Shrugger! Unity!

[keith.lamothe]

So what kind of sensor technology would I use to even notice that a beam has been fired in the first place?

Well, if it's coherent visible light, then worst to worst you've got the MkI eyeball.

If it's an x-ray laser or whatever, then an xray sensor is going to pick up that there's something going on out there, and have a pretty shrewd notion of the general direction where it's most active (i.e. the line itself).  An array of such sensors could then be used to triangulate.  I think

Unless of course the beam is so incredibly focused that there's simply no scatter at all.  In which case I suppose even a visible-range laser would be effectively "invisible" unless it was aimed directly at you.  But I don't think I've run across a sci-fi setup where the lasers (visible or otherwise) were that focused.  And with any kind of ambient particle density there'd be some kind of scatter off that.

Unless it cooks my fuel tank, then it'll be kinda obvious.

Sure, I guess in lieu of competent sensors one could deploy a vast network of tethered fuel tanks to catch all those misses and let you know when you're being shot at

[Draco18s]

So what kind of sensor technology would I use to even notice that a beam has been fired in the first place?

Pretty much you have to wait until it shows up and either hits you or zips on past.

Anyway, lasers are pretty much useless at long range.  The primary factor is relativistic distances make aiming almost impossible.  If it's going to take 6 seconds for the laser to travel from Here to There, then your target has 12 seconds to not be There anymore.

(6 seconds before you even find out they moved, followed by 6 seconds of flight time).

Smart missiles are the only way to go at it at those distances.  They might be slower, but when they get close they can course-correct.

Also, destroying the hull isn't the greatest plan either.  If you can get in close, just bombard the target with microwave radiation.  Cook them alive, then take command.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, energy weapons at ranges of more than about 2 light seconds get pretty dicey, and not just because of aiming.  You'd need a pretty big honking laser to do serious damage against any serious passive defenses over 600,000 km away.

At the same time, even missiles are going to have a hard time landing a direct hit on something far away and evading.  Either they're going too slow to catch it (or at least not get shot down by point defense) or they're going really really stinking fast... and fly right by because they can't overcome a 0.5c vector by more than a few degrees even with massive acceleration, etc.

So you get the missiles to shoot the energy weapons instead

Or you resort to some more direct approaches like popping the enemy warship in the microwave and wait til it goes "ding".  What sort of menu you have there depends widely on the standard technology involved in that particular setup.  Decent radiation shielding, for instance, might be thoroughly absent in one sci-fi setting, and completely defeat "death by cooking" in another.

[mrhanman]

The laser would have to have some of its light deflected off gas/dust particles and such to be detected at all.  Being in a nebula would therefore make it easier to detect than if you were in intergalactic space, for example.  It might be interested to factor that into the detection rates.  Assuming location matters at all, of course.

[Shrugging Khan]

Arrrrgh! I think I need to fill you in on something here.

The game is set in debris fields measuring a few dozen to a few thousand kilometers in diameter (presently utilising only the lower end of that range), with plenty of bad weather - microscopic rocks, metal dust, gases - floating around, and this weather gets worse the more things get blown up. It can be cleaned up by dedicated recycler ships (think Planetes), but that takes a while.

The main limiting factors on long-range engagements are cover, reduced visibility due to weather and deliberate screening, and low accuracy and projectile velocities due to crappy technology and questionably competent crews.

The main weapons in use are various sorts of simple guns, ranging from breech-loading rifles in space to massive autoloading artillery batteries. Plus, there's plenty of carp being strapped onto ships as armour. Advanced weaponry like LASERs and magnetic accelerators are available to fleets that invest heavily in technological sophistication, but that means that those same fleets fall very short in many other aspects like bureaucratic efficiency, infrastructure or manpower. Gentlemen, this is how we do balance here.

Missiles, Drones and all other sorts of automated equipment are actually illegal, and using them might cause the Space Police / Totalitarian Government / Paranoid Warlord from the next satellite over to fly by and pummel the local combatants with their better-equipped and substantially better funded forces. This doesn't make them impossible to use, but any fleet using them openly should only do so once strong enough to take on those external threats. That'll be game over for now, since there's not much left to do after that.

All of this obviously serves the purpose of creating a setting in which MEN OF IRON do battle in SHIPS OF RUST while looking their opponents IN THE EYES. Which also means that relativistic physics and postmodern hiding-behind-your-drones-and-missiles warfare are not going to play any central roles.

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So as for the LASERs, it's only possible to spot them with sufficient scattering? Suits me and my space weather system perfectly. Thanks!

[keith.lamothe]

Plus, there's plenty of carp being strapped onto ships as armour.

Fish-based armor?

This changes everything.



Don't get in punching range.

[Draco18s]

Carp are underpowered in Dwarf Fortress.

[Shrugging Khan]

As a Historical European Piscial Arts amateur, I have to tell you that carp are decent fish, but I would still pick a pike to protect myself with.
Pike. Heh.

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Right now, the following technologies are more-or-less implemented:

Weapons: Powder guns, beam emitters and magnetic accelerators ( and missiles).
Thrusters: Liquid bipropellant, Monopropellant, Solid-Fuel and Ion accelerators.
Rotation/Translation: Thruster-based RCS, Reaction Wheels
Matter/Energy converters: Combustion Engine, Nuclear fission reactor, Smelter, Workbench, Laboratory, Waste reprocessing
Stealth: Spray-painting equipment, IR smoke, Fiber-optical camouflage

As you can see, I'm keeping it fairly abstract. Any centrally important technologies I forgot?

[Aklyon]

How would you rate sturgeon then?

[Shrugging Khan]

How would you rate sturgeon then?

That...was well after my time in DF, so I'm really lacking first-hand experience on the species.

[Aklyon]

How would you rate sturgeon then?

That...was well after my time in DF, so I'm really lacking first-hand experience on the species.

They are essentially the new carp.
On they would be, if not outdone by the giant doom sponge of (mostly) unmovingness.

[Shrugging Khan]

I'm working out the details of how Space Weather™ will work, with Micrometeorites, Radiation, Solar Winds and all that.

Do you most gentle men have some interesting things to share about those? Some ideas relevant to a space action-rts/management game set in a deep space/orbital scrapyard/debris field/asteroid belt?

For examples

• How bad can rusting due to occasional encounters with oxygen atoms be?
• How are the oxygen levels aboard spacecraft, and how do those affect corrosion?
• How much kinetic energy rides on solar winds?
• At what sizes and velocities can micrometeorites and small debris reasonably be detected (For great Point Defence!)?
• For how long can a spacecraft orbit a sun-like star (at, say, two or three AU) before it becomes too irradiated for human use?
• What would be efficient protection against micrometeorites? Steel plating? Redundancy? Reactive Armour?
• What other factors might play a role in  Space Weather™?

Thanks for any input, as always 

PS: Oh, and I've recently noticed that the sun illuminating my game's locale is actually somewhat unrealistic, since it was created while I played around with scales and masses (for gravity) that Unity could handle. Now, to crank up the realism somewhat, I'd like to use a star that could viably exist, and that provides a usable level of brightness. Does anyone have an idea as to which real star could be used as a model, and at what distance from it the game should ideally be set?

[Aklyon]

Well, I don't know about your real-ish Space Weather, but Larklight has some rather interesting things happen in the aether. Schools of space fish, for example.

[Draco18s]

Micrometeorites can often be less than 10 cm in diameter and reach speeds up to mach 3.

And that's just the trash we have in orbit around the planet.

15 km/second for space debris and 72 km/second for meteoroids.

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Operations/Space_Debris/Hypervelocity_impacts_and_protecting_spacecraft

Also fancy pictures.

[Shrugging Khan]

Nice link, Draco. Thankee!
10cm and mach 3 means that those micrometeorites are as large as the smallest projectiles in the game, and a lot faster at the same time. Which means that for anything that large, I can just use the standard impact code for projectiles and other physics objects. Do you think I should handle smaller impacts the same way, or rather just treat them as an abstract "erosion" variable?

Well, I don't know about your real-ish Space Weather, but Larklight has some rather interesting things happen in the aether. Schools of space fish, for example.

While I'm personally partial to armoured space carp, I'm afraid they probably won't feature very prominently.