Something to consider when discussing versus or "what if".

[Lord Revan]

Something I've often noticed that people here and elsewhere assume that in VS or "what if" scenarios involving military that battles happen in empty (deep) space or on a flat field with 100% visibility. Now this is fine if you just want to compare power to power, but any conflict would happen in varied terrain.

Another thing is that tactics and strategy are generally considered an afterthought even with verses that are near to each other in "power"

Now Brian Young of Scifights has started making comentaries on this subject (here be a link) which people should probably read before discussing anything other then "2 man enter, 1 man leaves" style versus debates and no I'm not saying this only cause I helped him with the terrain commentary, even if you don't agree with him it should give you something to think about.

[orbitingpluto]

Is there transcripts or alternatives to downloading a 300+ mb movie file? I found his YouTube channel on the links page, but I didn't see them there.

[Lord Revan]

Is there transcripts or alternatives to downloading a 300+ mb movie file? I found his YouTube channel on the links page, but I didn't see them there.

none that I could find sadly, you might try asking Brian directly.

[Q99]

With a ground fight it is a bit odd, but in space, there's generally only two 'terrains' to speak of. Empty/effectively empty, and orbit/near something else.


Even an astroid field may as well be empty, there's so much space in between.

[Lord Revan]

With a ground fight it is a bit odd, but in space, there's generally only two 'terrains' to speak of. Empty/effectively empty, and orbit/near something else.


Even an astroid field may as well be empty, there's so much space in between.

tbh it's gonna pretty always "orbit or near something" as there's no real point to fight over empty space, that said "in orbit" can have "terrain" of it's own that needs to be considered as any semi-intelligent commander is gonna exploit that as much as they can instead of floating in open space. Which was my point in the OP to begin with.

[Simon_Jester]

The problem is that while "in orbit" has "terrain," there are limits on what you can do with it.

For most soft science fiction settings, the energy advantage of high orbits over low ones is pretty trivial- if your ship can manage anything over a one gravity engine burn for extended periods of time, it takes very little effort and only a modest amount of time to get from low planetary orbit to geosynchronous, and only a little longer than that to get to the vicinity of the moon.

For that matter, even occupying an orbit, as opposed to just hovering in place on your own exhaust plume, can be disadvantageous, assuming you have the means to protect yourself from junk that is in orbits smacking into the hull.

And while one can in principle conceal objects behind celestial bodies, it's not that hard for an intruding fleet with soft SF technology to send out scouts and probes on widely dispersed trajectories and get a good look at whatever you're hiding.

What's more significant in a hypothetical space war than 'terrain' is the strategic character of the combatants. For example, in certain parts of the old EU the Galactic Empire is portrayed as having given up attempts to conquer or suppress a relatively minor power, simply because it would be "unprofitable" to do so after losing a few dozen star destroyers in battle against the local defenses. This might set a precedent that if they're fighting someone who has the ability to pull a few devastating ambushes, the Empire might decide to leave that power alone rather than pressing the attack, even if they do have the raw industrial might and superior technology that it would take to win in a grinding total war.

Conversely, a technologically or industrially weaker power might enter a new crossover and win through persistence, adaptability, or playing off rival power blocs against each other, if those are areas they excel at.

Conversely, a

[Lord Revan]

the thing is I'm not pushing any other agenda or argument then "we should probably remember this when discussing"

Another is the thing I want to achive is the elimination of the idea of "I got [insert named military leader here] and there I get +10 to my 'battlescore'" instead of discussing military commanders as persons with their strenghts and weaknesses.

Lets take Grand Admiral Thrawn for example often it's assumed he just looks at peice of art and somehow gains omniscient knowlage of all the opponents plans, when in thruth his methalogy was to use art to get to know the "soul" of opponents and device a working strategy using that knowlage, obviously there's some serious limits with this method that are often ignored for one reason or another.

[biostem]

TBH, the reason *I* tend to ignore this stuff is because we are generally talking about the equipment/technologies that each side has at their disposal - it's not really a true test if one side happens to know that some star emits solar flares at regular intervals, then lures another force into the path of them, thus coming out victorious - that only demonstrates that they have particular knowledge or intel.

Similarly, if one person proposes a battle of the Federation vs the Empire, but then stipulates that it is to take place on a planet with no solid surface, which also has hundreds of moons that make orbital bombardments impossible, thus nearly eliminating the Empire's huge ground force advantage, would a Federation victory here be due to their capabilities, or the limitations imposed by the scenario?

It'd be like saying - how would a SSD with only 1 crewman on board and all systems inoperative fare against the Enterprise-E?

You need to compare things in a more laboratory-like environment, since you want to know whose tech is better than whose.

[Lord Revan]

TBH, the reason *I* tend to ignore this stuff is because we are generally talking about the equipment/technologies that each side has at their disposal - it's not really a true test if one side happens to know that some star emits solar flares at regular intervals, then lures another force into the path of them, thus coming out victorious - that only demonstrates that they have particular knowledge or intel.

Similarly, if one person proposes a battle of the Federation vs the Empire, but then stipulates that it is to take place on a planet with no solid surface, which also has hundreds of moons that make orbital bombardments impossible, thus nearly eliminating the Empire's huge ground force advantage, would a Federation victory here be due to their capabilities, or the limitations imposed by the scenario?

It'd be like saying - how would a SSD with only 1 crewman on board and all systems inoperative fare against the Enterprise-E?

You need to compare things in a more laboratory-like environment, since you want to know whose tech is better than whose.

that's what I meant with "power versus power", since if you ask "who would win a war" you have to compare not only the technology but also the skill and ability to use that tech.

it's not "lets pick the terrain where [insert verse here] has all it's strenght nullified" but rather "how well can [insert verse here] adapt to variable conditions"

If you want to compare just tech then obviously yes you need to eliminate outside influence, but you can say "who would win a war" and reduce it to simple comparison of tech that's just dishonest.

in summary, it depends on what's the question you're asking, a tech comparison will obviously need to take place in a proverbial blank space, but if you ask "who would in in a conflict" you need to take into account that not all battles will be fought in optimal conditions.

That said twisting the scenario so that you take away the strenghts of one side of the other isn't being honest.

[Sky Captain]

Fighting in low orbits around populated planet would be bad thing to do. Consider your typical soft SciFi fleet consisting of multi million ton warships spamming thousands of missiles, lasers, particle beams, kinetic impactors and what not and you are going to get one hell of collateral damage. Add to that some damaged ships and wrecks (possibly containing lots of radioactive and toxic stuff) falling on planet below and there are going to be millions of dead people and ecological disaster.

Defensive force facing incoming enemy fleet would try to intercept it in open space far from anything valuable to minimize collateral damage to stuff they want to protect. Most battles would be fought in open space or around uninhabited planets for this reason.

[Simon_Jester]

Basically, culture and attitude can matter a LOT. Nations that have the economic and physical means to repel an invader have lost before, when that invader capitalizes on a political weakness. Conversely, powerful invaders have lost to a dedicated and persistent force that keeps fighting despite being at a disadvantage.

Now, you can choose to totally ignore all such questions and just talk about "how powerful is the technology?" But one should know one is doing this, and that it represents a choice to ignore certain things. It's not "the only game in town."

[Borgholio]

Fighting in low orbits around populated planet would be bad thing to do. Consider your typical soft SciFi fleet consisting of multi million ton warships spamming thousands of missiles, lasers, particle beams, kinetic impactors and what not and you are going to get one hell of collateral damage. Add to that some damaged ships and wrecks (possibly containing lots of radioactive and toxic stuff) falling on planet below and there are going to be millions of dead people and ecological disaster.

Defensive force facing incoming enemy fleet would try to intercept it in open space far from anything valuable to minimize collateral damage to stuff they want to protect. Most battles would be fought in open space or around uninhabited planets for this reason.

Look at Episode 3 for an example. Had the half of General Grievous' ship not been under a "controlled" descent, it would have impacted with several times the force of the asteroid that created the Barringer crater. That would have hurt, no matter how advanced your building technology is.

[Sea Skimmer]

Yeah, and the movie could have been way cooler!

But glad you brought Episode 3 one up, because also serves to show how irrelevant the planet was to the conduct of battle. Despite the super short firing ranges being used, and low orbit of the action, the presence of the planet wasn't actually having an noticeable effect on the engagement at all! Nobody was say, breaking off to avoid crashing. You don't have the ability to run aground on uncharted reefs the way you might near a ocean coastline. The planet provided a reason for the battle to happen, it was a thing to crash into, but it had no actual tactical effect of note. The ship was clearly already wrecked by the time it began crashing and little reason exists to think it would have survived much longer. Nor would crashing be relevant to ships that were in actual orbit when crippled, as opposed to I assume hovering on repulsors (I also question gravity pulling them down that fast but whatever). They'd take days and days to crash or weeks or months, and only tiny amounts of power could be needed to prevent this. The longer firing ranges are and the higher preforming the ships, the less and less it ever could matter.

I can't see terrain mattering one bit for broad strokes space combat myself, unless we're talking about powers little more advanced then earth, and even earth has actually built ICBMs that could reach escape velocity with a useful payload. It is simply not at all relevant to Trek-Wars levels of technology or anything like it. Seriously landforms seldom directly affected ship to ship gunnery battles, how is it ever going to matter for interplanetary capable ships, let alone interstellar ones or anything with FTL drive? The scale is just too big for such small and predictable objects as planets and moons to matter, and ESB like asteroid belts don't exist that we've ever observed, and realistically couldn't exist for long at all before everything was smashed into small rocks. Wong addressed that many years ago. At best large objects are something to be hidden behind, but that only works if the enemy closely approaches, and on a single axis. Though Sci fi loves having military forces with zero reconnaissance. In the end though, its just not something that will decide a conflict, and its extremely situational. I chalk that up to a luck factor.

For ground combat meanwhile unless you have an agreed topographic map for the battle, I get super skeptical about people usefully applying terrain details. You can't say oh 'the battle takes place in a desert' or a 'forest' because these can mean radically different things (compare a dune sea to a field of volcanic rock, or parts of Tibet), and so without a map its better to stick to hard facts about the factions as they may be found or proven.

[Lord Revan]

For me terrain is something that really matters in long term conflict more then single battles when come to debates since with long term conflicts it becomes less about "cherry picking specific terrain to allow "X" to win" more about "how well will "X" adjust to variable terrain".

[Simon_Jester]

Right, and that's more likely to make sense in fantasy than in SF.

For example, if you have a hypothetical fantasy army that explicitly fights in a very rigid formation like a Greek phalanx... they won't do very well in a forest even if they're terrifying on big flat patches of land.

But in space wars fought over numerous planets, where the action is mostly decided by the winner of the space battle, stuff like that matters less.

[Adam Reynolds]

Right, and that's more likely to make sense in fantasy than in SF.

For example, if you have a hypothetical fantasy army that explicitly fights in a very rigid formation like a Greek phalanx... they won't do very well in a forest even if they're terrifying on big flat patches of land.

But in space wars fought over numerous planets, where the action is mostly decided by the winner of the space battle, stuff like that matters less.

That could apply to certain sci-fi armies as well. Using Star Wars as an example, certain theater shields wouldn't work very well when you were surrounded by trees. And walkers be somewhat limited in soft sand. Though they obviously have other tech that can work in that environment, it would limit them in ways that wouldn't affect a modern army(not that SW still wouldn't win).

Though there is another issue here. The fact that almost everyone in science fiction shows an astonishing lack of creativity in terms of developing weapons and other tech as compared with real life engineers. Most such weapons, like the photon torpedoes in Star Trek, are essentially just explosives stuffed into a a missile. Compare this with something more creative like the British Starstreak, which splits apart a and fires a trio of tungsten penetrators against aircraft rather than explosives.

These limitations are significantly reflected by the similar lack of true tactical creativity.

[Simon_Jester]

This is mostly because the writers have finite ability to come up with weapons that are creative and plausible at the same time. Simple weapons like "explosives stuffed into a missile" will not violate suspension of disbelief. A weapon that does something more exotic might- even if the thing it does is simply an exaggerated form of a real life weapon.

[Batman]

There's plenty of more creative weapons in written SciFi. For visual SciFi however there are at least two additional concerns-'will it look good onscreen' and 'can our budget handle it'. Kinetic impactors simply don't look like much, while ray guns and missiles full of explody stuff do.
Also, phasers and related Trek weapons-while their exotic nature is almost certainly a side effect of a limited FX budget they are pretty exotic I'd say

[Borgholio]

A good number of Sci-Fi games like X3 and Master of Orion have weapons like black hole guns...where they shoot miniature black holes at the enemy. Those would be rather neat to see on screen. Well...the impact anyways. Would be hard to see the black holes themselves...

[Lord Revan]

well kinectic impactors can be made to look impressive in film but that needs a semi decent effects budget or it'lll look just fake.

A good number of Sci-Fi games like X3 and Master of Orion have weapons like black hole guns...where they shoot miniature black holes at the enemy. Those would be rather neat to see on screen. Well...the impact anyways. Would be hard to see the black holes themselves...

these kind of have the same problem if done well they look pretty impressive but that needs money and if done poorly they look really fake.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Black hole guns have been seen on screen in Andromeda. They look...different.

[FTeik]

From what I understand of those VS-scenarios both sides enter it with the intention to win (since loosing would mean annihilation at least as a power in its own right), so we are looking at scenarios of total war and then the old adage of "tactics win battles, but logistics win wars" comes into play. Factors like terrain wouldn't matter much in such a war to the death, one side might win every battle and still loose the war.

[Batman]

While that's possibly how it started even during my time here far more limited Vs were done (Death Squadron with no access to the rest of Wars resources being a favourite) so while in a 'total war, both sides have everything they got and it's a fight to the death' terrain is unlikely to matter (at least with the Trek/Wars kind of tech discrepancy) it very well might in the more small-scale scenarios.

[FTeik]

While that's possibly how it started even during my time here far more limited Vs were done (Death Squadron with no access to the rest of Wars resources being a favourite) so while in a 'total war, both sides have everything they got and it's a fight to the death' terrain is unlikely to matter (at least with the Trek/Wars kind of tech discrepancy) it very well might in the more small-scale scenarios.

True, but in those cases the goals and the willingness of the involved parties about how far they want to go would cover too wide a range (depending on the scenario of the poster). It would remove the "need to see things through to the (bitter) end", if for example one side can stop/retreat because the casualities become to high for the population at home even if they have numerical and technological superiority (USA vs Taliban). Something which wouldn't be considered, if the only alternative to winning is annihilation.

[Q99]

Moving off space and onto land, that's one where it matters more.


Consider, say, Caine Wise, he of the boots of extreme mobility from Jupiter Ascending. The advantage of being able to change direction off of and rapidly climb most terrain via gravboot is a very nice edge against most foes.



---
And moving off land and back into 'space,' anyone read Grand Central Arena? Or more specifically, the second book, Spheres of Influence?

A setting where spaceships have a reason to conduct battles in atmo and at limited ranges

---

On weapons in space, I think the best I've seen in visual SF is probably Crest of the Stars/Banner of the Stars. They have beams of two varieties (one laser- instant. One anti-proton, and slightly slower but stronger), high-speed projectile warheads, and the mines, self-guided explosive that even come with a trick variant the enemy introduces.

Oh, and it also effectively has 'terrain' in space, since most battles happen in FTL space, and thus ships need to get close enough for their FTL bubbles to overlap to fight, so things like splitting and rejoining bubbles is a thing, there's limited enough area that debris can be an issue, etc..