PD weapons exist in any case, be it against missiles or asteroids. Take that as fact.
This means that missiles both exist, and are used on the field.
This means there are tactics developed to counteract the enemy point defense.
This means fighters are possible during the same phase of engagement where missiles are possible.
Possible, yes. Effective, efficient, worth making? You haven't shown that.
Weapons precise enough to destroy fighters can destroy or damage these weapons with ease, as they are attached to much slower-moving capital ships.
Whereas fighters are going to have severe trouble dodging any kind of weapon unless they're at extreme distances, so they're also going to be easy to hit.
The intent is to say that the weapons themselves are easier to hit than the fighters. That the fighters can be hit with relative ease by laser weapons I'll take for granted here.
The opening phase of the fight therefore becomes an exchange of salvoes that targets the individual weapons of the enemy - it's the best way to render the enemy helpless. This is especially true if ships are valuable enough to refrain from destroying them with abandon.
Wouldn't your logic make the ship with more PD weapons and PDstroyers the one with the advantage?
The general notion of combat, if ships are merely captured instead of destroyed, would lean towards that, yes.
Single large weapons become weakpoints. They become secondary weapons meant to be used when it's necessary to destroy the enemy, after its precise defensive weaponry is removed.
Assuming, of course, that the exposed part of the weapon is A. easy to damage and B. important to the function of the weapon.
A reasonable enough assumption, given that we're talking about
large weapons here. A laser powerful enough to count as anti-ship, and focused to a distance of greater than a light-second, may well have a focusing lens measured in
meters. At distances of over a light-second, any opening in armor more than a foot wide, be it for lasers or projectile weapons, aimed anywhere in the general direction of an enemy ship, may as well be a tunnel straight through it as far as weapon reach in concerned. No matter how rugged the design, several megawatts of laser pulse delivered directly to the operating mechanism is going to be bad for the weapon. If it's a turret, it's similarly doomed - being permanently exposed and likewise having to face towards the enemy in order to fire.
Multiple mobile weapons with enough range and precision to inflict damage on sensitive parts of the enemy become favorable.
Wait, how did "mobile" become an advantage? You kinda slipped that in there without explaining it. And why do I suspect you're going to immediately jump from "mobile" to "not on the ship" without explaining that, either?
"Mobile" becomes an advantage over static due to static weapons being vulnerable, as per above. This is, still, assuming engagements happen as they realistically would - at great distances with enough light lag to make lasers need to lead their target. There are many problems with mobile weapons affixed to the ship's hull - far from the least of which is that they're never going to be as armored as the ship itself, and unless they're literally little magnetically-attached scooting tanks they will introduce weakpoints in the armor they're attached to.
They are used at large ranges to avoid incoming enemy fire where regular weapon turrets are incapable of this,
Why? Again, the turrets can be made mobile if it's that much of an issue, and the ability to dodge in space is pretty much nil except against kinetic weapons at low speeds or extreme ranges.
Half a second of light lag in either direction is enough to make lasers pitifully ineffective against anything capable of suddenly changing direction. You assume mobile turrets are only going to be used by one side - if they're so effective,
both sides will use them. With both sides using them, the tactics of countering them changes from destroying the turrets themselves to destroying their means of moving around. The next logical step is disconnecting the turrets from the ship - making a weapons platform drone.
Attack drones use starts to expand when both sides use drones. As they are mobile weapons, the engagement ranges close to eliminate the possibility of dodging due to laser lag.
You mean it was possible to dodge before? Referring to those fighters, there.
Yes. Assuming realistic engagement ranges, again. At close range, less than some ten thousand kilometers, missiles and fighters alike can be used because their travel time to target becomes survivable, especially with counter-PD fire. The whole idea of fighters being useless stems from the fact that they can never get into range before being destroyed, because real engagement ranges in space are going to be vast.
Eventually fights progress into mixed drone/ship combat with ships and drones both exchanging fire at long and medium ranges.
Unless, of course, you have accurate, long-range lasers that can heavily damage ships before they get in fighter/etc range. Or you could always shoot down the drones as they get closer.
The whole thing with drones began exactly because everyone had those accurate lasers in the first place - any heavy weapons you so much as point in the direction of the enemy while not covered by protective armor covers are going to be slagged as a first priority. So everyone focuses on taking out those long-range accurate lasers first, and then someone has the idea to put long-range accurate lasers on something more agile and less restricted than a turret running around the ship's hull.
Unless drones possess individual intelligence on par with human, effective countermeasures are being employed to fool the opposing sides' drone AI.
Which are most eaisly and cheaply remedied with a patch, not--
Human presence is required on the field to control and direct drones in situations where light lag would prove disastrous.
--that.
Patch it once, twice, how many times? Programs are never perfect, and every error in combat is a fight lost. Drones will always need human supervision, because it's impossible to account for all the possible changes in tactics the enemy can employ.
Squadrons of mixed piloted and drone fighters are adopted as standard, all designed to appear identical on sensors, to provide in-situ control of AI drones.
Which requires wasting space in the drones so they have fake life support and whatnot.
Heh. Fake life support. Why not simply extra batteries? Maybe some redundant sensor arrays? CPU cooling systems?
That's about as far as I can hypothesize it.
Mind starting over?
[/quote]Eenope. See no need. ^_^
ninja laser edit: A pulse laser weapon is inherently bad at going through armor. It's equally good at melting tough armor and weak armor, but both of those are at best chipped away - armor ablation, as you yourself called it. The entire pulse, all of its energy, goes into the topmost layer of armor, which immediately boils away, leaving the rest of the armor partially melted but only receiving as much damage as the vaporized portion of the armor managed to conduct to it. So, not very good unless rapid-firing and hitting the same spot multiple times.
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Topic: Einsteinian Roulette: OOC and NEW PLAYER INFO (Read 2543908 times)