Page 151 Discussion: "We will wait, Outsider"

Discussion regarding the Outsider webcomic, science, technology and science fiction.

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Siber
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Re: Page 151 Discussion: "We will wait, Outsider"

Post by Siber »


P.s. You can feel it in a lot of strategy games, closer to the theme- EaW Remake, placing few ISDs betwees SSD and enemy turns large piniata into chainsaw for enemy fleets.
Those games are not tactical simulators, they're games designed and balanced around making getting the expensive cool thing a good idea. In Supreme Commander building a thirty storey tall spider mech with a giant laser on it is a good idea, when in reality it'd be an absurd one, killed by a single high altitude bomber rather than need to be pecked to death by dozens.

The attrition curve effects(your point B) in video games are weird compared to a reasonable scenario because typically units fight at 100% effectiveness until they moment they die, or close to it, while this is not the case in reality. There's no lucky hit on a magazine blowing a huge chunk out of the super-battleship and disabling a major part of its weaponry, or degraded effectiveness as it's crew gets worn down.

In any theater and tech band there's a point of diminishing returns where building something larger just gets you a bigger, more expensive target. Supertanks, superplanes, superbattleships, they have all encountered the same sorts of conceptual and engineering obstacles. Ships in space won't have air resistance or ground pressure to deal with, but they do still have to contend with escalating forces and thus structure to get the same nimbleness as a smaller craft. You don't need to be slow enough to be hit by long range mass driver fire for a lack of speed to attract deadly amounts of fire.

There are also advantages to being big, but there's naturally going to be a viable sweet spot and unviable extremes. Star wars doesn't care about that though(and never has), because showing that thing A is bigger than thing B, when we understand that thing B is already impressive and dangerous, will intuitively make thing A look even more impressive and dangerous. It's good visual shorthand, but it is not a universal law of engineering.
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Zorg56
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Re: Page 151 Discussion: "We will wait, Outsider"

Post by Zorg56 »

Arioch wrote:
Zorg56 wrote:
Arioch wrote: If a ship that costs as much as an entire fleet can be taken out by an entire fleet, then it is an inferior use of those resources, since the whole thing is lost if the enemy focuses fire on it. Whereas the fleet loses only one ship at a time to focus fire.

The dreadnought principle only works if the larger vessel is mostly impervious to damage by smaller vessels.
The thing is, you are actually not supposed to take damage with your Battleship, you need to bombard enemy from distance using your advantage in Firepower-per-ton and range.
And if you escort are deastroyed you can either:

a) Run away before enemy will be able to do critical damage to you.

b) Finish survivors of the enemy fleet, because loosing ships means constantly loosing firepower. Cruiser with same firepower as a dreadnought will loose to dreadnought because each time ship dies you firepower decreases.
If that were true, battleships would not need armor, and battlecruisers would have been the dominant capital ship type, since they have higher firepower per ton. But the battle of Jutland and other capital ship clashes exposed this as a fallacy; the lightly armored battlecruisers got mauled. It's an even bigger fallacy with megaships, since they are not going to be faster than smaller vessels, and will not be able to dictate range of engagement.
Well, yes, but actually, no.

Armor decreases enemy effective range. If your enemy can penetrate your armor from 20 km, but you can do the same only from 10 km, enemy outranges you even you have same guns with the same range.

And they are gonna be at least slightly faster, bigger systems usually more efficient.

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Arioch
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Re: Page 151 Discussion: "We will wait, Outsider"

Post by Arioch »

Zorg56 wrote:Armor decreases enemy effective range. If your enemy can penetrate your armor from 20 km, but you can do the same only from 10 km, enemy outranges you even you have same guns with the same range.

And they are gonna be at least slightly faster, bigger systems usually more efficient.
Miniaturization tends to reduce efficiency, but so does making things larger beyond a certain point. Larger craft tend to have longer range but decreased speed. But in any case you can't give a ship bigger weapons AND bigger engines AND heavier armor for the same mass.

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Re: Page 151 Discussion: "We will wait, Outsider"

Post by StarCruiser »

Depending on the armor scheme - what it does is provide a range of relative immunity to comparable weapons. Talking in terms of actual real-world battleships.

No armor scheme was ever conceived for any ship, even the mighty Yamato, that could not be penetrated at some range. No system was perfect for very good reasons - cost being only one factor. The need for a ship to "float" is rather important, after all.

The issue with battlecruisers was that the British (Lord "Jackie" Fisher) thought that speed was equivalent to protection and as such, focused on faster ships armed like battleships. The Germans proved that wrong by focusing on slightly less heavily armed ships with reasonably good armor and shot for similar speed. Jutland showed the advantage to that approach as the only German battlecruiser lost (Lützow) was actually scuttled since he couldn't make it home after the battle.

The problem with comparing anything in Star Wars to the real world is that Star Wars is (and always was) Science Fantasy - not Science Fiction. Star Trek is still a bit that way as well but, tries (or did, before the current hot mess of JJ Drek and Disco) to hold to some science principles.

The Executor being taken out in Jedi was a bit absurd but then, the whole film had issues from conception. It's generally held as the worst of the original trilogy for that reason.

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Re: Page 151 Discussion: "We will wait, Outsider"

Post by CaptainChaos »

To be fair to the British ship designers the original mission concept for the battlecruisers / heavy cruisers were to be convoy raiders, they would use their higher max speed and range to chase down merchant ships (something the slower battleships couldn't effectively do), use their bigger guns to drive off / destroy the escorts, then destroy high value merchants and if they encountered any battleships they would turn tail and run (thus the whole "speed is armor" motto, it meant they were to outrun the slower battleships and escape to raid again).

The problem was that the British Admiralty got blinded by the larger and larger gun calibers they keep sticking on the battlecruisers and ended up thinking that the large gun sizes meant they could be pressed into line combat vs battleships (they could not). This lead to a disaster in Jutland because while the light deck armor of battlecruisers could survive the 8-inch shellfire of destroyers they were designed to fight, it couldn't stand up to the plunging shell-fire of the 16-inch guns used by Battleships.

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icekatze
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Re: Page 151 Discussion: "We will wait, Outsider"

Post by icekatze »

hi hi

In the original Star Wars trilogy, the star destroyers/cruisers were known for being fast and running down smaller ships. They just couldn't maneuver very well, especially in close quarters. This is mostly in line with Star Wars being WW2 in space.

(Until something gets to the point where it's effectively traveling through a different medium, like hydrofoiling, or fully using a different medium like aircraft, more massive craft have an advantage vs drag. All else being equal, smaller ships, and also aircraft, experience more drag.)

None of that is really applicable in actual space combat.

In the near future of space weapons tech, I'd expect to see ships that are just big enough to fit the biggest laser that can be accurately focused. The larger their lens, the longer their range.

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Re: Page 151 Discussion: "We will wait, Outsider"

Post by novius »

And, remember the "airplane rule" of engineering, saying something like
An airplane with four engines has the doubled chance of experiencing engine trouble than an airplane with two engines.
Of course, said airplane with four engines would have less hassle with one of them malfunctioning than a plane with just two engines, but that counter-argument works only to an extent, because when someone plans for a bigger vessel, more guns, better engines and power generation, not everything is designed for redundancy/keeping reserves, but to bring more firepower onto the battlefield. And, a critical design flaw, or just battle damage or simple wear and tear has the chance of having an even larger impact in a single, bigger, and more complex system.

Bigger is not always better, sometimes it is the wiser choice to build twenty frigate/destroyer sized vessels instead of one big battleship if your goal is to bring in twenty guns into the combat theatre.

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Zorg56
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Re: Page 151 Discussion: "We will wait, Outsider"

Post by Zorg56 »

I am not saying that you should build only Executors, i am jsut saying that in situation when Loroi outranges Umiak, Umiak can build those types of vessel to somewhat denie this advantage of loroi.

It is more like:

Ultrabattleship | Swarm of cruisers | Loroi fleet

To be effective against drednought they will need to come into close quarters, where Umiak cruisers have advantage.

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Re: Page 151 Discussion: "We will wait, Outsider"

Post by StarCruiser »

CaptainChaos wrote:To be fair to the British ship designers the original mission concept for the battlecruisers / heavy cruisers were to be convoy raiders, they would use their higher max speed and range to chase down merchant ships (something the slower battleships couldn't effectively do), use their bigger guns to drive off / destroy the escorts, then destroy high value merchants and if they encountered any battleships they would turn tail and run (thus the whole "speed is armor" motto, it meant they were to outrun the slower battleships and escape to raid again).

The problem was that the British Admiralty got blinded by the larger and larger gun calibers they keep sticking on the battlecruisers and ended up thinking that the large gun sizes meant they could be pressed into line combat vs battleships (they could not). This lead to a disaster in Jutland because while the light deck armor of battlecruisers could survive the 8-inch shellfire of destroyers they were designed to fight, it couldn't stand up to the plunging shell-fire of the 16-inch guns used by Battleships.
Okay - first off, no 8" guns on destroyers in any navy or war that I've ever heard of. In WW1 - most destroyers were armed with 3"-4" guns and torpedoes (plus hydrophones and depth charges on some). Heavier pieces were usually on cruisers.

The Royal Navy intended to use battlecruisers as part of the fleet scouting force - and then did just that in several battles. They were also conceived to run down and destroy enemy commerce raiders and cruisers - and also succeeded at that task in a few actions (Falklands in 1914 - two of them basically wiped out the German Far East squadron).

Britain didn't really need commerce raiders that badly. They had the largest merchant fleet in the world (about 1/3rd of all merchant ships) and needed to protect those ships.

Where they failed - they were misused by the local commanders and by poorly thought out tactics (doctrine). At Jutland, Beaty's BCs should have disengaged immediately when they found the German fleet - not exchange fire over and over once the battle was joined. But yes, they have battleship guns, and are the size of battleships so...why not?

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cacambo43
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Re: Page 151 Discussion: "We will wait, Outsider"

Post by cacambo43 »

Derail/split please.

:roll:

CJSF

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Re: Page 151 Discussion: "We will wait, Outsider"

Post by Absalom »

Arioch wrote:
Zorg56 wrote:It was the bridge shield.
Main shield was taken out by Rebel MC cruisers bombardment, even in the movie you can clearly see how admiral Ackbar orders his entire fleet to focusfire executor.
If a ship that costs as much as an entire fleet can be taken out by an entire fleet, then it is an inferior use of those resources, since the whole thing is lost if the enemy focuses fire on it. Whereas the fleet loses only one ship at a time to focus fire.

The dreadnought principle only works if the larger vessel is mostly impervious to damage by smaller vessels.
You know, that isn't necessarily correct. If the only thing you care about is delivered firepower then sure, but what little we know of Star Destroyers of any size indicates that they were not really fit to the battleship mold. A galleon/carrier hybrid would be more appropriate, as they were simultaneously heavily armed warships, small-craft carriers, and landingship+troop carriers. I wouldn't be surprised if the Executor at least could provide limited drydock facilities to repair smaller ships as well, given that the thing was both huge, and apparently designed as a command ship. Even if the Executor cost as much as a fleet of ISDs, it's strategic worth might have been much, much more if you assume the existence of other Imperial fleets. It may well be that the Executor was actually being use as a supply base to support the Imperial fleet at Endor, rather than being a purely combat resource.

Also, it may have been designed & construction started before the Rebellion got lots of ships, in which case there arguably would have been nothing that could have actually done lasting damage to it. Even in RotJ, if it hadn't run into the Death Star 2 then it probably could have been salvaged and returned to duty later (unless it was using it's engines to sustain an artificial orbit).
Siber wrote:

P.s. You can feel it in a lot of strategy games, closer to the theme- EaW Remake, placing few ISDs betwees SSD and enemy turns large piniata into chainsaw for enemy fleets.
Those games are not tactical simulators, they're games designed and balanced around making getting the expensive cool thing a good idea. In Supreme Commander building a thirty storey tall spider mech with a giant laser on it is a good idea, when in reality it'd be an absurd one, killed by a single high altitude bomber rather than need to be pecked to death by dozens.

The attrition curve effects(your point B) in video games are weird compared to a reasonable scenario because typically units fight at 100% effectiveness until they moment they die, or close to it, while this is not the case in reality. There's no lucky hit on a magazine blowing a huge chunk out of the super-battleship and disabling a major part of its weaponry, or degraded effectiveness as it's crew gets worn down.
One note: taking out a magazine is commonly a game-ender for a battleship, super or otherwise. Those are stored inside the primary armor because detonating all of your powder charge at once beside or inside your armor is much more damaging to you than detonating it piece-wise beside your target... and yet the piece-wise approach was supposed to be destructive enough to take out an enemy battleship anyways, suggesting that your magazine going off should generally take you off the board completely.

Also, the main guns were heavily armored, so taking them out was meant to be about as hard as getting to the magazine. The secondary armaments would be a better comparison, as they were still decently powerful, but inevitable less well armed.

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Re: Page 151 Discussion: "We will wait, Outsider"

Post by Arioch »

cacambo43 wrote:Derail/split please.
The individual page threads have a limited lifespan, so I don't think it's a huge problem if they wander off-topic.

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orion1836
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Re: Page 151 Discussion: "We will wait, Outsider"

Post by orion1836 »

In my opinion, after looking through the insider, the tech of the major combatants seems to select for/favor highly maneuverable ships with high acceleration. Depending on the specifics of the engine technology, it stands to reason that there is a point of diminishing (or even decreasing) returns in these two categories as you increase the size of the ship.

After a quick eyeball of their stats, that point seems to be anything over a battlecruiser (BC) for the Loroi, and anything over a KK cruiser for the Umiak. Anything built beyond this point of diminishing returns should logically only be built for a specific purpose that outweighs the loss of maneuverability and acceleration. Looking at the ship descriptions, it seems that the Loroi and Umiak both cross this line for added firepower and/or command ships with special abilities or features.

Bottom line - no dreadnoughts for dreadnoughts' sake. In this fight, you only give up maneuverability and acceleration for a damned good reason and even then, you're only going to be going 30-40% bigger if you're Loroi and 30-35% bigger if you're Umiak (not including the redonkulous TTK).

Also, are they sure the TTK wasn't a station with thrusters as opposed to a ship?

Deep Space 9 could move, but no one would call it a spaceship.

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Zorg56
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Re: Page 151 Discussion: "We will wait, Outsider"

Post by Zorg56 »

The real question is, can alex whatever it is run doo... I mean, historian AI?

novius
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Re: Page 151 Discussion: "We will wait, Outsider"

Post by novius »

orion1836 wrote:Bottom line - no dreadnoughts for dreadnoughts' sake. In this fight, you only give up maneuverability and acceleration for a damned good reason and even then, you're only going to be going 30-40% bigger if you're Loroi and 30-35% bigger if you're Umiak (not including the redonkulous TTK).

Also, are they sure the TTK wasn't a station with thrusters as opposed to a ship?

Deep Space 9 could move, but no one would call it a spaceship.
Actual example: Gora Relay had the ability to move by itself as well, but look how much good it did to them.

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Re: Page 151 Discussion: "We will wait, Outsider"

Post by StarCruiser »

Yep - station keeping thrusters aren't going to get you very far, at least, not very fast...

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Re: Page 151 Discussion: "We will wait, Outsider"

Post by cacambo43 »

StarCruiser wrote:Yep - station keeping thrusters aren't going to get you very far, at least, not very fast...
Unless you're Miles O'Brien with Star Trek Physics™ on your side.

CJSF

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