The Space War Thread

[Smitty-48]

What's our stance on shields? I like them personally. Are they possible going forward I wonder though

Not plausible in the sense that energy would act like matter in terms of being like armor.

You could have fields more so than shields.

Like an effector, some sort of jamming on steroids, but it wouldn't stop things from hitting you at high velocity.

[Smitty-48]

This is why guns remain the arm of decision in space.

Guns work better in space

A DU penetrator going hypervelocity in a vacuum, it going to pack more punch than DE

[Smitty-48]

More realistic would be to just extrapolate the technology we have now

Active Protection System.

This is a hard kill defensive munition of some sort, which intercepts the incoming missile at the last moment.

This again is why they would use automatic guns in space, to simply overwhelm that in a hail of bullets.

[Smitty-48]

So, instead of an energy field, what my Exoships will have is micro and nano munitions embedded.

The micro are larger, go out further, intercept larger missiles and projectiles. Active Protection.

The nano are for point blank, they are like Explosive Reactive Armor. Reactive Protection.

It degrades as you go, when you run out of protective munitions, you start taking hits to the armor itself.

[Smitty-48]

There are beam weapons in my Spacemerica Universe, but they have their niche, same as now.

A laser burns through the target, which will be shielded, so it takes time to do damage.

So they use lasers as a stand off range disruptive effects weapon.

It's like search lights, they put the laser on you at stand off range, and you're feeling the burn,

so you have to find cover to approach the target.

Particle beams shoot near the speed of light, so they are good for long range as well, it's a ship to ship gun.

Microwave is also used, both for jamming and frying you at a distance.

"Bocks Car, contact, Searchlight, Searchlight, we're getting lased !"

"Fighting Cock, copy, can you find the emitter ?"

"Bocks Car, Enola is on it, but it's in the rocks, we're extended up here above the disc"

"Fighting Cock, copy, head for the rocks, get down and stay where you are, until we can get to you"

"Bocks Car, already on our way, wilco, out"

[Smitty-48]

"Bocks Car, Fighting Cock, how copy ?"

"Bocks Car, go"

"Fighting Cock, we are approaching the pos of that last contact, can you talk us in, what's your status ?"

"Bocks Car, we're in defilade, we have Bandits in sight by remote, two times Bushi with emitter"

"Fighting Cock, roger, I have your reference inboxed, we are outward to you, coming port side low"

"Bocks Car, roger, I see you, just keep coming straight in, stay outward to this rock, over ?"

"Fighting Cock, I see you now Bocks Car, stay eyes on, we'll set up for a pincer, over ?"

"Bocks Car, copy, standing by"

[Smitty-48]

The micro and nano smart munitions of the active and reactive protection systems hailed out in a cloud around Fighting Cock. The Apollo enshrined in a storm of intercept impacts as it kept coming by its creedo. Cock One on the gun. Betty piloting the trajectory. Rogers had taken the first Bandit unawares. Single aimed shot to the Tokamak. It had exploded in a plume of superheated plasma, sending the Bushido skittering away like a top, a new thruster born of the exit wound, no attitude control to go with it. The Second Bushido he took with a controlled pair to the magazine of the rocket gun it was packing, which exploded in its hands, blowing both its arms off. Two down. Two to go.

Fighting Cock hurtled into the maelstrom towards the remaining contacts. Rogers pumping rounds downrange, Betty doing her best to minimize their critical systems exposure to the threat as she steered. Rogers checked in the corner of his vision in the VR, seeing the protection system status board go from green, to yellow, to red. He looked away and returned to pressing the engagement by gunfire. He concentrated his fire on the rifle of the Bushido on the left. The giant sized railgun in the enemies grip simply broke in half in a spray of sparks and debris, severed in two by depleted uranium penetrator slugs.

Betty's voice cut through the audible alarm tones, warfighter mode now, she was ice cold, computer girl. "Brace, brace, brace, Chainmail is Winchester, now, now, now"

On the Betty's final 'now', Rogers felt the effects of the protective cloud of defensive munitions run dry, as the kinetic impacts of incoming rounds slammed into the analog armor of the Apollo.

"Stoppage, no rounds, sling the gun!" Fighting Cock dropped its empty rifle, Betty deftly swung it by dexterous arm sling to the back of the Apollo into a stowed configuration. Rogers selected CQC mode, Fighting Cock drawing its melee weapon. An Apollo scaled Native American Axe-Club, called a Mohican. A single piece of precision milled nanocarbon, sharp as a razor at the cutting edge, harder than diamond, big as a school bus.

Fighting Cock took the left hand Bushido with the disabled rifle first, bringing the Mohican down in a clavicle strike, angling for the center of the torso. The Bushido went limp as the Mohican cleaved through its CPU, crippling if not killing its A.I. in its substrate. The Apollo then front kicked the stricken Bushido, yanking the Mohican out with two hands. A puff of crystallized blood came in the wake. Got the box and the man with one shot.

Three down. One to go.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

Imma be real with you Smitty, because I have learned a lot from you, and respect you more than I can express.

"Tactics in Space" is fucking boring. In space, it will be the superpower (SpaceMurica) absorbing losses from terrorists mining otherwise safe trade routs. Too much emptiness and danger in space. You got to focus on people and politics.

The good story is focusing on the personal psychology of people... Joseph Conrad- "Nostromo" - style. You got amoral politics, and amoral action in real space with real people.

The tactics can be explained in a chapter. The moral superiority of Space Imperialism is the good story.

[Smitty-48]

Imma be real with you Smitty, because I have learned a lot from you, and respect you more than I can express.

"Tactics in Space" is fucking boring. In space, it will be the superpower (SpaceMurica) absorbing losses from terrorists mining otherwise safe trade routs. Too much emptiness and danger in space. You got to focus on people and politics.

The good story is focusing on the personal psychology of people... Joseph Conrad- "Nostromo" - style. You got amoral politics, and amoral action in real space with real people.

The tactics can be explained in a chapter. The moral superiority of Space Imperialism is the good story.

It's actually a love story, there is lots of politics, there is organized crime involved as well

There's not that many battle scenes, only as many as required to advance the relationship of the main characters

I'm just laying out the Spacemerica battlefield as the sanbox for the story to take place in,

I'm constructing the entire Spacemerica Universe, in which many stories can be told.

The story itself is entirely character driven, it's Epic Space Opera Romance.

In terms of the character driven romance, my wife is a good judge, if she likes it, it doesn't suck

In terms of the realistic tactics, I asked my wife if she understood what was going on, she said she does

I asked if she thought it was cool, she said it was. If an unmartial chick gets it, the target audience will for sho

Another tactical aspect in the Trace at Titan is that the Rings of Saturn are only about a kilometer deep

So they can pop out of cover and make dashes, but soon as they are in open space, they come under fire

Robert Heinlein had some infantry tactics in Starship Troopers, I'm just expanding on that trope

I'm checking it with my friends, everybody whose read some so far likes it.


Maybe you're just a hippie faggot peacenik who isn't into kick ass military shit /shrugs

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

Imma be real with you Smitty, because I have learned a lot from you, and respect you more than I can express.

"Tactics in Space" is fucking boring. In space, it will be the superpower (SpaceMurica) absorbing losses from terrorists mining otherwise safe trade routs. Too much emptiness and danger in space. You got to focus on people and politics.

The good story is focusing on the personal psychology of people... Joseph Conrad- "Nostromo" - style. You got amoral politics, and amoral action in real space with real people.

The tactics can be explained in a chapter. The moral superiority of Space Imperialism is the good story.

It's actually a love story, there is lots of politics, there is organized crime involved as well

I'm just laying out the Spacemerica battlefield as the sanbox for the story to take place in,

I'm constructing the entire Spacemerica Universe, in which many stories can be told.

The story itself is entirely character drive, and it's a Space Opera Romance.

Not to lay into "Nostromo" too hard, but Conrad dispenses with the "sandbox" in one chapter. The worst parts of that fantastic novel gets lost in the tall grass over how to navigate a calm gulf with a rocky jetty.

I would hate to see a good idea about a Hard Sci-Fi space opera get lost in the weeds over how weeb-ass Gundams would "really fight" in the rings of Saturn.

If it is character driven, give us a character. like Conrad's 'Giorgio Viola,' who has a history in Garibaldi's army. All this Gundam - FTL drive - tactics shit is boring.