You can dismiss this as the rantings of a mad man. But, I've just been reading some articles on weapons advancements and the lot and podcasts and videos talking about scifi battles. I’m putting down my thoughts for fun. Feel free to correct if you disagree.
Now, the physics of space change a lot of the game. In combat, the rule of the game is to kill the bad guy and not get killed. Simplified, its shoot him and not get shot in the process. Easiest way to not get shot is to stay away. Missiles are becoming increasingly popular because you can hurl them from a long distance, forget about them (fire and forget weapons), and never endanger your people. But, depending on your tool, there is max range. Artillery shells can only go so far. Aircraft can only fly a certain distance before needing to refuel. The ability to detect things also has a range to it. In space, the game changes. I like a quote from Mass Effect. To paraphrase, if you shoot a nuke in space, somebody’s going to have a bad day. It may be next month. It may be next year. It may be the next decade. But somebody somewhere is going to have a bad day.
Not only that, but in the void of space with no horizon, detection systems will also be much further
In space, battles are speculated take place at absurdly long distances, distances so large that it takes several seconds or even minutes for the information to travel. Ships will see where their enemy is seconds or even minutes ago. Space war will turn into looking at the ‘shadow’ of the enemy vessel, try to predict where it will be, then fire. And combat will be tricky as you not only need to predict where the enemy is now but where the enemy will be by the time your weapons fire gets there. Weapons will become barrages of missiles in a general area and defenses will be counter missiles exploding to destroy the barrage mid flight. Firing multiple missiles could improve chances but range will be dictated by how realistic it is to predict where to fire. If the shadow you see is fifteen minutes in the past, then there’s no point in trying to figure out where they are now.
That is where the game changes once you include certain technologies. The two biggest ones I’m thinking of are shields and hyperdrive. Ships are staying far away from each other because they can’t take that much damage. With shields, you can afford to take a few hits. Now it is more efficient to close the distance and start firing shots you know will land. And if things go wrong, you have the hyperdrive to bust you out.
The shields also influence things like ship size since smaller ships are more easily maneuverable and harder to hit. You can afford to make bigger ships as long as you can make stronger shields. Battles will still take place at distances longer than in the atmosphere but closer than without shields. We never really got distances mentioned in SG-1 but in one episode, they parked a Tel’tak to ring aboard a mother ship, Carter said they were several hundred kilometers away (and even gave a nice camera angle for visual reference). However, many ships have Orbit-to-surface capabilities and the distance to high earth orbit is 35 thousand km. Meaning ship engagements are taking place anywhere from several hundred to tens of thousands of kilometers.
Along with defenses, offensive will also be spiking up. In particular, I’m thinking of explosive weapons. Air makes a really big difference. No oxygen means the explosions will be smaller, even with oxidants. It also means no shockwave. You can see an example of the smaller boom with the Goa’uld-buster nukes that barely covered half a 300m long Ha’tak. This means you better break out the big guns if you want to make any sort of impact. I wish we could’ve seen what a MKX Gate-buster could do to a capital ship. But explosions direct their energy in all directions so it’s not energy efficient. This may be why the beam weapons are so powerful as they direct all their energy straight into the target. That means a beam weapon with less energy could do more damage to a target than an explosion.
Also, it seems like most capital ships in stargate prefer arrays of smaller guns that can double as anti-fighter weapons rather than a few larger anti-capital ship guns. The Ori mothership (and eventually the 304’s) is the only exception but even they still possess an array of pulse weapons along with their beam weapon.
I guess this leads me to the final thought for the day in this long and pointless thesis paper you probably didn’t bother reading through: fighter craft. The purpose of the fighter craft greatly depends on the capital ship. With shield technology, the ability of fighters has been reduced. You might have noticed that when two Ha’tak duke it out, they don’t send out death gliders as their only armament are twin staff cannons. However, F-302’s are occasionally used against capital ships but I believe the increase in confidence is due to their ability to delivery a more explosive ordinance of naquadah enhanced missiles. However, they are only seen doing this on occasion. When used against capital ships, they are usually performing precision strikes such as destroying the hyperdrive without destroying the ship. Wraith hive ships are an exception to this and have been seen launching swarms of darts against capital ships. This actually works for wraith due to the sheer quantity of the darts they don’t mind disposing of. The combined fire power of that many darts could actually begin to make a difference against capital ships. Perhaps not as much as a dedicated anti-ship gun but its combined power can add up. A punch to the face is more devastating than a bee sting (allergies aside), but I’m sure we’d all be scared to piss off a bee hive. Also, the darts serve as a point defense system, intentionally blocking weapons fire and shooting down missiles.
Just putting down food for thought and curious what other people had to say.
Now, the physics of space change a lot of the game. In combat, the rule of the game is to kill the bad guy and not get killed. Simplified, its shoot him and not get shot in the process. Easiest way to not get shot is to stay away. Missiles are becoming increasingly popular because you can hurl them from a long distance, forget about them (fire and forget weapons), and never endanger your people. But, depending on your tool, there is max range. Artillery shells can only go so far. Aircraft can only fly a certain distance before needing to refuel. The ability to detect things also has a range to it. In space, the game changes. I like a quote from Mass Effect. To paraphrase, if you shoot a nuke in space, somebody’s going to have a bad day. It may be next month. It may be next year. It may be the next decade. But somebody somewhere is going to have a bad day.
Not only that, but in the void of space with no horizon, detection systems will also be much further
In space, battles are speculated take place at absurdly long distances, distances so large that it takes several seconds or even minutes for the information to travel. Ships will see where their enemy is seconds or even minutes ago. Space war will turn into looking at the ‘shadow’ of the enemy vessel, try to predict where it will be, then fire. And combat will be tricky as you not only need to predict where the enemy is now but where the enemy will be by the time your weapons fire gets there. Weapons will become barrages of missiles in a general area and defenses will be counter missiles exploding to destroy the barrage mid flight. Firing multiple missiles could improve chances but range will be dictated by how realistic it is to predict where to fire. If the shadow you see is fifteen minutes in the past, then there’s no point in trying to figure out where they are now.
That is where the game changes once you include certain technologies. The two biggest ones I’m thinking of are shields and hyperdrive. Ships are staying far away from each other because they can’t take that much damage. With shields, you can afford to take a few hits. Now it is more efficient to close the distance and start firing shots you know will land. And if things go wrong, you have the hyperdrive to bust you out.
The shields also influence things like ship size since smaller ships are more easily maneuverable and harder to hit. You can afford to make bigger ships as long as you can make stronger shields. Battles will still take place at distances longer than in the atmosphere but closer than without shields. We never really got distances mentioned in SG-1 but in one episode, they parked a Tel’tak to ring aboard a mother ship, Carter said they were several hundred kilometers away (and even gave a nice camera angle for visual reference). However, many ships have Orbit-to-surface capabilities and the distance to high earth orbit is 35 thousand km. Meaning ship engagements are taking place anywhere from several hundred to tens of thousands of kilometers.
Along with defenses, offensive will also be spiking up. In particular, I’m thinking of explosive weapons. Air makes a really big difference. No oxygen means the explosions will be smaller, even with oxidants. It also means no shockwave. You can see an example of the smaller boom with the Goa’uld-buster nukes that barely covered half a 300m long Ha’tak. This means you better break out the big guns if you want to make any sort of impact. I wish we could’ve seen what a MKX Gate-buster could do to a capital ship. But explosions direct their energy in all directions so it’s not energy efficient. This may be why the beam weapons are so powerful as they direct all their energy straight into the target. That means a beam weapon with less energy could do more damage to a target than an explosion.
Also, it seems like most capital ships in stargate prefer arrays of smaller guns that can double as anti-fighter weapons rather than a few larger anti-capital ship guns. The Ori mothership (and eventually the 304’s) is the only exception but even they still possess an array of pulse weapons along with their beam weapon.
I guess this leads me to the final thought for the day in this long and pointless thesis paper you probably didn’t bother reading through: fighter craft. The purpose of the fighter craft greatly depends on the capital ship. With shield technology, the ability of fighters has been reduced. You might have noticed that when two Ha’tak duke it out, they don’t send out death gliders as their only armament are twin staff cannons. However, F-302’s are occasionally used against capital ships but I believe the increase in confidence is due to their ability to delivery a more explosive ordinance of naquadah enhanced missiles. However, they are only seen doing this on occasion. When used against capital ships, they are usually performing precision strikes such as destroying the hyperdrive without destroying the ship. Wraith hive ships are an exception to this and have been seen launching swarms of darts against capital ships. This actually works for wraith due to the sheer quantity of the darts they don’t mind disposing of. The combined fire power of that many darts could actually begin to make a difference against capital ships. Perhaps not as much as a dedicated anti-ship gun but its combined power can add up. A punch to the face is more devastating than a bee sting (allergies aside), but I’m sure we’d all be scared to piss off a bee hive. Also, the darts serve as a point defense system, intentionally blocking weapons fire and shooting down missiles.
Just putting down food for thought and curious what other people had to say.
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