Possible justifications for Point Defenseless

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Jub
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Re: Possible justifications for Point Defenseless

Post by Jub »

Q99 wrote: 2018-06-18 04:32pmGoing back to the Armor Paradigm one, Jub, none of your complaints about it really respond to the "What if it's really easy to kill all a ship's sensors with weapons that sear the hull even without enough power to penetrate armor? Then wouldn't it be better to temporarily hide some so, y'know, you can take hits and still see? Yes, you don't want to spend time blind but the whole point is to make "how can I spend as little time blind as possible without getting permanently blinded" a tactical puzzle,
I've answered that question already and that answer is, you don't hide your sensors; you deploy new ones when and where you can. Depending on details this could be done post-battle, could be done in the period between enemy weapons detonation and the time before a new wave can reach you, or could be a near constant stream of tethered sensor clusters being launched like observation balloons. In none of these cases does hiding your main sensors make sense.

You can't just say the puzzle is x so the solution must be pickles. You have to actually understand the puzzle, how militaries think, and then figure out an answer. You started at the answer you wanted and designed backward which is why there are always going to be holes in your universe. It's why there are massive holes in most sci-fi universes.
and Jub? The paradigm you're talking about of 'modern-esque fighting with fighters involved' is super unrealistic.
I never introduced the idea of fighters in the first place. I simply argued that if fighters exist, so too will PD.
"Why would you want to spend time blinded?" Well, why would you want to have armor that can be pierced? Why would you want to be shot at at all? Wouldn't you want weapons good at blinding your opponents for the exact same reasons you don't want to be blinded?
The real equation is more like, I want to survive and/or I want to accomplish some goal, how can I best do this.

You've yet to show that the blind myself to save a single set of sensors idea has a higher rate of success than the competing idea of carrying spare sensors and treat them like their just more ammo. Both sides are also likely to be risk averse if losing sensors means losing a battle. In such cases, battles might be rare with wars won and lost with only a single decisive battle finally fought after months or years of maneuvering.

When your question allows for more than one answer, many of which have a historical basis that your prefered answer lacks, it's bad form to piss and moan when people point out the flaws in your work.
If there was a gun that can be fired at my ship and kill my sensors from 50km away in a wide energy beam, would you not want that gun on every one of your ships? Or would you not use such a weapon on the ground that maybe your opponents will be nice and also not mount that?
You haven't given enough info about the gun for anybody to say which ships should or shouldn't mount it. Is it expensive or cheap? Is it large or small? Can it fire rapidly or is it slow? Can it sustain its rate of fire or does sustained fire have drawbacks? Is 50km range optimal and if not can we change something to find a better range? Does the enemy have the knowledge to produce this gun? Do we have the knowledge to produce a version that works at 51km and deploy it before the next battle? Does one side or the other have a counter that would make the gun less effective?

You can't boil down a weapon or system of combat down to a single sticking point without people speaking up and asking, "Why doesn't anybody think of this?"

Hell, this entire thread came about because we're all asking "Which dumbfuck thought the space combat we saw in TLJ made sense?"
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Re: Possible justifications for Point Defenseless

Post by Q99 »

Here's a nice video on what realistic space warfare would be like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Xs3mGhQGxM

Long range, no-one in sight, heat problems, etc..
Jub wrote: 2018-06-18 05:21pm I've answered that question already and that answer is, you don't hide your sensors; you deploy new ones when and where you can. Depending on details this could be done post-battle, could be done in the period between enemy weapons detonation and the time before a new wave can reach you, or could be a near constant stream of tethered sensor clusters being launched like observation balloons. In none of these cases does hiding your main sensors make sense.
Deploying new ones... so basically doing what I said, except being more reliant on spare parts? If you can make something re-usable, and do basically the same thing except just... temporarily hiding something for a short period so you don't have to replace it, why not save it rather than replace it, and thus not be limited to how many spares you can carry? Also, easily deployable sensors probably aren't always going to be as good as nice big built-in already-tested and installed ones.

Deploying additional sensors/sensor buoys while your main ones were hidden was something I explicitly talked about too.

I kinda get the idea you didn't pay too much attention to what I said while decrying it. I don't exactly get why you made "no hiding sensors behind armor, ever," is the hill you've chosen to defend for absolute unbelievability, when your own response is, "Why not do the same thing but let your sensors be destroyed entirely first?".
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Re: Possible justifications for Point Defenseless

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Q99, you're missing the point.

Yes, with deployable secondary sensors you'll also spend some time blinded, this is going to be unavoidable with any realistic level of technology. The advantage is that you have sight right up to the point where the enemy actually blinds you. Then you send out the next sensor cluster which you'd have prepped and ready to launch. You might even send the sensor cluster out behind your missiles from the same tubes.

Under your system, you have to preemptively close down the armor which means spending more of the battle blind. You also have to carry extra mass for the armor, and the system that opens and closes it, while also carrying extra sensors because armor isn't a perfect defense. Not to mention that moving anything heavy is going either be fast and hard on the equipment or slow and relatively gentle. How many repetitions of opening and closing a multi-ton slab or armor in seconds is going to last through?

In any case, you propose carrying extra mass, staying blind longer, and still carrying backup sensors anyway; just to save the cost of a sensor array.

Can you show a historical example of any military ever doing what you're proposing? It didn't happen with battleships, didn't happen with early warning radar sites in the cold war, it hasn't happened on modern naval vessels. The closest we get is tanks buttoning up but that's not to save sensors, it to save the crew who also happen to perform functions other than looking for the enemy. They don't carry extra armor to cover their vision blocks/cameras/IR lights which would be the equivalent to your suggestion.
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Re: Possible justifications for Point Defenseless

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Jub wrote: 2018-06-27 05:09am Q99, you're missing the point.

Yes, with deployable secondary sensors you'll also spend some time blinded, this is going to be unavoidable with any realistic level of technology. The advantage is that you have sight right up to the point where the enemy actually blinds you. Then you send out the next sensor cluster which you'd have prepped and ready to launch. You might even send the sensor cluster out behind your missiles from the same tubes.
Like, I already talked about launching sensor clusters,
And you still have the option of letting them blind you to get that last second information on the attacks you already know is incoming... but you're completely missing the point of "and now our sister ships has gotten direct fire off of us, so we open up mid-battle and oh nice we have a great view for these few minutes, oh enemy approaching again, we close up, ah ha we beat them, we open again."

You spend less time blinded, that's the point.

I don't necessarily think you've been paying the closest attention to the argument. Or if you have, maybe not thinking it through well, because you're really not selling me on "a few second more info before an attack blinds you is so much better than being able to see clearly again any time the fire lets up for an opening."
Under your system, you have to preemptively close down the armor which means spending more of the battle blind. You also have to carry extra mass for the armor, and the system that opens and closes it, while also carrying extra sensors because armor isn't a perfect defense. Not to mention that moving anything heavy is going either be fast and hard on the equipment or slow and relatively gentle. How many repetitions of opening and closing a multi-ton slab or armor in seconds is going to last through?

In any case, you propose carrying extra mass, staying blind longer, and still carrying backup sensors anyway; just to save the cost of a sensor array.
Wait, you want to only bring one? So they can shot it and then you're blind for good? And you only have one fight before you don't have a backup? Plus you want the higher cost of a whole new sensor system every battle, guaranteed? That really is as dumb as you've been claiming mine is. Nor are quickly deployed sensors going to be as good as a big robust built-in system, if you can shoot it out of a missile tube, it can't see as far or clearly as something sizeable, just due to the way sensors work (bigger lenses work better, distributed arrays provide more info, dishes collect more signal, etc. etc.. That's why sensors have big dishes, telescopes big lenses, and so on).

A retraction mechanism isn't a big thing mass-wise- the armor's there either way, the question is if you can pull stuff behind it. Your worry is the cost of armor hatch wear while you're throwing away sensor arrays like candy? Yes, there's definite maintenance and repair costs involved, but compared to treating powerful sensor arrays as expendable toys, one of these things is more than the other.

Like, your proposal is 'having extra vision for a handful of seconds is totally worth having a main sensor array destroyed in every battle guaranteed, even if you're fighting pretty minor forces.' Your proposal is 'be blind longer, rely entirely on deployable extra sensors requiring you to carry more of them, so more mass if you're at all sensible, and if you're out, then you can be stuck blind all the way home.'

I literally see no tactical advantages to your proposal. Tiny bit of mass for sensor guards is exchange for needing more mass for deployable backups (since you will need more and once a fight begins rely 100% on them), the sensor guard system has the option of fighting like your proposal, it just also has the option of saying, "You know, we're ok with trading the next few seconds of sensor data for several minutes later on in the fight and using fewer sensor buoys." In addition to the option of, "Ok, no, we do need these few seconds in specific," if that's the case in that specific situation, but they have the flexibility to chose- and most of the time I doubt they'll chose the latter.

Total longer blind time, loss of a built-in array and/or not having a bigger array to begin with, needing to use more deployed arrays, and nothing that the sensor-hiding side doesn't have the option of doing.
Can you show a historical example of any military ever doing what you're proposing?
Yep, a number of cases, the USS Monitor. Turned it's turret while reloading, hiding the enemy from it's vision but also protecting it's gun ports, then turning around once reloaded, because it didn't need constant visual contact.

Knights jousting armor, especially the frog mouth helmet, you leaned down so you could see out the visor, then just before impact leaned up so your eyes weren't vulnerable.

Roman shield formations provide a not-that-different effect to a lesser extent, put up all your shields and the amount you can see out drops a lot.

Early tanks, you could close up vision ports to lower vulnerability, and similarly when not under fire you'd open a hatch and stick your head out with binoculars, since it was pretty hard to see out of them.

A lot of the times when a defensive setup was dominant, in short.

Also? This is fiction we're talking about under different circumstances, something doesn't have to exist historically. I can't think of anything that fights like your proposal, historical or not, but the point is we're not limited to that.


Honestly a lot of stuff you're saying seem to me like you're being contrary for the sake of it. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm really scratching my head at "It's always worth it to keep looking at the last second, even if you lose the ability to use it again later," approach. Hiding your sensors temporarily to prevent damage if they're under threat (and my idea basically just being a paradigm where it's easy to put them under threat) just seems really common-sense to me.
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Re: Possible justifications for Point Defenseless

Post by Patroklos »

Q99 wrote: 2018-06-27 07:44am
Can you show a historical example of any military ever doing what you're proposing?
Yep, a number of cases, the USS Monitor. Turned it's turret while reloading, hiding the enemy from it's vision but also protecting it's gun ports, then turning around once reloaded, because it didn't need constant visual contact.
This is not an example. The Monitor did not use its gun ports as the primary means of seeing around itself, just the primary means allowing shot through its armor. I guess they could technically aim that way but I believe they had periscopes for that aiming the guns. Even more importantly, the argument here is you don't want to blind yourself during an attack because that sensory information is vitally important to intercepting and/or countering that attack. The USS Monitor was not shooting down incoming canon balls with its own cannon balls, so any "sensors" associated with its turret are irrelevant to this discussion. If you are not using your sensors for anything at the moment, there is zero downside to masking them or otherwise protecting them. In our situation, there is a cost/benefit analysis.

Ships of this time don't really have sensors, as in mechanical third party equipment between human and target. There is no direct equivalent.
Knights jousting armor, especially the frog mouth helmet, you leaned down so you could see out the visor, then just before impact leaned up so your eyes weren't vulnerable.
A more appropriate comparison, but still falls short. They didn't do that because they were worried about losing sensory information, they did that because they worried about a lance through the brain. Again, there is no "third party" here so the comparisons don't match. This is more akin to "I can't armor my engine bell, so I will never point it at the enemy when in effective weapons range."

Its a different problem, more akin to the start of this thread where there was an assumption that sensors necessitated a direct vulnerability through a ships armor. I think we have laid that to rest as not a thing.
Roman shield formations provide a not-that-different effect to a lesser extent, put up all your shields and the amount you can see out drops a lot.
But not blinding themselves...
Early tanks, you could close up vision ports to lower vulnerability, and similarly when not under fire you'd open a hatch and stick your head out with binoculars, since it was pretty hard to see out of them.
Again no third party, they were not protecting their sensors but rather their soft, squishy lives. They may be one in the same in these circumstances but that's just because they are attached. Nobody was going to be like "well, I lost my life, but at least my eyes are still mint!"
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Re: Possible justifications for Point Defenseless

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Patroklos wrote: 2018-06-27 09:21am Even more importantly, the argument here is you don't want to blind yourself during an attack because that sensory information is vitally important to intercepting and/or countering that attack. The USS Monitor was not shooting down incoming canon balls with its own cannon balls, so any "sensors" associated with its turret are irrelevant to this discussion. If you are not using your sensors for anything at the moment, there is zero downside to masking them or otherwise protecting them. In our situation, there is a cost/benefit analysis.
And the ships in this scenario aren't shooting down incoming heavy fire either, so your point?

The whole point of the proposed scenario is "you hide them when you would otherwise not be able to use them due to them being gone/blinded because the weaponry in this universe is good at doing that, so you resort to secondary methods when that's in effect." If you haven't gotten that point, you haven't been paying attention. If you aren't taking that into account, you aren't finding flaw in the scenario, you're rejecting the scenario outright.

"No, that won't work because I don't want things to work that way," is not the same as something being a bad idea if it works that way.
A more appropriate comparison, but still falls short. They didn't do that because they were worried about losing sensory information, they did that because they worried about a lance through the brain. Again, there is no "third party" here so the comparisons don't match. This is more akin to "I can't armor my engine bell, so I will never point it at the enemy when in effective weapons range."
Actually splinters was the big worry, and those wouldn't go through your brain. They'll just, y'know, hit your eyes and blind you.

Also it strikes me this is really nitpicky. "Gimmie historical examples of people hiding their ability to see for protection in combat! No, not that one..."

Why yes, it's not an exact comparison because it's eyes instead of sensors, but no historical model is going to perfectly model a futuristic model unless it's one that unrealistically is based directly off that (unless you're seriously suggesting that no future combat can do more than directly carbon-copy an old mode of combat? I hope not). It is a case where people would deliberately cut off their sight temporarily shortly before a clash so they can protect their sight so that they could then unprotect it and see clearly without the threat of splinters a moment later, which is exactly what was asked for, and which is a direct comparison to the scenario.

Honestly, the degree of nitpickery being used here is something else, this is exactly what was asked for.

Also, what does "third party" have to do with it? That's not part of the scenario, combat has been discussed between two sides either in duel or two larger forces.

Its a different problem, more akin to the start of this thread where there was an assumption that sensors necessitated a direct vulnerability through a ships armor. I think we have laid that to rest as not a thing.
Oh no, you certainly have not laid the 'hypothetical not-existed mod of warfare' as not a thing. I think we moved away from that to focus more on blinding, but we could put it back in no problem.

In a hypothetical discussion of tech, it can work however we darn well want. That's not an assumption, it's a construct, and like I noted, the 'realistic' scenario in no way resembles the 'point defense with small guns firing at fighters' anyway, which is equally artificially constructed. Jub called my scenario 'flat earth,' but as I noted, the base scenario is the equally fictional 'hollow earth,' and actual 'solid ball of rock planet,' scenarios don't even get near this discussion.

You might not like the idea of tech working that way, but that's just saying you don't like the scenario, not how things would work in the scenario.
Again no third party, they were not protecting their sensors but rather their soft, squishy lives. They may be one in the same in these circumstances but that's just because they are attached. Nobody was going to be like "well, I lost my life, but at least my eyes are still mint!"
So you think they'd do nothing at all to protect their sight-apparatuses if they were super vulnerable?

I don't think you know much on how combat works, your vehicle losing most of it's ability to see out often leads to a decrease to long-term survival.



"No one would ever spend effort to just protect sight in combat," is such a bizarre stance. I really don't know what to say.
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Re: Possible justifications for Point Defenseless

Post by Patroklos »

Q99 wrote: 2018-06-27 11:36am
Patroklos wrote: 2018-06-27 09:21am Even more importantly, the argument here is you don't want to blind yourself during an attack because that sensory information is vitally important to intercepting and/or countering that attack. The USS Monitor was not shooting down incoming canon balls with its own cannon balls, so any "sensors" associated with its turret are irrelevant to this discussion. If you are not using your sensors for anything at the moment, there is zero downside to masking them or otherwise protecting them. In our situation, there is a cost/benefit analysis.
And the ships in this scenario aren't shooting down incoming heavy fire either, so your point?

The whole point of the proposed scenario is "you hide them when you would otherwise not be able to use them due to them being gone/blinded because the weaponry in this universe is good at doing that, so you resort to secondary methods when that's in effect." If you haven't gotten that point, you haven't been paying attention. If you aren't taking that into account, you aren't finding flaw in the scenario, you're rejecting the scenario outright.

"No, that won't work because I don't want things to work that way," is not the same as something being a bad idea if it works that way.
You have obviously embarked on some tangent not relevant to the larger discussion going on in this thread.

The reason we are talking about sensors is because they are integral to point defenses, the subject of this thread. Point defenses are for close in defense, including shooting down incoming fire. If we are talking about the effects of incoming fire on sensors, and point defenses have no role in countering said fire, then there is no need to be discussing them here.

You seem to be talking about the vulnerability of point defenses as a system, not just the sensors, against main battery weaponry beyond the scope of threats they are designed to be a defense against. That's fine, but if your reaction to that is "hide my point defenses" instead or "harden my point defenses" then all you have done is signal to the enemy an easy way to incapacitate your point defenses and convert whatever threat they were designed to counter the king of the battlefield. And if that way to incapacitate them is so easy that this attack is basically 100% effective (necessitating you always hide them instead of just risk loss but with a good chance of still presenting a credible defense), those point defenses wouldn't exist in the first place.

Your scenario rests on the assumption you will always be facing weapons the point defenses are vulnerable to but can't counter, or weapons they can counter and won't be vulnerable to. This is of course stupid, any media relying on such a setup should be laughed at because it doesn't pass a second's worth of logical scrutiny. The reality is if there is a distinction between those two sorts of enemy weaponry you will be facing both concurrently, not giving you the luxury or tailoring your defenses so you are never in a sub optimal situation regarding vulnerability vs effectiveness. If there is not this distinction, dedicated point defenses won't exit. They will either be one and the same with the main battery, or the cost benefit analysis will lead you to invest your money in a better main battery system to get their first with the knock out blow before you enemy can hit you at all.
A more appropriate comparison, but still falls short. They didn't do that because they were worried about losing sensory information, they did that because they worried about a lance through the brain. Again, there is no "third party" here so the comparisons don't match. This is more akin to "I can't armor my engine bell, so I will never point it at the enemy when in effective weapons range."
Actually splinters was the big worry, and those wouldn't go through your brain. They'll just, y'know, hit your eyes and blind you.
You don't seem to understand the distinction being made here. Space ships, presumably, have a separation of function that does not exist in your knight scenario. Namely, crew and sensor or two different things. In a space ship I can lose a sensor, but the crew which is doing all sorts of other things effectively, are still around/alive to continue to do those other things. In the case of a knight crew and sensor are the same thing, and a knight with a splinter through his eye is the same thing as a space ship with a deceased/incapacitated crew. Its 100% useless.

So again, your comparisons are flailing and ill conceived.
Also it strikes me this is really nitpicky. "Gimmie historical examples of people hiding their ability to see for protection in combat! No, not that one..."
That was not the question that was asked of you. You were asked for examples of people doing what you proposed, which as far as I can tell never included "radar operator closing their eyes instead of looking at the sensor console." They have always involved the masking or other protection of a third party intermediary sensor platform (third part to the operator, not the ship), which has none of issues involved with a crew-as-sensor setup.
Why yes, it's not an exact comparison because it's eyes instead of sensors, but no historical model is going to perfectly model a futuristic model unless it's one that unrealistically is based directly off that (unless you're seriously suggesting that no future combat can do more than directly carbon-copy an old mode of combat? I hope not). It is a case where people would deliberately cut off their sight temporarily shortly before a clash so they can protect their sight so that they could then unprotect it and see clearly without the threat of splinters a moment later, which is exactly what was asked for, and which is a direct comparison to the scenario.
You problem is they are not protecting their sight in the examples you provide, THEY ARE PROTECTING THEIR LIVES.

The task at hand is not hard to do, you are just displaying a breathtaking lack of knowledge of the subject. For example, its common for SAM systems to turn off their fire controls and search radars whenever they suspect there is some sort of HARM or other AA suppression effort underway. They do this even though SAMs can shoot down HARMs and wild weasel aircraft, but sense this is a situation or point-defense-concurrent-with-main-battery they make the analysis that its more important that they survive to shoot at bombers another day than to engage with an destroy point defense threats and hope the lack of a signal to home in on saves them. They don't always do this though, if there is a legitimate primary target they really want to kill or detect they will accept the risk and rely on their point defense. So this meats the criteria of an example, but its useless to your argument because a SAM site in the clutter of a forest or jungle or the ground generally has something no hard scifi space ship ever will that makes defense EMCON effective; stealth.

Using your flawed methodology, a much better example is bomber pilots in nuclear warfare. Knowing a nuclear blast could flash blind pilots, B-52s would put black out curtains over their windows once at altitude and fly on instruments. If they had to look outside for whatever reasons, they would use one eye periscopes to ensure they never went completely blind. This is of course not a point defense scenario, though, as bombers don't shoot down incoming ICBMs just like the USS Monitor didn't shoo down cannon balls...
Also, what does "third party" have to do with it? That's not part of the scenario, combat has been discussed between two sides either in duel or two larger forces.
Third party as in we are not talking about crew members staring out of windows and manually aiming their laser guns. Again, crew-as-sensor adds a lot more to worry about than sensor-as-third-party-inanimate-object. You are now talking about risking two vital components, or more accurately in most cases a vital component and a critical component. This shouldn't come as a surprise to you, but most defensive warfare revolves around the human component not getting killed...
Oh no, you certainly have not laid the 'hypothetical not-existed mod of warfare' as not a thing. I think we moved away from that to focus more on blinding, but we could put it back in no problem.
Its a done deal, but if you want me to school you up on it feel free to tell us your examples, real or imagined, of sensor-is-hole-in-armor that you want applied to the discussion.
In a hypothetical discussion of tech, it can work however we darn well want. That's not an assumption, it's a construct, and like I noted, the 'realistic' scenario in no way resembles the 'point defense with small guns firing at fighters' anyway, which is equally artificially constructed. Jub called my scenario 'flat earth,' but as I noted, the base scenario is the equally fictional 'hollow earth,' and actual 'solid ball of rock planet,' scenarios don't even get near this discussion.
Just because you can make it work however you want, doesn't mean its not incredible stupid and boring/bad story telling. You can make your space combat revolve around the weaponrization of bottled dog farts. Its your world man, you do you, but so far you are not justifying your ideas inside any circumstances either of you have provided.
You might not like the idea of tech working that way, but that's just saying you don't like the scenario, not how things would work in the scenario.
Your tech solutions do not make sense in any scenario so far provided.
Again no third party, they were not protecting their sensors but rather their soft, squishy lives. They may be one in the same in these circumstances but that's just because they are attached. Nobody was going to be like "well, I lost my life, but at least my eyes are still mint!"
So you think they'd do nothing at all to protect their sight-apparatuses if they were super vulnerable?
I said no such thing. I gave the scenarios where doing so and not doing so makes sense. It has to do with the character of the combat, such as whether defense is all or nothing, targets are staged in vulnerability (the specific incoming weapon can damage some things, but never damage others), or ablative in nature (damage is general, and wears uniformly over time, hit point style), and if the enemy has multiple damage modes it can employ.

Then we get back into whether you point defense is itself vulnerable, is it concurrent with your main battery, is it expendable from cost/benefit analysis, etc?

What you don't do, ever, is blind yourself when that weapon is your best defense against the thing doing the blinding in an all or nothing scenario (which is current real world naval warfare).
I don't think you know much on how combat works, your vehicle losing most of it's ability to see out often leads to a decrease to long-term survival.
Long term survival is irrelevant when you failed the short term survival test. This is how I currently practice modern warfare on the most advanced combat platforms humans have ever produced, as a data point.
"No one would ever spend effort to just protect sight in combat," is such a bizarre stance. I really don't know what to say.
In scenarios where protecting your sight and your life are one in the same (not in the logical follow on consequences sense, but in the this bullet will simultaneously blind and kill/incapacitate me sense), which is all the historical scenarios you brought up, are you really ever protecting your sight, or is that just part and parcel with protecting your life?
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Re: Possible justifications for Point Defenseless

Post by Jub »

Thank you, Patroklos, you've put into words what I've been trying to say this entire time and more clearly to boot. I hope you have better luck than I was having with convincing Q99 that his idea wouldn't make for realistic or enjoyable fiction.
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