Some thoughts on the Big Guns/Small Ships idea:
Status: RO
One thing we have to be careful about drawing analogies is that the technology
curve doesn't necessarily apply in all cases.
I've seen a lot of analogies drawn between WWII battleships and
destroyers, and the need for smaller quick-firing guns to compensate
for that. You also have to remember that the big disadvantage of big guns
against small ships was that they took so long to cycle; a small ship, with
its maneuverability, could maneuver out of solution before the guns had a
chance to shoot again. (Compare this to the large "fast" battleships, which
were only four to eight knots slower
than destroyers, but took several counties to turn. (8-) )
Unfortunately, in FT and most sci-fi universes, guns are lasers, or
phasers, or rapid-fire rail cannon; things where reload rate is
irrelevant, and the speed of the projectile is so high that even if you miss
with the first shot, you can easily compensate and tag the bugger with the
second. End of Story. (Examine Starfire, or the Honour Harrington Books, or
the B5 Universe. You're small, you die easily in the line of battle. HH is the
strongest example of this; I would not want to take a destroyer, or even a
squadron of destroyers, against a Superdreadnought.)
Thus, in these other universes, the construction of small ships must be
justified by other factors; expense and numbers. Unfortunately, these are only
factors in campaign style games, where you need destroyers and the like as
convoy escorts, pickets, scouts, and "distractions." (While somewhat callous,
it is a role that small ships have fulfilled from time immemorial. WWII is
full of examples of destroyers and cruisers taking on opponents twice their
displacement, to let the convoy get away.)
While trying to fix the system so that a "balanced" fleet will win against a
"Munchkin(tm)" fleet is admirable, and highly desired, I don't think it's
possible. What I will suggest though is this: why
not fight a destroyer or destroyer/cruiser only action? Precedents
exist in large numbers from that Pacific War in WWII, and in most modern
conflicts from that point on. (The Egyptian Osa II patrol boats that sank that
Israeli destroyer in '73 is a good case.) Sure, it isn't as sexy, but it's a
lot more fun. (Mark K. might
even be able to hit something with his pulse torps. (8-) )
Sorry for the ramble.
J.
Status: RO
> While trying to fix the system so that a "balanced" fleet will win
I HEARD THAT!!!
Mk
An additional thought. Who says the recycle rate of combat lasers or rail guns
is negligible? Many SF universes like B5, Star Trek etc do NOT fire big guns
rapidly (although some do fire exended bursts with the risk of doing damage to
themselves) but they power them up and then let loose. It could take a lot to
hurl that much energy at some one.
Once you have a target in your sights a beam weapon will almost always hit
unless you are more than 186,000 miles away at which point you have 1 second
to evade. Anything closer... This can only mean that the problem is targeting
versus armour and it boils down to how long does it take to target and how
difficult is it for a smaller more manoeuvreable ship to evade. Personally I
think targeting systems would always win out over moving ships (inluding
fighters) unless you take into account very high target speed
David Best
> Unfortunately, in FT and most sci-fi universes, guns are lasers, or
> On Oct 18, 1997 at 11:59:42 AM, Jerry Han <jhan@idigital.net> wrote:
> Unfortunately, in FT and most sci-fi universes, guns are lasers, or
> with the second. End of Story. (Examine Starfire, or the Honour
> the line of battle. HH is the strongest example of this; I would not
An interesting take on this is presented in Sherwood Smith and Dave
Trowbridge's _Exordium_ series. In the series, battlecruisers are the
largest ships, at 7 km in length, with destroyers being closer to a kilometer.
Both are armed with a single skipmissile tube, a weapon which fires a
hyperspace skipping plasma burst of tremendous power. Both ship types mount
tesla shields as well, although the shields of a destroyer are much weaker. In
general, a destroyer cannot withstand a square hit from a skipmissile, whereas
a battlecruiser can. Such a hit sets up oscillations in the shield, however,
and with guile and skill three or more destroyers can overwhelm a
battlecruiser's shield. A single destroyer cannot, because its skipmissile
tube can't recharge fast enough. Battlecruisers can sometimes (albeit with
great difficulty) best each other in single combat, because their tubes
recharge faster.
_Exordium_ is a great universe, but unfortunately it can't be gamed very
well, because lightspeed information lag is very important to the naval
tactics of the universe. It does have a LOT of clever ideas for games, though.
I'm
currently rewriting my _Exordium_ web page to detail the ships involved
-- it
should be available on 10/27.
> On Mon, 20 Oct 1997, BEST, David wrote:
<SNIP>
> Once you have a target in your sights a beam weapon will almost
Actually you don't have to be that far away, in fact you want to be as close
as possible to move out of the attackers firing arc as quickly as possible.
Actually acquiring the target is the trivial part of getting a kill.
I.e.
radar can easily track anything bigger than a golf ball flying more than a few
hundred feet above the Earth a speeds from 0 to 25,000 mph the problem is
delivering the weapon to intercept. In the case of lasers it's easy to hit a
target, but do get enough energy transmited to the target to get
significant results - i.e. beam dispersion, target moving/rotating so
that a new area is exposed (alderson fields in Mote in God's Eye). Unless your
precision is such that you can keep a conventrated beam on a target area
maybe a few meters square for milliseconds at 20-100k miles you aren't
going to be able to do squat with beam weapons. A tiny vibration in the weapon
may cause a deviation measured in meters or km at the receiving end totally
negating the weapon.
--Binhan
Actually by extrapolating from current military laser experiments (if this is
safe) they work on a pulse effect. You have a high yield energy burst like a
bullet not the long streams of energy so dear to the hearts
of sci-fi fans. Therefore the blast will all go into one area. My
point was that if you are close enough for a beam to hold together for damage
to be done, all you have to do is have it in your sights when you push the
button and you hit. They can't evade unless they are moving incredibly fast
which is then a targeting issue. You are then left with ECM to prevent
targeting or the ablity of your gun mounts to swivel quickly enough (depending
on how they do it) to track. I agree that the farther away the target is the
easier it is to track.
> ----------
I.e.
> radar can easily track anything bigger than a golf ball flying more
> Binhan at 12:03 21/10/97 -0400, you wrote:
8<snip>8
or the ablity of your gun mounts to swivel
> quickly enough (depending on how they do it) to track. I agree that
...Well I have always assumed mirrors! In a starship you have all the gubbins
of a 'Beam' inside the ship perpendicular to the surface and a sort of movable
(in and out) parabolic mirror that can spin quite fast. The
mirror would be contained within a dust/debris cover that is only opened
for firing. GZG ships have loads of these 'bubbles' or have I got this wrong
and have all the bad castings!!!
Jon (T.C)
Sprayforming Developments Ltd. [production tools]
made in
[prototype times]
'The future is now'