The Gaming News Thread

[Crazed Rabbit]

Well, a laser is pretty fast, so unless we're talking about lightminutes of distance, which is already far enough so you won't see much of the enemy I guess, it's not very likely that they will miss. A distance of 100km isn't a whole lot for a laser in space. A missile would take rather long to travel that distance anyway and a laser on the target could easily destroy the missile before it even gets close. If the game models battles over distances of several lightminutes then it's still boring of course since just waiting for them to show up on your radar screen would take minutes.and as you say there's not really a weapons system that could work against a target flying random patterns at this distance. Unless you fire some kind of field weapon where the field covers a large area or cone. But at within visual range engagements or even anything close to it a laser makes zap and it's a hit. The kind of slow-flying "laser projectiles" of games and movies aren't really realistic after all and realism was the assumption here, right?

Ah, but laser isn't just zapping someone and taking them out. You have to keep the laser on target - a specific point - and burning a hole into the enemy ship. Even if this takes just a few seconds, at ranges of 1000km the slightest error in targeting or stability could screw that up. And then you burn a hole and take out one compartment.

I would heavily recommend this site:
http://www.projectrho.com/public_htm...--Laser_Cannon

If your opponent has a laser, they can shoot you, and possibly destroy your own laser. Unless you get their laser first. Or they might shoot some self-guiding projectiles at you, and you'll have to use your laser to blow them up before they hit you. And while you do that they hit you with their laser.

And projectile weapons don't lose energy over space, so they could be fired from outside of laser range - hopefully with enough projectiles to saturate any laser defense. But lasers will always have a lot of range with which they can destroy incoming projectiles.

As to what could make lasers miss:

And don't think that lasers will automatically hit their targets either. There are many factors that can cause a miss. Off the top of his head, Dr. John Schilling mentions:

Uncertain target location due to finite sensor resolution
Uncertain target motion due to sensor glint or shape effects
Sensor boresight error due to finite manufacturing tolerances
Target motion during sensor integration time
Analog-to-digital conversion errors of sensor data
Software errors in fire control system
Hardware errors in fire control system
Digital-to-analog conversion errors of gunlaying servo commands
Target motion during weapon aiming time
Weapon boresight error due to finite manufacturing tolerances
Weapon structural distortion due to inertial effects of rapid slew
Weapon structural distortion due to external or internal vibration
Weapon structural distortion due to thermal expansion during firing
And we haven't even begun to include target countermeasures...

CR

[Husar]

What mister cube says. In space you also have to deal with less random movement than you do on say, an ocean, yet the navy can already aim lasers at one spot of a moving target from a moving platform.



The only thing that would limit laser range are bad optics that lead to the beam dissipating and becoming less focused at long distances. Or an enemy coated in mirrors. And projectiles fired at 100.000km range would have to be guided or suffer from really, really bad accuracy. However, even if you fire 100 missiles, at 100.000km there's plenty of time to destroy them with a laser before they arrive. And if you're coated in mirrors you also don't have to worry about the other guy's laser. Or you can fire 200 missiles back to keep him busy for a few minutes. In gaming terms that would all still mean you're sending stuff towards a blip on your radar, in the case of lasers you can even spare yourself any graphical effects.

If you like that sort of thing, there's already a game for you: https://sites.google.com/site/samsimulator1972/home

[Husar]

Lasers play a huge, huge part in modern warfare already. An Abrams tank uses a laser range-finder for just about everything, from calibrating a firing solution for a main gun round to telling your loader how high he should aim his machine gun.

I know, I tried the Steel Beasts demo.
But these lasers aren't even used in space. I'd think in space you even deal with less vibration, there are no different layers of air temperature etc. etc., making things easier. My point was if they're already used effectively in this rough terrain here on earth, why should they be less reliable in space, where everything floats around gently? There are no waves or bumps in space that could suddenly distort your aim. There is also no air that makes them less intense at long ranges. The one thing that could defeat them are mirrors. If you fired a missile with a mirror in front of the warhead then the laser might destroy the ship that fires it.so maybe scratch lasers, how do photon torpedos and plasma blasters work again?

[Crazed Rabbit]

I know, I tried the Steel Beasts demo.
But these lasers aren't even used in space. I'd think in space you even deal with less vibration, there are no different layers of air temperature etc. etc., making things easier. My point was if they're already used effectively in this rough terrain here on earth, why should they be less reliable in space, where everything floats around gently? There are no waves or bumps in space that could suddenly distort your aim. There is also no air that makes them less intense at long ranges. The one thing that could defeat them are mirrors. If you fired a missile with a mirror in front of the warhead then the laser might destroy the ship that fires it.so maybe scratch lasers, how do photon torpedos and plasma blasters work again?

It's like you're not reading my previous post. And lasers have to deal with diffraction in any environment: http://panoptesv.com/SciFi/LaserDeat...ffraction.html

Mirrors don't work. No mirror is 100% efficient in reflecting light and any amount of energy that isn't reflected will nigh-on instantly destroy the reflective capabilities of the mirror. And then destroy the mirror and whatever is behind it.

Imagine salvo after salvo of ship-peircing kinetic bursts being fired at the ship's current location and every location that the computer thinks they might possibly be. The tactic most successful would probably be finding the enemy unawares, getting a range bearing (difficult if the other guy has laser-detecting technology, which already exists, so... element of surprise would be difficult to get beyond that brief first moment) and then having your cannons saturate a spherical area exactly large enough to encompass any place the enemy ship could be by the time your rounds got there.

Ah, now this begins to get interesting. Another possibility is firing kinetic weapons with some small boosters to allow for mid flight adjustments. Otherwise, trying to saturate the possible routes of a ship 1,000 km away could - would - take more ammo than is available.

Here's a short discussion of space combat tactics:
http://www.projectrho.com/public_htm...vanced_Tactics

And there's links here to a variety of interesting discussions on lasers, missiles, and kinetic weapons;
http://www.projectrho.com/public_htm...--Introduction

CR

[Husar]

It's like you're not reading my previous post.

I did, but only remembered talk about internal vibrations etc. making aiming hard. That's why I said it's probably less hard in space if it can be used on tanks today already. and we're talking about more advanced than today.

And lasers have to deal with diffraction in any environment: http://panoptesv.com/SciFi/LaserDeat...ffraction.html

Mirrors don't work. No mirror is 100% efficient in reflecting light and any amount of energy that isn't reflected will nigh-on instantly destroy the reflective capabilities of the mirror. And then destroy the mirror and whatever is behind it.

Yes, but the only energy that hurts the mirror is the remaining energy that is not reflected and we don't even know what kind of mirrors we will have once we have lasers capable to tearing through an armored space ship. Maybe mirrors made of unobtainium.

Ah, now this begins to get interesting. Another possibility is firing kinetic weapons with some small boosters to allow for mid flight adjustments. Otherwise, trying to saturate the possible routes of a ship 1,000 km away could - would - take more ammo than is available.

Yes, I also thought the amount of ammunition could easily become a problem in GC's scenario. But I'd still think that at these long ranges, kinetic projectiles are relatively easy to avoid or destroy before impact. Or they'd have to be very, very fast, but in any case it's enough to destroy the ones coming at you, whether it's a few guided ones or just a few from a huge mass of projectiles. In the games and movie scenarios, the space fighters are pretty small, like modern airplanes, saturating space thousands of kilometers away with enough matter to kill one no matter where it moves would probably take more projectile mass than 10 such space ships could carry, no?

[gaelic cowboy]

@GC I cant help feeling some alien world government ended up destroying it's economy by building such ginormomungus spacecruiser deathmachines.

Sure the little ewok planet would only need to attach a few booster rockets to a couple of asteroids and boom the empire is gone.

[Husar]

It could be built by mining asteroids. Otherwise we might risk lowering the weight of the earth too much, thus changing its course around the sun.