Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

[boldilocks]

What if the slug were stealth? I don't see why not.

I think slugs are already as stealthy as they can get.
And even if you could make them even less detectable, as long as the enemy knows you're firing slugs they can adjust accordingly by not having predicable vectors.

[kfcroc18]

Your vectors have to be predicable too some degree if you are also a warship trying to target and hit the other ship.

[boldilocks]

Your vectors have to be predicable too some degree if you are also a warship trying to target and hit the other ship.

Some degree, maybe, you may know that a warship has to pursue you or head towards what you suppose their objective is, however with a 360 degree battlespace that still leaves a gigantic area in which they are able move to evade slugs, or that you will have to saturate with slugs to ensure a hit.

[Mk_C]

What if the slug were stealth? I don't see why not.

If a setting allows SPEHHS STELF it typically changes the doctrine way, way more than just by making mass-drivers more viable.

Outsider, however, does not seem to operate on that assumption - sensors are good and reliable enough so that if there's nothing between two ships within one solar system, they can see each other (and all the smaller things) as clear as day.

Your vectors have to be predicable too some degree if you are also a warship trying to target and hit the other ship.

Yeah - predictable for you. The enemy doesn't have your current evasion pattern fed into his targeting system to adjust his aim before those maneuvers are even executed - you, however, do.

[MBehave]

It was for Terran ships to defeat long range sniping of Umiak plasma when using 8 heavy lasers in an array.
IN my battle sims It lets a Terran Battle Cruiser take on and destroy a Type-K Heavy Cruiser if the heavier long range shots from the Umiak ship can be negated.

The material used is not blocking the beam, its acting as a catalyst that absorbs energy from the beam and creates a highly charged environment which is directly proportional to the energy of the weapon passing through it. This causes charged particle interactions with the beam and the stronger the beam the stronger the charge of the resulting plasma, even a neutral particle beam of say hydrogen will become charged.

Required disruption to a beam at 100km to go from 1m diameter to 10m diameter is 0.0057 degree increase in beam angle though the plasma.
Even neutral sub atomic particle beams are effected by magnetic fields sufficiently that greater then this would be reached at the electromagnetic strength such plasma would be charged at by outsider energy weapons.

Its for my own non cannon battle simulation, dont want an argument about it.

Well, the material of a shield doesn't disappear, it only changes its state of aggregation.

And even as a gaseous nebulae, it'll dissipate any focused beam trying to transverse it.

The material must be extremely thin to cover as much space as possibly. If a bit of nebula was enough for cover, you'd think it would be easier to just release clouds of water and skip the solid stage.

Also, aren't ships in Outsider very fast and constantly dodging? How large would a barrier need to be to provide decent cover? Even at 1 gram/m² that would be quite a lot of mass to fire and forget.

[Krulle]

The distances in space are VAST.
And three dimensional.

And no natural hindrances against clear shots....

So no, you can move very randomly and keep a clear line of sight of the opponent's ship.

And with the distances involved, aiming only 0.01° wrong, the miss will be tremendous, and measurable in kilometres.
I don't think ships are large enough to be hit even then.

SpoilerShow

Combat ranges for the warring factions here (Loroi and Umiak) seem to start getting into effective ranges around 90 Megameters between ships. While the Loroi can engage up to 300 and 400 Megameters distance (and 600 Mm with the Wave Loom), the amount of damage is greatly reduced....plus the likeihood of hitting the target goes down a bit, (I imagine), once you are over a light-second distance.

90.000.000*tan(0,01°) = 900.030 km
for comparison, and out of interest:
90.000.000*tan(0,001°) = 90.000 km
90.000.000*tan(0,00001°) = 900 km

[kfcroc18]

I just realize something a handheld laser weapon can be used like a long-range flame thrower. Think about it, the target will be lit up before the weapon stars to directly cause damage.

[CaptEndo]

What if the slug were stealth? I don't see why not.

I recommend you look up footage of a USNavy rail gun being fired. It’s a highly energetic event involving lots of plasma and molten metal from both the rails and the projectile sabot making a spectacular muzzle blast. Any such projectile would glow very brightly in space, like a tracer shining in infrared. No stealth about it!

[CF2]

Is sharing in someone else's dream, or dreaming together a phenomenon Loroi experience among their own kind?

[Chekist_Felix]

What if the slug were stealth? I don't see why not.

I recommend you look up footage of a USNavy rail gun being fired. It’s a highly energetic event involving lots of plasma and molten metal from both the rails and the projectile sabot making a spectacular muzzle blast. Any such projectile would glow very brightly in space, like a tracer shining in infrared. No stealth about it!

Well... yeah, it fired in the atmosphere. In space however... not sure. It depends on what kind of rail gun we talking out, technically speaking.

[tpkc_klick]

What if the slug were stealth? I don't see why not.

I recommend you look up footage of a USNavy rail gun being fired. It’s a highly energetic event involving lots of plasma and molten metal from both the rails and the projectile sabot making a spectacular muzzle blast. Any such projectile would glow very brightly in space, like a tracer shining in infrared. No stealth about it!

Well... yeah, it fired in the atmosphere. In space however... not sure. It depends on what kind of rail gun we talking out, technically speaking.

Rail guns, by their nature, require contact between the conductive projectile and the two rails. This will likely always produce at least some muzzle flash from vaporized projectile/rail material as a result of the friction and the high current flowing through the system.

If you want a stealthy hypervelocity weapon, a coilgun might be a better bet. The projectile and barrel don't necessarily need to actually come into contact with each other (no friction to produce heat) and you can cryogenically cool everything to both mask the heat signature of the weapon and projectile, as well as taking advantage of low-temperature superconductivity. With some careful design for the projectile to reduce its radar and visual profile, you could have a weapon that's very difficult to detect until the shot is right on top of the target (if its detected at all before impact).

[CaptEndo]

I like the idea of coil guns, but so far haven’t gotten real practical velocities out of them.

[Krulle]

The Umiak and the Loroi are far above our current tech level. Why would coil guns be beyond their tech?

Thr impracticality of having to peper large volumes of space to make a hit remains though.

[gaerzi]

Don't shoot slugs, shoot torpedoes. Let the projectile correct course to make the hit more likely.

The projectile being accelerated by a coil gun, all its onboard energy can be used for course correction rather than the initial acceleration.

[CaptEndo]

That’s what has been done in some Science Fiction. Andromeda used coil guns to accelerate missiles both large and minuscule. They took the idea to an extreme though! Pumping significantly subluminal velocities into systems and expect them to still work.

[dragoongfa]

That’s what has been done in some Science Fiction. Andromeda used coil guns to accelerate missiles both large and minuscule. They took the idea to an extreme though! Pumping significantly subluminal velocities into systems and expect them to still work.

A similar technology is currently under use with self guided artillery shells but there is a significant tradeoff; said shells exchange explosive power for accuracy (they are meant to be used against armored columns and strike vehicles from the top).

The problem with launching torpedoes or torpedo like munitions as projectiles is making them sturdy enough to withstand the instanteneous acceleration, have strong enough drive systems to be able to sufficiently affect their trajectories in said velocities, smart enough to be able to properly acquire a target in an ECM heavy environment, small enough to be able to be fielded in sufficient numbers and cheap enough to not bankrupt the state.

It's one of the 'good on paper' ideas but 'headbangingly stupid' when trying to actually implement it.

[Arioch]

I expect that ship-to-ship mass driver rounds will have some form of guidance, but as with guided artillery shells, I think there's a limit to how sophisticated the projectile can be and still survive being fired. It depends on what velocities we're talking about -- a low-velocity mass driver might make a good torpedo launcher, but it's hard enough to accelerate a dumb slug to "significantly subluminal velocities" without turning it into plasma.

[Siber]

on the other hand, with the energies these missiles' engines operate at, being able to give them a good strong kick so they can light up at decent distance might be good for your paint job.

[Arioch]

on the other hand, with the energies these missiles' engines operate at, being able to give them a good strong kick so they can light up at decent distance might be good for your paint job.

And with that in mind, you probably want to kick the torpedoes out laterally, rather than in front of you and have to worry about following in the torpedo's drive plume.

[Ithekro]

At one end of the spectrum: we are talking more or less of smart mine (dropped munitions that activate against a passing target), and on the other end: photon torpedoes (which can be fired at warp speeds and maintain speed with a warp sustainer). Mass drivers tend to be vary depending on the intended target. If it is a ship or a fighter, the rounds are smaller and presumably fast enough to hit a target within a short period of time (seconds at the most). While a planetary scale weapon would just use local rocks and aim them at a planet for kinetic impacts.

If one is going to treat a mass driver like a battleship cannon, than one can only hope the fire control system can accurately predict where the enemy will be within the time it will take the projectile to reach the target. I imagine the Earth mass drivers have fire control systems that can easily engage other 6G starships at considerable ranges, but with the local super powers having upwards of 30G or more starships, the poor fire control systems just can't compute that accurately enough over typical combat ranges, forcing the humans to fight way to close for comfort if they want to get their deadliest weapons into combat.