Advice Thread OOC Future Tech Only

[OMGeverynameistaken]

That made my head hurt. But kinetic weaponry is bullets And such yea? Like we use Irl?

'Kinetic' generally refers to anything which fires a solid projectile. Modern firearms are 'kinetic' weapons, although in FT you're more likely to find some sort of magnetic system (railguns, coilguns, etc.) It also seems that explosive projectile weapons (see WH40k's 'Bolters') get lumped into this category a lot for the sake of convenience.

The alternative is generally referred to as 'energy' or 'directed energy' weapons (DEW, for short.) Those are your lasers, particle beams, whatever.

There are also more exotic weapons out there. Gravity based, probability based, or something else that screws with the laws of physics.

[Kreanoltha]

That made my head hurt. But kinetic weaponry is bullets And such yea? Like we use Irl?

Yes they are. KEW (Kinetic energy weapon), KKV (kinetic kill vehicle), and kinetic weapons are all bullet-like weapons. DEWs are directed energy weapons and cover things like lasers, plasma, and particle beams.

I am wanting to start RPing with my FT nation but don't really have a place to start.

You might want to check out FT-Bravo. There's a link in my signature that should take you there. Make sure you read the opening post in full. You'll want to use the IRC that is also linked in the OP.

I want the technology to be similar to human technology in HALO but a more graceful "slipstream" engine that is more accurate and dependable.

There's nothing specifically wrong with this tech base. Make sure to diversify it though.

The ships wod be the same in design but not size or EXACT design.

Halo is known for having some of the larger ships in scf-fi. Make sure to keep things reasonable. Also, copy/paste is one sure fire way to end up without a lot of people to RP with so be sure to make them a little different. No one minds an OSHA Standard Human Fleet around here (well most don't), but just because they're armored bricks doesn't mean you can't mix things up a little.

It's in a fictional galaxy which I have yet to name.

That's going to be the problem. For reasons of RP-accessibility and cooperation, having your own galaxy is not the way to go. I've been there and done that as a nugget, and people will not be fond of you having your own galaxy. It limits the people you can RP with because a lot of people don't have a way to get to you and takes away a lot of reasons for you to RP with people.

I'm not sure on soldier weaponry yet...

Don't worry about that. You're new. You'll have plenty of time to work that out.

[SquareDisc City]

Here's a topic that I don't think has been discussed in a while: How do you handle the differences in day and year length among the worlds of your stellar empires?

By not being that interested in planets Our population aren't big on colonisation, so space stations are a viable approach for those who do want to move abroad. When it comes to resource utilisation we've gone down the route of scooping up hydrogen from stars and nucleosynthesising heavier elements. So, we just stick to Stark Island time (which is the same as New Zealand time).

That said, one planet we do have a limited presence on (and I created) operates its own civil time system. With a rotation period of a bit over 11 1/2 hours the "civil day" lasts two solar days, being either 23 hours or 23 hours 15 minutes.

In the homeland, we still kept to a 24 hour day even through the centuries we sent without sunlight.

I've yet to decide how to handle relativistic effects on moving spacecraft. I think they'd have to keep two clocks, one for local time which would just be a normal clock, and one for Stark Island time which would either compensate for the relativistic effects or receive an FTL time signal. (Of course, I have doubts as to whether my craft should be running about at the kind of speeds that make such effects matter.)

On MACs, well my simplistic argument is that if I can accelerate a bunch of particles that aren't connected up to relativistic speeds (a particle beam weapon), why can't I accelerate an equally massive bunch of particles that are connected to comparable speeds and the same kinetic energy?

The historical development is a bit of a problem though. For ship-to-ship combat an unguided weapon needs to either fire at or near light-speed, or be much more powerful than the weapons that do, or it's wholly inferior to them. So you can't have a progressive increase in projectile speed over time unless you either used them for bombarding planets a lot or had serious problems with developing alternatives. I think the way round this would be for one's relativistic projectile weapons to have developed from one's particle beam weapons. (Indeed my own are OOCly inspired by the LHC and similar particle colliders.)

Zapping an incoming projectile with a laser isn't as simple as it sounds. As xkcd's what-if mentioned, above a certain speed the atomic bonds don't matter when it comes to the impact, so merely vaporising it isn't enough. You can significantly arrest its forward momentum, which requires a laser of comparable yield to the projectile, and then if you have any misses you're expending more energy on defending yourself than the enemy is on attacking you; anyway, stopping the rounds this way is what your shields are for. Alternatively, you need to give the atoms in the projectile enough thermal energy for it to significantly expand before it hits you, ideally enough so that most of its misses you; I'm not even sure that spreading the impact over most of your ship is actually an improvement, indeed it might make matters worse! Considering the time available to do that to the projectile in, I fear it may be a tall order indeed. Or you can try and push the round to one side, but that means giving it a not-inconsiderable lateral velocity at a considerable range in a controlled manner, not an easy thing to do.

(On a sidenote, ways to harden a projectile against such measures spring to mind. A mirrored surface and an interior including thermally-insulating refractory materials should do the trick. That way it needs a more powerful laser to zap it.)

But really, I use MACs (calling them Gauss Cannons myself) because I want diversity in weaponry. Space combat being nothing but ship-mounted lasers and missile-mounted lasers might be more realistic, but dang that'd feel boring.

Yes they are. KEW (Kinetic energy weapon), KKV (kinetic kill vehicle), and kinetic weapons are all bullet-like weapons. DEWs are directed energy weapons and cover things like lasers, plasma, and particle beams.

Though it's not a classification that's gained any popularity, for some purposes particle beams are closer to projectile weapons than to lasers. Indeed the "guru" on the subject, Phillip E. Nielsen, considers bullets as a type of "directed energy weapon". (A bomb, by contrast, is not a directed energy weapon.) Sci-fi authors have of course cheerfully ignored his usage.

[Feazanthia]

Neutralized Particle Beams are technically kinetic weapons, though they look like directed energy weapons.

Charged Particle Beams are a sort of hybrid kinetic/energy weapon, though a CPB is essentially the same thing as a plasma beam, so it's typically treated as an energy weapon. It also is nearly flat out useless in space warfare if you care about reality, but most people don't so whatevs.

[The Noble Wolf]

A small reconnaissance robot: http://www.roleplaygateway.com/roleplay ... s?start=20
Weapons / Equipment:

Orbital Camera: My good little robot possess a powerful camera that can view light in several spectrum's, and can easily overlap these spectrum's. Views include visible light, infrared, and a special "radio wave" camera.

D-TECT Module: Good little robot has a unit that can detect a wide range of energies, fields, and even trans-dimensional fluctuations. Most notably, these sensors include EM-readers, Grav-detectors, quantum-arrays, plasma-membrane for sound, grav-camera for video feed, thermal for people and the like, X-Ray for concealed weapons. These scanners are constantly fed through his quantum core/cpu unit.

Gravity Shield: Robots' camera and "soft spots" are covered by a field of intense gravity. This field of gravity, though infinitesimally thin, is extremely powerful. Mass simply cannot pass through. My little robot can deactivate this at anytime, but does not do so often. He is also able to put his grav-shield in overload, utilizing his photon capacitor to charge and discharge a massive flux of power capable of letting his grav-fields sap dark-matter from sub-space. This effectively puts the droid in a sort of "doomsday" shield, blocking any kinetic or energy attack.

Solid-State Quantum memory/processing core: This little robot houses a powerful processor capable of decoding information and storing data. By combing his cpu and drive, "the robot" is able to create a computing powerhouse that can preform immensely demanding tasks.

Anti-Matter Generator: The robot contains a generator that supplies all of his energy needs. If the generator is breached and opened without being shut down, an anti-matter explosion occurs.

I used this as a reference: http://www.roleplaygateway.com/roleplay ... s/ig-13659
Tell me if I need to add anything or delete/combine stuff. I take no credit except for anything I added but no credit for things y'all give me.
Regular features:

- Multiple regenerative photoreceptors, located in the face, chest, back, knees, legs, elbows, and back of the head.

- Multiple power cores, located in the head, chest, waist

- Programmed with detailed knowledge of all seven basic fighting styles and 2 advanced fighting style.

- Multi-jointed and fully rotatable limbs allow for agility and flexibility no human could match.

- Advanced learning combat programming allows the assassin robot to adapt to a highly diverse variety of tasks. These tasks ranged from melee and ranged combat to starfighter/spaceship control.

- Reinforced duranium/nanotech combat chassis is highly resistant to blaster fire, and can even withstand glancing blows from a vibroblade.

- Possesses a far-superior mechanical anatomy in comparison with most other robots, allowing for superhuman acrobatics, speed, and combat ability.

- Can magnetize any part of it's body at any time, thus being able to walk along certain walls and ceilings or removing itself from another magnetic surface by reversing it's own polarization but limited by power supply.

Upgrades and changes:

- Redesigned faceplate/certain electronic part.

- Repainted chassis.

- Bounty Hunting/Assassin protocols installed.

- Additional programming explaining the importance of capturing a bounty alive as opposed to dead installed.

- Internal database of criminal and black market undergrounds uploaded.

- Self-preservation protocols forbidding unauthorized deactivation or reprogramming of the unit. Any attempt at this will result in immediate activation of the unit and the termination of the violator with extreme prejudice.

Major Programs:

-Melee (Counter-Vibroblade Combat) (Acrobatic Combat)

-Blaster

-Repair (Self Repair)

Minor Programs:

-Programming (Own Internal Programming)

-Medical (Major Arteries of Various Species) (Torture Methods)

-Unarmed (Subduing Target)

-Piloting (any kind of ships that are in it's programming/protocol)

[The Legion of War]

Hey have you guys heard of TimeShift? It's a game.

Anyways, for those of you that have... Would the Beta Suit be OP?

[The Legion of War]

I want the technology to be similar to human technology in HALO but a more graceful "slipstream" engine that is more accurate and dependable.

Well in the Halo Lore, after the Human-Covenant war, slip space drives underwent a MASSIVE improvement due to Forerunner tech.

So now they are more "graceful". The are much more accurate in terms of distance and time to get there.

[Ularn]

I want the technology to be similar to human technology in HALO but a more graceful "slipstream" engine that is more accurate and dependable.

Well in the Halo Lore, after the Human-Covenant war, slip space drives underwent a MASSIVE improvement due to Forerunner tech.

So now they are more "graceful". The are much more accurate in terms of distance and time to get there.

Apparently now you can even chose which Covenant cruiser you want to drive your superdreadnought through upon exiting slipspace like a badass!

[G-Tech Corporation]

Hey have you guys heard of TimeShift? It's a game.

Anyways, for those of you that have... Would the Beta Suit be OP?

After a quick wiki walk, it depends. I personally try to stay away from anything that messes with timey-wimey-wibbly-wobblyness, but you might find a few people around here who could work with it. You'd just have to be very very careful about making your OOC communication highly nuanced.

[Esternial]

Hey have you guys heard of TimeShift? It's a game.

Anyways, for those of you that have... Would the Beta Suit be OP?

After a quick wiki walk, it depends. I personally try to stay away from anything that messes with timey-wimey-wibbly-wobblyness, but you might find a few people around here who could work with it. You'd just have to be very very careful about making your OOC communication highly nuanced.

I'd advise against it. You might be able to use it in some kind of RP centred around it, but using it versus other nations won't bring you much good, I believe.

[Kreanoltha]

Hey have you guys heard of TimeShift? It's a game.

Anyways, for those of you that have... Would the Beta Suit be OP?

After a quick wiki walk, it depends. I personally try to stay away from anything that messes with timey-wimey-wibbly-wobblyness, but you might find a few people around here who could work with it. You'd just have to be very very careful about making your OOC communication highly nuanced.

Agreed. It's just best to stay away from the Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff all together. Of course, with proper OOC communication, preparation, and a great deal of restraint and liberal application of the Rule of Bro anything is possible, but you don't want to push things too far no matter what you do. My advice, stay away from the time tech. It can be a lot of trouble.

Well in the Halo Lore, after the Human-Covenant war, slip space drives underwent a MASSIVE improvement due to Forerunner tech.

So now they are more "graceful". The are much more accurate in terms of distance and time to get there.

Apparently now you can even chose which Covenant cruiser you want to drive your superdreadnought through upon exiting slipspace like a badass!

lol

Sadly that was the best part of Halo 4.

[YellowApple]

Hey have you guys heard of TimeShift? It's a game.

Anyways, for those of you that have... Would the Beta Suit be OP?

After a quick wiki walk, it depends. I personally try to stay away from anything that messes with timey-wimey-wibbly-wobblyness, but you might find a few people around here who could work with it. You'd just have to be very very careful about making your OOC communication highly nuanced.

*points to self*

I work with it in my own canon (using wormhole-based FTL means having to deal with the possibility that - if something goes wrong - a ship can and will find itself in very weird places, including logical extremes such as prior to a Big Bang or after the heat death of a universe).

But yeah, as the others mention, it's a very good idea to keep such things limited. Using that kind of thing as an advantage in a war RP, for example, would not be kosher. In the event you do utilize time travel, make sure you've thought out the potential time paradoxes such travel might incur (in fact, I'd read up on the Wikipedia article on that subject if you haven't done so already).

[Ularn]

Apparently now you can even chose which Covenant cruiser you want to drive your superdreadnought through upon exiting slipspace like a badass!

lol

Sadly that was the best part of Halo 4.

Uh...Are you certain we played the same game here?

[Kreanoltha]

lol

Sadly that was the best part of Halo 4.

Uh...Are you certain we played the same game here?

Yes. I have... strong feelings about what the writing team did with Cortana. Similar to my feelings about Samus in Metroid: Other M.

[The Legion of War]

Uh...Are you certain we played the same game here?

Yes. I have... strong feelings about what the writing team did with Cortana. Similar to my feelings about Samus in Metroid: Other M.

If anything 343 made Chief and Cortana stand out MORE as characters. Not just some random dude in a suit with an annoying voice in his head.

[Kreanoltha]

Yes. I have... strong feelings about what the writing team did with Cortana. Similar to my feelings about Samus in Metroid: Other M.

If anything 343 made Chief and Cortana stand out MORE as characters. Not just some random dude in a suit with an annoying voice in his head.

Yes, and they did a terrible job at it. Instead of stopping the action for a few minutes to actually explore Cortana and Chief's characters for once and maybe do a little work examining their relationship, which should be pretty complicated by now, we get a few hours of unbearable subtext and one scene where Cortana opens up right before she dies which has been done to death by this point. For that matter, her freaking out before the real Rampancy even sets in is massively out of character for Cortana who, to date, has, to date, had to deal with being attacked by 343 Guilty Spark, rampant Covenant security AI, being mindraped by the Gravemind (I'd easily vote that as being the worst thing Cortana's had to deal with), and facing possible death every time she and the Chief are deployed. The fact that she would die shouldn't be affecting her since she's always known she would go rampant.

So, instead of taking the opportunity to characterize her and the Chief (something I was looking for when I bought the game) they turned Cortana into a passive, distressed, Shonen love interest blowup doll (something I warned the guy I sold my copy to). Yes they made her hot. No, like Samus in Other M, this did not make up for it.

[Steel Confessors]

Yes. I have... strong feelings about what the writing team did with Cortana. Similar to my feelings about Samus in Metroid: Other M.

If anything 343 made Chief and Cortana stand out MORE as characters. Not just some random dude in a suit with an annoying voice in his head.

Heartily agreed. They did a wonderful job of fleshing out the characters. Chief before just felt like a walking suit of armor that occasionally belted out a one-liner. Now, he actually feels like flesh and blood and easier to pick up on the hurt and loss he feels. There's more a sense of urgency to complete your mission. He's relatable. Now, some might not like that since they can no longer project themselves onto MC, but really is that such a bad thing?

Cortana too you can relate and have sympathy for. You can feel the rampancy and the damage her solitude did. Even the anger and hurt from losing herself you can feel.

They did a brilliant job.

[Bajireyn]

Well in the Halo Lore, after the Human-Covenant war, slip space drives underwent a MASSIVE improvement due to Forerunner tech.

So now they are more "graceful". The are much more accurate in terms of distance and time to get there.

Apparently now you can even chose which Covenant cruiser you want to drive your superdreadnought through upon exiting slipspace like a badass!

Now, to figure out a way to use that in an RP. Also, I'm probably going to start issuing shielding and better FTL drives to the Bajireyn fleets now, as having to loose several of our ships just to kill or damage a single enemy ship is just silly.

Well, if I ever can find a decent RP, that is.

If anything 343 made Chief and Cortana stand out MORE as characters. Not just some random dude in a suit with an annoying voice in his head.

Heartily agreed. They did a wonderful job of fleshing out the characters. Chief before just felt like a walking suit of armor that occasionally belted out a one-liner. Now, he actually feels like flesh and blood and easier to pick up on the hurt and loss he feels. There's more a sense of urgency to complete your mission. He's relatable. Now, some might not like that since they can no longer project themselves onto MC, but really is that such a bad thing?

Cortana too you can relate and have sympathy for. You can feel the rampancy and the damage her solitude did. Even the anger and hurt from losing herself you can feel.

They did a brilliant job.

I fully agree with all your points there.

Although, they could have done a better job with the multiplayer armor, most of its terrible and doesn't look like it belongs in Halo. And for that matter, the sticky detonator (y'know, that rocket pistol thingie) is borderline useless, and the new Pelicans look like shit, and, the why are all the maps so small, and why did you remove the Falcon , and why did all the covies just take up a whole new level in ugly and.....I could go on and on about what they should have done better.

[The Legion of War]

Apparently now you can even chose which Covenant cruiser you want to drive your superdreadnought through upon exiting slipspace like a badass!

Now, to figure out a way to use that in an RP. Also, I'm probably going to start issuing shielding and better FTL drives to the Bajireyn fleets now, as having to loose several of our ships just to kill or damage a single enemy ship is just silly.

Well, if I ever can find a decent RP, that is.

You still haven't? When I made my Halo nation (this one, still working on making it unique somehow), I used all the latest upgrades in the Lore.

Compared to other Sci-fi universes, Halo is kinda weak... Unless you're talking about the Forerunner and/or the Precursors.

[Steel Confessors]

Actually I feel the Multi armor looks pretty awesome (Dat warrior helm) and most of it does. It looks, human, utilitarian and rugged. Except slightly more advanced than MC merely because it was designed for more advanced Spartans. The Spartan IV's by the way.

And, yeah the remote detonator is silly. What's with games and remote detonating grenade launcher things? Not fun, not useful.

The new Pelicans I like. They look like more advanced... well pelicans. And not to mention the level when you get to fly one was fun as hell. The Falcon I imagine was removed to make room for the Mantis. And the fact the Falcon was a pain in the ass in multiplayer especially when there's already another flyer.

The Covies have a nice aesthetic to them. Look more.. scrapped and dressed in the equivalent of rags (Power armor rags that is.) since they are supposed to represent a splinter warband.

EDIT: Also, need to get me an Infinity class ship. Want to ram the fuck out of people and deploy frigates as fighters. Shit's cool. Although will be in limited number like one a Legio to keep from being too numerous.

[The Legion of War]

After a quick wiki walk, it depends. I personally try to stay away from anything that messes with timey-wimey-wibbly-wobblyness, but you might find a few people around here who could work with it. You'd just have to be very very careful about making your OOC communication highly nuanced.

I'd advise against it. You might be able to use it in some kind of RP centred around it, but using it versus other nations won't bring you much good, I believe.

Do you think it would be acceptable in character RPs? I mean in those you get people with physic powers and things that appear to be magic.


Oh and the armour in Halo 4 doesn't look useful at ALL in a battlefield. Artwork has a slit for a visor. Scanner is retarded, FOTUS has a useless horn, HAZOP and CIO have both taken into consideration the third human eye that doesn't exist, and the rest just look wierd.

It's like 343 tried to make "cool" armour and not functional armour that an actual soldier would wear.

[Bajireyn]

Actually I feel the Multi armor looks pretty awesome (Dat warrior helm) and most of it does. It looks, human, utilitarian and rugged. Except slightly more advanced than MC merely because it was designed for more advanced Spartans. The Spartan IV's by the way.

And, yeah the remote detonator is silly. What's with games and remote detonating grenade launcher things? Not fun, not useful.

The new Pelicans I like. They look like more advanced... well pelicans. And not to mention the level when you get to fly one was fun as hell. The Falcon I imagine was removed to make room for the Mantis. And the fact the Falcon was a pain in the ass in multiplayer especially when there's already another flyer.

The Covies have a nice aesthetic to them. Look more.. scrapped and dressed in the equivalent of rags (Power armor rags that is.) since they are supposed to represent a splinter warband.

EDIT: Also, need to get me an Infinity class ship. Want to ram the fuck out of people and deploy frigates as fighters. Shit's cool. Although will be in limited number like one a Legio to keep from being too numerous.

I would sell you guys an Infinity, but the seven we have currently (Only one has proper shields and Forerunner tech, though.) are wayyyyyyyy too important at the moment to give away. Well, that and the fact we seem to go against everything you are for, and we really don't need to deal with another group of religious nutters while the Covies are still around.

Anyways, the new UNSC stuff (Except the Mantis, which made me change my stance on using walkers, I love that thing.) looks too curvy, imo, instead of the boxy feel all the UNSC equipment had previously. Not only that, but a lot of the armor just looks....silly for lack of a better word. Warrior is pretty awesome, as is Recruit and Soldier, along with the new Aviator helmet, even if I liked the one in Reach more. I have no complaints about the Pelican gunship, besides the fact that they should give it some goddamn missiles or rockets, or at least something to put on those pylons. Anyways, the Remote/Sticky Detonator is too gamey to use seriously, and like the Scorpion, exists only as a failed prototype in Bajireyn canon. The Falcon, at least as I remember it, was pretty much a flying target, and was typically shot down as soon as it took off, with few exceptions. They should have just kept, the Hornet, that little VTOL was amazing.

Finally, while I don't really have a problem with the ragtag appearance of the Covies in Halo 4, why they have to keep changing what all the Covenant species look like (Except the Engineers, I think.) every damn game confuses me.

I'd advise against it. You might be able to use it in some kind of RP centred around it, but using it versus other nations won't bring you much good, I believe.

Do you think it would be acceptable in character RPs? I mean in those you get people with physic powers and things that appear to be magic.


Oh and the armour in Halo 4 doesn't look useful at ALL in a battlefield. Artwork has a slit for a visor. Scanner is retarded, FOTUS has a useless horn, HAZOP and CIO have both taken into consideration the third human eye that doesn't exist, and the rest just look wierd.

It's like 343 tried to make "cool" armour and not functional armour that an actual soldier would wear.

* Wetwork

Anyways, you seem right about what they were thinking when there were designing Halo 4's multiplayer armor. Now Reach, Reach's armor was badass. Anyways, maybe the third eye on those helmet's is actually a kind of built-in sensor, or something to confuse Covenant, or something. It still looks silly though.

[The Akasha Colony]

Random topic for discussion:

A guy on a forum I frequent is claiming that it is simply impossible to have any sort of even modestly accurate orbital bombardment. One of my allies parked a few dozen ships 150 km above an enemy nation and opened up with a precision bombardment of his territories, targeting military installations for minimal civilian casualties. The weapons used were relativistic particle beams and low-yield guided missiles, targeting stationary installations and troop formations.

The defender then claimed that he had inflicted 56,000 military and 4 million civilian casualties in the bombardment, since he assumed the bombardment would have to be indiscriminate. The area was decently populated by a generic grimdark culture with lots of military assets, so there should have been no shortage of obvious and easy targets. His ally then backed him up and said that accuracy in any kind of bombardment in FT, and furthermore even in modern tech, is flat-out impossible, despite having been told otherwise by a former artilleryman and current tank crewman.

Now, I'm obviously inclined to believe differently, if only because my allies happen to be the ones doing the bombarding and 4 million civilians for only 56,000 military casualties is nearly impossible even with WWII-era carpet bombing unless he's paving his airbase runways with his own people.

But your opinions? What sort of accuracy can orbital bombardment be expected to achieve?

[Kreanoltha]

Guided missiles will have great accuracy becuase they're guided fucking missiles!!!!

Particle beams my not even make it to the surface depending on how bad atmospheric bloom is, but at 150 KM they're not going to be going sideways out of his lenses.

Tell the defender to listen to the former artilleryman and current tank crewman.

The particle beams might be off by a little, but if they can hit a ship tens or hundreds of thousands of kilometers away while taking defensive countermeasures (assuming they don't sit there and duke it out Horatio Hornblower style while armor-tanking damage like REAL MEN) then they can hit a target on the ground despite atmosphere bloom.

Has the attacker done orbital bombardment before? If so then he's probably figured out atmo-bloom.

TL;DR?

Bombardment is accurate now. There's no reason to think people would somehow forget how to do it right.

[The Akasha Colony]

Guided missiles will have great accuracy becuase they're guided fucking missiles!!!!

Particle beams my not even make it to the surface depending on how bad atmospheric bloom is, but at 150 KM they're not going to be going sideways out of his lenses.

Tell the defender to listen to the former artilleryman and current tank crewman.

The particle beams might be off by a little, but if they can hit a ship tens or hundreds of thousands of kilometers away while taking defensive countermeasures (assuming they don't sit there and duke it out Horatio Hornblower style while armor-tanking damage like REAL MEN) then they can hit a target on the ground despite atmosphere bloom.

Has the attacker done orbital bombardment before? If so then he's probably figured out atmo-bloom.

TL;DR?

Bombardment is accurate now. There's no reason to think people would somehow forget how to do it right.

The attacker's done it dozens of times by now. This one wasn't even a big one. This is also Earth, and being undertaken by a nation whose home is also Earth, so the atmospheric values would probably be memorized by every weapons officer by now, and likely even the default setting for the fire control system. But for some reason it seems players like to scream about civilian casualties since common perceptions don't seem to have moved past WWII-era carpet bombing. The defenders are demanding that the attacker pay fiscal reparations for all of the civilian casualties as recompense for a war crime, even though putting military bases that close to population centers is also a war crime.

I have no real intention of arguing the point further. The defender and his allies have persuaded each other that accurate bombardment is impossible and they're attacking the credentials of the artilleryman and tank crewman by claiming they don't really understand the military and that a 'book' they read tells them that precision bombardment is impossible. At this point, it's become abundantly clear that no amount of text on an internet forum is going to convince that clique otherwise, and expending any further effort IMO is a waste of time, but I wanted a second (actually, fifth) opinion.

The funny part is that the primary proponent of the impossibility of precision bombardment (an international security major, of all things) is now claiming that his own orbital gunship is accurate to within 0.1 millimeters with a simple 120 mm gun.