Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

[QuakeIV]

I think the humans are taking the right path by trying to pick the side that lets them avoid fighting, at this point I'm pretty sure they are just going to get massacred otherwise.

[kfcroc18]

The idea of using flak guns in space is interesting. Flak gun point defense would most likely work far better at stopping missiles, torpedoes, and small craft like fighters. Than laser point defense.

[dragoongfa]

The idea of using flak guns in space is interesting. Flak gun point defense would most likely work far better at stopping missiles, torpedoes, and small craft like fighters. Than laser point defense.

Flak guns have a singular way of damaging a target; shrapnel. Shrapnel is dangerous to aircraft because they are complex machines which are traveling in a hostile to them medium (they are flying against the force of gravity which constantly pulls them downwards). Put enough holes in enough critical areas and the plane will go down.
The problem in space is that anything traveling in it doesn't travel against a constant force. Even if sufficient damage is done to render a torpedo's engine inoperable said torpedo will still keep going forward from momentum alone, if it's close enough it may still hit the target and flak by its nature is the most dangerous the closest to its target due to the distance the shell has to travel.
Lasers on the other hand are instantaneous and pass along a lot of heat energy on impact which should guarantees that the target is destroyed.

Proximity missiles are also out, these destroy with blast shockwaves and shrapnel. They may bring down missiles and fighters in atmosphere but in space there is no air pressure to create a shockwave that will know the target off its track and damage its flight surfaces.

[kfcroc18]

The shrapnel will most likely kill the pilot of the fighter or blow the fuel tanks as for torpedoes the fuel tanks could blow or the warhead could be hit and the whole missile will explode. As for counter missile-missiles you are right no shock waves in space which is why they will need to hit their target directly.

[dragoongfa]

The shrapnel will most likely kill the pilot of the fighter or blow the fuel tanks as for torpedoes the fuel tanks could blow or the warhead could be hit and the whole missile will explode. As for counter missile-missiles you are right no shock waves in space which is why they will need to hit their target directly.

Would depend on how fragile the canopy and said fuel tanks would be, if they are fragile enough to be pierced by shrapnel thrown by a simple explosion they shouldn't be space worthy as simple minor debris (like metallic bits or small rocks) would be knocking them out simply because of the speeds involved. The Flak cannons from the recent BSG series show this plothole as the canopy of a Viper is shown to be able to withstand battle debris (the 'Nothing but the rain' revolves around Starbuck hearing the sound of battle debris hitting her canopy) but somehow nothing can withstand the flak bursts that a Battlestar lets out.

One could perhaps create faster shrapnel by making stronger explosions but after a point it becomes prohibitive.

A far better solution would be to employ rapid shotgun turrets for point defense in close ranges. Modern day navies use gattling guns for point defense against missiles and modern tank active defenses (and very successful at that) employ far smaller automatic 'shotguns' against anti tank missiles; in fact so far modern Tank APS have proven themselves in both low and high intensity conflicts and should be considered as standard equipment for future generations of tanks.

[kfcroc18]

I don't think flak shrapnel would be useless in space. Random debris the is not the same as shrapnel that has been designed to rip things apart (to be fair I don't know how, maybe make them out of tungsten?) the only downside I can see to using flak in space is that your flak is just as dangerous to your missiles and fighters as the enemies.

[GeoModder]

Shrapnel is dangerous to aircraft because they are complex machines which are traveling in a hostile to them medium (they are flying against the force of gravity which constantly pulls them downwards). Put enough holes in enough critical areas and the plane will go down.

Heh, you could say the same for naval vessels. Put enough holes in one and it loses buoyancy.

[Krulle]

But in space you don't need buoyancy...

[kfcroc18]

But in space you don't need buoyancy...

True, but you do need to be airtight.

[dragoongfa]

But in space you don't need buoyancy...

True, but you do need to be airtight.

Not really, crew comfort is what requires pressurized spaces but in a proper warship in a proper fight maintaining said pressurized spaces would be a secondary if not tertiary concern. 'The Expanse' showcases this with certain battle sequences where the crew of a warship dons their space suits before the fight and they fight in a vacuum.

All in all vacuum is actually desired in a space fight, it's the absolute natural insulator which negates rapid heat transfer, should make electrical surges difficult, while the lack of oxygen makes fires impossible. An ideal damage control environment provided you have suits that allow full body dexterity.

[Krulle]

And we've seen the Loroi don a kind of suit for the battle situations. (https://www.well-of-souls.com/outsider/outsider138.html)

[Mk_C]

And we've seen the Loroi don a kind of suit for the battle situations. (https://www.well-of-souls.com/outsider/outsider138.html)

Pilots do - totally helmetless Alex and Beryl in their plain cloth uniforms are sitting just out of the frame, in the same air volume with Talon. And Talon herself did not put the helmet on until page 135, when Highland-7 got fired upon.

Overall seems like combat operations in Outsider typically don't include vacsuit protocols. Mostly due to, well, their faces - we like them.

[Krulle]

But there seems to be a kind of battle protocol at least.
Passengers less, but the pilots. They need to be able to survive and remain conscious for decisions to be done.
Same as for airline pilots.
They have to have one suited with a mask at all times.

[gaerzi]

All in all vacuum is actually desired in a space fight, it's the absolute natural insulator which negates rapid heat transfer

While obviously handy against battle damage, this can also be a problem when overheating is a concern. There's a reason our computers have fans.

[Incinerator]

While obviously handy against battle damage, this can also be a problem when overheating is a concern. There's a reason our computers have fans.

Using the air in your ship's compartments to absorb heat from ship systems will result in a cooked crew. The Mass Effect series addresses this in the description for the Normandy's stealth systems: it can only suppress its heat emissions for so long before the internal temperature becomes dangerous to the crew.

Any warship is likely to cool itself by pumping some sort of fluid coolant through heat exchangers near heat-generating components (such as weapons, engines, reactors and computers), after which it flows through radiators on the exterior hull which radiate the heat into space.

Not really, crew comfort is what requires pressurized spaces but in a proper warship in a proper fight maintaining said pressurized spaces would be a secondary if not tertiary concern. 'The Expanse' showcases this with certain battle sequences where the crew of a warship dons their space suits before the fight and they fight in a vacuum.

All in all vacuum is actually desired in a space fight, it's the absolute natural insulator which negates rapid heat transfer, should make electrical surges difficult, while the lack of oxygen makes fires impossible. An ideal damage control environment provided you have suits that allow full body dexterity.

Not to mention that it deprives pressure waves from explosive weapons of a medium to pass through!

[boldilocks]

Not to mention that it deprives pressure waves from explosive weapons of a medium to pass through!

Might it not be preferable to have shockwaves dissipate through internal air pockets rather than through more structurally and technically important spaceship infrastructure?

[Arioch]

In the period between the two world wars, the wet-navy battleships began to change their armor schemes from the pre-existing paradigm, in which the entire external hull was armored, to a new scheme known as "all-or-nothing." In this scheme, only the critical parts of the ship were armored: the engines and engineering spaces, magazines, turrets, and command centers. The primary benefit of this was that it allowed a battleship to have much thicker armor for the same weight. All areas were compartmentalized to try to minimize flooding, but in the non-critical areas, the damage to the ship would actually be less if the shell blew all the way through the ship before its detonator could arm, rather than exploding inside the ship.

The same principles could apply to starships. Having the entire hull be armored (and pressurized) has the advantage of allowing crews easy access to all parts of the ship without pressure suits, but chances are that if an area has taken battle damage, it has already been depressurized. It might make sense to concentrate both the protection and the life support infrastructure to critical areas, and have the rest of the areas (mostly storage) be minimally protected, so that projectiles will pass through doing only the minimum of damage. Damage control teams will need to wear pressure suits, but that was probably going to be the case anyway.

With an all-or-nothing scheme, "flak" shrapnel would have minimal effect, and it would be less likely that a ship would sustain serious damage from a "golden bullet" small high-velocity impactor.

[boldilocks]

Would that work the same way with beamed weapons? Beam weapons seem to be more focused on putting holes in ships, possibly in search of critical infrastructure, so focusing the armor on critical areas might be useful then, and you'll just have to expect the rest of the ship to get perforated.

[kfcroc18]

With an all-or-nothing scheme, "flak" shrapnel would have minimal effect, and it would be less likely that a ship would sustain serious damage from a "golden bullet" small high-velocity impactor.

Flak would be useful against small craft like fighters.

[dragoongfa]

Not to mention that it deprives pressure waves from explosive weapons of a medium to pass through!

Might it not be preferable to have shockwaves dissipate through internal air pockets rather than through more structurally and technically important spaceship infrastructure?

Air shockwaves still carry the same force that the explosion lets out, whatever they would hit would be subjected to the same force that the localized area of the explosion has taken already. It would 'spread the love' in other words.