone from far away. There's no surprise advantage.

That's a massive assumption that may not be true at all. Think about the potential effective range of weapons in a frictionless environment - range could be measured in hundreds of thousands of kilometres or even more. And then think about the size of space at that range.

I mean sure, if you've got Star Trek quality sensors that can determine the number of lifeforms on a planet in seconds then spotting the exact location of enemy ships within a few hundred thousand kms... but Star Trek sensors are stupid. Instead you're staring in to the vast black of space, trying to pick up heat signatures or the like, on vessels that are likely designed to mask their heat signatures. It's likely combat would be all about surprise and identifying the exact position of the enemy before he identifies you.

This is why I've always preferred the sub battle analogy to space combat - the art is in spotting the enemy, once that's done killing him is the easy part.

It's not a very good analogy, however, given that something with engines as weak as the space shuttle is still visible from Pluto's orbit with nothing more than a telescope. You also have the problem that space, being empty, doesn't have any heat in it. Thus, anything hot enough to radiate heat (read: hot enough for anything to survive) will be glowing like a beacon to anything looking at it in the right spectrums. Even worse, trying to hide your heat also quickly teaches the lesson that vacuum is a perfect insulator, and you'll quickly boil your crew in their own waste heat. Not to mention the problems of active sensors, occluding known celestial bodies, and being unable to accelerate due to the visibility of your propellant.

 Grey Templar wrote:
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.

No. Humans are put through flight training, which is at least as expensive as building an AI, and something you have to do for every single pilot. Once you've got the AI you can just copy & paste it.

And in combat they aren't thinking for themselves, they're following their training. Having planes out there with everything thinking for themselves would be total fething chaos. Nor is it simple to adapt human training and instinctive behaviour to counter a new threat.

 Laughing Man wrote:
Even worse, trying to hide your heat also quickly teaches the lesson that vacuum is a perfect insulator, and you'll quickly boil your crew in their own waste heat.

The obvious fix being steam powered space craft...

 insaniak wrote:

 Laughing Man wrote:
And barring blowing up about a cow's weight in antimatter (probably two or three cows to make up for most of the radiation being unusable), there isn't really a more efficient energy source.

...that we currently know about.

Given that not so long ago FTL travel was just considered completely impossible, writing it off on the basis that we just don't currently have a big enough battery seems a litle premature, don't you think?

Given that E=MC^2 is pretty much an immutable law of the universe, the only way to get better power efficiency involves violating the laws of physics in ways that would make an S&M fetishist feel ill.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 insaniak wrote:

 Laughing Man wrote:
Even worse, trying to hide your heat also quickly teaches the lesson that vacuum is a perfect insulator, and you'll quickly boil your crew in their own waste heat.

The obvious fix being steam powered space craft...

In which case you've got a wonderful heated plume of steam to show them exactly where you are and where you've been. Not precisely stealthy.

 insaniak wrote:
But happens once. If at all.

Yeah, missiles only happening once is such a big limitation that we don't bother to use them at all in the modern world.

Yes, the missile only needs to make a one way trip... but that's not an issue in a setting where the fuel or power source for the fighter takes up a significant amount of space.

It's always a problem. Space is frictionless. This means that the range on a one-way trip is infinite. Enough fuel to get up to crazy fast speed, then a little fuel for adjusting course and evasive manoeuvres when you reach the target.

On the other hand a fighter has finite range, however far it got on half its fuel, it needs that much to turn around and go home again.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Frazzled wrote:
Hate:

All the aliens have human emotions. On TV shows they are often a single facet.

Very rarely do aliens act...alien, or can do unexpected things. Here's the only ones I kind think of in that category:
*Shadows (B5)
*Alien (Alien)
*Andromeda Strain (alien virus/lifeform/thingy)
*Monument builders (2001)

Yeah, good one. That always annoys me, not only that aliens have similar emotions and motivations to ourselves, but they have none of our variation. Klingons are the classic example - they are a warrior race. All of them. Every single one is assumed to focused on warrior culture and honour (a few Trek episodes sort of deal with characters who aren't honourable but still). At the same time humans continue to be seen as wildly diverse.

 sebster wrote:
On the other hand a fighter has finite range, however far it got on half its fuel, it needs that much to turn around and go home again.

Quarter of the speed. Half will only let you stop. You'll need the same amount of match the velocity you had in the other direction, then a fourth portion to keep from kamikaze'ing your berth.

 Laughing Man wrote:
Given that E=MC^2 is pretty much an immutable law of the universe, the only way to get better power efficiency involves violating the laws of physics in ways that would make an S&M fetishist feel ill.

No, you're right. There is absolutely no possibility that our current understanding of science could be flawed.

In which case you've got a wonderful heated plume of steam to show them exactly where you are and where you've been. Not precisely stealthy.

Clearly the ship would be collecting the steam to provide water to their hydroponics and life suport systems...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 sebster wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
But happens once. If at all.

Yeah, missiles only happening once is such a big limitation that we don't bother to use them at all in the modern world.

It wasn't a question of whether or not they would be used at all, just a reason that they were potentially inferior to fighters.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 sebster wrote:
On the other hand a fighter has finite range, however far it got on half its fuel, it needs that much to turn around and go home again.

...unless it gets picked up.

Yeah, good one. That always annoys me, not only that aliens have similar emotions and motivations to ourselves, but they have none of our variation. Klingons are the classic example - they are a warrior race. All of them. Every single one is assumed to focused on warrior culture and honour (a few Trek episodes sort of deal with characters who aren't honourable but still). At the same time humans continue to be seen as wildly diverse.

Funnily enough, some Star Trek writers tried to make that a feature, by claiming that one of the reasons humanity is so dominant in the galaxy is that very diversity compared to other races.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yes, missiles are only a 1 way journey, but there are plenty of reasons a missile is not ideal in space.

1) easy to shoot down. If you are shooting a missile accross many thousands of kilometers of space, its going to take a relativly long time to reach its target. Plenty of time to get shot down by an anti-missile laser or missile. A fighter can carry counter measure systems or simply alter its course enough to make tracking it difficult or impossible given the distance.

You're really not thinking this through. There is exactly no reason to think that a missile cannot carry counter measures, and an AI capable of adapting its course. That's just you putting imaginary limitations on the missile to justify fighters.

2) Missiles are expensive. Yes, a fighter is more expensive than a missile. But it can be used over and over again and only requires fuel and ammo input.

Not a thing at all. A missile, like a fighter, may well be very expensive indeed. But when the side with missiles has such an overwhelming advantage over the side with fighters, the real cost is the capital ships lost by the idiots trying to fight a war with fighters.

Ultimatly, a mixture of fighters, missiles, and other stuff will get used. Because every type of weapon has a counter and only using one specific thing leaves you vulnerable to those counters. So you ill use a good mixture of weaponry to ensure you are never left completely without an answer.

Weapon platforms get outmoded. We don't have battleships anymore, because aircraft carriers and missile boats developed to be able to do everything that battleships could once do. Once we're looking at a future in which craft are capable of movement with g-force that will kill a human pilot, and there is AI capable of performing at least equal to human pilots, then the advantages of one-way AI controlled missiles completely dominate over human fighter craft.

I'm going to interrupt the fighters vs. missiles debate to drop this in :

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheGrandListOfOverusedScienceFictionCliches

 Laughing Man wrote:
It's not a very good analogy, however, given that something with engines as weak as the space shuttle is still visible from Pluto's orbit with nothing more than a telescope.

Once you know where it is, you can easily zoom in on that spot and see it any time you please. The problem is seeing it in the first place. There are objects bigger than Pluto that we haven't spotted yet. And that's with years on years of looking. The idea that it can be done in second without unbelievable processing power is quite a piece of speculation.

You also have the problem that space, being empty, doesn't have any heat in it. Thus, anything hot enough to radiate heat (read: hot enough for anything to survive) will be glowing like a beacon to anything looking at it in the right spectrums. Even worse, trying to hide your heat also quickly teaches the lesson that vacuum is a perfect insulator, and you'll quickly boil your crew in their own waste heat. Not to mention the problems of active sensors, occluding known celestial bodies, and being unable to accelerate due to the visibility of your propellant.

All of which I mentioned, and then went on to talk about heat retention and masking. It is a massive assumption to suggest that there could be no possible future tech that couldn't mask or control heat emissions.

And there's also the problem that while heat may be there, it doesn't radiate instantly. You may be able to see it, once the heat reaches you... at which point you'll have a very good idea where the object was a few minutes ago.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Laughing Man wrote:
Quarter of the speed. Half will only let you stop. You'll need the same amount of match the velocity you had in the other direction, then a fourth portion to keep from kamikaze'ing your berth.

No, half is right. The second quarter is spent decellerating, but you're still moving forward. Then the return journey uses the other half of the tank.

 sebster wrote:
All of which I mentioned, and then went on to talk about heat retention and masking. It is a massive assumption to suggest that there could be no possible future tech that couldn't mask or control heat emissions.

And there's also the problem that while heat may be there, it doesn't radiate instantly. You may be able to see it, once the heat reaches you... at which point you'll have a very good idea where the object was a few minutes ago.

There's also the option of going the other way entirely... don't mask the craft's heat emissions, but deploy heat-emitting chaf to create multiple fasle returns. Good luck shooting all of the heat signatures that just appeared on your scopes...

 insaniak wrote:
It wasn't a question of whether or not they would be used at all, just a reason that they were potentially inferior to fighters.

But it's a reason that doesn't make any sense.

You have a capital ship, that by any logic is going to cost vastly more than missile or fighter plane (if only because it's going to have a lot of fighters and missiles on it). Whatever weapon of war that increases the chance that it is their capital ship instead of yours that gets trashed is going to be preferred by all sides, even if it is a one shot weapon.

...unless it gets picked up.

Which assumes that your carrier ships will advance into the new area after defeating the enemy. Which is a huge gamble, especially if they're firing missiles that by definition massively outrange your fighters.

Funnily enough, some Star Trek writers tried to make that a feature, by claiming that one of the reasons humanity is so dominant in the galaxy is that very diversity compared to other races.

Which only doubles down on the weird racist vibe. We're so unique and different, everyone else is a collection of stereotypes.

I mean, I like that Star Trek tried to be positive and progressive about the future, but part of that is that when they dropped the ball it was really noticeable.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 insaniak wrote:
There's also the option of going the other way entirely... don't mask the craft's heat emissions, but deploy heat-emitting chaf to create multiple fasle returns. Good luck shooting all of the heat signatures that just appeared on your scopes...

Good point.

 sebster wrote:
You have a capital ship, that by any logic is going to cost vastly more than missile or fighter plane (if only because it's going to have a lot of fighters and missiles on it). Whatever weapon of war that increases the chance that it is their capital ship instead of yours that gets trashed is going to be preferred by all sides, even if it is a one shot weapon.

So why doesn' the US just have a fleet of Cruise Missile ships instead of Carriers?

Which only doubles down on the weird racist vibe. We're so unique and different, everyone else is a collection of stereotypes.

Ultimately, I think it was just an attempt by a couple of writers to explain away deficiencies created by other writers... they had to have some sort of explanation that worked, but were constrained by the existing material.

 insaniak wrote:
So why doesn' the US just have a fleet of Cruise Missile ships instead of Carriers?

Because, as I've mentioned, there's a horizon on earth which you can hide behind and precludes targeting without self-guiding and self-directing missiles. You need to be able to send a human to the other ship (at least far enough to see it on the horizon) to blow it up, and the cheapest and most spammable way of doing that is with a single-seat or double-seat aircraft, which needs a launching point. Hence carriers.

In space, there is no horizon.

Additionally, as UAVs and Drones become increasingly prevalent, the difference between a carrier-launched drone and a battleship-launched missile becomes increasingly narrow, to the point where the only difference is the carrier gets the drones back.

EDIT:

It is also of note that even with the limitation of the horizon, some fleets (such as the Russians) do indeed use exclusively cruise-missile launching ships as their primary capital force. See the Kirov-class cruiser, the completion and commissioning of which inspired the United State's reactivation of the Iowa battleships in the 1980s (to be fitted with missile launchers, no less.)

 Breotan wrote:
Classic: Evil androids blowing fuses and shutting down after being given a simple logic puzzle that relies on a fallacy.

Then you must have loved Wheatley in Portal 2.

Yes, missiles are only a 1 way journey, but there are plenty of reasons a missile is not ideal in space.

1) easy to shoot down. If you are shooting a missile accross many thousands of kilometers of space, its going to take a relativly long time to reach its target. Plenty of time to get shot down by an anti-missile laser or missile. A fighter can carry counter measure systems or simply alter its course enough to make tracking it difficult or impossible given the distance.

That depends entirely on what percentage of the speed of light you can get them up to on their way there. Even 0.1 lightspeed is hugely fast, and once it's at that velocity, the engines can cut out, giving the enemy a tiny unpowered object to detect. One of possibly dozens, considering a ship would have to carry enough for a long engagement. Hell, you don't even need a warhead on the thing, just the mass of the "missile" is enough to act like a giant bullet.

It would be like detecting micrometeorites coming at the ship. You might not even know an attack is happening when they come in, as they might even just show up as mundane space debris.

The downside of space-capable fighters versus missiles is that you cannot just have auxiliary ships in the fleet making new fighters and trained pilots from the metals in asteroid belts as the fleet sweeps through.

Am i the only one who thought that the kind of future naval warfare shenanigans are really impossible in anything but orbital engagements?

I mean, this does make fighter craft viable, but once you put things into vast interstellar distances required to travel, and would be traveled, assuming the universe has some sort of FTL business. I mean, the chances of two ships running into each other to actually have an engagement would be small, even if they had huge effective weapon ranges. And even an infinitesimally small fraction of a degree could cause weapons to miss by miles. If they were within some sort of viable range to make the math work, they would potentially kill themselves by running into each other.

 insaniak wrote:
So why doesn' the US just have a fleet of Cruise Missile ships instead of Carriers?

Because the enemy is concealed by the horizon, and giving aircraft an important role as scouts. Same thing for the threat of submarines, concealed by the ocean you need aircraft carrying sonar to detect the enemy. Then you've got aid and support to ground forces. Finally you've got air superiority... removing their aircraft from the sky and making it safe for yours - which is a function of there being a value to having aircraft in the sky in the first place.

Now consider a fleet operating not on the surface of the Earth, but in open space. You don't need to deploy air resources forward to see over the horizon or over a particular patch of sea - visual range is almost unlimited.

And then you have the likely increases in AI. We're already seeing the slow shift to unmanned planes. If we're going to project FTL and massive space navies, it only makes sense to think search and rescue and ground support missions would be better achieved by very advanced AI that we're likely to see in the future. And then once we acknowledge advanced-AI drones in all of those roles, the idea of humans piloting ships in space (limited by g-forces), compared to an equivalent AI ship makes little sense. And then once you've got AI piloting those things, the moral qualms of one-shot fighters goes away and you see they're much better off with double the effect range, as one shot missiles.

Ultimately, I think it was just an attempt by a couple of writers to explain away deficiencies created by other writers... they had to have some sort of explanation that worked, but were constrained by the existing material.

Fair point not to criticise those writers specifically.

 Laughing Man wrote:
...terapedos...

Whats that?

tbh I think you're more likely to see some sort of fusion between the two. A C&C 'stealth' fighter controlling a large number of AI missiles, that way the best of both worlds become available, high capacity hard hitting munitions controlled on a realtime link.

Cheers

Andrew

 AndrewC wrote:

 Laughing Man wrote:
...terapedos...

Whats that?

I think it's something she would do... just think:

tbh I think you're more likely to see some sort of fusion between the two. A C&C 'stealth' fighter controlling a large number of AI missiles, that way the best of both worlds become available, high capacity hard hitting munitions controlled on a realtime link.

Cheers

Andrew

Yup!

 VanHammer wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:
Inter-species romance and crossbreeding...

Not to mention space-aids would be way worse than normal earth-aids.

There a scene in an episode of Hyperdrive (the one with the big red wobbly hats) that the crew get made to sit through a sex-ed video before going to a first contact trip.
Yes, alien STDs are messy

3 annoying things in certain Scifi shows.

1. In Stargate for example. WHY are all the aliens speaking english??
I mean its just so very stupid.
the show 'Farscape' had a simple but effective way of explaining this in the form of 'translator microbes'.

2. In the majority of Scifi shows, almost all the aliens are basically 'Humans with masks on'
why is that?? Everyone has 2 legs, 2 arms and the facial features are mostly the same.
Why not somehing like the Shadows from Babylon 5, Elcor or Hanar from Mass effect.

3. In independence Day, the virus uploading was just so stupid.. *sigh*.. So stupid..

HawkWall wrote:
3 annoying things in certain Scifi shows.

1. In Stargate for example. WHY are all the aliens speaking english??
I mean its just so very stupid.
the show 'Farscape' had a simple but effective way of explaining this in the form of 'translator microbes'.

2. In the majority of Scifi shows, almost all the aliens are basically 'Humans with masks on'
why is that?? Everyone has 2 legs, 2 arms and the facial features are mostly the same.
Why not somehing like the Shadows from Babylon 5, Elcor or Hanar from Mass effect.

3. In independence Day, the virus uploading was just so stupid.. *sigh*.. So stupid..

1. Tiny translators in the comm badges, in the equipment, embedded in the ear are generally the explanation in all of these shows. It's just not said out loud in every episode. Usually it's mentioned once and that's it.

2. Because these shows aren't real and have budgets to meet. Sad but true. Starfish aliens are more common in CGI heavy shows and videogames. Facts of life here.

3. That was actually explained. All human computer technology was reverse engineered from the alien ship in the independance day universe. This means that the apple computer is literally alien technology already.

I hate it when a robot or AI shows too many emotions (example:turrets)

orkdestroyer1 wrote:
I hate it when a robot or AI shows too many emotions (example:turrets)

Turrets show emotion beyond "target in sight. Target destroyed! Yee hah suck it alien scum!" ?

It's probably the first ever complaint I've seen about....

 malfred wrote:
I'm going to interrupt the fighters vs. missiles debate to drop this in :

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheGrandListOfOverusedScienceFictionCliches

Ah, TV tropes, So many hours at work whiled away.

 Ouze wrote:

 malfred wrote:
I'm going to interrupt the fighters vs. missiles debate to drop this in :

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheGrandListOfOverusedScienceFictionCliches

Ah, TV tropes, So many hours at work whiled away.

Maaaaaaaaalfred!!!!!!!!
Damn your procrastination causing website!

Hehehehe

 Ouze wrote:

 malfred wrote:
I'm going to interrupt the fighters vs. missiles debate to drop this in :

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheGrandListOfOverusedScienceFictionCliches

Ah, TV tropes, So many hours at work whiled away.

WHOA! Who let him open a Tropian Vortext so carelessly? I've seen DAYS vanish into those things man!

Jesus tag that link and spoiler it for the safety of us all!