quote:
That 10 billion increase in sensor power seems odd. It may be that the sensor power increases the closer the missile get to it's target but I don't think the increase is a simple multiplication process. If it's true that no wonder missiles don't miss, that's one big *** target!
Its only the image that gets bigger. Imagine looking at the surface of the moon from here. Now fly down to the moon and go into orbit. See how much bigger the moon looks now?
quote:
No matter what the sensor or ECM device is the time a missile takes to reach its target will have as big an effect, if not more, than the tracking device on how effective ECM is.
Who cares how long it takes the missile to cruise over to where you are? Once it gets close (<1 square) is when the seeking really comes into play. The missile keeps adjusting its aim until it hits. So there is essentially zero time to target.
quote:
If it takes 4 times as long for a missile to reach it's target compared to a beam then the target has an advantage, if only in maneuver.
Of course. But once the missile catches you, it hits.
quote:
Ten billion is a bit crazy. At the most energy would fall off at something like the distance to the forth power, but that all depends of the detecting beams emission lobe. A very tight bean will not lose intensity as quick, so to say something like ten billion is really pointless.
If energy fell off at r^4, then the power increase would be 100,000,000,000,000,000,000.
Energy falls off by the distance
squared. Since the missile (@ 1km) is 100,000 times closer to the target than the ship (@ range 4, 100,000kM) its sensor strength is 100,000 ^2 times as strong.
Yes, a tight beam dosen't lose energy as quick, but unless the beam is smaller than the target, you still get 10 billion times the power when you're 100,000 times as close.
quote:
There is a lot of people saying stuff like, "well if you jam me, then I will just loch unto your jammer."
I think I was the only one who said that, and you're right, it dosen't really apply.
quote:
Missiles are closer, so they do get some advantage there. Still an entire ship has a whole bank of generators, at least thousands (but not ten billion) of times more space for computers. On top of that, they have crew that can monitor the system to quickly change strategies if things seem to fail.
Yes, but not just
someadvantage. The ship can't compensate for the 10 billion times greater resolution & power of the missile when its a few kilometers away from the target.
That's why we sent out the voyager space probes.
Jupiter is 600,000,000KM away at minimum.
When voyager 1 got to 700,000KM from jupiter (at closest approach), it was approximately 1000 times closer that we are.
It therefore got 1000^2 = 1 Million times the resolution from it's bity cameras than we would get from earth with the same camera.
A million friggin times, and it was just trying to fly by. The entire planet earth can't overcome the million times improvement of a bitty 722Kg spacecraft that was just flying by, most of a million kilometers away.
We'd have to have a thousand meter telescope in orbit to see what Voyager 1 saw. And better optics are
not going to shrink a scope that size to reasonable proportions.
Thats why probes are used. Thats why missiles get incredible vision compared to the ships.
quote:
A distinction also needs to be made between making this MODDABLE and putting it into the basic SE4 set
I agree. The more moddability, the better.
I'm just trying to reason out the "Seekers always hit" idea.
[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 03 May 2001).]