Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[forsaken1111]

Nah, just strap engines and a guidance computer onto a few big rocks in the asteroid belt, time them to hit around the same time and wait. No need for a massive ship or operation.

[Greenbane]

Nah, just strap engines and a guidance computer onto a few big rocks in the asteroid belt, time them to hit around the same time and wait. No need for a massive ship or operation.

If that were possible...

a) It'd be very slow unless you used hundreds of (expensive) engines.
b) The enemy would have an ample window to intercept the lumbering rock with either missiles or sustained fire from energy weapons.
c) You also would need to get the massive engine cargo there somehow (not to mention install it all), which means...
--- 1) The cargo ships could be intercepted as well.
--- 2) The enemy would have a lot of time to disrupt your plan.

So I don't think it would be such a good idea unless you're hitting a frontier colony with minimal military presence. And even if it were the last colony of a largely defeated alien race, simply invading the planet would take far less time and expense. And probably be more effective across the board.

[forsaken1111]

a) It would start slow, but constant acceleration has a way of making things pick up speed.
b) You assume that the enemy can monitor the entire sky all the time. Today we look at barely 1% of the sky at any time with instruments capable of seeing a single asteroid moving at that kind of distance. Its very unlikely that it would be detected before its picked up significant speed, and you wouldn't send in just one. Even if they intercept the rock, they've expended ammunition while all you've lose is a few engines. Intercepting larger rocks wouldn't be quite as easy as you seem to think either...
c) It would be easier and cheaper to truck a few engines in than to build a massive ship capable of breaking up and firing entire asteroids, and has the advantage that the rocks can come from many different directions where the massive platform Beorn suggested can only fire from one location at a time and is very fragile, vulnerable to counterattack.
--- 1) The whole concept of kinetic bombardment assumes you have control of the outer system at least. If you cannot even get cargo ships in, it means you're still fighting the space battle and planetary bombardment is premature.
--- 2) Only if you give them that time.

Boosting rocks at a planet is a very old strategy for maximum destruction at minimal cost. It requires no expensive weapons platform, no elaborate engineering or plan, and you can use cheap last-generation engines. Detecting a few small non-emitting objects at a distance in space is not an easy feat.

[Neonivek]

The math required to do it would be monumental!

Afterall not only are you doing this to an irregularly shaped object, but you are fighting the force of gravity of several objects at once.

Anyhow I hope Aurora is no where close to being finished. There are just sooo many things it could be.

[forsaken1111]

The math required to do it would be monumental!

Afterall not only are you doing this to an irregularly shaped object, but you are fighting the force of gravity of several objects at once.

I think you're overestimating the difficulty somewhat. Yes, the math would be monumental... but this is the future. We can ALREADY do the calculations required for something like this, it isn't that much of a stretch to see that power compacted onto a ship or in a navigation computer.

Anyway the discussion is moot. I too hope that Aurora evolves over time, it could be an amazing game with some work.

[Neonivek]

Does the game currently have toxins you can destroy planets with?

[forsaken1111]

Does the game currently have toxins you can destroy planets with?

Well... sorta. You could park a terraforming ship in orbit and pump chlorine into the atmosphere to spike the colony cost and kill off population, yes.

[Neonivek]

Does the game currently have toxins you can destroy planets with?

Well... sorta. You could park a terraforming ship in orbit and pump chlorine into the atmosphere to spike the colony cost and kill off population, yes.

To my knowledge you can park weapons on the planet surface. Allowing planets to attack into space (not very effectively though)

Kind of a shame that missles are soo inaccurate (unless you turn them into cluster missles) that they are only really effective at striking planets.

[forsaken1111]

Does the game currently have toxins you can destroy planets with?

Well... sorta. You could park a terraforming ship in orbit and pump chlorine into the atmosphere to spike the colony cost and kill off population, yes.

To my knowledge you can park weapons on the planet surface. Allowing planets to attack into space (not very effectively though)

Yeah, PDC's can have weapons which can fire into space though I think only missiles are very good at it.

[Greenbane]

a) It would start slow, but constant acceleration has a way of making things pick up speed.
b) You assume that the enemy can monitor the entire sky all the time. Today we look at barely 1% of the sky at any time with instruments capable of seeing a single asteroid moving at that kind of distance. Its very unlikely that it would be detected before its picked up significant speed, and you wouldn't send in just one. Even if they intercept the rock, they've expended ammunition while all you've lose is a few engines. Intercepting larger rocks wouldn't be quite as easy as you seem to think either...
c) It would be easier and cheaper to truck a few engines in than to build a massive ship capable of breaking up and firing entire asteroids, and has the advantage that the rocks can come from many different directions where the massive platform Beorn suggested can only fire from one location at a time and is very fragile, vulnerable to counterattack.
--- 1) The whole concept of kinetic bombardment assumes you have control of the outer system at least. If you cannot even get cargo ships in, it means you're still fighting the space battle and planetary bombardment is premature.
--- 2) Only if you give them that time.

Boosting rocks at a planet is a very old strategy for maximum destruction at minimal cost. It requires no expensive weapons platform, no elaborate engineering or plan, and you can use cheap last-generation engines. Detecting a few small non-emitting objects at a distance in space is not an easy feat.

I was talking in Aurora terms, where there's no acceleration and you'd hit a strict speed limit, the enemy can monitor the entire sky all the time (in reality, even current astronomical instruments can do a complete sky survey in about four hours, or less*) and building a couple of ships with railguns would be cheaper than constructing hundreds of expendable engines (even missiles would be cheaper if you just want to glass the target). Not to mention planetary invasion is essentially free once you've trained the (cheap) ground units.

*Source: http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/spacewardetect.php

[forsaken1111]

That source is talking about detecting active engines shuttling about. In this case the engines would be on the far side of a big rock aimed right at the observer. Any heat plume would be out of the observer's line of sight, and there would be no relative motion to measure. You would have to measure the observed size of the space rock as it moved directly towards you, or figure out that one rock out of billions has shifted its orbit.

These rocks don't need to be under constant acceleration either. If you have time, a small nudge can knock a rock onto an orbit which will eventually hit the planet, and in that case you'd have to compute the orbit of every object in the sky in real time to know if one shifted to an orbit that would eventually hit you. Its a big problem with no good answer beyond lots of raw computing power and lots and lots of observation, with a good dose of luck.

[Greenbane]

(...)you'd have to compute the orbit of every object in the sky in real time to know if one shifted to an orbit that would eventually hit you.

And you think that won't be possible in 100, hell, 50 years?

EDIT: You needn't monitor every object in the sky in realtime, though. Just those within a relatively tiny sphere around the detector.

[breadbocks]

Err... Hmm....

Even with my spiffy monitor, I can't reach the 1024 height needed. Are there any tools which extend my monitor vertically?

[forsaken1111]

(...)you'd have to compute the orbit of every object in the sky in real time to know if one shifted to an orbit that would eventually hit you.

And you think that won't be possible in 100, hell, 50 years?

EDIT: You needn't monitor every object in the sky in realtime, though. Just those within a relatively tiny sphere around the detector.

what if I pick a rock outside of that tiny sphere? By the time you detect it, it could be moving so quickly that diverting it is impossible.

Regardless, I said this discussion is moot because its all amateur speculation with no basis in fact. We don't know what it would really be like.

[quintin522]

Control panel ->Appearances and Themes -> Display -> Settings ->Advanced ->Monitor ->Uncheck "Hide modes this monitor can not display"