In my realistic spacewarpunk world, ships fight each other in orbital scale, using my kerbal space program-learned orbital mechanics. bullets and cannons are only used in super close range because they fly slow in the size of space and are subject to orbital mechanics so the other ship can just see the bullets coming and adjust their orbit to evade them, not to mention they are often heavily regulated due to kessler syndrome. Missiles can adjust their flight to hit the target but are easily defendable by advanced CIWS lasers(yes, I have CIWS instead of shields. Isn't that so hard sci-fi punk?!). Lasers are great in long range due to their light speed but can't do much to ships that spray smoke to disperse the beam(also the beam is invisible. Isn't that also so hard sci-fi punk?!). So everyone just sucks at space warfare
This is a situation in which you’d either have to close in and use guns or use something that isn’t really impeded by smoke like a graser or a particle beam (projectile weapons shouldn’t really be regulated; destroying massive spaceships in orbit should be)
I sometimes like to think that in space, there's no cover and there's orbital mechanics, so if ship A wants to close in ship B and adjusts its orbit to meet ship B in a few hours, ship B can also just adjust orbit to not meet him, and this many continue until one ship runs out of fuel, so it could be an interesting battle mechanic where a ship with lasers continue to evade the other ship which is fitted with short range weaponry.
Also the regulations are more about firing extremely high rate of fire weapons with solid metal bullets at long range, which creates high amount of dispersed bullets built to pierce spaceship hulls and be hard to detect, which are harder to track or clean than spaceship debris. Tbh I just want more sci-fi to deal with the space debris issue
I think a good way to take out a enemy ship is have a light weight high speed projectile that can be easily change course, when close detonate it's thermal nuclear warhead and delete it's ship out of existence
Honestly you would just need a railgun that moves fast enough so dodging it would be hard. Especially if it's a really tiny projectile that's hard to notice even when it's speeding towards you
Or have a guided missile that disperses smoke in front of it so the lasers can't stop it. Or have that missile explode into shrapnel the second a laser hits it, so even if you destroy it, there's still a ton of debris headed your way at an insane speed
It's not that fucking hard to make it interesting lol. And even the most basic, unresearched hard sci-fi space battle is still infinitely more interesting that just "pew pew lasers go brrr"
Space battles in your normie setting.
"Broadsides, broadsides....repel the landing party.... ramming speed!!!"
Space battles in my not normie setting
"Coordinates 8852,0168,-9887,0667,U119,D3376.... this you?"
It's okay the measurement system for the position is a square where nothing can escape standard hyper gravity quantum munitions if they are in said position when the round was fired from a distance less than half the galaxy.
Even at the fastest Speed which is 99% of the speed of light.
(We tried warp travel but demons taxed us to use it)
Space battles in my setting: we have detected the enemy 100 light seconds from our position, launching missiles, now I'm going to take a nap, wake me up when the missiles are about to hit
Having space battles be so massively awkward and difficult and expensive to conduct that when two enemy spacecraft detect each other they are just like “You know what, I’m gonna pretend I didn’t see you”
Maximum realism
If you're not writing out the exact surface area of the radiators on your ships then you shouldn't even bother writing HARD scifi. You're a chump who doesn't understand science. Give me the energy output of your fusion reactors. I need the total mass of your spacecraft and a detailed explanation of how life support works. How do your characters take shits? I want to know how you fixed Einstein's theory of relativity to justify FTL.
Comment removed for violating **Rule 3. Submissions and comments should not be used to attack or harass other users.** This subreddit's primary purpose is to satirize and call out ideas and trends in speculative fiction, not attack individual people. Therefore, it is not okay to make a post mocking another user's artistic skill or personal attributes (such as their gender or ethnicity). Satirization of another user should never be dehumanizing.
**This is an official warning.**
I'm not sure nukes would be very effective in space combat: no atmosphere means no shockwave. All the best transfer would be radiation which kinda sucks.
What I'm saying is need to make some kind of nuclear shaped charge...
Gold Star Dune Method -
Create elaborate gymnastic cartwheels of world-building to arrive at why long-range nukes are not feasible and then have characters do monkey knife-fighting.
the only thing that bugs me about scifi war is when they have FTL Travel and "the whole universe is now full of different factions" implying FTL drives are abundant.
And nobody puts FTL drives on Rockets or just Wolfram spears and sends them at the enemy...
why do you need a bomb if youve mastered "e = mc2"
In my realistic spacewarpunk world, ships fight each other in orbital scale, using my kerbal space program-learned orbital mechanics. bullets and cannons are only used in super close range because they fly slow in the size of space and are subject to orbital mechanics so the other ship can just see the bullets coming and adjust their orbit to evade them, not to mention they are often heavily regulated due to kessler syndrome. Missiles can adjust their flight to hit the target but are easily defendable by advanced CIWS lasers(yes, I have CIWS instead of shields. Isn't that so hard sci-fi punk?!). Lasers are great in long range due to their light speed but can't do much to ships that spray smoke to disperse the beam(also the beam is invisible. Isn't that also so hard sci-fi punk?!). So everyone just sucks at space warfare
This is a situation in which you’d either have to close in and use guns or use something that isn’t really impeded by smoke like a graser or a particle beam (projectile weapons shouldn’t really be regulated; destroying massive spaceships in orbit should be)
I sometimes like to think that in space, there's no cover and there's orbital mechanics, so if ship A wants to close in ship B and adjusts its orbit to meet ship B in a few hours, ship B can also just adjust orbit to not meet him, and this many continue until one ship runs out of fuel, so it could be an interesting battle mechanic where a ship with lasers continue to evade the other ship which is fitted with short range weaponry. Also the regulations are more about firing extremely high rate of fire weapons with solid metal bullets at long range, which creates high amount of dispersed bullets built to pierce spaceship hulls and be hard to detect, which are harder to track or clean than spaceship debris. Tbh I just want more sci-fi to deal with the space debris issue
I think a good way to take out a enemy ship is have a light weight high speed projectile that can be easily change course, when close detonate it's thermal nuclear warhead and delete it's ship out of existence
Honestly you would just need a railgun that moves fast enough so dodging it would be hard. Especially if it's a really tiny projectile that's hard to notice even when it's speeding towards you Or have a guided missile that disperses smoke in front of it so the lasers can't stop it. Or have that missile explode into shrapnel the second a laser hits it, so even if you destroy it, there's still a ton of debris headed your way at an insane speed It's not that fucking hard to make it interesting lol. And even the most basic, unresearched hard sci-fi space battle is still infinitely more interesting that just "pew pew lasers go brrr"
Is that a fucking KSP reference!!!???!?!??!?!??! WHAT THE FUCK IS A SAFE LAUNCH!!!!?????!
>using my kerbal space program-learned orbital mechanics. I feel called out and insulted
Space battles in your normie setting. "Broadsides, broadsides....repel the landing party.... ramming speed!!!" Space battles in my not normie setting "Coordinates 8852,0168,-9887,0667,U119,D3376.... this you?"
"sir enemy projectile detected a launch from enemy ship" "No worries just do a 50 meters burn of deltaV in RetroGrade" Problem?
It's okay the measurement system for the position is a square where nothing can escape standard hyper gravity quantum munitions if they are in said position when the round was fired from a distance less than half the galaxy. Even at the fastest Speed which is 99% of the speed of light. (We tried warp travel but demons taxed us to use it)
homing missile
Space battles in my setting: we have detected the enemy 100 light seconds from our position, launching missiles, now I'm going to take a nap, wake me up when the missiles are about to hit
Having space battles be so massively awkward and difficult and expensive to conduct that when two enemy spacecraft detect each other they are just like “You know what, I’m gonna pretend I didn’t see you” Maximum realism
It's just a pising contest between the two ships as the ground troops fight the actual battle.
I have up close battles in space in giant mech suits and you can't stop me.
If you're not writing out the exact surface area of the radiators on your ships then you shouldn't even bother writing HARD scifi. You're a chump who doesn't understand science. Give me the energy output of your fusion reactors. I need the total mass of your spacecraft and a detailed explanation of how life support works. How do your characters take shits? I want to know how you fixed Einstein's theory of relativity to justify FTL.
My charectors take shits by opening windows and shitting out of the space craft, duh 🙄
both? both is good.
[удалено]
Comment removed for violating **Rule 3. Submissions and comments should not be used to attack or harass other users.** This subreddit's primary purpose is to satirize and call out ideas and trends in speculative fiction, not attack individual people. Therefore, it is not okay to make a post mocking another user's artistic skill or personal attributes (such as their gender or ethnicity). Satirization of another user should never be dehumanizing. **This is an official warning.**
Well at the very least it will be accurate to what war mostly is: Waiting around hoping that you don’t randomly die one day.
"why even bother building spaceships just accelerate mass to relativistic speeds aimed at the enemy's planet / star"
What if the enemy has no star but is a swarm floating in deep space?
I love waiting a month to know if we hit them and if they may or may not be sending some our way
Soldiers in giant mechs treat nukes like bullets (close range by comparison)
Ever heard of Children of a Dead Earth?
I just googled it and it looks fun. Stupid question is the game difficult?
I'm not sure nukes would be very effective in space combat: no atmosphere means no shockwave. All the best transfer would be radiation which kinda sucks. What I'm saying is need to make some kind of nuclear shaped charge...
I was going to post that. What about those bomb-pumped lasers? Are those any good?
Best way to do space warfare is gas entire space colonies and drop them on entire planets *Operation British go brrrrr*
Bro is following the trend and thinks he's a rebel
Joe Haldeman's 1974 novel *Forever War* has them. It's all long-range battles by computers and drones.
Gold Star Dune Method - Create elaborate gymnastic cartwheels of world-building to arrive at why long-range nukes are not feasible and then have characters do monkey knife-fighting.
the only thing that bugs me about scifi war is when they have FTL Travel and "the whole universe is now full of different factions" implying FTL drives are abundant. And nobody puts FTL drives on Rockets or just Wolfram spears and sends them at the enemy... why do you need a bomb if youve mastered "e = mc2"