In Starship Warfare,is the size matter ,bigger the better?

[Avatar28]

Here's a thought. The old computers (ENIAC) filled an entire room and could barely do operations. Then we found better materials to make it out of, more conductive materials and suddenly the computer went from a room to half a room. Nowadays, computers are smallter than a cell phone (which are computers in and of themselves), and run 1000x or more faster than the old computers tha filled a room. And they do better heat disappation.

I guarantee you it's a LOT more than 1000 times faster. The fastest modern CPUs, such as the Athlon 64 FX60 or Pentium D 950 are almost 15000-20000 times faster than the original 4.77 MHz 8088 processor of the original PC-XT. It, in turn, was way faster than Eniac.

ENIAC could execute 5,000 additions, 357 multiplications, and 38 divisions in one second

While not an entirely meaningful comparison (raw instructions per second are actually a bad basis for cpu comparison), an Athlon 64 FX60 overclocked to 3.0 GHz (from 2.6) can perfom something of the order of 27000 MIPS (millions of instructions per second), that's 27 BILLION instructions per second. BIG difference.

Physically, ENIAC was a monster. It contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors and around 5 million hand-soldered joints. It weighed 30 short tons (27 t), was roughly 8 feet (2.4 m) by 3 feet (0.9 m) by 100 feet (30 m), took up 1800 square feet (167 m2), and consumed 150 kW of power.

According to the same article of 2004, a bit of silicon chip measureing .02 inches square has the same computing power.

[IcyNeko]

THanks for pointing out that I just commented off the cuff. My point is that as tech improves, the size of everything goes down. Same thing with weapons technology.

Bravo for the research though.

[Avatar28]

Thanks. Just pointing out that the the differences were even greater than you had suggested.

Even so, though, that's not always the case. As engineering capabilties increase, sometimes things get bigger. E.g. ships, cranes, construction equipment, buildings, etc.

[nickak2003]

Ever heard of counter-battery fire? Why would increased range negate any defenses?

[/quote]
Well this is assuming that the batteries are able to defend the entire area simultaneously, that you are able to bring them to effectiveness before theyve been destroyed, and that they can be at all effective to begin with. In space, attacks could be coming from any and every direction. It seems like there must be weapon systems that would render counter-batteries useless.

There are bound to be weapons systems and in specific configurations or in conjunction with particular strategy or tactics that cannot be practically defended against -especially in the vastness of space where you can pick your battles. For instance, super massive shells or missiles travelling at enormous speeds. It may not be possible to fend against several such weapons on different arbitrary vectors, perhaps in addition to other kinds of weapons and offense.

Theoretically it should be possible to overwhelm any sort of battery or defense. If you draw a circle, and call the perimeter, defense, and then draw a second circle of arbitrary size around it, and call that offense, you can see a large difference in ratio. This concept seems to lend it self perfectly to any sort of ranged combat, and maybe combat in general. Its possible to fit huge amounts of offense into small amounts of defense. The bottom line is that there are way more forms of offense than forms of defense.

Historically as weapon ranges increased new defenses and tactics were developed that countered those new ranges.

What, camo and guerilla tactics? guerilla tactics do not seem applicable, and camo, once youre spotted, youre dead. There arent any counters to range other than hiding, avoiding hits, and really thick armor which often loses its defense after some amount of hits. History shows that offense is more powerful than defense and that intelligence is more powerful than either.

[LOKI LOKI]

Back to the origional point about size in the lost city hammond seems confident that the prometheus can take on a few alkesh and Hatak so they were outnumbered and also much smaller than the Hatak without it making much difference because we had the advanced asgard shields. However our lack of (good) offensive weapons and slow speeds (related to what the engines are capable of) is down to our ships being too small and underpowered with a ZPM we do ok so i think our ships need to be bigger with a larger power core to utilise our current tech better

[cs-comm]

Well this is assuming that the batteries are able to defend the entire area simultaneously, that you are able to bring them to effectiveness before theyve been destroyed, and that they can be at all effective to begin with.

A shield could defend an entire area at the same time. Counter-battery fire is when you shoot back at the enemy with your guns so you can destroy theirs. Perhaps if a shields was erected that blocked incoming fire and then you return fire with your own guns.

It seems like there must be weapon systems that would render counter-batteries useless.

Why must there be weapon systems that would render counter-batteries useless? In order to do that a weapon would have to hit every defensive weapon at the same time (very quickly) and come without any warning? Are you proposing a weapon that is perfectly invisible and can also destroy an unlimited amount of enemy weapon systems nearly simultaneously? Explain how if such a weapon was built it couldn't be used to defend against itself.

snipped: repetition of "there must be a weapon" argument -especially in the vastness of space where you can pick your battles.

It is also harder to attack someone in all that vastness since they would be harder to find. Try to remeber that both sides can pick their battles.

This could be considered an instance when smaller ships would be more desirable since they would be able to attack faster and then escape ie hit-and-run.

For instance, super massive shells or missiles travelling at enormous speeds. It may not be possible to fend against several such weapons on different arbitrary vectors

Except if you had a shield or armour that covered you entire ship thus defending it from attack "on different arbitrary vectors".

perhaps in addition to other kinds of weapons and offense.

I'm glad you've realized that a multi-dimensional offense would be far more effective then using a single type of weapon.

Theoretically it should be possible to overwhelm any sort of battery or defense. If you draw a circle, and call the perimeter, defense, and then draw a second circle of arbitrary size around it, and call that offense, you can see a large difference in ratio. This concept seems to lend it self perfectly to any sort of ranged combat, and maybe combat in general. Its possible to fit huge amounts of offense into small amounts of defense. The bottom line is that there are way more forms of offense than forms of defense.

That was one of the most ridiculous paragraphs I've ever read. Comparing the cirmcuference of two circles? War is never that one-dimensional. There are numerous facter that affect the effectivess of a weapon. You have to know were your enemy is, you have to know what defenses your enemy has, you have to know what offensive capabilites you enemy has, you have to know how many enemies you're attacking. No weapon is so perfect that it can destroy every enemy no matter where they are no matter what defenses they have.

There arent any counters to range other than hiding, avoiding hits, and really thick armor which often loses its defense after some amount of hits.

You forgot to mention shooting back (counter-battery fire).

History shows that offense is more powerful than defense

Then why isn't every offense a success? Seems like history has shown that that offense and defense evolve together with offense continually attempting to get around new defenses and new defenses continually attempting to block new offenses.

and that intelligence is more powerful than either.

Great you just admitted that now offensive weapon is perfect and that for every weapon there is a defense.

Now to a point about whether or not bigger is better (the topic of this thread, remeber?): a smaller ship would be harder to hit but a larger ship can take more damage and dish out more damage too. It seems the best tactic would be to pair small ships with big ones like modern navies or the Wraith (hive ships + cruisers)