Space Guns, GUNS, GUNS, GUNS!

[Neko_Oni]

Okay as far as realistic weapons go what kinds of weapons would you use on a spaceship?

The choices as far as I can see are:
Kinetic Cannons (Railguns, Massdrivers)
Particle Beam Weapons
Laser Weapons
Missiles (variety of warheads)


What kind of advantages and disadvantages do they have? (this is sorta for a fanfic I'm going to start soon). Any help would be great.

[Solid Snake]

Martian Death Rays!

[Kuja]

particle beams to brind down the shields, then kinetic weapons to finish it off. EMP for capture ops.

[Larz]

Beam cannons- These would be used to bring down shields or deflectors, the main disadvantage would be that their would be no other use except for maybe trying to surgically disect your opposing vessel.

Laser cannons- pending these and your kinetic weapons would be the main bulk of your cannon weapons. These could be used to pulp up starships, provide fighter defense, and if their is a good enough auto tracking computer could be used as an anti-missle screen.

KE weapons- These would be used for mainly fighter screen. Due to the fact that you have a finite amount of ammo per each turret platform it would be best to link these to a high power targeting computer with tracking. If you expend ammo, might as well hit something. Also good if your opposing vessel has some soft spots, past that is pointless to try and chew at armor with KE weapons unless you have a lot of ammo or their is a nice tender spot underneath

Warheads- In realistic weapons, this is the king of any fleet, let me break this down into some smaller catagories:

-Dumb warheads(rockets and such)- your basic high yield warhead with an engine strapped to it. Point and shoot. Carry lots of these, very good when flanking and enemy vessel, just let loose a volley or two of these puppies and watch the armor ionize.

-Smart Missle (fighter sized)- Use these to pick of pesty bomber formations as well as take down enemy turret platforms or launchers

-Torpedo (duh)- Have a tender spot with some armor on it or a weak spot that could use a night light, just load, lock, and launch. Disadvantage of this is its vunerability to being shot down. Also larger thus easier to hit, make them fast (though this lowers ability to hit target if it has to constantly menauver to acquire target)

-Proximity warheads (flak/mines)- disrupt or detonate dumb warhead volleys or bomber formations.

-Intercepts- your basic smart missle except with a specific duty to hunt down and destroy enemy torpedoes before they add holes into your hull.

Well, thats it for now, hope this helps. I'll post when I think of some more specialty things.

[Enlightenment]

Lasers for light and medium targets out to one lightsecond, high-acceleration kenetic kill or antimatter warhead missiles for heavier targets and longer ranges.

[Slartibartfast]

X-Laser Missiles: basically, each missile is a nuke that fuels a powerful x-ray laser aimed at a ship. The missile actually doesn't hit the ship (or even get very close, only get it in the sights)

[NecronLord]

What tech level is this at?

[Slartibartfast]

What tech level is this at?

Theoretically, it could be built today (don't know the exact mechanics of focusing the nuke x-rays into a laser, but I think it's possible). But the damage would be massive.

It's actually harder to generate x-ray lasers *without* the bomb.

I'll post more info if I can find any.

[NecronLord]

I meant the challenge, not your soloution plese send info anyway. It may be of use some time.

[omegaLancer]

What about singularity mines, ( create massive Gravity point in space to suck up unsuspecting vessles)..

magnetic Soliton torpedoe - magnetic monopoles that home in on the magnetic fields of enemy vessles and when it strikes, turn protons into positron.....

[Guest]

What about carefully shaped slugs of Pu-239 that go critical upon impact on hard armor. Never mind that's just a nuke.

Oh and for the ammo for KE weapons, why not just put a block of compressed U-238 on the ship, and start milling out hexagontal shaped slugs to replenish ammo? Of course you need another block of ferrous material to be milled out to attach to the U-238 for use in a magnetic railgun.

[Guest]

Oh and btw, my new avatar is a screenshot I made of a Super Acolyte from HW:C, with these specs from Homeworld Shipyards:

Cataclysm Statistics
Class: Fighter
Cost: 300 RUs
Build Time: 25 s
Support Req.: 5 SUs
Maneuverability: very high
Acceleration: 1,000 m/s^2
Max Velocity: 900 m/s
Hit Points: 1,000
Repair Rate: -
Sight Radius: 9,000 m
Firepower: ?
Coverage: ?
Mass: 5 q
EMP Stun: 1.5 s
Leech Dam.: -

Salvage Points: 0
Repair Droids: 0
Nav Lights: 0
Leech Points: 0
Required Tech:
None

Upgrade Tech:
None
.


.

.
Weapons: 2 Small Ion Cannon
Mult.: 9.0
Damage:?? [~<=2 GT , based on calcs by Sir Nitram on standard ion cannons on asteroids]
Range: 6,000m [range of Ion Cannons]
Fire Time: 1.0 s

[kojikun]

First point: You people either don't understand the meaning of "realistic" or dont care much about answering.

Second point: You're going way OT.

Third point: Traditional guns (explosive charge, metal shell) will prevail until railguns are perfected and made cheap (in energy). Mass drives aka coil guns might be used if they can get them working. Either way, these are going to be small weapons not major ones.

The larger damage weapons will be missiles with chemical explosives. EMP will not be used because any civilisation capable of getting into space for war will be far past having the ability to block EMP. Present day HELICOPTERS have EMP shielding. Nuclear weapons wont be used because the raw radiation given off by nuclear weapons in vacuum would be quite bad and might even melt through whatever radiation shielding the ship has unless the explosion is VERY distant.

Another thing to note is that wars in space will ALWAYS be between two planets. No country on earth will ever fight another country on earth, in space, because its far cheaper easier and more damaging to do so here on the ground.

Because of this, interplanetary wars will almost GUARANTEED use missiles. No ships, just missiles. It's far easier to launch countless missiles at an enemy planet then to send a ship into space to do it for you with less missiles.

-- That is all.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Yeah, that's what my Fenari race uses. Simple clean and efficiant. FTL buss that releases multipal pheonix missile sized weapons each with an Xlaser warhead.

Massdriver poit defesnse, weapons. Fusion beams (MicrowaveLasers), and Particle accerleation beams. Now their ground forces are big on railguns and heattransfer beams.

[Guest]

First point: You people either don't understand the meaning of "realistic" or dont care much about answering.

Second point: You're going way OT.

Third point: Traditional guns (explosive charge, metal shell) will prevail until railguns are perfected and made cheap (in energy). Mass drives aka coil guns might be used if they can get them working. Either way, these are going to be small weapons not major ones.

The larger damage weapons will be missiles with chemical explosives. EMP will not be used because any civilisation capable of getting into space for war will be far past having the ability to block EMP. Present day HELICOPTERS have EMP shielding. Nuclear weapons wont be used because the raw radiation given off by nuclear weapons in vacuum would be quite bad and might even melt through whatever radiation shielding the ship has unless the explosion is VERY distant.

Another thing to note is that wars in space will ALWAYS be between two planets. No country on earth will ever fight another country on earth, in space, because its far cheaper easier and more damaging to do so here on the ground.

Because of this, interplanetary wars will almost GUARANTEED use missiles. No ships, just missiles. It's far easier to launch countless missiles at an enemy planet then to send a ship into space to do it for you with less missiles.

-- That is all.

Then people start launching ships to intercept missiles since shooting projectiles at missiles is more certain and cheaper then launching antimissile missiles and pretty soon these ships begin fighting each other, unless missiles are advanced to the point that they can attack the ships. However this is only applicable when missiles don't have ftl.

[Guest]

Oh and BTW, ships are useful for landing troops to capture things on planets. Of course you could make funky missiles loaded with troops but that would be considered a ship.

[Neko_Oni]

Wow! Thanks for the replies everyone. In responce to the tech level of this I was thinking of realistic tech around 200-300 years from now.

[Enlightenment]

Something that doesn't seem to have been mentioned here yet is that unguided projectiles (guns, unguided rockets) aren't useful for space combat at the kind of ranges that will be involved. Unguided projectiles just aren't accurate enough.

Another key point regarding warheads is that once the velocity of a projectile is high enough, the KE of the projectile will vastly overwhelm the yield from an explosive warhead. All that's necessary for a 'warhead' will be an inert block of metal rather than conventional explosives or even a nuke. Nontrivial quantities of antimatter change things a bit, however.

[SirNitram]

Hence why my sci-fi uses antimatter missiles, Enlightenment.

But yea. Unguided weapons will be barely useful except in point-blank attacks. Sure, having a coilgun that can slam a paintchip into a guy at a fraction of c is nice, but at the ranges realistic combat will be at, you can't hope to hit. Any opponent engaging at close range has to A) Hope the opposition's nukes are too dirty for close engagement, and B) Have massive numerical superiority.

[Slartibartfast]

First point: You people either don't understand the meaning of "realistic" or dont care much about answering.

Sorry, but the nuke-pumped x-ray laser is totally realistic.

[Slartibartfast]

Also, basically anything made of fiberoptics is pretty much EMP-impervious. Never mind any future technologies.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Okay as far as realistic weapons go what kinds of weapons would you use on a spaceship?

The choices as far as I can see are:
Kinetic Cannons (Railguns, Massdrivers)
Particle Beam Weapons
Laser Weapons
Missiles (variety of warheads)


What kind of advantages and disadvantages do they have? (this is sorta for a fanfic I'm going to start soon). Any help would be great.

Realistic starship weapons:

Long Range

Nuclear-tipped missile:
Advantages: A nuke doesn't need to be too close to do some damage (In the form of radiant energy.) You can stud it with spikes to create bursts of lased x-rays. And it keeps you far away from your target.
Disadvantages: Each missile is relatively expensive. They're also big, and take up lots of precious room, so you can't carry too many of them.

Medium Range

Conventional fragmenting missile:
Advantages: Fragmenting warhead throws a spray of hard-to-evade shrapnel in your enemy's path.
Disadvantages: You'd have to be closer to the enemy to increase your chances of a near hit. Also, refer to the entry on nuclear missiles.

Particle Beam:
Advantages: Hail of relativistic subatomic particles imparts tremendous damage, induces radioactivity in enemy hull, etc, etc, etc.
Disadvantages: Requires an accelerator and something to ionize all those particles. (Implies an inefficient weapon.) The accelerator makes the medium-ranged particle beam a fixed-position weapon.

Laser:
Advantages: Lasers in the range of tens or hundreds of MW will do much damage to a target, in spite of the longer range. Also requires less space than the particle beam cannon.
Disadvantages: Lasers are very inefficient at converting reactor power to destructive energy.

Short-Range

Shaped-charge rocket:
Advantages: Cheap, easy to build. Can carry many.
Disadvantages: Since the warhead doesn't have that much acceleration time, direct hits are essential.

Kinetic Weapons: (Railguns, mass-drivers, artillery (chemical or magnetically driven.))
Advantages: Short-ranged weapons can fit in turrets.
Disadvantages: Ammunition is limited. Granted, you can easily make more (harvest it from nickel-iron asteroids.) Ammunition is also of small size and of limited effectiveness. Demagnetizing the barrel also becomes a problem with repeated use.

Plasma Weapons:
Advantages: Bolt of plasma eats/burns through enemy hulls/antennae/airlocks.
Disadvantages: Bolt spreads out and disperses quickly. Barrel magnetizes much more quickly and overheats faster. Requires many more safety systems than a railgun. (Plasma guns requires lots of fuel.)

Now how does one defend against these nasty weapons. That's another post.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

First point: You people either don't understand the meaning of "realistic" or dont care much about answering.

Second point: You're going way OT.

Third point: Traditional guns (explosive charge, metal shell) will prevail until railguns are perfected and made cheap (in energy). Mass drives aka coil guns might be used if they can get them working. Either way, these are going to be small weapons not major ones.

The larger damage weapons will be missiles with chemical explosives. EMP will not be used because any civilisation capable of getting into space for war will be far past having the ability to block EMP. Present day HELICOPTERS have EMP shielding. Nuclear weapons wont be used because the raw radiation given off by nuclear weapons in vacuum would be quite bad and might even melt through whatever radiation shielding the ship has unless the explosion is VERY distant.

Another thing to note is that wars in space will ALWAYS be between two planets. No country on earth will ever fight another country on earth, in space, because its far cheaper easier and more damaging to do so here on the ground.

Because of this, interplanetary wars will almost GUARANTEED use missiles. No ships, just missiles. It's far easier to launch countless missiles at an enemy planet then to send a ship into space to do it for you with less missiles.

-- That is all.

Then people start launching ships to intercept missiles since shooting projectiles at missiles is more certain and cheaper then launching antimissile missiles and pretty soon these ships begin fighting each other, unless missiles are advanced to the point that they can attack the ships. However this is only applicable when missiles don't have ftl.

Just wait till the missiles can get up to 0.5 C. Hard to knock down, and the payload becomes a lump of inert iron that weighs 100 tons. Of course if you had some sort of inertial or gravity compensating technology, you could get the missile up closer to C. Of course, that raises the interesting question of what happens when you turn the compensating system off . . .

[Stormtrooper THX-1138]

Slartibartfast : This is slightly OT, but didn't Larry Niven (and others in his Known Space universe) make great use of nuke-pumped x-lasers? I seem to remember them being one of the primary weapons of the UNSN during the Man-Kzin wars era.

[Neko_Oni]

The human ship from Footfall used nuke-pumped lasers (gamma or x-ray can't remember). In one case an enemy nuke went off next to the bomb bay and pumped the entire rack of lasers.