How Overpowered Scifi Space Combat Would Be

[Spacescifi]

 

In space nukes don't make a huge blastwave because there is no air to conduct the extreme radiant energy to.

 

Antimatter is so powerful it does not require a blast wave to burn up stuff for hundreds of kilometers....  if you have enough of it.

Let's assume for a setting that AM production has made it accessible enough to make fleets of spaceships utilizing it 

How powerful is one ton of antimatter?

According to one calculation that is 43000 megatons, with a incinerate to burn damage of a 500 kilometer radius!

To put that in perspective, the karman line is about 200 kilometers up... so if we light up one of these 1 ton AM bombs EVEN in LEO the Earth below is bound to get a massive fireball anyway.

 

So ultimately, if time is any guide, super offense is both the main defense and offense, and aside from that quantity and the ability to deploy is all that matters.

Tactics nearly do not matter... just don't do this...

 

A single one ton AM bomb missile would either annihilate or damage most of any fleet that lacks fictional shields. Armor matters not.

 

Do spread ships out one by one.. like really far, maybe 2000 kilometers.

What do you think?

Perhaps the raw power of antimatter is the reason why any scifi featuring it widely used in large quantity without fictional shields should have virtually ALL battles outside of visual range.

Since AM ton bomb missiles will kill both the firing ship and the target if they are in the blast radius of about 500 kilometers.

 

Long story short, the more power is involved in scifi space war, the less skilled combat matters, since a 1 ton AM bomb hits everything within 500 km, no skillful aiming requied, as missile will aim itself.

 

Edited July 11, 2020 by Spacescifi

[DDE]

4 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Long story short, the more power is involved in scifi space war, the less skilled combat matters, since a 1 ton AM bomb hits everything within 500 km, no skillful aiming requied, as missile will aim itself.

This is an incredibly inefficient use of energy, the universe's ultimate resource. Very little of the energy released would hit anything, compared with directional weaponry.

But yes, the basic jist is that space warfare is extremely offense-dominated with limited room for clever tactics.

Edited July 11, 2020 by DDE

[magnemoe]

Nuclear bombs are less dangerous in space than on ground as its no shock wave, radiation from the bomb is more dangerous as the radiation tend to be absorbed by the atmosphere. Now you have the option to shape the nuclear blast like an shaped charge, you could probably use an liner who increased radiation you wanted more off for an emp effect. 

Antimatter, this is not something you would want on an warship. Having the magazine blowing up is an problem dating back to the age of sails for navies so military tends to go for more stable and hard to set off explosives than civilian ones who still use lots of dynamite. 
Now have an magazine who would blow up the ship if magazine lost power would be an huge no. Yes I can see antimatter being very useful in some setting but also easy to more damage to your own side. 
You would want to use it as dust, an anti matter missile would be more useful as it in the engine than the warhead. 

Now another issue I raised in another tread is that larger ships are likely to have better engines than small ones as most of the good engine designs are pretty large. 
Yes its probably also an upper limit on most to and issue with adding multiple because they radiate and heat each other up. 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

 I'll bite - why do you think an AM bomb would be any different from a nuclear bomb in space? 

[Spacescifi]

1 hour ago, DDE said:

This is an incredibly inefficient use of energy, the universe's ultimate resource. Very little of the energy released would hit anything, compared with directional weaponry.

But yes, the basic jist is that space warfare is extremely offense-dominated with limited room for clever tactics.

 

If one can afford fleets of spaceships using antimatter in large quantities.... it's a 'waste' they can afford.

And a 500 kilometer wide burn zone for a fraction of a second is nothing to sneeze at.

It's like getting hit with a billion deathray lasers all at once all on the side facing the radiant blast and hoping the hull won't explode.

 

I know energy damage weakens with distance, but greater intensity of energy does MORE damage at farther range.

Edited July 11, 2020 by Spacescifi

[Bill Phil]

Problem with antimatter is getting it to fully annihilate. You’re not likely to get the full ton to annihilate. And considering how containment works you might still get better energy yields from thermonuclear bombs. Though if you can use antimatter as a primary then you might get an interesting design. 

The best weapons will probably be a mix of guns, lasers, particle beams, and nuclear warheads. Casaba Howitzers might be a useful weapon, same with “SNAKs” - kinetic weapons propelled by nukes. 

But antimatter takes so much energy and effort that you could build more yield in nuclear bombs for every antimatter bomb built. What this means is that whichever faction is using antimatter will start losing as soon as the other faction uses conventional nuclear technology. Because they can bring more firepower.

[Spacescifi]

1 hour ago, Bill Phil said:

Problem with antimatter is getting it to fully annihilate. You’re not likely to get the full ton to annihilate. And considering how containment works you might still get better energy yields from thermonuclear bombs. Though if you can use antimatter as a primary then you might get an interesting design. 

The best weapons will probably be a mix of guns, lasers, particle beams, and nuclear warheads. Casaba Howitzers might be a useful weapon, same with “SNAKs” - kinetic weapons propelled by nukes. 

But antimatter takes so much energy and effort that you could build more yield in nuclear bombs for every antimatter bomb built. What this means is that whichever faction is using antimatter will start losing as soon as the other faction uses conventional nuclear technology. Because they can bring more firepower.

 

Assuming this is like the short story superiority, abd the weaker faction destined to win does not even have AM in large quantity or an easy way to store it (that's us) we still would not necessarily win.

Reason? Deployment.

Nuclear requires bigger vessels with thrust that is... let's face it, weak, unless you make a giant orion.

On the other hand, the AM side can make small car size missiles with a ton of AM inside, with COMPLETE annihilation (because they are just THAT superior).

Missiles that are propelled by their own AM trigged tiny nukes (baseball size).

 

So sure the weaker side may have more firepower overall, but without a way to deploy it more rapidly than their superiors, the superior side will just try and drown them in the light of complete total antimatter annihilation of a ton each.

 

Only chance the weaker side even has is destroying the AM bomb missiles before they get within kill range.

Which requires uber good particle beams or massive long range lasers with massive lenses.

Since an AM fusion triggered pusher plate missile WILL outrun ANY conventional missile, so you can't kill it with missiles.

Edited July 11, 2020 by Spacescifi

[Nuke]

3 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

 I'll bite - why do you think an AM bomb would be any different from a nuclear bomb in space? 

outside a ship a nuke (or antimatter weapon) is completely useless, inside the ship, well its a lot less useless. so nukes would need to be a delayed detonation affair. combine a kinetic impactor and nuclear warhead in a single shell, just before impact the warhead would separate from the impactor. the impactor's job is to put a hole in the ship to let the nuke through. you would want to aim for pressurized parts of the ship, propellant tanks, hab areas, etc, for maximum effect. you may not need the impactor if the ships in question are not very well armored, but for warships i think it would be a good idea. 

Edited July 11, 2020 by Nuke

[StrandedonEarth]

Nuclear/AM weapons will produce a shockwave carried by the vaporized bomb casing. Not as effective as with an atmosphere to propagate the blast wave, but it is there.

[Bill Phil]

3 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

 

Assuming this is like the short story superiority, abd the weaker faction destined to win does not even have AM in large quantity or an easy way to store it (that's us) we still would not necessarily win.

Reason? Deployment.

Nuclear requires bigger vessels with thrust that is... let's face it, weak, unless you make a giant orion.

On the other hand, the AM side can make small car size missiles with a ton of AM inside, with COMPLETE annihilation (because they are just THAT superior).

Missiles that are propelled by their own AM trigged tiny nukes (baseball size).

 

So sure the weaker side may have more firepower overall, but without a way to deploy it more rapidly than their superiors, the superior side will just try and drown them in the light of complete total antimatter annihilation of a ton each.

 

Only chance the weaker side even has is destroying the AM bomb missiles before they get within kill range.

Which requires uber good particle beams or massive long range lasers with massive lenses.

Since an AM fusion triggered pusher plate missile WILL outrun ANY conventional missile, so you can't kill it with missiles.

I don't know what you're referring to. I wasn't referring to us. What I was saying (or trying to say) is that any conflict between advanced technological civilizations won't use antimatter based weaponry. The reason is because antimatter just isn't worth making. To make 1 tonne of antimatter requires a minimum of 2 tonnes of mass-energy. With that much energy you could produce billions of tonnes of steel, or billions of tonnes of aluminum. Or hundreds of thousands of conventional nuclear warheads. Likely millions of warheads. And that's the minimum cost. It will undoubtedly require more energy. And energy is effectively a strategic resource. Without it nothing is possible. A less energetic civilization could still win against a more energetic civilization provided clever strategies and tactics, but that can only be stretched so far.

Antimatter production is difficult, not just in terms of energy cost but also in infrastructure cost. It requires large installations and with it large radiators. Not to mention expensive and complex equipment to handle the large amounts of energy. And then there's storing it. The antimatter production facilities would make an easy target, meaning that the faction that uses antimatter would need to devote even more resources to defending those resources. Antimatter is a trap - any civ that tries to use will regret it.

All the weaker side has to do is destroy those missiles. And there won't be a lot of them - they're so expensive. For every amat missile the enemy builds the other side can produce dozens, hundreds, possibly thousands of warships or even more. It isn't just more firepower. Even if every amat warhead takes out a few hundred enemy ships - it will still not be enough. A missile with 1 tonne of amat will be worth hundreds of thousands of warships in energy terms. Possibly millions. Using antimatter is a death sentence - for the side that uses antimatter. It's the largest waste of resources possible in a technological conflict. The opportunity cost is too great. One warhead that might take out a few hundred or even a thousand enemy ships isn't worth the hundreds of thousands or even millions of ships that could be built instead. The combat might look like a few thousand amat missiles vs millions or billions of warships. With that many warships they likely have enough firepower collectively to destroy most of the enemy missiles before they can get close. It wouldn't be hard - they just have to cause the amat to lose containment and the missile will destroy itself. 

And that's before taking into account more realistic efficiencies for antimatter production. A fairly optimistic number is 10 thousand - that is it takes 10 thousand times as much energy as mass-energy. This would only make this relationship worse. Instead of being worth millions of ships a single amat bomb with 1 tonne of amat would be worth billions of ships in energy cost. 

No sane civilization will use antimatter as a weapon. The energy cost is so immense that any sane civ will have better things to do with their time and energy. There are millions of better things to do with that energy. And many better uses for that antimatter as well.

[StrandedonEarth]

Hmm. Star Trek used AM, although only tiny amounts, and not usually as a weapon (unless that's what the warhead in photon torpedoes was made of, sounds logical). I wonder if the ST:TNG replicators could make antimatter, although it would have to include the magnetic bottle. One tactic I never saw used was to use the transporter to place some AM aboard an enemy ship. But the shields would have to be down first to use the transporter.

[Bill Phil]

8 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Hmm. Star Trek used AM, although only tiny amounts, and not usually as a weapon (unless that's what the warhead in photon torpedoes was made of, sounds logical). I wonder if the ST:TNG replicators could make antimatter, although it would have to include the magnetic bottle. One tactic I never saw used was to use the transporter to place some AM aboard an enemy ship. But the shields would have to be down first to use the transporter.

Stargate used transporters and rings to send warheads to other ships. 

[Guest]

23 hours ago, Nuke said:

outside a ship a nuke (or antimatter weapon) is completely useless, inside the ship, well its a lot less useless. so nukes would need to be a delayed detonation affair. combine a kinetic impactor and nuclear warhead in a single shell, just before impact the warhead would separate from the impactor. the impactor's job is to put a hole in the ship to let the nuke through. you would want to aim for pressurized parts of the ship, propellant tanks, hab areas, etc, for maximum effect. you may not need the impactor if the ships in question are not very well armored, but for warships i think it would be a good idea. 

Nukes outside the ship are far from useless. They can vaporize large swatches of armor, particularly cheap Whipple shields. It can also damage radiators, because on any warship they will be running close to their melting point. Kinetics and lasers are actually not very good at this, because radiators can be aligned edge-on to the enemy, making them hard to hit and easy to armor from a single direction. A nuke, even a modestly sized one, can devlier enough thermal radiation to damage the radiator, as long as it goes off within line of  sight of its surface (an easy matter, since in space PD is easy, so massive missile salvos are a must).

Direct hit with a nuke would be nice, but getting that sort of accuracy is difficult with a missile. There's lot of maneuvering going on in terminal phase, and if the target is capable of high-G maneuvers, requiring a direct hit will make things difficult. Generally, projectiles that do that need to be launched in great quantity, and most of them will miss anyway. 

[Nuke]

46 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

Nukes outside the ship are far from useless. They can vaporize large swatches of armor, particularly cheap Whipple shields. It can also damage radiators, because on any warship they will be running close to their melting point. Kinetics and lasers are actually not very good at this, because radiators can be aligned edge-on to the enemy, making them hard to hit and easy to armor from a single direction. A nuke, even a modestly sized one, can devlier enough thermal radiation to damage the radiator, as long as it goes off within line of  sight of its surface (an easy matter, since in space PD is easy, so massive missile salvos are a must).

Direct hit with a nuke would be nice, but getting that sort of accuracy is difficult with a missile. There's lot of maneuvering going on in terminal phase, and if the target is capable of high-G maneuvers, requiring a direct hit will make things difficult. Generally, projectiles that do that need to be launched in great quantity, and most of them will miss anyway. 

yea but why bother with a close detonation when you can have an internal one. even conventional weapons sometimes do this for greater effect. i dont think accuracy will be a problem when we get to the point of actually using weapons in space. 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

If instead of a soccer ball you used an inverted cone shape for your warhead, can you get a nuclear shaped charge? 

 

If so, you could have an interesting weapon that can penetrate the EM and ablative shields of the enemy intergalactic battle cruiser Mk iv

[DDE]

5 hours ago, Nuke said:

yea but why bother with a close detonation when you can have an internal one

Enemy close-in defense, that's why.

3 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

If instead of a soccer ball you used an inverted cone shape for your warhead, can you get a nuclear shaped charge? 

Not exactly, but yes. A moderately-focused version (22⁰ cone) was developed for Orion, but this was hardly the limit.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

5 minutes ago, DDE said:

Enemy close-in defense, that's why.

Not exactly, but yes. A moderately-focused version (22⁰ cone) was developed for Orion, but this was hardly the limit.

LOL - Humans are so destructively creative!

 

@Spacescifi -- back to my quibble: I'm reminded of the old platitude that humans can destroy anything that we can create.  If your drone army was created by people... expect that someone, somewhen will discover how to throw a monkey wrench into it!

Edited July 13, 2020 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[Guest]

7 hours ago, Nuke said:

yea but why bother with a close detonation when you can have an internal one. even conventional weapons sometimes do this for greater effect. i dont think accuracy will be a problem when we get to the point of actually using weapons in space. 

Because you can't usually have an internal one. It's difficult to score a direct missile hit on a maneuvering target, especially one that's also blazing with CIWS fire. The only efficient way to accelerate something as heavy as a nuke to space combat velocities is by using a missile, meaning you have to deal with the limitations of that approach. Nukes are one way of doing that (this actually goes back to Cold War nuclear SAMs), fragmentation is the other, and of the two, nukes are better (before you ask, continuous rods don't work too well against most kinds of armor).

Edited July 13, 2020 by Guest

[DDE]

2 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

before you ask, continuous rods don't work too well against most kinds of armor

To be fair, this isn't a requirement. You're not going anywhere with half a plane.

[magnemoe]

4 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

Because you can't usually have an internal one. It's difficult to score a direct missile hit on a maneuvering target, especially one that's also blazing with CIWS fire. The only efficient way to accelerate something as heavy as a nuke to space combat velocities is by using a missile, meaning you have to deal with the limitations of that approach. Nukes are one way of doing that (this actually goes back to Cold War nuclear SAMs), fragmentation is the other, and of the two, nukes are better (before you ask, continuous rods don't work too well against most kinds of armor).

Yes, second problem is that you are hitting at orbital velocity. If you hit something solid like an structural beam or some sort of armor you don't have time to detonate, you are traveling faster than the shock wave of the explosives for one  
Yes its nice to penetrate and then explode but that is hard especially with fragile nuclear weapons at this speeds. 
 

[KerikBalm]

If I had that much AM, I'd rather make a relativistic missile.

An AM warhead is not needed. If you have a slow missile with a big warhead, then that's plenty of time fora laser CIWS to destroy it (and you can build X ray pulse lasers that would be deadly at multiple AU).

If you have a fast missile, a warhead is not needed.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

2 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

If I had that much AM, I'd rather make a relativistic missile.

An AM warhead is not needed. If you have a slow missile with a big warhead, then that's plenty of time fora laser CIWS to destroy it (and you can build X ray pulse lasers that would be deadly at multiple AU).

If you have a fast missile, a warhead is not needed.

Or a relatavistic auto cannon - small rocks can do a lot of damage once you get them up to speed! 

[DDE]

42 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Or a relatavistic auto cannon - small rocks can do a lot of damage once you get them up to speed! 

ShotgunRackingSound.wav

[Entropian]

Maybe a high power laser could cause a non-breakeven fusion reaction on the outside of the spacecraft?  You don't see the shot coming, and your enemy can't intercept the beam, but if the hull is made of heavier elements, then the effect of the fusion is reduced.  AM would probably cause a fusion reaction as well though...

Edited July 13, 2020 by Entropian

[DDE]

1 hour ago, Entropian said:

Maybe a high power laser could cause a non-breakeven fusion reaction on the outside of the spacecraft?

There are easier ways.

https://toughsf.blogspot.com/2019/11/hypervelocity-macron-accelerators.html?m=1