Shielding concept

[Simon_Jester]

I think I should point out something.
I thought this went without saying but there have been a lot of naval metaphors thrown around lately and I think I should set things strait.

A ship at sea is easy to sink. Punch a few holes into it in the right places and it's dead.
A ship in space not so much...

This is entirely because you're using weapons that aren't dealing sufficient damage through the target's armor. Pre-dreadnought battleships armed with uniform batteries of 5" guns would have the same problem of needing a bajillion hits to sink their targets. It's nothing to be proud of.

I even use the term Mission Kill to refer to ships that have suffered damage that makes them unrepairable in the long run. But that are still fighting actively.

...That's the opposite of true.

A "mission kill" is when the unit is out of action for this mission, but can be brought back into action later. An aircraft forced to jettison its bombs to avoid an enemy attack is "mission killed" even if it's completely undamaged, because it cannot complete the mission.

You're using the word to mean the opposite of what it means.

Also, I'm having trouble with the idea of irreparable damage that the ship can keep fighting through. If it can still fight, repairs will only serve to make it fight better; it cannot be irreparably damaged without losing something it would need to perform its duty (fight). It simply doesn't make sense in this context for a combat-capable ship to be impossible to repair in the long run.

Granted it might be unprofitable to repair, or might never be restored to full function, but it would still be physically possible to repair it to make it a more effective fighting unit as long as it can still serve as a fighting unit this minute.

So while it takes Gigaton range weapons to penetrate the armor, it takes Teraton range damage to completely take a ship out of action.

...Then why don't you use some? Or at least do something to scale up beyond the barest minimum required to do minor damage to the target after penetrating the armor?

Many issues in this stem from the fact that the RPG has been lasting for some 2 years now. And that in the early days, none of us really paid attention much to realism. Now however, we are paying attention (since it is required for competitive gameplay) but also have to not break with the things established in the early times of the RPG.

How would this stop you from having a Dreadnought Revolution?

[Purple]

This is entirely because you're using weapons that aren't dealing sufficient damage through the target's armor. Pre-dreadnought battleships armed with uniform batteries of 5" guns would have the same problem of needing a bajillion hits to sink their targets. It's nothing to be proud of.

It's due to the fact that as I described the weapons that are in the correct weapons range to do this are huge, unwieldy, use huge ammunition, have prohibitive reload times and suffer from other such disadvantages.

Anything beyond say 2-3 times the scale of these shells simply is not practical in terms of cost effectiveness.

...That's the opposite of true.

A "mission kill" is when the unit is out of action for this mission, but can be brought back into action later. An aircraft forced to jettison its bombs to avoid an enemy attack is "mission killed" even if it's completely undamaged, because it cannot complete the mission.

You're using the word to mean the opposite of what it means.

I know.
But than again, my battle cruisers are much better combatants than my battleships. My battleships are essentially over sized carriers, my carriers are troop transports and my destroyers are mini battleships.

Hence, in universe, logic in terminology need not always apply.

Also, I'm having trouble with the idea of irreparable damage that the ship can keep fighting through. If it can still fight, repairs will only serve to make it fight better; it cannot be irreparably damaged without losing something it would need to perform its duty (fight). It simply doesn't make sense in this context for a combat-capable ship to be impossible to repair in the long run.

Granted it might be unprofitable to repair, or might never be restored to full function, but it would still be physically possible to repair it to make it a more effective fighting unit as long as it can still serve as a fighting unit this minute.

You pretty much answered it your self there.
After sufficient damage has been applied to a ship, it simply becomes extremely impractical to use it for anything else than scavenging the hull for spare parts. It can still fight right now, but than again, so can a single turret linked to it's magazine and floating in space.

...Then why don't you use some? Or at least do something to scale up beyond the barest minimum required to do minor damage to the target after penetrating the armor?

As said, practicality and utility. As well as the fact that it is much cheaper and faster to simply add more armor to a starship than to replace weapons to fire larger munitions.

Also, at the ranges we are often fighting most shots will not reach the target due to the fact that the projectiles used can often be used as defenses to shoot down enemy projectiles. When an alpha strike does get through (like in the example I gave) it can be quite devastating.

How would this stop you from having a Dreadnought Revolution?

The start of the RPG was just 2 years ago (game time) and we have a proportional pace of 1 day [reality] equals 1 day [in game].
So manufacturing a whole new style of ships would take time. And everyone would catch wind of it. And than everyone would start making their own. And everyone would simply add more armor (something that can be done much faster and cheaper than changing the weapons on a starship) And we would be right where we started.


We are all right now trying to find a way to make a reliable weapon that will be an order of magnitude above what we are using right now. But it's easier said than done considering the limitations of the situation.

[Purple]

Missed the editing window, so just to add the fallowing paragraph to the post.

After all, the game has shown us that there is little use to be had of a weapon that can be mounted once per ship and can be fired only once per 15 minutes. Even if it can instantly kill an enemy warship.

[Imperial528]

I would like to add that there actually are ships in-universe which would be the equivalent of a dreadnought revolution-style ship (I have some such ships, but they've yet to see real combat due to my neutrality. That and I have, maybe 16-30 of them.). And the person who is basically the IoM (With a lot less grimdark) has never really gone into details on his ships, but they do seem to mount the sort of ship-killing weapons that have been brought up. However, IIRC, it still takes multiple hits against an equivalent opponent to destroy said opponent. To put it simply, the design of warship in-universe is highly diverse, and that so far, what has been used works.

[Simon_Jester]

This is entirely because you're using weapons that aren't dealing sufficient damage through the target's armor. Pre-dreadnought battleships armed with uniform batteries of 5" guns would have the same problem of needing a bajillion hits to sink their targets. It's nothing to be proud of.

It's due to the fact that as I described the weapons that are in the correct weapons range to do this are huge, unwieldy, use huge ammunition, have prohibitive reload times and suffer from other such disadvantages.

Anything beyond say 2-3 times the scale of these shells simply is not practical in terms of cost effectiveness.

You could say the same if you were advocating pre-dreadnought battleships armed with uniform 5" main batteries. "Oh, we can't use 12" guns, that would require an impossibly strong man to load the shells into the breech!" "The ammunition would be HUGE!" "You'd need almost a full minute to reload!"

And it would still be stupid. Because yes, you are making tradeoffs in ammunition size, in reload time, and so on. But what you seem to be missing is that you get something back: destructive power.

For that matter, maybe you don't just arbitrarily scale up the shells. Maybe you use energy weapons. Or just long barreled guns that accelerate existing shells to higher speeds. Or who cares? The point is that the massive defensive bulk of these ships is wasted if all you do with it is stud the outer surface with weapons that are like popguns compared to an opposing ship of its own tonnage.

Look, if it comes down to "the rules of the RPG aren't designed for our ships to mount heavy antiship weapons because we're supposed to have fights that take forever to resolve with hundreds of hits needed to put a target down," fine. But be honest that you're arguing from game rules, not from a handwave that wouldn't fly in real life.

...That's the opposite of true.

A "mission kill" is when the unit is out of action for this mission, but can be brought back into action later. An aircraft forced to jettison its bombs to avoid an enemy attack is "mission killed" even if it's completely undamaged, because it cannot complete the mission.

You're using the word to mean the opposite of what it means.

I know.
But than again, my battle cruisers are much better combatants than my battleships. My battleships are essentially over sized carriers, my carriers are troop transports and my destroyers are mini battleships.

Hence, in universe, logic in terminology need not always apply.

Ohhh, I see. So you're making up words and throwing away the dictionary.

You should have said you were doing that to begin with. If I'd known you didn't mean for words to mean what they mean to people who actually use them in real life, I'd have ignored what you were saying earlier about "mission kill," just as if you'd told me that in your RPG, "fire" means that wet stuff in the ocean and "water" means what you get when wood is very hot and starts combusting.

It would be dumb, but I wouldn't try to correct you because it's your game and you can mangle the language if you want to.

You pretty much answered it your self there.
After sufficient damage has been applied to a ship, it simply becomes extremely impractical to use it for anything else than scavenging the hull for spare parts. It can still fight right now, but than again, so can a single turret linked to it's magazine and floating in space.

In that case, it's not really a functioning combatant. If it can't maneuver, the enemy would be idiotic to not just fly the hell out of range and blow it apart from extreme range.

Ships too damaged to be repairable aren't combat effective, even if there's still some plucky little gunner in one of the popgun blisters on the hull who's still ineffectually trying to shoot back long after he's lost all his fire control radar and after the engines die and the enemy runs out of range.

...Then why don't you use some? Or at least do something to scale up beyond the barest minimum required to do minor damage to the target after penetrating the armor?

As said, practicality and utility. As well as the fact that it is much cheaper and faster to simply add more armor to a starship than to replace weapons to fire larger munitions.

Why? Wouldn't adding billions of tons of armor (and yes you DO wind up with billions of tons for ships that are many kilometers long and that have this incredible "hundreds of meters thick" armor on) add extra strain to the hull? You can't just slap extra armor on things indefinitely in real life; they'll fall apart under their own weight.

You'd have the same problem on a spaceship: you lose acceleration as mass increases, and if you scale up the engines to match the increased weight of armor, you increase the force on the hull framework. To solve that problem you have to reinforce the hull... at which point you've basically just forced yourself to rebuild the ship from scratch. That is NOT going to be easier than adding guns.

This notion of adding more mass for free is ridiculous from an engineering standpoint; the only reason for it to be there is as a totally arbitrary RPG rule to stop anyone from using bigger guns to gain a tactical advantage.

Also, at the ranges we are often fighting most shots will not reach the target due to the fact that the projectiles used can often be used as defenses to shoot down enemy projectiles. When an alpha strike does get through (like in the example I gave) it can be quite devastating.

Why do you need a ten-meter projectile to shoot down ten-meter projectiles? Why not use lighter guns for point defense and use the volume saved on their reduced-size magazines and mountings to add a smaller number of larger guns?

How would this stop you from having a Dreadnought Revolution?

The start of the RPG was just 2 years ago (game time) and we have a proportional pace of 1 day [reality] equals 1 day [in game].So manufacturing a whole new style of ships would take time. And everyone would catch wind of it. And than everyone would start making their own. And everyone would simply add more armor (something that can be done much faster and cheaper than changing the weapons on a starship) And we would be right where we started.

The only reason that's true is because your RPG has rules designed to impose this mechanic of monster superhypertransturbodreadnoughts plinking away at each other with thousands of popgun rounds.

Don't try to handwave it; it just makes you look worse.

[Purple]

You could say the same if you were advocating pre-dreadnought battleships armed with uniform 5" main batteries. "Oh, we can't use 12" guns, that would require an impossibly strong man to load the shells into the breech!" "The ammunition would be HUGE!" "You'd need almost a full minute to reload!"

And it would still be stupid. Because yes, you are making tradeoffs in ammunition size, in reload time, and so on. But what you seem to be missing is that you get something back: destructive power.

We actually had huge weapons deployed, and in universe they proved unpractical beasts that took over 15 minutes to reload and were generaly not cost effective. I mean, during a single battle I did face a superlaser that took out some 4-5 of my ships with instant kill shots. During a 2 hours long battle.

It's like asking, why did the battleships of WW1 not mount railway guns. When these are clearly what was required to instantly sink an enemy warship. Instead we had battles like Jutland where we would get images like this after the battle was over.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SMS_S ... damage.jpg
And that is on the wining side.

For the same reason, why did the star destroyers not mount superlasers on each? Clearly their shields could sustain long bombardments from one another. And clearly the super laser could blow a ship up at once. So why did star destroyers not mount super lasers?

Call it game rules if you truly want. But I would call it common sense.
Once you scale a weapon up by an order of magnitude, the size of the weapon, reload time, ammunition, coolant and supporting equipment have to scale up as well. For a laser you don't need ammunition, true. But you need a bigger lens, a stronger power generator etc. All this equally scales the weapon up.

Also, I am generally focusing on projectile weapons in my posts for the sake of simplification.
So where ever you see the term shell or canon, feel free to substitute laser or lens or coolant or particle beam or what ever.

But either way, it is due to conditions mostly beyond our control.

For that matter, maybe you don't just arbitrarily scale up the shells. Maybe you use energy weapons. Or just long barreled guns that accelerate existing shells to higher speeds. Or who cares? The point is that the massive defensive bulk of these ships is wasted if all you do with it is stud the outer surface with weapons that are like popguns compared to an opposing ship of its own tonnage.

The issue is that you can't just arbitrarily increase the firepower as explained before. For the same reason why WW1 warships did not carry railway guns.
It looks neat on paper, but you end up with heaps of junk that are dedicated ship killers with 1 gun per ship.

It would be dumb, but I wouldn't try to correct you because it's your game and you can mangle the language if you want to.

Well, I find that the term fits becouse it rings a bell in the mind of the reader.
It's catchy. And if someone is going to complain about it, I can always claim that since the term is used in game and my people are an alien race it is a translation fluke.

In that case, it's not really a functioning combatant. If it can't maneuver, the enemy would be idiotic to not just fly the hell out of range and blow it apart from extreme range.

You seem to think that a warship can just run out of range of a weapon that is guided and faster than it.
I mean sure, he could use FTL to escape I guess. But I was being poetic. We don't so much get examples of single gunners as we do of ships with a corner or two of them torn of still fighting.

Why? Wouldn't adding billions of tons of armor (and yes you DO wind up with billions of tons for ships that are many kilometers long and that have this incredible "hundreds of meters thick" armor on) add extra strain to the hull? You can't just slap extra armor on things indefinitely in real life; they'll fall apart under their own weight.

It's heritage from the earlier time, alas.

You'd have the same problem on a spaceship: you lose acceleration as mass increases, and if you scale up the engines to match the increased weight of armor, you increase the force on the hull framework. To solve that problem you have to reinforce the hull... at which point you've basically just forced yourself to rebuild the ship from scratch. That is NOT going to be easier than adding guns.

Adding guns requires you to:
1. Change the weapons on each starship
2. Retool the factories to make new weapons, munitions, lenses or what ever is required.
3. Rip out the armor of all my starships, make new magazines and turrets and mount them inside the starships
etc.

All in all it is a complete rebuild of a ship.

Adding armor is easy, sure I lose some speed but dodging was newer a priority. And high speed during an engagement is night worthless anyway. Since our ships do not run around like starfighters shooting at each other. We use long range guided munitions.
I have only once seen a situation where someone wanted to close range real fast. An he did it using FTL.

Why do you need a ten-meter projectile to shoot down ten-meter projectiles? Why not use lighter guns for point defense and use the volume saved on their reduced-size magazines and mountings to add a smaller number of larger guns?

I did say makeshift.
The point is that the shells are easily capable of targeting each other. And that who ever strikes first has a harder time as the enemy can use both his standard point defenses his primary weapons to shoot down enemy projectiles. (We have even seen situation where they were used to destroy particle beams)

And the fact that the primary weapons are so incredibly overkill means that you stand a better chance with more shells than with less stronger ones.


So yes, it is due to conditions completely beyond our control. But if you people are going to provide any meaningful input I do have to point these conditions out so that you know what you are dealing with.

[Simon_Jester]

It's like asking, why did the battleships of WW1 not mount railway guns. When these are clearly what was required to instantly sink an enemy warship. Instead we had battles like Jutland where we would get images like this after the battle was over.

[Raises eyebrow]
Surely you are aware that typical railway guns of that era were of the same caliber as naval battleship guns? And that railway guns would seldom if ever be able to sink a full-sized capital ship of that era with a single hit? That the technology of the era could not produce larger guns than the ones found on the battleships of the time?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SMS_S ... damage.jpg
And that is on the wining side.

[Raises other eyebrow]
I find it interesting that you propose that the Germans won the Battle of Jutland. The usual consensus I've heard is that it was a draw: "The prisoner has attacked his jailer, but is still in jail."

Call it game rules if you truly want. But I would call it common sense.
Once you scale a weapon up by an order of magnitude, the size of the weapon, reload time, ammunition, coolant and supporting equipment have to scale up as well. For a laser you don't need ammunition, true. But you need a bigger lens, a stronger power generator etc. All this equally scales the weapon up.

Yes. Historically, this did not stop men from mounting the largest weapons available, up to the point of overkill, on capital ships. They did NOT deliberately stop at the bare minimum of firepower required to penetrate the target's armor belt and inflict minor injury on the target, as you have done.

But either way, it is due to conditions mostly beyond our control.

For that matter, maybe you don't just arbitrarily scale up the shells. Maybe you use energy weapons. Or just long barreled guns that accelerate existing shells to higher speeds. Or who cares? The point is that the massive defensive bulk of these ships is wasted if all you do with it is stud the outer surface with weapons that are like popguns compared to an opposing ship of its own tonnage.

The issue is that you can't just arbitrarily increase the firepower as explained before. For the same reason why WW1 warships did not carry railway guns.
It looks neat on paper, but you end up with heaps of junk that are dedicated ship killers with 1 gun per ship.

In this case, the problem is with game rules biased to favor a certain style of combat, not with "oh but there are inherent problems with heavy antiship weapons because they're too big!"

That is an arbitrary convention, and one you should have been willing to admit was arbitrary much sooner.

It would be dumb, but I wouldn't try to correct you because it's your game and you can mangle the language if you want to.

Well, I find that the term fits becouse it rings a bell in the mind of the reader.

Yes, it reminds him of something that means the opposite of what you're trying to say. How helpful.

It's catchy. And if someone is going to complain about it, I can always claim that since the term is used in game and my people are an alien race it is a translation fluke.

That would me more convincing were you an alien, and one without access to a dictionary...

You seem to think that a warship can just run out of range of a weapon that is guided and faster than it.

Why yes. All weapons have maximum effective range. The effective range against a helpless, non-maneuvering target is always going to be greater than that against a mobile target that can move about. There is no logical reason to remain within the effective range of an immobile and crippled enemy in a space battle, any more than one would stand with one's feet in a fire while trying to put it out. Stand somewhere else; it's less dangerous.

You'd have the same problem on a spaceship: you lose acceleration as mass increases, and if you scale up the engines to match the increased weight of armor, you increase the force on the hull framework. To solve that problem you have to reinforce the hull... at which point you've basically just forced yourself to rebuild the ship from scratch. That is NOT going to be easier than adding guns.

Adding guns requires you to:
1. Change the weapons on each starship
2. Retool the factories to make new weapons, munitions, lenses or what ever is required.
3. Rip out the armor of all my starships, make new magazines and turrets and mount them inside the starships
etc.

All in all it is a complete rebuild of a ship.

Which you would have to do anyway to add massive amounts of armor.

You will note that historically we do NOT see massive up-armoring of battleships or tanks, aside from random field improvisations of limited effectiveness. Such up-armoring as did occur was usually a dockyard job, one that required the same kind of facilities needed to build the ships in the first place.

Indeed, upgrading the armor of a design often meant exactly the same thing as upgunning it, because in either case you had to go back to the drawing board and design a new vehicle. So the notion that upgunning is difficult because it takes time is absurd, because it ignores that increasing armor protection also takes time.

I did say makeshift.
The point is that the shells are easily capable of targeting each other. And that who ever strikes first has a harder time as the enemy can use both his standard point defenses his primary weapons to shoot down enemy projectiles. (We have even seen situation where they were used to destroy particle beams)

And the fact that the primary weapons are so incredibly overkill means that you stand a better chance with more shells than with less stronger ones.

By your own arguments, weapons lighter than your main battery guns would be quicker-firing and perfectly adequate to destroy incoming enemy shells. Why not use them, when volume of fire is a greater concern than individual damage potential?

So yes, it is due to conditions completely beyond our control. But if you people are going to provide any meaningful input I do have to point these conditions out so that you know what you are dealing with.

The conditions in question are arbitrary and bluntly illogical, defying common sense, engineering logic, and the lessons of history. The fact that you accept them uncritically does not make them more valid.

[Imperial528]

Simon, I would like to note one thing.

If you were to compare most starships in the RPG to Purple's, you'd find that there are two key differences:

Most of the warships in the RPG are like conventional warships, with PD/light turrets, medium turrets for escorts or disabling larger ships, and large heavy-hitters for killing ships of equal tonnage in a few well-placed shots, with some decently thick armor or shielding (we're talking 1-2 yard or meter thick at most for armor, except in the extreme cases).

Purples starships, on the other hand, have the opposite. Relative to his ships' armor, his guns are peashooters. But relative to the rest of the RPG, his weapons will do fine against the opposing armor, and the opposition's guns will be able to, but still require some effort, to punch through his armor. And the higher volume of guns means that even if his weapons aren't as powerful as the oppositions, he can simply drown them in fire on a ship-by-ship basis.

I mean, if you look at my ship here, you can see that it has large guns, and appears quite well armored. Against a ship of its class, one of them could easily be dead in five minutes at most. Against one of Purple's ships, in five minutes, Purple's ship could still exist, albeit unable to do nothing but retreat and be salvaged for materials, and mine could be simply dead, with escape pods streaking away from the battle area.


Also, back to the shielding...

The belief was not that adding armor was not feasible (well, it's possible, but then systems would have to be rerouted, etc, while adding a component is easier for my style of ship building), it was simply that I have extra space and power generation, and that if I can add more protection without much cost, why not?

That and I wanted to know if the idea was possible IRL at all.

[Purple]

I was under the impression that adding armor was not so much unfeasible as simply somewhat harder to do than adding shields. Something you are doing. It's actually a good idea, I will have to look into shielding my self.

[Junghalli]

Adding armor brings us back to the rocket engineering difficulties too. Gotta keep the engine in balance as well as growing you propellant tanks.

On the plus side you may be able to use your propellant as armor. Think of a spacecraft buried in a giant iceberg that it consumes as propellant. To hurt most of the spacecraft proper lasers have to burn through large volumes of ice first. The giant propellant mass might also make a nice heat sink.

Of course obviously this works better in more hard SF with reasonable numbers than a setting with gigaton weapons. Honestly armor and dramatic slugfests in general work better in a universe that doesn't have hugely powerful weaponry. Putting hugely powerful weaponry in such a universe gets you into what I call the self-nulling double bullshit effect: you invoke magic to justify your huge yields and then you invoke more magic to cancel out your other magic so your huge yields can look like much smaller yields in battles. Personally if you want ships to be able to take hits and keep fighting I don't see why you wouldn't just go for relatively weak weapons so it makes sense right off the bat. Is there some pressing reason you need huge yields?

[Purple]

er... that would come under this:

Many issues in this stem from the fact that the RPG has been lasting for some 2 years now. And that in the early days, none of us really paid attention much to realism. Now however, we are paying attention (since it is required for competitive gameplay) but also have to not break with the things established in the early times of the RPG.

I realize that some facts might not make sense. But they are facts established as such and have to be accepted without questioning. We can't say that the armor was capable of withstanding X a year ago but cant withstand it now. And we can't say that in the last 24 hours someone invented a weapon that is several orders of magnitude beyond anything anyone considered possible by physics while no one noticed anything.

[Junghalli]

Fair enough, honestly it was more a generalized rant, tons of settings do it. It's one of those tropes that gets imitated endlessly because everyone else is doing it.

[Simon_Jester]

Fair enough, honestly it was more a generalized rant, tons of settings do it. It's one of those tropes that gets imitated endlessly because everyone else is doing it.

[Plays Star Wars theme]

Of course, it dates back to the pulp era with gee-whiz rayguns that could melt through steel... at which point some poor writer sat down and realized he needed a way to defend against said rayguns. Thus was born the shield, and thus was born the aptly named, and ever-escalating, self-nulling double bullshit effect.

[Junghalli]

[Plays Star Wars theme]

Ironically the Star Wars movies never really struck me as having this problem so much. The Star Wars universe with its multi-gigaton turbolasers and other assorted obscenely powerful weaponry on the other hand is a textbook case of the syndrome.

I find the problem generally a lot worse in written SF than visual SF, simply because written SF by its very nature tends to spell out the tech more. With visual media you can just assume things are sane because the author isn't there to tell you otherwise.

[Purple]

That's a quality name.

About RPG history, my setting did a transitiion from soft to hard sci fi right in the middle of a running crossover rpg in which it was taking part. The fix was simple: stop mentioning most the stuff, and retcon the few places where it directly affected the plot, sometimes with everyone agreeing to just let certain details slide.

You can retcon something in a story you are writing. Becouse you are the god of that story.
Hence you control all the faction.

But in a RPG (that stands for Forum Role Playing game or how you people would call it here STGOD role-playing games) we can't do that.

I could for example tone my weapons down so that my armor and ship stats make sense. But there is no way I could make the other guy tone his ships down. So I would end up with weapons that can penetrate my armor, but can't scratch the paint off his.


And there is no way to enforce a system wide change of all the numbers.
Not to mention that the GM would just outright refuse to even consider it.

[Junghalli]

It worked for us because all the players valued the plot and characters over the firepower, so we all just agreed to let it slide. (hell, being a crossover, there was already some of that going on. We had one out of character flamewar over 200 GIGATONS - indeed, the other player formatted it just like that - but it ended happily anyway because David vs Goliath is no fun if David never has any chance at all! He doesn't have to win, but he needs some chance. Everybody recognized that and we simply agreed it all made a lot more sense with everybody normalizing around a lower value than a higher one.)

Yeah, if it's just ship battles for a typical SF setting I don't think it should be too hard to rearrange the numbers; what matters is the relative power of the weapons and effectiveness of the defense, so if you just evenly slash zeroes until you get to the point that the weapon effects correspond nicely to the weapon yields without inserting extra superfluous magic you should probably be good.

This is really one of the main reasons I find self-nulling magic to be objectionable; it's often just essentially plot-superfluous detail.

[Imperial528]

Up until this point I had assumed our ships were not all that strong....

This thread has been revealing.

[Purple]

Well, I took gigatons because I wanted to be able to do horrible damage to planets with as few shots as possible.
And it paid off, big time.

[Junghalli]

If you want to do lots of damage in very little time you could just pack a couple of dozen thousands of (sane yield i.e. kiloton to megaton) nuclear missiles into some specialized bombardment ship designed to be able to launch them all at once. That should be able to fuck up a planetary society pretty good in one "shot".

It might be a more efficient approach too as omnidirectional bombs are subject to the inverse square law.

[Purple]

I was thinking about what you people said. And my words started sounding somewhat insane the more I thought about them.
So I returned to the only real major fleet battle we had so far and examined it. And than I came to some interesting findings.


Let me explain the situation first.
The battle in question was between an enemy fleet (some 20000 ships) and my fleet (some 30000). It lasted for some 2 hours and it began at a range of approximately 1-1.5 light hours. At the beginning, the fleets almost immediately started closing that distance.

As the battle lasted, the same patten repeated it self over and over again. The fleets would fire broadsides at the same time. The shells would meet in the middle, partially destroying each other in the process. Than, what was left of the shells would fly on only to be decimated by point defenses.

In fact, during the first 1 and a half hours (approximately) I don't think either side lost more than 10 ships total.
But in the last 30 minutes or so as the fleets finally came into what was essentially mele range. The players could find no more gimmicks to rely on and they just had to suffer getting hit. Since the point defenses just could not get it all, the ships could not dodge etc.

During these last 30 minutes, the total losses mounted to about 35000 ships total.


So it seems that there is actually a good justification in universe for having a lot of smaller guns instead of few large ones. The shells are not inferior at all, they just don't get to hit the ships much. The point defenses are just that good. In fact, now that I look at the numbers in the posts. I think that at long ranges, if 1% of your shells make it through than that should count as a successful attack. (we even used explosions to stop particle beam attacks)

That would also explain how one of my cruisers was heavily damaged by a broadside from an enemy warship, while the same class of cruisers stood up to enemy warships of the same class for over 2 hours.

And I only noticed that now when I was re reading the thing to try and find out just why our ships are so durable.
Although I guess I can be excused for forgetting such details since the battle was almost a year and a half ago (real time).

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Let me explain the situation first.
The battle in question was between an enemy fleet (some 20000 ships) and my fleet (some 30000). It lasted for some 2 hours and it began at a range of approximately 1-1.5 light hours. At the beginning, the fleets almost immediately started closing that distance.

As the battle lasted, the same patten repeated it self over and over again. The fleets would fire broadsides at the same time. The shells would meet in the middle, partially destroying each other in the process. Than, what was left of the shells would fly on only to be decimated by point defenses.

You had to have expended a lot of shells for that to happen. And I mean a lot of shells. Literally enough to walk on, if they were running into each other. Are you aware just how much empty volume there is in space?

In fact, during the first 1 and a half hours (approximately) I don't think either side lost more than 10 ships total.
But in the last 30 minutes or so as the fleets finally came into what was essentially mele range. The players could find no more gimmicks to rely on and they just had to suffer getting hit. Since the point defenses just could not get it all, the ships could not dodge etc.

During these last 30 minutes, the total losses mounted to about 35000 ships total.


So it seems that there is actually a good justification in universe for having a lot of smaller guns instead of few large ones. The shells are not inferior at all, they just don't get to hit the ships much. The point defenses are just that good. In fact, now that I look at the numbers in the posts. I think that at long ranges, if 1% of your shells make it through than that should count as a successful attack. (we even used explosions to stop particle beam attacks)

Nah, it just means the whole lot of you are bleeding idiots. A small shell that does a little damage if it hits is worth much, much less than a bigger shell that does a lot of damage if it hits. Especially since the big shell has a better shot at getting a piece of something that would mission-kill, or kill-kill, an opposing ship. You just have to save the shells until you get into that final kill-zone, and then shoot them all off when the nobody can really get out of the way. If you've got particle beams and other beams, you can use those to try to shoot your enemy's point-defense and sensors (diminishing their ability to intercept your weapons, and to shoot back at you.)

[Connor MacLeod]

I think that's common: a lot of sci fi fans really have no perspective on just what the numbers mean, or the scale of the universe. Planets have one little town in them, solar systems are as big as the planet and its low orbit, and gigatons are weak shots.

Obviously, none of those are true, but the sci-fi tropes are so biased toward that so people don't think much about it.

Why blame "numbers?" Its not the numbers thats the problem, its the complexity of the issue and the knowledge (or lack thereof) of the people involved. Most of the time its not "OMG its huge yields" because there are universes that are fairly consistent. The problem is mainly the consistency - people don't think fully through the consequences of their actions. Realism is complicated, and actual realism defeats the complete understanding of one person. Once you start introducing details like science and logistics and all that other stuff to make it sound more "realistic" things can quickly snowball -where does one draw the point on "realistic" pray tell? Besides anyone can fuck up smaller numbers just as well as big if they aren't careful and consistent in their approach.

Hell its not even limited to "soft" science fiction, or science fiction in general. Fantasy and lots other fiction can have that problem as well (Harry Potter is a good example, as is Tom Clancy or Dale Brown or lots of other 'modern fiction' writers...) I've yet to see a group of supposedly "hard" scifi fans agree with what is going to be "appropriate" future tech (I kind of doubt we can actually even predict it with any degree of success.. complexity again.)

[Purple]

You had to have expended a lot of shells for that to happen. And I mean a lot of shells. Literally enough to walk on, if they were running into each other. Are you aware just how much empty volume there is in space?

They were not running into each other. It was deliberate.
The logic of both sides was that it is more important to avoid being hit than to hit the enemy.
So decreasing your own firepower for the sake of protection was a worthy trade off.

It had absolutely nothing to do with chance.

Nah, it just means the whole lot of you are bleeding idiots. A small shell that does a little damage if it hits is worth much, much less than a bigger shell that does a lot of damage if it hits. Especially since the big shell has a better shot at getting a piece of something that would mission-kill, or kill-kill, an opposing ship.

But less shells means that less get through. If only 10% of the projectiles gets through, and you fire 10 projectiles than 1 will hit. If you fire 1 with the firepower of all 10 combined than 0 will hit.

How is that incomprehensible? A trillion teratons worth of bombs is worth nothing to you if it gets destroyed on the half way point.

You just have to save the shells until you get into that final kill-zone, and then shoot them all off when the nobody can really get out of the way. If you've got particle beams and other beams, you can use those to try to shoot your enemy's point-defense and sensors (diminishing their ability to intercept your weapons, and to shoot back at you.)

That is what we ended up doing after we both figured out the other guy's point defenses. I mean, both of us had almost no intelligence on the enemy fleet for the most part.

[Connor MacLeod]

Numbers become the problem the second a writer or a GM writes them down. Now, readers who know their stuff will just moan at it, and readers who don't won't gain anything from it either; it is just a "ooh techy" to them.

That's going tob e true of any number though, and not just big numbers. I'd agree though that keeping it vague works best, but there's only so far you can do that.

Either way, you lose, and it very rarely makes a lick of difference on the plot. I read on the internet that there is some law of conservation of detail that writers are supposed to heed. When you throw out bullshit numbers, you violated that.

Everyone has differing opinions on bullshit numbers. I've seen folk who think the Atomic Rockets stuff is too soft (talk of single digit megawatt lasers in combat, or not even using spaceships at all, or so on and so forth.) I've seen disagreement on what constitutes a "realistic" rocket ship, and I think the whole "what would be the best kind of space battle" has gone back and forth for years now without any resolution (lasres vs Missiles, etc.)

What it boils down to is degrees, and people will never agrgee on the 'right' degree. Which to me is what makes attempts at categorization such as 'hard' and 'soft' hilarious. you might as well try to set down a definitive code of "good" vs "evil" (beyond certain broad agreements like "killing for certain reasons is bad" say, you're not going to get much agreement.)

Now, of course, "show, don't tell" has its problems too when it comes to firepower, at least if you insist on analyzing it in the SDN manner. Sometimes it is wanting to see the action while on the ground and in space - leading to weaponsn weak enough to survive while a few yards away on one hand, but big enough to be seen 1000 miles away on the other.

Weapons will invariably have problems no matter how big the number is if the person doesnt know what he or she is doing. Think of the infamous STV "photon torpedo" incident. It doesnt matter whether you argue that is kilotons, tons, or even kilograms in explosive yield, its going to have problems regardless. But at the same time, it's beyond ludicrous to assume that all photon torpedoes are either technobabble weapons or must have grenade size yields (but alot of fans DO assume one or the other, and often do so in other cases.)

That however is the problem, its going to be hard to find a sci fi writer or fan who isn't going to be an amateur in some way, and an amateur approach, no matter how well read/advised/researched, is going to run into problems. Again, its a matter of degree. The best lesson I've ever learned is "never assume you know everything, and expect to be wrong all the time." because most of the time you're bound to be proven wrong in some way (or at least have an incomplete answer.) Complexity will defeat any sci fi fan.

More often, it tends to be people throwing out planets as if they were towns. "I'll destroy this entire planet!" and stuff like that gets thrown around... without the slightest realization in just how BIG "this entire planet" is and what consequences that would have on the calcs.

Which works if its handled fine. I know lots of "soft" sci fi that, to me, at least doesnt break suspension of disbelief. Old Man's War, Hyperion, the Cultureverse novels, Asimov's stuff, etc. I'm all fine with that and it generally is more conssitent (relatively speaking) than STar Wars.

On the other hand, I have a very broad definition of consistency I use. Stuff like "Trantor has only 40 billion people on it" doesn't bug me because there can be lots of plausible (if irrational/illogical) reasons for that to be.

[Connor MacLeod]

Yeah, what you say is reasonable, Connor.

Sometimes. When I'm thinking. LOL

Though, on big vs small, going with small is usually the way the plot prefers to go anyway. People like ships that duke it out instead of disappearing in a flash. They like seeing the characters struggle to win instead of just throwing super tech at the problem.

True, although "big" vs "small" is going to be relative. What is small? kilotons is small to megatons, gigawatts are small to terawatts, and megawatts are small to gigawatts. And "ships disappearing in a flash" could happen in alot of ways (if you're using antimatter in your ship, or your ship is carrying or producing gigatwatts or terawatts of energy, its quite probably will disappear in a flash

The "power level" and the technology and all that should fit the setting as envisioned, and do so reasonably. Stuff like Star Wars and Star Trek have problems in that they leave too many technological loose ends flapping, so to speak.

None of this are hard rules, just a starting point.

If I am honest, I actually think going with "magic" rather than "realism" makes things easier simply because you don't have to bend over backwards to satisfy "realism". I mean one can go with the realistic approach but it gets incredibly technical just to get it accurate - sooner or later you have to say "fairies did it" at some point or your book is probably not going to get written cuz of all the research you do just to make it accurate. Nevermind other aspects like "military realism" or "political realism" or "economic realism" or such not.

I'd daresay that even tech that was mostly "soft" or "magical" could work quite well if it was internally consistent and used in a plausible manner (which can mean rationally or irrationally.)

But like with any medium, if it breaks disbelief or works in an obviously stupid manner, we're probably not going to like it. (I still cringe at the movie "Eraser" and it smagic railgun.)