Ground combat and planet suggestions

[DFDelta (OP)]

A bunch of connected suggestions about ground combat and planets.
Most of it is not very well thought out yet and just food for thought and general direction.


Lets get started by breaking up planets into 10 zones.
Each area is of a certain type, which could be:
Plains, water, liquid (other), ice/frozen, overgrown, mountainious, desert, barren.

Every zone stands for about 10% of the plants surface in a very simplified way. So for a habitable planet the zones could be for example:
5 water zones, 1 ice zone, 1 overgrown, 2 plains, 1 mountainious.

As mentioned they are very simplified. Of course even an earthlike planet will have deserts or barren parts, but on the grand scale they are not enough to warrant being counted as a zone.
The example above also lists "1 mountainious", that does not signal that there is one gigantic mountain that spans 10% of the planet, just that there are 10% mountains in total.

Those zones are influenced by the different values of the planet. A very hot planet with an average temperature of 80°C will have much more deserts and barrens and maybe only 1 zone of water if any at all.
On the other hand a planet with an average temperature of -100°C will end up with something like 5 ice zones, 3 zones of other liquid and 2 barren zones.
Planets with high tectonics will tend to be filled with barrens, many mountain areas and plains, while a planet with low tectonics will tend to have many plains, overgrown areas and a few mountains in between.
Zones can change one type into another.
An earthlike planet that becomes increasingly hot will lose plains and gain deserts. If its atmosphere become dangerous its plains and overgrown areas will turn into barrens.
Cold planets will lose ice and frozen zones and gain water and plains. (I think we even have events for that already)

The zones will have an impact on population allocation. Some examples:
Water zones could produce a lot of food but require a lot of maintenance and thusly worlds with lots of water will have a lower percentage of people allocated to agriculture and more towards maintenance.
Plains offer lots of farmland while producing no extra hazards, making them the ideal zones to have.
Deserts, barrens, frozen areas and mountains all offer little food production (requiring a higher percentage of people to keep everyone else fed) while needing moderate maintenance.
And so on.

Bonus idea: Have zones also produce civvie trading goods. Overgrown planets produce "luxury wood" that is shipped by traders to planets that don't have them. Giving them good profits and us high wealth due to taxes.

Bonus bonus idea: Terraforming installations/modules could also gain extra significance by allowing us to turn one area into another one the planet can support. Plains become overgrown and overgrowns can become plains. Deserts and barrens can be turned into plains with enough time.



Now that we have split the planets up into zones lets move to PDCs.
When building a new PDC or assembling PDC parts we are asked to select a zone to place it in. It does not have much impact on combat performance (no bonus for defenders in plains, ice, deserts or barrens. Little bonuses in overgrown areas and mountains), with the exception of water zones. PDCs in water zones gain a huge defensive advantage but lose the ability to use non-missile weapons.



Now, lets cover troops and combat.
Troops can be moved from and to every zone in a matter of 24 hours if not in combat. Let us just assume that our trans newtonian empire can move units of any size around a planet in those times. (might actually be a bit slow for smaller units)
The zone a troop is stationed in has an impact on its combat performance. Infantry is bad in wide open areas (barrens, desert, plains), armor fares badly in jungles and mountains and horrible in water (or maybe they are unable to be used there at all).
Hostile troops stationed inside the same zone will automaticly engage in skirmishes which deal very low damage to both every day.
If moving a friendly troop out of a zone which contains an enemy the move time is increased to 72 hours and combat performance is halved for that duration. (retreating a force that is spread out)
Troops that have arrived in a new zone can not be given new orders for 24 hours.
You can at any time order your idle troops to attack a hostile unit or PDC that is inside the same zone as them.



New GU type. Aircraft.
Yes, I know. Every battalion has its own support aircraft. But I don't talk about scout/attack helicopters that might be part of an armor battalion, transports in a mobile infantry troop or similar.
Aircraft are a bit different from infantry and armor. For starters they can not benefit from replacement battalions, instead they need to be moved to a planet with a fighter factory (replacing 1 fighter per factory and year). They come in squadrons of 10 fighters and take damage in solid 10% chunks. All aircraft are good on the offensive and deal high damage to troops outside PDCs.
If an aircraft squadron attacks ground units that have an allied aircraft squadron inside their zone those allied aircraft will always engage the attacking aircraft.
Squadrons are not transported via troop transport modules, but instead fit into boat and hangar bays, each squadron weighting 300 tons. (25tons for each fighter plus 50 tons other related gear)
Aircraft can attack enemy troops in every zone of a planet.
They come in 3 variants.

Attack Craft: 30 atk / 2 def (so 3 atk / 0.2 def for each remaining fighter)
x5 bonus when defending against other aircraft, x2 bonus to attack if attacking troops outside PDCs
These are heavy bombers. They deal massive damage when attacking undefended troops but take long to load and launch and are very bad in the defensive.

Interceptor: 10 atk / 6 def
x10 bonus when defending against other aircraft, x2 bonus to attack if attacking troops outside PDCs
Exactly what it says. Fast and agile interceptors. As aircraft they can still deal a high amount of damage, but their strong point is that they will defend troops inside the same zone against enemy aircraft. They can quickly be loaded and launched, giving them a certain use in the defense.

Aerospace Fighter: 20 atk / 4 def
x5 bonus when defending against other aircraft, x2 bonus to attack if attacking troops outside PDCs
Very expensive to research and build, but have some unique advantages. First they do not need to be unloaded to the surface, and instead can strike directly from the inside of a orbiting carrier (and thus ignoring the 24 deploy delay for moving troops).
They can attack enemy orbiting ships with a 50% chance to deal 1 damage per remaining fighter. CIWS and turreted weapons set to final defense (ship only) have a chance to hit and destroy them.
If they are stationed inside ships or PDCs they can be used like turrets set to "final defense (ship)" to intercept missiles. They have a chance to deal a hit equal to 1 damage per fighter to a missile salvoe that is influenced by the empires engine tech level and the missiles speed. (Faster fighters + slower missiles = higher chance to deal damage) Each shot is calculated seperately, so in theory a full squadron can shoot down 10 missiles with a lot of luck.



New ground officer stat:
Combined arms.
Every officer can lead combined arms well enough to prevent them from shooting at each other, but it takes a special kind of officer to make them move like one man.
The combined arms bonus of the officer leading the brigade headquarters is applied to every of his troops in the same zone as him. The bonus is applied once for every different type of GU present and under his command. (no bonus is applied if only one type of unit is present)

Example:
Major John has a CA bonus of 10%. Under his command are 2 battalions of infantry and 1 battalion of armor, all of them and his headquarters are stationed in zone 4 on Terra.
Each of those battalions now gains a 20% bonus because there are 2 different types (infantry and armor) present.
If I now give him command over a squadron of interceptors and move them to Terra 4 then every battalion and the squadron would benefit from a 30% bonus. If, on the other hand, I moved the armor battalion to zone 7 then none of his battalions would benefit from any bonus at all. (As now there are only infantry units in his zone, so no combined arms bonus can be applied no matter how many different infantry battalions are present)
I'm torn on the question if the headquarters itself should count into it, but I lean towards "no".



What do you think about it?
Any suggestions that build on it, or anything in here that might be good ground for discussions?

[metalax]

I like the idea of expanding the scope of ground combat. It doesn't entirely make sense to have the same number of zones for each planet regardless of size. A body like the Earth should have far more than a tiny asteroid. I'd suggest one zone per x amount of surface area of the body with a minimum of one.

Note that one issue that can arise is with attacking a unit that is moving resulting in it not being present when the attack is resolved. There are also quite a lot of issues with colony layout such as just where facilities, resources and populations are located, that I think that this should really be handled separately and possibly wait for Aurora 2.


One addition I would like to see for ground combat is the addition of company sized units for the other combat ground units. Also the implementation of the split/combine between battalion and company size units.


Regarding aircraft I think you would need to run with all aircraft are aerospace capable, otherwise you run into issues with what atmospheric pressure is required for them to be able to operate, what gravity they can operate under and so on.

I'd say your suggested aircraft stats are overpowered. Instead I'd suggest something more in line with exiting troop strengths below.

Code: [Select]

Attack Defence Size Cost
Ground Attack Squadron 10 10 5 200 x2 attack/defence against troops in open, Can fast deploy. Can't engage in combat inside ships or PDC's.
Ground Attack Flight 2 2 1 40 x2 attack/defence against troops in open, Can fast deploy. Can't engage in combat inside ships or PDC's.
Interceptor Squadron 10 10 5 200 x3 attack/defence against aircraft. Can fast deploy. Can missile intercept. Can't engage in combat inside ships or PDC's.
Interceptor Flight 2 2 1 40 x3 attack/defence against aircraft. Can fast deploy. Can missile intercept. Can't engage in combat inside ships or PDC's.

Garrison Battalion 0 10 5 60
Garrison Company 0 2 1 12
Assault Infantry Battalion 10 5 5 100
Assault Infantry Company 2 1 1 20
Mobile Infantry Battalion 5 10 5 100
Mobile Infantry Company 1 2 1 20
Marine Battalion 10 10 5 180 x2 on ship attack/defence
Marine Company 2 2 1 36 x2 on ship attack/defence
Combat Engineer Battalion 10 10 5 180 x2 on PDC attack/defence
Combat Engineer Company 2 2 1 36 x2 on PDC attack/defence
Heavy Assault Infantry Battalion 12 12 5 180
Heavy Assault Infantry Company 2.4 2.4 1 36
Fast deploy meaning that aircraft ignore load times similarly to combat drop pods when deploying from a ship.

For missile intercept my suggestion would be. Each interceptor unit has a base chance to do one point of damage to one impacting missile each 5 second increment equal to it's attack rating. This is modified by the missile speed against a speed determined by current engine technology level(3000 km/s / techlevel?). The interceptors fire as if set to final fire, so will target missiles aimed at the planet or ships at the planet.

This gives interceptors some ability to intercept missiles without overshadowing designed point defence fighters.

I'd keep using troop transport modules to house the aircraft to keep things easier to program. If they were housed in hangars they should use comparable space to other ground units i.e. 2500 tons for a squadron and 500 tons for a flight.

One issue that would need to be handled is potential disproportionate effects of the aircraft attack/defence bonuses due to the way combat is currently calculated, total attack verses total defence. eg 10 ground attack squadrons against an enemy with 9 ground attack squadrons and a garrison battalion. The first should not double their strength due to the single opposing troop unit when most of their fighting is going to be against other air units. Similarly the same situation should be avoided with a single aircraft giving all the opposing forces interceptors double strength.


I don't see any need for the combined arms bonus, troops can already receive a bonus due to commander skill from the ground combat bonus.

[DFDelta (OP)]

I like the idea of expanding the scope of ground combat. It doesn't entirely make sense to have the same number of zones for each planet regardless of size. A body like the Earth should have far more than a tiny asteroid. I'd suggest one zone per x amount of surface area of the body with a minimum of one.

Note that one issue that can arise is with attacking a unit that is moving resulting in it not being present when the attack is resolved. There are also quite a lot of issues with colony layout such as just where facilities, resources and populations are located, that I think that this should really be handled separately and possibly wait for Aurora 2.

I was toying with the idea of different size planets having a different amount of zones.
What I considered a problem with that is that ground combat could become really tedious with that.
But then again, it could make for some interesting large scale groundbased warfare.

Regarding building placement I was just assuming that the facilities are placed in an even manner around the planet, so if an enemy attacked and took 2 out of 10 zones your industry output would be reduced by 20%.
That would be a rather simple way and working 80% of the time, but that opens up a whole different can of worms if we think about things like multiple races/nation starting on the same planet.

A much more complex way that takes care of such problems would be this:



When founding the colony it lets you place it on a place of your choice, maybe make it a square with the sides equaling the height of the center bars. (So a moon sized body would have a 1x1 colony, earth sized 2x2, I kinda lack the vocabulary to explain it better )

That would allow several colonies to exist next to each other.

A colony could still work like described above for ground combat. If an enemy captures one zone of a 2x2 zone colony 25% of the industry would be compromised and unavailable to the defender. A colony would count as lost when all zones are occupied.

But yeah. That's kinda far beyond a simple suggestion.

One addition I would like to see for ground combat is the addition of company sized units for the other combat ground units. Also the implementation of the split/combine between battalion and company size units.

That would certainly be nice to have.

Regarding aircraft I think you would need to run with all aircraft are aerospace capable, otherwise you run into issues with what atmospheric pressure is required for them to be able to operate, what gravity they can operate under and so on.

Right. I didn't think that far. 
It might be hard to come up with a handwave why a fighter can fly on a zero grav asteroid without an atmosphere but can't fly in "space".

For missile intercept my suggestion would be. Each interceptor unit has a base chance to do one point of damage to one impacting missile each 5 second increment equal to it's attack rating. This is modified by the missile speed against a speed determined by current engine technology level(3000 km/s / techlevel?). The interceptors fire as if set to final fire, so will target missiles aimed at the planet or ships at the planet.

This gives interceptors some ability to intercept missiles without overshadowing designed point defence fighters.

Yes, that's pretty much what I had in mind, just way better explained. 

I'd keep using troop transport modules to house the aircraft to keep things easier to program. If they were housed in hangars they should use comparable space to other ground units i.e. 2500 tons for a squadron and 500 tons for a flight.

Agreed, those are better values.
I wrote it at work and could not come up with the weight values of a troop transport module so I just made it 300 tons. 25 tons is, if I remember that correctly, roughly what a modern fighter weights loaded so I used that.

One issue that would need to be handled is potential disproportionate effects of the aircraft attack/defence bonuses due to the way combat is currently calculated, total attack verses total defence. eg 10 ground attack squadrons against an enemy with 9 ground attack squadrons and a garrison battalion. The first should not double their strength due to the single opposing troop unit when most of their fighting is going to be against other air units. Similarly the same situation should be avoided with a single aircraft giving all the opposing forces interceptors double strength.

That's true.
One possibility could be to have air vs air resolved first.

Maybe even a split into 3 combat phases.
1. Air vs air
2. Air vs ground
3. Ground vs ground

That way a successful aircraft attack would be softening up enemy troops for the ground units while a good interceptor screen can prevent all damage to a group of ground troops.

I don't see any need for the combined arms bonus, troops can already receive a bonus due to commander skill from the ground combat bonus.

I don't really think there was a big need either.
Its just that the game already tracks what type a unit is but does absolutely nothing with it (at least as far as I know), so I thought adding something that makes use of it might be nice.

Also if not playing strictly by self imposed RP rules I usually just plunge down as many Assault Heavy Armor Battalions as I can with a few Combat Engineers in between and the odd Replacement Battalion here and there.
I pretty much never use "real" infantry for anything because if I can afford to train and sustain a mobile infantry unit I can usually also afford to train some heavy tanks.

A bonus to mixed units might give me encouragement to use them more often even if I don't tell myself "my insectoid race doesn't know what a tank is". 

[swarm_sadist]

Here is my view on a possible aircraft system in the game, which could hopefully be implemented easily as a stopgap. In the simplest explanation possible (for me at least), it can be broken down into three stats.

1. Air Radar Coverage
The amount of land(really airspace) that you can currently see using ground based air radar and early warning systems. Vaguely and without detail, the more radar stations you have, the more likely an enemy air attack can be spotted and intercepted. If you cannot see where an attack will occur, then the amount of interceptors you have is pretty much a worthless statistic.

2. Air Supremacy Rating
The amount of interception power you have IN YOUR OWN TERRITORY, based on the number of interceptors and fighters you have on the defensive. A high rating will damage or route bombers and fighters coming into your territory, while enemy air superiority fighters will try to lower it. The enemy also has an ASR, which will damage your own bombers when they attack AND will prevent damage to their forces. While air superiority fighters are usually much more expensive to research and manufacture, one air superiority fighters could take on multiple interceptors at beyond visual range and still return safely home when their munitions are emptied, allowing for multiple strikes in a lifetime.

3. Mission Effectiveness
The efficacy of the aircraft to perform it's primary mission, whether that is interception, air superiority, ground bombing, strategic bombing, reconnaissance, surveillance or AWAC.

Using these three statistics would provide aurora with a simple step up in terms of ground combat, and allow for more fleshing out later in the development cycle. Number 3 (mission efficiency) can depend entirely on the unit type, with each unit type having a different mission:

Planetary Interceptor Squadron
Intercepts ICBMs, fighters, bombers and drones entering your (claimed) airspace.

Air Superiority Fighter Squadron
Attacks enemy interceptors, as well as other fighters, to establish air superiority.

Ground Attack Bomber
Attacks ground units directly, even when next to friendlies. They are cheap but the enemy units can hit back.

Strategic Bomber
Hits the enemies factories, mines, cities and resource stockpiles. Nukes optional.


Using these, we can also expand to include some other types of aircraft later down the road.

Reconnaissance Aircraft
Searches enemy territory and provides intermittent information on ground movement, PDCs, industries and population. High speeds, stealth skins and high altitudes prevents most (but not all) interception. Cannot attack, cannot defend.

Surveillance Aircraft
Long endurance drones track local movement for guerillas, crime, smuggling, enemy infiltration, piracy, etc. Lowers unrest, prevents espionage, increases the chance of catching an enemy espionage team.

AWAC
Improves the air radar coverage, provides a place for the commander, and can directly coordinate and improve the capabilities of any units within it's command.

EW Aircraft
Searches for and destroys enemy AWAC, radar, reconnaissance aircraft and prevents ground AA from hitting friendlies.

Escort Fighters
Prevents the bombers from being damaged or distracted from enemy interceptors.

Aerospace Fighters
Aircraft launched from motherships in space to allow for some form of air superiority during the early stages of an invasion.


Air Force HQ
The numbered air force provides command and control for the entire air force on a planet. This is to give an early advantage to the defenders against invaders, while still allowing air superiority to eventually be established.

Air Division HQ
Provides the air force equivalent of a ground division.

Air Wing HQ
Provides command and control for 4 squadrons.

[GenJeFT]

Has anyone played Master of Orion 3?

Yes a seriously broke game BUT, they had a decent region system for both planetary building and ground combat. I also like how you could select how you wanted to fight on the planet with different tactics that you could select. Simply take that idea and run with it modifying it as needed. I enjoyed the ground combat in MOO3, mostly because it was they only place I could win in multiplayer games. But that system would work well for what you want to do with regions.

[alex_brunius]

I don't think adding ground based atmospheric only fighters and radar mechanics would add much to the game actually.

Any active sensor with a smaller resolution close enough can already spot all ground units in the open on a planet body.



What would be cool though is if we could design space fighters that can also fly and fight within the atmosphere. This would enable you to launch fighters from Carriers in space that can act as airsupport or invasion support and fire beam weapons from "within" the atmosphere thus circumventing the normal rules preventing firing beam weapons into an atmosphere.

It could also be fairly simple to add I think. Just a single toggle or component "atmospheric aerodynamic capable" that adds say 10 or 20% extra weight but unlocks this capability to hit ground targets with beams.

[doomsought]

We already have fighters in game, what we need is weapons specific to fighting ground forces.  They could be designed like a turret or CIWS.  It would makes sense if anti-ground-forces weapons don't need to be linked to a fire control just CIWS.  That would mean you could have very light/cheap fighters for anti-ground action which would be useless against space threats. 

Or you could revamp fighter design so that they are designed like CIWS, which would make more sense than spending a hilariously large amount of RP on unlocking fighter engines and having them grouped with ship designs.  You could also make heavy ground units with the same screen If you had a fighter/tank drop-down option.

[Khanti]

I like land battles concept, but when I was reading Honor Harrington series, it was clearly said: who controls the space/orbit controls the planet.  Winning space/orbital battle means surrender/destroying the planet. 
 
Space invasions like in Star Wars would be possible only with planetary shields preventing bombardment.  If bombardment is available no commanders would send troops down.  Just some rockets/lasers/whatever before sending a message "surrender or die".

[Paul M]

On the whole "we control the orbitals you die" idea.

In between WW1 and WW2 there was the whole idea that you could win wars solely from the air.  This idea seems to hang in there even in modern terms.  The reality so far as I have ever seen is that air support is valuable, and air interdiction can be devestating but if you want to occupy ground (or more importantly perhaps: deny it to the enemy) you need "boots on the ground."

Even in today's environoment of orbital survelliance, drones, AWACS, etc it has proven massively possible to sustain ground combat.  I recall one Iraqi artillary commander commenting that due to 6 weeks of air attacks he lost a single gun, being overrun by an armoured thrust cost him all of his battalion in the space of about 30 min or less.

At the end of the day there is always some way to spoof, or blind the orbital gun just like the same is true of modern air support.  There will always be terrain where it is in-appropriate or simply not usable.  More to the point there will be situations where it is valueless.  The Germans smashed Stalingrad from the air...and it didn't help them in the least.  Though the German's in Normandy were basically not getting supplies through they still did keep fighting and it took the combination of Goodwood and Cobra to break their lines.  The taliban is still fighting in Afganistan even though the allies have controlled the air from day one.  Even the support given to the rebels in Lybia required that their be a rebel army that would draw out the government forces and so far as I am aware the government forces had fairly limited AAA abilities.   Air support is a force multiplier, but you aren't going to win a ground war with it.

Nuclear weapons are not exactly the most ideal of battlefield support weapons, nor do they leave much to be occupied due to activation and climate disruption.  You certainly can bombard the enemy into the stone age but that isn't always a net gain for you.

Last but not least putting a ship in close orbit to provide both sensor and guidance will leave that ship very exposed to ground fire that would basically hit it before they even knew it had been fired.

The view that there is no solution to the enemy controlling the orbitals is just that people have not been presented with this situation and thus have not been required to find a solution to the problem (David Webber in particular in the case of the Herringswine universe isn't trying to find one).  I have every faith that there is a solution and that it will be implemented.  It is simply another aspect of warfare...I'm pretty sure people have been talking about this sort of "one weapon to rule them all" since we started getting together to have battles.  Inevitably someone finds the weakness to the new weapon system and then you are back to square one.  It is also possible I read Starship Troopers a few too many times growing up.

[Hawkeye]

I agree with the both of you

Khanti is right if we think of classical battles. Any time an enemy tries to mass forces for an attack on one of our positions, he gets blasted from space, no way around it.

But Paul is also right. There are circumstances, such an approach would not work. Asymetrical warfare is a bith in that regard.

Re. vulnerability of a ship in low orbit, yes, it would be vulnerable to ground fire, but I sure wouldn´t try to put a ship there, but a crapton of relatively small and cheap surveylance satellites. Any site shooting one or ten of those down will get an instant visit from Mister KKV from the warship(s) further out.

[symon]

Unless you plan on nuking a planet till it glows (which begs the question what do you intend to do with your glassy slag heap), atmospheres are very effective forms of defence. Most weapons that work well in a vacuum are pretty ineffective in an atmosphere (and vice versa).

Specialized ortillery munitions (preferably with forward observers) might be the most effective. Even then, you'd want boots on the ground to establish control.

Unsurprisingly, HH is a poor guide.

[Paul M]

The situation is a lot more complex then it looks.

To survive atmospheric re-entry and to be still effective the speed of the kinetic impactor has to be inside of a fairly narrow band.  Or at least according to a website I found that talks about meteors and what happens to them.  This limits you to something like 4-10 km/s KI velocity against a earth-like atmosphere.

This means that your ships will be in "low earth orbit" moving very slowly otherwise the KI's will arrive on target minutes to hours later.

It is this limitation that is generally forgotten, and it applies to nuclear warheads as well.  They have to come to a screeching halt before the atmosphere or else you get a kinetic airburst rather than a ground burst nuke.  The Lost Fleet books for all they had a pretty good basis for what they had happen really blew it here, with their launching precision KI strikes from the orbit of jupiter (effectively) and having them impact inside of a few days...they would impact but only as airbursts.  Those velocities are simply to high for material to remain solid in the face of atmopheric resistance...unless the idea was to blow holes in the atmosphere to let the last few rounds through.

The only systems that make sense for battlefield support are lasers, and rail guns.  There is still the issue of identifying a target in a complex battlefield environment.  I assume that the same procedure will be followed as is done today.  Either a clear target marker/laser designation for precise hits...or "one round for spotting" for more general stuff.  The ships in orbit are artillery, so they are force multipliers.  Their most effective use is in things like: "oh there is an enemy supply convoy", "oh there is the enemy CP", "oh there is an enemy ammo dump", "oh there is an enemy airbase" etc.  Fixed and relatively easy to identify targets can be taken out from orbit.  But after that...how much Blue on Blue do you like?  Identifying from orbit whose tanks you are shooting at in a meeting engagement would be interesting.  Pilots routinely can not spot things like bright orange target markers in broad daylight.  Atmospheric distrubances (like from the last KI barrage), clouds, smoke, camoflage, ECM etc will all make identification from orbit "not so easy."  Also what is the CEP of a rail gun slug?  In this case ship mounted lasers are likely far more effective but would require specialized targeting systems I'd imagine.

Micro satalites would last only so long as the enemy has time to plot their orbits then they would meet some steel ball bearings launched from a single use remote controlled launcher.  If we can take out things with KI's fired from Aegis ships I can't believe something battlefield portable would not show up in the future.  Or just a ground based laser...kind of hard to track it.  I'm fairly sure there will be an active orbital war...sensors will be destroyed on a regular basis.

Fundamentally in my view this is nothing more than the WW1 artillery generals arguement that the only thing you need for victory is more and bigger guns.  The biggest effect of orbital strikes is likely to make it more cost effective to use smaller forces (something the British discovered with air power in the 20s and 30s) to maintain control/fight wars.

[symon]

A good summary of many of the issues.

However, lasers are a very poor choice for ortillary if there is an atmosphere. Wreaks havoc with beam cohesion. Worse, the properties you want for good space performance (highest wavelength you can manage) are worst at coping with an atmosphere.

Death from above is a very real danger with no atmosphere (if the attackers doesn't want the facilities). Atmospheres, radiation belts and magnetic fields are good protection, unless the attacker is prepared to nuke the place from orbit, so being sure!

[Hawkeye]

I´m not arguing that there are not limitations to what ortillery can do, I just don´t trust those KKV numbers.

What about meteorites. The larger ones (which are not slowed down by the atmosphere a whole lot) hit earth with 10 to 70 km/s and those are not optimized to survive through the atmosphere. I would guess, that, if we put our mind to it, we could design a KKV that moves at 100 km/s and survive to impact on earth.
Yes, the larger meteorites mass in the in the hundreds or thousands of tons, but as I said, they are basicly pieces of rock, not tungsten rods or something similar.

Also, while I agree that it would be darn hard to spot/identify enemy tanks when they are already engaged with _my_ tanks, that was not what I was talking about.
I was more thinking about how the German Panzer Divisions learned pretty fast at Normandy (and earlier), that it was a baaaaad idea to be on the move during daytime, ´cause those tripple damned Jabos (fighter/bombers) were everywhere and would rip you a new one in a heartbeat

[Paul M]

a 10 cm dia iron object at an 80° angle looses nearly all energy when going through the atmosphere til 45 km/s then it starts breaking up in the air.

air resistance goes with the square of velocity...so that is why I think you want slower moving KI.  They have to get through the atmosphere without slowing.

either that or you throw much larger objects with a higher heat capacity as that is the critical issue that i think causes the air burst.

the calculator is here: http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk

as for fighter bomers...that is interdiction and I've said right from the start that is a good use for obital strikes.  Just keep in mind they also bombed a tiger bn with heavy bombers and it had zero effect.