Stick to ship combat and no fighters.

[llye]

The truly alien will just use a stellar construction to fire a death beam or teleport a bunch of moon sized asteroids to smash it into your fleet and or habitat/ring/planet/dirt factory. The ultimate in hands off, post AI drone, warfare.

True , but while they power their death beam or ready an asteroid to teleport /crash into a planet, those mechs and fighters would cripple the aliens due to them not having so much defense because they invested everything into the beam and teleports. And besides if they have death beames and tech to teleport asteroids onto us then they outclass us technologically so much that it isn't even a war but a massacre.

 

[Safehold]

True , but while they power their death beam or ready an asteroid to teleport /crash into a planet, those mechs and fighters would cripple the aliens due to them not having so much defense because they invested everything into the beam and teleports. And besides if they have death beames and tech to teleport asteroids onto us then they outclass us technologically so much that it isn't even a war but a massacre.

That's why they put the hidden shipyards in a pocket dimension or inside stars or black holes. Even in the age of aircraft carrier projecting air power bombs over long range distance, that didn't really matter much if a fleet of battleships and submarines found the carriers. Good lesson on kiting and fighting at range, don't get found.

The primitives often like a good offense over defense thus forgetting critical aspects, like controlling the environment and the logistics around the main force. For people that know there is always some entity above and below them, they wouldn't create a moon or a planet with long range offensive power, and then use inferior point defense systems to attempt to protect it. Which eventually fail due to some pipsqueak resistance movement that the point defense guns fail to track.

As for being outclassed technologically, that's only from the viewpoint of a brute force head on collision between powers. Instead, people should find the center of gravity of the various civilizations and hit at that. The center of gravity of Earth is the planet, the sun, the other planets, and the morale or existence of the people. Destroy those, and it's like slicing out the spine of a human animal. Even if the rest survive, it is meaningless. But the alien civilization's center of gravity may have little to nothing to do with any material substance that can be destroyed using external power.

 

[SharpFish]

This is blatantly not true because you assume that mass and volume are the same thing and in reality they would differ in so many ways in different types of crafts.

I think you're being a little extreme there. I certainly concede that I ignored issues around structural integrity for simplicity, and that there must be a point at which, for a given level of materials technology, the same level of thrust cannot be built beyond a certain size. But I don't think this really solves the problem, because even with modern materials tech, that maximum size seems likely to be far, far larger than your typical one-pilot fighter. So this really only serves to distinguish between big "cruisers" and really big "battlehips", and that's without even speculating on potential future advances in materials.

 

[Teleros]

I think you're being a little extreme there. I certainly concede that I ignored issues around structural integrity for simplicity, and that there must be a point at which, for a given level of materials technology, the same level of thrust cannot be built beyond a certain size. But I don't think this really solves the problem, because even with modern materials tech, that maximum size seems likely to be far, far larger than your typical one-pilot fighter. So this really only serves to distinguish between big "cruisers" and really big "battlehips", and that's without even speculating on potential future advances in materials.

Having just gone back over this part of the discussion... actually SharpFish seems to be in the wrong. As I understand, it's gone like so (even-numbered quotes are from SharpFish):

1. "my species has created an FTL drive ( warp drive, worm hole creation, or hyper drive) in the process we created a sub light drive that allows us to travel, what would normally take days in mere hours or even minutes, example ( earth to pluto in a week as opposed to 15 years). The smallest we can make the drive is fighters sized, it is just impossible to make this drive missile sized."

+

2. "Fine. Now, remember how I pointed out that everything is moving in a single medium? So the issue of whether it can be built small enough for a missile is not important; what is important is whether it can be built big enough for a cruiser or a battleship. Seeing as you didn't specify any upper limit, this seems to be the case. So I can now build ships that are just as fast, just as manoeuvrable as your "fighters", only they are vastly larger, tougher, and carrying much more firepower.

Look, there's no frictional drag in space, so the only factor that determines a vessel's performance is the *proportion* of overall mass that is "engine", to use terms fairly loosely. If your X-wing is, say, one third engine, and yet I can build a Star Destroyer that is also one third engine, then my SD will have exactly the same performance as your X-wing. The whole concept of "fighter" is redundant; all the things that made it distinct are gone."

+

3. "From what I gather, what you are saying, is that a battleship, can maneuver, accelerate, decelerate, and turn just as fast as a fighter?"

+

4. "Yes, exactly. Because of the absence of drag. If you stood on the deck of a modern aircraft carrier and kicked a football into the ocean, this would have no effect on moving the ship. If you did the same thing on a that exact same carrier floating in microgravity, it WOULD cause the ship to move, ever so slightly, and ever so slowly."

+

5. "This is blatantly not true because you assume that mass and volume are the same thing and in reality they would differ in so many ways in different types of crafts."

+

6. Above quoted post.

+ + +

Shaktari proposed, as near as I can tell, inertial compensator tech married to the mother of all rocket engines (maybe it's reactionless, but well go with a reaction drive for simplicity) for his fighters. The inertial compensator tech is necessary to avoid the extreme accelerations from destroying anything vaguely fragile in the fighter. It did not seem to be (this is important!) an inertialess drive however.

Now, SharpFish is absolutely correct that there is no stated reason you can't slap such a drive onto a battleship, but he is wrong that this will make battleships as manoeuvrable as fighters, because he has not factored in the mechanical stresses involved in when accelerating objects.

Suppose you have a 1-metre-long engine strapped to the back of a 100-metre-long cylindrical spaceship, like a Saturn V rocket. If you accelerate the spaceship along its central axis (ie from rocket exhausts straight up to nose cone), then the entire thing will experience the same forces. So far, so good.

Now suppose we want our spaceship to turn 90 degrees. Our engines are at the back, so that's where the the work will be done. For the sake of argument, it will take precisely 10 seconds to complete this manoeuvre, all thrust will come from the back of the engine block, and for the record, 1 gravity = 9.8m/s/s. Now, how far will the engine block and the nose cone move? Well, time for some maths...

1. Think about the hands of a clock going from 12 to 3: the point where the hands join to the mechanism is the back of our engine block. So the front of the engine block is 1 metre away.
2. The circumference of a circle with a radius of 1 metre is 6.28 metres. 90 degrees is a quarter of this, so 1.57 metres.
3. Thus in the 10 seconds it takes for this manoeuvre, the front of the engine block will move 1.57 metres.
4. The circumference of a circle with a radius of 101 metres is 634.6 metres. 90 degrees is a quarter of this, so 158.65 metres.
5. Thus in the 10 seconds it takes for this manoeuvre, the nose cone will move 158.65 metres.
6. The front of the engine block will be moving at 0.157 metres per second (assuming a constant rate) - compare that to 9.8m/s for 1 Earth gravity over 1 second.
7. But the nose cone will be moving at 15.865 metres per second (assuming a constant rate) - ie about 160% of what we experience on Earth.

Obviously, the nose cone HAS to move that fast to complete the manoeuvre in 10 seconds. Now, humans and well built machinery can easily handle 1.6 times Earth's gravity... but what happens if we use a bigger ship doing a faster manoeuvre? Let's say it's a 1km ship doing it in just 1 second...

Well, the circumference of a circle with a 1km radius will be 6,283 metres, so the nose will have to move 1,571 metres. To move 1,571 metres in one second is obviously 1571m/s... or 160 times the gravity experienced by us on Earth! Anyone sitting in the nose cone then will be reduced to a fine red mist. Heck, even if your ship is entirely unmanned, its Intel Core i99 CPU might find itself ripped free and obliterated by that kind of acceleration. Worse, the structural materials you use might buckle, literally tearing the ship apart.

Meanwhile, the 1 metre engine block will be experiencing only a fraction of 1 Earth gravity (1.57 m/s).

+

Now, eagle-eyed readers will have noted that I mentioned inertial compensator tech earlier. This means that we can reduce the forces experienced in our spaceship by a certain amount - let's say we can reduce them by 50% across the board. So whereas our nose cone should be experiencing 160gs in its manoeuvre, it's now "only" experiencing 80 gravities. That's still going to kill people and break machines.

But a shorter ship won't be experiencing g-forces anywhere nearly as strong as these. Thus, your (say) 20m long fighter will continue to be much more manoeuvrable than your 1km battleship.

+

Clever readers might also suggest rotating the spaceship at a different point: after all, spinning it about the engine block places the maximum stress on the nose cone. So why not spin it halfway along its length?

Well... you're absolutely right. However, this means your engine block and nose cone are both still experiencing strong forces, because they're both effectively at the end of a 500 metre object going through that motion. And again, if you can do this for your battleship to make it easier, you can do the same for your fighter too. In other words, the fighter still has a significant advantage over the battleship in terms of manoeuvrability.

+

Finally, I mentioned the idea of an inertialess drive. This is a drive in which the forces experienced above are entirely cancelled out. It's also physically impossible and lethal (for various esoteric reasons), but hey, this is sci-fi. So how would it work if we used one of these instead?

Well... now we finally have battleships that can manoeuvre like fighters - at least so long as they continue firing their engines (no thrust = no motion, not even momentum... remember inertialess). Battleships will be bouncing around at the speed of light (unless they have really, really puny engines) trading shots at one another. Combat will be the most hilariously fast dogfight ever seen.

However... you may opt like Doc Smith to let inertialess ships go faster than light when inertialess. In this case... the fighter probably comes out on top again. Why? Because if the speed of light is no limit, then the limit is when the thrust from the engines equals the resistance of the interstellar gas and dust you're fighting in. Obviously, a smaller ship will encounter less resistance, so unless your means of thrust scales perfectly with the size of the ship (ie it probably has to be a reactionless drive), smaller ships will have a marginally higher top speed than bigger ships. Amusingly, streamlining your ships will also be useful now, because "air resistance" will actually matter .

+

Finally, for those who want to know more, an essay on this problem by an actual qualified engineer: http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Science/Size.html

I hope this impromptu physics lesson clears up this point .

 

[SharpFish]

Largely conceded, but: I would still contend that my last point stands: that whatever the material and inertial limits might be, even with simple steel beams the tolerances they and a crew could handle would be much larger than simply those of a "snub fighter".

 

[Safehold]

The problem would generally be how to design it so that torsion forces and multi vectors won't collapse the structure (high G accelerations). It's easy to make as structure resist force from one direction, that's how bridges are. Until the wind harmonics start up and earthquakes and all the other stuff, and then the design needs an update.

Although in that sense, a planetoid that is an ovoid, ellipsoid, or sphere would be better at it than a fighter that has jagged edges. Unless we come upon a structure material that prefers to be like a crystal instead, using fractals.

Combat will be the most hilariously fast dogfight ever seen.

One advantage of computers and AI, they can react faster given predictable scenarios.

 

[vyshan]

the only thing I have to say is that Sir Issac Newton is the deadlist son of a bitch in space!

 

[Safehold]

the only thing I have to say is that Sir Issac Newton is the deadlist son of a bitch in space!

Turns out that once Relativity and the new Standard Model in Quantum Physics mixes, you could indeed shoot from the hip, because the consciousness can change the outcome of physics then due to some kind of Dirac Sea phenomenon.

Oh well, they needed to rotate it down there in ME.

 

[Teleros]

Turns out that once Relativity and the new Standard Model in Quantum Physics mixes, you could indeed shoot from the hip, because the consciousness can change the outcome of physics then due to some kind of Dirac Sea phenomenon.

Huh?

 

[Safehold]

Huh?

An extrapolating of Schroedinger's Cat. Like how light is both a particle but also a wave. That outcomes only solidify due to an observer, the way Relativity requires frames of reference when calculating light speed effects.

Sooner or later, they'll have to figure out how to isolate for human or any kind of consciousness, and its effects on physics. Quantum physics, that may also apply to the macro world. That's not something physicists want to do though, the human mind is pretty messy.

 

[EntropyAvatar]

Suppose you have a 1-metre-long engine strapped to the back of a 100-metre-long cylindrical spaceship, like a Saturn V rocket. If you accelerate the spaceship along its central axis (ie from rocket exhausts straight up to nose cone), then the entire thing will experience the same forces. So far, so good.

Actually, this is not true. A larger ship is at a disadvantage even in the case of linear acceleration. When a ship is accelerating at 1g, every frame of the ship is holding up all of the weight of every frame above it. So the base of the ship, near the rocket exhaust, is experiencing more stress than a section halfway up the length. Just like a terrestrial building in this case.

On the Earth's surface, with a constant 1g, you can build a 1-storey building out of cardboard, but a 100-storey building needs something stronger, like steel. If we build both buildings out of steel and start increasing the local g-force, the 100-storey building will crumple much sooner. For any given material tech, the linear acceleration that a large structure can take will be less than a smaller structure (assuming the structure is something like a tower with all of the thrust at the base).

With inertial compensators, who knows? You could certainly decide that in this fiction, they work in a way that makes small craft very maneuverable. That seems quite plausible.

 

[EntropyAvatar]

An extrapolating of Schroedinger's Cat. Like how light is both a particle but also a wave. That outcomes only solidify due to an observer, the way Relativity requires frames of reference when calculating light speed effects.

Sooner or later, they'll have to figure out how to isolate for human or any kind of consciousness, and its effects on physics.

I don't think most physicists support that interpretation. From wiki:

A poll was conducted at a quantum mechanics conference in 2011 using 33 participants (including physicists, mathematicians, and philosophers). Researchers found that 6% of participants indicated that they believed the observer "plays a distinguished physical role (e.g., wave-function collapse by consciousness)". They also mention that "Popular accounts have sometimes suggested that the Copenhagen interpretation attributes such a role to consciousness. In our view, this is to misunderstand the Copenhagen interpretation."

 

[Safehold]

Most scientists are wrong, due to the limitations of their upbringing, consciousness, preference for the status quo, and inability to think outside the box. Plus the inability to understand or approve of other people outside the current limitations.

One example is the microbiome, HFCS, and various other stuff related to human bio chemistry and health.

There has been more than 3 models of the Atom. There is now, at least, one Standard Model of sub particles in quantum physics. They are all wrong, by definition. It's just the next model from now, is slightly better and more useful and more accurate than the previous one. They have to be wrong, for science to advance and create better explanations and theories. They aren't completely right, to put it another way. The current Standard Model is useful, and won't be obsolete for maybe a few decades or less. But it will become obsolete for science to advance beyond it, just as the older atomic models didn't have electron clouds or other things in it to account for explanation of physical phenomenon/entities.

There's an entire list I found concerning what we now accept as status quo truth concerning science, was never in the majority back when it was discovered. It didn't go beyond more than say 2-10 people, even. Far less than 6% then, of their peers back then.

Also, Hawkings said in public that he bet (his reputation by implication) that his math equations predicted that Higgs-Boson particle didn't exist. Higgs, using the Standard Model, said it did theoretically exist and would prove its existence, and then CERN proved it by smashing particle stuff together.

Even if Hawkings could pull in 99.999999% support from his physics and mathematics colleagues and peers... he would still be wrong, under the scientific methodology. And if he had managed to pull in 100%, by kicking Boson and Higgs out of the community entirely, he would actually be more wrong, certainly wrong, since whenever people get into agreement, they stop seeing things.

 

[Teleros]

An extrapolating of Schroedinger's Cat.

That was at least in part to show some of the absurdities of the situation you realise .

Like how light is both a particle but also a wave.That outcomes only solidify due to an observer, the way Relativity requires frames of reference when calculating light speed effects.

Sooner or later, they'll have to figure out how to isolate for human or any kind of consciousness, and its effects on physics.

That's not quite how things work. Quantum effects basically only really work on the quantum scale (sorry you can't use quantum effects to walk through walls etc ), and remember it's down to probabilities even then. The idea that physics only works consistently in the presence of consciousness is plain voodoo.

Heck, it's trivially easy to set up an observer-less experiment, run it a few hundred (or whatever) times, then look at the results. Especially one as simple as the stuff shown in that Mass Effect scene: pretty basic physics, basically. For example:

1. A machine gun, with 10,000 rounds of ammo.
2. A target funnel, such that all ammunition that "hits" the target goes into the funnel and is stored. Shots that miss don't go in the funnel.
3. A simple mechanism to pull the trigger every X seconds.
4. Bury it 3 miles down underground in soundproof insulation etc etc etc.

Actually, this is not true. A larger ship is at a disadvantage even in the case of linear acceleration. When a ship is accelerating at 1g, every frame of the ship is holding up all of the weight of every frame above it. So the base of the ship, near the rocket exhaust, is experiencing more stress than a section halfway up the length. Just like a terrestrial building in this case.

Well, it was close enough to get the point about manoeuvrability across .

 

[Safehold]

That was at least in part to show some of the absurdities of the situation you realise

A paradox is only absurd if you lack a model to explain the physical phenomenon.

At the time, they were incapable of doing so.

Quantum effects basically only really work on the quantum scale

Quantum effects are only studied on the quantum level. That does not mean they have no effect on higher or lower dimensions, or other things not currently in the status quo explanations.

 

[bz249]

A paradox is only absurd if you lack a model to explain the physical phenomenon.

At the time, they were incapable of doing so.

Quantum effects basically only really work on the quantum scale

Quantum effects are only studied on the quantum level. That does not mean they have no effect on higher or lower dimensions, or other things not currently in the status quo explanations.

There is one thingy in every scientific experiment. You can only evaluate them using given models. You cannot even design an experiment without some good idea what you would like to test. If the experiment delivery something not vaguely similar it will be rejected as a measurement error. At least the overwhelming majority of the cases.

 

[Teleros]

Quantum effects are only studied on the quantum level. That does not mean they have no effect on higher or lower dimensions, or other things not currently in the status quo explanations.

Look, quantum effects must have some effect on larger scale phenomena, otherwise... well, xkcd explains it well enough:

However, there's a big, BIG difference between saying "oh hey, we can use quantum electrodynamics for semiconductors" or w/e, to what you're saying. I mean... quantum mechanics tends to work on the level of the individual photon or electron or w/e: there's a probability that a particular photon will do X instead of Y, and so on. This is never ever ever observed on the scale of matter visible to the Mk 1 eyeball - or even the scale visible to the Mk 1 eyeball + microscope, for that matter.

If nothing else, this is down to mathematics: the probability that all the particles in a warhead will spontaneously go off-course is the multiple of all the individual probabilities. So if the chance is 1% (very high, but w/e), and there are a trillion trillion particles in that warhead, you need to multiply 1% by 1%... a trillion trillion times. There are going to be so many zeroes after the decimal point before you get to the "1" that for all intents and purposes it ain't ever happening.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

On the issue of big versus small ship you should also add the thing about thrust efficiency per mass of an engine. Unless the engine are going to be a small part of a ship (unlikely in my opinion) and the efficiency of the thrust is depending on the area of the engines ejecting the plasma or what type of engine you have then the bigger the engine the less efficient per mass the engine will be. This means the mass of the engine increase more than the efficiency of the thrust. I think it is about a 2:2.5 ratio or something.

 

[SIEGE-109]

That doesn't apply to reactionless drives, or to ionic reaction drives that might require big electromagnets and tiny nozzles.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

It might apply to reactionless drives, that would be hard to know. But it is true for more relativistic drive types.

Just wanted to point this out.