The Truth About Space Combat
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- Опубликовано: 19 окт 2023
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George Lucas and the release of Star Wars in the 1970s unintentionally set a precedent for how almost every single piece of sci-fi media would depict space combat. Small spaceships fighting each other above in the atmosphere is synonymous with the genre, but does the science support this World War II style of dog-fighting in SPACE?
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*Thanks for watching space dorks!*
You're welcome Physics Fabio
Thanks for making this for us, space Thor 😂
Of course Kyle…..hey wait a second!
Well, there is no stealth, and there is ALL stealth in space. Yes, you can't hide. But be far enough away, or coast like an asteroid, and as long as noone looks at you, you are invisible. And as long as you don't make too much noise.
I've recommended some of your videos to my lab mates, thanks for keeping me entertained through an undergrad degree and now grad-school Kyle!
also keep in mind that you're not going to detect a laser weapon that is targeted at you until it has already hit you, as is the nature of light speed.
Yeah, I was surprised something that obvious have been missed. Can't avoid something if you can't see it coming your way until it actually hits you.
Although one could spot a laser aimed at you before it has fired.
@@ybokors8524 You might be able to tell that the laser is there, you might even be able to tell parts of the assembly heating up before firing the blast, but all of that also comes with the light delay *and* you can't know if that laser is actually aimed at *you*
@@insu_na how so can't one tell it's actually aimed at you? And yes, your reaction time is the time it takes to fire the laser.
but lasers will have much smaller range than railguns and missiles though, they are also A LOT less powerful than a steel and tungsten projectile flying toward you at mach 20. lasers will maybe slowly scorch a fixed point of your hull and slowly cut it at maybe 50km away, a railgun projectile will basically go right through your entire ship as if you were made of smoke from a completely different orbit, or the moon depending on how good the aiming is. the advantage of lasers is, as people already said, they can't be dodged and are pinpoint precise, so you can use them to basically disable everything that is exposed, like your enemy weapons.
My favorite space combat story was a book called "The Forever War". One of the "battles" was simply, "We've detected an enemy missile. I will impact us in about a week."
THIS
Lmao, yeah the battles and descriptions were so detailed in the technicals it really fired my imagination and got me thinking about space all over again
And yet Heinlein managed to construct a scenario where two space-going civilisations had to fight with hand-to-hand weaponry just to make things interesting!
'The Lost Fleet' by Jack Campbell displays space combat very good. And the books are also very fun to read.
I really enjoyed how he played with time dilation as well
I also liked how the later recruits saw the main character as a veteran even though he'd only been in like 2 battles.
My dad loved Star Wars, and he watched it by himself before he even told me about it. His enthusiasm could not have been more intense! But he always bemoaned the concept that people were even needed to fight in space, especially in such an advanced civilization. He said that computers would handle everything infinitely better than humans could.
Some years later I read a short story (I think it was in Omni Magazine) where wars between planets and systems were merely calculated by computers to determine which side was the winner, thus avoiding so much unnecessary bloodshed.
Until the computer takes the other super computer into account which enters a loop and then cavemen with stick and rock win
@@Cthulhu357 lol you caveman! To defeat computer, you do not need another computer. You need space copyright! "Quick! Gunner it says "Insert original disk", were is our original disk??!!" 🤣
@@Cthulhu357 not true, if you have paid attention to the starcraft ai development you would know how wrong that assumption is.
and even the best humans in the world cannot beet them unless they put restrictions on the ai.
@@robgilmour3147 rock goes bonk
And when one empire doesn't agree to this AI concept of war? What about when you get something like a devouring swarm like the Tyranids? Or you get some race like the Klingons who want to fight for the glory of the fight?
The way FTL handles space piracy is honestly pretty cool. They answer the question of how pirates would board your ship with "teleportation," and "they ram a robot through the hull, causing a breach that sucks all the air out, and then the robot kills everyone aboard," and, "lol they don't, they blast your ship with enough radiation to kill your crew," and so on.
These are pretty solid methods. But,
1. Teleportation comes with it's own problems, the first of which "what's the point of space travel when you can simply teleport to your destination?"
2. That robot approach is actually pretty awesome. In a similar manner, I know a book where they sneak one guy aboard a ship who then proceeds to construct hundreds of combat robots in-situ using hacked shipboard facilities. And in order to defend, the ships crew must build their own robot army and a war of attrition ensues, like skirmish RTS match aboard a space ship. It's wild.
3. Radiation sounds neat, but might get blocked by a ships hull which would already be radiation-proof against cosmic rays. And for anything more effective againt the hull you'll probably end up with lasers anyways.
@@debott4538 To contribute to your first point, we already see this on our current scale. Some people prefer driving or trekking cross country instead of taking a flight because they get more enjoyment out of it. I'm one of them. Instead of taking a 1 hour flight to Atlanta and being done with it as quick as possible, I'd rather take a 7 hour drive in my own car. If we lived in an era space travel and teleportation I don't think my opinion would sway too much. Throw on some dub techno and I'm at peace with the engine of my craft droning away in the vast nothingness of it all.
The closest thing we have to space travel currently is cargo ship travel where you can be out at sea for days at a time. Every now and then you'll pass someone else, but for the most part it's just you and your crew out there.
@@FurryWrecker911 @FurryWrecker911 Thanks for the response. But I think your point lacks somewhat since we were talking about an environment where piracy is a thing.
I assume you are not often at risk of armed robbery on your 7 hour drives, are you? ;)
And if you were, wouldn't you also prefer your trip via air plane?
@@debott4538 Oh I was speaking more in a general sense of transportation as a whole, less so about FTL. My mistake. I lost sight of the big picture here.
@@debott4538i mean the teleportation might not work over suuper long distances
With regards to frail meat bodies and maneuvering, I liked how in Halo 3 one of the terminals talked about a space battle where an A.I. in control of a large combat vessel basically disregarded the humans on board in order to more effectively maneuver the ship and that the A.I. was fleetingly aware of how the former occupants were now basically splatters of gooey matter sloshing around inside the ship.
So the best maneuvering ship that hold humans safely would have some similar design parameters to an egg drop device...nice.
The Apollo return capsule was basically a large multi-stage, 3-egg drop device.
Tbf human squishyness is overestimated.
The bobiverse series was such a great example of AI ship to ship combat. The only limits to G force being on the hardware itself, and all engagements essentially being won or lost thousands of miles before anything kinetic ever happens. Many times only getting one good pass at an enemy with a miss meaning several days to decelerate and turn back
@@Endelin you put it in simple language very well 😊
Realistic space combat runs into the same problems that face realistic sword fights: the fights would be short and largely determined by who lands the first hit. There can still be suspense, but it's a lot trickier to keep an audience's attention when taking any hit means the fight ends and the other party will die. You can make it work for books quite well, examinkng the thoughts going through each fighter's head with each action, but in more visual media like movies or shows, that flexibility of time to draw out a short fight through mind games and such is a lot harder to pull off
That's also the case in samurai films and those are still quite popular, if with a different audience.
Good to know that you see war as a spectator sport.
Real life fighter jet dogfights already look like that. When they interviewed WW2 aces, they talked about how quickly the fights were over and about how it was all about having the advantage in speed and altitude, as opposed to long drawn own aerobatics competitions like we see on the screen.
@@slicershanks1919 that's the problem with combat in terms of excitement. If it's a 1 on 1 fight it's just a matter of who lands the first finishing blow, be that knocking someone out cold in a fisticuff or at least break their leg or something so that they can't continue the fight, or basically the same thing but with weapons. I can see a swordfight taking a bit longer if both are really good at parrying the other's blows but someone will make a mistake at some point. That's kinda what your goal in a fight with melee weapons is, exploit an enemy's mistake and hope you don't make one. That mistake could also be that the enemy is too weak to parry your blows because you're Swolo McBeefcake. In a gunfight? It's all about hitting the vulnerable parts of your enemy first and sometimes that can be from just sniping your enemy who was unaware of your presence. Vehicular fights? Mostly comes down to whose combat vehicle is better. A jeep with a machine gun is faster and more mobile than a tank but that jeep can't do shit against the tank's armor so it's more about when the tank will land a shot. Wildcard there could be infantry with anti vehicle weaponry but those have to rely on the vehicle they intend to destroy with it being unaware of them and the weapon they are using being able to one shot the vehicle or at least deal serious damage to it. But as soon as the vehicle operator knows where you are you are toast.
The same will happen for spacefights, attacking another vessel will mostly come down to who has the better ship. As Kyle said, there is no stealth in space. You see an enemy and as soon as they are in range of your weapons you can unload on them and they will unload on you until only one ship remains. Or none. Big ships will have an advantage in those fights because by sheer size alone the attackers will need to land more hits to actually destroy it. In that sense the Borg ships from Star Trek might actually be the most efficient warships in SciFi simply because they are big cubes with multiple redundancies built it, weapon arrays spread across its surface so even if you blow a huge chunk out of it it can still fight back. It also runs off a central computer that can coordinate the crew instantly. Though in theory you wouldn't even need a big crew to operate such a ship, you'd need a command crew that tells the computer what to do and then the computer will do the fighting for you. At best. Maybe a backup engineering crew to keep the main systems running but that too wouldn't require alot of people. Unless your ship is capable of self repairing those things, which we can assume will be a thing.
what about force fields?
Expanse have pretty great space combat vision
Also there is Honor Harrington series, written by navy officer. There are great takes on different types of weaponry, tactics, strategy and formations in fleet to fleet, fleet to space station+fleet, fleet to planet with orbital defences. Also, there are great takes on swarms of small vessels in combat, stealth in space and at war in general, pricy high-tech vs low-cost low-tech strategies and tactics.
Space combat in The Expanse is probably some of the most realistic in SciFi, as they take into account acceleration and also the lack of gravity, but they also have plausible weapons, with missiles and EM rail guns used offensively, while lasers and projectiles are used defensively (against missiles).
However, even The Expanse opts for the "rule of cool" by having stealthy spacecraft, such as the Amun-Ra stealth frigates.
Another (unrelated) glaring error, is that the alien wormhole is a 2D ring when it should be a 3D sphere...
Honor Harrington is OK, but suffers from the same problem as Star Trek, as most of the flying and firing is still performed manually by humans, when computers can already perform these tasks better.
The spaceships in Peter F. Hamilton's "Night's Dawn Trilogy", such as the sentient Voidhawks, are more plausible, piloted by an AI which is symbiotically, neurally bonded with their human pilot.
@@GonzoTehGreat thumbs up for anything from Hamilton. The Galactic Commonwealth is still one of my favorites to this day.
Check out Space Carrier by Ian Douglas, The Lost Fleet by Jack Campbell, Hyperion by Dan Simmons or even Starship Troopers by Heinlein if you want good space/space combat or just better space travel in general. I especially love Hyperion's method of fast travel in that she ship is fine.....the humans are turned to liquid due to the accelerations, just reassembled after the ship gets to where it's going. And in Space Carrier they generate micro black holes in front of the ship that pop in and out. But since the entire ship is pulled towards it and not propelling itself then it can go FTL as it's the frame that's moving.
@@gotindrachenhart 💯 agreed. For me, Hamilton is something like the Tolkien of Sci-Fi. Ridiculously detailed world building filled with fantastically imaginative ideas, but not the best at writing characters. 😁
@@gotindrachenhart Thanks for the recommendations. 👍 I've read the first book in the Star Carrier series. It was OK, but I found his storytelling somewhat lacking. Hopefully, it gets more interesting as the series progresses. Your other suggestions are all on my reading list, especially the Hyperion Cantos and Starship Troopers.
I'm currently re-reading the Foundation series after ~30 years and while Asimov's imaginative world building is still impressive, his characters are poorly written and his writing style leaves much to be desired.
One of the things I liked about Firefly is that even though they were in space, they were still using bullets in their guns and projectile weapons in space.
The Expanse handled this really well. Everything from acceleration changes, to quick maneuvers had to be planed and prepared for in advance.
One of the best Sci-fi shows of all time.
@@bryanteger Agreed. I was so upset when it abruptly ended. There were so many unclosed storylines they had introduced😭
@@tizodd6try the books if you haven’t already. Best in audiobook version. Books 7 - 9 picks up after the tv show ended.
@tizodd6 please read or listen to the last 3 audiobooks it goes in a way different crazier direction and I loved it all.
I listened through all the audio books after watching the show it's worth it
@@tizodd6You’re doing yourself a great disservice if you haven’t read the books. Although they’re much much better than the show I will give the show credit because it’s some of the best sci-fi I’ve ever seen.
In summary: Kyle's concept for improving the scifi genre is a space trolley problem.
Reminded me of FTL
Discombobulate
Just push a fat guy.
Aka, dull. Dwarf Fortress in space.
Alternately, it’s all in ship stuff like Alien. Which really puts the being in space way on the back burner to the point of not mattering.
As a scientist he forgot that games and pop culture are more about fun and spetacle than it is about realism...
Not his fault here, but he did forgot to mentioned two important aspect of any space sim game... shields and gravity generators.
I have in my Steam libreary a game called Starship Evo, the goal of this ship is just build ships from scratch (is much more in depth than the ship crafting system of Starfield.
You can build a ship with many blocks you want and whatever size you want, but theres a set of parts that need to be in a ship, altough not essential parts, the shields (this actually are essential especially for combat ships) and the gravity generators are parts of the ship that does make a difference.
The shiels are especilly efficient against solid objects, and the gravity generators besides allow us to walk straight on our ships also do the trick of fix the G forces while flying.
And yeah, i know this sort of stuff isn't realistic but...
There's a game called "Children of a Dead Earth",which attempts to make orbital combat as realistic as possible. The most notable feature are orbital mechanics just like in KSP
It still makes some concessions to make you actually go close to the enemy. Railgunning each other from a neighbouring moon isnt modeled, and you dont get to use big boy nukes.
Big boy nukes are possible if you know how to make them. I've got 25mt yield warheads the size of a person in that, and 2kt micronukes the size of a football. It doesn't model billion km ranges because they aren't possible with tech we have now. The precision required to make a railgun slug reach as far as it does right now requires 0.0001 for the margin of error, and thats to reach 6km with a target radius of about 30ft. To put a round in a target at 20,000km would require a precision barrel with an error rate in the 0.00000001 range. Aka, not possible. Yes technically you can reach infinite distance, but actually hitting the target is another matter.
Using large gravitational wells to 'slingshot' objects towards a target would be incredibly effective you could launch a missile toward a star, the engine power would be covered by the 'noise' the star it producing, once it is on the far side of the star it could cut engine and leave escape velocity towards the target at incredible rates of speed. If you painted the missile an extra dark black, it would be almost impossible to see coming before it hit you. The margin of error on such a thing would be incredibly difficult but you could theoretically use air burst control to redirect on route without being detected.
@@kain52002and it would take years for it to reach the target which by that point the war could be over, and you will be hitting innocent people
@@ravener96 nukes dont work in space...
I never called Star Wars a "Science Fiction" movie series, I called it "Space Fantasy" since it had a lot of magic and was just high fantasy just set in space.
True
There is a reason why it was first called a space opera before it was labeled Sci-fi
I think that the Expanse's combat is fairly realistic
Came to say this. So well made .
Exactly! I like that the expanse show that they have to completely strap in and even be injected with a stimulant that is a mix of blood thinne, blood vessel protection, and adrenaline when they have to make extreme maneuvers or speed.
So do I
@@kylehill, sooo, can we get a video?😊 About the Expanse, that is, lol
@@ctjones522 not enough ppl watch the expanse a video on it would get basically no views, which is stupid because it's amazing
This is why i have a serious appreciation of the television show The Expanse. They have their own stretches on physics but they paid a great deal more attention to details than pretty much any other show or movie.
The books are even better, you should read them. But physics do kinda get thrown out the window in the last 3
@@ianh1504 that´s to be expected, with all the fictional alien stuff...
And it´s somehow ALWAYS the fictional alien stuff in most shows, that doesn´t make any sense and gets eventually overblown to a point of pure fantasy.
@@Morpheus-pt3wq I'm fine with that though. Otherwise whatever mystery might be left in the universe would be pretty static and too familiar to really evoke that sense of wonder.
@@Morpheus-pt3wq its unfortunate that real life got in the way of making the 6th season so they had to heavily edit the story and now we'll probably never get to see the end of the series
I was about to write this. Heck yeah 💯
Gundam sorted this out in the combat in the 70s. Ambushed in asteroids, and use special sensor jamming particle generators to be harder to detect. The small ships, and even the robots, were mainly used to fight the enemy big ships at close range while said big ships were busy fighting the other big ships.
"asteroids" Nope. Asteroid fields like in star wars don't exist in space, apart for a very short time, like when a moon is destroyed by its host planet when it comes across the Roche limit.
Another solution to this issue with realistic space combat is that, with few exceptions, any Gundam series in the metaseries that uses energy weapons utilizes *only* particle beam weapons, circumventing the issue with the instantaneous/near-instantaneous shoot-to-hit time that lasers would have.
@@CurrypkatRamonlab
The asteroid thickets present in many of those Gundam series are usually explained away as being the result of human intervention, e.g. literally being pulled out of the Asteroid Belt by starship tugs and brought closer to various places for easier access for mining and/or building purposes, or, in some cases, being used to drop on Earth/or tossed at space colonies because... The insanity of man and their ideological grudges.
Even then, asteroid fields like commonly depicted in most Sci-Fi are practically non-existent, with the closest being areas with a high concentration of battlefield debris generally termed as "shoal zones" in the various series.
If you had watched any one of the Gundam series, you would've found the explanation pretty much handed to you on a silver platter, instead you wanted to sound smart.
@@The-Plaguefellow I sounded smart (for what I care) explaining how it is in real life, not in anime or scifi shows. You, sounded acrimonious and quite like pure form of social network drone.
The "Lost Fleet " series by Jack Campbell handles intership combat pretty realistically.
They do use special pleading devices, such as inertial dampening, and two different versions of faster than light travel (hyperspace and teleportation of entire fleets of ships)
But the in system battles take light speed lags of sensor information and intership communications as well as the physics of turning craft around to re-engage opponents while traveling at one tenth the speed of light.
And the ships carry "rocks" ballistically shaped chunks of dense metals that they launch at planetary targets from the edge of star systems.
The author maintains the suspense in the combat scenarios, but I'm not sure they would translate well to films or games.
It's actually pretty unrealistic. The problem Campbell fails to consider is that it would be trivial to maneuver defensively eg dodge at those sort of distances even if you are firing slugs at high fraction of c. Or intercept them with your own slugs even. If you have drives as efficient as the ones in the series it would be utterly trivial for military vessels to constantly shift their orbit. Which would massively reduce the distance at which you can reliably hit.
@XMysticHerox Have you read the books, because i think you may be misunderstanding how combat in them plays out. What you've said is literally pointed out in them. Dropping rocks can only be done for planetary bombardment (because planets can't dodge). Ship to ship combat only occurs at short range. With hours spent accelerating towards one another a 0.1c, and since their relative velocity is 0.2c engagements last a few nano seconds where they mostly just try to fire buckshot into the path of the other ship. And if one party doesn't want to engage in combat its basically impossible to do so, as they can just keep their distance. The self guided long range munitions (Spectre missles in canon) rarely every work because your opponent just shoots them down with mid range energy weapons (hell lances) or short range rail guns (buckshot)
The Expanse probably has the most realistic space battles so far. Especially in the books when they dont have to cram everything to within visual range for the viewers.
Absolutely. Surprised that there are not more Expanse references in the comments.
@@mapsgoonthewall5396 Heh, I just left a comment before scouring the comments for more Expanse references!
Children Of A Dead Earth is a great example too.
@@mito._one of us
Beltalowda
Mass Effect 1 has a codex entry describing the complications of fighting in space, there's so much thought and lore put into it. The cutscenes don't really reflect how interesting that entry is, but it's nice that it's there.
I just love that little scene in ME3 maybe, when an officer tells the gunners, when they fire a thermonuclear shell and did not hit target it will just fly straight into space until will hit something/one eventually.
@@teveszaki i remember that one too!
@@teveszaki Wasn't there a scene in ME1 where a NCO was dressing down two junior enlisted, ending his lecture with something like Newton is the baddest MF in space.
@@urbypilot2136 Both of you are talking about the same scene and it was ME2 at the citadel. "Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of a bitch in space!"
@@anastasiyaivanova4665Oh right! It was ME2.
I'd also like to add an additional combat problem: Heat. I was listening to a NASA engineer talking about this. Despite space being quite cold it, because there is no atmosphere it is actually quite difficult to properly dissipate heat. So if you are using laser weapons against your opponent the heat you are imparting on their ship is way more of a problem then slicing a piece of it off. Eventually the staff on board one ship or the other would give up or pass out from heat exhaustion.
Any warship would have massive radiators. If you use ablative armour I highly doubt it would be possible to boil the people inside.
@@XMysticHerox Massive radiators sounds like a great target. Also bear in mind those radiators are depending on conversion to infrared light to release the heat.
Any warship in a realistic setting would already have to rely on radiators unless you introduce some fancy technobabble tech that means you don't (which is fine just not super hard sci fi).@@foxstele
@@XMysticHerox I don't get your point. Dissipating heat in space is hard. Of course they would have radiators. Problem is, depending on infrared transmission for heat dissipation is very inefficient. It is nothing like using a radiator in an atmosphere. As you scale your ship up I'm pretty sure the problem goes up at a square-cube rate.
The point is that ships would already have significant capacity for dispersing heat just to run their engine and fire their weapons. Worst case scenario they turn those of.
Between that and ablative armour I don't really see lasers being able to disable the a ship through heat alone.
As for a larger ship. Well no not really. Yes you have more volume per surface but as you mainly depend on radiators not the hull itself the square cube law does not matter much. @@foxstele
Sensors may fail if only because yes you can detect things from massive ranges... but there is a LOT of space and would you need to scan things in. So, scans would likely need large crews and to check angles and match things up there. Basically hiding in the background noise.
Computers can easily solve that problem.
@@rh451 Yes, until you reach the point where you can be hacked and it becomes an E-War game, where the goal is to subvert the systems. After all, if the computer says there is nothing there, then your eyes are lying.
Having AI systems which are only connected to sensor data and displays on the bridge are very difficult to hack.
@@rh451 True. At the same time, people will try and find a way, if only because that becomes the target/obstacle to overcome.
To detect something at such a range you need to know what to look for and where to look for it, it also helps when what you are looking for is not trying to hide and even transmitting radar as well(like Voyager 1). His choice of Voyager 1 as an example was pretty silly for all of these reasons. Realistically if a space fighter wanted to hide, it very well could.
You need to read the Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell. He went out of his way to try to get the physics for space combat as realistic as possible. Including talking about things and the fact that combat takes place over hundreds of thousands of miles.
The best part of that whole series for me was that not only does the preparation before battle last for months, the battles are over in seconds and conducted by AI gunners. The crew is just along for the ride other than making repairs, planning the battle, or planetary invasions.
If you like this stuff I would recommend the Forever War by Joe Haldeman. It has insanely long range relativistic space combat, taking place over light years distance, and looks at the consequences of that.
Thank you for this post and for beating me to it. Love that series so much for all of the realistic sci-fi space battles. I'm actually re-reading it now. The time delay aspects of communicating even at the speed of light really make for interesting preparation for space battles. You just arrived in a system? You get the full picture of what is happening there (even if it is old information) while the other guy has to wait hours to see that you even got there. Love that he dunks on fighters and stationary weapons platforms the whole time. He even calls the kinetic projectiles that ships launch at stationary targets "rocks." LOVE this series and really recommend it.
I really enjoyed the interaction of FTL and light delay, basically every time a ship exits FTL it gets a massive information advantage as it can immediately see everything in the system while those in the system will take hours to see the ship. Really nice series.
so you all ok with stupid retro idea that thousands years ahead people still fighting like monkeys , now in space? lol. its like zero knowledge about human psychology progress. there is no wars in the future let alone space wars
The issue with locating something small, like the Voyager probes, over a large distance is that you need to know exactly where to look.
Space is big. Really big.
Yeah, that was my thought. Sure, you could probably, theoretically see just about anything you want within the solar system, but unless you know where to look to begin with, it seems like you'd have to get really lucky to see any ship, large or small, if it isn't broadcasting any kind of signal.
Also that the voyager is designed to be noticeable, we designed it to be seen at long ranges. The fact we don't have stealth spacecraft that don't emit EM radiation isn't indicative that it's not possible, but that it hasn't been a design criteria so far. As soon as space warfare becomes a thing, that'll absolutely be something that we design ships for, exactly like we design stealth fighters today.
To be fair, it is kinda difficult to design something to not emit EM radiation. If the craft if constructed in space sure, but to do so on a body then launch it into space is going to be difficult given the extra mass.
The problem is heat. If you dont radiate it out you shit would cook very fast. Thrust cant be hidden at all. Then you also have the issue that your shit obstructs what is behind you which can easily be detected.
Yea, his contention that stealth is no longer a varible, either through size, or distance or extremely low albedo at most all frequencies is silly. Of COURSE that would still be a massive factor.
He's kind of a science nerd with no experince but lots of standard science jammed into his head.
What Kyle described is basically a text based survival horror sim. This game is available for free already. It is a mobile game called Seedship. You play an AI tasked with finding a habitable planet for a ship of 1000 sleeping colonists. Every choice results in damage to your ship or loss of colonists. Simple and fun
another Seedship player? Impossible
@@demon_xd_ not just impossible, but a dystopian police state
The expanse had space combat pretty well nailed. A fleet downing another fleet halfway across the solar system. Rogue factions hurtling asteroids at earth. Small raiding ships with rail guns and nuke torpedos. What a show it was.
Well looking at it, it isn't if we invented all the tech used in the expanse tomorrow yes but with lasers technology being possible any of these weapons are gonna be useless except maybe pdcs
Probably the best depiction of how "stealth in space" would work, is in the "Helforts War series by Graham Sharp Paul". Most of the first book is them planning and executing a raid using things like plant shadows and regualar orbiting comets to mask the approach and inseartion into a system.
Cheap sensors scattered all over the system . . . no shadows.
Or maybe the battleships hide inside black holes after all even the slowest Starships in Star Trek at just ridiculous speed which is 5 times the speed of light would be able to hide inside of a black hole without being pulled towards the singularity of the black hole so the battle plans are: step 1 hide inside black hole until the enemy gets close, step 2 attack enemy spacecraft until they either give up or they fall into the black hole after their ships faster than light speed drives that become damaged to the point where they can't operate properly anymore, step 3 capture enemy spacecraft and force the crew to tell you where the enemy base is, and then step 4 raid enemy base and win the interstellar War! 🫡👍👌🙏😊😀
@@DavidMuri-rm4ym check out Battlestar Galactica! The synthetic side literally has its base in the very small machine made calm zone of a natural singularity. Forcing all the attackers to either stay away or jump directly beside the armed base. Which they do.
I think stealth in space can only be achieved through hacking and intelligence. Imagine something otherwise obvious, right out there in the open, but you can't see it because your systems are lying to you. Maybe everyone else in the solar system have caught on but you've been cut off by some MitM spoofing tactic and is blissfuly unaware. And of course the speed of causality could be a factor. e.g., If something went down on Pluto, Earth wouldn't know for several hours. Another thing sci-fi could play with is to lower the tech and cornucopia a bit, like 1969 space combat. Think: Das Boot, but in space. Tense and gritty, with all the physics.
Even if you do all that, your ship's I.R. signature would literally stick out like a flare. That's why cloaking devices or shutting everything down and "running silent" won't hide your ship either.
This video actually makes me appreciate the way Dune's space travel is done even more, especially for a story of that era. Space travel in Dune is very expensive, especially when traveling to different star systems, and there is no combat in space because all space travel is controlled by one entity. Battle is still done within the atmosphere of planets and as such it follows the same laws of physics as modern day war but with more advanced technology.
this is a really good point
Gotta love how despite warhammer40k being a direct copycat of Dune, they made everything so bad shit insane its unrecognizable. Like space ships ramming and broadside combat kinda crazy
The edgy Dune clone@@AvatarAang100
space travel in those books is also a monopoly
Isn't the premise of guild navigators that they can see into the future, allowing them to plot a course that wouldn't collide into anything?
8:11 In the Japanese Anime Space Battleship Yamato, the enemy also redirects small objects towards Earth, namely from the Kuiper Belt, in a way to bomb earth from a distance earth cannot defend.
Kuiper is 4 light hours away. Surely, the Earth would have some counter measures to intercept the bombardment.
@@debott4538 Today? Not really. Even a nuclear weapon can only destroy objects of certain sizes. The best option would be to try to use disposable satellites to change the trajectory of objects. If an asteroid or Kuiper Object the same size as the Chicxulub object that wiped out the dinosaurs were to be on a collision course with Earth, that would be our best option since even the Tsar Bomba wouldn't even dent that thing. Just like nuking a mountain: You can take a sizeable chunk, but the mountain is still gonna be there, albeit with a decent sized crater in its side.
@@theminerwithin9316 No, not today for sure. I was thinking about a sci-fi universe where Earth possesses space defenses. IRL, an asteroid redirect takes at least a year or more for planning building and execution.
I think it's certainly plausible that any space-based combat in real life would probably be long-range, but I think you would still need to allow for closer-range combat ala Star Trek and Star Wars on some occasions.
If you think about a scenario where two fleets are engaging from vast distances, say fleet 1 is in orbit near the sun and fleet two is orbiting Pluto, and they start firing off their long-range weapons, it would seem odd if not insane if they did not have some way to counter each other attacks. This could be interceptor missiles or energy weapons taking out the attacking missiles, some sort of decoy system that would attract and reflect energy-based weapons, or even energy shields like Trek/Wars letting the attack come and bounce off the shields.
In that sort of setup, sooner or later the fleets would probably find they were getting less and less effective attacks in and switch to getting closer ranged. Say fleet 2 got closer to the asteroid belt while fleet 1 kept hanging around the sun. They might start getting better results in at this range, until both sides have developed new technology and new tactics used in later attacks at this range countering each other's attacks again.
So they switch positions again and now fleet 2 is somewhere between Mercury and Venus and initially getting better results, but again, history repeats and their newer tactics and countermeasures mean they need to get closer again. And now they are fighting side by side almost, in which case they'd probably be re-routing all power to shields, including the energy from the Janeway brand coffee maker.
And the daycare centre.
And the petting zoo.
Problem.with fleets engaging at long distance with speed of light weapons is that unless the ships are completely still they will have drifted by the time the laser reached their target think of the time lag involved in communication in space. It takes minutes or even hours for a message to go from one place yo another at the speed of light. So unless the range was limited to say a few thousand KM then speed of light weapons would be effectively useless.
Remember that detecting and tracking weak radio sources from millions to billions of kilometers away requires some pretty big receiver dishes that dwarf any spacecraft that we can even hope to build in the not too distant future. Also, even with a bunch of those huge dishes here on Earth, it helps to know where to look since too many are needed to scan the entire sky continuously.
But your system will never be attacked by 20 W probes. Rocket plumes will be seen in visible light and infrared by much smaller telescopes all the way up to Pluto. (Additionally, even though it's not important in this context, weak radio signals could be detected in space by huge radiotelescopes because they can be made _extremely_ light in space due to not having to support themselves against gravity.)
@@fsmoura they are not going to use radio, that's absurd. And rocket's won't be on the menu either. No one had any idea the combustion engine was a thing until it was invented and changed the planet. Same thing will happen with whatever tech is coming.
Also, all that telemetry just told you where the object was and what it was doing several minutes or even hours ago. Not where it is now, nor what it's been doing.
@@FrostSpike Good point, I'vent seen this mentioned before. Still, if its that far it is of no threat to you and this light lag it doesn't matter much.
Well, your idea of an exciting sci fi-based video game may be fun for about half an hour. But in general, you seem to want to analyze games like Starfield, and sci fi in general based on our current scientific and technological limitations and a serious lack of imagination.
First, artificial gravity answers a lot of your questions. Directed, controllable gravity generation can not only be used for propulsion and artificial ship-board gravity, but also to cancel out inertial effects of sudden acceleration/deceleration.
Second, no, space combat would not favor smaller number of larger capital ships unless you had perfect shields that would cover every angle of attack equally as well as distribute damage perfectly across the shields.
Third, you’re seriously underplaying how difficult detection can be to make the argument that stealth would be impossible in space. You have to be looking in the right direction, in the right electro-magnetic or alternate band, have the right size of apparatus to be able to cover the wavelengths, etc. And then, if you’re in a system, especially near planets or asteroid fields/belts, well, good luck distinguishing something that’s actively masquerading as something else, especially if they’re not using particulate or EM-based propulsion at all.
Edit: This was meant to reply to the video not the top comment here, which I wholly agree with as well.
In Gundam they solved the problem introducing "Minovsky physics", basically the fusion reactors used scatter a fictional subatomic particle, the Minovsky particle, that messes up with any kind of communication and detection, wich means that combat can only happen within visual range. And the only weapons similar to drones have to be either controlled through cables, or with the extrasensorial abilities of the pilot.
Gundam is a great example of space combat done smart.
I feel like Gundam also compliments this by then adding in New Types to the mix, with their superhuman empathy acting like a radar built upon that 6th sense of mankind. It’s neat how when technology fell short, mankind’s role as a social species ascended to accommodate.
"Legend of the Galactic Heroes" also did space combat pretty well in my opinion. There was no dog fights. Space combat came entirely down to large fleets fighting it out in long range shootouts with tactical positioning and kind of "flanking". And then there was the occasional the use of "super weapons"
I love Gundam
Right! I wonder why no one (exaggerating) talks about Gundam when talking about space combat smh
Stealth could be possible for 3 reasons: 1. Space is large and 3D. You would need to aim your detection in the direction of the attacking "ship". 2. Actual stealth coating/design can make even properly aimed detectors not detect the ship. 3. The attacker can launch a small asteroid with the engines off in the general direction of the target. This would look like a random rock in space and not appear as a threat, even if detected. When the rock is close the engines can automatically turn on and redirect towards the target. This would give the target much less time to react.
yeah its honestly baffling that he never once talks about stealth technologies or how cargo ships might not have cutting-edge detection systems
Fat Electrician's latest video about how the prototype of America's largest tank, the T-22, was *lost* for 27 years out in a field.
They just forgot where it was.
Don't tell me small craft engagements can't be a thing.
Of course, the important thing about a small 1 man spacecraft isn't that it's a delivery system for ordinance, it's that it's a delivery system for a guy.
Depending on how you set up defences against laser, the far out kill may not always be possible.
Launching a cloud of mist in between you and your target can effectively disperse laser and render it much less lethal, and you can have time to get closer and then launch your small crafts in a range where they can accelerate at a larger angular speed than the enemy guns can do. Other than mist, you can also just launch a big enough asteroid mass, the enemy can dodge the slow mass but cannot shoot it down, thus you can get close. In these cases, small crafts act as a relay point to attack from different directions bypassing any obstacles you and your enemy launches to block your lasers.
You don't need stealth to get close, and even if you want stealth for your small crafts, launch them with tethers and just pull on them to make them change direction to throw off the predictions of your enemies' computers.
What do you mean by launching small craft with "tethers"?
or just jitter randomly a bit every so often with a small jet of fuel, so light lag makes you impossible to predict the place of.
Can't deploy mist or anything chemical in a vacuum
Not even that. Lasers do not have infinite range. Their range is actually severely limited by their size. They have a focal point and if you go well beyond that they do fuck all even vs a stationary target. You would need a truly absurd laser to do damage at millions of km.
@@chrislong6541 Yes you can, they just won't stay there for long.
They expand roughly at the speed of sound, and you can always just use some transparent material like plastic bag to contain it. The laser will mostly go through and doesn't heat up the transparent container too much to immediately burn through it, and will have to heat the gas contained in it enough to either expand the container enough to break it, or heat it enough to melt it. And even if it punctured a hole, the gas inside will just escape at the speed of sound, and it is going to be a slow process if you have a big enough container.
MassEffect 1 had a wonderful Codex Article covering Space Combat, elaborating on how engagements would take place light seconds and light minutes away.
It also touches on heat management in warships and how you cannot effectively get rid of heat caused by weapons systems. It was very detailed but sadly in-game you never saw it in action.
Because it would also be really boring to watch.
Yes, the heat aspect gets overlooked most of the time. They allways have some form of "generator" or "reactor" that produces all the required power and some form of "shield" that dissipates incoming beams and projectiles, but where does all this energy go? In warhammer 40k the shields transfer the impacting energy into another dimension aka the warp aka literal hell.
@@oO0Xenos0Oo And they never have any kind of super heat sink for all that heat to go.
Yeah heat management would be a huge limiting factor in space combat. In vacuum you can only get rid of excess heat via radiation, which is pretty slow and depends on the surface area. This would definitely impact the design of ships and choice of weapons. I think the most useful weapon would be rockets/torpedoes since you can just "push them" out of the ship without significant excess heat and they can start accelerating on their own (burning their own propellant), heating up only themselves.
On the other hand, humans have always been very good at developing ways of killing each other, so I would trust them in this case too.
@@SMJSmoK I agree those choices would limit heat surplus aboard the ship but at those ranges of light seconds or minutes, torpedoes or missles cannot hold enough fuel to track or lead a target, plus they are too slow in velocity only reachimg several 10 of thousands mph as apossed to railguns reaching percentages of C.
Yes you can detect small spacecraft that are far away, with one major caveat-- you have to know where to look. It's hard to keep track of every tiny pin-prick-sized spot in all directions (the whole sphere of directions) all at the same time. A small spacecraft "fighter" closing in from an unexpected direction could take an enemy by surprise.
Honestly though, this kind of tech is difficult to implement but not impracticable. F-35B pilots have sensors around their hull feeding data to their AR headsets that can enable full 360 degree vision about the aircraft, even though the body of the plane, in multiple spectrums.
This really would end up being just another advantage of larger ships, probably. The smaller a sensor is, the harder it generally is to reach either extreme range or accuracy.
For an advanced spaceship, having more room to accommodate larger sensors (and more of them) will provide better awareness, and reaching a certain level of capability will be easier. With that being said though, smaller ships would still be able to incorporate this ability, just at smaller scales. I think when spacecraft are developed to the point where a sensor suite like this is feasible (in terms of mass and power requirements) it would become standard safety tech.
The only reason we don’t do this now is because power and mass are the biggest limiting constraints on spacecraft. We have come up with more clever ways to stay safe and be aware of our surroundings from outside the craft, so we don’t have to make every spacecraft carry all that extra stuff.
It would be great if it could all be on-board, but the challenge in doing so is something we have to overcome anyways before ‘space navies’ ever become a thing, which is overcoming the limits our our current energy and propulsion technologies.
Not really. All spacecraft will give off infrared energy, which isn't difficult to detect. You'll know where anything and everything is around you, reaction time and anticipating what the enemy will do is important.
You also have to assume that, despite having the scientific knowhow to travel distances over time to make this scenario even plausible, no one has ever developed technology for a ship trying to actively remain stealthy to fool these sensors. We would likely see the same sort of stealth arms race we see today, where stealth tech gets better causing sensors to get better causing stealth tech to get better, rinse and repeat.
I was about to say this. Thanks for pointing that out. Even if something is detectable from a very far distance the farther you go the amount of data you need to elaborate grows exponentially high to a point where the mere computation would take several years at least with current technology. Realistically speaking a ship would only try to detect objects that are within a certain range, which arguably can still be a pretty enormous radius, but certainly not spanning an entire solar system.
EXACTLY. all the arguments fall flat when you think about them more than 3 seconds.
11:26 Warframe solves the airlock problem with ramsleds, boarding craft meant to breach enemy ships and make their own entrance. Basically the missile idea, plus they solve the killbox issue by detonating breaching charges that knock down defenders and clear debris.
I think the biggest flaw with this video is it assumes that we have perfected space flight but not FTL or some kind of other transport like the hyperspace from Babylon 5 where ships can't be tracked from normal space, so there would still be an argument for space pirates and drone ships because a hostile could just appear right on top of you and launch a wave of drone fighters and quickly overwhelm any defenses you had, and in space warfare lasers would be utterly useless and easily defeated simply by coating your ship in a mirror surface a shield if you will and you could then angle that panel to fire the laser right back or simply constantly rotate your ship so the laser is never concentrated on one spot , or you could simply use a prism to redirect the laser
Other things to consider is light speed lag in targeting. Remember that when something is one light second away, you aren’t seeing where it is, but where it was 1 second ago. Trajectory let’s you know where they will likely be, but if it is a small craft that can maneuver quickly, that can change. Also, even if you have a laser weapon, that’s another light second to actually fire back.
I was thinking about that in the video. I think the ideal laser weapon would be one that a) calculates the trajectory of the target, b) calculates every possible evasive move the target could take (which would be limited by the G-forces the craft or occupants could withstand), c) calculates any potential gravity wells or other light-bending objects along the firing path, and then d) fires a dense sweep of lasers like the electron beam in a CRT monitor. The lasers could travel 18.5 billion km in about 17 hours, striking every possible place the ship could be at that time. This is assuming of course that we could produce lasers that are a true collimated beam rather than a gaussian beam.
The countermeasures to a laser attack like that are, I think, hiding behind things or social engineering. Or maybe dropping singularities like a jet drops flares. It could make for a good novel, where the galactic factions have the capability to snuff any ship anywhere at any time.
1 light second is about 300,000 km...
@@etodemerzel2627 yes...? 18.5 billion divided by 300k is 61.7k seconds, which is 1027 minutes, which is 17.12 hours.
and not to mention with possible tech being able to alter the ways of targeting and sensing said objects. Maybe even make some things seem invisible.
@@trs4184 What is this?
I feel like space piracy would have to be more just fake distress calls and just waiting around hoping someone will take the bait, you’d probably need a secondary ship to occasional make an approach and preform a “rescue” so it doesn’t look too suspicious after a while. But I agree that most of the piracy would probably happen planet side. I do think space combat where everyone always knows where everyone else is is actually kinda interesting, a lot more plan and strategize on approach than high maneuverability jet pilots.
Ideally smart pirates would already have some of their crew aboard the target vessel, both to determine the worth of the potential booty and to neutralize any on board defenses. It would be more space hijacking rather than space piracy.
That, or staying powered down in a debris or asteroid field to ambush any scavengers or miners that come too cole to you.
Pirates would never be able to ambush trading ships in a space scenario like the expanse because those would be at a ridiculously high relative speed if they ever came close to a prepared ambush. Things that treat you hidings spot as thier destination would be the only available targets.
the battle for information in a space battlefield would still be present, just a lot different than traditional warfare.
instead of detection vs stealth by concealment (the physical obstruction of information vs the effort to uncover them),
the meta of information warfare would be based on prediction & precise timing vs unpredictability & unexpected maneuvers, due the real-time lag of information (light speed) in extreme distances between space combatants.
One of the scenarios written for the Traveller RPG (yes, the 1970s original, released the same year as _Star Wars_ ) presented a nice starship defence against space pirates. When the pirates fire a warning shot across your bows, you radio your surrender, kill the drive and open the airlock. The pirate ship docks and the boarding party transfer to your ship. When they open the inner airlock door they find themselves staring into the gaping mouth of your laser cannon...
Having vapourised the boarding party and shot the guts out of the pirate vessel, you send your salvage crew out via the real airlock to claim your prize.
You should read "The Expanse" series and/or watch the show on Amazon
Two comments:
1.) Unmanned, remote- or AI-guided fighter ships would be very effective in a space battle: The enemy has to deal with lots of small targets, and every small target is a separate drain on the enemy's resources.
2.) A human can't evade a laser weapon because the laser is undetectable until it hits you: It travels at the speed of, well, ya know,
1. Get a better computer
2. Light can spread, which makes it weaker and you do know how big is space is.
Battlestar Galactica seemed to focus more on a realistic approach to space combat. The viper had external ports that shot out propellant of some sort, and they were located all around the ship. With this approach It seem they would be able to micro adjust for maneuverability aspects. As far as munitions, I think solid projectiles were used they didn’t have lasers.
Something I really enjoyed about Battlestar Galactica reboot is that while they did go with the whole space fighter thing, they at least didn't limit them to aerial maneuvers dictated by aerodynamics. They moved about with RCS thrusters, spun around to shoot at pursuing craft etc, it was pretty cool.
And demonstrated that the best weapon can be disabling the enemy without even firing a shot, as the Cylons did in the initial attack.
That was a great series!
I also very enjoyed the detailed attention to realism in space maneuvers and combat in The Expense.
There's a game like this that does something similar called Infinity Battlescape
And Babylon 5, and Space: Above and Beyond did that too.
I've read that since space is a vacuum, and vacuums are perfect insulators, a lot of space combat would probably just be focusing heat rays at each other and seeing who cooks first, since it's very difficult to shed the heat you're receiving.
If you can make sufficiently strong lasers or fling objects at relativistic speeds, defense would be very hard for the target. Fights would be long range indeed.
Now I'm imagining hyperadvanced aliens having swarmships that are just mass hives of "Nanites", femtomachines, ect, and the whole ship can squirm writhe and reshape itself physically out of the path of any incoming weapon, or ablate sheets away from the core mass to mitigate laser spotlights / heatwaves. The swarm intelligently shuffling interior spaces around as it does so, or on the spot forming sealed compartments for passengers for temporary events or as an escapecraft.
More interesting at least than "Fields" doing everything.
Doesn't radiation not require a medium to travel? Hence the radiators on the ISS
@@yemmohater2796true, radiation doesn't need a medium to shed energy, so a radiator could still work. however, it is FAR less efficient than if it was in a medium.
The way the vast majority of heat is shed in a medium is because of the physical interaction between molecules. When two molecules in a medium bounce off each other, their energy equalizes.
This process is pretty much instant, so think about just how many molecules are bouncing off each other at any given moment. That's why radiators and heat sinks work as well as they do, the increased surface area allows for greater interaction with a medium to either cool it down or warm it up.
wouldn't generating the energy to produce a focused heat ray also cause you to heat up?
Imagine it is 1500 AD, and someone says there will be a day where battles are fought in the air with unguided spears and projectiles propelled by explosions.
Honestly, in a realistic setting, some of the most valuabe tactics would be predictive engines and disguising techniques. If you can predict an attack, you can drastically improve your ability to evade or counter. If you can disguise yourself, you've essentially created space stealth.
I loved Babylon 5's explanation of space stealth for Minbari craft: the sensor systems they used against Earthforce ships simply overpowered Earth's sensors. So we knew they were out there, but simply couldn't target them effectively. But then we found the solution with John "Nukem" sherridan where you just booby-trap the area with nukes that the Minbari simply weren't looking for.
that is basically how ECM works. people think that ECMs make you invisible, but its the opposite, it actually blinds the enemy sensor with an absurdly powerful signal. the problem however is that half of the galaxy will know where you are (well... eventually)
To this day my buddy gushes about how realistic the human fighters and ships in B5 were, especially for the time. I'm inclined to agree, the whole show holds up very well even now.
I love Babylon 5. I'm currently rewatching it with a couple of friends who haven't watched it before
The Mimbari would have lasted three seconds against Earth if the writers had ever heard of anti-radiation missiles. If you’re pumping out that much electromagnetic radiation you’re a perfect target for a passive seeker. Jamming is like shining a flashlight in someone’s eyes in a dark room. Yeah, they’re blinded, but they have a real good idea where to toss the grenade if they can’t shoot at you. Jamming is like tracer bullets: “they work both ways.”
@joeatwood6905 You're assuming Minbari jamming works like ours do. They're the most technologically advanced Younger Race. It could work through completely different principles that humanity isn't aware of.
i think all of this is why the warp/jump/wormhole drive or whatever is such a magical piece of sci-fi gear. it not only makes travel over long distance feasible in a meaningful time period, but it would also make it impossible to observe someone move towards you, as the target would be moving at the speed of light (or faster). you literally wouldn't be able to attack or prepare defenses until they drop out of warp on you, making space a highly agressive battlefield.
i really like how the older elite games handled warp. it was only usable between systems, but still tooks years to do. additionally, jumping between systems left a visible wake from where you entered hyperspace, and a ship with faster warp could analyze your warp wake, outspeed you to your destination, and literally just wait for you to arrive and kill you. that was a take i found really interesting on space combat.
I actually had a interesting idea in my own sci fi world for a drive system.
Sub-space drive, which is useable for in system travel and also useable between stars depending on your ship and module of the drive.
the drive would simply push the ship through a rift into subspace and would then drop your ship back into real space at the destination. you wouldn't be able to predict ships arriving on a scanner, they just arrive "out of nowhere"
im thinking about making a countering system for bigger station that ships cant drop out in a certain area around it or even around a planet, the system would just force your ship to drop out if you get in the range of the device. out of range of weapons for probably both sides but in range for all scanners to pick up.
the drive would use alot of fuel and power and is fairly slow on longer distances.
Interesting. I hope all the best for you in your writing endeavor.
@@gringles thank you! its still gonna take a while, im writing on a basic thing for now as a trial cause im writing it in english (its not my main language) and then maybe write the finished (first) product.
@@fritzflitzsci-fi often does something similar for enforcing "No jump zones" with the simple concept of Gravity as the restriction factor. Gravity wells interfere with jump systems, and the bigger the gravity, the farther out your jump ends unless you want to critically risk potentially devastating results, ranging from exciting well off course in general to burning out your jump system, burning out your entire ship's systems, tearing your ship apart upon reentry into normal space, or even reappearing inside other solid matter like a ship, base, or planet, with catastrophic results...
A small earth sized planet loose in interstellar space would force you out at extreme combat range, while a Sol sized system has enough distortion to guarantee a 10+ hour trip in normal space to reach earth if yo intend to stop and visit instead of flying by at combat speed...
The Honor Harrington books handle this Really well
@@Shocktrue1 exactly what i thought, gravity and mass, also artificially mass locked by stations and well most orbital stations are near planets anyway.
The fighters in the original Battlestar Galactica definetly moved like WW2 aircraft, especially when they attacked. And the Tie-fighters of Star Wars would been more impressive if the moved like the fighters in Babylon 5.
The motion makes sense if the ships are piloted by meatbags and cost/mass/energy constrained.
Our bodies take g-forces better in some directions than others. Putting big thrusters behind or beneath us is better (we sat upright in fighter planes because this vectored gravity, thrust, and climb (climb being the most preferable basic maneuver) in a way that worked with our bodies. In space, it might be a little different, but not much.
Irrespective of the relative direction of thrust to our bodies is the cost of large thrusters and potentially the effect on fuel. Having very large thrusters acting in one direction and using smaller pitch/roll/yaw thrusters to change vectors will probably remain more cost effective. Couple this with the meatbag considerations from above and space fighters look a lot like airplanes.
As far as the tenability of space fighters, I guess it depends on the maximum velocity of spacecraft, the range and potency of weapons, and the general "rules" of combat. Keep in mind that tanks and fighters today are technologically meaningless when compared to nukes, but we still use them.
@@tehbonehead The idea is to not have to have to change momentum when pointing the forward facing guns at the enemy. Just swivel around like if the space fighter was a turret.
@@michaelpettersson4919 changing momentum in this scenario is primaroly for evasion... again, depending on the weapons in play.
@@tehbonehead Exactly. Unlike how it look in most shows by Babylon 5 got it right.
We're looking at a Legend of the Galactic Heroes battlefield, where huge fleets maneuver and position themselves and exchange fire back and forth at each other. Fighters only come out when the fleets get into close range, it ends up looking like something more resembling a battle out the Napoleonic era with ships fighting in ranks. But hey when you can see each other approaching unless they were using galactic bodies to hide their approach, it just quickly becomes a battle of attrition and who has more guns to fire.
I havent seen this in the show but ill assume ships bunch up to protect themselves from long range missiles or among other things (like communication aswell) If not a bunch of smaller, more agile fleets should come up on top.
We see this when the numerically superior alliance fleet got defeated in detail on the first battles of the show
With FTL drives, it adds another dimension to space combat. Being able to travel faster than light can mask your presence, as you will only be seen by the distance light takes to get there, and if you do a FTL jump, you're effectively invisible for the period of time light takes to get there.
Outrunning light in one direction doesn't mean light won't still bounce off you from every other direction. It might even be accelerated in the direction you're going.
@@BlueSatoshi It doesn't work this way. And it also depends on how FTL travel is done. If it's with a wormhole, then there's nothing to bounce off of except for a burst of radiation to indicate it. If it's warp, same thing.
Light can't go faster than light.
@@BlueSatoshi Straight in front of you, you'll arrive before anything can detect you. Straight behind you, anything not also traveling faster than light can't reach you (so for example you can't be hit by laser weaponry). In other directions it depends on how much faster than light you're traveling.
Book I'm reading right now still has counters to this. You can detect the starting point of where a ship spun up their FTL drive and calculate their trajectory and likely point where they'll come out of FTL. There is only so much heat a ship of a certain mass can tolerate during FTL travel before it starts to melt itself or the crew. In the book this turns into an interesting cat and mouse game. The fleeing ship using FTL can use objects like a star, planet, moon, etc. to hide their FTL spinning up from a certain angle for short time. (But can't be too close to a gravity well to use FTL.) The chasing ship in turn only has to aim it's specialised FTL sensors along the right angel to detect where the fleeing ship starts and stops using FTL.
The fleeing ship can in turn vary the times they come out of FTL and make slight adjustments to the angle they use FTL at to obscure their final destination and make it harder to follow follow-up FTL travel.
The book is called: "To Sleep in a Sea of Stars" for anyone interested.
@@Handinmapocket "You can detect the starting point of where a ship spun up their FTL" this is already a pretty bad take imo. Without having omniscience-level technology you shouldn't be able to detect who entered ftl at the same time as they did it.
I'm fairly certain these reasons are why in Star Wars they jump in as close to the enemy as possible from a complete different star system, as their sensors can indeed detect even an x-wing across the star system. Giving the enemy fleet as little time to react as possible. And there are atmospheric battles too, which originally the larger ships could not enter atmosphere, they were just too large. And they have stealth ships as well for scouting and such.. it does make sense as to why they are not just shooting at each other from millions of kilometers away.
Not sure how he missed this one. Also I don’t recall Star Wars tech being able to detect anything more than a few hundred thousand kilometers away. Take Ahsoka for example: she was able to hide in a bone field. And the Eye of Sion wasn’t able to track or detect her ship
The thing about this video is that he took hard physic approach to sci-fi. With FTL, jumping, warping and shit, things would be different. When traveling in (some type of) FTL, you will be completely undetectable, bringing the cloud back to space combat. But it's not like Star Wars tactic is perfectly valid, like if they can send manned aircrafts in so close, why couldn't they just send a thousand nuclear missile, at least as a preliminary strike.
@@naravishthongnok5899 While I broadly agree with a lot of the points he brings up I think it's important to note that our current tech is designed for stealth on earth. To detect something in space you still have to give off emissions that would make you detectable and there are probably ways to mask your signature in a way that would still throw off sensors to some extent. Either that or you can deploy dummy signals around the system that might be difficult to rule out by sensor systems many AU away.
Voyager isn't a great example anyway. Voyager was not designed to be undetectable - it gives off emissions - and we know exactly where it is to look for it. The sensors described here have perfect signal detection capabilities across a full spherical area and can immediately spot even the tiniest discrepancy from the typical background noise. I don't think that's actually as easy or simple as it's made out to be in this video.
Finally, considering the backdrop here is Starfield, he ignores a rather relevant detail: the grav drive. People generally don't just fly around at sublight speeds across vast distances. You jump straight to the destination you want to by folding space. This is somewhat similar to other types of FTL travel that most space shows employ. So a lot of that 'closing distance' is eliminated by the ability to drop in within a reasonable distance from your target. Then it comes down to defensive capabilities and maneuverability.
Of course the 'dodging lasers' bit is still a thing. Even an AI is going to be unable to really 'dodge' incoming laser fire. (Nevermind that you can't actually see incoming laser fire before it has already reached you anyway.) So it would be more about baffling sensors to throw off targeting at which point evasive maneuvers could still be effective.
But a lot of those critiques do rely on sci-fi tech which may or may not be possible. Certainly, a lot of these critiques absolutely apply to a universe with sub-light travel and tech that's within the lines of what we know is possible.
In other words, it's the same reason why modern militaries still have ground forces when we could theoretically switch to drones and missiles only: because a more varied military capable of fighting a unilateral war is more likely to win.
@@t3hsilarn Also most SW blasters use plasma not light to fire. And plasma moves significantly slower than a laser.
I read a science fiction book that had a very good argument against large space vessels in war. Essentially it had to do with the momentous energy that could be used in weapons. Either fast kinetic mass thrust into an area or nuclear bombs meaning you could not make a vessel strong enough to survive even a grazing hit.
His take was every ship would be modular able to break apart into dozens, hundreds or thousands of vessels for battle and then reform. That way ships could escape by offering too many targets.
This video reminds me of a scene in a Honor Harrington book, where the main character is talking to cadets at the Space Academy.
It's not about hiding as a way to make yourself *invisible*, but it's about using deception, bluffs, and electronic warfare to make your ships look like something they're not.
Yes. Misdirection and blinding are both totally valid tactics. Hiding a raider crew on a ship that is supposedly a refugee vessel or a cargo ship is quite legitimate. On the other hand, simply glaring a multi-frequency laser into the face of whomever is trying to look at you will certainly not prevent them from knowing exactly where you are, but it may make it quite difficult for them to ascertain important details about you that they would really like to know before it's too late...
I kept thinking of the Honor Harrington series the whole time he was talking.
@@VastinIf you blinded another ship's view of your ship with lasers they'd probably just assume bad faith, alert everyone in the system, and send homing missiles in your direction.
@@EvdogMusic Oh, no question. They just might not be quite as sure WHAT they were nuking. :D
@@Vastin "Hey, what was that enemy?"
"Dunno, don't care, it's dead now."
Everytime I watch an educational show about space combat, weapon systems are always discussed. But never defensive systems. Such systems would change how space warfare would actually be conducted. I would love to see a part two to this episode that would incorporate a good discussion of realistic defensive systems and how the model of space combat would change.
Scalar beams make shields (tesla) and can disperse a light beam wave, much less melt incoming scagg...
Realistically, every space battle is fatal for both parties. Missiles can easily generate far more kinetic energy than any hull could withstand, especially a hull that needs to be lightweight. No ship can carry enough lead to shoot down a thousand 1kg missiles. In space, offense easily swamps any possible defence. The guy who shoots first *might* survive, only if the other guy never shoots.
@@xizivejoneswouldn't the best way to deflect and disable a kinetic missile be another kinetic missile? In which case the survivor is the one with more missiles.
Check out the expanse. They got it right. Other than hacking attacks and redirecting incoming attacks with flack, there is essentially no such thing as defense in space. Your best bet is to get in a space suit, put the interior into vacuum, and just hope the shrapnel passes through a non critical part of the hull, and not you or your fuel tank. We would have to completely misunderstand physics for it to be any use at all. If you want something that that’s defensive options, but only one unrealistic magic technology (Mass drives), I’d recommend Mass Effect’s codex. They put so much creative, grounded work into thinking about this issue.
@@Tinyvalkyrie410 one of the issues I have with the expanse is that the treat metal as an infinite resource. Every bullet shot into the void or ship lost is metal gone forever. Asteroid mining can only produce so much and metal is becomes more valuable when in space travel is possible.
1:43 I love how a little girl from a taco shell commercial became a meme! LOL
The one way Star Wars does work is in terms of hit-and-run tactics where the idea isn't to get into a big space battle but to have cheap ships that can attack unprotected regions and then run away however that is reliant on the idea of hyperdrive or other hidden travel mechanism
The most novel space combat I've seen depicted is in the Jack Campbell (John G Hemry) The Lost Fleet series. Space battles would occur at relativistic speeds (fractions of c), and the ammunition was basically just kinetic slugs launched at high speed. Engagements only last fractions of a second, and relied on being able to predict enemy fleet positions millions of km apart.
Read the Honorverse books, way better.
@@tomwithey711 Why not read both series? That's what I did, and both are absolutely fantastic!
Makes no sense tbh. The very obvious counter would be to maneuver randomly. There is literally no way to predict that no matter what sort of insane supercomputer you have.
The range of unguided munitions in space will always be limited by the enemies ability to manuever defensively. Even at relativistic speeds there is no way to hit reliably at millions of km unless you are bringing an absurd amount of firepower.
Not to mention that being able to accelerate a slug to fractions of c is some pretty out there tech.
@@XMysticHerox well yeah they didn't hit much without closing with the enemy. Flying past at massive speeds, encounters last "fractions of a second" as stated.
Even that is pretty out there. Doing flybies at relativistic speed is very out there. You'd have to either travel at interstellar speeds and then somehow maneuver into an intercept once you arrive in a system where you only get one shot at it. And for all that effort you have literally zero advantage because the enemy hits just as hard.
Or you have weapons that can fire projectiles at relativistic speeds from a relative standstill. Which is completely absurd. Thats complete science fantasy.
Which is not to say it is a bad book series. I just wouldn't hold it up as an example of realistic space combat. Like a lot of military sci fi it is science fantasy essentially on the level of Star Trek but dressed up in a gritty theme that makes it feel realistic. Which is fine again. Just not a portrayal of probable, realistic space warfare under our current understanding of physics. @@jasonwinzenried1115
The Honor Harrington book series by David Weber actually does space navies really well. Things like ship class and armor matter. Missles are dependant on tracking and electronic warfar capabilities. The ships evolved due to the tactics and technology available. Definitely worth a read
It is far and away one of my favorite military sci-fi IPs.
Even they have fighters C-LACs turn the war. His argument is bad and dumb. There are multiple reasons both in physics terms and strategically to have “space fighters”
- Dropped in to mention the Honorverse.
For all the legit MarySue criticisms, I loved the battle scenes. Hypervelocity smart missiles and klnetic dumb bombs but realistic inertial issues with getting your capital ships up to speed and maneuvering.
Trying to evade an incoming swarm that's many thousands of K's out... and still hours away. 😳
In naval terms .. like a battle using slow but very long range torpedos, but you're all sailing large oared Galleys! 😜
@@jimg5669She is Hornblower in space. It does not make it a bad thing. The Saganami Island tactical simulator board game is interesting but is a bit too much math for me.
I showed up just to say this very thing. Weber gets space combat about as good as possible within the bounds of his system of technology and real physics. Even to the point of evolving tech that renders previous tactical doctrine obsolete and forces navies to update both tactics and tech to keep up. It's a realistic combo of fighting with math, tech, resources, and logistics. He even makes engagement times of days and hours exciting to read...would love to see Honor Harrington on screen and done right, but we probably never will.
The benefit of a small ship isn’t that it can “dodge” laser fire, but that it is harder to aim across a large field of view.
Assuming a similar laser weapon range before the laser decoheres too much to be damaging, the smaller ship is much harder to hit - not because it dodges, but because the size of it in the field of view is smaller and thus requires more precision to hit.
Computers can aim better than humans, but they still aren’t perfect.
Nice! One could argue that like vehicles with active suspensions and special tuning that allow them to feel like they're overcoming physics, the vehicles in Star Wars do have gravity generators that could hypothetically stimulate an artifical feeling of fiction in the flight controls and reactions. 🤔
And dodging lasers would require you to have detectors that operate at FTL. The laser hits you at the same time the light hits you to inform you to dodge, no matter how far you are from the source of the laser beam.
Pretty sure most modern sci-fi (haven't played Starfield though) deals with lasers by ways of messing with targeting systems or sci-fi shields and such.
Technically even Star Wars doesn't necessarily use lasers (and some other kind of projectiles, like plasma or something similar) but then again, SW is just a fantasy story in a soft space-age setting and counting all handwaving examples from it would take ages.
A small ship could still dodge by randomly accelerating in different directions, at far enough distances the big ship's information could be a quarter second out of date and it could take a quarter second for a laser to hit the smaller ship giving the smaller ship time to move out of the way of what the big ship might be shooting at it. Combine that with technology that makes the ship harder to spot (insulating the ships interior so the surface puts out less heat, painting it black less of the suns light reflects off of it, and using shapes that reflects radar or lidar away from its sources) and a group smaller harder to hit ships that is mostly engines and a guns could be more effective than a larger slower, easier to spot and hit ship.
You wouldn't use lasers to "cut" or make holes in the ships as lasers have ranges due to how lenses and optics work. And those aren't that large as Kyle suggests. Anyway, you would use lasers, microwaves and others to "cook" living things on spaceships. As the only way you loose heat is via radiating it away, which is slow. Just look at things like ISS, it has larger radiators to dissipate heat then their solar panels. And shooting things will require you to have internal heat collectors which will add mass to the ship and then insanely huge radiators, which you will not be using while in "combat". As damaged or destroyed radiators means getting slowly cooked by the sun and life support systems. I suspect first designed combat craft will play of a game of cat and mouse, "dropping" (you wouldn't want to launch them to absorb heat) missiles from your ship and "seeding" the enemies path with debris to heat the armor up and overwhelm their cooling capacities. Similar to how early subs needed to surface after few hours of "combat" for air, these ships will need to use radiators to dissipate heat. And you wouldn't bee able to use rapid fire weapons in space as they create enormous amounts of heat. Like miniguns getting red hot in a few seconds of shooting, it would take hours to cool it down if not days. Oh and don't forget things like metal welding in space and others things we can't think of.
While this would be true, lasers likely wouldn't be an exceptionally practical weapon to use for most ships. Keeping the coherence of a laser for things like communications over the vast distances of space is possible. Keeping enough coherence at those ranges to actually melt through the shielding on another ship would be an entirely different order of magnitude.
A laser powerful enough to *quickly* damage another ship would have to be so powerful that the ship it emanated from would basically melt. Otherwise, as soon as a laser was detected hitting your ship, you could simply start to rotate your ship around an arbitrary axis, making the laser never have enough contact with a particular spot to produce that much heat.
In addition, if you couldn't near-instantly melt through the opposing ship, said ship would likely begin evasive maneuvers, which means you'd only have that single initial shot have decent accuracy. You'd then have to rely on computers to attempt to predict where the ship would have moved to, until ranges closed significantly.
Actually dodging lasers would be done exactly the way planes 'dodge' bullets in real dogfights or soldiers 'dodge' bullets on a real battlefield while moving - you jig and change course randomly and frequently. Assume the laser can and will be coming at you at any moment, and make yourself hard to hit regardless.
If you get unlucky, you get unlucky and you die. If you get close enough to the enemy that your random course corrections can no longer realistically get you out from under their beam or projectile trajectory, you die.
This is why I loved the space combat in The Expanse. It was treated very realistically, and I felt that added a tension that you don't get from stylized combat.
And just remember, there actually is a good reason why they didn't use lasers - heat. Another thing the movies tend to get wrong. The problem isn't the cold of space, it's being able to dissipate heat. And energy weapons generate a LOT of heat. This is why they were still using projectile weapons.
That's addressed in some works. In Saberhagen's Berserker universe, the really powerful beam weapons are on planets where they can use whole seas for cooling.
The heat problem is also at least mentioned in passing in "Mass Effect", and "Elite:Dangerous", where, depending on loadout, heat management can be more important than power management. @@robertmiller9735
@@robertmiller9735that is sick.
The Expanse's ships relationship with the heat is... weird, TBH. They don't use lasers because they generate too much heat, but at the same time their engines should generate enough heat when thrusting to vaporize the entire ship with generated heat ten times over (I think somebody calculated the energy Epsten drive generates being somewhere in the petawatt ranges?).
Yay for Mass Effect! Radiators (a bit lousy, but still good explanation) and heat sinks that have to be discharged by approaching a planet.
In my opinion, the only way fighters will be used in the future is if they're also a space plane which can fly into an atmosphere and carry out strike missions. So if you want to make comparisons between space and naval warfare (which I don't recommend), the best modern analogy for a space fighter would be an amphibious assault craft.
It's kind of ironic because the most common complaint about space fighters is that they look airplanes but this would mean they actually would look like airplanes.
As a pirate you simple puncture the outside of the merchant ship and wait a day or two - then cut in and take everything from the dead people.
No need to tow the ship - and its definitely easier in space than port. They can watch you do it, but by the time they have seen the images and sent a response you are gone
Funnily enough, your scenario reminded me a lot of Children of a Dead Earth which is very much a physics-based space combat simulation including usage of gravity wells and the like to get in position as well as fire your weapons. Worth checking out and it gets HARD quickly.
Also that game would never be as big as Starfield or even FTL
the game uses tech from the 60s which doesn't make sense, but it's a decent start for getting into hard sf.
just beat the game a few days ago. its such an underated gem that i basically never see mentioned except for when this specific topic is brought up
@@rommdan2716 Still a fun game
One thing CoaDE does not depict well are: sensors and Electromagnetic Warfare in general. Hell, your missiles don't even need sensors to find their targets, they just know at all times where it is, allowing you to cover their noses in meters of composite armour without consequences, which is very unrealistic to say the least.
Part of the reason I love The Expanse series so much. Limitations of craft more often come down to the people over the ship. The craft might be able to pull 20g acceleration, but humans will more than likely die of a stroke at half of that. Ship to ship combat is mostly long range weapons with maneuverabilty to dodge incoming projectiles. It's a race to see either who can drop the hammer on the enemy faster, or who's got the endurance to outrun a pursuer.
Aircraft have already far exceeded human limitations. One of the reasons air forces want to use unmanned drones.
Exactly. And the nuclear missiles (no reason not to use them in space combat, since fallout is a non-issue) were much faster and more maneuverable than any manned craft could ever be. Successfully dodge one and it just turns around for another attempt. All you can do is hope that your point defense cannons can take out all the missiles before one hits you. Maneuvering just buys the PDCs more time.
@@MrClickity Cost, time of production, availability of raw, means to process materials. IRL, someone is going to have to see you as an immense threat and have no less costly means to neutralize you to send a nuke after you. I could see the potential of a kinetic missile that seeks to collide with a target then go back and land where the sender can retrieve it for reuse.
I thought of a partial solution to the "air lock boarding" problem: the pirate ship needs an exit port that's a giant suction cup. Attach to the hull of the other ship, suck the air out, breach the hull with tools/explosives, and board through the hole you just made. Now you're entering through a wall instead of a door, and the other ship will lose pressure if it detaches.
I always saw space combat like the age of the dreadnoughts. Firing long shots at each other and eather taking someone out of action or reaching the end of their operational limits.
Probably. Missiles likely wouldn't work in an environment where you can theoretically see them coming from an infinite distance away and just laser 'em, so we'd be back to lobbing big chunks of metal at ludicrous speeds.
@@colbyboucher6391 You would use missiles to deploy "minefields" in space in enemy trajectories so they would need to dodge the crap they spilled. Doing couple of kilometers per second and meeting a couple of centimeter sphere in your path going at the same speed of at a fraction of a c. Would make anything we can make little more then wet paper.
@@colbyboucher6391 Kinda depends on how far we extend the tech level. Because once tech level gets higher you get more fanciful sensors, but you also get more fanciful ways of ECM confusing those sensors which makes missiles more survivable. We can take out incoming missiles today with water navy ships, yet missiles are still the preffered way of making an attack that doesn't use airpower. And you overcome the defences by shooting a LOT of missiles to overwhelm the point defence.
Similar would likely apply. As a bonus missiles also have the ability to correct their course for course changes that any fleet in combat will likely be doing excatly to limit the ability of the enemy to get them easily with unguided kinetics.
On the other hand kinetics would be absolutely lethal once ships close in to ranges where acceleration is insufficient to alter the vector enough for the ship to move out of the path.
On the gripping hand, missile or a solid shot in space are pretty much a same thing if they weight approximately the same. A ship is just as capable of giving them that initial speed. A missile is just a projectile that can do some basic course correction. And unless we are talking about basically space grapeshot both are as spottable.
Of course in near future setting, everything will be VERY fragile because low mass would be VERY important if we are burning the conventional chemical rockets. So pretty muhc anything works as a weapon. Including basically firing grapeshot AKA Kessler Syndrome Starter.
This is actually a little bit like how space combat is described by Alistair Reynolds in Revelation Space: the combat takes place over several lightminutes of range, largely using relativisticly accelerated masses to prevent evasion and fast accelerating high-g missiles to attempt the kill.
The most accurate space combat I saw in anything was in Forever War. I dunno what its respective influences were, but basically everything was just launching munitions at relativistic speeds through vast expanses of space and them trying to figure out how they were going to cope with that physically.
Super Dimensional Fortress Macross it not bad in space battles if you take out the Armoured suits but they are mostly used how you would expect and mostly realistic until they get later in
A PS1 game I liked was Colony Wars. Ships don't move like planes in atmosphere, you can spin in full 3D and keep the trajectory of your last maneuver.
Writer was a vietnam war vetern.
Aaah a classic,
For good descriptions I think you need sf books, not movies. Cholewa's Algorithms of War describe space combat excellently, more similar to submarine maneuvering. No visibility, silent running, torpedoes but at extremely long ranges, sprays as anti-laser defence.
One thing that is completely ignored in this video is electronic warfare that would render a lot of those complicated long range sensors and long range weapons a whole lot less effective.
I read this sci fi book a while ago and I forgot the name. The aliens called space battles the glinting because everything was precalculated by ai, everything is moving at close to/ at light speed so the to fleets are annihilated in fraction of a second as they pass each other. Whoever survives the glinting usually wins.
Even modern day, we have destroyers lobbing missiles from hundreds of miles away. Modern air combat is all BVR, where it’s just lobbing BVR missiles at each other, and also lobbing stand-off weapons from BVR. Modern vehicular/vessel combat as dictated by modern weapons now rarely happens within visual range.
Also loved the Hyperion series, where engagement ranges are across entire planetary systems.
Air combat isn't all BVR. Most of the most recent air/air kills have been within 2 miles. Rarely are rules of engagement structured to allow for BVR.
@@kdrapertruckerplease provide examples. I would argue that modern combat between more or less equal powers would be both BVR and close one
Majority of modern conflicts have been a superior foe against an inferior foe without proper defences. So we have limited knowledge on the reality of defencive capabilites but if the defence industry has anyhting to say about it they are nearing a point of overtaking the capabilities of offensive weapons thanks to new tech.
US Patriot defences managed to take down Russian super sonic kinsals which as raised worries from China and other nations that the status quoe of MAD is now in question if the US would actually be capable of taking down ICBM's.
New anti missile defences are reaching a point where they can track and take down hundreds of incoming targets with high accuracy even if hostile weapons have countermeasures. A lot of modern computers have enough power to be able to be linked with a defence system and could track and take down fast moving targets.
@@kenji214245 Taking down 1-2, even 20 ICBM warheads was possible back in 60's. The problem was always that for every launcher you can buy enemy can buy 10 ICBMs.
Modern air combat isn't all bvr. Stealth will change this. 2 stealth fighters won't be able detect each other until they're close by.
Everything could be about the settings in the film. If there is a specific sci-fi technology created in that universe that we don’t have, they could fight in their ways that is more efficient than what we think they can. One of the setting problem in Star Wars and many other sci-fi movie is that the ships and fighters have unrealistic amount of fuel and life support in them, and without any backup thrust, the fighters can maneuver like a jet fighter in the air. Lasers are no good use in real since they attenuates, unless the lazer is very strong and can be focused very precisely at the target. At longer range, kinetic weapons works much more efficient, but requires better aiming because they cannot move at light speed. So unless there is a unique state of energy for a new kind of special weapon, super high velocity projectiles (just like the rocks and meteors mentioned in the video) are the best.
Some years ago, I saw a video on RUclips that showed a live-action version of Space Battleship Yamato. It was fast paced and exciting, so I searched out a copy of the movie. I was very disappointed to discover that the space footage I saw was actually from a Japanese pachinko machine. Everything in the movie was slow and ponderous. Yes, they had space fighters, but just firing the smaller guns on the capital ship itself was like a 1-2 minute process. When they decided to fire the main gun, it took probably five minutes to get prepared and actually fire it. I would have much preferred a full movie of the pachinko machine footage.
Realistic doesn't always equal fun or exciting, especially in games. The 80s game Elite was a fun 3D, open world, space trading and combat game. Dogfights with pirate ships, while slow due to the hardware it was running on, were fun. Then one of the authors released his follow-up, Frontier, which tried to simulate realistic physics. Attempting to fly between star systems without using hyperspace jumps would have taken literal years. Once you arrive in a star system and need to travel to a specific planet, you have to use time acceleration so that it doesn't take you literal days to get to your destination. Then, because it simulates the realistic movement of planets and moons, you pretty much have to use the auto-pilot, or you'll waste a week of game time trying to course correct and predict how to intercept the planet you're trying to get to. Then you need to quickly disengage the auto-pilot before it crashes you into said planet, which it was very apt to do.
Even with time acceleration, you needed to accelerate your ship to ridiculous speeds to travel anywhere without having to sit around forever, but as soon as you're attacked by pirates, time acceleration is disabled, but you're still traveling at about 1,000,000,000 KPH, which means that you can't maneuver or significantly alter your course, turning combat into a series of jousting matches as you and the enemy slightly increase or decrease your respective speeds, causing you both to go whizzing past each other in the blink of an eye. The only way you'll ever even see the other ship is if you lock the auto-pilot onto it, which, you guessed it, will crash you into it.
In my opinion, Frontier was an amazing tech demo, but a lousy game. And that's not even mentioning the bugs...
While I'm often the one to point out wildly implausible things in movies, I suspend my disbelief for stuff in movies and games that seems semi plausible to an inexperienced layman. Or that has some technobabble to explain it away. For example, I accept the idea of artificial gravity because having the characters float around would just be awkward, and all the realistic methods of generating artificial gravity (rotation, constant acceleration) also have their downsides.
There was an indie game called "children of a dead earth" several years back that focused on realistic physics and orbital mechanics. I never did try it myself though.
Its pretty good. But by God does it need a lot of brain power to play effectively.
This is the definitive space combat sim.
and Outer Wilds!
That one shows really well the difference in acceleration missiles can have compared to human crewed ships :)
it makes a lot of wrong assumptions and is far from realistic, but it is one of the "better" options
basically requires tons of technical knowledge to play though, and half of actual hard sci-fi stuff isn't even possible to do
lasers are also miserable, being stuck with 1970s technologies
kinetic weapons are somewhat viable, which is pretty magical in itself
missiles are apparently a pain to use according to every player I've met, and just instantly despawn upon running out of propellant
detection systems are also not modelled at all, and contrary to popular belief, stealth in space is possible in specific circumstances and assumptions
Instead of stealth I'd expect decoys and perhaps jamming. I also wonder if deliberately deploying debris fields could be used to limit the speed of approaching objects, making them easier for a defense system to engage.
If your enemy used laser for point defence, and your long range weapons are missiles, it would highly behoove you to send in some initial missiles that are just full of highly refractive dust. Enemy can't effectively hit your missiles if they are shooting through dust that diffuses the beam. Speaking of decoys, debris, and laser-jamming dust; of all the scifi to consider and implement that, it was Gundam.
They did a lot of dumping fake asteroids, fake mechs, real debris and active jamming. They also readily make use of clouds of dust to deplete all sorts of directed energy weapons too. It's almost ironic that a franchise centered around close-in dogfights in giant humanoid robots also had all the rest too.
Masseffct at least tried, with the heat sinks and chilled hull. And it showed how limited that tech was both in cost and size of ship it worked on.
Decoys won't work. The plume will give away their mass. And if you're building a fleet of decoys with the same mass and drive of your ship, you might just as well have a fleet-still no stealth, though.
From _Atomic Rockets > Space War > Detection > All Right! I'll Use Decoys!:_
"Problem is, the rate (i.e. velocity) at which the plasma is coming out, manifests itself as a doppler shift in the characteristic emission lines of the plasma. As soon as a dedicated tracking sensor focuses on the target for a second or two, the game is up. If the plasma is coming out fast, it can't help but produce thrust proportional to mass flow rate (manifested as luminosity) times velocity (doppler). If the plasma is coming out slow (or fast but in opposing directions), it will be seen to be coming out slow and thus be recognized as not a real engine.
Conservation of momentum doesn't leave much room to hide thrust, or lack thereof, in a visible exhaust plume. If you know how much exhaust there is and how fast it is moving, you know how much thrust is being produced, period. Thrust estimation by observing plume properties is in fact a common procedure in laboratory testing of plasma thrusters, and while it's no substitute for a direct mechanical thrust measurement it will certainly provide the sort of order-of-magnitude values needed for decoy discrimination."
@@fsmoura that's where strats come in decoys don't have to be fully just decoys they could be turrets or missile launchers that look like your ships and meet 1 or 2 out of 3 of the things sensors use to identify fighter crafts. If enemy has mass, heat and velocity detection just give them the same thrusters they will have the same heat and velocity but not the same mass which would confuse your target to either deal with them or the smaller set of fighter craft that meet all 3 fully confirming what they are to their sensors. Then your decoys get into visible/attack range after being ignored and their actually carrying mines or nukes or just outright be their own missile launcher system and now your target is forced to engage them as well or they blow up with emp or other sensor jamming particles and maybe even missile disabling tech or beam dispersal tech and you have a field where your fighter crafts can safely approach from.
@@AGleeBustHard69 That's not 'stealth in space,' that's just 'having a fleet.' And that hypothetical is just 'ignoring a fleet of spaceships coming to attack you.' There's no 'visible range.' _Everything_ is visible all the way through. Detection will precede combat by months/years. There's also no fighters in space.
Personnel transports with AI-controlled defense lasers and long-range semi-autonomous kamikaze drones. That's basically the entirety of spaceships in a warring society.
Counterpoint: space dogfighting with lasers and little ships is cool as fuck
I like the take on space combat from the Honor Harrington books.
The tactics reverted to the 18th century with ships of the line volleying missiles at each other from across a solar system
Technological assumptions has to be extremely contrived to justify that. Honorverse tech is in no way "hard science fiction". Harder that Star Trek and Star Wars maybe, but still pretty soft.
Oh it absolutely is. But I like the creative concept
I've always maintained that more realism in games doesn't equal more fun. The entire point of a game is to be able to do things you could not irl. Even simulations only take it so far, because too much realism is not fun.
That sounds like such a naive and childish way to look at video games, and Growling Sidewinder would probably disagree as well, seeing how he loves playing that near military grade flight simulator. Games shouldnt just be escapism, rather people should learn how to stop making life so horrible.
@@storysearch9432Exactly. I would add fun is such a bad word for this stuff anyway. Fun is a dopamine hit. Not everyone needs every game be for a hit. Is Flight Simulator played by serious player not fun? Is flying real life airplane not fun? Maybe not - but it's enjoyable, relaxing, etc. So yeah, @ChadeGB, actually, we can't fly spaceships in real life so a totally realistic-as-possible space sim is totally what some people, including me, really want, because it's not irl and I can only imagine or dream such a life. I'll still play "fun" stuff like a Star Wars video game, and there's nothing wrong with that, but having ONE great realistic space sim is still an unobtained holy grail for many of us. We want the experience, not shallow "fun." More of ANY one thing probably doesn't equal more fun - it's all about the game being designed well as a whole to make the target audience like it and keep playing it.
@@ThisCanBePronounced And thats without mentioning the communicative aspects that making art in that media could have, with subtext, exploration of concepts and characters, subtle relation of ideas and stories to the lives of the audience, provoking thought and reflection, etc. Disco Elysium is one of my favorite games because the people who created it had things that they really wanted to express about life, and you feel those messages in that game, without it getting ham-fisted. I hope it never gets a sequel
Aren't we each supposed to determine what we as individuals want out of video games?
@@darealmaul No, you didnt make it, you just purchased it for 79.99 or whatever price it is. Thats when you say you as an individual are supposed to determine what you get out of the thing you bought. Its the person who makes the thing who is supposed to determine what they put into the video games. Whether thats meaningful or not is ultimately up to them. But im sure youd agree, its rather reductive to simply state that the purpose of video games is and should have always been about fun. Simply another way our capitalistic society twists something that should be meaningful into something that simply exists to be bought by lovers of the superficial and convenient, the apathetic and the just plain useless people who devote their lives to these sorts of distracting toys
A good version of "naval" battles in space is the "Lost Fleet: Dauntless" series by Jack Campbell. It doesn't focus on fighters, but rather battleships, battle cruisers, and other support vessels traveling (and fighting) at 0.1c. The relativistic effects on targetting, as well as the delay of hours before you see a fleet hyperspace into your system are all taken into account.
Reading the Revelation Space series brings up another good argument against any sort of forced boarding... the ship won't want you there. You don't need a gun crew behind the door. I'd be much more terrified of all the crazy ways a super automated, self maintaining, 'intelligent' ship could find to kill you.
Babylon 5’s Star Fury is one of the very few small spacecraft designs that actually looks like it was realistically designed to be manoeuvrable and agile while operating in a vacuum, as anyone who’s seen it will appreciate.
Children of a dead earth has probably the most realistic space combat I can think of. You can build an Diamond, Aerogel and Kevlar composite armor with a configurable spacing between them.
One thing CoaDE does not depict well are: sensors and Electromagnetic Warfare in general. Hell, your missiles don't even need sensors to find their targets, they just know at all times where it is, allowing you to cover their noses in *meters* of composite armour without consequences, which is very unrealistic to say the least.
@@peasant8246 A sequel of that game is well deserved. I'd love to see the mechanics expanded and the visual style evolved. Unfortunate that it'll never happen though
@@The4j1123 I believe the developer has returned and said he's working on a new project set in CoaDE universe. See if you can find the post where he's talking about it.
I think Delta V handles space combat fairly well too, even though it's about mining and not combat
space has a medium, its time, and its relative to motive force over mass and gravity. In other words, a large object's agility is dependent upon how much motive force it can exert, while this is the same for any sized object, larger objects take longer than smaller objects at identical motive force due to their mass, not including gravity, which introduces minimum motive force requirements equal to the gravitational force+additional force relative to the desired direction away from the gravitational field.
if thats too confusing, then how about this: If it takes 5 seconds to reach 10 feet per second from 0 feet per second at 1 pound of thrust, then it takes 5 seconds to return from 10 feet per second to 0 feet per second at 1 pound of thrust, provided mass and gravity force is identical in both directions.
I think it really all depends on the weaponry, travel method, and other science limitation placed on the setting. If thought out and made right there are universes that I think could easily keep fighters as plausible/useful even if not having the dominant role they do in classic sci-fi.
Obvious one would be really efficient FTL spreading humanity over thousands of systems with small colonies each. Fightercraft would simply be the feasible size to still be able to patrol that many systems.
@@XMysticHerox Similarly, efficient and widespread FTL capabilities would make long distance engagements non-viable since you could just warp out before a long distance projectile gets to you. It also renders the trajectory tracking thing moot as well.
That depends entirely on how the FTL function which is largely up to the author. Maybe a ship needs to charge for some time. maybe you can only enter FTL far away form planets or at certain points. Maybe FTL capable ships are way too valuable to risk in combat so they only act as carriers. But yes depending on the exact FTL it might be all about close range engagements. @@Descriptor413
I enjoyed the space combat in the Expanse. That liquid they would mainline before doing high g maneuvers was a nice touch on the author's part.
Just rewatched the series. Man it’s an awesome show.
Have you guys seen Battlestar Galactica..
One of the creators of BSG was consulting on space fights in the Expanse..
I frikkin love BSG and The Expanse was also good. :)
i seen battlestar galactica for the first time like 4 years ago. it shot up to my top 3 favorite shows. im trying to get my brother to watch it@@dusermiginte4647
Some of the more hardcore science fiction stories immerse the crew in fluid, letting the crew breath oxygenated fluids. As many fluids don't compress, any saturated crewmember should likewise, not compress. I don't know how accurate that actually is, but one science fiction story, 'The Forever War' made great use of that.
@@DelverRootnose I’m not a doctor, but I am a pilot, and that doesn’t sound like it would make any difference. Fluid in your lungs instead of air wouldn’t change the g forces your body, and all its organs, experience.
A game that did this really well is Children Of a Dead Earth. A lot of the combat is missles launched from out of plane and capital ships wizing past eachother while blasting away at eachother.
Yeah, in my opinion "Children Of A Dead Earth" does a really good job of portraying how DIFFERENT space combat would be with our current technology. It ends up being this interesting situation where it can take MONTHS to reach your target, and the speeds that the ships move at while in orbit often lead to combat only lasting for a couple of brief seconds.
And you had better hope that you made the right choice in sending ships to attack because it's not like you can just turn your ships around to have them return. If you're lucky you could find another object to hopefully give a gravity assist for a return, but otherwise you'll have to stay committed to your original plan of attack and then use the gravity assist from that object to return.
Yeah, but that game flopped
12:40 man this reminded me of one of our DnD games,we played a futuristic type of game with costum rules and we got attacked by a bunch of automated drones.
Infinite Ryvius was (mostly) good about slow space combat where every move took a long time to program.
I am a longtime mecha anime fanboy, and one of the things about real robot shows is that they normally have some kind of reason or explanation why their tech is relevant. I could see something like space fighters or pirates being relevant if they invented some kind of stealth tech but it can only hide small ships. But again that involves suspending disbelief and a touch of fantasy.
As far as space combat goes, I rather have the rule of cool approach hahahaha. Love mecha, and my favorites are the beam sword types, super inefficient and unrealistic, but so cool
In Battletech universe the reason for mechs is the invention of artificial muscles that contract as if they were your own. In MW Mercenaries 5 I actually see them in the limbs, if the armor is blown off. It gives the feeling that limbs can still work unless you tear through the entire muscle, unlike an unlucky hit in a servo of a conventional biped mecha design.
Also the convention bans the pragmatic approach of nuking planets from the orbit, so in a sense the setting itself admits that there are artificial limitations in warfare that make sense the use of mechs
Google **hydrogen steamer** for a hypothetical stealth ship in space.
I do think it's interesting how vulnerable ships in gundam end up being throughout the various series. They're still used because carrier doctrine and great weapons platforms, but the idea that essentially the most effective fighter is a dude in a big space suit is kinda believable. They also do stealth with dummy asteroids and the like which also makes sense.
Kinda how in battletech the concept of elementals changed how ground wars were fought.
Just a heads up if you're considering buying a Holzkern watch: Holzkern has a decent mechanism inside, but the watches themselves can be a little fragile at times. They use wood in a few sections and that can weaken it a little. They do have some really nice designs, and I've heard many good things about them but my experience with Holzkern was not the best in terms of longevity. If you love the styles they have then totally go for it! If you want something a little higher quality for the same price you could look into brands like Citizen, Orient or Seiko. Just some food for thought.
Anyways: great video as always Kyle!
I know you’re talking about a specific game and reference Star Wars style fighting. What I want to mention is when/if we get to the point where there are so many crafts it’s a massive network of lg/sm ships of variable purpose like a massive air traffic control….which is something you should do a video on 😉
The best description I have come across is how Iain M Banks describes the battles in Excession
I'm still a big fan of the whole "WWII dogfight in space" trope so I would be sad to see it go away, but I would like to also see games/tv/movies that further investigate other ways these things could play out based on real science, much like how the Expanse kind of walks the line between realistic and exciting space combat. I would def. watch a series of video where you break down classic space combat scenes from games and movies and depict the "correct" way those engagements would have gone with real science. This kind of stuff is fascinating to learn and you do a great job.
In my Sovereign Species series, the classic Sci-Fi Star Wars space battles will be proper battles, simply due to the sheer number of ships the combatants bring, whilst the more realistic space battles will be "Skirmishes" that take place after such engagements are either won or lost, and it's more a siege on both sides decided by who will be able to hold out the longest. The ships *can* hide, but they have so many of them that they can use them to fight climactic decisive battles and cause devastation, and for certain factions, production rates are *shockingly* fast.
And space fighters will take on harrassing/support roles for the bigger ships, or, in the Aldokk's case, spam so many drones that the Arek are forced to fight both them and their own vessels at the same time.
Having played the B5 game "We've Found Her", I can say that playing space fighter sims like you were flying in atmosphere is massively easier than real world physics. While the game was a fun diversion, I spent more time trying to change the direction of my motion than I did with my weapons on target.
It's so dang easy to drive too fast and overshoot when impatient
Cool, I remember playing that it was sure novel.. what I remember the kost though was the weirde hyperspace nav segments.
I'd played every major space sim since Elite in the 80s through Wing Commander, X-Wing/Tie Fighter and Freespace 2, this was by far the hardest.
My favorite boarding action is of the Astartes kind. Just make your own entry point in the enemy ship.
I think that the only argument I would have with this is that a mass of drone fighters would be able to overwhelm and dodge point defense and then stick with and deal continuous damage to systems of the target craft. Whether that means it is more resource efficient or not is the question.
I think both the "horizons" issue and "space piracy" issue would be complicated by operations around planets and moons, although this depends on how well-settled a solar system is. Pirates can potentially hide in the atmosphere of a planet to intercept ships slowing down on their landing approaches with missiles, bots, or tractor beams, or perhaps just hijack their navigational signals to direct them to a fake landing site. A remote enough outpost might not have the resources to combat said pirates, and an important enough hostage might preclude a massive military response.
Don't forget social engineering. Pretend to be a stricken ship in need of rescue, then hijack your rescuers. Where there's a will, there's a way.
A point: we can detect Voyager because it's actively trying to contact us and we know exactly where it is. But what if there were several small ships painted in Vanta black to blend in with the back drop of space, and they were either going radio silent or using communication signals that were directional and pointed away from their target? OR, they approached with something like the sun directly behind them so that any of their radio sources could get drowned out by all the radiation and light from the star?
Also the voyager signal being received by a virtual radiotelescope essentially 8 km in diameter.
"ships painted in Vanta black to blend in with the back drop of space" Space is not cold like black death or black drop, space is 3 Kelvin degrees hot and space craft will be hotter like 100 °K but painting Vanta black would be very hot from sun radiation.