Author Topic: Replacing PDCs  (Read 82049 times)

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Offline alex_brunius

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #210 on: October 19, 2017, 07:41:40 AM »
Actually, if you are tossing around lasers with similar energy delivery profiles as a nukes you are basically nuking the planet anyway. You just don't use an actual nuclear warhead to make the kiloton and up explosions happen.

This means you can actually destroy a defending force to the last with orbital laser bombardment alone, just keep in mind the collateral. Because, you know, kiloton range explosions and up are pretty bad at only hitting targets smaller than a city. Usually everything around it also dies.

This assumes that your nuke can deliver 100% of it's energy directly into the ship ( like a laser would ), and that your laser suffers zero energy reduction from a planets atmosphere on it's way down towards the target ( like a nuke would ).

If nukes in space deliver for example just 1% of their energy into the ship ( proximity hit around ~1 ship length away ) while a laser delivers 100%, and if the atmosphere reduce laser energy by say 90%, then what we are looking at is a laser impact with same damage vs space ships transferring 1000 times less energy delivered into a ground target then a nuke.

( At also assume that the energy from shockwave and heat in the nuke is as damaging as the energy from a beam weapon ).



Regardless of what values you use I think it's safe to say that beams deliver several times less total energy, especially when firing at a planetary surface target, then nukes even if they do the same damage against a spaceship.
« Last Edit: October 19, 2017, 07:49:44 AM by alex_brunius »
 
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Offline Hazard

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #211 on: October 19, 2017, 08:55:56 AM »
*snip*

That's nice. I think I'll keep it at actual mass of the vessel instead of the abstracted volume of the vessel, because that means I can do things like say that Commercial ships of the same weight are notably larger than Military ships due to armour being dense. The lack of difference in performance profiles loaded when fully or empty can be handled with 'because Trans-Newtonian weirdness.'

You are aware that the weight of water a ship displaces is in fact equal to its actual mass, right?  It pushes water out of the way, and is pushed back up.

Yes.

However, ships that carry a lot of cargo are weighed at their theoretical full load IIRC, which is not the same as a ship's empty weight. The difference can be quite large, and thus so is their displacement. However, the paperwork doesn't care if the ship's fully loaded or not, it's still a however many tons large vessel.

*snip*

There's a reason I said similar energy delivery profiles.

In the end, all that really matters is how much energy ends up delivered at the target.
 

Offline bean

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #212 on: October 19, 2017, 10:57:24 AM »
However, ships that carry a lot of cargo are weighed at their theoretical full load IIRC, which is not the same as a ship's empty weight. The difference can be quite large, and thus so is their displacement. However, the paperwork doesn't care if the ship's fully loaded or not, it's still a however many tons large vessel.
Unfortunately, you recall incorrectly.  Merchant ships usually have three different 'tonnages', none of which are whole-ship displacements.  Gross and Net tonnage are both volumetric measures which relate to things like safety regs and port duties.  They have very little to do with the absolute weight of the ship, because the density of a ship varies greatly with role.  Then you have deadweight tonnage, which is the cargo capacity in terms of actual tons.  Displacement tonnage generally isn't reported (if you doubt me, poke around wiki articles for merchant ships).  It's a warship measure, and usually you get light and full-load values.  Sometimes you get standard displacement, too, but that's a story for another day.
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Offline Barkhorn

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #213 on: October 19, 2017, 11:45:09 AM »
In the end, all that really matters is how much energy ends up delivered at the target.
This is not necessarily true.  Dispersed forces will still be much harder to target.  Sure, a 10-kiloton blast will destroy an area the size of a small city, whether it was caused by a nuke or a laser.  But there's no reason to expect that, without ground-based fire control, that you can guarantee a hit even that close to dispersed ground troops.  So what if each blast wipes out an area the size of Buffalo, NY if the enemy could be anywhere in the state?  Unless you're OK with obliterating the whole region, you can't defeat them from orbit.
 

Offline alex_brunius

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #214 on: October 19, 2017, 11:47:57 AM »
There's a reason I said similar energy delivery profiles.

In the end, all that really matters is how much energy ends up delivered at the target.

It is not all that matter when it comes to collateral damage though, since the definition of collateral damage is energy NOT delivered at the target...
 

Offline Hazard

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #215 on: October 19, 2017, 12:54:05 PM »
This is not necessarily true.  Dispersed forces will still be much harder to target.  Sure, a 10-kiloton blast will destroy an area the size of a small city, whether it was caused by a nuke or a laser.  But there's no reason to expect that, without ground-based fire control, that you can guarantee a hit even that close to dispersed ground troops.  So what if each blast wipes out an area the size of Buffalo, NY if the enemy could be anywhere in the state?  Unless you're OK with obliterating the whole region, you can't defeat them from orbit.

Well, obviously. Given that I was talking about nuking the place from orbit just to make sure you get all the defenders that was rather implied.

It is not all that matter when it comes to collateral damage though, since the definition of collateral damage is energy NOT delivered at the target...

Yes? Your point?
 

Offline alex_brunius

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #216 on: October 19, 2017, 04:50:32 PM »
Yes? Your point?

What is your point? Your original point was built on lasers doing the same collateral damage that nukes and we now seem to agree that's not the case at all so...

Actually, if you are tossing around lasers with similar energy delivery profiles as a nukes you are basically nuking the planet anyway. You just don't use an actual nuclear warhead to make the kiloton and up explosions happen.

This means you can actually destroy a defending force to the last with orbital laser bombardment alone, just keep in mind the collateral. Because, you know, kiloton range explosions and up are pretty bad at only hitting targets smaller than a city. Usually everything around it also dies.
 

Offline Hazard

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #217 on: October 19, 2017, 05:12:21 PM »
What is your point? Your original point was built on lasers doing the same collateral damage that nukes and we now seem to agree that's not the case at all so...

Ah, you misread my original argument.

I'm saying that if your laser is delivering about equal energy to a kiloton of TNT in a very short timespan, say a laser pulse, at a specific point of a planetary surface, or even a specific point in a planetary atmosphere, there is for blast wave calculation purposes not much of a functional difference between a nuclear bomb of that yield detonated at that place and a laser.

Which means that effectively speaking every time the laser fires it's doing the exact same thing a nuke is doing with a few differences in things like fallout.

Collateral damage, therefore, will be similar.
 

Offline Bremen

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #218 on: October 19, 2017, 09:13:59 PM »
How will ground units with ground-to-space weapons detect and target enemies in space?

One possibility might be to just have them automatically fire on any units attempting bombardment or troop landing against the planet (with the flavor reason being that those units are moving into low orbit to do so).

That's how it worked in Emperor of the Fading Suns; you had Planet to Space units on the ground, and if any enemy spacecraft tried to bombard or land within a certain range of them (including bombarding the PtS units themselves) they'd get a free attack against them. I was always pretty fond of that mechanic.
« Last Edit: October 19, 2017, 11:26:07 PM by Bremen »
 

Offline Marski

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #219 on: October 20, 2017, 12:00:40 AM »
Yeah, an interesting suggestion which puts orbital laser bombardment firmly as a supporting weapon. If you want to wipe out defenders you still need to rely on nuking the planet ( and all the downsides ).

Actually, if you are tossing around lasers with similar energy delivery profiles as a nukes you are basically nuking the planet anyway. You just don't use an actual nuclear warhead to make the kiloton and up explosions happen.

This means you can actually destroy a defending force to the last with orbital laser bombardment alone, just keep in mind the collateral. Because, you know, kiloton range explosions and up are pretty bad at only hitting targets smaller than a city. Usually everything around it also dies.

This is not necessarily true.  Dispersed forces will still be much harder to target.  Sure, a 10-kiloton blast will destroy an area the size of a small city, whether it was caused by a nuke or a laser.  But there's no reason to expect that, without ground-based fire control, that you can guarantee a hit even that close to dispersed ground troops.  So what if each blast wipes out an area the size of Buffalo, NY if the enemy could be anywhere in the state?  Unless you're OK with obliterating the whole region, you can't defeat them from orbit.

Alright, since it seems I'm possibly the only one here who's actually gone through military service and is in reserve, I should explain couple of things for you folks.

Nuclear weapons aren't magical. They operate on laws of physics like everything else. You don't drop them somewhere and have everything go dead with 100% certainty. Outside the imminent blastzone and lethal air pressure area, you can survive by simply hiding in a foxhole. This means vehicles too; dig in, wait for the blastwave to pass, get out, prepare for fallout unless your mission requires you to keep moving.

Modern militaries across the globe have plans and doctrines on how to operate in a nuclear war. They differ and vary from country to country but they all have one thing in common; spread out. Companies have minimum distance of atleast ten kilometers from each other to reduce potential losses from TNW (Tactical Nuclear Weapon) being dropped. Motorized, Mechanized and Armored military formations are the most vulnerable and easiest to find and are on top of the priority list just below HQ's for TNW strike.

Infantry on the other hand are the least vulnerable (yeah, surprising), they can spread out as much as needed thus making it impossible to take out an entire battalion of infantry with just TNW's, infantry can take cover in absolutely anything or create some very fast. They aren't restricted by infrastructure and therefore can move anywhere and are difficult to detect from air or space.


These strategies can also be applied for how to operate in a envirovement where enemy has space superiority. Any formation that are too close together are target for strike. Even then, there's bound to be something left to fight. Hunting down platoons and other small-scale units will be rather difficult because at that level it's very hard to determine where's the "center" for the formation and where to deliver a orbital strike. That's what I mean by "ground units that are below certain strength percentage"

I can't post any of the videos we were shown during training so I have to do with what youtube has to offer, even if they're a bit outdated they still hold up alright.


 

Offline Hazard

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #220 on: October 20, 2017, 04:11:45 AM »
*snip*

On the other hand Marski, if you are tossing ground detonation nukes around in such numbers that the fireballs overlap you can be fairly confident that whatever formation existed there does so no longer.
 

Offline alex_brunius

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #221 on: October 20, 2017, 05:46:16 AM »
On the other hand Marski, if you are tossing ground detonation nukes around in such numbers that the fireballs overlap you can be fairly confident that whatever formation existed there does so no longer.

It quickly becomes a problem of math and economics...

Earth has a total surface land area of ~150 million km^2.

Submarine launched nukes are often considered the upper border of what would be a "tactical" nuke, so let's take one of the most common (W-76) in the US/UK arsenal. It has a fireball radius of 500 meters when detonating on the ground meaning the fireball covers an area of 0.79 km^2.
( Source: https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ )

You would need to drop around 200 million such nukes to cover the entire land surface of the Earth and ensure you wipe out all hiding & dug in spread out infantry.

Even if you use an airburst and the larger air blast radius ( resulting in universal injuries and widespread fatalities for exposed & unprotected, but most dug in infantry probably survives ) we get 33.5km^2 area covered and around 5 million warheads needed to cover the surface of the earth.


See the problem?
 
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Offline chrislocke2000

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #222 on: October 20, 2017, 06:13:50 AM »
I'm really looking forwards to the changes in ground combat but think the issues of interaction of ground forces with ships and the differing mechanics is an area that needs some thought. I'd still be keen to see ships having to move to a low orbit for them to be considered involved in ground combat in same phasing as that and for ground to space anti ship weapons that are used by ground forces to be limited to engaging ships that are in such low orbit.

Having ships in such a position being a force multiplier rather than something that is shooting every five seconds v the longer term ground turns feels like a better way of doing it.

I'd also like to see the effects of nuclear strikes being more damaging in terms of impact on economy, reaction of the population etc such that whilst they can of course be used as an effective way to damage ground forces there is more of a decision to be made by the player or NPC on such use.
 

Offline sloanjh

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #223 on: October 20, 2017, 07:13:27 AM »
(or, at least, the majority of the vocal us)

Sweet!

John
 

Offline bean

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Re: Replacing PDCs
« Reply #224 on: October 20, 2017, 07:22:15 AM »
Submarine launched nukes are often considered the upper border of what would be a "tactical" nuke, so let's take one of the most common (W-76) in the US/UK arsenal. It has a fireball radius of 500 meters when detonating on the ground meaning the fireball covers an area of 0.79 km^2.
( Source: https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ )
No, they aren't.  There isn't a precise boundary for "tactical" nuclear weapons (which have gone out of favor recently), but a W76 definitely isn't one.  Try something more like 10-20 kt.  SLBMs are strategic weapons, plain and simple.  And you're not just going to use fireballs to kill things, as that's inefficient. 

On the other hand Marski, if you are tossing ground detonation nukes around in such numbers that the fireballs overlap you can be fairly confident that whatever formation existed there does so no longer.
Is this a planet you want to keep?  Because if so, I'd recommend strongly against that.  Groundbursts are very dirty. 

Alright, since it seems I'm possibly the only one here who's actually gone through military service and is in reserve, I should explain couple of things for you folks.
I'm not military, but I've spent quite a bit of time studying nuclear weapons.  Also, please stop being condescending.

Quote
Nuclear weapons aren't magical. They operate on laws of physics like everything else. You don't drop them somewhere and have everything go dead with 100% certainty. Outside the imminent blastzone and lethal air pressure area, you can survive by simply hiding in a foxhole. This means vehicles too; dig in, wait for the blastwave to pass, get out, prepare for fallout unless your mission requires you to keep moving.
This, at least, is true.  Although it's not always the blast that kills you. 

Quote
Modern militaries across the globe have plans and doctrines on how to operate in a nuclear war. They differ and vary from country to country but they all have one thing in common; spread out. Companies have minimum distance of atleast ten kilometers from each other to reduce potential losses from TNW (Tactical Nuclear Weapon) being dropped. Motorized, Mechanized and Armored military formations are the most vulnerable and easiest to find and are on top of the priority list just below HQ's for TNW strike.
No.  10 km between companies is way too much.  Spreading out is good, but you can't fight like that, and most tactical weapons aren't that lethal.  Seriously, show me one tactical weapon with any kind of lethal radius of even 5 km.
And armored/mechanized formations are the most survivable on a nuclear battlefield, not the least.  AFVs are remarkably blast-resistant (hence enhanced-radiation weapons) and can carry NBC protection systems with them.

Quote
Infantry on the other hand are the least vulnerable (yeah, surprising), they can spread out as much as needed thus making it impossible to take out an entire battalion of infantry with just TNW's, infantry can take cover in absolutely anything or create some very fast. They aren't restricted by infrastructure and therefore can move anywhere and are difficult to detect from air or space.
And then are incapable of moving or, you know, actually doing anything useful.  Leg infantry has its uses, but when it has no supporting infrastructure, it's not going to stand up to someone who does.
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