Cornflakes_91 wrote:Remotely related:

If using missles in LT feels like it does in EVE online, i'll probably even use them, because eves feeling makes me want to use missles as primary weapon for the first time in all my gaming history

One of the reasons why I chose Caldari, and loved to fly a Golem.

However, missiles in Eve were determined by two very important factors:
- Flight time
- velocity

The higher the velocity, the more distance you could get with them.
Also with more flight time, the more range you get with missiles.

All of these required some extensive training, which could easily see you waiting 6 months before fully maxing out the range for all types of missiles.

My two cents would be that LT utilise at the very least flight time and velocity for helping to determine research upgrades.

Mass is another aspect too, as you can only have a certain amount of fuel on the missile to deliver the projectile to its destination.

FormalMoss wrote: Mass is another aspect too, as you can only have a certain amount of fuel on the missile to deliver the projectile to its destination.

Wouldnt that be flight time as well?

What else does the fuel amount determine?

FormalMoss wrote: All of these required some extensive training, which could easily see you waiting 6 months before fully maxing out the range for all types of missiles.
.

I only see 2 explicit skills at the moment, one for flight time and one for velocity, and training up 2 skills doesnt take 6 months.

Or did you include ship/fitting specific skills in that?

Sasha wrote:If missiles were realistic they'd be far too powerful.
Unlimited range, perfect accuracy, massive damage, smart targetting...
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jspEovlEK-w
This is a relatively small missile compared to some that are available

I realize I'm replying to a year-old necro but this statement is so offensively wrong that I feel compelled to reply.

1) Range is limited by delta-v, if you don't have enough to leave Earth orbit you're not going to hit a target orbiting Mars.
2) Real missiles burn through all their solid fuel within seconds from launch and use fins to steer, those don't work in space. You either end up with a dumb solid fuel rocket or a liquid fueled missile which is limited in its tracking capability by delta-v, highly expensive and has volatile fuel which is difficult to store + it needs a complete RCS system to be able to maneuver or even fire the main engine, further driving up the costs. Even then an interplanetary or interstellar spaceship with effectively unlimited delta-v could simply perform a planechange or some other highly expensive maneuver that the missile can't follow up on. Alternatively it could target it with a laser, evaporating pieces of the missile to destroy important parts and deflect its course.
3) No massive damage. HE is much less effective in space due to lack of atmosphere meaning no shockwave, it would have to score a direct hit to even do anything at all. Additionally it causes fragmentation which is liable to come back and hit your own ships and/or cause Kessler syndrome which is not something you want around a planet you want to occupy. HEAT does not cause "massive" damage compared to other weapons like railguns, either. The only reason large ASM's are more effective than artillery on Earth is because physical constraints imposed by the atmosphere mean ASM's can pack larger warheads and have longer range than shells, in space you have railguns which can impart massive amounts of energy on a projectile and produce killing power equivalent to even large ASM's.

Missiles in space "sims" work because they're completely unrealistic and have their behavior governed by this stupid space is an ocean trope, in reality they would be expensive, unreliable and ineffective pieces of crap that are only one step up from space triremes ramming the enemy in terms of killing power. They are completely overshadowed by railguns and lasers. The only possible application they could have would be on very small vessels that don't have the power supply for better weapons and can't handle the recoil from chemically propelled projectiles.

No Image Available wrote: 1) Range is limited by delta-v, if you don't have enough to leave Earth orbit you're not going to hit a target orbiting Mars.
2) Real missiles burn through all their solid fuel within seconds from launch and use fins to steer, those don't work in space. You either end up with a dumb solid fuel rocket or a liquid fueled missile which is limited in its tracking capability by delta-v, highly expensive and has volatile fuel which is difficult to store + it needs a complete RCS system to be able to maneuver or even fire the main engine, further driving up the costs. Even then an interplanetary or interstellar spaceship with effectively unlimited delta-v could simply perform a planechange or some other highly expensive maneuver that the missile can't follow up on.

so you allow spaceships to have unlimited dV but missles not?
why shouldnt they use the same basic drive technology, but with a much higher mass ratio than a spaceship could economically have?

missles would also probably have "fast burn" variations of ship drives, having only a very short time to fail, but having immense thrust, so the spaceship might be able to escape with its higher dV reserves
but can it do so in time?

also in an age where interplanetar and interstellar space travel is as expensive as taking the plane to fly to another country, i dont think that the relative costs of missles would be much different from today

No Image Available wrote: dumb solid fuel rocket

as dumb as a railgun projectile or smarter?

its also likely that a solid fueled dumbfire rocket would be more energy and space efficient compared to a railgun, as you dont have to mount giant capacitor banks and a power supply to recharge them
but basically only a tube on your ship.

with multistake rockets you could also have a projectile that behaves like a conventional kinetic launcher with terminal guidance
launch it to railgun speeds with the first stage, let it coast until engagement range and then burn to hit with the second stage.

No Image Available wrote: in space you have railguns which can impart massive amounts of energy on a projectile and produce killing power equivalent to even large ASM's.

for that you have to hit with them at all, and a projectile which can be detected at launch and is much much slower than the speed of light is comparatively easy to avoid
fly to the side a few metres and done.
railguns are also strongly limited by materials science, if your rail burns up if you fire a projectile its not a very efficient weapon.
relativistic railguns are unlikely to ever emerge, as you need a mechanical, firm, sliding connection between the rails and the projectile, and i dont think that there will ever be a material that survives sliding against a surface at relativistic speeds (you'll probably also run into problems with finite electrical speed at some point, where the bullet would outrun the electrical impulse, but that is not before 50% light or so)

a missle can correct its course to compensate evasive maneuvers, and if we allow warheads like bomb pumped lasers they dont have to score a direct hit but only come close and ignite the warhead.

No Image Available wrote: They are completely overshadowed by railguns and lasers.

lasers have short ranges and if not they are very very big devices to get to usable ranges, you need focusing mirrors/lenses with diameters in the tens of metres else your laser is a better torchlight at big ranges.
as CIWS would lasers probably excel, though.

No Image Available wrote: The only possible application they could have would be on very small vessels that don't have the power supply for better weapons and can't handle the recoil from chemically propelled projectiles.

or on combat ships which have the goal of "get out as fast firepower as possible in the shortest amount of time with the least cost"
spaceship power supplies wont be cheap, and a ship which needs less power will be cheaper.



missles, lasers and mass drivers all have their usecases in space.

missles on long range, as they can correct for maneuvers of their target and dont have diminished firepower with distance.
railguns against stationary or slow targets or at close range where the slow movement doesnt matter as much.
and lasers at close to medium range where they can play out their advantages.

Cornflakes_91 wrote:so you allow spaceships to have unlimited dV but missles not?
why shouldnt they use the same basic drive technology, but with a much higher mass ratio than a spaceship could economically have?

1) I'm assuming effectively unlimited delta-V, not unlimited and I do so because to be effective, any military craft would need to be able to complete multiple planetary transfers before returning for refuel.
2) Because miniaturization is expensive. I'm assuming any interplanetary spacecraft would use fission/fusion powered plasma thrusters or some other propulsion system using large amounts of electrical energy to produce extremely high specific impulse. Even if we consider missile-sized fission/fusion reactors a possibility they would likely be prohibitively expensive, forcing you to rely on either old-school chemical rockets with very low efficiency or something like an ion drive, with extremely low thrust. Neither is really suitable to pursue a maneuvering target over long distances.

also in an age where interplanetar and interstellar space travel is as expensive as taking the plane to fly to another country, i dont think that the relative costs of missles would be much different from today

I'm considering realistic scenarios in the relatively near future with interplanetary and early interstellar vessels using technology that is mostly theoretical today. Anything beyond that is pure speculation and pointless to discuss because then we might as well consider quantum-tunneling bullets, laser beams with infinite energy or some other fictional nonsense.

as dumb as a railgun projectile or smarter?

Dumber. You could potentially modify the power output of a railgun to impart different amounts of acceleration, you can't modulate a block of solid rocket fuel.

its also likely that a solid fueled dumbfire rocket would be more energy and space efficient compared to a railgun, as you dont have to mount giant capacitor banks and a power supply to recharge them
but basically only a tube on your ship.

Except if you want to store more than one salvo in which case the railgun wins out by having smaller ammunition.

with multistake rockets you could also have a projectile that behaves like a conventional kinetic launcher with terminal guidance
launch it to railgun speeds with the first stage, let it coast until engagement range and then burn to hit with the second stage.

If you wanted that kind of projectile you could also just do away with the first stage and fire it as a rocket-assisted projectile straight from an actual railgun.

for that you have to hit with them at all, and a projectile which can be detected at launch and is much much slower than the speed of light is comparatively easy to avoid
fly to the side a few metres and done.

Same thing with missiles, fragmentation warheads are nonviable because of low killing power and/or fragments being liable to come back and hit the shooter, some other friendly object or simply became hazardous space debris. HE produces no shockwave in space and would do only minor damage on a direct hit compared to a kinetic kill missile. The only thing with any area of effect at all would be a nuke, except those could a) be fired from railguns just as well and b) defeated by using unmanned craft or radiation shielding on larger vessels. And a missile is not going to move any faster than a projectile while being more detectable due to burn signatures. The fact that it has a limited ability for course corrections simply means the evasive maneuvers are slightly longer (negated by the increased ease of detection) or that it would be targeted by point defense lasers until it is either destroyed or pushed so far of course it can't hit the target anymore with its delta-V reserves. The later could potentially give it a niche as a weapon of harassment, forcing the enemy to waste heat and energy on swarms of expendable missiles but that is hardly the wunderwaffe the originally quoted post implied.

railguns are also strongly limited by materials science, if your rail burns up if you fire a projectile its not a very efficient weapon.
relativistic railguns are unlikely to ever emerge, as you need a mechanical, firm, sliding connection between the rails and the projectile, and i dont think that there will ever be a material that survives sliding against a surface at relativistic speeds (you'll probably also run into problems with finite electrical speed at some point, where the bullet would outrun the electrical impulse, but that is not before 50% light or so)

We already have prototypes propelling projectiles at several km/s in atmospheric conditions. Wear and tear is an issue but I assume by the time we have interplanetary spaceships we will also have advanced metallurgy enough to handle this. No need for relativistic speeds either, a 2kg projectile traveling at 3km/s will punch through a spaceship aft to stern and mission kill if not outright destroy it in one hit.

a missle can correct its course to compensate evasive maneuvers, and if we allow warheads like bomb pumped lasers they dont have to score a direct hit but only come close and ignite the warhead.

Any kind of special warhead could also be propelled by railguns more efficiently since the ammo would not need its own propulsion system.

lasers have short ranges and if not they are very very big devices to get to usable ranges, you need focusing mirrors/lenses with diameters in the tens of metres else your laser is a better torchlight at big ranges.
as CIWS would lasers probably excel, though.

Nonsense, weaponized lasers have existed since the 60's, we already have prototypes that can be mounted on planes and ships and they certainly don't have lenses in the tens of meters. Since diffraction occurs only when a laser passes particles they would keep focused much longer in the vacuum of space than in Earth's atmosphere and since the projectile travels at the speed of light they would have the shortest lead times and thus the highest effective range. If you want a weapon for long-range sniping you need a laser, not a missile.

missles, lasers and mass drivers all have their usecases in space.

Yes, but your analysis doesn't correspond to reality. Missiles are for cheap disposable weapons buses or other vessels without the power supply for better weaponry. Railguns are for short- and mid-range combat, indirect fire against targets orbiting the same planetary body and delivering special warheads. Lasers are for long-range combat and point defense. Missiles in space would be a low tier weapon, not the overpowered magic bullet the guy I originally quoted claimed them to be.

Missiles will be as powerful as they need to be considering the effort / resources to make them.
Game logic. *shrug*

No Image Available wrote:

as dumb as a railgun projectile or smarter?

Dumber. You could potentially modify the power output of a railgun to impart different amounts of acceleration, you can't modulate a block of solid rocket fuel.

The projectile itself is still just a dumb block of metal and cant correct for any maneuvering of the target.

And modulating the propulsive power only makes sense for different kinds of payloads, you always want the highest speed/acceleration possible to minimise the enemy reaction time and maximise the impact energy.

Except if you want to store more than one salvo in which case the railgun wins out by having smaller ammunition.

Depends very strongly on what kind of power sources you have available.
Also on the effective refire rate of the gun.
If you want to fire a 64 MJ projectile every second you have to lug around a 64 MW powerplant with your ship.

If you wanted that kind of projectile you could also just do away with the first stage and fire it as a rocket-assisted projectile straight from an actual railgun.

With the difference that the dual stage variation needs less mass aboard your spaceship, has no energy requirements on launch which again reduces your ships mass

for that you have to hit with them at all, and a projectile which can be detected at launch and is much much slower than the speed of light is comparatively easy to avoid
fly to the side a few metres and done.

Same thing with missiles, fragmentation warheads are nonviable because of low killing power and/or fragments being liable to come back and hit the shooter, some other friendly object or simply became hazardous space debris. HE produces no shockwave in space and would do only minor damage on a direct hit compared to a kinetic kill missile. The only thing with any area of effect at all would be a nuke, except those could a) be fired from railguns just as well and b) defeated by using unmanned craft or radiation shielding on larger vessels. And a missile is not going to move any faster than a projectile while being more detectable due to burn signatures. The fact that it has a limited ability for course corrections simply means the evasive maneuvers are slightly longer (negated by the increased ease of detection) or that it would be targeted by point defense lasers until it is either destroyed or pushed so far of course it can't hit the target anymore with its delta-V reserves. The later could potentially give it a niche as a weapon of harassment, forcing the enemy to waste heat and energy on swarms of expendable missiles but that is hardly the wunderwaffe the originally quoted post implied.

Who is talking about HE warheads besides you?
they'd only be effective with a direct hit, as railgun bullets.

Fragmentation warheads would have a use in space warfare.
As short range shotgun.
The missle doesnt have to hit, just get close and hurl a spray of fragments in the enemies direction.
May doesnt do the same damage as a full sized railgun hit, but much harder to avoid than a railgun.

Radiation protection against nuke tipped missles is either unneeded or useless in the case of need.
Above some range they'd only warm your (already needed) basic radiation shielding, in case of a close miss the radiation would melt metric tons of armor.

Theres no shockwave, no, but also no atmosphere to absorb the radiation. (Which would cause most of the shockwave in the first place due to heating/rapid expansion of said atmosphere)

Firing warheads from railguns has the big drawback that you must either limit the acceleration which results in either lower muzzle velocity or longer railguns.
You could also build warheads that survive the acceleration, but that would likely result in more costly warheads.

We already have prototypes propelling projectiles at several km/s in atmospheric conditions. Wear and tear is an issue but I assume by the time we have interplanetary spaceships we will also have advanced metallurgy enough to handle this. No need for relativistic speeds either, a 2kg projectile traveling at 3km/s will punch through a spaceship aft to stern and mission kill if not outright destroy it in one hit.

You dont need relativistic velocities to do massive damage, no, but for a railgun to be more than a knife in space you need more than 3km/s.
3km/s are snails pace for interplanetar combat which would be conducted at 1000km and further.

In that i'll search the story of where a russian sattelite was going to be in a 500km range of ISS and both control centers shat themself out of fear from a collision.

A range where a 3km/s mass driver would have a chance of hitting an enemy who knows that you are fighting at basically collision ranges.

Any kind of special warhead could also be propelled by railguns more efficiently since the ammo would not need its own propulsion system.

Except that the warhead doesnt have to survive a hundred or a thousand g's of acceleration, but only 10 or 20.
Making the warhead quite a bit cheaper.

Nonsense, weaponized lasers have existed since the 60's, we already have prototypes that can be mounted on planes and ships and they certainly don't have lenses in the tens of meters. Since diffraction occurs only when a laser passes particles they would keep focused much longer in the vacuum of space than in Earth's atmosphere and since the projectile travels at the speed of light they would have the shortest lead times and thus the highest effective range. If you want a weapon for long-range sniping you need a laser, not a missile.

Diffraction still limits laser range, as you cant focus them beyond some limit, the diffraction limit.
The distance at which you can focus your laser effectively (enough) is directly dependent on the lens/mirror diameter

You know that terrestric fighting ranges are infinitely short compared to space combat?

the AirBorneLaser system which has ~300km range with a 1 metre mirror, but 6 or 7 second dwell time to destroy a missle in which it has to keep the missle targetted forthat time to destroy it.

Range linearily increases with mirror radius, so for a somewhat usable 10000km range you'd need a 30 metre mirror version of the ABL.

You can maybe cut 30% of that because of better tech and no atmosphere, but that still leaves you with a 20 metre mirror.

For measely 10000km!
Not even one earth diameter
1/30th the distance to the moon
Against a 10e6 km "i bomb your cities to oblivion with mass drivers" range.

Btw thats a perfect application for mass drivers, nuking stationary targets from long range.

Yes, but your analysis doesn't correspond to reality. Missiles are for cheap disposable weapons buses or other vessels without the power supply for better weaponry. Railguns are for short- and mid-range combat, indirect fire against targets orbiting the same planetary body and delivering special warheads. Lasers are for long-range combat and point defense. Missiles in space would be a low tier weapon, not the overpowered magic bullet the guy I originally quoted claimed them to be.

With the bullet velocities you cited railguns really would be short range weapons, but lasers in turretable variations would also be very short range weapons.

Lasers would never be long range weapons, basic physics forbid it, they'd definitely not be long range sniper cannons you try to make them.



In laser range or against stationary targets missles are maybe an inferior weapon system.
But if you have to engage moving targets at really long range, use missles.
They only need simple, cheap ships and can be fired in giant amounts in short times, as they are not power dependent.

To fire big amounts of railgun projectiles you need time and/or big amounts of power, and they still have a high chance of being evaded or maybe even shot down (if the enemy has visuals on you, he sees where you are targetting and when you fire, so every bullet has a known fixed vector and is thus relatively easy to evade).


Lasers are good in their range, which is sadly pretty short and basic physics limited.

Railguns are good at any range if the target cant evade
(Static targets at long range, high projectile velocity at short range)

Missles are good (/cost efficient) against maneuvering targets at longer range because they can correct their course. Maybe railgun launch them to increase their effectivity. They are also ideal hit and run weapons.
Have a ship consisting only of VLS cells and an engine, fly in engagement range and drop a hundred missles at once. If the enemy point defense needs a second per missle but has to shoot down 200 missles in 100 seconds, it has a problem.
They are spray and pray weapons, yes.
But railguns arent any better in that regard, but have lower effective refire rate, as you cant just drop them.



Ninja Gazz:
Im not talking about game logic

Cornflakes_91 wrote:The projectile itself is still just a dumb block of metal and cant correct for any maneuvering of the target.

Same for rockets. Your point?

And modulating the propulsive power only makes sense for different kinds of payloads, you always want the highest speed/acceleration possible to minimise the enemy reaction time and maximise the impact energy.

Not for indirect fire. If your target is orbiting the same body as you are but hidden behind the horizon, it would be useful to put a projectile in a collision orbit. Being able to adjust the acceleration of the projectile on the fly allows for more precise adjustments to the final orbit and thus puts railguns ahead of rockets.

Depends very strongly on what kind of power sources you have available.
Also on the effective refire rate of the gun.
If you want to fire a 64 MJ projectile every second you have to lug around a 64 MW powerplant with your ship.

Nuclear powered sea vessels have reactors with output in the hundreds of MW. Current railgun prototypes have outputs in the range of 9 MJ, about equivalent to modern tank guns. Plans are for 40-50 MJ at 10 RPM, any ship-sized vessel would have more than enough power output for a railgun. Power would only be an issue if you had something too small for its own reactor, like a missile battery that you drop like a mine, which closes on the enemy and then deploys a swarm of missiles from short range.

With the difference that the dual stage variation needs less mass aboard your spaceship, has no energy requirements on launch which again reduces your ships mass

See above, railguns become more mass efficient as more ammo is stored, energy is only relevant on extremely small platforms.

Who is talking about HE warheads besides you?
they'd only be effective with a direct hit, as railgun bullets.

The guy I originally quoted claimed missiles would have massive killing power, when in reality common contemporary payloads (such as HE) would pale in comparison to kinetic options.

Fragmentation warheads would have a use in space warfare.
As short range shotgun.
The missle doesnt have to hit, just get close and hurl a spray of fragments in the enemies direction.
May doesnt do the same damage as a full sized railgun hit, but much harder to avoid than a railgun.

1) There is nothing preventing you from using fragmentation shells for railguns
2) Any weapon like that would be Kessler's nightmare and therefore highly situational

Radiation protection against nuke tipped missles is either unneeded or useless in the case of need.
Above some range they'd only warm your (already needed) basic radiation shielding, in case of a close miss the radiation would melt metric tons of armor.

Theres no shockwave, no, but also no atmosphere to absorb the radiation. (Which would cause most of the shockwave in the first place due to heating/rapid expansion of said atmosphere)

Yes, there is no atmosphere to absorb the radiation, the neutrons released by a nuke can travel for extreme distances in the vacuum of space, hence all military craft must take measures to address this problem. A single warhead taking out every vessel within a 50 mile radius through radiation poisoning is simply unacceptable and must be addressed if you want an effective military spacecraft.

Firing warheads from railguns has the big drawback that you must either limit the acceleration which results in either lower muzzle velocity or longer railguns.
You could also build warheads that survive the acceleration, but that would likely result in more costly warheads.

So it comes down to efficiency: building warheads that withstand higher G forces vs giving them expensive guidance and propulsion systems + outfitting your vessels to carry and fire a sufficiently large amount of missiles as well as store the necessary liquid fuel (which is by no means trivial). Not to mention the decrease in flexibility that comes with using multiple weapon systems (loading different types of ammo is easy, swapping out a currently unneeded missile battery not so much)

You dont need relativistic velocities to do massive damage, no, but for a railgun to be more than a knife in space you need more than 3km/s.
3km/s are snails pace for interplanetar combat which would be conducted at 1000km and further.

In that i'll search the story of where a russian sattelite was going to be in a 500km range of ISS and both control centers shat themself out of fear from a collision.

A range where a 3km/s mass driver would have a chance of hitting an enemy who knows that you are fighting at basically collision ranges.

You overestimate the range of space combat. Even at light speed it would take several minutes for a projectile to reach from Earth to Mars, let alone the delay in signal detection. You would have lead times of 5-40 minutes. Unless you have both FTL projectiles and FTL sensors you can forget about combat beyond 1 light second or so and that goes for railguns and missiles.

Except that the warhead doesnt have to survive a hundred or a thousand g's of acceleration, but only 10 or 20.
Making the warhead quite a bit cheaper.

See above regarding cost of more robust warheads vs missiles

Diffraction still limits laser range, as you cant focus them beyond some limit, the diffraction limit.
The distance at which you can focus your laser effectively (enough) is directly dependent on the lens/mirror diameter

You know that terrestric fighting ranges are infinitely short compared to space combat?

the AirBorneLaser system which has ~300km range with a 1 metre mirror, but 6 or 7 second dwell time to destroy a missle in which it has to keep the missle targetted forthat time to destroy it.

Range linearily increases with mirror radius, so for a somewhat usable 10000km range you'd need a 30 metre mirror version of the ABL.

You can maybe cut 30% of that because of better tech and no atmosphere, but that still leaves you with a 20 metre mirror.

For measely 10000km!
Not even one earth diameter
1/30th the distance to the moon
Against a 10e6 km "i bomb your cities to oblivion with mass drivers" range.

Btw thats a perfect application for mass drivers, nuking stationary targets from long range.

1) You're vastly overestimating the range of space combat again. To have any useful firing solution at 10000km you'd need to propel a projectile at what, 1000km/s? Forget it.
2) You oversimplify laser scaling. Effective range depends on the amount of energy projected, which is determined by spot size and the laser's power. Spot size depends on diffraction which depends in part on mirror size and in part on the wavelength of the laser. A 10m wide, 100nm UV laser running on 100MW could burn through a meter of graphite long before any projectile or missile could so much as come near the target. And because it travels at light speed it cannot be dodged, hence why it is the perfect weapon for long range sniping. The only thing that could even come close to this level of accuracy would be particle beams at near-FTL speed.

BTW, there is no such thing as a stationary target in space. Even satellites and space stations have maneuvering thrusters as otherwise they would be pushed out of their orbit by solar wind, etc.

With the bullet velocities you cited railguns really would be short range weapons, but lasers in turretable variations would also be very short range weapons.

Lasers would never be long range weapons, basic physics forbid it, they'd definitely not be long range sniper cannons you try to make them.



In laser range or against stationary targets missles are maybe an inferior weapon system.
But if you have to engage moving targets at really long range, use missles.
They only need simple, cheap ships and can be fired in giant amounts in short times, as they are not power dependent.

To fire big amounts of railgun projectiles you need time and/or big amounts of power, and they still have a high chance of being evaded or maybe even shot down (if the enemy has visuals on you, he sees where you are targetting and when you fire, so every bullet has a known fixed vector and is thus relatively easy to evade).


Lasers are good in their range, which is sadly pretty short and basic physics limited.

Railguns are good at any range if the target cant evade
(Static targets at long range, high projectile velocity at short range)

Missles are good (/cost efficient) against maneuvering targets at longer range because they can correct their course. Maybe railgun launch them to increase their effectivity. They are also ideal hit and run weapons.
Have a ship consisting only of VLS cells and an engine, fly in engagement range and drop a hundred missles at once. If the enemy point defense needs a second per missle but has to shoot down 200 missles in 100 seconds, it has a problem.
They are spray and pray weapons, yes.
But railguns arent any better in that regard, but have lower effective refire rate, as you cant just drop them.



Ninja Gazz:
Im not talking about game logic

Effective range in space is limited by both projectile travel and detection times, you simply cannot effectively engage targets more than a light second away with conventional weaponry because the lead times are so enormous. Even missiles are limited in their ability to react to enemy maneuvers through the delta V they carry and propelling projectiles to the speed necessary is simply not realistic with any technology we're likely to see within the next century or two. The only weapon with sufficient accuracy would be lasers and as you said yourself, those have their own limitations.

Missiles would be short range weapons delivered by expendable weapon buses with high efficiency low thrust engines which close in on the enemy before deploying their payload. The missiles themselves would use short warning times and superior TWR to close on the target before it can outrun them through superior delta V reserves and large numbers to overwhelm point defense. Any manned vessel would have a reactor by necessity, simply to power sensors, life support, etc. making railguns and lasers the superior choice, the former for close range fighting with superior sustained firepower and the latter for long range engagements with superior accuracy + point defense.

No Image Available wrote:Same for rockets. Your point?

im not talking about unguided rockets, though.

No Image Available wrote:Not for indirect fire. If your target is orbiting the same body as you are but hidden behind the horizon, it would be useful to put a projectile in a collision orbit. Being able to adjust the acceleration of the projectile on the fly allows for more precise adjustments to the final orbit and thus puts railguns ahead of rockets.

that assumes that you just cant modify the burn behaviour of your missles....

a missle also doesnt need the launch speed modifications because it can steer itself to its target, whereas a railgun cant.

the missle doesnt really care if the target is behind the horizon.

No Image Available wrote: propelling projectiles to the speed necessary is simply not realistic with any technology we're likely to see within the next century or two.

and thats why missles would be comparatively long range weaponry, they have no real change dependent on range.
throw them in the general direction of the enemy from outside laser range, let them coast into engagement range, ignite their drives.

they may be slower than lasers, but they can engage over ranges where you couldnt focus your laser or hit anything with a projectile.


power is also always a consideration.

why use a 100, 200 MW reactor when you can get away with 10 or 20?
mass is dV and acceleration, both is important.

No Image Available wrote: The guy I originally quoted claimed missiles would have massive killing power, when in reality common contemporary payloads (such as HE) would pale in comparison to kinetic options.

with the muzzle velocities you cited they would have exactly the same impact energy as their weight in TNT, with the difference that a missle has a higher potential precision compared to a mass driver round and thus is more likely of hitting weaker spots than the mass driver.

No Image Available wrote:2) Any weapon like that would be Kessler's nightmare and therefore highly situational

any space combat is kessler nightmare, so thats not really an argument.

No Image Available wrote: Yes, there is no atmosphere to absorb the radiation, the neutrons released by a nuke can travel for extreme distances in the vacuum of space, hence all military craft must take measures to address this problem. A single warhead taking out every vessel within a 50 mile radius through radiation poisoning is simply unacceptable and must be addressed if you want an effective military spacecraft.

you with your almost colliding craft all the time.

50 miles is almost collision in space.

im also not talking about neutron radiation.
gamma flashes arent healthy on short distances (like single digit kilometre distances)
not even for armor steel.

No Image Available wrote:BTW, there is no such thing as a stationary target in space. Even satellites and space stations have maneuvering thrusters as otherwise they would be pushed out of their orbit by solar wind, etc.

you know what i mean with stationary, not maneuverable enough to change its orbit significantly in reaction to incoming fire.

Cornflakes_91 wrote:im not talking about unguided rockets, though.

Then you don't know your subject matter because rockets are by definition unguided. If it has guidance it's a missile.

that assumes that you just cant modify the burn behaviour of your missles....

a missle also doesnt need the launch speed modifications because it can steer itself to its target, whereas a railgun cant.

the missle doesnt really care if the target is behind the horizon.

As above, missile != rocket.

and thats why missles would be comparatively long range weaponry, they have no real change dependent on range.
throw them in the general direction of the enemy from outside laser range, let them coast into engagement range, ignite their drives.

they may be slower than lasers, but they can engage over ranges where you couldnt focus your laser or hit anything with a projectile.

You don't just throw something into the general direction of the target and let it coast, that's not how orbital mechanics work. Just making an efficient planetary transfer would cost several km/s of delta-V, making an inefficient transfer (i.e. burn straight towards the target) would cost significantly more. Then you also need several km/s for evasive maneuvers so you don't get zapped and then some to account for evasive maneuvers of the target. If it is orbiting a planet it can simply arrange to be on the other side of the planet by the time you arrive, so you'd have to not only have dozens of km/s to perform your initial acceleration but twice that to perform an orbital insertion and catch up with the target and then some to match any plane changes the target makes. It would basically have to be a fully autonomous spacecraft to achieve interplanetary ranges.

power is also always a consideration.

why use a 100, 200 MW reactor when you can get away with 10 or 20?
mass is dV and acceleration, both is important.

Because miniaturization is difficult and expensive and it is easier to build a 500MW nuclear reactor than a 50MW one.

with the muzzle velocities you cited they would have exactly the same impact energy as their weight in TNT, with the difference that a missle has a higher potential precision compared to a mass driver round and thus is more likely of hitting weaker spots than the mass driver.

Those velocities are what we already have now, on Earth, where we are limited by atmospheric friction. Any space based system could easily propel projectiles to much higher velocities.

any space combat is kessler nightmare, so thats not really an argument.

Laser weapons vaporize their targets, they can burn out critical systems to mission kill a vessel while leaving the wreckage relatively intact. Seeing as the goal of any space combat would be to capture strategic assets such as planetary facilities, not making the space above it completely impassable to space travel would be a major consideration.

you with your almost colliding craft all the time.

50 miles is almost collision in space.

And when almost collision or collision makes the difference between victory and defeat it becomes important.

im also not talking about neutron radiation.
gamma flashes arent healthy on short distances (like single digit kilometre distances)
not even for armor steel.

Hence why measures must be taken to protect ships against radiation released by nuclear weapons. Your point?

you know what i mean with stationary, not maneuverable enough to change its orbit significantly in reaction to incoming fire.

No I don't know that, stationary means immobile. Your definition doesn't make sense in this context because given the warning times inherent to firing projectiles over interplanetary distances, even a bulky space station would be able to alter its position enough to evade your fire.

No Image Available wrote: As above, missile != rocket.

you are talking rockets, i was talking missles all the time

No Image Available wrote: Hence why measures must be taken to protect ships against radiation released by nuclear weapons. Your point?

i'd like to see the material that survives what basically is a nuke pressed against it.
with the energy that on earth causes the shockwave gets deposited directly into the hull.
link to read starting with "impulsive shock"

if you can make an armor that survives that, your lasers are pointless too.

No Image Available wrote: No I don't know that, stationary means immobile. Your definition doesn't make sense in this context because given the warning times inherent to firing projectiles over interplanetary distances, even a bulky space station would be able to alter its position enough to evade your fire.

like the ISS is "mobile" in the sense that it has in the order of 2m/s dV per month for stationkeeping?

you also bend your arguments as you like, you either have almost collisions or dozends of light minutes distance.

there are distances that are between those, y'know?
like, your one light second.

No Image Available wrote: You don't just throw something into the general direction of the target and let it coast, that's not how orbital mechanics work. Just making an efficient planetary transfer would cost several km/s of delta-V, making an inefficient transfer (i.e. burn straight towards the target) would cost significantly more. Then you also need several km/s for evasive maneuvers so you don't get zapped and then some to account for evasive maneuvers of the target. If it is orbiting a planet it can simply arrange to be on the other side of the planet by the time you arrive, so you'd have to not only have dozens of km/s to perform your initial acceleration but twice that to perform an orbital insertion and catch up with the target and then some to match any plane changes the target makes. It would basically have to be a fully autonomous spacecraft to achieve interplanetary ranges.

i played enough KSP to know that that doesnt work for interplanetar, but im not talking interplanetar.

im talking for distances over a few lightseconds at most, in the gavity well of some planet.

pre-accelerate the missle with some mass driver or as a multi stage missle, let it coast towards the intercept point and then ignite.

Cornflakes_91 wrote:

No Image Available wrote: As above, missile != rocket.

you are talking rockets, i was talking missles all the time

No you weren't

its also likely that a solid fueled dumbfire rocket would be more energy and space efficient compared to a railgun, as you dont have to mount giant capacitor banks and a power supply to recharge them
but basically only a tube on your ship.

We were talking specifically about dumbfire rockets so stop backpedaling on your arguments.

i'd like to see the material that survives what basically is a nuke pressed against it.
with the energy that on earth causes the shockwave gets deposited directly into the hull.
link to read starting with "impulsive shock"

if you can make an armor that survives that, your lasers are pointless too.

From your link:

A one kiloton nuclear detonation produces 4.19e12 joules of energy. One kilometer away from the detonation point defines a sphere with a surface area of about 12,600,000 square meters (the increase in surface area with the radius of the sphere is another way of stating the Inverse Square law). Dividing reveals that at this range the energy density is approximately 300 kilojoules per square meter. Under ideal conditions this would be enough energy to vaporize 25 grams or 10 cubic centimeters of aluminum (in reality it won't be this much due to conduction and other factors).

Now from the same link regarding Neutron radiation:

A one megaton Enhanced-Radiation warhead (AKA "neutron bomb") will deliver a threshold fatal neutron dose to an unshielded human at 300 kilometers.

You're going on about how 500km is collision range so tell me, what is more relevant to a spacecraft, the thing that kills at one kilometer or the thing that kills at hundreds of kilometers distance?

like the ISS is "mobile" in the sense that it has in the order of 2m/s dV per month for stationkeeping?

The ISS uses 2m/s because that is all that's needed. If bombardment from your 10e6 km away is a concern it would be easy to mount stronger maneuvering thrusters. You don't need that much of a change either, over multiple orbits tens of m/s is enough to produce hundreds of km of change in position. Hence why targeting any spacebased object from that kind of distance is unfeasible with anything not traveling near, at or faster than light.

you also bend your arguments as you like, you either have almost collisions or dozends of light minutes distance.

there are distances that are between those, y'know?
like, your one light second.

You're the one bending and backpedaling all the time. First we explicitly talk about rockets, then as you lose that argument you've suddenly been talking about missiles all along. First you talk about mass drivers with 10e6km range and now its just one light second.

And in case you haven't noticed, we're talking about space weapons, i.e. things that destroy other things by colliding with them. Near collisions are to be expected on a maneuvering target and a nuke that can kill on a near miss is something to be accounted for, because when it zips by and kills all your crew through radiation poisoning you can't just point out "but 300km is nothing in space".

i played enough KSP to know that that doesnt work for interplanetar, but im not talking interplanetar.

im talking for distances over a few lightseconds at most, in the gavity well of some planet.

pre-accelerate the missle with some mass driver or as a multi stage missle, let it coast towards the intercept point and then ignite.

Even one light second is well outside the effective range of projectile weapons. To have any chance of hitting the target your projectile would need to accelerate to something like 30000km/s, that ain't happening.

What i was wondering:

How diverse will missle launch systems actually be in LT?

Will we only get the cannon-like launchers which incidentally shoot missles instead of shells?

Or will there be fixed canisters, semi-internal vertical launch tubes, simple hold pylons?

Cornflakes_91 wrote:What i was wondering:

How diverse will missile launch systems actually be in LT?

Will we only get the cannon-like launchers which incidentally shoot missiles instead of shells?

Or will there be fixed canisters, semi-internal vertical launch tubes, simple hold pylons?

I hope that we get both types depending on how research progresses. There could easily be pros and cons for each type of launcher.

The canister type could have the advantage of launching a volley of missiles at a target and the missiles may be less likely to all be picked off by an anti-missile system (AMS). These missiles may deliver a smaller payload to prevent the destruction of one missile from destroying the rest of the group.

The semi-internal vertical launch tubes could have the advantage that each missile may contain a larger payload because the spacing per missile could be set to a larger distance. This type of launching system may fair worse against an AMS equipped ship since each missile is coming at the ship in single file (In theory, the pattern could be changed).

Canister type may be easier to target because of it's size on the hull of the ship. The semi-internal vertical launch tubes on the other hand may be more difficult to target since the size of the launcher is a single missile port (per launcher).

I don't understand what 'simple hold pylons' means.

BFett wrote: The canister type could have the advantage of launching a volley of missiles at a target and the missiles may be less likely to all be picked off by an anti-missile system (AMS). These missiles may deliver a smaller payload to prevent the destruction of one missile from destroying the rest of the group.

Why should they always fire in volleys?
It could as well just be a canister with three or four AMRAAM equivalent missles, with the canister just being there for stealth/protection/fast reloading.

BFett wrote: The semi-internal vertical launch tubes could have the advantage that each missile may contain a larger payload because the spacing per missile could be set to a larger distance. This type of launching system may fair worse against an AMS equipped ship since each missile is coming at the ship in single file (In theory, the pattern could be changed).

why should a VLS only be a single egress port?
On modern naval vessels VLS are arranged in pretty big banks.

BFett wrote: I don't understand what 'simple hold pylons' means.

link
A simple external mount point for missles without any fancyness around it.