Ship size vs. weapons

BKrani · #1 January 31st, 2001, 02:47 AM

quote:
Originally posted by apache:
1) There is no such thing as ballistics in space (vacuum, no gravity effects). All standard weapons will travel straight until they hit something else. I believe the range of weapons in the game is taken to be a range at which most ships cannot easily dodge them, rather than the point at which the beam dissipates or the particle has gone astray, since the beam will never dissipate, nor will the particle go astray.

Purely my opinion of course but, I'd always imagined that advanced, long-range, space based ballistics revolved around Navigation computers moving the ships in evasive patterns vs. Fire computers attempting to predict just where the target ship will be when the shells/beams arrive.

Depending on the range at which battles are fought, the delay between launching an attack, and it's arrival at the target could be measures in minutes, down to nothing. At 300,000 km (approx earth -> moon distance) range, even beams travelling at light-speed will take about 1 sec to reach their target. A ship capable of accelerating at 30Gs could be 300m away from the original location by the time the beam arrives. Slower munitions such as DU shells and missiles would presumably take longer.

Cheers.

apache · #2 January 31st, 2001, 06:42 AM

Yes, there sure are particles and gravity effects in space. However, both of these become much more irrelevant the farther you get from a gravity source.
The gravitational force is proportional to the distance from the gravity source, squared. Considering that nearly all combat takes place in empty sectors, or quite a few squares from a planet, we can ignore gravity effects. Also, based on the fact that gravity is totally ignored in the game, aside from black holes, weapons, and sensors, we can again figure that this kind of thing is not applicable to the game.
Now, particles are far and few between in space. You bet the Earth is hit by a lot of particles. But based on its size, and due to the fact that its a magnet, this is to be expected. However, atmospheric particles get much farther apart the farther from the earth they are. The Mean Free Path (MFP) between particles in the outer atmosphere at about 400 km can be on the order of 10m. This means that some object 9.9m wide could infact slip through any two particles completely unaffected as it flys around. Now note that the radius of the Earth is about 6000 km. So, we are talking less than a square away from the planet here, the particle density is so low that a small satellite can pass through it with very little atmospheric drag.
Now, the farther out you go, the less frequent particles are encountered. The truth is that any projectile weapon encountering these minute particles would have negligeable effects on the trajectory.
And beam attenuation is nonexistent unless it hits a significant amount of particles. In the atmosphere, beam attenuation is most severe, obviously, in the lower atmosphere, where the density is highest. However, in space, beam attenuation goes to approximately nil, because there are so few particles to actually run into. And even the particles that are encountered are not going to affect the beam enough over the distances encountered in space combat within the game.
Now, the reason there are ranges in the game is exactly for the reason BKrani said. By the time the beam/projectile gets there, the ship will have been able to move out of the way. But then again, a ship moving with 30 Gs of acceleration puts a force on the crew roughly equivalent to getting hit by a car going 70 mph. On the other hand, its safe to make the assumption that the propulsion systems in the game are based on non-inertial principles, so the crew would not feel a thing if the ship could move that fast.

[This message has been edited by apache (edited 31 January 2001).]

BKrani · #3 January 31st, 2001, 07:06 AM

quote:
Originally posted by apache:
However, in space, beam attenuation goes to approximately nil, because there are so few particles to actually run into.

Not quite - though I might be talking a cross angles to yourself. Over the distances we're referring to, beam weapons will probably spread a little. I'm not sure just what 'X'th century focusing techniques are like but it's highly unlikely that the focussing is 100% perfect. Over a few 100,000 kms, even at a tiny percentage of a degree misfocus, the beam will spread until it's inefectual - eventually. Otherwise anyone with a simple communications laser and a good aim could drill a hole through a planet on the other side of the universe - eventually.

quote:
But then again, a ship moving with 30 Gs <snip> On the other hand, its safe to make the assumption that the propulsion systems in the game are based on non-inertial principles, so the crew would not feel a thing if the ship could move that fast.

I wasn't thinking of non-inertial systems, inertial dampers or gravity polarisers. Though when we're talking future techs here so who knows... However, what I was thinking when I mentioned 30Gs was advanced G suits, auxillary blood pumps, drugs to promote conciousness etc. I suspect that 30Gs for short times with advanced medical techniques is about the limit of what HUMANS can endure force wise. Any more and we start to suffer serious internal tissue damage.

What other races might be able to withstand is anyones guess.

However, once you start to include non-inertial systems, then beam combat outside of the milisecond range becomes infeasible. Without acceleration limits, any ship could immediately accelerate out of the way of incomming fire (assuming they knew it was comming). Acutally, they could probably accelerate out of combat were this the case. Combat timeing would then likely become one of aiming & firing before the target can react. On that basis, I don't favour non-inertial ideas. Inertial dampers maybe. They imply a limit to what interia can be absorbed. And gravity polarisers work in proportion to whatever local gravity fields are around. All speculation anyway...

Cheers.

Aub · #4 January 31st, 2001, 07:21 AM

quote:
Originally posted by BKrani:
...However, once you start to include non-inertial systems, then beam combat outside of the milisecond range becomes infeasible. Without acceleration limits, any ship could immediately accelerate out of the way of incomming fire (assuming they knew it was comming)...

Hmm, according to the Einstein there is no way they can know it is coming. Information cannot travel faster than light -- or it can cause all kinds of temporal paradoxes.

You can still try to predict what the enemy ship will do however, e.g. by observing its actions and trying to reverse-engineer its navigational software

Aub

BKrani · #5 January 31st, 2001, 08:13 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Aub:
Information cannot travel faster than light -- or it can cause all kinds of temporal paradoxes.

But don't forget that this is just a game... Repeat after me - 'Just a Game'!. Seriously (or at least, a little more seriously), in this simulation, we've got vessels traveling most of the way across a system in less than 0.1 of a year. Not to mention, traveling the vast distances between systems in a fraction of that time so there's probably some f.t.l. travel.

That said, I realised that what I said earlier was a little problematic. I mean, being able to tell that a beam weapon is incomming stretches the boundaries of belief a little.

Beam weapons (visible spectrum lasers that is) are relatively easy to defend against though. You just need a mirror finish. Proton and neutron beams are really particle weapons and probably move at a much slower speed (relatively). I acknowledge though that I'm not an expert, or even well read on the subject of these types of systems.

Cheers.

Puke · #6 January 31st, 2001, 08:28 AM

oh yeah, bring reason to super science. let me be the devils advocate for a sec here (like i really look for permission):

mirror finish will reflect all kinds of lasers.. but good luck having any kind of stealth with that. i remember some star trek quote from the klingons... "i respect the federation, who else has the balls to paint their war ships WHITE and put RUNNING LIGHTS on them." of course i also recall a quote from a Finnish sniper in WWII "I like fighting the Russians. They fight standing up." Gawd DARN, you have to respect the Fins, winter 1939-1940 saw saw some of the greatest heroism in the history of man.

i digress. as far as FTL information travel, we are doing it today (in the lab anyway) with intertangled pairs of photons and funkey quantum mechanics that I dont even pretend to understand. I am sure I can dredge up some links if anyone is interested. I dont think it invalidates Einstienean (spelling?) realitivity, but I think the way most people view realitivity is generally flawed. granted, matter acquires mass as it accelerates toward the speed of light, but FTL travel in the SEIV case involves neat fiction like space 'folding' or wormholes (covered in current understanding of quantum mechanics.. anyone familiar with the principals used in _CONTACT_?)

shoot, im rambling.. i will cut this short here.

Aub · #7 January 31st, 2001, 08:30 AM

quote:
Originally posted by BKrani:
But don't forget that this is just a game... Repeat after me - 'Just a Game'!. ...

'Just a Game'. 'Just a Game'.

Ok, I realize that. But the calculations involving the distance from Earth to Moon and how much acceleration a human body can withstand sounded soooo serious! So I could not resist the temptation

On a more serious note, indeed, I strongly believe that each addition/modification in the game should be cosidered from the gameplay point of view first (what does it add to the game? does it throw the balance off?) and only then from the point of view of "realism" (whatever it is). People tend to forget that it's 'Just a Game' so often.

Aub