Aftermath of Bombardment

[Eternal_Freedom]

It occurred to me that in this setting it would be pointless to even have starfaring fleets of warships. If you can build missile launcher's with trans-galactic range, why aren't all conflicts fought using those weapons?

You've basically built a Cold War style setting but with only one side having ICBMs whilst the other side is limited to nuclear artillery. A sane leader wouldn't even try and fight such an enemy without comparable weaponry.

[SilverDragonRed]

It would be apt to say the setting is an analoguous to late WW2 fleet actions that somehow recently discovered cruise missiles; they know what it can do, but it's too new for the full impact of it to be felt and tactics to adjust accordingly. Plus, the biggest limitation for the missiles (and to a greater extent torpedoes) is sensor range. Without the planes to send their readings back to the ships, accurate targetting would be 200 lys from a mobile platform (and maybe double that from fixed installations). As to the second point, everyone has these weapons so there is no significant tech disparity between powers.

But yeah, you are right about the Cold War style. The major powers (and minor powers not led by the insane) are afraid of their own weapon's destructive capabilities thus leading to a general fear of anything beyond limited scale wars being waged.

If you can build missile launcher's with trans-galactic range, why aren't all conflicts fought using those weapons?

In the furture of the setting, that would most certainly be the reality of things; but for the current state of affairs, planes are the workhorse of border smirches and force projection.

[Esquire]

So it's basically an excuse for cabinet wars IN SPAAACE?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Even if the range is only 400 ly for fixed installations that will still make it nigh-impossible to mount an attack. Each fixed launcher can target anything within a 400 ly sphere, or 268 million cubic light years. You wouldn't even need defences around your colony worlds, just fill your home system with launchers and you're covered.

If the technology is new, then it should only take one engagement (where the attacking side is massacred for no gain) for people to realise "shit, maybe we should re-think this."

[Simon_Jester]

Even if the range is only 400 ly for fixed installations that will still make it nigh-impossible to mount an attack. Each fixed launcher can target anything within a 400 ly sphere, or 268 million cubic light years. You wouldn't even need defences around your colony worlds, just fill your home system with launchers and you're covered.

I'd argue that you would want to take the opposite tack.

What you're saying is like "modern artillery has a range of tens of miles, so we can defend an entire area twenty miles wide by parking a whole heap of artillery in a big open field in the center of that area." It's not strictly true for multiple reasons:

1) The artillery doesn't kill everything it's fired at. Sometimes the missile will miss, or fail en route, or fly into a sun on the way to the target, or some moron programs the wrong coordinates.
2) The artillery cannot know what it's shooting at unless someone tells it so. This guy's setting apparently has no sensor technology with range comparable to the range of its own weapons, so you can't just sit in an armchair in your home system and pot enemy planets from a thousand light years away. If nothing else, someone has to physically fly over there to observe the target, make sure its location is precisely known, and so on.*
2) If the artillery is all parked in a single known location, the enemy can use their artillery to get the jump on you and blow your artillery to kingdom come. You need some means of stopping their elusive, mobile scouts from spotting your concentrated forces and hitting them while they're vulnerable.

*In Doc Smith's Skylarkverse, also known for being the first FTL travel story (not 'first to do X,' just... first), the second novel's action climaxes in an interstellar war that is fought from a fixed installation on one of the allied planets, against an enemy planet and the entire fleet it controls. Because the Skylarkers do have sensor technology with range greater than or equal to the range of their weapons.

If the technology is new, then it should only take one engagement (where the attacking side is massacred for no gain) for people to realise "shit, maybe we should re-think this."

In theory. On the other hand, people can sometimes rationalize it for a while- witness how many battles it took before people stopped trying to launch frontal human wave attacks into entrenched machine gun positions.

"The Yogbonians didn't lose because it's impossible to send an attack fleet into range of interstellar missiles! They lost because they didn't have adequate jammers in place and didn't take enough precautions about randomizing their trajectories!"

Although come to think of it that should be an effective defense. If an enemy's missiles have to fly ten minutes just to reach you, you can dodge a pretty respectable distance in that amount of time. Unless the missiles have a blast radius large relative to ten minutes' flight time for the ship, or unless they are being continuously updated so they can appear at a precise, changing point in space at the proper time... they'll miss a lot.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Good points...although if these guys don't have sensor technology to allow them to fire at interplanetary ranges without a spotter, I sure hope they have FTL comms, otherwise we're back to that "The Killing Star" crap again.

As for concentrating stuff on your homeworld, yeah, true. Still, it raises more questions about the setting.

I'm curious as to why having a fixed installation for launching self-propelled missiles doubles their max range over a mobile launcher.

[Sky Captain]

If those interstellar missiles take some time to reach target and can't easily change course once launched then they are strategic weapons, good for wrecking planets and other targets with known locations, but rather useless to engage mobile fleets. They would act much like ICBMs preventing wars between major powers who have them because of MAD.

[SilverDragonRed]

Although come to think of it that should be an effective defense. If an enemy's missiles have to fly ten minutes just to reach you, you can dodge a pretty respectable distance in that amount of time. Unless the missiles have a blast radius large relative to ten minutes' flight time for the ship, or unless they are being continuously updated so they can appear at a precise, changing point in space at the proper time... they'll miss a lot.

The warhead is really only there to ensure that the missile just doesn't shoot through the other side of the ship. Its not going to have a blast radius of 22.8 lys. But, yeah, the things can be dodged if the engines aren't taken out.

Good points...although if these guys don't have sensor technology to allow them to fire at interplanetary ranges without a spotter, I sure hope they have FTL comms, otherwise we're back to that "The Killing Star" crap again.

They do have FTL comms that makes the info sent back still reliable. Never read Killing Star, is that a good book?

So it's basically an excuse for cabinet wars IN SPAAACE?

Sure, why not.

[Patroklos]

What is the characteristics of the shields? If its the "glass dome" type and it came back up just after the hit then does it contain the effects of the hit within it? You mentioned theatre shields so will those protect the rest of the surface from atmospheric and surface effects? As some have mentioned the character of the impact might result in significant ground shockwaves causing anything from natural faults to go crazy to gigantic tsunamis worldwide, not much youar shields can do about that.

[SilverDragonRed]

The shield in question does not come back up since the generator for it would have been destroyed by the blast. You are correct that the shield would not do anything against earthquakes 'cause it doesn't go subterranean.

[Esquire]

So it's basically an excuse for cabinet wars IN SPAAACE?

Sure, why not.

May have seemed like a flippant question, but there's a deeper point: if what you really want is a setting that allows for limited wars, what narrative purpose is served by giving any lone-nut corvette skipper world-ending firepower? Admittedly I haven't seen what you'll do with the setting, but it seems as though the numbers and the story might get in each others' way here.

[SilverDragonRed]

I didn't feel any disrespect from the question; just never heard of cabinet wars before you asked. After finding a wiki article on the subject, it is an interesting period that deserves more in-depth research. Thank you for letting me know about it.

By limited wars I meant that the combatants handicapping their application of force so that escalation of destruction doesn't spiral down to MAD. Like the American involvement in Vietnam or the small-scale wars they waged in the 90's.

As for the 'lone-nut corvette skipper' situation, that would be a hard one to pull off because corvettes can't do lone patrols. They're always assigned to play escort for the larger vessels to help protect them from enemy bombers or to be a missile shield.

[Simon_Jester]

Why 'can't' they act as singletons?

Another question- what stops people from zooming into a star system and lobbing teraton-range shot at enemy-held planets from long range, purely to cause random destruction? Will the defenders be able to raise shields in time to avoid suffering massive devastation on their own worlds?

[SilverDragonRed]

Corvettes don't have the amount of armament necessary to withstand an armada of planes. Cruisers or Escort Carriers are the smallest ships that can adequately survive on their own.

As for your question Simon; ain't nobody just gonna 'zoom into' an enemy-held star system with sensor stations nearby. Let's use the smallest sensor range I've stated (200 lys). At 2.28 lys per minute, that ship has to spend 88 minutes (rounded up) in transit to reach the target; more than enough time to activate any defences the place has and call for aid.

[Simon_Jester]

An enemy might send masses of light raiding craft, knowing that any one of them could be easily destroyed by a swarm of 'fighters...' but that you can't possibly have enough fighters to launch one swarm per raider. The old fighter-versus-bomber issue.

[By the way, use of the word 'ships' is widely accepted in space because spacegoing vehicles are usually imagined as large, multi-crewed constructs that are in some sense shiplike. But... 'planes?' That sounds almost as weird to me as Doc Smith calling the Skylark Two a 'car' in the first FTL travel story]

[Sea Skimmer]

Corvettes don't have the amount of armament necessary to withstand an armada of planes. Cruisers or Escort Carriers are the smallest ships that can adequately survive on their own.

As for your question Simon; ain't nobody just gonna 'zoom into' an enemy-held star system with sensor stations nearby. Let's use the smallest sensor range I've stated (200 lys). At 2.28 lys per minute, that ship has to spend 88 minutes (rounded up) in transit to reach the target; more than enough time to activate any defences the place has and call for aid.

So your going with the 'future weapons shall bypass all concepts of training and readiness' sci fi meme? 88 minutes isn't very much strategic warning at all for interstellar attacks which could involve rather massive concentrations of forces. Its not even enough even to reliably call back personal to duty from a nearby town to start making stuff ready to fight, unless you have a lot teleporters at least.

[Simon_Jester]

Hm. Fair point.

He's implicitly assuming that defenses are on standby at all times. An hour and a half is enough warning time to activate a defense system you already had standing ready to be activated. Not enough time to activate a system that was in mothballs.

So basically, if your armed forces were already at DEFCON one or two before the attack, you'd be able to bring the defenses online in response to the attack. Otherwise... not so much.

[gigabytelord]

Can scanning systems be jammed? Kind of like the old fighters vs bombers problem, you also have the much older offense vs defense conundrum. For every advance made in offensive capabilities defensive capabilities will eventually equal out your advantage. i.e. "Sure is a nice missile system you have there, to bad you can't actually target me with it!"

[SilverDragonRed]

He's implicitly assuming that defenses are on standby at all times. An hour and a half is enough warning time to activate a defense system you already had standing ready to be activated. Not enough time to activate a system that was in mothballs.

I was assuming at least two competent on watch at the sensor relay to follow the SOP for an unresponsive blip. Then for them to alert nearby worlds and patrols for them to act accordingly. If the world is important enough to warrant a theater (or planetary) shield, the skeleton crews there can activate them within minutes. Don't need to be at DEFCON for any of that to take place.

Can scanning systems be jammed? Kind of like the old fighters vs bombers problem, you also have the much older offense vs defense conundrum. For every advance made in offensive capabilities defensive capabilities will eventually equal out your advantage. i.e. "Sure is a nice missile system you have there, to bad you can't actually target me with it!"

The sensors can be jammed, spooled, tricked, or anything else you can think of if you know the system; and if someone there doesn't catch the damage until its too late.

[Simon_Jester]

He's implicitly assuming that defenses are on standby at all times. An hour and a half is enough warning time to activate a defense system you already had standing ready to be activated. Not enough time to activate a system that was in mothballs.

I was assuming at least two competent on watch at the sensor relay to follow the SOP for an unresponsive blip. Then for them to alert nearby worlds and patrols for them to act accordingly. If the world is important enough to warrant a theater (or planetary) shield, the skeleton crews there can activate them within minutes. Don't need to be at DEFCON for any of that to take place.

This requires that all these systems be at standby status, though- never taken down for maintenance, with adequate-sized crews manning them continuously.

You can maintain such a system, but it is really expensive. Look at the costs of maintaining a highly alert and ever-ready nuclear deterrent during the Cold War.

[SilverDragonRed]

Are you imagining these systems as a series of single-point failures? 'Cause I sure didn't when I was talking about them. Plus, you really have to ask who's going to be stupid enough to set up a maintainance cycle so that all items on the same stage of any system get taken offline for preventative checks.

[By the way, use of the word 'ships' is widely accepted in space because spacegoing vehicles are usually imagined as large, multi-crewed constructs that are in some sense shiplike. But... 'planes?' That sounds almost as weird to me as Doc Smith calling the Skylark Two a 'car' in the first FTL travel story]

Do you call an X-Wing a ship? A Tie Fighter? Why should I call a bunch of one-man craft that perform a similar role (although they're actually capable of taking on fully-shielded capitol ships) ships and not planes?

[Sea Skimmer]

Are you imagining these systems as a series of single-point failures? 'Cause I sure didn't when I was talking about them. Plus, you really have to ask who's going to be stupid enough to set up a maintainance cycle so that all items on the same stage of any system get taken offline for preventative checks.

The point isn't that nothing works. The point is that at any given time a large portion of them wont, or will be engaged in other activities other then alert duty because that's reality, and the enemy chooses the time and place of the attack. Military equipment is never all that reliable because its always trying to push new limits, while as long as you have biological crews they'll need rest, training and replacement cycles.

The end result is warning matters a fuckload, and you need a lot of it if the enemy can showup with weapons that are one shot kills on planets, or else collossal levels of overarmament to ensure you have an effective defense operational at all times, which is unlikely because the enemy can always show up with his own collossal overarmament and overwhelm you anyway. This makes high powered sci fi really annoying, or else just massively stupid handwavium in which nothing ever gets broken for no real reason other then to justify stupidly powerful weapons that really aren't likely ever going to serve any useful plot purpose that you couldn't have otherwise.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, there's a third possibility, which is for the high-powered sci-fi to actually fully explore the consequences of its own galaxy-sized scale. In which case you're looking at huge interstellar polities where in relative terms, a single planet and all the ships it can field are about as significant as one soldier in a large army.

So sure, every week and probably even every day the war goes on, a certain number of planets are getting ambushed in raids that ruin their surfaces and kill some billions of individual beings. And a certain number of other planets are defending themselves successfully against such attacks, by being on alert at the right time. That's just casual skirmishing; the real action will take place when the Third Division of planets is brought around in a grand flanking maneuver of the enemy positions in the next spiral arm over!

[Sea Skimmer]

I've already run amok with that idea personally; down to the planets moving to fight each other and being armored into death star like contraptions and a rank system that goes to fifteen or sixteen stars in a sort of logical scale up, I don't suggest it unless one wishes to be very comedic about things. The scale and shear callousness of such a situation doesn't make for a very interesting setting if its to to be serious, at least if your not going to just go completely full throttle on super technology, such as say personal shields that allow you to survive the planet being vaporized under your feet and city scale escape pods.

[Simon_Jester]

Eh, true.

I suppose the reason I keep coming back to it is because "galactic-sized conflict" is one of the classic models of space opera. There's a certain dizzying pleasure in the moments when you lean back and can actually briefly picture the scale of the action, something I think Kipling managed to capture, without quite meaning to because it predates most if not all of Golden Age SF, in one of his poems:

The Sack of the Gods

Done right, you get a sense of the mythic in science fiction, of the cosmos-shaping Titanomachy.

Of course, done wrong it's just childish, so I suppose your mileage can and will vary.