Sci-fi Weapons, Vehicles and Equipment

Something moving FTL doesn't interact with normal matter via kinetic energy, more or less by definition, unless you're completely rewriting physics. So you have to give your FTL drive some sort of secondary effect that permits this, which is completely made up. Ergo, there's no point in asking if it meets any scientific test.

That merely describes a functional limitation of the technology, not how it works or what applications it might have beyond travel.

edited 30th May '18 6:43:49 AM by Fighteer

The FTL drive for the world I was using only works from gravity well to largest gravity well, they gotta rely on good old fashion rockets to fly from planet to planet.

As far as weaponization I was more referring to the fact that whatever an FTL drive does is presumably exotic and high-powered, and things like that can usually mess up someone’s day if they’re misapplied.

That's certainly reasonable.

Kind of a question of semantics, but would Earth's moon technically have an "airspace", despite lack of an atmosphere and...well Air.

Because we were discussing manned fighters not being viable in deep space, but perhaps they could be in suborbital situations. Wonder if that applies to the moon, if say an enemy is attacking a Gateway port or moon base.

The moon has an atmosphere, but it’s extremely thin. It isn’t enough to support an aircraft.

"Incredibly thin" is something of an understatement. For all intents and purposes, it's vacuum. Regardless, it's correct that it most certainly won't support aerodynamic craft.

"Suborbital" implies that a craft is either maintaining altitude via lift forces or is continually applying thrust to resist gravity. It could also be on a ballistic course that doesn't reach orbital velocity.

edited 30th May '18 12:24:27 PM by Fighteer

Airspace is a generic phrase meant to denote a given empty patch of space somewhere above the ground for flying craft to move through. Basically a section of sky controlled by some sort of method or another. You could call orbitals air space if you wanted to but it makes little sense. Orbital Space on the other hand makes some sense.

edited 30th May '18 12:36:57 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Hmm that begs the question, if your craft is low enough in the moons “atmosphere”, would there technically be a horizon? You know, since that’s an important part of aerial warfare

There would be. Horizon distance depends on altitude, I believe it’s something like 5 kilometers at head level.

edited 30th May '18 1:19:13 PM by archonspeaks

The horizon is an effect of planetary curvature, not atmosphere.

edited 30th May '18 1:43:56 PM by Fighteer

So that’s sort of make VR combat somewhat viable. Depending on circumstances.

Visual Range or Virtual Reality?

Former

Well, the obvious followup question would be why you'd want to engage in combat so near the surface of a planet or moon when being higher up gives you numerous tactical advantages, a wider horizon being only one of them.

I can think of a few instances, such as evading detection, when you'd want to approach your target from below its horizon for as long as possible. This, of course, assumes that the target is ground-based or at a low altitude.

In fact, this might be one of the few truly valuable roles for "space" fighters, as they'd be much better suited to take advantage of terrain and other forms of concealment in order to get close to a target without being seen. In turn, this implies that you care about stealth, which means that you are probably at an overall disadvantage in terms of parity of forces, or at least that you don't want to expose your capital resources to counter-fire.

edited 31st May '18 8:53:39 AM by Fighteer

There could also be resources on planets and moons that you can't afford to bomb from orbit

Yes, we've repeatedly been over the various reasons why you wouldn't want to simply obliterate your enemy by bombarding their planet(s), chiefly that you want to use the planet afterward, or that you want to arrive at a political resolution that leaves both sides able to coexist.

edited 31st May '18 9:35:32 AM by Fighteer

You might use a gravity boost maneuver or just want to break line of sight for a moment.

Could the craters in the moon be of any use? Maybe you could hide some serious nasty weaponry, guided as a crater

Anything big enough to need hiding in a crater would be easily visible from orbit, so it's sort of pointless.

You might have better luck burying something in a crater. Just place the object inside, fill the crater, then shoot the dirt to add more craters to hide the landscaping.

Or the weapon itself looks like a crater...

What would be some Military based uses for Androids outside of infiltration missions?

Etiquette and protocol.

That is actually a good point.

It would depend on the capability. They could be used for hazardous work where humans wouldn't do as well. Construction and Demolition could be good jobs.

Basically it depends on what they can actually do.