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[Amperzand]

Yep. I believe AtomicRockets has a neat discussion on roughly the same topic. Vessels referred to as Jousters carry various kinetic impactors, accelerate towards the target, release them, and pull away.

[i2amroy]

You know the asteroid belt? Standing on one 'roid, you need a telescope to see the next one in line, so to speak. When we're talking about space combat this is the kind of scale you need to be thinking in. If you're fighting in space you are doing it looking at a computer.

Heck, this is even true with most airplane combat on earth today; the opening stages (which is when the vast majority of combats are decided) of modern fighter jet combat literally comes down to "the computer informs you that the enemy (which you can't actually see yet) is targeted, you press the button to fire the missiles, and a minute later the computer informs you of a hit or miss".

[PTTG??]

One common assumption I've seen about space combat is that it will take place on interplanetary scales. In practice, I think it's more likely that combat -- or at least the interesting combat, in the sense that, while most modern casualties are caused by bombs and artillery we focus on infantry combat in fiction -- will take place in orbit or by surprise at very close range. Pirates might claim to be friendly until they close to naked-eye range, estimate some opening volleys, and suddenly open shutters and lase the bejesus out of an unsuspecting trade port. Even in open war, belligerents won't joust at one another for no good reason, there will only be combat where there's a practical reason to sacrifice the ships that may be lost.

A dedicated millitary ship is obvious, and therefore pointless. As we've already seen, stealth isn't possible in space, but subterfuge is.

And when you have subterfuge, all you really need is a rock, not a nuke. This is where the engine exhaust comes in. It takes careful navigation to avoid hosing the starbase with relativistic steam. If you come in to dock and decide to change sides, you can just not be careful.

[i2amroy]

Yeah but consider this fact; it's extremely easy for a spacestation to mount multiple guns at the docking areas. Sure you'll torch the station with your exhaust, but you certainly aren't going to be walking away from it anytime soon.

And honestly that's the way a lot of space combat comes down to something similar by virtue of the fact that everyone is essentially walking around in metaphorical soap bubbles that the need to carry life support in hard vacuum causes; pop them badly enough and there isn't really much that they can do. As a result it's very common in considering space fighting to see 1 of three scenarios:
1) Mutually assured destruction - you can pop me with your rock, but I'll pop you with my rock. We all die.
2) Perfect defenses - We both have so much time to defend that even our weak defenses can counter your best offenses. Nobody dies at all as long as we have resources to burn.
3) More/better resources win - My computer is faster than yours, so if I can close to the point where my computer can handle your offenses but your computer can't handle mine than I win, or I have more fuel than you and can just chase you till you run out.

Since scenario 1 is going to happen in any sort of close range battle, and scenario 2 in any sort of long range one, you  basically have two options, either try to find that magic middle ground or draw the fight out long enough so that your resource advantage can take precedence; or try to take the target through more mundane means. In the case of a space port, this would be actually docking with it, than capturing it from the inside rather than the outside (which has the advantage of gaining you an actual useful functioning spaceport over a pile of space wreckage.

(This of course doesn't even consider the idea of ground->space/space->ground combat, which would be much more useful in actually earning you anything of any substance, since if you are fighting over resources they certainly aren't going to be located in the hard vacuum, after all or what you would actually be fighting over since a space-based civilization could feasibly overcome many of the things such as resource/space scarcity that cause much of our fights through cases like asteroid mining and space habitats.)

[Rolepgeek]

Honor. Honor is always important, i2amroy.

If wormholes become the go-to route for 'FTL', I can see them being used as weapons. Might have to be used at lagrange points normally, but if you can open a wormhole smaller than the target's vessel, in it's path, and have it not hit you directly on the other side, you can tear shit up regardless of defenses.

[Amperzand]

Honor is a very interesting topic in science fiction.

Everything works fine until one pragmatic bastard ruins it for everyone. I'd prefer to write stories around the pragmatic bastard.

[Rolepgeek]

Honor is a very interesting topic in science fiction.

Everything works fine until one pragmatic bastard ruins it for everyone. I'd prefer to write stories around the pragmatic bastard.

Right, and then everyone gets together and obliterates that guy's planets.

Honor means planets don't explode, Amperzand.

[Amperzand]

I would say that genocidal nastiness and pragmatism are different. It is, after all, rather unpragmatic to pursue a course of action that gets everyone else to gang up on you.

Edit; Additionally, I didn't necessarily mean that they be the hero. A story is as much built around the antagonist as the hero.

[Tack]

Yeah, pragmatism v honor v genocide is always weird.

"Honor" is the resistance to the gun in early Japan, because it invalidated the skills of a whole noble class. It also got tossed out the window due to pragmatism.

"Compassion" led to the Geneva convention, to stop overly painful or mutilating weapons from being used in war.

"Fear" is why we don't use Nukes or planet killers, IMO.

[Amperzand]

Yeah, pragmatism v honor v genocide is always weird.

"Honor" is the resistance to the gun in early Japan, because it invalidated the skills of a whole noble class. It also got tossed out the window due to pragmatism.

"Compassion" led to the Geneva convention, to stop overly painful or mutilating weapons from being used in war.

"Fear" is why we don't use Nukes or planet killers, IMO.

Yes.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Saw genocide and remembered something...
Call of duty advanced warfare storyline spoiler

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Is it possible to make a virus that targets people with specific genes like in CoD:AW? Can you design your own specialty viruses?

[Grimlocke]

I was just thinking, if a spaceship were to go near-light speed and head right for you, it would be very difficult to see it coming before it would be right on top of you. (ignoring for a moment the annoying temporal funkiness that might cause)

In fact, the moment your enemies travel at light speed or faster it would be very stupid to try and detect an enemy by sight. It would be like listening for incoming bullets. Things going faster than light that move toward you would not be visible until they already passed you (or hit you)...

If wormholes turn out to be of no practical use, then communication would for the first time since the invention of the fire signal be limited to how fast someone can carry it around.

This is also where my understanding of these matter kind of falters. Does light always move at the same speed, regardless of speed of its source? If it doesn't then moving at exactly one C would cause the ship to leave a trail of light that stands still... That doesn't sounds right at all.

...

I can see why somewhat FTL detection and communication is needed for writing remotely entertaining space battles.

[Sheb]

Saw genocide and remembered something...
Call of duty advanced warfare storyline spoiler

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Is it possible to make a virus that targets people with specific genes like in CoD:AW? Can you design your own specialty viruses?

I'd say it depend on what the genes are. I can't think right now of a way to make a virus that target a specific DNA sequence, so it depend what that gene is coding for.

Edit: Actually, you've got those nifty molecular computers that react to level of gene expression and produce some DNA sequence. AFAIK they only work in vitro so far, but you could imagine building one that react to a specific gene sequence and produce a toxin, then package it into some easily spread virus. It should spread around and only kill your target.

So yeah, it's science-fiction, but it's definitely possible.

[Kot]

I belive it could be possible in a dozen of years or so, but it will never be nowhere near as advanced as the ones in AW are. You certainly can't make a database of people it won't target, unless it's some kind of nanomachine virus, but only some certain features, possibly like race which gives some serious incetive for terrorists to get their hands on a working one, but still... it's viruses. Viruses have crazy mutation rate. Relasing one that would target just people with blue eyes could suddenly turn out to be complete genocide for everyone.

[Sheb]

I belive it could be possible in a dozen of years or so, but it will never be nowhere near as advanced as the ones in AW are. You certainly can't make a database of people it won't target, unless it's some kind of nanomachine virus, but only some certain features, possibly like race which gives some serious incetive for terrorists to get their hands on a working one, but still... it's viruses. Viruses have crazy mutation rate. Relasing one that would target just people with blue eyes could suddenly turn out to be complete genocide for everyone.

You could make a database of people it won't target: all you'd need is a genomic database for everyone, and then you know who's a potential victim and who's not. Not possible right now, but not impossible in a decade. Mutations would definitely be an issue, especially since most people's genetic make up is very similar, so a tiny difference would make it target someone else. But then that's mostly an issue if you want it to spread it far and whide, I don't know how they use it in AW.