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VB6 Aurora > Newtonian Aurora
Island Hopping vs. Deep Strike
MehMuffin:
One possible form of deep strike that I see is with the new self guided missiles, a task group jumping into a system only for long enough to target an enemy colony/base and fire self guided missiles at where it will be when they reach it, and jumping out. This would let a box launcher salvo of several hundred missiles combined with a deep strike easily wipe out an alien homeworld.
UnLimiTeD:
Unless someone detonates a single nuke in their path.
Or a Canister of Sand.
jseah:
Doctrine: 1000km separation between individual missiles.
Doctrine: Missiles perform evasive maneuvers when enemy is within 300 000km.
Then again, there is a different way. The missiles may not be able to reach the planet but demonstrate it one time anyway. Show up with a huge force, announce your presence, launch a deliberately under-strength salvo and leave.
Now the defender is forced to place anti-missile defences at every important colony.
Imagine defending Titan against an incoming missile salvo... while Earth is in opposition. Defending spread out colonies in multiple systems could cost more than the attacking fleet + missiles.
swarm_sadist:
Resurrection; almost been a year but oh well...
I was thinking more about deep strikes in a 3D environment and I discovered some limitations, most of which have already been discussed.
1. Time: the amount of time from the order to the completion of the task increases as the distance increases. While this may be minor if there is some way to communicate FTL, a universe with a limited communications range will effectively put that unit out of action until the task is completed. It also increases the time between strikes, reducing the effectiveness as the enemy rebuilds any damage received.
2. Range: the range increases twice as fast as the distance, since the unit must turn around and head back home at the end of the mission. A longer range requires more fuel, more supplies, more room for the crew in place of weapons. A long range unit would therefor be weaker than a system defence craft, and this difference would increase as the range required increased.
3. Intel: the intelligence of distant targets will always be worse than closer targets, will be more out of date and will be less frequent. Scout ships would need to be placed nearer to the enemy in order to have accurate intelligence, but that would require either more range or more forward outposts to refuel them. Forward outposts that would most likely be circumvented by the enemy.
4. Firepower: as mentioned before, the firepower of a unit must be sacrificed for range, and the increased range will increase the time required to head back and reload. Therefor, even if you managed to infiltrate a system and bomb a planet, there is no guarantee that the planet would be wrecked enough to justify the fuel costs.
My idea:
Have it so that ships must travel between stars when moving at FTL (which is how it has been explained), and make it dependant upon the size of the star. The larger, less common stars would act as a crossroad for long distance travel, while the clusters of the more numerous small stars would act like islands. More powerful FTL engines could move a ship between much more distant stars, while the weaker starting engines would only allow movement between nearby stars only.
Movement between small dwarf stars would be possible only at short range, while two super giants could allow travel across thousands of ly at high tech levels. The distant super giant would have it's own cluster around itself, allowing for stellar highways across large distances. Further up the tech tree, more advanced travel from larger (and more dangerous stars) could allow for further distances to be travelled (possibly even between black holes).
This would result in forward bases being constructed across multiple systems, as well as the placement of fleets inside large star wells. The 'islands' of dwarf stars would allow for island hopping campaigns across a cluster, but would still allow for deep strikes at higher tech levels (or with better, dedicated engines for long distance travel).
PTTG:
I got the feeling that Steve backed off from Newtonian Aurora, which is a shame, because I was really looking forward to it.
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