Newtonian Space Combat

[drachefly]

What do we use fighters for nowadays? What can they do that large ships firing missiles can't?

Well, ships typically can't see the enemy because its below the horizon (if they could, they would bombard it with deck guns). Will this be a problem in space? Hell no.

Cruise missiles have a minimum thrust to maintain if they want to stay up, so they need to pack a lot of fuel. Will this be a problem in space? HELL NO.

If there are any other advantages to fighters, please let me know... 'cause I can't think of any more.

[Mobius]

harder to hit maybe... and smaller SCS (don't know if it really apply)
but as say Steven Coonts:

fighter pilots make movies; attack pilots make History

(only partly true imho)

[Mobius]

ghetto edit:it's not SCS, it's RCS

Moreover that point is completely wrong.
Sorry.

[White Haven]

Man...I need to dig up that game and start playing it again. TOO fun. Course I'd have to slack off on WoW. *whimper* The conflict, it burns!

[Nephtys]

If you want true Newtonian combat, play this freeware game. Babylon 5: I've Found Her.

http://ifh.firstones.com/

Bab5's pretty much the first show that I know of that depicted newtonian fighter combat, with ships pivoting in place while still drifting and such, and using that in their combat maneuvers. Although starfuries are inefficient, they certainly are cool...

[White Haven]

CNV-301 v Starfury. This should be an entertaining, short, and bloody matchup.

[Nephtys]

Also. Again.

A fighter in any realistic space scenario does the exact same job as a missile, but it requires four times the Delta V, plus more mass diverted to a cockpit, life support, etc...

Let's see.

-Cruiser fires missile at target. The target is hit.

vs

-Cruiser launches fighters at target. They arrive and manuver to engage.
-Fighters evade because pilots don't want to die. This uses fuel, and they drop a bomb. Target is hit.
-Fighters fly home, then taking care to land.
-Just to be safe, they'll have more than the minimum fuel to do the job.

See the problem? To deliver the same warhead, a smart maneuvering missile is probably cheaper and more efficient.

[AMX]

What do we use fighters for nowadays? What can they do that large ships firing missiles can't?

Escort airliners with broken radios.
Identify targets of opportunity.

@Nepthys: True, in a straight-up fight.
So-called fighters are useable for "Missions other than War"; situations where you want an actual human at the site, preferably with a nice amount of firepower to give him adequate authority, but sending a proper spaceship is simply over budget.

In an actual war, you'd need some kind of plot device to justify them; one I happen to like is telepathy.
Depending how you do that in your universe, it can provide them with an unjammable, undetectable, possibly even FTL "datalink" to their mothership - something a missile will most likely lack.

[RedImperator]

Fighters are useful in naval combat in the real world because they travel through a different medium than the ships that launch them that lets them maneuver in an extra spatial dimension, see over the horizon, move much faster than ships, and outmaneuver them. A space fighter will have none of these advantages over a large ship while retaining all the disadvantages of an air fighter--fragility, short legs, limited armament. The only advantage it would retain is a small target profile, and that's not going to be all that helpful if the thing has to fly in a mostly straight line most of the time, which it will have to do unless your fuel density is absurd.

I find it's much more helpful to think of submarine warfare than surface naval warfare when thinking about what space combat would be like. The ships can move in three dimensions, there's no horizon (technically there is, but visibility is so limited that it's not a factor), and there's only one medium in which everyone can move. It would be absurd to build a submarine that launched one-man mini-subs armed with mini-torpedoes to sink other submarines, rather than just fire big torpedoes at the other submarines directly. It's just as absurd for big spaceships to fire little spaceships that fire little missiles when it could just fire a big missile that does the same thing.

Now as AMX said, small ships would still have some uses, such as when you want to poke your nose someplace without risking a major asset like a capital ship. But those would probably be called corvettes or gunboats or scouts or cutters or something like that. They wouldn't be fighters because they wouldn't fulfill the same role as fighters, and they wouldn't have the speed/maneuverability advantage over big ships to justify comparing them to aircraft. In fact, since interior volume cubes as surface area squares, big ships would most likely be able to reach much higher speeds than small ships, by virtue of accelerating for much longer, even if their acceleration was worse.

[AMX]

Actually, smaller ships would most certainly have a manouverability advantage over bigger ships, since they require less structural mass to handle a given acceleration (remember the "size matters" article - same reason why you can't scale up an ant to elephant-size) (This may, admittedly, be partially compensated for by the less favorable surface armor.)
In the case of "fighters" this would be even more pronounced, since they can do away with long-term life support, and FTL drives (if any), while maintaining (or possibly even increasing) the relative amount of fuel.

BTW, I prefer to reserve terms like "corvette" et al for proper, largely independent, ships, and assign terms like "fighter" to non-independent, carrier- or base-bound, vehicles.

[RedImperator]

Actually, smaller ships would most certainly have a manouverability advantage over bigger ships, since they require less structural mass to handle a given acceleration (remember the "size matters" article - same reason why you can't scale up an ant to elephant-size) (This may, admittedly, be partially compensated for by the less favorable surface armor.)
In the case of "fighters" this would be even more pronounced, since they can do away with long-term life support, and FTL drives (if any), while maintaining (or possibly even increasing) the relative amount of fuel.

BTW, I prefer to reserve terms like "corvette" et al for proper, largely independent, ships, and assign terms like "fighter" to non-independent, carrier- or base-bound, vehicles.

That's true, but they won't be able to take full advantage of it because of how much propellant they'll need to perform any maneuver and how little they'll be able to carry.

As for what to call them, it's really a matter of opinion, but fighter is such a brainbug and cliche I try to avoid it.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Besides, the smallest vessel I'd use would be the various patcoms which can easily carry firepower that can put any fighter out of the game and threaten capital ships of a larger size. A human fighter has to contend with G-force limits, unlike my barrage of homing missiles.

[FOG3]

In response to the OP there is: Atomic Rockket (section that talks about space fighters) and The Tough Guide to the known Galaxy.

[White Haven]

Hmm....to convert my carriers in the STGOD over to PatCom carriers, or not... *strokes chin*

[Nephtys]

Hmm....to convert my carriers in the STGOD over to PatCom carriers, or not... *strokes chin*

*crackwhip* BAD! BAD WHITE HAVEN! No multibeam fighters for YOU!

[tumbletom]

In real combat, would fighters be useful for a kind of point defense role?(think Starlancer where you chase torpedos in capship engagements, or the nBSG miniseries where the fighters are taking out some of the incoming missles)

[Nephtys]

In real combat, would fighters be useful for a kind of point defense role?(think Starlancer where you chase torpedos in capship engagements, or the nBSG miniseries where the fighters are taking out some of the incoming missles)

In such cases, a role would be done by a shipboard turret. Or a drone pod. A human pilot's reflexes are too slow for anti-missile work anyway, so adding a human to push a 'fire' button is inefficient and pointless.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

In real combat, would fighters be useful for a kind of point defense role?(think Starlancer where you chase torpedos in capship engagements, or the nBSG miniseries where the fighters are taking out some of the incoming missles)

No. Fighters would be less-than-useless for that purpose. You could save the mass required to support a human pilot and devote that into making a faster anti-missile drone, or a more effective decoy, or a better ECM drone.

[Battlehymn Republic]

I've often read that it's impossible to "bank" a ship in space, which I've understood as turning or tilting a certain way. Is that always true? What if you have an elaborate system of rockets on a ship that fires in a coordinated way?

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

I've often read that it's impossible to "bank" a ship in space, which I've understood as turning or tilting a certain way. Is that always true? What if you have an elaborate system of rockets on a ship that fires in a coordinated way?

Then you've wasted an enormous amount of fuel to make a spacecraft behave like an airplane in atmosphere. That's about it.

[Nephtys]

I've often read that it's impossible to "bank" a ship in space, which I've understood as turning or tilting a certain way. Is that always true? What if you have an elaborate system of rockets on a ship that fires in a coordinated way?

'Banking' effectively is just rotating, then firing jets horizontally furiously. There's no need for spacecraft to really do a bank-like maneuver. Just a long slide with the main engines is effectively the same, but without the pointless rotation.

[Surlethe]

Could banking possibly save fuel on antigrav systems?

[Admiral Valdemar]

Could banking possibly save fuel on antigrav systems?

What exactly does an anti-grav system do in space, ignoring the fact that such a device is pure fantasy right now?

[AMX]

Could banking possibly save fuel on antigrav systems?

What exactly does an anti-grav system do in space, ignoring the fact that such a device is pure fantasy right now?

Uhm.... maybe Surlethe means those "inertial compensation" thingies (which can be interpreted as a form of anti-gravity, if my memory of relativity is correct)?
In which case "banking" could, in fact, allow a reduction (just make sure the g-forces are always acting "down", and you can tolerate more than if they come sideways).

[Surlethe]

Could banking possibly save fuel on artificial gravity systems?

What exactly does an anti-grav system do in space, ignoring the fact that such a device is pure fantasy right now?

I apologize; I didn't give enough context in my post, as well as using the wrong terminology. Stupid me.

I was thinking about why the Enterprise, for example, banks in space, and the only SoD reason I could come up with was because it saves fuel on an artificial gravity (not antigrav, as I so moronically stated in my post above). Do I have a valid idea, or no?