A niche for space fighters

SF: discuss futuristic sci-fi series, ideas, and crossovers.

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AMX
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Post by AMX »

Wow. I go breathe fumes for a week, and my thread has grown a tiny bit beyond what I'm prepared to handle.
I hope nobody will be disappointed if I just pick out a few things to respond to.
(If you are, just complain.)
Stark wrote:
frogcurry wrote:In answer to Starks last comment, I don't think the person who started the topic is concerned about going for that level of depth of realism. Not when they are considering empires and pirates in space in the first post...
So why the hell is it even an issue?

This sort of thing irritates me, because plenty of people want to CLAIM 'hard' scifi, or 'harder than x' scifi, because they think it makes them 'better'. If you've got standard scifi shit, why bother trying to ruin your story by pretending to be all realistic? Write the story you want to write, for fucks sake. :roll:
Because of that pesky little thing called "internal consistency".
Just because you ditch realism doesn't mean you can get away with stuff that is completely illogical.
Gunhead wrote:I'm beginning to wonder how much is the creator of the OP is willing to bend the rules of reality to have his fighters in space.
Honestly?
Not particularly much; the entire question is somewhat academic. If I can't find a logical explanation, they get snippzorred out in an instant.
I loathe the idea of fighters in space. It's completely unrealistic, but more importantly it has the cool factor of a dead snail.
I have to disagree here, especially about the last part.
If I were to write a story that features "fighter-usefullizing" elements anyway (not sure what that could be, though - FTL telepathy? outright magic?), you could bet they'd have a limited chance to appear (even if outright magic might make fighters useful, that'd still not be an excuse to plot them into medieval fantasy "coz' they'r cool").
frogcurry wrote:The gist of what has been said so far seems to be that there is no way to create a situation where manned spacefighers are needed that doesn't seem to attract some serious ire or is in denial of common sense thinking.
Yep, that's what it looks like.
One could, of course, invent some trait inherent to humans (or at least pilots) that gives them a massive advantage (to offset their massive disadvantages), but that'd likely attract a lot of serious ire...
Major Maxillary wrote:Logic don't enter into the equation.
Logic is the whole point of this thread.
Xeriar wrote:In theory you could have something like a dogfight scenario at 300 meters if accelerations are about 10% of c... If dogfights are the most interesting part of your setting (or in the top 50) at that level of magitech, you need to think more about the implications of that sort of output.
:idea: Unless the actual output is not proportional to the observed performance.
*dodges thrown vegetables*
Let me explain:
When you posit "magitech" anyway, you could simply repurpose Alcubierre's work: moving the patch of space containing the ship, rather than the ship itself.
Since you never actually accelerate the ship, you don't have to deal with g-limits, and the energy requirements are anybody's guess (IIRC, the Alcubierre metric features equal amounts of positive and negative energy, which adds up to zero).
You would, however, need a second set of engines to provide impulse for take-offs, landings, etc.

Of course, this still doesn't justify fighters - I doubt a human pilot could handle those relative speeds.

And I have no idea what other implications that tech would have.
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frogcurry
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Post by frogcurry »

Destructionator XIII wrote:As I said when discussing linear acceleration, you would want some quick randomness to help prevent a concentrated laser beam from focusing on you, and you would want the ability to change your path within a scale of minutes to prevent long range coilgun shells from impacting. There isn't much you can do about missiles except point defense: a ship cannot hope to outmaneuver them due to limitations of the crew, if nothing else.
Some thoughts from reading your post (yes I DID read the whole post btw, not just the part I'm quoting).

I can't see coilguns being terribly effective unless due to the ability to avoid them due to relatively simple manouvering (as long as it can't be predicted by the enemy when they fire), using very fast (but light rounds), or a "shotgun" approach with the round dispersing out in the expected target vicinity to give a cone of damage (but then you need a damn big round and gun or all you'll do is scratch the paint on the target).
Also I can't see any captain with a brain closing to effective laser range as I don't believe that "some quick randomness" is of any real use to avoid being killed if you are in range of a laser. To assume a ship can manouver at 5 g in any direction assumes everyone is in a fighter pilot seat and trousers for hours and hours, with absolutely no loose items on board; if you can't ensure those (and other conditions) then probably something like 0.3 g is the limiting factor (otherwise people will start experiencing some dangerous gravity shifts as you change direction).

In that situation missles might be the main weapon. Presumbly they would be nearly invisible until at close range with stealth technology, but would be detected once they began final manouvering. However, they would be very obvious for a probably not inconsiderable period as they tried to close to target to be able to expode in a damaging range (this being ridiculously small in space). I can't help feeling that more realistically you might stick a nuke-bomb on a missle as the power unit for a one-shot laser or even coilgun, so the missle doesn't need to manouver once its gotten sufficiently close, just target (passively if possible), then fire.

So I've ended up coming back to something that isn't a world away from unmanned fighters as the main weapon system.
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Post by Batman »

frogcurry wrote: Also I can't see any captain with a brain closing to effective laser range as I don't believe that "some quick randomness" is of any real use to avoid being killed if you are in range of a laser. To assume a ship can manouver at 5 g in any direction assumes everyone is in a fighter pilot seat and trousers for hours and hours,
Untrue. It assumes everyone in an accelleration couch and suit during the engagement, not all the time.
with absolutely no loose items on board;
Or else what will happen? Not that that is in any way undoable-submarines, anyone?
if you can't ensure those (and other conditions) then probably something like 0.3 g is the limiting factor (otherwise people will start experiencing some dangerous gravity shifts as you change direction).
Modern day fighter pilots seem to live through it just fine.
In that situation missles might be the main weapon. Presumbly they would be nearly invisible until at close range with stealth technology,
assuming arbitrarily effective Stealth technology,
but would be detected once they began final manouvering.
No they wouldn't but let's run with that.
However, they would be very obvious for a probably not inconsiderable period as they tried to close to target to be able to expode in a damaging range (this being ridiculously small in space). I can't help feeling that more realistically you might stick a nuke-bomb on a missle as the power unit for a one-shot laser or even coilgun, so the missle doesn't need to manouver once its gotten sufficiently close, just target (passively if possible), then fire.
IOW it WOULD need to maneuver.
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Post by Nyrath »

Destructionator XIII wrote:
frogcurry wrote:I can't see coilguns being terribly effective unless due to the ability to avoid them due to relatively simple manouvering
I agree. They would be of most use hitting predictable targets or stationary, like missiles coasting in.

That is why I said you want some acceleration, enough to randomize your position in a matter of minutes, but having huge acceleration is irrelevant.
One of the most scientifically accurate paper-and-cardboard wargames about spacecraft combat is Attack Vector: Tactical
http://www.adastragames.com
It does include three dimensional vector movement.

The game testers quickly discovered that yes, coilgun fire is easy to avoid.
However, it can be used effectively to drastically reduce the number of directions a ship can dodge to. In other words, it can be used to "herd" the target ship into the vector you want.

If the range was close, you could fill all the dodge directions with either coilgun fire or missiles. The target ship then had to decide which direction contained hostile fire that would hurt the least.
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Post by CaptainChewbacca »

In a scifi universe of my own design, fighters are necessary to get weapons inside an enemy ship's defensive perimeter. It is effective largely because the "bad guys" have never encountered space fighters before, and so they aren't able to counter numerous small, rapidly moving targets.

They'll catch up, but not for a while.
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CaptainChewbacca
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Post by CaptainChewbacca »

Destructionator XIII wrote:
CaptainChewbacca wrote: It is effective largely because the "bad guys" have never encountered space fighters before, and so they aren't able to counter numerous small, rapidly moving targets.
Then how do they survive a wave of missiles?
Missiles won't get through the aliens shields and ECW, but fighters will. Really, the humans should be able to make better missiles, but the "fighter force" is built on a time crunch.
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