Posted by: Sheb
« on: April 09, 2016, 02:16:58 AM »Well, it's not sure that the infinite acceleration thing work in athmosphere. Not if you don't want the shockwave to destroy your launching platform.
Keep in mind that they would inherently have shields given their size and importance, and In the current model of trans-newtonian physics they would be able to nullify the kinetic energy impact by applying an opposite force, and they could otherwise just shoot them down (If the missile isn't destroyed on launch from the interaction with the atmosphere). Also keep in mind ground units are also able to be destroyed by space fire, hence why you have a navy/PDCs to keep space clear of hostiles.
With precision guidance, short (compared to space) ranges, and lower speeds of the target vehicles, kinetic impact hyper-velocity missiles are viable weapons. Giant Ogre/Titan-style vehicles can be destroyed by massed fires from cheap (compared to the construction cost of oversized warmachines) ordnance.Keep in mind that they would inherently have shields given their size and importance, and In the current model of trans-newtonian physics they would be able to nullify the kinetic energy impact by applying an opposite force, and they could otherwise just shoot them down (If the missile isn't destroyed on launch from the interaction with the atmosphere). Also keep in mind ground units are also able to be destroyed by space fire, hence why you have a navy/PDCs to keep space clear of hostiles.
KE = 1/2 * 250kg * (50,000 km/s)^2 <---0.25 ton missile flying at decent AMM speed
KE = 3.125e17 J
convert to tons of TNT = ~75MT
So there was a lot of discussion about the new Titans units in the change log thread. One thing that wasn't much discusse however was "starting from what we know about TN elements, how would ground combat change"? We know that TN elements allow instantaneous change of speed and direction, as well as FTL detection of gravity waves, but also of heat and EM (And as such, FTL communication). Interestingly, it cannot send energy in a FTL manner (hence the range limit on energy weapons)
It also seems that the TN effects only work over a certain size, since you can't build a missile of less than 2,5 tons.
So, how would TN influence ground combat? I'd expect the 2,5 tons limits to be important. The agility and maneuvrability benefits are some important I'd expect militaries to devellop exosuits of that weigh range.
Hence the multi hundered/thousand ton titans coming into existence. IRL MBTs are already ~50 tons so I would assume that it would be easy to convert those, and make bigger ones. And the smallest trans-newtonian engine in Aurora is 0.1MSP (so only 0.25 tons).