Worldbuilding

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Realistic space war building? (slrpnk.net)

submitted 5 days ago by absurde@slrpnk.net to c/worldbuilding@lemmy.world

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Hi! I'm currently building a hard sci-fi world and I was wondering about the idea of war. Because space is huge - really huge, and most ships probably won't interact with each other for years or centuries. But if two space ships or fleets were to meet on a new stellar system and declare war to each other, what could this look like? What weapons could they use?

Have you ever tackled the subject in one of your worlds? Or do you know a piece of media which did this?

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[–] DScratch@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Detecting and intercepting kinetic weapons could be very very difficult. You shape them like stealth bombers, paint them in a radar absorbing coating and launch them at Mach 10 or so. Especially since you have nearly unlimited range to fire from and gravity assists to achieve funky angles of attack. A projectile of depleted uranium with a titanium weave penetrating core would be there with nuclear weapons for destructive power and harder to stop.

In a universe where the Rods From God are an everyday threat, planetside military bases would be easy pickings, so spacefaring craft with erratic trajectories would be preferable. (You could have a plot arc about someone stealing the navigation software that adds randomness to a ship’s course to avoid long-range ballistics)

[–] athairmor@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

What happens if you to your ship if you fire something at Mach 10?

If you can see your opponents ship, can you determine, by it’s change in velocity, the mass fired and direction? If you’re far enough away do you have time to just move out of the way?

[–] absurde@slrpnk.net 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Would that render kinetic weapons pretty much impracticable for a spaceship-to-spaceship war?

[–] Blaster_M@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

And that's why lasers are the king of range. Hpwever, they can be a nuisance at a distance more than a threat, as they are easier to defeat with the right armor setup.

That said, the big thing with kinetics is your effective range shrinks substantially, bit it is much harder to defend against reliably. The way to use kinetics is get close, take advantage of enemy weakspots.

[–] DScratch@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

If kinetics are out of the picture, lasers are completely countered by mirrors.

Plus the intensity falloff is significant, especially over the distances space travel allows.