OK, so we know that space combat in SG is very flawed. How about we take all we know about the fictional technologies and their capabilities and extrapolate what the battleground would look like realistically.
I think the driving factors behind space combat would be much the same as MAD during the cold war: hyper drives provide a means of bypassing any fixed or mobile defense, allowing the enemy to strike anywhere, so "behind enemy lines" would not mean anything. And secondly, we now that small ships, like Tel'tak and Al'kesh are capable of achieving relativistic (60 percent light speed in the case of the later) speeds, at which they become the kinetic equivalents of nuclear warheads.
Combine these two and you have a devastating weapon of mass destruction that cannot be intercepted en route, and only has a minuscule window to intercept it once it drops out of hyperspace due to it's incredible speed (0.50 c would mean moon-earth in 2 seconds).
Unfortunately this makes any random smuggler a giant free radical so to speak, who could wipe out whole cities. How would governments cope? Simplest solution is to make sure that there are no random smugglers, impound all non official ships, and limit civilian engines to sub-relativistic speeds.
Then there's cloaking technology, which will most likely turn space into submarine type cat and mouse combat.
So, what's everyone else got to add?
I think the driving factors behind space combat would be much the same as MAD during the cold war: hyper drives provide a means of bypassing any fixed or mobile defense, allowing the enemy to strike anywhere, so "behind enemy lines" would not mean anything. And secondly, we now that small ships, like Tel'tak and Al'kesh are capable of achieving relativistic (60 percent light speed in the case of the later) speeds, at which they become the kinetic equivalents of nuclear warheads.
Combine these two and you have a devastating weapon of mass destruction that cannot be intercepted en route, and only has a minuscule window to intercept it once it drops out of hyperspace due to it's incredible speed (0.50 c would mean moon-earth in 2 seconds).
Unfortunately this makes any random smuggler a giant free radical so to speak, who could wipe out whole cities. How would governments cope? Simplest solution is to make sure that there are no random smugglers, impound all non official ships, and limit civilian engines to sub-relativistic speeds.
Then there's cloaking technology, which will most likely turn space into submarine type cat and mouse combat.
So, what's everyone else got to add?
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