Alternatives To Scifi Shields In Space Combat Might Be More Interesting....

[Spacescifi]

In scifi it is common for block everything scifi shield bubbles to stop not only incoming enemy fire, but radiation and virtually any other hazard you can think of.

Yet the elephant in the room for me was always the fact that fictional such shields have no blindspots and somehow work just fine with the main engines blasting off on them in the rear while simultaneously being hit by enemy fire.

An Alternative: In space the best way to maximize efficiency is to specialize.

So instead of scifi shields you make defense ships and attack ships.

Scifi setting: Spaceships are 300-500 ton SSTOs that have excellent thrust with specific impulse measured in a few hours rather than mere seconds, and missiles are are multi-hundred g thrust (that cannot throttle down) monsters that have specific impulse measured in a few minutes (which is why they are space only as atmosphere would burn them up).

Attack Space Vessel (ASV): Designed totally for attack of one sort or another. Think of a laser vessel with an engine at one end and a giant laser lens at the other... or a giant phased laser array that can fire in a cone arc without moving. Ironically a fleet of these is excellent for long range missile intercept IF they all mass laser focus with a combined beam on whatever target they wish.

Defense Space Vessel (DSV): Designed for active defense of one sort or another. For example an anti-laser vessel would be a sandcaster, firing off sand in the direction of laser zaps to weaken the beam intensity. With sandcaster pulsed fire acceleration measured in thousands of g's. For example, a cannon could fire pulses of sand in a cone shaped beam at 4000g. Excellent for wrecking incoming missiles as well as weakening laser beam intensity.

Battle Outcomes: Inteligence is key... and lack of it would be a deciding factor in battles. I find it amusing how in Star Trek they go hopping from solar system to solar system not knowing what they will face and yet more often than not their weapons are are the right ones for the job.

For example, a defense sandcaster vessel would be excellent at short range space combat (4000g sandcaster blasts sprayed liberally will kill anything), but at long range it would not be effective and a good counter to it would be a fleet of laserstars focusing a massed beam upon it.

Quantity is a quality of it's own, and I would argue that a large enough fleet of laserstars could only be beaten by a sufficient amount of missiles or sandcasters.

Star Trek Combat Speed: At star trek combat speeds (literally flying up to orbit a planet in less than a minute after you can see it in the window with your eyes) missiles are more or less obsolete unless they can actually keep up. Certainly no real missile we could make could. The more ridiculously fast space vessels are, the more lasers and ultra high g sandcasters become the only weapons that matter much at all in my opinion.

 

Thoughts?

Edited November 18, 2023 by Spacescifi

[Nuke]

point defense certainly looks cooler in scifi than shield percentage callouts. its why space battles in bsg or the expanse are a lot more interesting than in star trek. star wars has shields but doesn't abandon point defense, which i think makes more sense and is a lot more realistic (tactically speaking). its pretty much the onion model, where you have a layered defense strategy instead of a single space magic system. realistically speaking i have my doubts that scifi force fields will be all that useful and can be penetrated by neutral particle beams and lasers and will fail catastrophically with kinetic weapons. electronic warfare might be a thing, you might have hackers on your crew that try to break into incoming warheads and either self destruct them or turn them on their own launch platforms.  stealth, diversion and mimicry are all going to be other layers in that defense. and lets not forget diplomacy and subterfuge. art of war stuff.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Motie novel(s) shields had problems.   Although, tbh, you could fly into a star with them. 

Point defense is cool looking. 

What I might remind is that the entire history of humanity shows a stagger - step march of offense vs defense, with each improvement in one begetting an advancement in the other (although time scales are not uniform by any means). 

[Shpaget]

10 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Scifi setting: Spaceships are 300-500 ton SSTOs that have excellent thrust with specific impulse measured in a few hours rather than mere seconds,

We already have engines with ISP measured in hours.

DART mission used NEXT-C ion thruster which has ISP of 4190 s, or 1,16 hours.

10 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

and missiles are are multi-hundred g thrust (that cannot throttle down) monsters that have specific impulse measured in a few minutes (which is why they are space only as atmosphere would burn them up).

We've had that for quite some time, and they work in atmosphere just fine.

Sprint missile.

[kerbiloid]

Generate an Alcubierre bubble, but don't move via it, but let the incoming things and beams splash against it.

So, it's not harder than the way, you are usually crossing the Galaxy.

Edited November 19, 2023 by kerbiloid

[tater]

Ah, sandcasters (traveller RPG). Real world efficacy likely not great.

[magnemoe]

On 11/19/2023 at 4:54 PM, tater said:

Ah, sandcasters (traveller RPG). Real world efficacy likely not great.

I say it depend on use,  it would be great as an AAA, here it don't need much velocity as its the missiles running into it at high speed. You probably have them on an small rocket or mortar for more of an stand off distance I think. 
Or have them on an fast missile arriving early to take out sensors or while lasers will be active to take out the optic. 
Even if ship is well armored and has shields it don't imply all part has it, then the US attacked battleship Yamato, the fighter escort who had nothing to do as it had no air support, so they starting shooting at the ship with machine guns, against an battleship.  Well its hard to armor rangefinders and radars and if the staff leaves the bridge it like beeing hull down in an tank you have much less situates awareness but most important the light and medium anti air guns was open mounts, same was true for all WW 2 warships, and the thing who would kill Yamato was the torpedo bombers who had to come in low and slow for their launch so you wanted to suppress the AAA, and ti worked more pilots was killed then they was gauging at the sinking ship and it blew up than from the AAA. 
Granted the US sent twice as many planes against her and her escorts than was used to attack Pearl Harbor in 1941. 
And the US had an battleship group on standby if the air attack did not work  

[tater]

2 hours ago, magnemoe said:

I say it depend on use,  it would be great as an AAA, here it don't need much velocity as its the missiles running into it at high speed. You probably have them on an small rocket or mortar for more of an stand off distance I think. 

As a sort of shotgun vs high speed missiles, sure, if nothing else any optics on front get sandblasted. Trouble is density. Close to the ship is too late.

Assuming fairly maneuverable ships, and high speed missiles, you'd likely use fragmentation and KE as the missile's effect. Disperse a cloud of shot such that at whatever distance from detonation, the cross section of the target will be sure to get X hits. Damage might be mild per impact, but you send a bunch of them and end up scrubbing stuff off the target.

[AckSed]

If we're bringing fiction in here, the Night's Dawn trilogy had combat wasps, missiles with computerised submunitions made to counter other combat wasps and I think DE.

[Kerbart]

You should read/watch The Expanse. Ships have torpedoes, PDC's (also used in CQB) and sometimes rail guns (with some limitations in its use due to their size).

Defense is evasive maneuvering, signal jamming, chaff, double hulls and crew wearing vac-suits in combat to anticipate hull breaches.

Can't say the battle are less exciting than when shield generators and phasers are used.

[magnemoe]

On 11/22/2023 at 5:31 AM, tater said:

As a sort of shotgun vs high speed missiles, sure, if nothing else any optics on front get sandblasted. Trouble is density. Close to the ship is too late.

Assuming fairly maneuverable ships, and high speed missiles, you'd likely use fragmentation and KE as the missile's effect. Disperse a cloud of shot such that at whatever distance from detonation, the cross section of the target will be sure to get X hits. Damage might be mild per impact, but you send a bunch of them and end up scrubbing stuff off the target.

Yes so you want this to be an payload on a small missile or an shell, perhaps rotate and leak sand to relapse an dish of sand away from the ship, if smart set it so it releases this well before the missiles get close. 

[tater]

2 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Yes so you want this to be an payload on a small missile or an shell, perhaps rotate and leak sand to relapse an dish of sand away from the ship, if smart set it so it releases this well before the missiles get close. 

Ceases to be "shields" and ends up "point defense," however. Might be better to use lasers (which at close ranges can't miss). You need to know the direction the threat is coming from.

[magnemoe]

On 11/23/2023 at 5:29 PM, tater said:

Ceases to be "shields" and ends up "point defense," however. Might be better to use lasers (which at close ranges can't miss). You need to know the direction the threat is coming from.

Agree and don't  see this as point defense but as an area of effect one, the point defence attack the ones still chasing you. 
 

[kerbiloid]

The best defense is absence of what to defend. Homing expendable stuff.