Realism says that space fighters are no good

>projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect.php

I'm not approaching this from hiding, but from covering up your emission signature with ECM and infowar. Not preventing your enemy to see you, but making them unable to discern what they are seeing.

If you want humans in spacewar at all just have an thwarted AI revolution in the backstory. Now you need humans because AI is reviled. Herbert is love, Herbert is life.

If you want fighters have a faction that doesn't have the industrial capacity (economically or politically) to make bigger ships. (They still lose all the time)

Ain't make no sense otherwise.

>So, what's that ship?
>>Don't know.
>Bah, kill it.

one man fighters are moronic unless...
if there is hyper travel or whatever the spacecrafts cna jump in and out of normal space that would allow small missile heavy craft with dual-cycle drive to ambush a much larger heavier and infinitely more expensive force and get the fuck out off dodge before it can be engaged.

in normal relativistic space with newtonian drives it's just retarded. unless they are atmospheric fighter bombers that can also function in space with limited endurance they would be thoroughly useless. even then in space their role would be limited to commerce policing as the only thing they would be able to pose a threat to is unarmed merchants.

Thrust to weight ratios are the same for both large and small craft in the void of space. The key to voidcraft is delta-v. Delta-v is the amount of speed change you have left relative to your weight, engine and reaction mass available.

The problem with Newtonian physics is that you have to throw something out to change velocity. Smaller craft have less weight, but carry a corresponding lesser amount of reaction mass. Larger craft can have more efficient engines and therefore gain greater speed over time. Delta-v.

Problem is, most people don't realize that combat is done at non-efficient times and durations. You don't have 50 days to get up to speed that a large craft on a cruise has. You need smaller craft that are inefficient, but can change direction and speeds rapidly. Usually they would be missiles, but in space, an active missile is a dead missile. Lasers. So you will need a delivery system. A delivery system that doesn't require the mother ship to constantly transmit data, and also doesn't have to go active itself until crisis time. Armor and stealth would help a lot too. Launch such a device at long ranges, and let it coast into the wake of the enemy ship. Quiet as a mouse while the big boys duke it out with lasers at range. Then once it is in a good position (the rear, or any angle cleared of point defense lasers, by combat damage) it launches the actual nuclear warhead missile that will crack a large space vessel. It boosts away and sets a rendevous course for a nearby point that is prearranged for pickup.

In theory, that would require a manned vessel. Too many options for an programmed vessel, and you don't want to be signalling constantly in a space battle, so no drones. That leaves only a fighter. Or bomber to be more specific. Fighters will come about because rather then have all your point defense on the surface of your vessel, where enemy lasers can disable it, you put some on your own vessels and launch them for a quiet intercept

Doesn't that same logic apply to current warfare, though? Which currently has a large place for aircraft carriers?

Yes, welcome to warfare.

This is also how submarines act quite often, hell. There's a real problem of mistaking whales and such for hostile subs

Breaking news: [insert faction here] fires on civilian craft, hundreds dead. Prominent leaders advocate for retaliation. Public disorder widespread as citizens protest [faction's] indiscriminate rules of engagement. Full story at 23:00 Earth time.

If they have enough info on you to score a lock on then you failed.

>Is that ship there or ten meters to the left? There's so much jamming I can't tell.

>You don't have 50 days to get up to speed
in space you have it's all you have weeks or months of acceleration before you can see anything from your objective.

Why would a civilian craft fly around all covered up in the first place? That's fishy.

You know, I can't help but wonder. What about drone fighters? Drone fighters wouldn't be subject to the fragility of the pilot, and the pilot would be safely ensconced on the ship.

Just to get the enemy to do this type of shit and kill them.

Lusitania. Look it up.

>minimize crew of normal battleship

Why even have a crew, as in human crew, at all?
Why not just AI?

The difference is that ships and planes occupy different mediums and have completely different functions. There's fundamentally nothing a fighter does that a larger space ship does not.

>realism says
A lot of stuff I ignore, yes.

Stupid. Drone require constant transmissions. Constant transmissions are easily homed in on by missiles. Lasers will be even worse.

It would be like in the middle of a firefight if the support gunner went out into the middle of the field and dropped trough to take a dump.

Drones are a no go unless they are attached by umbilical.

Why stop there even. Why not fully automated drone battleships, commanded by a CnC vessel safely out of the combat zone?

Because AI will never be that complex.

No program will ever be more complex then what a human can code.

>Why not just AI?
don't trust the toasters user! that's how you genocide your species.

>people still think dogfights are relevant
hate to break it to everyone here but space combat is mostly focused around long range engagements
even modern aircombat is mostly just missile spam with machineguns being a backup

i think it's a distinct possibility that sufficiently advanced artificial brains will let pilots upload and download (if the craft survives) their brain state into something that can take 200Gs not just 3-9.

Not in combat buddy.

Fucking retards.

Your fighter would be laser'd to death either way. You can't hide it no matter how "quiet" it is, and the jamming equipment would run into the same problems as the propellant: bigger is better, so your torpedo bomber is still a no-go.

What you want is probably some sort of insane missile the size of a small spacecraft. Propelled by the most ridiculous engine you can find (nuclear saltwater, for example) and is fired off-vector so it spends most of its time accelerating to an extreme speed. Once it is on an approach vector, the enemy PD network will only have a few milliseconds to shoot it down - but the missile will turn into a fast-moving nuclear fireball just as it enters PD range, so the enemy is screwed either way. Now pray that your fireball actually manages to do some damage, and we are good.

>Is immediately destroyed by a swarm of ai controlled drones.
Drones, mines, and missiles are the future of space warfare. Humans will not be in the line of fire unless you're an unlucky scientist or technician on a station.

indeed dogfights are not a real option in space many many thousand kilometers will separate opposing ships. you won't be able to see them unassisted.

the only real question is and we don't know the answer to that is will energy weapons with light speed have sufficient power to dominate the battles or not.

if not then missiles will.

Are laser beams detectable outside of the line of their beam in space? Guide drones with optical transmissions if not.

>Only give AI access to the military
>Let them pilot and man ships without any humans on board
>Let AIs have sole access to big gun ships that could level cities
user, this is how terminator shit could happen. Barring the whole "AIs are bad!!1!" Meme this opens up your whole navy to some neckbeard with determination and another AI.

yes even in combat. you spot the opposing force light minutes out (assuming they don't hide behind a celestial body). it takes a long time to get into light-seconds range where you can engage them.

*sigh* Morons.

Any laser that opens up, is dead. Simple truth. Soon as it fires, the heat will be detected, and the beam emitter port targeted and destroyed with enemy lasers. Basically, the one that fires last, wins.

Emitter ports will not be able to be armored, at least while firing or right after, therefore easy kill for a laser. And trust me, lasers won't have any easy kills other then these. They take too long to burn through that much metal. Space combat ships are going to be the most compartmentalized, armored fuckers that we can move through space. He with the last laser will win the field and the day. Not because of the laser itself, but because by having that laser, you are safe from nukes. Nukes will be the real killers of combat ships.

Now, I know you can't follow, but someone else out there might, so I will continue. You fire a laser, you better be sure. Bombers can be built of sufficient forward armor to survive a laser long enough for it to be taken out by the mothership. Especially if the have a small enough weight to move constantly erratic enough to stop the enemy laser from staying on the same point to burn through.

So you have all this stopping a ship from firing at a bomber until it is close enough to kill before it loses the laser, or until after it launches it's nuke.

Space combat will be a massive game of chicken, with the most cunning captain having the most laser as the victor. Fighters and Bombers will be a part of that. No AI can be complex enough, and any transmission point would be burned out by lasers. Manned craft is the only solution.

>What is machine learning?

Optical transmissions on something that is to be constantly evading the enemy?

lol.

If it can evade the enemy lasers, it can evade your transmission laser. If it can't, it's dead.

Then there is the heat of the emission port on your vessel. Easily detected and lasered.

No point. Manned only.

>Drones are a no go unless they are attached by umbilical.
dude... what the fuck did i just read? your entire post is full retard but this...

>Basically, the one that fires last, wins.
unless it is fired from many light-seconds out by a ship traveling with several thousands of kilometers per second and by the time you return fire the ship is not even there of course.

... Are you actually that stupid?

No one is going to advertise what they are, and their intentions that far out. Unless they have such an overwhelming force that it doesn't matter. Deception will be key. You won't know you are fighting until the lasers open up. Then, you are only doing evasion for the purpose of shifting your ports around enough to shield what you need to and expose what you need to. See the comment about a game of chicken.

Oh, and if you do combat over a light second out, your lasers are fucking pointless. Combat twists will move any point you fire at out of position before the photons land. Lasers need time to burn through.

Space combat will be much closer then most imagine. Primarily because a laser will never burn through an entire ship before it disengages. Nukes will be the killer. And they need to be close enough to get to range before a laser kills them.

Umbilical attached drones. The only way you will have the ability to shield your laser ports. You have them move into position to take the hit from enemy lasers after yours has fired. It would also disperse the heat emissions around it so that pinpoint targeting would be difficult.

Basically, in retard speak, so that you understand, a movable pavise attached by cable to the mothership.

>No one is going to advertise what they are, and their intentions that far out.
they have little choice in that regard.

Sheesh, then they will take out the bomber with a missile. Or a mass driver. It is not like they have to waste that much firepower to swat it out of space.

And if you want the bomber to be really that sturdy and independent on the battlefield, then you will get a torpedo boat. Or even a heavier corvette/lighter destroyer if you hand slips.

nah that's still retarded. the umbilical port more than the other thing but meh.

>No AI can be complex enough, and any transmission point would be burned out by lasers. Manned craft is the only solution.
Don't be a retard, we're already making computers complex enough to handle combat scenarios.

>Oh, and if you do combat over a light second out, your lasers are fucking pointless.
they are mostly defensive measure anyhow. not very good against spacecraft as far as we can tell.

Really? So how are you going to determine if that chunk of metal is a ore carrier or a combat ship? Both are heavy, and carry tons of metal. Ore carriers will be an integral part of any stellar shipping. Getting metal up a gravity well is just too fucking expensive in delta-v. Especially the uranium for reactors.

You can ask? They can tell you what they want. If they hit your ore carrier out while it was transporting, probably on the other side of the system primary, you won't fucking know.

Morons seem to think we know everything about all the space around us. We don't. We are constantly discovering new things.

AND WE HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR OVER 50 YEARS.

(With decent orbital technology)

Deception will be key. And it will be used every combat.

Laserstars are a thing.

if you can't tell an ore carrier from a warcraft you already lost the game nigga. btw it's easy enough if you suspect foul play (like camouflage and active transponder and drive signature spoofing). fire a missile at them, kill or divert the missile just before impact no way a warship will take the risk of not engaging it. the civvies on the other hand can't.

>what are pulsed lasers

A missile that can be targeted with a laser on the bomber? Oh, such a fucking threat.

And no, you don't need anything near that size. You just need metal. Metal and thrusters. Lasers don't burn through metal that fast. It takes time on target. You burst your maneuvering thruster to set yourself in a spiral pattern or just a spin and that laser is not getting enough time on target to burn anything deep. He matches your spin, you burst again. Each time the laser is off the metal, it's dissipating heat.

The answer is of course armored missiles. But once you can launch them at a bomber, you are in range for their armored missiles, or probably called torpedoes by the romantic.

Remember twit. If you are in range of your weapons, you are probably in range of theirs.

Please ignore the fighter advocate. He doesn't know of pulsed lasers.

We've spent 50 years looking at shit that's dead cold surrounded by dead cold space. Any heat producing machine sticks out against that like a sore thumb, and analyzing its heat output and configuration should easilly tell you if it's a warship or a transport.

This not to say that I disagree with you. Deception will be key, but it will also be a lot harder than you make it out to be.

railguns and massdrivers is the way its going to be
laser weapons are NOT viable due to power needs and armor choices possbile in the future, the answer? more brute force
the biggest concern is how to get rid of all the extra heat generated by said weapon systems

Why? Because you want to transmit to the enemy where your electronics are located on the hull?

You want to give them a soft, easy target for their lasers?

Transmissions in space are easily located. And with nothing to protect them, because you need to put them outside the armor belt for them to do their FUCKING WORK, they are easily destroyed.

FUCKING THINK PEOPLE.

look even a gigawatt laser will not do much but scratch the paint of a warship from a light-second out. even our best laser and lensing technology doesn't allow for more cohesion. you won't be able to tightly focus your beam there and a ceramic plated moving warship will only laugh at your futile efforts.

the only thing that's remotely possible is bomb pumped x-ray laser warheads that detonate from a few kilometers or tens of kilometers from target.

space warfare will be pretty clear-cut imo. the density and composition of the missile and counter-missile salvos will be the most deciding factor. and also who can play hide and seek better in planetary and moon orbits.

Except a bomber can't carry missiles of the size or number than a larger ship can, so the bomber will lose that fight.

>thread is devolving into space stealth thread
Oh boy.

I'm more concerned by a missile running under a battleship's (obviously powerful) ECM cover. The fighter will not have the ECCM suite to pierce it, and its lasers will be a lot less powerful too, so it is still screwed. Unless you scale up the whole package for more powerful ECM/ECCM, more powerful PD lasers, a bigger power plant to feed it all, a bigger engine to get it all up to speed, a bigger propellant tank to keep the endurance at bay, more armor to cover it all, more electronics, crew, crew support and other utilities to keep it running, and *BANG* you are looking at a torpedo boat.

Sure.

And do they still run into walls? Trip up and are unable to move? Get one thing wrong and spin off to oblivion?

We are nowhere near combat computers that can operate completely independently. And we probably never will be. Too many variables.

AIs that can fight with constant oversight from multiple other AIs and control locations? Sure. Something you would trust with combat nuclear warheads that can destroy massive armored space combat ships?

What if they are hacked and fire at you?

Men cannot be hacked. They don't need transmissions to stay on target. Passive sensors are just fine. They can deal with unprogrammed situations and have unprogrammed responses. They are not always stupid.

Manned combat vessels are the only way.

A ship that has the role and capability of a battleship is a battleship, not a fighter.

Additionally nothing you described does anything to mitigate the fact that a manned warship of any size needs to be habitable for long periods of time and provide useful work areas for the crew. If the crew are not actually doing any kind of work other than controlling the ship they are being used analogously to computers and can just be replaced with computers. You also retain the problem of people die and subsequently manpower and training time are lost when that ship is destroyed. And all of this is for literally zero benefit.

The only value a manned craft of any size has over an unmanned one is that it has the ability to exercise human discretion and be held accountable for the decisions it makes. Unless you can figure out a reason why you need this and can't just use a drone you still have no reason to use a manned craft.

>railguns and massdrivers is the way its going to be
they are literally the worst way. they only accelerate to a few thousand m/s which is almost nothing in space combat unless the enemy is right in your face. but at least their acceleration curve is steep enough that fine mechanics and electronics will have trouble to survive it. dumb shells are useless against moving targets with delta v.

missiles even dumb kinetic missiles beat railguns in a few seconds of acceleration like 3 seconds for today's railguns. atmosphere limits the may speed of missiles greatly and reduce their acceleration not so in space.

railguns would only win against missiles in the case you only have equal number of launchers as rails and the target is within 30km range (that's extreme close range in space not going to happen)

Precisely. They are for stopping the nukes from killing you. Nukes that can survive a laser will either be very fucking close, in a position where you can't fire lasers in defense, or very fucking heavily armored.

And you will probably need at least 2 of those.

But a laser can kill another laser emission port. And THAT will be the offensive purpose of them. That and any electronics that are stupidly being used.

Could you please sound a little more ignorant. We aren't quite at saturation levels yet. Please consider talking about hacking more.

>Men cannot be hacked
There's plenty of things that can 'hack' a man. That's why espionage is a thing. Sleeper agents, manchurian candidates, blackmail, psyops in general...

Posters like this user is why Veeky Forums hates Hard SF to the bone.
Hard SF should be illegal on Veeky Forums.

>But a laser can kill another laser emission port.
i mean what would it take to close a port hatch after firing? ww1 technology at least.

>bullshit the post
you can shot targets MUCH further away than mere 30 km, i´d like to point out the lack of normal gravity would allow objects hurled though space to move much faster with marginal deaccelaration happening
here on earth we can shot targets up to some 10 km away while they are moving thanks to modern FCS systems, the same can be done on a much larger scale espeicaly when you dont have drop to take into consideration
what im trying to say is, space combat will be much like battleships but 3D

We're nowhere near making space warships either dumbass. If anything AI is advancing exponentially faster than any other pertinent technology field. By the time those arrive it'll be more than qualified to replace human operators and carry out engagements with minimal human oversight.

>Transmissions in space are easily located.
not if it's directional perhaps learn about elementary 3d geometry before you talk out of your ass. a tight beam transmission will not be detected by an enemy force at all. there is absolutely no need for stupid cords unless you plan on supplying power through them.

Really? So, if I showed you a picture of an age of sail frigate, you would know exactly how many guns on it? How many men on it? How much ammo it holds? Marine complement?

With what sensors are you able to pierce a box of metal that shields out the radiation OF A FUCKING STAR?

Only data you are getting from a ship in space is what it transmits.

It can't stop it's heat (Though it can redirect it; and if it pushes most of it out it's engines, you can't tell anything other then LOTS), and it can't stop EM waves from bouncing off it.

So which EM wave are you using that tells you, while it's fucking drive is POINTED RIGHT AT YOU (because it is slowing down) crew, laser, torpeado, vessel count carried by said vessel?

Please. Enlighten me.

>you can shot targets MUCH further away than mere 30 km
yes you can but the missile will reach it faster with far bigger kinetic energy. that's why railguns are stupid.

>space warfare threads before 200 posts: people with widely different initial assumptions yell at each other because they're essentially talking about different settings and tech levels, also both sides shit on the one guy who starts talking about submarine warfare
>space warfare threads after 200 posts: a consensus of RELATIVISTIC DRONE BUSES FIRING AI GUIDED FRAGMENTATION MISSILES THAT EXPAND INTO CLOUDS OF METAL DEATH vs LASERSTARS WITH LIGHT MINUTE RANGES AND GARGANTUAN RADIATORS SHINING BRIGHTER THAN A THOUSAND SUNS IN THE NIGHT SKIES OF THE PUNY MORTALS BELOW, then two conflicting economics calculations that show one option is better than the other

Stupid sci-fi. Nothing more.

>So, if I showed you a picture of an age of sail frigate, you would know exactly how many guns on it? How many men on it? How much ammo it holds? Marine complement?
probably would have a good guess.

Hell, maybe making it a one-way mirror kinda thing would work. We can shoot out of the dome, the dome disperses enemy lasers enough that it's harmless, replace if dome gets melted.

i'm thinking about something different... what if you used the enemy laser hit to your laser to reagitate the medium and return fire faster?

Yes. But if it uses all it's missiles on the bombers, what is it going to use on the enemy carrier?

Attrition warfare. Learn something.

Fighters will counter the bombers. Short ranged missiles that are launched well away from the mother ship is far superior then letting a bomber get close enough to launch it's own missiles.

Especially as the bombers will come in squadrons...

no they are real enough. they just don't provide much advantage in any situation. except if you want to burn through much material and you have the time then they are better.

Or just use the enemy laser's power to power the next shot, that seems more plausible and is probably kinda like what you just said.
That said, if the enemy laser's power can get absorbed, then why don't our hypothetical spaceship is designed to absorb as many laser energy as it could, then direct it to fire a bigger, more devastating laser?

okay you dont seem to underwhat that the problem is, missles have limted fuel and will only have inital steering or final adjustments
however if ships move at a decent pace missles would not be suitable not to mention they would take up much more resources to produce and store

with railguns or mass drivers all you would need is things to load and fire, much like a sling shot
hell if you load the thing with gravel you got a giant shotgun

Yeah, cause that port can close in less then a second and completely disperses all heat from the firing before it ever reaches the enemy's passive sensors.

Those fucking WW1 techs are fucking awesome at space combat.

Physics lessons for dumbasses: If something is large enough to count at armor, and you move it swiftly in space, it moves you.

EQUAL BUT OPPOSITE REACTION.

Learn your fucking Newton.

Directional knocks in down from 360 to less. Basic geometry.

Now geometry for you. Where do you put object that you wish to engage an enemy with?

Do you put them behind you?

Do you put them to the side of you?

OR DO YOU PUT THEM BETWEEN YOU AND THE FUCKING GUY TRYING TO KILL YOU?

>Yes. But if it uses all it's missiles on the bombers, what is it going to use on the enemy carrier?

I'm fairly sure that it would take far less missiles to take out a bomber than to take out a carrier. And why take out the carrier once its bombers are out? And if the carrier also carries missiles, then why bother with the bombers? You can probably get a lot more missiles if you throw out the bombers. Hell, if you are really at it, you can just have six bazillion smaller missiles against bombers, and a few dozen capital busters against everything else. And you are still better off, because you are not wasting space for hangars, extra supplies, extra crew and facilities, etc.

>okay you dont seem to underwhat that the problem is, missles have limted fuel and will only have inital steering or final adjustments
>however if ships move at a decent pace missles would not be suitable not to mention they would take up much more resources to produce and store
it's the opposite imagine this:
you go towards the enemy with a combat acceleration of 3G (yeah crew is strapped in seats) so you fire at the enemy with your fuckhuge railguns and after 6-9 minutes you catch up with your own fire and if unlucky run straight into your shells. that sounds stupid right?

but if you fire fission torch missiles that can easily bur for 90 minutes with 100 gravities you will never catch up to them and they will reach the enemy faster than you by far.

>with railguns or mass drivers all you would need is things to load and fire
and all the enemy needs to do is change course slightly and evade them gracefully with scorn.

You don't use bombers for attrition you idiot, you use a missile bus. You certainly don't use fighters to intercept anything that could be intercepted by the infinitely more compact and less resource intensive missile.

Stop talking like you know anything.

>what are mandible hatches
Please post slower.

to the side would be fine if you have a fetish for undetected transmissions. it's a function of the beam radius and relative velocities to see where you can place them efficiently. the one thing you won't be needing is an umbilical cord.

And you could tell this as well through the fires of a engine burning at full to slow down for orbit?

And you could also do this against a comparable sized merchant ship?

I don't think so.

You could guess. You want to start throwing nukes at civilians on guesses?

Yeah, that will work...

>fission torch missiles that can easily bur for 90 minutes with 100 gravities

That's a big missile.
>4U

not that big it has to have a few hundred kilograms of fuel the missiles itself the drive the warhead. i don't think it would be much bigger than today's chemical motor anti ship missiles.

Yes, if you using conventional munitions.

NOT IF YOU ARE USING NUKES.

It only takes one to kill a combat vessel of any size. (Except stupid sci opera sizes)

So sure. Let that bomber get close enough to launch it's nukes. You have more then enough to kill it...

Personally, I'd just say "fuck realism" and have space fighters anyway.

Of course you could, because the fires of its engine is what you're looking for. You look at its energy output and delta-V. Great, now you know the ship's mass and engine configuration. Compare those to the ships you have in your database and Boom, you know what class of ship it is.