Capital ship warfare

[pellaeons_scion]

Greetings all

I am new to this board but have been reading the posts with interest. As someone who loves the mammoth size and power of the capital warships in starwars, particularly the ISD and VSD, I have been always puzzled by one thing.

That thing being actual ship to ship engagements.

I guess what Id like to ask, is if anyone has an idea on how these battles would be conducted. Would they be similar to WW1 and WW2 surface ship warfare, with the main participants exchanging massive broadsides?
If so, considering that each ISD battery consists of 5 guns, would their be an overall weapons officer acting as firecontrol?

Also, when engaging targets, would those broadsides be simultaneous or staggered to reduce recoil. The reason I ask this is I was thinking of the firepower of the heavy guns of a capital ship, and how much recoil it would produce. Wouldnt it put a massive strain on the ships hull integrity?

Any answers are welcome. I guess the real reason Im curious about this is that the movies only ever seem to show light turbolasers and blaster cannon in action, which is more like the anti-aircraft guns of a warship ( fast fire rates, independant targeting, no synchronicity in fire control etc)

thanks

[Master of Ossus]

Battles in SW are almost certainly going to take place at very long range. The two capital ships will stand off against each other and bombard their enemies with weapons fire. That fire could be done either with all of a capital ship's weapons at once, or as a series of shots fired independently (they have set up "walls of fire" in several novels, indicating that they were firing all of their weapons simultaneously, but in RotJ we can clearly see them firing individual weapons). In addition, weapons can be synchronized (generally done for planetary bombardment), or individually (done when constant fire is needed over a long period of time).

Basically, there is a lot of flexibility in SW capital ship design. The primary goal appears to be to get your enemy in front of you so that all of your weapons (except the comparatively few rear-facing ones) can hit it at once. If you can do that, you will win the battle assuming parity of forces. All of SW capital ship combat is based around bringing the most weapons to bear at one time, and to that end all tactics in SW are based.

[Kuja]

And fleets are constantly forced to change formation to get the max amount of firepower.

[Master of Ossus]

And fleets are constantly forced to change formation to get the max amount of firepower.

Fleet combat has slightly different tactics involved. Basically you want to spread out your vulnerable but important capital ships, like Interdictors. Such ships are strategic assets, and you don't want your enemies to be able to destroy them all in once place or trap them so they can be destroyed individually. You want to concentrate your larger ships, and keep picket ships as a screen between them and enemy starfighters.

[pellaeons_scion]

My thanks for such a prompt response

So in essence, whilst the cap ships are capable of engaging with simulatenous broadsides, they would be more likely to keep up a sustained fire approach of staggered fire to constantly keep the enemies shields under stress.

I can see how that would be more advantageous as a constant attack is more likely to find and exploit a weakpoint in the targets defenses, and then perhaps once a shield facing is down, then a commander might switch to full broadside to maximise damage?

Im still trying to picture what it would look like. Anyone know of a CGI movie or other picture evidence of this? It would be nice to see it and get a visual image for when Im writing fanfics or RPG's etc.

[Kuja]

sadly, GL has been lack in showing CapShip combat

[Master of Ossus]

Mmmm... actually, shields seem to have more trouble stopping simultaneous damage. Officers are more likely to move in firing broadsides, then switch to staggered fire once an enemy's shields have dropped so as to waste as little firepower as possible. Against smaller ships, staggered fire is usually sufficient to knock them down, anyway, and you don't usually have time to synchronise fire during combat with light ships.

[pellaeons_scion]

*nods*

That also makes sense using overwhelming firepower in one short instant to burn out the shields.

I guess once a ships shields are down, you can pretty much leave your gunners to lay waste to the target, stripping it of vital components etc in short order. Also it would be much harder for the enemies damage control teams to repair damage and fires because the damage would be in numerous places.

What about torpedoes and missiles. I have read various sites about this and most seem to agree that they would have little to no place in large scale warfare. I always thought that they may have been used as a decoy tactic, or to feel out an enemies weakpoints in the hope that one gets through.

Hm. So many CGI films made where Star trek is the main feature. Makes one want to learn how to do it just to adress the imbalance

[Master of Ossus]

*nods*

That also makes sense using overwhelming firepower in one short instant to burn out the shields.

I guess once a ships shields are down, you can pretty much leave your gunners to lay waste to the target, stripping it of vital components etc in short order. Also it would be much harder for the enemies damage control teams to repair damage and fires because the damage would be in numerous places.

What about torpedoes and missiles. I have read various sites about this and most seem to agree that they would have little to no place in large scale warfare. I always thought that they may have been used as a decoy tactic, or to feel out an enemies weakpoints in the hope that one gets through.

Hm. So many CGI films made where Star trek is the main feature. Makes one want to learn how to do it just to adress the imbalance

Exactly on everything above.

In regards to missiles, capital ships use missiles against other capital ships in a very similar manner to how they use their other weapons. They fire them all at once, usually at one shield generator in an attempt to overload it. This is only different with the YV, in which case they spread the missiles out to avoid the Dovin-basal singularities. Once a particular part of the shield is breached, additional firepower is fired towards that area.

Against starfighters, usually capital ship missiles are wasted firepower because generally laser cannons are more than enough to destroy them. However, when forced to use missiles on starfighters, capital ships tend to either fire them towards a small group of enemy starfighters, in which case they are detonated a short distance from them in an effort to destroy multiple fighters at once, or they are fired one to a ship in an effort to ensure that that starfighter is utterly destroyed by the blast.

Against picket ships, missiles are generally reserved until the ship's shields are already down, after which a small number of missiles are used to destroy critical areas of the ship.

Starfighters use missiles almost exclusively against unshielded capital ships, or ones that have lost their shields. They fire for critical areas like the bridge, hangar bays, or turbolaser batteries in the hopes of dealing considerable damage to the enemy ship with a minimum expenditure of ammunition (missiles are very expensive). If forced to fire against a shielded target, they will generally fire two missiles at once, with one slightly ahead of the other. This is in an effort to knock the shields down momentarily with the first shot so the second one can sneak through. Most capital ships, however, can easily ward off these attacks, anyway, with their powerful shields and armor. In addition, starfighters must get as close as they can to capital ships they are attacking before they fire to try and minimize the chances that the enemy ship will be able to intercept their missiles with point-defense lasers.

[Kuja]

And manuevering close to a capship will likely get you killed, which is why fighters v capships is always a desperate situation (common in the rebellion)

[Bob The Great]

I was under the impression that heavy jamming between capital ships made maximum-range engagements almost a blind crapshoot, forcing the ships to close to a distance at which they could burn through the jamming.

Mr Bean posted an explanation that I thought was quiet good on http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... ming#68619 thread (qoted below).

[quote=Mr Bean]Any take an ISD, Drawn a 10 KM Circlue around it, On its lower models of jamming thats basicly what happens the ISD *Grows in signal size and because of the way SW ECM works that Signal can be *aimed any which way, In other words that *Sphere could be centered on the ship, projected behind it, to the sides or whatnot

When jamming heavy SW ECM actual warps space/time somewhat, propertly messing with controls but on the flip side, creating a 50-400Km sized Sphere that only Visual Sensors can pentrate, everything from Radio/subspace/Hyperswave sensors are complete blocked out

Why most SW ships shoot at LS range is because the jamming on them is so sever that a ship can make a sensor shadow 400 KMs sized and your aming for a 2 KM ship in a 100 KM, your bascily firing blind, and even if you DO hit, you won't know unless you have drones/fighters up thier spoting for you
[/quote]

So, it seems to me that missiles would actually be the preferred weapon for long-range, given the jamming of line-of-sight weapons. Missiles can adjust their flight path on their way to the target (quite well, as seen in AOTC) and while they would be vulnerable to the jamming, pure visual sensors could guide them in to a point where even their small sensors could burn through it. Of course, long-range missiles may be much easier to shoot down, given their long travel times, so they would not be a replacement for turbo-lasers; just a harassing tactic untill the ships could close the distance, and nullify the jamming. Thoughts?

[Bob The Great]

ok, let's try this link again. The other one got screwed up. Also my quote didn't make it through, and I have no idea why. Darn this lack of edit! Darn it to Heck!

go here for Mr Bean's post.

[AL]

I was under the impression that heavy jamming between capital ships made maximum-range engagements almost a blind crapshoot, forcing the ships to close to a distance at which they could burn through the jamming.

Mr Bean posted an explanation that I thought was quiet good on http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... ming#68619 thread (qoted below).

Any take an ISD, Drawn a 10 KM Circlue around it, On its lower models of jamming thats basicly what happens the ISD *Grows in signal size and because of the way SW ECM works that Signal can be *aimed any which way, In other words that *Sphere could be centered on the ship, projected behind it, to the sides or whatnot

When jamming heavy SW ECM actual warps space/time somewhat, propertly messing with controls but on the flip side, creating a 50-400Km sized Sphere that only Visual Sensors can pentrate, everything from Radio/subspace/Hyperswave sensors are complete blocked out

Why most SW ships shoot at LS range is because the jamming on them is so sever that a ship can make a sensor shadow 400 KMs sized and your aming for a 2 KM ship in a 100 KM, your bascily firing blind, and even if you DO hit, you won't know unless you have drones/fighters up thier spoting for you

So, it seems to me that missiles would actually be the preferred weapon for long-range, given the jamming of line-of-sight weapons. Missiles can adjust their flight path on their way to the target (quite well, as seen in AOTC) and while they would be vulnerable to the jamming, pure visual sensors could guide them in to a point where even their small sensors could burn through it. Of course, long-range missiles may be much easier to shoot down, given their long travel times, so they would not be a replacement for turbo-lasers; just a harassing tactic untill the ships could close the distance, and nullify the jamming. Thoughts?

I think that is excellent and makes great sense. I would say most cs combat will take place as the two opposing ships near each other. I wonder to if this could be why cs have a hard time hitting fighters. Not because they lack point def weaponry but because a small fighter uses its own ecm devices and james a certain number of enemy guns lined up on it.

[Knife]

I would imagine tatics like a modified cross the T, for battlegroups and the usual flanking type manuvers to include pinchers but in a 3D enviroment for large multiple taskforce engagments.

The missile problem in SW is a damned if you do and damned if you don't thing. If you launch your missiles at long range, the target has ample time to dodge, jam, or shoot the missile. If its done at close range, then the jamming is stronger, and the launching vessel comes into range of the weapons of the target ship.
This is probably why starfighters can carry missiles and torpedos, too spread out the launch capability, not to mention attack vectors. This would increase the probability of a missile to reach its target. That would also explain the large role fighters have in SW, though they are not a huge threat to capships. Large formations of dedicated attack craft like the TIE bomber or Y wing to deliever the missiles and the others to protect or destroy the attack craft.

[Mr Bean]

Indeed, after emailing a few Lucus people about how SW jamming works and why we often see battles as such close range, then taking a quick drive an talking with one of my Navy EW buddies(EW's are the guys in the backseat who running the jamming equipment on fighters) to get a more in depth technical prospective of jamming in general then a email or two more I was able to devople a picture of how SW jamming works(Note the Figures are pure scalling, there is little EU mentioning or Movie mentioning of Jamming besides ANH Trench run)

Anyway thats why the avarage SW battle is at such close Range, due to the simple fact that, SW ships can throw a HECKAVE alot of jamming out there.

The Sphere is directional what prevents them from simply shooting at the center and also why Vic SD carry so many concussion Missle Launchers

[Enlightenment]

Anyway thats why the avarage SW battle is at such close Range, due to the simple fact that, SW ships can throw a HECKAVE alot of jamming out there.

Unfortunately there's a gaping hole in that argument: SW ECM doesn't have an appriciable effect on the visual spectrum. Even if every non-visible band was rendered unusable by ECM, finding, tracking, and targetting SW ships would be dead easy for passive electro-optical sensors. The first person to bolt a CCD onto a telescope and connect the whole thing to a targetting computer would have a field day picking off Wars ships at extreme range.

[Bob The Great]

Actually, this is not true. I see this argument spread around a lot, but everyone seems to forget some very important points.

First, in space there would almost always be a relative velocity difference between ships. This means, especially at long range, that the ships must lead each other with their guns if they hope to hit anything. Leading requires that the relative velocities of the ships be known to the gunners, to accurately calculate leading.

However, velocities are very hard to calculate if the distance between the ships isn't known accurately. This is even more important at great distances. Accurate ranging requires an active sensor system, one that "pings" the enemy ship with some form of signal, and computes the range based on the time it takes the signal to return. This is where jamming comes into play. It blinds the active sensors, which means the gunners cannot lead their targets properly, and have virtually no chance of consistently hitting a distant target.

Now, you may say that passive visual sensors could use the angle taken up by the enemy ship in the sky to compute range, but this would require that the exact visible length of the ship be known. This length changes based on the ship's angle of attack, and small differences in the visible length produces widely varying range measurements.

Basically, purely passive visual sensors can be used to detect ships (though they do have limits), but they aren't very good for targetting.

[Spartan]

I think that your forget the limitations of passive optical sensors. You have to be within approximately 300,000 km ie one light second of your target to be reliable.

For example:

SW uses computer assisted, human-controlled targeting. Given the ranges of Galactic weaponry and the velocities available to galactic standard starships. It is a necessity that the fire control computers be extremely powerful and sophisticated. Light travels at approximately 300,000 km/s, so using conventional sensors at ranges beyond this greatly limits the effectiveness of turbolasers. Since a TBL bolt travel at exactly c (Ref: SWICS2). At ranges beyond 300,000 km the bolt takes more than a second to reach the target area. Now even DS1 had a lower limit acceleration of 1km/s, so it would take 160 seconds for the DS to move completely out of the line of fire. So at ranges of 160+ light-seconds even the DS can evade fire! An ISD has a lower limit acceleration of 30km/s and has a length of 1.6 km; such acceleration allows an ISD to displace itself more than its body length in 1/15th of a second. Given a full second and it could be anywhere within a 60 km diameter sphere.

Bottom line you need those FTL sensors; and some damn fine fire control computers, running some very sophisticated algorithms or your screwed in a high ECM environment.

[Mr Bean]

Unfortunately there's a gaping hole in that argument: SW ECM doesn't have an appriciable effect on the visual spectrum. Even if every non-visible band was rendered unusable by ECM, finding, tracking, and targetting SW ships would be dead easy for passive electro-optical sensors. The first person to bolt a CCD onto a telescope and connect the whole thing to a targetting computer would have a field day picking off Wars ships at extreme range.

Acutal no

Class care to guess what the problem is?

Yes Timmy?

*Ummm is it that Light moves at C so any Teloscope you use would be seeing the Ship as it was a mintue ago if you tried to shoot at Light mintue Ranges?

Thats Right Timmy! See Enlightment forgot that old principle that visabul scanners are limited to C in speed!

[Kuja]

ah, the Picard Manuever.....

[Enlightenment]

However, velocities are very hard to calculate if the distance between the ships isn't known accurately. This is even more important at great distances. Accurate ranging requires an active sensor system, one that "pings" the enemy ship with some form of signal, and computes the range based on the time it takes the signal to return.

Paralax. Relative bearings taken from widely-spaced sensor platforms.
Active optical ranging.

Furtheremore, there's not much in the way of a need to calculate leads when shooting missiles or c-propagating weapons at moderate ranges (< .25ls) . All that really matters is approximate range (to know if the target is within range or not), relative bearing, and bearing rate of change.

Now, you may say that passive visual sensors could use the angle taken up by the enemy ship in the sky to compute range, but this would require that the exact visible length of the ship be known. This length changes based on the ship's angle of attack, and small differences in the visible length produces widely varying range measurements.

Optical VLBI on a long enough baseline could be used to resolve an image of the target with sufficient quality to determine its aspect. Granted this won't work all that well out to the magic one light second but it should be more than good enough to work at ranges--say--an order of magnitude larger than the SW combat as shown in the movies.

I think that your forget the limitations of passive optical sensors. You have to be within approximately 300,000 km ie one light second of your target to be reliable.

Why is this even remotely relevant given that (AFIAK) no visual depictions of SW combat have ever shown battle ranges to be anywhere near 1 ls? It seems rather bizare to dismiss as defective a sensor system that loses effectiveness beyond 300,000km when existing depictions of SW combat sensors suggest operating ranges of a few thousand KM at most.

[Master of Ossus]

The use of SW ships to bombard targets on the surface of planets demonstrates that they have ranges greater than 1 light second.

[phongn]

Conventional triangulation is used with (apparently) EO sensors - the ISD Chimaera had a room dedicated to that at the time of the Hand of Thrawn series. Apparently there's problems with it - perhaps the EO sensors are blinded by lasers?

[omegaLancer]

Apparentily jamming would render most Forms of FTL tracking useless. But Capital ship can borrow a technique of targeting from the pre WWII surface fleet..

Before the day of radar, spotter planes were used to help in the targeting of enemy capital ship.. All Battleships build in the period between WWI and II were design with Catapult to launch such planes.

In a long range engagement one could deploy long range scouts ( like the imperial Scot tie) to perform in such a role... staying just out side the radius of the opposing force jamming, but with light second, they can direct and coordinate bombardment against enemy fleet via FTL communication.

[Connor MacLeod]

Conventional triangulation is used with (apparently) EO sensors - the ISD Chimaera had a room dedicated to that at the time of the Hand of Thrawn series. Apparently there's problems with it - perhaps the EO sensors are blinded by lasers?

As I recall, Assault cruisers in Before the Storm used lasers to blind ground based sensor installations.

Before the Storm, page 10:

"High-powered lasers on the cruisers painted the batteries, blinding ground esnsors and testing for counterpunch fire from secondary sites."

It should also be noted that shields appear to be useful for masking the presence of ships against sensors as well (Lando Calrissian and the Star Cave of Thonboka) and that sensors can be hindered by planetary shields (even incomplete or low powered ones... even if capital ships can breach them.)

Another point to note is that the "flashes" that are exhibited when laser and blaster bolts strike shields (the glows, flashes, tl bolts decaying into visible light, whatever) can also interfere with targeting. In the first Rogue Squadron novel, Corran's lock on onto a TIE was disrupted by repeated flashes caused by laser/shield interactions.