dog Fighting in space your pick

[azazel1024]

Naruni remote piloted fighter drone.

Cause that's how I roll (with my personal hide not on the line).

If we were talking in a PC sense, well probably a Black Eagle.
-Matt

[keir451]

Naruni Star Dragon, it's the only way to kill!!!

[Rallan]

Whatever has the most MDC and can dish out the most hurt per attack. Dunno if you guys had noticed, but the combat rules in Rifts aren't all that great for subtle tactics

[Esckey]

Katana with an AA weapon pod and a mini-missile pod(why it has less Main Body MDC then the Black Eagle I'll never know)

[Jefffar]

Star Ghost - can't kill me if ya can't find me.

[GT]

Katana with an AA weapon pod and a mini-missile pod(why it has less Main Body MDC then the Black Eagle I'll never know)

The AA pod's range for the medium range missiles and the Rail gun are just one mile though.

[KLM]

Whatever has the most MDC and can dish out the most hurt per attack. Dunno if you guys had noticed, but the combat rules in Rifts aren't all that great for subtle tactics

Actually, in "classic" dogfighting the dog can have all the firepower facing forward as long as I am the tail.
As per DMB2 rules.

Having a tailgunner or two however...

So my pick would be a Protector with "Scotty O'Noro" as chief psi-engineer and maybe a
few TW too.

(As a side note, the Star Ghost is probably visible for the UWW sensors.)

Adios
KLM

[Greyaxe]

Scorpion, one of the fastest and most manuverable with a 16 mile attack range.

[Ziggurat the Eternal]

A cosmo-knight.

[Greyaxe]

A cosmo-knight.

A scorpion could take one. It uses rail cannon at 4d6x10. Full damage to a CK. It also flies faster at sublight speed than a CK does so .......

[Jefffar]

Whatever has the most MDC and can dish out the most hurt per attack. Dunno if you guys had noticed, but the combat rules in Rifts aren't all that great for subtle tactics

Actually, in "classic" dogfighting the dog can have all the firepower facing forward as long as I am the tail.
As per DMB2 rules.

Having a tailgunner or two however...

So my pick would be a Protector with "Scotty O'Noro" as chief psi-engineer and maybe a
few TW too.

(As a side note, the Star Ghost is probably visible for the UWW sensors.)

Adios
KLM

However the tail guns have proven not to really have done much good against for a number of reasons
A) It's really hard to score a hit with them
B) They tend to be lower powered weapons because they have to be small and manoeuvrable, limiting their killing power when they do score
3) They add unnecessary weight to the aircraft which reduces it's performance, handicapping it as a fighter.

In WWII the British fielded a number of so called "turret fighters" that featured a turret in the cockpit rear with a rather expansive field of fire. It caught the Germans off guard in the battle of France, but by the time the Battle of Britain had developed the Germans knew about them and had plenty of counters allowing them to swat the turret fighters out of the sky in drives.

Still, if you do want to mess with the guy behind you, a couple of years back the Russians successfully fired an air to air missile backwards from one of their fighters.

[KLM]

Having a tailgunner or two however...

So my pick would be a Protector with "Scotty O'Noro" as chief psi-engineer and maybe a
few TW too.

However the tail guns have proven not to really have done much good against for a number of reasons
A) It's really hard to score a hit with them
B) They tend to be lower powered weapons because they have to be small and manoeuvrable, limiting their killing power when they do score
3) They add unnecessary weight to the aircraft which reduces it's performance, handicapping it as a fighter.

"0" Check the bold part

A) Especially with a muscle-operated one. Servo-turrets however did a rather good job, especially
if one can put its main gun into a turret (not neccessary a full, manned turret). In this regard, I was
wrong writing a tailgunner instead of a weapons officer
That said, a number of fighters (Star Ghost for example) does have turreted guns.

Missiles do the trick too, FYI, while the soviet R-60 could be fitted "backwards", I saw a
photo-series of an F-18 shooting down a target behind it with an ASRAAM. The ASRAAM in question
was launched forward (ie. Lock After Launch).

Adios
KLM

[Jefffar]

I was responding to the part about the tail guns, besides, everyone knows that any capital ship can be taken out by a lone single seat fighter targeting a weak spot - if it's piloted by a PC, it's a convention of the genre.

[azazel1024]

Damn thermal exhaust ports. My next star fortress of planetary doom and death is going to have screens installed covering all thermal exhaust ports.
-Matt

[KLM]

And now, let us stand in silence for a minute, remembering the Valiant and the Red Squad.

Adios
KLM

[Esckey]

"Ugh, another delusional fan trying to emulate the famous trench scene. How many lives must that accursed film claim!?"
Marvin the Martian

[Rallan]

Whatever has the most MDC and can dish out the most hurt per attack. Dunno if you guys had noticed, but the combat rules in Rifts aren't all that great for subtle tactics

Actually, in "classic" dogfighting the dog can have all the firepower facing forward as long as I am the tail.
As per DMB2 rules.

The problem is that classic dogfighting is silly in in outer space. What's to stop the dog from just flipping around and facing backwards so it can open fire on the tail persuing it?

[KLM]

Hi there!

The problem is that classic dogfighting is silly in in outer space. What's to stop the dog from just flipping around and facing backwards so it can open fire on the tail persuing it?

Like becoming a sitting duck for the tail's wingman? While the tail - which is still accelerating, since it did not
cut its main drive - conveniently flies out of the firezone?

And again: as per DMB2 rules.

Adios
KLM

[Aramanthus]

Either a Starfury or a thunderbolt..... Opps. I was hoping I could pull from any SciFi show!

[Rallan]

Hi there!

The problem is that classic dogfighting is silly in in outer space. What's to stop the dog from just flipping around and facing backwards so it can open fire on the tail persuing it?

Like becoming a sitting duck for the tail's wingman? While the tail - which is still accelerating, since it did not
cut its main drive - conveniently flies out of the firezone?

And again: as per DMB2 rules.

Adios
KLM

The problem is that traditional dogfight maneuvring is meaningless in space, because spacecraft aren't limited by the physics of a winged body in an atmosphere that has to generate enough lift to stay up. Any ship travelling at any speed can point in any direction without losing speed, changing course, or losing lift. They're also (unless they're designed by idiots) capable of accelerating, decelerating, or rotating on any axis. A space dogfight is gonna be more like the bouncing around and maneuvring of a PvP fight in the Descent games than a traditional aircraft dogfight.

Or at least, it would've been more like a game of Descent than a flight sim if it weren't for Palladium's dodge rules discouraging players from wasting actions on anything except shooting or running away

[KLM]

Any ship travelling at any speed can point in any direction without losing speed, changing course, or losing lift. They're also (unless they're designed by idiots) capable of accelerating, decelerating, or rotating on any axis.

This looks cool at the first sight, however...

If someone designs a ship, with engines facing evenly into every direction... Well that ship - frankly -
will lose in an acceleration contest against a ship with "concentrated" engines - ie. main drive+(maybe lifting engines)+manouver "jets".

Think something like the SLAVE I from Star Wars (which conveniently uses its main drive for both lifting/VTOL and
linear acceleration)

So, the solution is the turreted weaponry.

Adios
KLM

[Rallan]

Any ship travelling at any speed can point in any direction without losing speed, changing course, or losing lift. They're also (unless they're designed by idiots) capable of accelerating, decelerating, or rotating on any axis.

This looks cool at the first sight, however...

If someone designs a ship, with engines facing evenly into every direction... Well that ship - frankly -
will lose in an acceleration contest against a ship with "concentrated" engines - ie. main drive+(maybe lifting engines)+manouver "jets".

Think something like the SLAVE I from Star Wars (which conveniently uses its main drive for both lifting/VTOL and
linear acceleration)

So, the solution is the turreted weaponry.

Adios
KLM

Virtually everything in Phase World runs on contra-gravity engines. That presumably allows for full acceleration and turning on all axes, which renders your point kinda moot.

[KLM]

Virtually everything in Phase World runs on contra-gravity engines. That presumably allows for full acceleration and turning on all axes, which renders your point kinda moot.

Except that all artwork seems to contradict it, right?

Adios
KLM

[Rallan]

Virtually everything in Phase World runs on contra-gravity engines. That presumably allows for full acceleration and turning on all axes, which renders your point kinda moot.

Except that all artwork seems to contradict it, right?

Adios
KLM

Silly me, I was getting ahead of myself. I should've known better than to expect a mishmash of oldschool pulp scifi like Phase World to run on anything vaguely resembling logical assumptions

[KLM]

Mind you, if a CG drive is "vectored" (like a more conventional drive, f.ex. photon drive) my assumptions
stand - so in that regard palladium is right. Especially with those auxiliary thrusters, in the Scorpion and some
Draygon fighters.

However, with different ingame physics, different shipbuilding comes into play - and different game engine (read: rules).

Adios
KLM

[gaby]

I make it a mix of the fights in Battlestar Galatica and Robotech.

How do you set up the Fights?

[Ziggurat the Eternal]

A cosmo-knight.

A scorpion could take one. It uses rail cannon at 4d6x10. Full damage to a CK. It also flies faster at sublight speed than a CK does so .......

speed isn't everything, just because your faster doesn't mean your better. If we are flying at each other at mach 3 we will have only a few seconds to hit each other between maximum range and flying past each other.
Furthermore, My cosmo knight generally has 1000mdc in forcefields, giving him a slight edge over a starfighter.

On another note, Cosmo-knights are better at hunting frigates and destroyers than starfighters.

[rat_bastard]

Naruni Star dragon with the standard force field used by the Naruni Fire Breather and booster jets.

Its fast, though not the fastest.
It auto Dodges
It has a pilot, two gunners and a sensor/comm operator meaning it gets a crap-load of actions per round.
It has some of the best sensors of any fighter
and two of its main guns are turrets which means dog fighting does not necessarily facing your opponent.

[Rallan]

Mind you, if a CG drive is "vectored" (like a more conventional drive, f.ex. photon drive) my assumptions
stand - so in that regard palladium is right. Especially with those auxiliary thrusters, in the Scorpion and some
Draygon fighters.

However, with different ingame physics, different shipbuilding comes into play - and different game engine (read: rules).

Adios
KLM

Different shipbuilding will never come into play, because the artwork in Phase World will be based entirely on the rule of cool.

Which means that no matter what the game itself has to say on the matter, spaceships in it will always be drawn on the same "let's make a spaceship that looks wicked awesome" principles that have governed sci-fi illustrations ever since someone realised that you can make spaceships in shapes other than just a big rocket with fins at the base.

[KLM]

Hi there!

Different shipbuilding will never come into play, because the artwork in Phase World will be based entirely on the rule of cool.

1, Actually, IRL stuff (jest, ships, etc.) does look cool - yet, in their design, "cool" played a rather minimal role

2, That said, the Scorpion is equipped with a rather effective booster engine, in addition of a CG drive and
its depiction is... Well, as cool as a brick.

3, IMO of course.

Adios
KLM

[KLM]

[
IRL the human body can't really do the classic dog fight it would slam the brain around inside the skull the forces acted upon the human body would wreck it. Good thing that talks about this is History channels The Universe; Weapons in space (or something like that)

So, starships do not have internal gravity ? Ooops, they have... Sorry, no G-force-black/redout.

Adios

[DhAkael]

[
IRL the human body can't really do the classic dog fight it would slam the brain around inside the skull the forces acted upon the human body would wreck it. Good thing that talks about this is History channels The Universe; Weapons in space (or something like that)

So, starships do not have internal gravity ? Ooops, they have... Sorry, no G-force-black/redout.

Adios

Only really low-tech societies / power blocks wouldn't have inertial compensators. This also applies to any space-fighters that the Orbital community has in Rifts Terra.

MOST (about 90%) of the fighters listed in the Tri-gal books would have at least a G-cancelling field system, if not a full-powered CG-drive with compensators. So pilots would be able to dog fight with no problem, and would only be held back by the materials of their attack craft.

[Sgt Anjay]

[
IRL the human body can't really do the classic dog fight it would slam the brain around inside the skull the forces acted upon the human body would wreck it. Good thing that talks about this is History channels The Universe; Weapons in space (or something like that)

So, starships do not have internal gravity ? Ooops, they have... Sorry, no G-force-black/redout.

Adios

Only really low-tech societies / power blocks wouldn't have inertial compensators. This also applies to any space-fighters that the Orbital community has in Rifts Terra.

MOST (about 90%) of the fighters listed in the Tri-gal books would have at least a G-cancelling field system, if not a full-powered CG-drive with compensators. So pilots would be able to dog fight with no problem, and would only be held back by the materials of their attack craft.

Based on what?

[DhAkael]

Based on making logical assumptions using the fluff text in all the Phaseworld books, the fact that CG drives are all the rage, and using ohh... i dunno, a good half of the space opera printed to page as a guideline.
David Webber is a good start for LOTS of techno-babble on why, how, and what for space drives and combat.
Yes, I know it is NOT Phaseworld, but jeez, use some lateral thinking here folks.
Otherwise you'd have PC's taking days, game-time, to initiate a single combat pass SAFELY so they wouldn't go -squish-
Keep your physics outaa space opera fighter-combat and everyone will be happy.
You want physics and game-slow-down?
Play Star-fleet battles.

[KLM]

Plus DMB2, p155 - the effect table of the Rift Projetion cannon details the loss of artifical gravity systems.

Adios
KLM

[Sgt Anjay]

I could maybe see some very light inertial dampening, maybe just enough to ignore worries of the very real dangers of combat maneuvering at top speed. But I've always used the physical limits of the pilots as the most logical explanation for the whole top speed in space issue anyway. Which is handy, since it both adds verisimilitude and conforms to the books ("Sure, technically in space you can accelarate to 18000 mph, you'll just be a red stain on the inside of your cockpit if you try to do anything but straight line at that speed. And I hope you have some really great psychic ability, cause you're gonna need alot of help with your reaction time."). Uber-inertial compensation rather goes against the speed stats listed for fighters in the books. So based on how you would like Phase World to be is cool at the game table, but not an especially compelling reason in my view to contradict the written material.

I've never bought the premise that Phase has to be just so much more advanced than is already shown, whatever contortions of mental cogitation folks take to reach that conclusion. Especially since it mostly boils down to "outside of Phase World, its like this, so that's what Phase World has to be like."

[DhAkael]

You play your table your way, we'll play it ours.
The individual GM is gawd in his own campaign 'verse.
Always has been, always will be, and any arguments beyond that are just wasting time & breath and other players time.
This debate is over, 'far as I'm concerend

[Sgt Anjay]

Folks can play how they like in their own games? No kidding? That must be why I said "So based on how you would like Phase World to be is cool at the game table".

Except, of course, that you proposed your table's status quo as the baseline. Or, at least, as what should be the baseline because of "logical assumptions". Meanwhile, I'm pointing out how I integrate the actual written material into my table, and why. Positing an alternate viewpoint, as it were, after inquiring as to how you arrived at yours, which is never a waste of time or breath.

You are right neither of us seems much interested in having a meeting of the minds on this, though.

[azazel1024]

Okay, first off no red stain. Unless we are talking instant accelerations, 18,000mph is high, but it isn't obscene. Light G cancelling can easily get dog fighting with non-reaction drives down to resonable g-forces.

Also, even in modern jet fighters actual dog fighting rarely occurs at high speed. A high speed dog fight is maybe in the realm of 400-500mph and likely slower then that if trying to use cannons. Missiles possibly as well unless doing a high speed pass or break away. So to carry that logic over, a fighter might have a top speed of around 16-18,000mph, but it is likely to be dog fighting it more like 4,000-6,000mph most of the time (still fast, but a g-reduction of 50-80% gets it down to the realm of realistic, even if there was none, then the manuevers would have to be a lot more gentle, so).

A total g-cancelling intertial compensator (within reason) seems totally realistic considering a CG drive. If you can manipulate gravity to propel you ship and can manipulate it to provide artifical gravity inside the ship, a linear gravity field to counteract g-forces doesn't seem all that hard to do, counterating 100,000g maybe not, 40-50g sounds pretty easy peasy to me.

Frankly the most unrealistic part is the ranges and speeds, both of which are really low in the game, but so who cares, this isn't real life, its a game.

If things were based on the physics we know, there would be no reactionless drives so the point would be moot. Even with no reactionless drives or intertial compensators a dog fight wouldn't take days, hours maybe. Heck, with reaction based drives, even with fusion power and more advanced drive types, like some kind of fusion hybrid drive kind of like a nuclear light bulb (wikipedia it) drive that exists today (more in concept then anything else) you aren't going to have all that obscene STL speeds. If that existed and some kind of FTL drive did as well, you'd likely see 95% of all combat occur within the orbitals of a planet/moon. Deep space is a big place, even for realistic sensor detection ranges of a few hundred thousand miles against a non-stealthed ship. On top of that the planets and moons are what you are likely to be fighting over anyway, probably for control of the high ground in an invasion, that sort of thing.

So really most manuevering unless breaking for orbit or bugging out is going to be changing your orbital height or path, so you'd have firing passes on each orbit and that would be it. Smaller ships might be able to 'pull a 180' and that sort of thing, but even then fighters and small combat ships would have pretty limited fuel doing that kind of manuevering, probably only enough for a couple of high speed passes.

A good read for something based pretty closely on actual physics and likely future engineering developments read Aliens: Colonial Marines Handbook. With the exception of cryofreezers and FTL communications/drives and computing just about everything else is a simple advancement on current science and engineering.
-Matt

[Rallan]

Um... a few of you guys seem to be getting speed and acceleration mixed up. As long as you don't collide with anything, being in a spaceship that's doing 18,000mph isn't any worse for your health than being in a spaceship that's stationary. And putting full sideways or reverse thrust on a ship that's doing 18,000mph isn't going to be any more stressful than doing the same with a stationary ship. Barring collisions, the only thing you've got to worry about when it comes to working out how harmful maneuvres will be is the rate of acceleration.

And (predictably) that's something that Palladium's rules have absolutely nothing on.

[glitterboy2098]

A good read for something based pretty closely on actual physics and likely future engineering developments read Aliens: Colonial Marines Handbook. With the exception of cryofreezers and FTL communications/drives and computing just about everything else is a simple advancement on current science and engineering.
-Matt

except for the plasma cannons. and the space stealth. and the use of decoys as a viable means of deception in space. and the impossibly efficent sublight drive. and the artificial gravity. and the assumption that missiles are a viable means of space combat (as opposed to being expensive wastes of mass).
and and and.

that book, while certainly about as good overall as the new battlestar galactica or babylon 5, is a joke in terms of scientific accuracy. it ignores physics left and right. it just seems more realistic compared to stuff like star wars.

[Sgt Anjay]

Um... a few of you guys seem to be getting speed and acceleration mixed up. As long as you don't collide with anything, being in a spaceship that's doing 18,000mph isn't any worse for your health than being in a spaceship that's stationary. And putting full sideways or reverse thrust on a ship that's doing 18,000mph isn't going to be any more stressful than doing the same with a stationary ship. Barring collisions, the only thing you've got to worry about when it comes to working out how harmful maneuvres will be is the rate of acceleration.

And (predictably) that's something that Palladium's rules have absolutely nothing on.

Raw speed isn't harmful, no. Hence my comment about being just fine if all you're doing is going in a straight line. But high speed maneuvers do put stress on pilots, because rapid shifts of direction are experienced as high acceleration by the pilots. Modern jet fighters are already plenty capable of maneuvers harmful to their pilots. And the planes don't even have to be going full speed to pull harmful maneuvers. As was pointed out, combat generally takes place at much slower speeds. But moving in slight, gentle arcs to maintain safe high speed trajectories are inordinately easy to track, and thus shoot down, making them useless. Thus combat takes place at much slower than top speeds. If you increase top speeds and still try to pull combat maneuvers, you exponentially increase the stresses on the pilot. Its not because I somehow think speed=harm, its because speed is in direct proportion to the stress that is experienced during a combat maneuver. Thats is why I dont have problems with the top speeds listed in the books; I use those as the top safe combat speeds. It isn't physics imposing those limits, its safety.

[KLM]

But moving in slight, gentle arcs to maintain safe high speed trajectories are inordinately easy to track, and thus shoot down, making them useless.

Not automatically.

Speed (and altitude) IS life in conventional dogfights - so conserving speed by using gentle turns
(mind you, a high speed "gentle turn" can easily stress the pilot with enough G to black/red out)
IS useable in dogfight.

For example, it was the edge (well, one of the edges) of the P-40 over the Zero, which the
Flying Tigers exploited so effectively. Or the Me-262 vs. Allied bombers and fighter escort.

End of air combat lesson.

-------------------------------------------
One more issue on 3Galactic dogfighting. The DMB2 actually covers the loss of artifical gravity
(useable as inertial dampening). MDC characters, especially borgs and Machine People DO NOT get
almighty dogfight bonuses - which they should, if G-forces would affect dogfights "realistically".
But they dont - so it is just easier to assume that most 3G combat craft can negate tremendous
G-forces, like making a full 180 turn in seconds, while maintaining 10+ Mach speed (yeah, right,
Mach-number in space).

I have deja vu.

Adios
KLM

[Sgt Anjay]

But moving in slight, gentle arcs to maintain safe high speed trajectories are inordinately easy to track, and thus shoot down, making them useless.

Not automatically.

Speed (and altitude) IS life in conventional dogfights - so conserving speed by using gentle turns
(mind you, a high speed "gentle turn" can easily stress the pilot with enough G to black/red out)
IS useable in dogfight.

For example, it was the edge (well, one of the edges) of the P-40 over the Zero, which the
Flying Tigers exploited so effectively. Or the Me-262 vs. Allied bombers and fighter escort.

End of air combat lesson.

Ah, maybe you weren't quite grasping what I was getting at? The edge of the P-40 was the ability to do non-stressful turns at maximum speed? Somehow, I dont see that. Or was it greater acceleration/better climb and dive rates? Speed is handy, in a number of ways. But once you start running into the reaction time and stress limits of your pilots, there's diminishing returns. Current generation fighters are amazingly better than older fighters, but they're not amazingly faster (in terms of top speeds) than older fighters, because there has been a consistent lack of ability to turn high mach speeds into combat effectiveness. More useful has been attaining the same sorts of speeds while retaining maneuverability and endurance.

-------------------------------------------

One more issue on 3Galactic dogfighting. The DMB2 actually covers the loss of artifical gravity
(useable as inertial dampening). MDC characters, especially borgs and Machine People DO NOT get
almighty dogfight bonuses - which they should, if G-forces would affect dogfights "realistically".
But they dont - so it is just easier to assume that most 3G combat craft can negate tremendous
G-forces, like making a full 180 turn in seconds, while maintaining 10+ Mach speed (yeah, right,
Mach-number in space).

I have deja vu.

Adios
KLM

Unless a later edition of DMB2 has a different table in regards to the Rift Projector Cannon than mine does, I have no idea what you are referring to. I do not see which part covers artificial gravity=inertial dampening, I do not see any mention of fighters having artificial gravity, nor do I see what the loss of artificial gravity might be on a fighter provided it even has it. The chart seems entirely focused on the odd effects a RPC inflicts on ships; every option which mentions what is being effected uses that specific word, in fact.

The obvious reason there's no massive bonuses to certain races in fighters is to keep players from having limited choices if they want to excel in fighter combat. Its a game issue and needs to be considered as such. I dont see why MDC being = immune to their bodily fluids and/or other internal structures being jerked around by acceleration causing harmful reactions, neccesarily. MDC being is a pretty hazy, inexact thing and the closer you examine it to fully conform it to strict biology the more it falls apart, like so many other things in RPGs and other works of fiction. Luckily, that doesn't mean it can't work as a game mechanic, so rather than wail at the horror of it all I.....don't deconstruct it until it all falls apart, I guess? If hard pressed, I am entirely happy going with "Because of the effects on the structure of reality by space ley lines tied into celestial movements as driven by the Ultra Space Nexuses at the centers of galaxies which poor magic-deprived scientists think are black holes. This is compounded by the simultaneous effect that the structure of reality has on those space ley lines themselves." Phase World isn't our universe. I'm more interested in handwaving in a solution which sounds "in character" and so mantains the versimilitude of the setting than I am with slaving Phase World to our mundane and vastly different universe. That's not everyone's cup of tea, and everyone can and should drink whatever tea they feel like. All I really keep coming back to is, it is not "wrong" to go with the books as written and it is entirely possible to do so without utter abandonment of suspension of disbelief and verisimilitude.

At any rate, since a number of Phase World fighters can go 10+ Mach and I've already stated that I use the listed speeds as viable combat speeds, we agree that tremendous G-forces are in some way being negated for Phase World pilots. So there is at least that. As for the other...yes, Palladium Books uses the word Mach incorrectly. Annoying as it may be, its far from the first a term like that has been coopted inappropriately, it is hardly an isolated incident in the annals of gaming or fiction, and far from the last it is likely to happen. C'est la vie until a movement manages to get them to replace that term as it is used with a better unit of measure, which is something else I could probably get behind.

[azazel1024]

A good read for something based pretty closely on actual physics and likely future engineering developments read Aliens: Colonial Marines Handbook. With the exception of cryofreezers and FTL communications/drives and computing just about everything else is a simple advancement on current science and engineering.
-Matt

except for the plasma cannons. and the space stealth. and the use of decoys as a viable means of deception in space. and the impossibly efficent sublight drive. and the artificial gravity. and the assumption that missiles are a viable means of space combat (as opposed to being expensive wastes of mass).
and and and.

that book, while certainly about as good overall as the new battlestar galactica or babylon 5, is a joke in terms of scientific accuracy. it ignores physics left and right. it just seems more realistic compared to stuff like star wars.

Artificial gravity sure. The efficient sublight drive, not so much. In principal the method of sublight propulsion using thermal heating from a fusion tokomak reactor has merit. It doesn't go in to great detail on how it is done, but it is certainly conceivable, sort of like a nuclear water propelled drive. Now that is a far cry from super efficiency, but a heck of a lot more efficient then a chemical drive.

Plasma weapons, as stated in the book are certainly possible. I don't know the physics of cadmium-telluride super heating to plasma, but the method of utilizing an accelerator track or even gauss gun to accelerate plasma would work, and using the right frequency laser will temporarily create a 'solenoidal' tunnel through the atmosphere as the book describes. It doesn't seem to be super far fetched to think that maybe a couple of centuries from now someone has figured out how to actually get it all together and weaponize it in to a plasma weapon.

Missiles in space, not really a waste of space. Sure if you can see the launch well in advance your probably going to be able to shoot down the missile or manuever out of its path, but there are many ways to make viable missles, and they do have the advantage of long range. A several hundred kg projectile hitting at say several km/sec is going to do a hellacious amount of damage.

Decoys and stealth, again also possible. For IR emissions you can bring the ship skin closer to a 'hole in space' level of thermal emissions by radiating the heat away from opponents, of course the supposes you know the direction of the opponents. Radar absorbing materials...currently used. Lidar absorbing materials possible (and lidar still has a fairly short range, even outside of an atmosphere). Optically it isn't going to be the easiest thing in the world to locate a several hundred meter object at tens or hundreds of thousands of miles simply by obsevering the occulation of stars behind the ship, especially if the ship has a low albedo. Decoys, again if beyond easy optical obsevation it is possible to mimic the emissions radar and thermal of another ship, now manuevering would need to be kept to a minium because the exhaust thermal and UV signiture of a several hundred kg decoy is going to be vastly different then that of a several thousand metric ton ship.
-Matt

[glitterboy2098]

Artificial gravity sure. The efficient sublight drive, not so much. In principal the method of sublight propulsion using thermal heating from a fusion tokomak reactor has merit. It doesn't go in to great detail on how it is done, but it is certainly conceivable, sort of like a nuclear water propelled drive. Now that is a far cry from super efficiency, but a heck of a lot more efficient then a chemical drive.

what imean is that the drive is presented as being far too efficent for how it works. using the description in the book, 90+% of the ship should be fuel if it wants to do what it claims. but the ship isn't 90% fueltank.

Plasma weapons, as stated in the book are certainly possible. I don't know the physics of cadmium-telluride super heating to plasma, but the method of utilizing an accelerator track or even gauss gun to accelerate plasma would work, and using the right frequency laser will temporarily create a 'solenoidal' tunnel through the atmosphere as the book describes. It doesn't seem to be super far fetched to think that maybe a couple of centuries from now someone has figured out how to actually get it all together and weaponize it in to a plasma weapon.

the problem is that using plsma as a weapon is basically a case of "i shoot it with hot gas". thermal expansion will cause any plasma 'bolt' to expand to match local atmospheric pressures rapidly, cooling it in the process. the plasma cutters in the movie make sense (heck, we have real life types of those), but as a ranged weapon? highly improbable. and even plasma's that self-generate confining magnetic fields wouldn't help much. using plasma's in space? the zero pressure envirment would dissipate any sort of plasma 'bolt' immediately after leaving the barrel. for a setting that otherwise indicates realistic ranges in space combat, this is like arming your tanks with swords.

Missiles in space, not really a waste of space. Sure if you can see the launch well in advance your probably going to be able to shoot down the missile or manuever out of its path, but there are many ways to make viable missles, and they do have the advantage of long range. A several hundred kg projectile hitting at say several km/sec is going to do a hellacious amount of damage.

compared to kinetics, yes they are. those missiles need to have accellerational abilities superior ot the ship to be viable, but can't carry enough reaction mass to get them very far. they quickly turn into kinetic projectiles..which is a waste of the cost and bulk of a rocket motor, since you could more cheaply use coilguns to propell the mass.

but they employ coilguns as defensive weapons. which is stupid, since your better off using lasers for defense. so in short, they arm their ships with 'long range' weapons that really only have a range shorter than the ship is, use long range weapons as point defense, and rely mainly on over-costed projectiles as their main offensive punch....

Decoys and stealth, again also possible. For IR emissions you can bring the ship skin closer to a 'hole in space' level of thermal emissions by radiating the heat away from opponents, of course the supposes you know the direction of the opponents. Radar absorbing materials...currently used. Lidar absorbing materials possible (and lidar still has a fairly short range, even outside of an atmosphere). Optically it isn't going to be the easiest thing in the world to locate a several hundred meter object at tens or hundreds of thousands of miles simply by obsevering the occulation of stars behind the ship, especially if the ship has a low albedo. Decoys, again if beyond easy optical obsevation it is possible to mimic the emissions radar and thermal of another ship, now manuevering would need to be kept to a minium because the exhaust thermal and UV signiture of a several hundred kg decoy is going to be vastly different then that of a several thousand metric ton ship.
-Matt

except that thermodynamics don't allow that. you have to get rid of heat. heat can only be gotten rid of through radiation. the IR radiation makes you visible. you can't cancel it, you can't store it, and you can't convert it.
decoys don't work because you ID targets via thermal and accelleration. decoys will have different heat profiles (different composition and internals, not to mention lower power needs. plus they need less powerful rockets, which show up differently thermally. to make a decoy that is identicle to the ship, you need the exact same mass, internals, rockets, structure, power source, etc. in short, you need a duplicate ship.)

stealth is impossible in space.

[azazel1024]

For the IR radiation, if you radiate it away from the target, behind the body of the ship, the IR radiation is occluded from observation. This assumes you know where the target is and use the appropriate radiating tower on the ship.

For missiles, if say 90% of the missle mass was fuel, you'd have superior delta V then a ship with say 30% of its mass being fuel, though drive efficiencies come in. If you say launch a missile that can accelerate to maybe 10kps, let it coast for maybe 1,000s (about 15 minutes) you'd be able to hit something at 10,000 km, if you let it coast for say an hour you'd range out to 36,000km. If the missile has a very, very efficient drive and can accelerate to say 30kps you could reach out and hit something at 100,000km in an hour. With a secondary stage/drive or liquid fuel drive that conserves some fuel for a final burn you'd possibly be good. If the target observes the launch and maneuvers to avoid the missile it likely would be able to. If the launch is at closer range or is unobserved the target likely would not be able to generate enough delta V to cause a miss, especially if the missile can manuever through its ballistic coast by keeping a few kps of delta V in reserve.

The plasma weapons would be totally useless outside of an atmosphere, deffinitely. In an atmosphere depending on how hot that plasma is it very well might be worth while adding the thermal energy to the kinetic. It would also be a method of 'no drop' kinetic weapon because the self confining solenoidal tunnel the laser creates through the atmosphere would keep the plasma from 'dropping' due to gravity.

With coil guns you'd have pretty short effective range due to their velocity. If you didn't observe a shot, and the enemy gunner had darned good calcs on gravity, velocities, etc you might hit something at say 50,000km...but likely not. Even with 50kps of velocity for some super high velocity railgun/coilgun in a few hundred seconds it would be pretty easy to generate a miss. Not quite as true with a lower velocity missile that retains fuel for manuevering that can put itself back in a collision path.

Coil guns would still be highly useful at lower ranges and for forcing manuevering (its a threat you must take seriously). A big tactic very well might be to force manuevering and burn the delta V of the opponent.

An unobserved launch or a well stealthed missile (low radiation when not manuevering) is going to be hard to pickup until it gets awfully close which doesn't leave a lot of manuevering time or time to kill the incoming missile. A laser can help disable it, but it would have to be hugely powerful to completely vaporize the entire missile, even fragments moving at several kps are going to do a lot of damage to a well armored hull.
-Matt

[KLM]

Speed (and altitude) IS life in conventional dogfights - so conserving speed by using gentle turns
IS useable in dogfight.

For example, it was the edge (well, one of the edges) of the P-40 over the Zero, which the
Flying Tigers exploited so effectively. Or the Me-262 vs. Allied bombers and fighter escort.

End of air combat lesson.

Ah, maybe you weren't quite grasping what I was getting at? The edge of the P-40 was the ability to do non-stressful turns at maximum speed?

While it is "one of the edges", and one of the examples, and a really cheap try - actually yes. Better damage treshold, better armament
and a superior dive characteristic helps, but it boils down to top speed: the faster party can choose to fight or to flight.

-------------------------------------------

I do not see which part covers artificial gravity=inertial dampening(...),

It is called common sense, but azazel detailed it.

The obvious reason there's no massive bonuses to certain races in fighters is to keep players from having limited choices if they want to excel in fighter combat.

Oh, please....

Its a game issue and needs to be considered as such. I dont see why MDC being = immune to their bodily fluids and/or other internal structures being jerked around by acceleration causing harmful reactions, neccesarily. (...)

So, in a short order, the best way to kill a thousand mdc D-bee is to throw it out from like the 10th floor?

Adios
KLM

[glitterboy2098]

For the IR radiation, if you radiate it away from the target, behind the body of the ship, the IR radiation is occluded from observation. This assumes you know where the target is and use the appropriate radiating tower on the ship.

except that can't work. if you can 'direct' your radiated heat (which is nigh impossible, due to it being made of photons with random energy levels and vectors), you can so hide sensor platforms, which have a lower heat signature to start with (not needing to keep a crew in comfortable conditions). which means it will be impossible to determain where it is "safe" to direct ones heat. and since sensor platforms are far cheaper than spaceships, you can seed the system pretty thouroghly with them for much less than it costs to build a ship.

again, stealth is impossible in space. you can't hide your heat..and if you can redirect it, you can never know where you can aim said heat without informing the enemy of your prescense months in advance.

For missiles, if say 90% of the missle mass was fuel, you'd have superior delta V then a ship with say 30% of its mass being fuel, though drive efficiencies come in. If you say launch a missile that can accelerate to maybe 10kps, let it coast for maybe 1,000s (about 15 minutes) you'd be able to hit something at 10,000 km, if you let it coast for say an hour you'd range out to 36,000km. If the missile has a very, very efficient drive and can accelerate to say 30kps you could reach out and hit something at 100,000km in an hour. With a secondary stage/drive or liquid fuel drive that conserves some fuel for a final burn you'd possibly be good. If the target observes the launch and maneuvers to avoid the missile it likely would be able to. If the launch is at closer range or is unobserved the target likely would not be able to generate enough delta V to cause a miss, especially if the missile can manuever through its ballistic coast by keeping a few kps of delta V in reserve.

and yet, a kinetic impactor is cheaper, easier to fire, and has a longer effective range. the missiles would need to have torch drives in order to have enough Delta-V to be worth using over a laser or pure kinetic weapon.

The plasma weapons would be totally useless outside of an atmosphere, deffinitely. In an atmosphere depending on how hot that plasma is it very well might be worth while adding the thermal energy to the kinetic. It would also be a method of 'no drop' kinetic weapon because the self confining solenoidal tunnel the laser creates through the atmosphere would keep the plasma from 'dropping' due to gravity.

except said laser tunnel would make a vacuum, which actually excerbates, not improves, the problem of pressure diffrential.

With coil guns you'd have pretty short effective range due to their velocity. If you didn't observe a shot, and the enemy gunner had darned good calcs on gravity, velocities, etc you might hit something at say 50,000km...but likely not. Even with 50kps of velocity for some super high velocity railgun/coilgun in a few hundred seconds it would be pretty easy to generate a miss. Not quite as true with a lower velocity missile that retains fuel for manuevering that can put itself back in a collision path.

Coil guns would still be highly useful at lower ranges and for forcing manuevering (its a threat you must take seriously). A big tactic very well might be to force manuevering and burn the delta V of the opponent.

and a extremely long effective range given that space combat is a extremely predictable enviroment. you'll know hours or even weeks in advance the courses you'll need to fire at. as for good calcs about gravity, velocities, etc? your in a space ship. you need al lthat just to navigate yourself. if oyur computer can't figure basic plots liek that, you have no business being in space, and will probably die soon through your own ignorance.

An unobserved launch or a well stealthed missile (low radiation when not manuevering) is going to be hard to pickup until it gets awfully close which doesn't leave a lot of manuevering time or time to kill the incoming missile. A laser can help disable it, but it would have to be hugely powerful to completely vaporize the entire missile, even fragments moving at several kps are going to do a lot of damage to a well armored hull.
-Matt

no such thing as a stealthed missile. if it's rocket is burning, it's visible out to pluto. if it's coasting, it's electronics will put out enough waste heat ot be seen out to the asteroid belt.

nor do you need to vaporise the missile. just pump enough energy into it to force it off course through ablation and impact shock. which can be done with a fairly weak laser.

i recommend you read through the site i linked too. most of the things you've suggested have already been suggested by others, and picked apart by a mailing list fileld with PHD's in things like physics, material science, chemistry, aeronautical engineering, etc.

[Esckey]

stealth is impossible in space. you can't hide your heat

\

Wheres the fun in that?