Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

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Rosen_Ritter_1
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Rosen_Ritter_1 »

TrashMan wrote:Umiak prefer to charge in and blast in from clsoe range?

Hehe...ironicly, the that's exactly where the human weapons are the best.

Design cheap ships with minal crews that are made to push asteroids in front of them as giant shields. Arm them with the best mass drivers you can.

Charge at the Umiak (or don't. They'll charge at you anyway)
With a mile or solid rock between you and them, and them charging at you, human ships should be abel to close within range. And then...mass driver time baby!
*short range* is kind of relative here. Umiak weapons are short range since Loroi weapons are so long ranged. Umiak weapons still dramatically out range human beam weapons in terms how far off they can fire and still do effective damage (the ratio being even more skewed in their favor, since the Umiak have screens).


The idea that the Umiak would charge directly into mass driver range is kind of like assuming an army of modern soldiers would fix bayonets and charge into a hoplite formation. It seems more likely the Umiak would just split their task force up and move to the sides and above and below so they could get a shot at the human ships behind the rocks. That, or just fire torpedos and set them to detonate behind the asteroids.

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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by TrashMan »

Feretto wrote:
TrashMan wrote:Umiak prefer to charge in and blast in from clsoe range?

Hehe...ironicly, the that's exactly where the human weapons are the best.

Design cheap ships with minal crews that are made to push asteroids in front of them as giant shields. Arm them with the best mass drivers you can.

Charge at the Umiak (or don't. They'll charge at you anyway)
With a mile or solid rock between you and them, and them charging at you, human ships should be abel to close within range. And then...mass driver time baby!
With Umiak's superior engines they can just fly around that rock and strike from sides or from behind, moreover, they can just rocket-spam human vesseles from another side of asteroid.
Flying around that rock and keeping distance kinda nullifes the speed/acceleration advantage, doesn't it? Sicne the human vessel needs to move only a little comparatively, to be behind cover again. And it wastes more fuel.
With really big rocks and several such ships, you can practicyl force the Umiak to close - everything else is a collosal waste of ammo and fuel.

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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by TrashMan »

Rosen_Ritter_1 wrote: The idea that the Umiak would charge directly into mass driver range is kind of like assuming an army of modern soldiers would fix bayonets and charge into a hoplite formation. It seems more likely the Umiak would just split their task force up and move to the sides and above and below so they could get a shot at the human ships behind the rocks. That, or just fire torpedos and set them to detonate behind the asteroids.
More like soldiers entering the house to clear it. They have long-range rifles, but they are less effective inside the house, no?
CQB still exist, depsite all our long-range weaponry. The only trick is to force/trick your enemy to commit to it.

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Rosen_Ritter_1
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Rosen_Ritter_1 »

TrashMan wrote:
Rosen_Ritter_1 wrote: The idea that the Umiak would charge directly into mass driver range is kind of like assuming an army of modern soldiers would fix bayonets and charge into a hoplite formation. It seems more likely the Umiak would just split their task force up and move to the sides and above and below so they could get a shot at the human ships behind the rocks. That, or just fire torpedos and set them to detonate behind the asteroids.
More like soldiers entering the house to clear it. They have long-range rifles, but they are less effective inside the house, no?
CQB still exist, depsite all our long-range weaponry. The only trick is to force/trick your enemy to commit to it.
Except there really isn't an equivalent to house clearing in space. Space is HUGE and open, and except for area's like the Naam system, concealment is exceptionally unlikely.
TrashMan wrote: Flying around that rock and keeping distance kinda nullifes the speed/acceleration advantage, doesn't it?
How? They're still perfectly capable of staying out of range.
TrashMan wrote: Sicne the human vessel needs to move only a little comparatively, to be behind cover again. And it wastes more fuel.
With really big rocks and several such ships, you can practicyl force the Umiak to close - everything else is a collosal waste of ammo and fuel.
You may only have to turn a little bit, but you've got a massive and unwieldy piece of dead weight to move around. Miles thick asteroid? That's a really big weight. I'm not sure Human starship drives are going to keep up with Umiak ones with that kind of handicap at long range.

And you realize...the Umiak have other ways to deal with the asteroid, right? Even if a human ship COULD keep up with an Umia ship this way, the Umiak ship could just let loose it's gunboats. The mother ship trys to flank left, and the three gunboats start moving in from the right, above and below. Your asteroid can only block in one direction.


You also miss out on an important fact. Nothing about this engagement dictates that the Umiak have to charge at the human ships. The Umiak could simply ignore the human ships, and start accelerating towards an inhabitable planet. That dictates that the human ships will either have to make a beeline for the Umiak in pursuit (suicidal), or offer to surrender in exchange for earth/Mars/Alpha.

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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by bunnyboy »

TrashMan wrote:Flying around that rock and keeping distance kinda nullifes the speed/acceleration advantage, doesn't it? Sicne the human vessel needs to move only a little comparatively, to be behind cover again. And it wastes more fuel.
With really big rocks and several such ships, you can practicyl force the Umiak to close - everything else is a collosal waste of ammo and fuel.
And you think that pushing the asteroid would be cheap? :P
Maybe if you are ready to wait thousands of years for founding right asteroid and giving a little pushes when it bypass celestial bodies.
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by TrashMan »

Rosen_Ritter_1 wrote:
TrashMan wrote: Flying around that rock and keeping distance kinda nullifes the speed/acceleration advantage, doesn't it?
How? They're still perfectly capable of staying out of range.
If the enemy wants to stay at range and come around the asteroid, then they have to make a FAR larger orbit around that same asteroid. Whereas a ships that kissing the steroid surface has to make only minor manouvers to move and stay concealed by the asteroid.

To put it simply, all the speed advantage of the enemy is made null and void, because they need to cover a far greater distance to expose the same 2-3° of fire.

Of course, if the enemy outnumbers you too, that's another kettle of fish. You'd need more asteroids :P



TrashMan wrote: Sicne the human vessel needs to move only a little comparatively, to be behind cover again. And it wastes more fuel.
With really big rocks and several such ships, you can practicyl force the Umiak to close - everything else is a collosal waste of ammo and fuel.
You may only have to turn a little bit, but you've got a massive and unwieldy piece of dead weight to move around. Miles thick asteroid? That's a really big weight. I'm not sure Human starship drives are going to keep up with Umiak ones with that kind of handicap at long range.
Why would the humans even try to chase?



You also miss out on an important fact. Nothing about this engagement dictates that the Umiak have to charge at the human ships. The Umiak could simply ignore the human ships, and start accelerating towards an inhabitable planet. That dictates that the human ships will either have to make a beeline for the Umiak in pursuit (suicidal), or offer to surrender in exchange for earth/Mars/Alpha.
I there's nothing else in the system?
Of course, this is a rather static/slow type of tactics, so it's not suitable for intercept. IT's very defensive in nature.

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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by bunnyboy »

Better than that. If there are nothing else in system, there are no need for moving.
Bore hole on the asteroid for powersource and crew and put surface full of guns.
Umiak can come or ignore it on their whim.

You can also put them on angrave points or orbits for planetary defence.
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Mjolnir
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Mjolnir »

TrashMan wrote:If the enemy wants to stay at range and come around the asteroid, then they have to make a FAR larger orbit around that same asteroid. Whereas a ships that kissing the steroid surface has to make only minor manouvers to move and stay concealed by the asteroid.
With their weapon range, all the Umiak would have to do is make a flyby, potshotting the human ships on the way to the real target.

TrashMan wrote:To put it simply, all the speed advantage of the enemy is made null and void, because they need to cover a far greater distance to expose the same 2-3° of fire.

Of course, if the enemy outnumbers you too, that's another kettle of fish. You'd need more asteroids :P
They don't need to outnumber you. They need two ships, and not particularly big ones. Or torpedos.

This is a completely worthless tactic...these asteroid-ships are effectively immobile and can easily be taken out from far beyond the effective range of their weaponry. The Umiak would have no reason at all to close within mass driver range. They wouldn't even have reason to engage with such worthless warships unless it was to clear them out from around a more meaningful target, and there's no need for them to close to such extremely short range to do that.

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Ktrain
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Ktrain »

Since we (humanity) currently have bunker busting bombs capable of destroying people hundreds of meters below the surface of the Earth, I believe the Bugmen would have something that could deal with an asteroid base in a fixed position. Frankly, I feel humanity needs to build a bunch of large hadron colliders and create enough black holes to make our territory unattractive xP.
OUTSIDER UPDATE => HALF LIFE 3 CONFIRMED?

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Rosen_Ritter_1
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Rosen_Ritter_1 »

TrashMan wrote: Of course, if the enemy outnumbers you too, that's another kettle of fish. You'd need more asteroids :P
The enemy doesn't need to outnumber you to flank the asteroid ships.

Image
-3 Terran asteroid ships vs 2 Umiak ships. Their rocks provide them protection.


Image
-But despite being outnumbered, the Umiak are STILL able to flank and destroy individual Terran ships.


Image
-The only way having more ships offers additional protection, is if you physically bring your ships together in an asteroid Phalanx.


Image
-But while this provides better coverage, it results in more catastrophic damage should an enemy torpedo get through.
TrashMan wrote: Why would the humans even try to chase?
The same could be said for the Umiak. They could simply bombard from a distance, or...
TrashMan wrote: I there's nothing else in the system?
simple. You would bypass the system. You'd take your fleet, fly away from the Terran asteroid ships, and go to the next system. There isn't actually any pressing reason to engage the Terran ships floating about in an empty system.
bunnyboy wrote:Better than that. If there are nothing else in system, there are no need for moving.
Bore hole on the asteroid for powersource and crew and put surface full of guns.
Umiak can come or ignore it on their whim.

You can also put them on angrave points or orbits for planetary defence.
The problem with this is that while your guns nestled deep inside the asteroid are secure, they need to expose themselves to fire on the enemy. No it'd certainly be advantageous to only open up when the enemy was in range (neutralizing their ranged advantage), the Umiak have other options.

Namely as you said, they could bypass the defenses if it was placed somewhere irrelevant. Or if it's a major colony (Alpha or Mars) they can fire torpedoes at the colony and when the dug in guns pop out to shoot them down, the Umiak can blast the exposed guns from long range with beam weapons (presuming they can't just target the gunports directly and blast them in. Even if they're deep in enough to not be destroyed, the damage to the gun ports will prevent you from bringing them up to fire ).


This isn't to say that defensive installations can never be useful. It's just if that's the only thing you can bring to the table, any enemy (much less a massively more advanced one) will eventually be able to pick away at them.

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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

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Ktrain wrote:Since we (humanity) currently have bunker busting bombs capable of destroying people hundreds of meters below the surface of the Earth
HUNTERS OF METERS!
Image
D***! I need to burrow my nest more deeper.

Edit: :roll: Funny typo.
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Mjolnir »

bunnyboy wrote:You can also put them on angrave points or orbits for planetary defence.
"angrave points"?

Anyway... http://img853.imageshack.us/img853/6957 ... 937078.gif
Effective range on Terran mass drivers is <10000 km. Max range of Umiak plasma weapons starts at 7 times that and goes up to just short of 29 times that, and given the relatively weak and immobile nature of these targets may be even higher. To force attacking Umiak vessels to just barely come into mass driver range of any human ship to attack another ship would require a spherical formation 540000 km across (so distance to a ship at the center is Umiak weapon max range + Terran weapon max range, putting Terran ships on the edge of the shell in engagement range of the attacking Umiak), packed so full of human asteroid ships that Umiak can't get in any spaces. And even then, a few Umiak gunboats charging in would rapidly great holes in the formation at little risk, allowing other ships to potshot all the other ships without exposing themselves to return fire.

Volume of a 280000 km radius sphere is 21952 times the volume of a 10000 km sphere. Spheres don't pack perfectly, so there'd be overlap and gaps, and you'd want to pack them tighter so the Umiak can't stay at extreme range, so at a rough estimate, you'd need around 30000 asteroid ships to force the Umiak to enter mass driver range. Again, briefly, until they rip a hole in your formation and start zapping your ships from beyond range of return fire.

You're talking about packing space from Earth to lunar orbit with ships spaced so closely that an Umiak ship can't slip through without getting within 10000 km of one. It's not workable.

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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Mjolnir »

And if you want to cut down on the number of ships by making a hollow sphere, an Umiak ship that runs the gauntlet and reaches the center can then target any human ship in the formation, forcing them to turn their vulnerable sides to Umiak vessels that remain outside the formation. And note that ships near the "surface" can still be targeted on opposing sides even with this enormous sphere by Umiak vessels attacking along tangents to the sphere...it's nowhere near big enough to force them to come within mass driver range to do this.

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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by bunnyboy »

Mjolnir wrote:
bunnyboy wrote:angrave points
"angrave points"?
:oops: I meaned Lagrange points

But there is no need to stay with ship guns. They can build future versions of "Big Bertha" on them, if they want.
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Mjolnir »

bunnyboy wrote: :oops: I meaned Lagrange points
Only of interest for long term orbits and minimal-energy trajectories. Granted, if you're pushing asteroids around, minimizing the energy required will be of interest. A bigger problem is scale...Umiak weapon range is far larger than the useful regions around the Lagrangian points, it's roughly the distance of the Earth-moon L4 and L5 points from Earth and the moon themselves. There's no room for a vast fleet of asteroid ships large enough to force the Umiak to come within mass driver range.

bunnyboy wrote:But there is no need to stay with ship guns. They can build future versions of "Big Bertha" on them, if they want.
How much do you really expect them to increase the range by doing this? Do you really see this making any sort of difference?

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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

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Mjolnir wrote:This is a completely worthless tactic...these asteroid-ships are effectively immobile and can easily be taken out from far beyond the effective range of their weaponry. The Umiak would have no reason at all to close within mass driver range. They wouldn't even have reason to engage with such worthless warships unless it was to clear them out from around a more meaningful target, and there's no need for them to close to such extremely short range to do that.
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by bunnyboy »

Mjolnir wrote:How much do you really expect them to increase the range by doing this? Do you really see this making any sort of difference?
Even 3x range makes some difference. If Umiak will stay out of that, only some of their weapons makes any significant damage.
They may damage satellites on near earth orbit, but no targets on surface. That gives us little or more time to react. Like grovel, shoot missiles or escape.
If they try go between or from the poles, they are in crossfire.
And max range of mass drivers in space are infinite, so we can get some lucky shots and also destroy any ship who has lost its controls.
(Escape velocity from sun system is only 525 km/s)
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Trantor »

bunnyboy wrote: :oops: I meaned Lagrange points
But Lagrange points are only in the planetary plane.
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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Mjolnir »

bunnyboy wrote:Even 3x range makes some difference. If Umiak will stay out of that, only some of their weapons makes any significant damage.
They may damage satellites on near earth orbit, but no targets on surface. That gives us little or more time to react. Like grovel, shoot missiles or escape.
If they try go between or from the poles, they are in crossfire.
3x the range makes no significant difference, it's still half the max range of the shortest ranged Umiak weapons, 1/10th that of the longest. The Umiak can still blast the defenses to bits from far beyond mass driver range, it'd still take a completely impractical number of ships to make a formation large enough that the Umiak can't do this. And even if these asteroid ships were somehow protected against Umiak weapons from beyond mass driver range, targets on the ground are not protected at all, unless you think these things can mount enough point defense to stop Umiak torpedos.

bunnyboy wrote:And max range of mass drivers in space are infinite, so we can get some lucky shots and also destroy any ship who has lost its controls.
Building vast fleets of useless ships on the off chance of getting a lucky hit or two is not a way to survive a war.

bunnyboy wrote:(Escape velocity from sun system is only 525 km/s)
I don't know why you think solar escape velocity matters, but your figure is wildly wrong. Solar escape velocity at the distance of Earth and the moon is only 42 km/s.

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Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Rosen_Ritter_1 »

bunnyboy wrote:
And max range of mass drivers in space are infinite, so we can get some lucky shots and also destroy any ship who has lost its controls.
(Escape velocity from sun system is only 525 km/s)
It's infinite against stationary targets. The problem is that requires the Umiak to not bother moving for an hour after the humans fire at them.

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