Supercarrier help

[Cassel]

1 hour ago, GoSlash27 said:

Oh, no... There were rockets and they were used to devastating effect. A flight of F4U Corsairs could unload a barrage of "Holy Moses" rockets that was as powerful as the broadside from a cruiser.

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How many ships were destroyed because of those rockets?

3 minutes ago, ARS said:

Telling story about the life of fighter drones is less appealing for audience than telling an elite pilot's combat record.

You should check "Stealth" 2005
 

3 minutes ago, ARS said:

Also, drones does not have decision making capabilities like humans do. Drones can also get jammed, fooled or hacked (if drones have a potential to kill carriers, and suddenly your drones are hacked to be hostile towards you, you are screwed).

+1, I said same thing earlier.
 

 

[tater]

3 minutes ago, Cassel said:

How many ships were destroyed because of those rockets?

Many small craft were likely wrecked by HVARs, though .50 cal MG fire was more common, or skip-bombing.

USN forces would usually have mixed assets wherever enemy shipping targets were, and FM-2s, F6fs, and F4Us all had the capability to mount HVAR rails---though they were usually used against land targets, many barges, sea trucks, etc were tied up along the shore during the day and camouflaged, waiting for nightfall to move.

[GoSlash27]

9 minutes ago, Cassel said:

How many ships were destroyed because of those rockets?

Cassel,

I have no idea, I didn't count. I was just correcting the statement that they didn't have aerial rockets back then. They did, and they were quite effective.

Best,
-Slashy

[ARS]

12 minutes ago, Cassel said:

You should check "Stealth" 2005

I already watched it, but what I meant is not about super high tech prototype drone where only 1 is made, what I mean is space fighter drones that's considered expendable, cheap, dumb drones with simple targeting and combat protocols that you throw away into enemy ship to kill it (and they die in droves)

[tater]

25 minutes ago, ARS said:

Telling story about the life of fighter drones is less appealing for audience than telling an elite pilot's combat record.

Certainly true, but people have experience with computer systems now, so imagining a disntant future where computers are somehow less capable is... difficult.

 

25 minutes ago, ARS said:

Also, drones does not have decision making capabilities like humans do.

Sure they do, and in a space combat environment, things happen too fast for people to even react. Human reaction time is on the order of 1-2 seconds. Perceive task, send impulses to the appropriate body part to perform task, impulses arrive, limb moves, craft does whatever. People would not plausibly be aiming weapons, they would at best be telling narrow, intelligent systems what targets to prioritize, etc.

25 minutes ago, ARS said:

Drones can also get jammed, fooled or hacked (if drones have a potential to kill carriers, and suddenly your drones are hacked to be hostile towards you, you are screwed).

So what, they're already part of any spacecraft, and the added mass to add a crew compartment, plus the value of a human being, makes them cheap. The human fighter can be hacked (pretty unlikely in combat, regardless).

25 minutes ago, ARS said:

And as mentioned by @Terwin, space warfare is not cheap (mostly). A fighter that have a service life of 100 battles is much more economical than buying 100 missiles. Pilots can gain experience to fight and adapt to different combat situations better, but drones does not.

This is nonsense. No fighter will last 100 sorties. If missiles can be shot down (and if they can't, then you don't need fighters, 1 missile, one kill), then fighters can be as well. So you have fighters that are basically suicide craft, or no need for fighters. Pick one. The current survey if AI researchers puts the time to Artificial General Intelligence at ~50 years. Some put it as far as hundreds of years away. BSG style space battleships are well beyond that sort of time frame, so it's best to assume AGI, or at the very least narrowly superintelligent systems. The AI need not be a human analog, capable of writing poetry, it only needs to know how to deliver weapons systems to designated targets. They will always be better than people at this once they exist.

 

25 minutes ago, ARS said:

About the computer in space, there's a bit of truth in real life, computers used in space is indeed worse than we have on earth. Many space probes, especially for exploration past Jupiter even has a transmission data rate of one bit per second (not byte, it's bit). When NASA is asked why they didn't use more powerful or better computer, they simply said that: "Back then during the early space age, we're evaluating several computers that'll be used for unmanned mission into another planet. Several of the candidates are amongst the best, fastest and most sophisticated computers ever designed during that era. But we choose the slowest and simplest one. Why? Faster and more powerful computer has higher clock speed as well as more power hungry, this creates an issue in power management and heat dissipation since unlike on earth, heat dissipation is a far more serious problem in space. Also, more complex system is more vulnerable to failure than simple system, and in space, there's no way we can repair them like here on earth, so we choose the simplest system that worked for space probes simply because, what they lack in performance and quality, they compensate it with durability and reliability"

Power is not an issue, the thread is about Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica style fighters and spacecraft. Given that the fighters aren't 98% propellant, but look like, well, fighters, they must be using VAST amounts of energy, to even have small dvs and reasonable thrust, since they carry almost no fuel, the energy delivered to that propellant must be huge. Even reactionless drives require vast power (whatever the total KE they give to their craft).

Computers use very little power compared to every other sci-fi system you must imagine these space fighters to have.

Another post mentioned cooling. Certainly a huge issue for anything realistic, but space opera ships ignore this, and if you bother negating lasers because of cooling, you might as well negate the fighters as well. Any "realism" arument used to prop up fighters opens up the same level of realism expectation for everything else.

[DDE]

@tater @ARS Burnside's Zeroth Law is love, Burnside's Zeroth Law is life.

48 minutes ago, Cassel said:

You should check "Stealth" 2005

Villains need not to be sympathetic.

13 minutes ago, tater said:

If missiles can be shot down (and if they can't, then you don't need fighters, 1 missile, one kill)

Nah. ~3 missiles per fighter for older models, 0.9 fighters per missile as currently assured by manufacturers.

So, probably with generous assumptions about countermeasures.

Edited January 22, 2018 by DDE

[GoSlash27]

13 minutes ago, tater said:

Sure they do, and in a space combat environment, things happen too fast for people to even react. Human reaction time is on the order of 1-2 seconds. Perceive task, send impulses to the appropriate body part to perform task, impulses arrive, limb moves, craft does whatever. People would not plausibly be aiming weapons, they would at best be telling narrow, intelligent systems what targets to prioritize, etc.

They had a bad experience in the past with their AI combat systems. They went haywire and started searching for Sarah Connor. Now nobody trusts AI.

Best,
-Slashy

[tater]

1 minute ago, GoSlash27 said:

They had a bad experience in the past with their AI combat systems. They went haywire and started searching for Sarah Connor. Now nobody trusts AI.

Doesn't require AGI. AlphaGo would do just fine. Running on a laptop.

If I asked about tarvel to Mars, would you get out paper, or consult trajectory browser at NASA? Would you use a slide rule, or a calculator (or wolfram alpha)? Assuming we're not talking steam punk, even old computers would be superior to people, and certainly current systems would be, even forgetting any improvements at all in computing.

BTW, I think if any civilization makes AI incompatible with their society, that;s a mistake they only get to make once.

[Cassel]

41 minutes ago, ARS said:

I already watched it, but what I meant is not about super high tech prototype drone where only 1 is made, what I mean is space fighter drones that's considered expendable, cheap, dumb drones with simple targeting and combat protocols that you throw away into enemy ship to kill it (and they die in droves)

Some oeople like watching zombies moves and tv series, I guess there are your viewers :-)

[tater]

9 minutes ago, DDE said:

@tater @ARS Burnside's Zeroth Law is love, Burnside's Zeroth Law is life.

There are people that like the SW prequels... no accounting for taste.

The solution is to have AGI, and make the ships themselves interesting characters (Iain Banks, for example).

 

9 minutes ago, DDE said:

Villains need not to be sympathetic.

Nah. ~3 missiles per fighter for older models, 0.9 fighters per missile as currently assured by manufacturers.

So, probably with generous assumptions about countermeasures.

Countermeasures work against all systems, including people, since they only see what the sensors show them, anyway.

 

I think OP needs to flesh out what the specifics are. I'll entertain any framework, but I need the framework.

[Cassel]

50 minutes ago, tater said:

Many small craft were likely wrecked by HVARs, though .50 cal MG fire was more common, or skip-bombing.

USN forces would usually have mixed assets wherever enemy shipping targets were, and FM-2s, F6fs, and F4Us all had the capability to mount HVAR rails---though they were usually used against land targets, many barges, sea trucks, etc were tied up along the shore during the day and camouflaged, waiting for nightfall to move.

So not many sea targets were destroyed by rockets, if I understand that correctly.

What was range of those rockets? They could hit targets behind horizon line or they were just like cannons shell, but more powerful?

[GoSlash27]

1 minute ago, Cassel said:

What was range of those rockets? They could hit targets behind horizon line or they were just like cannons shell, but more powerful?

The latter.

Best,
-Slashy

[Cassel]

28 minutes ago, tater said:

BTW, I think if any civilization makes AI incompatible with their society, that;s a mistake they only get to make once.

I am more afraid of AI limited with certain mind set and not allowing anyone to have different mind set, ever again.

21 minutes ago, GoSlash27 said:

The latter.

Best,
-Slashy

That explains why carriers during WWII were so powerful units, but now when you can hit them using rockets or railguns (over 100km range) I think they are going to lose meaning. And remember you don't have to sink carrier with railgun projectile, all you need is to destroy planes on deck.

With lasers you can destroy antennas and radar systems of any ship in open sea.

 

Edited January 22, 2018 by Cassel

[tater]

1 minute ago, Cassel said:

So not many sea targets were destroyed by rockets, if I understand that correctly.

What was range of those rockets? They could hit targets behind horizon line or they were just like cannons shell, but more powerful?

Direct fire. They were often fired while the machine guns were also firing. That close. 1-2 km, mostly in altitude, from a dive.

No, not many ships were attacked with 5inch rockets in ww2.

 

[Cassel]

@Jhorriga I think I've found role for your carrier :-)

Once planet orbit is cleared by space-all-in-one-battleships, you can use space-carriers to deliver manned fighters to planet atmosphere to conquer it. Your space-carrier could be space-sea-carrier that could make reentry to planet surface and then deploy smaller naval and air units.

Edited January 22, 2018 by Cassel

[DDE]

9 minutes ago, Cassel said:

@Jhorriga I think I've found role for your carrier :-)

Once planet orbit is cleared by space-all-in-one-battleships, you can use space-carriers to deliver manned fighters to planet atmosphere to conquer it. Your space-carrier could be space-sea-carrier that could make reentry to planet surface and then deploy smaller naval and air units.

So it's not a carrier but a landing helicopter dock

I actually completely agree, and, for more or less fighter-esque aircraft, did exactly that with my "corvette carriers" (as in, they carry corvettes).

Someone might retort about orbital bombardment, but a) you still require tactical troop insertion and b) close air support may be faster than orbital artillery, although likely slower than ground-to-ground artillery.

[GoSlash27]

35 minutes ago, Cassel said:

That explains why carriers during WWII were so powerful units, but now when you can hit them using rockets or railguns (over 100km range) I think they are going to lose meaning. And remember you don't have to sink carrier with railgun projectile, all you need is to destroy planes on deck.

Ah, but you still have to get within range. Fighters patrol many hundreds of km's away. They will spot you and call in strikes to take you out long before you get in range. That's something you've got to understand; carriers don't just steam around with their complement on their deck, waiting for trouble. They have air ops going 24/7. Those planes are out patrolling, hunting subs, shadowing suspicious vessels, etc. They maintain a constant air cover that protects hundreds of nautical miles away from the ships.

 

Best,
-Slashy

Edited January 22, 2018 by GoSlash27

[Cassel]

16 minutes ago, DDE said:

So it's not a carrier but a landing helicopter dock

I actually completely agree, and, for more or less fighter-esque aircraft, did exactly that with my "corvette carriers" (as in, they carry corvettes).

Someone might retort about orbital bombardment, but a) you still require tactical troop insertion and b) close air support may be faster than orbital artillery, although likely slower than ground-to-ground artillery.

Orbital bombardment is good to destroy large naval units and bases and some anti-orbital defence systems, while re-entry-carrier would be next step to secure landing site for more troops.

6 minutes ago, GoSlash27 said:

Ah, but you still have to get within range. Fighters patrol many hundreds of km's away. They will spot you and call in strikes to take you out long before you get in range.
 

Best,
-Slashy

Planes vs ship with laser = ship wins :-)

You need something that would keep railguns away from your carrier or you will lose planes. Smaller naval units from your carrier escort can be damaged by railguns too, so I don't really see how open sea battle can go other way than equal exchange 1 for 1.

[DDE]

14 minutes ago, Cassel said:

Orbital bombardment is good to destroy large naval units and bases and some anti-orbital defence systems, while re-entry-carrier would be next step to secure landing site for more troops.

Hm... about naval units... I'm afraid that anti-orbital submarines will be incredibly annoying.

[GoSlash27]

9 minutes ago, Cassel said:

Planes vs ship with laser = ship wins :-)

Actually, not so much. Airplanes don't take on surface combatants singly. They swarm and overwhelm your defenses. You may *think* that long range guns trump air power, but that question has been roundly answered. The aircraft carrier rendered the battleship obsolete as a capital ship.

And again... you should really have an understanding of naval history and doctrine if you're going to attempt to use it as an analogy.

Best,
-Slashy

[justidutch]

3 minutes ago, DDE said:

Hm... about naval units... I'm afraid that anti-orbital submarines will be incredibly annoying.

especially those ones that go orbital speeds!

[Cassel]

1 minute ago, GoSlash27 said:

Actually, not so much. Airplanes don't take on surface combatants singly. They swarm and overwhelm your defenses. You may *think* that long range guns trump air power, but that question has been roundly answered. The aircraft carrier rendered the battleship obsolete as a capital ship.

And again... you should really have an understanding of naval history and doctrine if you're going to attempt to use it as an analogy.

Best,
-Slashy

Then I am back to my argument... do they ever fought real modern battle carrier + escort vs same opponent?

What was during WWII doesn't count when you add modern rockets and lasers to that equation.

[DDE]

1 minute ago, Cassel said:

Then I am back to my argument... do they ever fought real modern battle carrier + escort vs same opponent?

What was during WWII doesn't count when you add modern rockets and lasers to that equation.

No. Primarily because only one nation even has full-fledged fleet carriers. The second half of the XXth century has been an era of asymmetric naval warfare.

[DDE]

@Cassel That said, a strike aircraft (especially unmanned and with tanker support) still outranges even the most optimistic railgun ranges.

Dammit, I need to find out the limitations of merging...

Edited January 22, 2018 by DDE

[GoSlash27]

54 minutes ago, Cassel said:

What was during WWII doesn't count when you add modern rockets and lasers to that equation.

Modern rockets, yes. Modern lasers, OTOH, have zero effect on the balance of forces, even today.  As for how it translates to this imaginary sci- fi world, rockets would take the place of torpedoes. Modern missiles operate in a very different environment than space, and would require reaction thrusters in order to maneuver.
 In this imaginary universe, modern missiles have the least DV of any propulsion system.

Best,
-Slashy

Edited January 22, 2018 by GoSlash27