TBX in space

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah, if you are shooting a big expensive missile at someone better put a nuke on it to make it do some real damage or even better if your technology allows a nuclear bomb pumped laser warhead to gain a standoff attack distance that would be plainly impossible with any kind of chemical warhead. At the speeds that would be tipically encountered during space combat a simple dumb kinetic impactor would do far more damage than any chemical explosive.

Yes. And you know your missile warhead is a bad joke when a literal sack of bricks would be a more effective choice for doing harm to the enemy.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Ideally, wouldn't you use that Casaba Howitzer nuclear-shaped charge rather than just letting most of the nuke's energy be wasted?

Incidentally, is there anything that actually rules out such weapons, or did they just never get tested in real life?

[Purple]

Ideally, wouldn't you use that Casaba Howitzer nuclear-shaped charge rather than just letting most of the nuke's energy be wasted?

That and bomb pumped lasers. One design I had in a RPG I played years ago was to have an atomic missile with a multi directional laser setup for point defense. I'd launch the missile which upon reaching a certain range would open up to reveal a myriad of small projectors which would than each target one enemy missile before the bomb went off spreading a whirlwind of lasers to fend off entire missile swarms.

[Simon_Jester]

Ideally, wouldn't you use that Casaba Howitzer nuclear-shaped charge rather than just letting most of the nuke's energy be wasted?

Assuming you can't get the missile to initiate very close to the enemy's hull, yes. There are advantages and disadvantages to that. The main advantage I see is that designing your nuclear warhead so it can 'shoot' the enemy with the bulk of its energies from several kilometers away makes it harder for the enemy to intercept the missile, and harder to tell if their electronic warfare has "fooled" it or not.

I suspect that the main disadvantage is (likely to be) that a nuclear shaped charge does not use fissile material as efficiently as a conventional warhead design- so that it takes more plutonium or tritium or whatever to cause a given release of destructive energy. And (or?) it takes a more massive warhead to achieve the same energy release in a nuclear shaped charge. The former is not much of a handicap in a space battle. The latter... can be.

The limitation on nuclear shaped charges (separate from the disadvantage) is that no nuclear shaped charge will ever transfer 100% of its energy into the jet, or into a particular part of the jet. And given that the lowest figures I've heard for the jet angles are on the order of "ten-degree arc," you can still have a lot of the warhead energy outright miss the target if the standoff distance is more than a few kilometers. This won't matter for lightly protected targets, but against a heavily armored one your effectiveness decreases sharply as the standoff range of the weapon increases. You'll always get better standoff effect than from an unshaped nuclear warhead, but you still have to get fairly close to the target..

[It helps to think of a realistic nuclear shaped charge not as a 'beam' of collimated energy, but as a 'wavefront' of energy that spreads outward in a cone from the point of detonation]

Incidentally, is there anything that actually rules out such weapons, or did they just never get tested in real life?

Well, literally everything done on the project is classified except for a few executive summaries, as far as I can tell. Therefore, we have no real way of knowing what design obstacles were encountered.

Certainly, no such weapons were tested as far as we know, although it is impossible to rule out that some test occurred with the true nature of the test being classified. Especially if the test was performed underground.

Basically, any discussion of how Casaba-Howitzer works, why it can or can't be done, and so on, would involve details of nuclear weapons design. The vast majority of people who are truly qualified to talk about that subject are themselves current or former nuclear weapons designers, and sworn to secrecy... so it really is hard to be sure about anything.

Ideally, wouldn't you use that Casaba Howitzer nuclear-shaped charge rather than just letting most of the nuke's energy be wasted?

That and bomb pumped lasers. One design I had in a RPG I played years ago was to have an atomic missile with a multi directional laser setup for point defense. I'd launch the missile which upon reaching a certain range would open up to reveal a myriad of small projectors which would than each target one enemy missile before the bomb went off spreading a whirlwind of lasers to fend off entire missile swarms.

Casaba-Howitzer gives you a uniform 'blast' of energy in a single cone. Bomb-pumped lasers give you one or more, much less energetic but more tightly collimated 'beams.'

Using bomb-pumped lasers for defense strikes me as very tricky, because aiming the lasing rods with that kind of precision and coordinating them, literally 'on the fly' because they must orient themselves in 3D space, would be hard. It'd be much more challenging to aim the weapon than to aim, say, a 'conventional' laser cannon mounted in a turret bolted to your spacecraft.

The conventional laser is in a fixed, predictable geometric relationship to the radars and other sensors that provide it with targeting information, which reduces the number of variables you have to think about. The bomb-pumped laser doesn't have that advantage.

Personally, I'd say that bomb-pumped lasers make more sense as offensive weapons, because with an offensive weapon you have more time to line up your shot, and compute the position of the targets. You are also engaging, on average, slower targets, so keeping track of where they are is less of a burden.

Using them as a short-ranged defensive system that is designed to engage agile threats, moving rapidly at close range (rapid change in the angle to the target), with only limited amounts of time to spot and lock on to the target... that's not so good.
______________

In other words, bomb-pumped lasers are solid slugs or buckshot, while Casaba-Howitzer is birdshot. Same basic operating principles, but Casaba-Howitzer is better for thin-skinned fluttery things while bomb-pumped lasers are better for tougher, more distant targets.

[Purple]

Using bomb-pumped lasers for defense strikes me as very tricky, because aiming the lasing rods with that kind of precision and coordinating them, literally 'on the fly' because they must orient themselves in 3D space, would be hard. It'd be much more challenging to aim the weapon than to aim, say, a 'conventional' laser cannon mounted in a turret bolted to your spacecraft.

How so? Why would the missile need to know its position? All it needs to know is the arc available for each lasing head and a good sensor readout on the immediate area. After all, the thing only needs to know what targets are close enough to hit and what rod to point at them. The individual rods need not know anything at all. They certainly weren't autonomous.

And why does it need to do anything on the fly? How is this thing any different than having a small one-use spaceship with a bunch of laser turrets?

The conventional laser is in a fixed, predictable geometric relationship to the radars and other sensors that provide it with targeting information, which reduces the number of variables you have to think about. The bomb-pumped laser doesn't have that advantage.

I fail to see how a missile carrying a bumb pumped laser would not have the same setup. You still have what amounts to a fixed number of fixed arc laser turrets mounted around a generator. The only difference is that once you fire the whole thing explodes.

What you are saying only really makes sense if you envision starships having non rotating turrets or having a separate set of sensors for each turret. Something which frankly I do not see being reasonable given that the material costs will far outweigh the cost of just doing the math on what ever computers a civilization advanced enough to fight a space war can build.

Personally, I'd say that bomb-pumped lasers make more sense as offensive weapons, because with an offensive weapon you have more time to line up your shot, and compute the position of the targets. You are also engaging, on average, slower targets, so keeping track of where they are is less of a burden.

A PD missile can however be made to be much smaller and lighter than an offensive one. So you can afford to use the space and weight saved for extra power and maneuverability. Thus instead of trying to figure things out you just get in closer.

Using them as a short-ranged defensive system that is designed to engage agile threats, moving rapidly at close range (rapid change in the angle to the target), with only limited amounts of time to spot and lock on to the target... that's not so good.

In the setting the norm for space warfare was basically missile spam. You'd have starships each with a broadside of several thousand guided weapons shooting at one another in the hope that enough projectiles will survive enemy defenses to get into range. So the process of aiming was more or less one of throwing a swarm of my point defense missiles into his missile swarm and having them take aim and detonate.

If I take them out I do. If not, and they managed to dodge I've made them waste enough time to buy my self the time I need to move further away and engage them again.


To use your analogy of modern day weapons. This thing was basically a FLAK burst. You fire enough of them into the enemy swarm chasing you and hope you kill them.

[Simon_Jester]

Using bomb-pumped lasers for defense strikes me as very tricky, because aiming the lasing rods with that kind of precision and coordinating them, literally 'on the fly' because they must orient themselves in 3D space, would be hard. It'd be much more challenging to aim the weapon than to aim, say, a 'conventional' laser cannon mounted in a turret bolted to your spacecraft.

How so? Why would the missile need to know its position? All it needs to know is the arc available for each lasing head and a good sensor readout on the immediate area. After all, the thing only needs to know what targets are close enough to hit and what rod to point at them. The individual rods need not know anything at all. They certainly weren't autonomous.

The problem is that you have to position the rods separately from the warhead; there has to be a vacuum gap between the lasing rods and the nuclear device. So the rods have to be 'steered' in some way to point at targets that can be maneuvering very rapidly in real time.

Since the rods are individually maneuverable objects that have to pivot and shift position relative to the nuclear warhead for that to happen... it's a problem.

And why does it need to do anything on the fly? How is this thing any different than having a small one-use spaceship with a bunch of laser turrets?

Because the rod has to be aligned with one end pointing at the warhead and one end pointing at the target. This creates problems for the geometry of engaging large swarms of missiles unless you put each individual rod a substantial distance away from the warhead... which means they are no longer physically attached, and the rod has to align itself in the correct position, pointing the correct way, at the millisecond when the warhead detonates.

The conventional laser is in a fixed, predictable geometric relationship to the radars and other sensors that provide it with targeting information, which reduces the number of variables you have to think about. The bomb-pumped laser doesn't have that advantage.

I fail to see how a missile carrying a bumb pumped laser would not have the same setup. You still have what amounts to a fixed number of fixed arc laser turrets mounted around a generator. The only difference is that once you fire the whole thing explodes.

The rods have to be able not only to point themselves but to remain aligned in the correct direction. So you basically need something that looks like a hedgehog, with rods sticking out every which way, but with all the rods free to scoot across the surface at will so that they can realign to point at a target.

This is if anything more mechanically complicated than building the rods into separate, independently maneuverable modules. But then you run into the problem of 'networking' all the modules, which is a LOT harder if you're using these as a defensive weapon against targets you didn't have a long time to line up your shots with.

Personally, I'd say that bomb-pumped lasers make more sense as offensive weapons, because with an offensive weapon you have more time to line up your shot, and compute the position of the targets. You are also engaging, on average, slower targets, so keeping track of where they are is less of a burden.

A PD missile can however be made to be much smaller and lighter than an offensive one. So you can afford to use the space and weight saved for extra power and maneuverability. Thus instead of trying to figure things out you just get in closer.

Needing to get closer to the enemy missiles negates the advantage of a bomb-pumped laser, because if you're planning to steer close to an individual target, why do you need extra standoff range from the bomb-pumped laser?

Using them as a short-ranged defensive system that is designed to engage agile threats, moving rapidly at close range (rapid change in the angle to the target), with only limited amounts of time to spot and lock on to the target... that's not so good.

In the setting the norm for space warfare was basically missile spam. You'd have starships each with a broadside of several thousand guided weapons shooting at one another in the hope that enough projectiles will survive enemy defenses to get into range. So the process of aiming was more or less one of throwing a swarm of my point defense missiles into his missile swarm and having them take aim and detonate.

If I take them out I do. If not, and they managed to dodge I've made them waste enough time to buy my self the time I need to move further away and engage them again.

To use your analogy of modern day weapons. This thing was basically a FLAK burst. You fire enough of them into the enemy swarm chasing you and hope you kill them.

Flak bursts don't work that way in real life- they're aimed at individual targets and scatter a large number of (wildly) unguided fragments into that target's path.

A bomb pumped laser, on the other hand, is a single warhead designed to fire multiple (painstakingly aligned) beams into multiple, widely separated targets.

Especially given that you see a defensive missile as being lighter and shorter-ranged than an offensive one, it makes far more sense to design each defensive missile to seek out and target one and only one enemy missile, but using a warhead type that gives it a higher probability of actually killing the target.

[Batman]

Using bomb-pumped lasers for defense strikes me as very tricky, because aiming the lasing rods with that kind of precision and coordinating them, literally 'on the fly' because they must orient themselves in 3D space, would be hard. It'd be much more challenging to aim the weapon than to aim, say, a 'conventional' laser cannon mounted in a turret bolted to your spacecraft.

How so? Why would the missile need to know its position? All it needs to know is the arc available for each lasing head and a good sensor readout on the immediate area. After all, the thing only needs to know what targets are close enough to hit and what rod to point at them. The individual rods need not know anything at all. They certainly weren't autonomous.

A good sensor readout means it knows its position. And the individual rods damned need to know something, namely where to point themselves.

The conventional laser is in a fixed, predictable geometric relationship to the radars and other sensors that provide it with targeting information, which reduces the number of variables you have to think about. The bomb-pumped laser doesn't have that advantage.

I fail to see how a missile carrying a bumb pumped laser would not have the same setup. You still have what amounts to a fixed number of fixed arc laser turrets mounted around a generator. The only difference is that once you fire the whole thing explodes.

Because starships are a lot bigger than missiles and thus have room for better sensors and aren't single-use-only and thus will likely mount more expensive sensors?

What you are saying only really makes sense if you envision starships having non rotating turrets or having a separate set of sensors for each turret. Something which frankly I do not see being reasonable given that the material costs will far outweigh the cost of just doing the math on what ever computers a civilization advanced enough to fight a space war can build.

Um-mankind has had separate sets of sensors for turrets by WW2 at the latest. I fail to see why that would be discontinued.

Personally, I'd say that bomb-pumped lasers make more sense as offensive weapons, because with an offensive weapon you have more time to line up your shot, and compute the position of the targets. You are also engaging, on average, slower targets, so keeping track of where they are is less of a burden.

A PD missile can however be made to be much smaller and lighter than an offensive one. So you can afford to use the space and weight saved for extra power and maneuverability. Thus instead of trying to figure things out you just get in closer.

Prove it. Given your laser Death Blossom idea I suspect it's the offensive missile that's actually the simpler one.

To use your analogy of modern day weapons. This thing was basically a FLAK burst. You fire enough of them into the enemy swarm chasing you and hope you kill them.

Flak bursts are essentially omnidirectional. Your lasers are not.

[Purple]

A good sensor readout means it knows its position.

No, it means knowing the position of other things relative to it self. The object taking the reading is always in the center of its own sensors.

And the individual rods damned need to know something, namely where to point themselves.

Rudimentary mathematics gives you that.

Because starships are a lot bigger than missiles and thus have room for better sensors and aren't single-use-only and thus will likely mount more expensive sensors?

Which only matters if you are going to be shooting at things that are far away. Which this is not. The point of this is to guide the missile remotely into a group of enemy projectiles and than have it sight and detonate at them from a range where the velocity of the laser beam is sufficient to guarantee a hit. You only need to point directly at the enemy. You take care of the rest by flying close enough.

Um-mankind has had separate sets of sensors for turrets by WW2 at the latest. I fail to see why that would be discontinued.

Because in space you need sensors much stronger and more accurate than what we use on earth in order to track and engage enemy targets. Especially if those targets are small missiles. So it make sense to centralize those and use basic math to correct for the locations of your turrets. Especially in non guided weapons where it is just math and you do not need a separate guidance radar to track targets individually.

Prove it. Given your laser Death Blossom idea I suspect it's the offensive missile that's actually the simpler one.

You need a larger warhead to hurt a starship and penetrate armor than you do to fire laser beams that can hurt missiles. Smaller warhead = more space in the same frame for fuel or better engines. Which is basically what I did. I used the same frame for both missiles.

Flak bursts are essentially omnidirectional. Your lasers are not.

It's roughly the same use though. You fire a bunch of fragments or in my case laser beams at the enemy and hope you hit. The only difference is that since space has a lot more room to wiggle around in the beams are roughly pointed before firing as opposed to just firing blind.

But really, half the job of guiding this thing is done by the fact that your enemy is literally flying straight at you. All you need to do is fire in his general direction to intercept and than use some sort of weapon which has a standoff range big enough that you don't have to score a direct hit. You can afford to get this thing within a couple of kilometers from your targets without risk of it being avoided or shot down. And you generally shoot from a distance that ensures your enemy does not have enough time to change his vector radically enough to move his entire hull out of the way of your shots.

[Batman]

A good sensor readout means it knows its position.

No, it means knowing the position of other things relative to it self. The object taking the reading is always in the center of its own sensors.

So...it knows its position.

And the individual rods damned need to know something, namely where to point themselves.

Rudimentary mathematics gives you that.

Which changes the fact that the rods need to know where they are relative to their intended targets...how, exactly?

Because starships are a lot bigger than missiles and thus have room for better sensors and aren't single-use-only and thus will likely mount more expensive sensors?

Which only matters if you are going to be shooting at things that are far away. Which this is not.

Yes it is.

The point of this is to guide the missile remotely into a group of enemy projectiles and than have it sight and detonate at them from a range where the velocity of the laser beam is sufficient to guarantee a hit.

The velocity of the laser beam by its lonesome is never sufficient to guarantee a hit.

Prove it. Given your laser Death Blossom idea I suspect it's the offensive missile that's actually the simpler one.

You need a larger warhead to hurt a starship and penetrate armor than you do to fire laser beams that can hurt missiles. Smaller warhead = more space in the same frame for fuel or better engines. Which is basically what I did. I used the same frame for both missiles.

Aaand wrong. You may need a bigger yield warhead to hurt a capship than to kill missiles, but the ancillaries needed to kill lots of missiles may very well and are in fact likely to make that warheads a lot more expensive and massive than a simple antiship one.

[Simon_Jester]

And the individual rods damned need to know something, namely where to point themselves.

Rudimentary mathematics gives you that.

Yes, but they have to be independently maneuvering in response to commands from the missile bus (the big thing that actually knows where the enemy is). This creates complexity because if the rod is either located or pointed in the wrong place, the beam is going to miss the target.

Basically, to physically steer a counter-missile into an enemy missile and blow it up at close range, you only have to command one object to maneuver into the general vicinity of one target. For this abortion, you have to command several objects to remain very precisely aligned relative to each other while the overall system tracks numerous distant targets.

Against purely ballistic missiles this can work, which is the context in which bomb-pumped lasers were first imagined. Against maneuvering targets it's going to be a lot harder, with no obvious reason to think it would pay off reliably.

Which only matters if you are going to be shooting at things that are far away. Which this is not. The point of this is to guide the missile remotely into a group of enemy projectiles and than have it sight and detonate at them from a range where the velocity of the laser beam is sufficient to guarantee a hit. You only need to point directly at the enemy. You take care of the rest by flying close enough.

The problem is this:

Sure, you don't have to worry about the enemy missile maneuvering enough to dodge your laser beams (which are fast), or to dodge your missile (thanks to its standoff range).

You do have to worry about it maneuvering faster than your very precisely aligned lasing rods can move to track it. The weakness of the system is its ability to accurately engage a crossing target that is maneuvering in three dimensions, given that you need the individual lasing rods to be independently aligning themselves in response to input from the missile bus.

Um-mankind has had separate sets of sensors for turrets by WW2 at the latest. I fail to see why that would be discontinued.

Because in space you need sensors much stronger and more accurate than what we use on earth in order to track and engage enemy targets. Especially if those targets are small missiles. So it make sense to centralize those and use basic math to correct for the locations of your turrets. Especially in non guided weapons where it is just math and you do not need a separate guidance radar to track targets individually.

On the other hand, if you centralize your sensors, and have only one set of sensors, one hit can blind your defensive targeting entirely, at which point you're screwed.

And for close-in defense of your ship, you don't need large, long range sensors... but you do very badly need sensors that cannot be crippled by a single lucky enemy strike. So "on-mount" sensors become very desirable.

Prove it. Given your laser Death Blossom idea I suspect it's the offensive missile that's actually the simpler one.

You need a larger warhead to hurt a starship and penetrate armor than you do to fire laser beams that can hurt missiles. Smaller warhead = more space in the same frame for fuel or better engines. Which is basically what I did. I used the same frame for both missiles.

Thing is, the mass of independently steerable lasing rods adds considerable bulk to the warhead. It is not a given that you gain all that much extra mass to devote to propulsion.

Moreover, if defensive missiles are just as big as offensive missiles, you really want to be sure each of your countermissiles actually kills one enemy missile. Given how hard it will be to aim the masses of bomb-pumped laser rods, I'm not sure that will work- and using more rods to compensate for the inaccuracy of individual rods hits diminishing returns. Because it complicates the targeting job done by individual missiles, and rapidly increases the bulk of the warhead.

Flak bursts are essentially omnidirectional. Your lasers are not.

It's roughly the same use though. You fire a bunch of fragments or in my case laser beams at the enemy and hope you hit. The only difference is that since space has a lot more room to wiggle around in the beams are roughly pointed before firing as opposed to just firing blind.

In which case you can still easily need to fire hundreds or thousands of individual laser beams at each missile to shoot it down. You'd do better to simply build each missile to have a warhead that will reliably kill one and only one enemy missile, and simply make it smaller than the enemy's offensive missile so that you can afford to fire more of them.

But really, half the job of guiding this thing is done by the fact that your enemy is literally flying straight at you. All you need to do is fire in his general direction to intercept and than use some sort of weapon which has a standoff range big enough that you don't have to score a direct hit. You can afford to get this thing within a couple of kilometers from your targets without risk of it being avoided or shot down. And you generally shoot from a distance that ensures your enemy does not have enough time to change his vector radically enough to move his entire hull out of the way of your shots.

If you're engaging from only a few kilometers away, a bomb-pumped laser is a pointless idea. An omnidirectional burst warhead, or a shaped nuclear charge, would be more effective.

[Purple]

So...it knows its position.

Only in relation to a very small number of targets. There is a difference between knowing your relative position opposed to the keyboard you are sitting in front of and to know your absolute position in space in time.

Which changes the fact that the rods need to know where they are relative to their intended targets...how, exactly?

Because the rods know nothing. They are just a mechanism with no software at all.

Yes it is.

So you are presuming to teach me how I used my own weapons?

Aaand wrong. You may need a bigger yield warhead to hurt a capship than to kill missiles, but the ancillaries needed to kill lots of missiles may very well and are in fact likely to make that warheads a lot more expensive and massive than a simple antiship one.

I think you are overstating things. Thy don't need to kill that many missiles each. Remember, these things are deployed in swarms. And you can fully expect that multiple lasers from multiple missiles or in fact multiple beams from the same missile to be targeted at the same target.

Yes, but they have to be independently maneuvering in response to commands from the missile bus (the big thing that actually knows where the enemy is). This creates complexity because if the rod is either located or pointed in the wrong place, the beam is going to miss the target.

This is indeed true. Which is why I used it in concentrations and against concentrations of enemy missiles. I made no pretenses at using just one and at distant targets or anything like that. That would indeed have lead to a lot of power being wasted.

Basically, to physically steer a counter-missile into an enemy missile and blow it up at close range, you only have to command one object to maneuver into the general vicinity of one target. For this abortion, you have to command several objects to remain very precisely aligned relative to each other while the overall system tracks numerous distant targets.

Against purely ballistic missiles this can work, which is the context in which bomb-pumped lasers were first imagined. Against maneuvering targets it's going to be a lot harder, with no obvious reason to think it would pay off reliably.

I think that this is where part of our misunderstanding came from. I was not firing this at anything that can and would try to dodge. Enemy missiles would for all intents and purposes be flying along a very predictable path from the enemy ship to my own only changing their direction if my ship tried to dodge. And most battles were conducted by two fleets lining up at huge distances and than advancing on one another. That is why I invented this thing late in the game to let my offensive missiles take out enemy missiles as they passed one another.

The problem is this:

Sure, you don't have to worry about the enemy missile maneuvering enough to dodge your laser beams (which are fast), or to dodge your missile (thanks to its standoff range).

You do have to worry about it maneuvering faster than your very precisely aligned lasing rods can move to track it. The weakness of the system is its ability to accurately engage a crossing target that is maneuvering in three dimensions, given that you need the individual lasing rods to be independently aligning themselves in response to input from the missile bus.

True. But it's not a problem that can't be solved by using motors and computers. And for a nation state that can afford to fight space wars using 15km long starships which fire thousands of missiles per volley at one another for several hours I can say that the costs are not that great.

Basically, to physically steer a counter-missile into an enemy missile and blow it up at close range, you only have to command one object to maneuver into the general vicinity of one target. For this abortion, you have to command several objects to remain very precisely aligned relative to each other while the overall system tracks numerous distant targets.

Well actually I have to roughly fly my cloud into the enemy cloud and see what happens.

On the other hand, if you centralize your sensors, and have only one set of sensors, one hit can blind your defensive targeting entirely, at which point you're screwed.

And for close-in defense of your ship, you don't need large, long range sensors... but you do very badly need sensors that cannot be crippled by a single lucky enemy strike. So "on-mount" sensors become very desirable.

That is a very good point. You have me there.

Thing is, the mass of independently steerable lasing rods adds considerable bulk to the warhead. It is not a given that you gain all that much extra mass to devote to propulsion.

Well for a start I dropped the warhead yield by an order of magnitude when designing these. And the whole steering system can't possibly be that big. I mean, the missiles were already 10m in diameter and stuff. There is room in there.

Moreover, if defensive missiles are just as big as offensive missiles, you really want to be sure each of your countermissiles actually kills one enemy missile. Given how hard it will be to aim the masses of bomb-pumped laser rods, I'm not sure that will work- and using more rods to compensate for the inaccuracy of individual rods hits diminishing returns. Because it complicates the targeting job done by individual missiles, and rapidly increases the bulk of the warhead.

Imagine things this way. You have 1200 missiles flying past 1200 enemy missiles at several or maybe tens of kilometers range. Both swarms are taking the quickest path to the enemy to give him least time to react. Out of your 1200 missiles maybe 200 are point defense, the rest are attackers. As the two swarms pass your "defense" missiles open up and try to hit as many as they can.

I expected these to account for maybe 200-250 enemy missiles destroyed. Maybe 300 if I am lucky. But that's enough to give my other defenses that come after a fighting chance.

In which case you can still easily need to fire hundreds or thousands of individual laser beams at each missile to shoot it down. You'd do better to simply build each missile to have a warhead that will reliably kill one and only one enemy missile, and simply make it smaller than the enemy's offensive missile so that you can afford to fire more of them.

I thought of that. But due to the above situation you'd end up with a lot of fratricide and a self defeating system.

If you're engaging from only a few kilometers away, a bomb-pumped laser is a pointless idea. An omnidirectional burst warhead, or a shaped nuclear charge, would be more effective.

A few to a few hundred at most. The two are synonymous in space.

The way these battles were fought you see is that the fleets would basically line up and advance on one another firing volley after volley of missiles. The closer you are the more of your missiles would get through the layered point defense (these things, nuclear attack missiles, laser PD's etc.). So the fleets would slowly chip away at one another with each volley being progressively more deadly up until the point where they get into knife fighting range. At that point PD was mostly useless and you'd end up with massive slaughter and death. This is assuming that one side does not realize they are screwed, turn tail and run.

So anything that helps my fleet advance on the enemy that bit further before taking damage was a good thing.

[Corvus 501]

So in your summery Purple, most battles are basicly like early Honor Harrington, useing reaction drives, and without sidewalls. Assuming that they have basic gravaty controll (logical, assuming that they have warp drive) and some related technology, (like inertial dampaners) as well as electromagnetic shields (also a reasonable assumption, we already can produce large scale fields, in fact they are used in degaussing ship hulls) than battles would be very much like Honor Harrington battles.

[Purple]

So in your summery Purple, most battles are basicly like early Honor Harrington, useing reaction drives, and without sidewalls.

I have no idea what you just said. But basically imagine Jitland playing out with guided missiles and at single digit percentage fractional C velocities.

Assuming that they have basic gravaty controll (logical, assuming that they have warp drive) and some related technology, (like inertial dampaners)

Very basic. Inertial dampening and artificial 1G on the ships is a thing. But there are no other uses for it.

as well as electromagnetic shields (also a reasonable assumption, we already can produce large scale fields, in fact they are used in degaussing ship hulls)

The setting did not use energy shields of any type. Yes you could probably have something to degauss your hull but nothing that could actually protect you from weapon fire. The primary protective mechanism in my case were simply kilometer thick armored belts.

than battles would be very much like Honor Harrington battles.

Again, not familiar with the setting at all.

[sarevok2]

I think offensive missiles are going to be much bigger and expensive than defensive missiles in a realistic setting. The reason is velocity required. In space the bigger the ship the faster it can go. A large thousand ton spacecraft with nuclear thermal engines will be far faster than any rocket propelled missile. Something as huge as a Saturn V rocket took three days to reach the moon from Earth. So a smaller missile will generally not have the required velocity to catch a spacecraft that mounts a bigger and more powerful engine. Now you might put nuclear engines on missiles but then again a big nuclear thermal engine is going to outperform a smaller one. So to catch a ship you need missiles the size of small spaceships.

A defensive missile on other hand can be no bigger than SAMs used on naval warships. They can be rocket propelled using of nuclear engines. They dont need great velocity because their target is coming right at them. All they need is to fly to a point in between the ship and the missile.

[Corvus 501]

The way I see battles working out is like this: Capitol class ships advance spamming missiles until they reach effective range of their projectile weapons, which they switch to to take advantage of a higher ROF. Meanwhile, battlecruisers, destroyers, and light cruisers slash in, fireing missiles from range, and lighter ships act as a point defence screen. Carriers, (if they exist, and I find their lack of presence unlikely) spam out fighters, bombers, and inteceptors. Whoever has the most ships, ammunition, and parasite craft wins, in theory.

The EM shields are there mostly to scramble guidance devices, and mess with targeting, they might block a plasma bolt, which is why no o e would use them. They wouldn't have much use as shields, which is why armor would be relied on so much.

[Corvus 501]

Also, with EM shields, nukes might have a little bit of trouble doing damage, as an EM shield might scatter the plasma before it hits the hull, though radation would still be a problem. As a reasult, you might need more than a few hits to take out a capitol ship, which is why you would still have drednoughts, and other heavy capitol ships.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Also, with EM shields, nukes might have a little bit of trouble doing damage, as an EM shield might scatter the plasma before it hits the hull, though radation would still be a problem. As a reasult, you might need more than a few hits to take out a capitol ship, which is why you would still have drednoughts, and other heavy capitol ships.

The vast majority of what ends up hitting the hull of spacecraft hit by a nuke is EM radiation, not plasma.

[Corvus 501]

Yes, that's the point. Shields don't stop much damage, but they do make it a much bigger pain to take out the ships that carry them.

[Corvus 501]

A ship equipped with a shield is harder to hit, as there this massive shifting magnetic field, one powerfull eanough to scramble radar, lidar, and similar sensors, not to mention mess with beam weapons, and scramble guidence packages. A shielded ship isn't a like a Covanent ship facing a UNSC ship, it's more like an AGIS crueiser with armor and missiles facing a conventional crueiser.

[Corvus 501]

Having a shield isn't an automatic win, it just makes life harder for everyone in question, and allow fleets to flee. Missiles, slugs, and torpedoes (what bombers drop) go through, but beam weapons tend to get unfocused. BPLs (bomb pumped lasers) might have more luck getting through, as you are dealing with a bunch of high energy lasers snapping into existence, something which is kind of hard to counter, especially when dealing with missile swarms, and it's much harder to set the shield to disrupt the beam when you are dealing with potentially hundreds of them.

[Purple]

The way I see battles working out is like this: Capitol class ships advance spamming missiles until they reach effective range of their projectile weapons, which they switch to to take advantage of a higher ROF.

Actually there were no projectile weapons. Just guided missile spam. There are several reasons for this, here are my top ones if I recall correctly. It was years ago.

1. Guided missiles mean no rotating turrets. And no rotating turrets means that the weapons are many times harder to disable. It also means that your weapons are not limited in their arc of fire so it does not matter which way you are facing the enemy with. You can always fire with 100% of your weaponry.
2. Rotating turrets are not faster to reload than a massive conveyor belt autoloader feeding an open shaft missile silo.
3. Battles would often conclude without closing as one side would turn tail and run or try to maintain distance knowing that if things close they will die. And you don't want to have half of your broadside only good for fighting at ranges where you would not be fighting half the time.

Meanwhile, battlecruisers, destroyers, and light cruisers slash in, fireing missiles from range, and lighter ships act as a point defence screen. Carriers, (if they exist, and I find their lack of presence unlikely) spam out fighters, bombers, and inteceptors. Whoever has the most ships, ammunition, and parasite craft wins, in theory.

I did not really have a combined arms classification like that. What I had was:
Leviathans - Huge battleships meant to act as fleet command hubs and such.
Battleships - Self explanatory.
Cruisers - Battleships that trade off size for longer cruising endurance for patrols and such. They still fight in the line of battle as a battleship would. But they also act as sector patrol ships and other such roles. Basically battleships on a budget. The closest Jitland equivalent would be the German style battle cruisers, not the British style ones.
Destroyers - Pocket battleships (see a trend?) performing screening, recognizance and similar roles. In battle these would fight as part of the line. These would be closest to British style battle cruisers in design.

There were no fighters although all ships did had non combat sensor drones used for scouting and such. And they were used on one occasion as a swarm of suicide craft to block an enemy missile spam by ramming into them. It's not really a tactic though for obvious reasons.

The EM shields are there mostly to scramble guidance devices, and mess with targeting, they might block a plasma bolt, which is why no o e would use them. They wouldn't have much use as shields, which is why armor would be relied on so much.

Yea, definitively nothing of that sort at all existed in my fleet. Any EM I would have had was either ECM or for non defensive purposes. It would not stop a fire extinguisher if it was blown against my hull.

Eventually shields did exist in the setting. But they behaved just like another slab of armor. They would literally act like a magical brick wall that could only take so much strain before cracking open. And once they did you lost your shields for that battle. They did not recharge.

Also, ECM was used heavily. But even with that it only meant that you could not accurately target individual turrets and such on a starship due to lack of resolution. A 15km long thing is hard to miss, especially if it's transmitting jamming at you. The smaller destroyers of course were a tad harder to hit. They were only 6km long.

[Alyrium Denryle]

A ship equipped with a shield is harder to hit, as there this massive shifting magnetic field, one powerfull eanough to scramble radar, lidar, and similar sensors, not to mention mess with beam weapons, and scramble guidence packages. A shielded ship isn't a like a Covanent ship facing a UNSC ship, it's more like an AGIS crueiser with armor and missiles facing a conventional crueiser.

As far as I know (and one of the local physicists can correct me on this) a massive electromagnetic field will not do that. RADAR frequency spam can deal with radar by fucking up range finding in various ways, an EM field wont do shit to photons of light. RADAR and LIDAR would be unaffected by such measures. The same for IR, X Ray, or optical telescopes.

[Corvus 501]

Can't EM fields bend light?

[Corvus 501]

A ship equipped with a shield is harder to hit, as there this massive shifting magnetic field, one powerfull eanough to scramble radar, lidar, and similar sensors, not to mention mess with beam weapons, and scramble guidence packages. A shielded ship isn't a like a Covanent ship facing a UNSC ship, it's more like an AGIS crueiser with armor and missiles facing a conventional crueiser.

As far as I know (and one of the local physicists can correct me on this) a massive electromagnetic field will not do that. RADAR frequency spam can deal with radar by fucking up range finding in various ways, an EM field wont do shit to photons of light. RADAR and LIDAR would be unaffected by such measures. The same for IR, X Ray, or optical telescopes.

Can't EM fields move bend light? If so, you can "bend" or defocus lasers and other beam weapons.

[Iroscato]

A ship equipped with a shield is harder to hit, as there this massive shifting magnetic field, one powerfull eanough to scramble radar, lidar, and similar sensors, not to mention mess with beam weapons, and scramble guidence packages. A shielded ship isn't a like a Covanent ship facing a UNSC ship, it's more like an AGIS crueiser with armor and missiles facing a conventional crueiser.

As far as I know (and one of the local physicists can correct me on this) a massive electromagnetic field will not do that. RADAR frequency spam can deal with radar by fucking up range finding in various ways, an EM field wont do shit to photons of light. RADAR and LIDAR would be unaffected by such measures. The same for IR, X Ray, or optical telescopes.

Can't EM fields move bend light? If so, you can "bend" or defocus lasers and other beam weapons.

Uhhh...no.