this isn't necessarily to refute anything said so far, but i was just thinking...

nukes would be less destructive in space. most of the area/volume affected by a nuke is the result of super-heating the air around ground zero, causing it to expand rapidly (a concussion wave). but there's no air in space, which means any concussion wave would have significantly less interrial power, and therefore less destructive force. you might even have to hit something dead-on to really do much damage with a nuke's direct power (assuming that something is built for combat - today's space shuttles probably wouldn't fare well in the outter reaches of a nuclear explosion).

...at least that sort of explains why i've seen the Galatica get hit by nukes multiple times and survive.

I wonder how much larger an area of space would be affected by a nuke in a vaccuum, though. The energy expended would have no air resistance or friction to slow/absorb the speed until it hit a planet or asteroid or something else. In atmosphere, all that super-heated air eventually consumes the energy of the bomb, thus stopping the radius of the blast. But in space...that would be one hell of a blast zone! I'm probably wrong on some point but it is still interesting to think about.

That's true, and some technologies would really change things drastically, like instantaneous warping through space instead of linear travel. You'd have ships jumping around each other trying to get a shot. However, if we go too far in that direction you end up with basically magic tricks, and anything is possible (that old Arthur C. Clarke line about high technology). If we don't project too far ahead, we can explore ideas about faster speeds and longer distances that might at least be possible one day.

The one thing I think is a safe assumption, is that as speeds increase, distance between opponents will increase along with it. Think about the change in dogfighting tactics between WWI biplane gun duels within spitting distance, and over-the-horizon targeting with modern jet fighters. The tactics changed because the speeds, weapons, and sensor tech changed, increasing the distance of engagements. I don't see why that wouldn't happen to an even greater degree in space. It just makes no sense that ships would be capable of interplanetary or interstellar travel speeds, but they'd be less than a light second or two distance from each other (which is REALLY CLOSE in space) during combat.



That's true, although conserving mass wouldn't matter if it means you win, and the other guy is a plasma cloud.



To target a beam, you need to know where the target is. You can't know that, when the distance gets beyond a few light minutes. A missile can be fired semi-blind in the general direction of the target, and home in if it's faster than the target. Taking advantage of a beam weapon's speed means you have to be very close (in terms of open space)... just a few light seconds away. The enemy might be able to do a lot of things before you get that close, like sending a seeker missile your way, or just flushing all the toilets to create a cloud of debris in your path. At those speeds, you really don't want to hit anything.



Well, I see it more like modern submarine warfare instead of a close-range cannon duel. Why give up the advantage of stealth? Distance equals stealth in space, or at least delayed response, due to the lightspeed barrier.

On the subject of nuke damage... if you can get the nuke close enough to the target, a better use for it might be to pump a one-shot X-ray laser and cause some serious localized damage. That would be a hybrid between the beam-weapon-on-a-ship approach, and a missile warhead, with the advantage that a fast missile can get past the lightspeed "fog of war" and find the target.

regarding your previous message, i had all the same thoughts, i just didn't feel like explaining them in any significant detail.

you seem to have a good mind for hard SF - have you stumbled upon my discussion, Bussard ramjets, cryonic stasis and exoplanetary colonization? at the moment we've digressed into a lengthy theoretical discussion of relativity, but it sounds like it might generally be right up your alley.

Dystopic, thanks for the heads-up! I'll check that thread out. BTW, here's some info I found on Wicki about the nuke-pumped laser idea. Apparently the U.S. military actually tried a few tests before the A-bomb testing ban kicked in, without getting very far. The Soviets were looking into it too. It's still an interesting idea, and IIRC, Niven used it in his "Footfall" alien invasion novel:

Yea thats pretty funny. As far as Babylon5 is concearned, two nukes will kill one of their largest ships, and they were not even direct impact. Although the nukes were embedded in Asteroids.

A missile can be fired semi-blind in the general direction of the target, and home in if it's faster than the target.

I missed my reply to that... I was gonna say a missile is vunerable to being shot down or decieved with countermeasures but not so for a beam weapon. Missiles were not used at all in Babylon5, i dunno why, but they would have been of little use in the Earth Mimbari war. Any Terran ship firing a nuke missile would have to use 'dumbfire' missiles since the Mimbari can disrupt guidance systems. Dumbfire nuke missiles would require close range to be effective and would therefore probably kill the user as well. Suicide nuke fighters on the other hand would be able to evade enemy fire and persue targets making them supremely lethal to the Mimbari fleet.

Also, making a small missile capable of more than the speeds we're assuming ships would be travelling in combat is entirely ineffective. The missile would be so massive that a ship could only carry two or three shots.

Reasoning: Missile is better because ships travel too fast, therefore distances are too far for optical or other electromagnetic targeting ship-to-ship. Ships travel too fast means they're still travelling basically at cruising speeds. Missile now has to travel faster than cruising speeds to hit a target moving at cruising speed.

ROFL, Mystik.   

drrider

Well, it works for current jet fighter combat (missiles traveling faster than the "mothership"), so it's not unreasonable to assume that this would extrapolate to future space combat.

There are a few other factors to consider besides speed, like G-force and radiation hardening. Unless we start assuming magic technologies like inertia-free fields, a missile can accelerate and turn with forces that would crush an organic life form. That's one reason why we're probably close to getting the fighter jock out of the cockpit with our current air forces.

So, stick a missile in an electromagnetically accelerated railgun on the main ship. That keeps the missile size small, since you don't need much of an engine except for final approach maneuvering. You're using the huge power generating ability of the main ship. Boost the railgun-launched missile up to insane speed (and G-forces) that way, and give it the ability to turn fast enough to plaster organic life into jelly on final approach, to counter any last minute evasion or countermeasures. Stick a nuke-pumped X-ray laser on the front... or just a simple area affect nuke. There are packages like that, which you'd want delivered a LONG way away from the main ship.

The Fighter Jet to Spacecraft comparison doesn't work because we're comparing roughly the speed of sound (for the missile, maybe Mach 4) with near (or, in fun situations, over) Lightspeed. The amount of energy required for these speeds is so close to (or is actually) impossible to produce it's not even funny.
To use a railgun-accelerated missile may make sense, but F=MA. The amount you want to accelerate this missile is going to make a huge force regardless of the mass, and it's going to screw with the rest of the ship.

Also, please note: One, we're OT, perhaps we should create a separate thread, and two, I don't mean to say long-distance combat isn't possible, only that short-range combat is equally possible.

Oh yea, the ship would loose speed when firing the missile - mass displacement.

Can't think of it like "lose speed" here. You have to acknowledge that it's "accelerating in another direction." If the missile shoots straight ahead, the two will be the same. Otherwise the ship's course will change.

And not a one of ya talked about, even though it's a TBS game, Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic.

Great game, still has a thriving community, of modders and players, and the graphics are still beautiful to me after all this time. I fell into the Starcraft path for a while but just found that strategy should not be dictated by speed. RTS are fun, but just not my foray. I find RTS to be exactly on the same tier as FPS, cuz it's really a matter of hotkeys and accuracy, more than thought-induced strategy.

Dat's jus' my 2 cents

If your using a mag tube to launch a missile ahead then it will definately slow the ship down. If you fired a missile with its own power source that dousn't rebound off the ship then it will not change the ships velocity at all.