Argument Thread OOC Future Tech Only

[Hornopolis]

You guys don't get it, I'm wasting my time trying to explain to you people.

[Vocenae]

Didn't we JUST get done talking about this?

[UNIverseVERSE]

*Universe, I wasn't targeting your post in general, I was targeting the whole thread*

I see.

Obviously, I can't speak for the whole thread. For a start, I've only been posting for 2/3rds of it.

But what I am trying to do in here is the following.

A) Inform people about what the scientific background to stuff actually is, so that they can work with it more effectively if they choose to

B) Inform people about how breaking the scientific background in various ways will break the rest of science, and help them repair the damage to what extent is possible, so that their universe is more coherent and believable.

C) Suggest interesting ideas which fit into the scientifically possible category, so that people get some inkling that playing hard SF isn't just a constant chorus of "you can't".

D) Learn all of the above by arguing about it with other people.

If you don't like the thread, don't read in it or post in it. If you want to ignore the science, do it. I'm not going to police or persecute you for it. But if you want to know about the science, want the suggestions my imagination can dream up for getting your cool ideas back into the realm of plausible, then that's what I'm here to do.

Again, I have a longer post about "Why should I care about scientific accuracy" in the works. Most of these points will be expanded on in that.

[North Mack]

You guys don't get it, I'm wasting my time trying to explain to you people.

You're the one who came in here crashing our party. Fulma asked if stealth in space was possible, and he got his answers. Whether or not he chooses to follow the advice given in this thread doesn't really matter. He asked a question and it was answered, no more, no less.

You have fun playing science FICTION, while other people enjoy playing SCIENCE fiction. And if you don't get that, then I'm wasting my time trying to explain to you.

[Balrogga]

Actually, the reason this Thread exists is to take all these distracting conversations out of the IC and OOC Threads where they would be hijacking the origional Threads and put them here so everyone can talk about them.

I have limited the topics to pertain to Future Tech RPs (Notice, I did not say Science Fiction, I said Future Tech) because that is the area I play in and the origional Arguments Thread was quite long on the JOLT forums meaning it served its purpose so I transplanted the idea here. Now we have over 120 pages and still going.


The request I have placed in the first post is everyone must be civil to everyone else.

[Hyperspatial Travel]

Just a note on science-fiction. Those of us who use science (however nominally) in our RPing don't object to cloaking fields, shields, FTL, and other physics rapists per se. Rather, we object to people pretending there's science behind their weaponry. I have no problem with turbolasers, cloakery, and a host of other wholly unrealistic technology, provided people acknowledge it's unrealistic.

It's not the dismissal of physics we object to, it's people dismissing physics and then falsely claiming their new drive/shield/cloak/faster-than-light coffee machine has some basis in physics. It's the intellectual dishonesty of that approach that is so grating. When people say 'I don't use physics, and I'm okay with that', there's at the very least a modicum of respect granted.

[Bryn Shander]

Just a note on science-fiction. Those of us who use science (however nominally) in our RPing don't object to cloaking fields, shields, FTL, and other physics rapists per se. Rather, we object to people pretending there's science behind their weaponry. I have no problem with turbolasers, cloakery, and a host of other wholly unrealistic technology, provided people acknowledge it's unrealistic.

It's not the dismissal of physics we object to, it's people dismissing physics and then falsely claiming their new drive/shield/cloak/faster-than-light coffee machine has some basis in physics. It's the intellectual dishonesty of that approach that is so grating. When people say 'I don't use physics, and I'm okay with that', there's at the very least a modicum of respect granted.

I have a problem with people using handwavium and then claiming superiority over those of us that use generous applications of lube when we rape physics despite the fact that they don't even know what the fancy sci-fi terminology they're invoking means.

[Bears Armed]

You know, I'm done arguing. Have fun with your 'win' Byrn. If the communication revolution can be reduced to moot with "They had radios in WWII" then there's no point. I will admit I didn't pull up sources for my arguments, but I was hoping some discourse decency could be applied. The communication revolution was more than radio. It was a revolution in the way commanders considered their fleets, by just that. It was a fleet now, not just a bunch of ships.

"Fleet" tactics, as distinct from "bunch of ships" tactics, date back to before Nelson's time: have you never heard of 'line of battle'?

[Phenia]

Just a note on science-fiction. Those of us who use science (however nominally) in our RPing don't object to cloaking fields, shields, FTL, and other physics rapists per se. Rather, we object to people pretending there's science behind their weaponry. I have no problem with turbolasers, cloakery, and a host of other wholly unrealistic technology, provided people acknowledge it's unrealistic.

It's not the dismissal of physics we object to, it's people dismissing physics and then falsely claiming their new drive/shield/cloak/faster-than-light coffee machine has some basis in physics. It's the intellectual dishonesty of that approach that is so grating. When people say 'I don't use physics, and I'm okay with that', there's at the very least a modicum of respect granted.

I have a problem with people using handwavium and then claiming superiority over those of us that use generous applications of lube when we rape physics despite the fact that they don't even know what the fancy sci-fi terminology they're invoking means.

Real men don't use lube when raping physics.

[North Mack]

Just a note on science-fiction. Those of us who use science (however nominally) in our RPing don't object to cloaking fields, shields, FTL, and other physics rapists per se. Rather, we object to people pretending there's science behind their weaponry. I have no problem with turbolasers, cloakery, and a host of other wholly unrealistic technology, provided people acknowledge it's unrealistic.

It's not the dismissal of physics we object to, it's people dismissing physics and then falsely claiming their new drive/shield/cloak/faster-than-light coffee machine has some basis in physics. It's the intellectual dishonesty of that approach that is so grating. When people say 'I don't use physics, and I'm okay with that', there's at the very least a modicum of respect granted.

I have a problem with people using handwavium and then claiming superiority over those of us that use generous applications of lube when we rape physics despite the fact that they don't even know what the fancy sci-fi terminology they're invoking means.

Real men don't use lube when raping physics.

That's what her tears are for. </offtopic>

[The Kafers]

Once again, we have Kafers demonstrating how bad he is at understanding warfare. The reason naval battles took so long to organize and commit to was simple. Ships are expensive, they take a long time to build and about half as long to prepare for combat, I.E. Getting them supplied, their crews trained and in position to engage in battle. Now, if you take space ships, which are expensive and take as long or even longer to travel from point A to point B, and you got battles that will take months to finish... And I'll tell you why. Only an idiot will throw his entire fleet into a battle to the death. No one in their right mind would stay in a battle to the bitter end... So, comparing space war to the Pacific Campaign, in this writer's opinion, is very apt. In fact, space war is almost exactly the same, but in three dimensions. Using analogies to explain, taking a solar system is like conquering an island chain. The same principles will apply in every way. Failing to heed the warnings of history will get you curb stomped in any war.

Failing to acknowledge advances in technology or properly utilize it if you have will get you smashed as well. But what I'm trying to say here is that not drawing comparisons between World War 2, the last total war fought in living memory and space war is stupid. Those who don't learn from history's mistakes are doomed to repeat them. Pick up a book one of these days, Kafers.

It is axiomatic that, for any set of technologies two or more combatants might have, there will be a set of tactics for each combatant that optimizes their chances of success in any conflict between them.

World War II was fought with a narrow range of technologies; it stands to reason that any war in which some or all of the combatants possess different technologies will require different tactics unless the relationship between all of those technologies is pretty much the same was it was in the World War II era.

When it comes to futuristic warfare among the stars, centuries from now, the odds of that happening are nonexistent.

Let's look at just a few of the differences between World War II naval-air combat and space warfare in an effort to understand this.

Portals

Fixed wormholes are a standard feature of NS FT RP; Hermes itself operates the HHTC, which it touts as the most extensive gate system anywhere in the galaxy. Gates allow for instantaneous travel between any two points on the gate system, which in and of itself is a dramatic departure from mid-20th Century reality.

More important, however, is the convention that renders traffic between gates unstoppable without bringing down one of the gates in question; even FTLi (or so I have been told) can't interdict gate traffic. This part of the picture is what I'd like to focus on, because it introduces a major change to the military environment vis-à-vis World War II.

Gates have been touted as faster and more efficient than ordinary starship travel - an arguable point - but in truth the greatest benefit of a gate system is security. Transports using gates cannot be attacked en route to their destinations by hostile forces, whether such forces be pirates or commerce raiders. This eliminates both commerce raiding and distant blockade - space denial - as a potential strategy by any party whose enemy employs a major gate system, a fact with far reaching consequences.

Without the need to tick off escorts, a space force can concentrate its military strength on combat - space control - without fear of having its commerce overtaken by the enemy; it also need not face the usual danger of defeat in detail that comes with splitting its forces into convoys in the face of an enemy space force in being. Most of the subtleties of 20th Century naval warfare become moot in this environment, as the superior power cannot use its forces to weaken its adversary's economy any more than the weaker power can force its adversary onto the horns of a dilemma in choosing to concentrate units for fleet actions versus distributing them for commerce protection.

Denied their best strategic opportunities for indirect assault on each other's positions, the entire struggle quickly devolves into an effort to draw the enemy into a grand battle (a sort of space-Jutland, if we can use a maritime metaphor here) for the purpose of eliminating him.

More generally, imagine a World War II in which the Germans couldn't have used submarines (or surface raiders) to stop Allied merchant traffic from crossing the Atlantic because ships could instantly teleport from New York to Liverpool; in which the Americans couldn't have used submarines to do the same thing to Japan because Japanese vessels could teleport from Yokohama to Pusan (or to Naples or Hamburg, for that matter). Imagine if either the Japanese or Americans had been able to establish a working portal on Guadalcanal, eliminating the need for supply runs in the face of enemy attack (runs which, BTW, broke the back of the Japanese navy, causing much greater losses than Midway did), not to mention allowing for virtually infinite reinforcement (so that several divisions of troops could have been "gated in" by whichever side controlled the "gate" at Henderson Field).

It wouldn't have been the same war at all.

Orbital Mechanics and Distances

Solar systems are dynamic things; the planets and moons that constitute one are not fixed in their locations, but rather move constantly. Then, too, the distances between them are vast.

The distances and changing positions of the planets and their moons render the entire "island hopping" analogy void. Spacecraft approaching the Earth don't have to pass Jupiter to get to the Terran homeworld, regardless of how many times filmmakers and television producers like to show that as happening: They can wait until the Earth and Jupiter are on opposite sides of the Solar System; alternately, they can just approach the system from the other direction, or come in from Solar North or South ("above" or "below" the ecliptic, although I hate using these terms, as they are deceptive).

In fact, the Outer System is probably the worst place to position defensive forces, even in a universe without FTL: This is because half the time such forces will be poorly situated to defend the rest of the system (essentially, they'll be on the wrong side of the system to intercept the attack). Rather, the ideal place to position defensive forces is as close to the center of the system as possible (in our Solar System, that would probably be Mercury), so that they will be in the best position to get anywhere. And that's not even considering that places like Mercury represent the best locations within any star system when it comes to harvesting energy from the stellar primary and/or producing antimatter.

As the best economic and political targets (Earthlike and Marslike planets, as well as the larger moons) are all going to be further out in system (in comparison with the best main defensive base), this doesn't suggest that "planet hopping" is going to be an important part of system defense at all.

Ships, Planes, and Spacecraft

The character of the War in the Pacific (1941-45) was dictated by the differing performance characteristics of ships and aircraft. Aircraft - small, light, and able to rise into the air - could travel faster than ships by an order of magnitude; ships - bound to the ocean's surface - could not move as quickly. Planes, OTOH, were only able to remain aloft for a few hours, while ships could travel for weeks without putting into port.

Neither ships or planes are spacecraft, however; neither move in the same way, or face the same limitations - and, for their part, spacecraft don't have the same limitations as ships and aircraft.

Let's begin by reiterating what everybody knows:

• Ships can come to a stop. Spacecraft can't, because everything in space is always moving, even if it's only a matter of falling towards the nearest star or planet.
  
  
• Ships and aircraft can change direction by using the water or air around them to redirect their momentum (IOW, they can turn). Spacecraft cannot do this; they can change direction only by vector addition: Images of space fighters banking and weaving as though space were full of air are the inventions of Hollywood, nothing more.
  
  One writer said it best: "Space warfare isn't like air or sea warfare. It's like warfare between 18-wheelers on black ice."
  
  
• Ships and aircraft generally have to face the same way they move. Spacecraft can turn any way they please, relative to their momentum. If you're flying a space fighter and some joker is "on your tail", all you have to do is spin your spacecraft around on your axis and blaze away at him. Nothing in the laws of celestial mechanics says you can't fly backwards (or sideways) just as fast as you can in any other direction.
  
  
• Ships and aircraft can only travel so far before they run out of fuel. Spacecraft can travel forever on a single impulse, so "range" is a meaningless concept. What spacecraft cannot do is change course or velocity forever; they have a limited delta vee capacity, and once that is expended they become ballistic objects.
  
  
• At sea or in the air, gravity pulls things down. Actually, it does that in space, too - only "down" in space means "towards the nearest planet or sun", which is likely to give one side or the other a gravitational advantage. More on this below.
  
  
• Most importantly of all, ships and aircraft operate under different rules from each other. Spacecraft, OTOH, all operate under the same rules. This is the biggest reason why the entire concept of space fighters flying circles around lumbering space "warships" is daft. Fighters and "warships" use the same basic motive systems (unless you're going to imagine fighters as using a completely different drive mechanism) and operate in the same environment. Therefore - unlike World War II, where you have two different kinds of units interacting to decide the outcome of sea battles - here you have only one basic type of unit out there, and everything is just a variation on that theme.
  
  If you wanted to imagine space battles as being like sea battles, then, you'd be better off imagining them as being like World War I sea battles (minus scout planes and zeppelins); in that scenario, space fighters would be like torpedo boats - light, expendable attack craft (and, for that matter, the torpedoes those boats fired didn't move appreciably faster than ships, either...). It should be noted that World War I torpedo boats evolved into destroyers, and the same thing could probably be expected to happen with spacecraft tasked to a similar role (it has also happened recently with missile-armed fast attack boats, BTW - look at the path of evolution from the Soviet Osa-class missile boat to the modern Russian Tarantul-class missile corvette).
  
  Of course, you'd still have to deal with the fact that spacecraft are ships. But at least you wouldn't be confusing yourself doubly by trying to tell yourself that some spacecraft are ships, while others are planes.

Of course - and here is where the power of imagination comes in - you could certainly invent a set of technologies that would let you have your Pacific air-sea battles in space if you wanted to, and nobody is stopping you from doing this if that's what you hanker for. Just keep in mind a couple of things:

• To do it right, you should invent some kind of propulsion system for fighters that allows them to "fly" through space the way aircraft fly through an atmosphere, essentially allowing them to move under an altogether different set of rules than ordinary spacecraft. If you do this, you will need to explain why this same technology can't be used on a larger ship.
  
  Don't try to cop out by saying "fighters are smaller, and so they move faster"; that just makes you look stupid.
  
  
• In NS FT RP, most people throw around OMFG-huge superdreadnoughts with masses measured in millions of metric tons. This is problem for fighters, considering that a World War II dive-bomber could cripple or destroy even a battleship with a single 500-lb bomb. This suggests that the balance of RP power in NS FT isn't the same as it was in World War II, where a dozen aircraft could easily sink a battleship or carrier if unmolested by supporting ships or enemy aircraft. Fighters are probably an order of magnitude weaker in NS FT RP, which suggests that the whole idea of them playing the same kind of decisive role they played in the Pacific theater of World War II is highly suspect from the get-go.
  
  If you really wanted to have fighters play the same kind of role they did in World War II, you'd have them carrying "bombs" or "torpedoes" capable of crippling or destroying a ship with a single hit. But that's never going to happen.
  
  
• In most visual depictions of a "air-sea battle in space", the fighters actually are much smaller than World War II fighters were, relative to their "naval" counterparts. They are also much faster. If you don't believe me, compare the action in Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and Stargate SG-1 to old World War II newsreels. This means that the foregoing factors are going to be a correspondingly greater problem: The drive technology that makes fighters agile will need to be multiple orders of magnitude better than anything "warships" have; their numbers will either have to be huge or they will have to have weapons of colossal power. Their numbers or striking power will need to be way out of proportion to what our expectations are as well.
  
  
• Finally, don't expect other people to accept your view of warfare as genuine. This is the biggest problem with the "air-sea war" theory of future space battles: It relies on everybody else buying into the model, because if they don't, it's not going to work. After all, if you have to invent your own physics to make space "just like the Pacific in 1941-45", then there's always the chance that somebody else will invent their own physics to make it what they want it to be.

Concluding Remarks

There were a million things I thought of that I could have added to this post: How Hollywood's depictions of space lead us to neglect the very real influence of gravity on space combat, how unlimited range affects engagement distances, how our differing perceptions of visibility and homing capabilities make us perceive the nature of space engagements differently, etc. I can go into them if I need to; for now, I think that this is quite enough to start.

[Feazanthia]

Kafer posts big things that make me read a lot.

On another note. Can anyone recommend a good program that would let me model my ships' internal layout? I have a hankering to do that for some reason.

[North Mack]

Internal layout? Why not just an AutoCAD style program?

[Kilrany]

Snip

Yep, nothing here I can really argue with. It's why I don't have fighters, and instead use drones in much the same way others use armed missiles; I just like to be able to recover those of mine still active at the end of a battle wherever possible.

Also the same reason I don't use anything but capitol ships since a small ship has no advantage over a larger ship except possibly for acceleration and economy of force. I say possibly as MC was right to point out to me during several conversations on the subject that not all drive types work the same, thus there's always room for exceptions.

[Othyl]

Real men don't use lube when raping physics.

Totally quoted.

[Telros]

Snip

Good points to be had, however your bias for hard tech stuff comes out. One thing to keep in mind not everyone cares that fighters, if probably adapted, should be capable of wiping out ships with one bomb, or how gravity affects them, or how their fighters can't dogfight like they do in scifi. Some like science, but to a degree, and then like to mix in the fiction that they like. As long as they can adequately explain it, even in a very handwavium way, and that is consistent with their nation, I don't see why not.

Just saying, Kafers. You seem to come down a tad hard on those who don't account for science in everything in your rants. If this isn't your intention. If so, I point you to the freeform part of the site and my earlier point above.

[Kilrany]

I wouldn't exactly say he's alone in that regard, I'm pretty sure on several occasions I was the same, and we had far then enough evidence from those coming down hard on him for being of the harder FT mindset. Personally I'd say the above of his was rather free of most bias given it was simply pointing out comparisons that as far as I can tell, are pretty accurate.

[The Kafers]

Snip

Yep, nothing here I can really argue with. It's why I don't have fighters, and instead use drones in much the same way others use armed missiles; I just like to be able to recover those of mine still active at the end of a battle wherever possible.

Also the same reason I don't use anything but capitol ships since a small ship has no advantage over a larger ship except possibly for acceleration and economy of force. I say possibly as MC was right to point out to me during several conversations on the subject that not all drive types work the same, thus there's always room for exceptions.

While writing that post, it occurred to me that - as I pointed out to UNIverseVERSE in our earlier exchange - Kafer spacecraft act more like fighters than warships (they have to point in the direction they're moving, they have a true range limitation due to the fact that when the power runs out they just stop [although not completely, as - like any object in space - they will maintain whatever orbital momentum they had before they started moving], they can travel much farther on a given amount of energy than Newtonian-impulse space vehicles can, they have lighter weapons, lighter shields [or no shields at all], they tend to travel at "pseudo-velocities" ranging from 0.1-0.3c, etc.). This was the reason I told UNIverseVERSE that air warfare may actually be a better model for space warfare than naval warfare. Of course, he set me straight on that, but still...

The reason I don't consider the Kafers a "fighter-using" nation (even though I have ships described as "fighters" in my ORBAT) is the fact that (a) all of my ships work that way, ranging from by 240-ton "fighters" to my 150,000-ton "battleships" (these, BTW, are human names for these classes - I have yet to develop native language names for such craft) and (b) everything - even my fighters - can technically travel FTL. Yet perhaps I should reconsider that classification, as it might be a better (although still imperfect) way of describing what it is I'm doing.

Which creates an interesting counterpoint to the "naval" or "naval-air" models of space warfare - an "air" model, in which spacecraft "fly" between star systems on raids and attacks. The principle deviation I would make from that model (in my case) is that my spacecraft don't have to return to "base" between missions - although it would not be hard for someone to invent a system in which such spacecraft did (a "gate catapult" with a "timed retrieval function", perhaps?).

Just saying, Kafers. You seem to come down a tad hard on those who don't account for science in everything in your rants. If this isn't your intention. If so, I point you to the freeform part of the site and my earlier point above.

What I don't like is inconsistency. It's easy to be inconsistent when you don't really understand how your technology works, and that's easy to do when you don't understand why it works the way it does.

Why is consistency important? Well, for one thing, it's necessary if other people against whom you might be competing (and, while NS RP is cooperative, there is still a competitive element to it) are going to form sensible strategies. An enemy whose capabilities change from one second to the next or whose potential cannot be understood is a hard enemy to deal with, to the point where the other players' actions seem arbitrary or even fickle. Then, too, hard physics is the one thing we can all (usually) agree upon; it's the common point of connection between all of these different techbases we invent.

I like a fair degree of hardness on my own part simply to able to predict what will happen when an adversary takes a particular action against me. I can shade that result somewhat to fit the exigencies of the story, but if I want things to be moderately believable then I need to police my own technology. I'm probably harder internally than externally; in most RPs I don't question what the other fellow is doing - instead, I generally take it at face value.

People are free to invent things whole cloth if they want; but if they do, they should be careful to craft internal "rules" to control their creations, so that they understand them enough to RP them reasonably well. If you want fighters that are powered by Dirac's "sea of negative energy" and use the "cosmic aether" as a "pseudo-atmosphere" in order to perform aerodynamic maneuvers, feel free; just make sure that you take a second to think about why all of your ships don't behave that way, as opposed to just the fighters. Otherwise, you strain believability.

Likewise, ditch those elements that obviously contradict nature (diving increases acceleration and pulling up slows your fighter, even to the point where it goes into a stall) unless you can figure out why they do that. Analogies are great, but they don't have to be perfect. Space can be live an ocean for starships and like the sky for fighters, but it shouldn't be an ocean or a sky, because it's not.

Finally, don't insist that the other side buy into your analogy. If you think that space warfare should be like World War II in the Pacific and your adversary thinks it should be like World War I, don't think: "Oh, well, I have fighters and he doesn't, so I'll rape him." Remember that, in his "reality" what you're doing doesn't work. It that sense, your job as a writer is to convince the other fellow to buy into your metaphor by making it as believable as his.

[Kilrany]

This was the reason I told UNIverseVERSE that air warfare may actually be a better model for space warfare than naval warfare. Of course, he set me straight on that, but still...

Can you elaborate on that discussion? Personally I can see comparisons between both, and depending on certain viewpoints subjective to technology used, I can see either being a possible model.

[Telros]

I wouldn't exactly say he's alone in that regard, I'm pretty sure on several occasions I was the same, and we had far then enough evidence from those coming down hard on him for being of the harder FT mindset. Personally I'd say the above of his was rather free of most bias given it was simply pointing out comparisons that as far as I can tell, are pretty accurate.

I know he's had people come down on him for it. But I'm saying things like "how we treat fighters like atmosphere fighters is ridiculous" and all that. Is it true techwise? Yes. Is it okay if someone does it in their nation without some ole bullshit? Yes. It had a bias, not a too heavy one, but one where some hits at the more fiction focused is seen.

@Kafers: That is basically what I was saying. As long as its consistent and not incredibly broken, there's no problem with doing it. And you are correct about trying to force people to your way of thinking. I recall an old battle I was in where an ally and myself were fighting someone else. The enemy used fighters, as did I, but my ally didn't and thought them weak and useless and his PD would shoot them all down. After a long debate, the enemy gave up and decided all his fighters would attack me. I was a bit miffed at that.

[Kilrany]

Fair enough.

In regards to this old battle though, which were you miffed at? The fact that he sent all the fighters at you, who presumably would react to them more in a realm as himself, or because your ally refused to see them as anything more then weak little targets to be blown out of the sky? Just curious, and quite possibly I'm making too many assumptions on how the discussion you mention went.

[The Kafers]

My initial statement was met by a good response from UNIverseVERSE. In particular, UNIverseVERSE pointed out how delta vee considerations and greater thermal signatures changed some of the circumstances of warfare significantly enough that the air warfare model was - in its own way - as flawed as the sea warfare model.

I think that, in building you model of warfare, you have to think about how your platforms move first and foremost. There are, very roughly, three different systems one could use for movement:

1. Reaction Drives (all three of Newton's Laws apply): Momentum is conserved, an impulse is required to alter momentum, and some kind of propellant mass must be discharged to produce that impulse.
   
   All known space propulsion methods fit this model.
   
   
2. Non-Reaction Impulse Drives (Newton's Reaction Law is bypassed): Momentum is conserved and an impulse is required to alter momentum; this impulse can be created without discharging any propellant, however.
   
   Gravitic drives usually fit this model, although there are a few other kinds of drives that could fall under it as well. If you ignore the effects of a massive laser on the platform that holds it, a laser sail might be seen as an example of this.
   
   
3. Non-Impulse Drives (Only Newton's Law of Momentum Conservation is observed): Momentum is conserved, but objects can be relocated or moved through space without changing their momentum.
   
   Displacement drives fit this model, as do drives that operate by mass reduction.

Thinking about how your vehicles move will help you think about what warfare is going to be like. If you use gravitic drives, for instance, those drives will have to transfer energy directly to momentum to make up for the change in total platform energy as momentum increases; thus, the limit on delta vee is actually a limit on power application. If you use displacement drives, those drives will need to add energy where total system energy increases (for instance, when climbing out of a gravity well) if you don't want them to be perpetual motion machines; beyond that, because momentum is no longer the force that carries you, your range is limited by your total power.

The thing is, other people will use different systems. This is the biggest reason warfare won't be any one "way": Because people aren't going to agree to how things ought to work.

[UNIverseVERSE]

Can you elaborate on that discussion? Personally I can see comparisons between both, and depending on certain viewpoints subjective to technology used, I can see either being a possible model.

Kafers
UvV

Essentially, I argued that extending airwar to space doesn't work for certain reasons, and is likely to be about as accurate as extending seawar to the air.

Kafers' post just up this page includes a good synthesis of the discussion.

I know he's had people come down on him for it. But I'm saying things like "how we treat fighters like atmosphere fighters is ridiculous" and all that. Is it true techwise? Yes. Is it okay if someone does it in their nation without some ole bullshit? Yes. It had a bias, not a too heavy one, but one where some hits at the more fiction focused is seen.

I disagree, slightly (but I do very explicitly have a hardSF bias).

I rather see it as informing people "This is what the reality of things gives you. So you need to break it somehow". Whether they then break away from reality is up to them. But the important thing is that you don't get people saying "Yeah, I'm hard FT" with their Star Wars/Trek/whatever tech.

I would draw a parallel to the stealth discussion from a few pages back. "Here is why science breaks stealth in space. Here is one way to get around it without breaking science. Here is another way to get around it with breaking science, but in a way that doesn't tear it all to pieces." People who read that and still think "I want stealth" now have a good idea of how to do it in a consistent and interesting way, if they so desire.

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One thing which does slightly irritate me is the use of handwavium technology to port modern warfare into space. What it shows, I feel, is a lack of imagination. Instead of exploring the various options that the space environment provides for warfare, and the various other ones that it removes, we get modern warfare ripped wholesale. Perhaps the canonical example is Star Wars, where the fighter sequences were explicitly modelled on WWII dogfights. The same sort of objection applies to using magitech to enable stealth, except now it's submarine movies.

Essentially, it's rejecting some of the incredibly cool options that FT should open up, and staying with something that's essentially "MT with shiny special effects".

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Incidentally, here's another difference between seawar and spacewar. You can surround your opponent on the sea, put up lines of ships and curtains of air power, and bring them to battle or prevent their passage. In space, they can just go over any picket line, fly straight up and out of every encirclement. The requirement to surround in three dimensions makes the necessary numerical superiority go through the roof.

[The Kafers]

Now that you're here, UvV...

I'm still playing with the retcon of my FTL drives back to canon form. In the orginal source materials, stutterwarp was based on the so-called "Jerome Effect" - a/k/a "Induced Directed Macroscopic Quantum Tunneling". Since QT is not (as some people believe) a way to tunnel through space as much as it is a description of what happens when a particle or wave "tunnels" through an energy state or barrier, I decided that I would justify the use of this term in canon by presuming that the spacecraft tunnels through a momentary tachyonic state, undergoing "condensation" back into a bradyonic state a moment later after undergoing an energy discharge caused by its interaction with the interstellar medium. Naturally, this explanation is still a work in progress.

IOW, handwavium - and palpable handwavium at that. But it made me think about a few things.

The first is what this looks like. As tachyons pass through space, they lose energy in the form of Cherenkov Radiation; strangely enough, as they lose energy, they accelerate. Condensation occurs at or near the point where their rest energy drops to zero (or, alternately, we could arbitrarily say that it occurs when it is the same as rest energy prior to the "tunneling event"); rest energy would reach zero at infinite speed, of course - but then, just as no bradyonic matter in the universe is ever really at rest, no tachyonic matter should ever achieve infinite speed.

So what we have is the disappearance on the spacecraft at point A, to be followed by the rapid superluminal movement of a Cherenkov Radiation source, after which the vehicle condenses back into existence at point B. Spacetime is not folded, spindled, or mutilated in the process of this "event" beyond the usual bending due to the proximity of matter (normal or tachyonic).

Now, it's my understanding that all tachyon bursts are always seen as moving forward in time regardless of the frame of reference of the observer (the Feinberg Reinterpretation Principle). Thus, from some frames of reference, the vehicle is seen as disappearing at A and reappearing at B; from other frames of reference, it is seen as disappearing at B and reappearing at A (essentially, moving backwards).

One question is the degree to which this view of the vehicle's movement persists over time. I read somewhere that a ship travelling FTL would present the same appearance to certain observers, especially where they might otherwise think that it was travelling backwards in time relative to their frame of reference (relative to its own frame of reference, of course, it cannot do this).

And yes, I am momentarily ignoring the issues with causality such a drive would engender. Right now, I'm curious as to what it would look like.

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ADDENDUM: Another thing that bugs me about Hollywood images of space. People say: "There's no up or down in space."

Of course there is:



← DOWNUP→

Of course, Hollywood doesn't do it this way. "Up" is always Solar North and "down" Solar South, or some such nonsense; since we understand that these directions are arbitrary and never reorient ourselves to think that gravity is pulling is "in" towards the Sun, and so "in" is "down", we never do quite get the sense of how interplanetary battles would work.

The same is true on a galactic scale: "Down" is "coreward" and "up" is "rimward". There's always gravity, and when you look at the orbital velocities of things, you begin to realize that it is, in fact, almost always a substantial force, if only over time.

So next time you start planning your space battle, cock your head and look at space in a different way to get a sense of how things out to work:

↑DOWN
UP↓

[Feazanthia]

Y'know, this may be the unseasonable heat and humidity talking, but I suddenly have the insatiable urge to abandon all storylines and retcon my nation in its entirety. It would then be replaced by a science FICTION nation using an alternate timeline Wings of Liberty-era Protoss race/culture/technology base.

I've never seen Protoss done well on NS. I wanna do it. Somebody stop me.