They should make one that includes Honorverse ships. Both pre- and post-Great Resizing.
edited 1st Oct '13 1:28:59 AM by AFP
Holy guacamole, that's a lot of ships!
Speaking of ship sizes, I'm not sure whether having a bigger ship would be a good or a bad thing. On the one hand, you can fit larger weapons and more of them; on the other, you make yourself more of an easy target, which is not a good thing in the least. How would the employment of a larger vessel compare to a smaller one?
Also, to switch to a meta-related topic: I've been thinking of creating another world building thread, this time for sci-fi weapons and military equipment*. The difference/slight overlap between that thread and this one would be that this thread would be for discussing the employment of the gear in question; that thread would puzzle over the actual nitty gritty of the weapons and so on. I think it'd be really handy for people such as myself who love designing such things, but aren't sure about whether it makes sense or not (or indeed, need help designing them in the first place!).
Do you guys think there would be merit in launching such a thread?
Locking you up on radar since '09In the Honorverse, at least, the drive for bigger ships is mostly due to improvements in inertial dampener tech (allowing bigger ships to maneuver like smaller ships) and weapons systems getting larger, most especially missiles. In order to fit bigger missiles, and anything like a sufficient magazines for extended combat, they needed to make their hulls bigger.
The latest book has an engagement where 5 Manticoran destroyers are consistently referred to by their enemies as Light Cruisers, due to differences in shipbuilding doctrine between the two groups.
Never read the Honorverse. Too busy writing my own stories :)
EDITED
I figure different spacecraft of different functions have different requirements such as size. Form follows function. The Saturn V rockets that carried the Apollo spacecraft were much, much bigger and carried way more fuel than the main fuel tank and boosters of the Space Shuttle; this is because the first was designed to carry its payload beyond Earth's gravitational pull so the Apollo spacecraft could reach the moon, whereas the Space Shuttle Orbiter isn't meant to leave Earth orbit, and would need something like a Saturn V (the biggest rocket ever built) to do so.
Spacecraft in my universe can only use Artificial Gravity tech on relatively small craft under 400 or 500 meters in length and width (FTL dependends on detonating a spherical shell of negative-density exotic matter inside the event horizon of an artificially generated black hole, hence 500x500). Some vessels have retractable sections like sensor clusters or weapons assemblies in order to be able to jump. Larger vessels like military cruisers and deep space research vessels are usually about a kilometer or 2 in length, with several rotating sections for gravity and auxiliary vehicle deployment. Crews of spacecraft too small for artificial grav but without huge rotating sections have to make do with zero gravity.
My 'verse accounts for technological progress. IE thirty years before my story there weren't any FTL drives on shuttles or other small craft, now the tech has been miniaturized and can be retrofitted on these vessels.
A smaller vessel, especially one that can operate on its own behind enemy lines like a cruiser, is now the ideal. A cruiser-subtype called a Warbird is capable of atmospheric operations. It used to be that carrier vessels dumped sublight, mostly atmospheric fighters into the atmosphere of a target planet (no space fighters, but carriers deliver attack jets that rocket back to the mothership instead of landing). When smaller FTL drives were developed this platform became obsolete and the C & C Vessel was born.
The C & C vessel is an atmospheric-capable, FTL-capable craft (it should be noted FTL in my 'verse is an instantaneous and untraceable "Jump Drive" style that uses wormholes to fold space-time.) It's even smaller than a Warbird-type cruiser (like 200 meters or less) but with the armament of a destroyer, almost as powerful as a light cruiser type like the "Warbird" variant (which usually carried 2 atmospheric fighters or a fighter an an auxiliary shuttle). It also has one or two bays, each holding a squadron of FTL-equipped, Transatmospheric fighters. One single vessel like this could harass an entire solar system for weeks, with 1 or 2 squadrons of FTL-capable fighters and a speedy, nimble, compact and powerful mothership. In the days of the Carriers, no one could have seen that coming: a tiny warship with only 1 or 2 FTL fighter squadrons that's more flexible and more adaptive than anything they've seen before, and could probably cream one of those old "Supercarriers" in a straight fight. Combined with the firepower of 1 or 2 fighter squadrons, it's even more powerful against larger spacecraft like destroyers or light-medium cruisers, though its purpose is to harass ground and air targets rather than engage in space combat.
Most spaecraft have AI that would allow a single person to control them, but that person would need at least a mechanic or a mechanic's skills to keep their spacecraft in shape.
Bulk Freighters are huge vessels the size of heavy cruisers (a good number of them are former heavy cruisers with most of the weapons stripped but keeping the armor intact.) They carry cargo by the megaton. They're usually owned by interplanetary corporations like the Rosenleicht Cargo Dynasty.
Stock Freighters are small freighters usually with a tramp crew (think Serenity or the Millennium Falcon) that are supposedly for smaller loads, although they're getting less and less legit business and are having to turn to smuggling to earn a profit, because of the availability of the newer, bigger, Bulk Freighters.
I go by the cell phone theory. The first cell phones were huge and impractical. Then they got smaller and more ergonomic as time went on. Then the iPod was invented, and its first model was bulkier than everything that came afterward. Same with T Vs, which became less bulky over time until the age of flatscreens. My main ship in my novel has an organic computer and even a kind of spinal cord with an auxiliary brain at the other end, like a dinosaur. It's experimental tech that wouldn't fit on a smaller spacecraft. But a couple generations from then, people might be using bio-computers everywhere, even on the tiniest shuttles. My characters just happen to be pioneering the use of biocomputers for flight navigation and systems maintenance, and fooling around with the FTL Drive to accomplish things thought impossible (like jumping directly into hyperspace, which is (incorrectly) considered suicide.
edited 13th Oct '13 3:58:36 AM by fulltimeD
Right, I see. Is there any particular reason for weapon systems getting larger (because of improving defences, for example) or is there something else driving it?
@fulltimeD:
I'm intending technology to improve as time progresses in my universe as well. I can't think of any particular examples off the top of my head, unfortunately, but it will be A Thing That HappensTM. Though it probably won't happen until after the conflict that occurs in the background of my story has concluded, I imagine that the cost and complexity of Link Drives and Link Projectors might start to fall, making them more common. Sure, 99.9% of all civilian traffic will still be using Link Gates, but they won't be the very exclusive technology that it was during the course of the story.
As an aside, I think the reason why you won't see starships being used as kinetic kill vehicles in my universe* is probably down to legislation* - basically, there were some near-misses in the past involving such things, and since nobody likes ruling over a bunch of dead (or at best severely marred) worlds, there are treaties banning the use of vessels in such a manner. Anyone who does decide to break the treaties would find themselves under immense international pressure and considered political outcasts to the extent that they can expect an alliance of other starfaring nations knocking on their homeworld's door in short order.
That aside, warships represent a considerable investment of manpower, materiel, and are built at a not insignificant cost to the user's coffers; even the Coalition, which has the largest fleet out of the various powers, can't be too wasteful when employing them. I know I might be falling victim to a meta version of Space Is an Ocean here, but the most direct analogy to how valuable a spacefaring fleet would be is to waterborne fleets here on Earth. They're very potent, but expensive.
Locking you up on radar since '09^I've always wanted to do something with a "Quantum Subway" where there are terminals linked by wormholes and a subway-like reception/boarding areas, in big tubes with a small wormhole at either end.
I think that's a very interesting concept that you describe, legislation against "space warfare" that limits conflict. Cool idea.
IIRC, there's already a similar real life precedent.
edited 9th Oct '13 10:18:07 AM by fulltimeD
rollin' on dubs
Space warfare in my 'verse:
Nukes, anti-matter and all that are very bad things. Mostly saved as weapons of last resort. Except in space, their they are a great way to point at things you want dead.
Kinetic weapons however are great when you want to force someone to surrender and then fill in the crater you just made.
Habitable worlds are not to be targeted by "Nuclear, Chemical or Biological Weapons" so says the Tri-Party Agreement on Hostilities. That includes anti-matter (classes as nuclear) and the use of nanites as weapons on sentient beings ("biological" for legal purposes).
Radiation decontamination can be impossible with some areas "hot" for decades. Ion cannons, lasers, metal rods, mass drivers et al are perfectly legal because filling in the large crater is easy. The Cay Union made this a condition to signing a treaty with the United Earth Government. In turn Earth demanded that the CU agree to regular prisoner exchanges and the protection of commanding officers (Cay tradition is to execute all enemy commanders to establish control over prisoners). The Southern Cross wanted a ban on the bio-androids but only got them classified as drones.
"Orbital Artillery" is legal to target: military facilities, bases, landing zones, ports with 50% or higher military use, C-n-C facilities, factories, power plants and weapons caches. Cities with less than 30% of land with dedicated military use are off limits. The problem is that space stations and orbital colonies tend to be mix-use and are valid targets. The treaty covers deliberately de-orbiting space stations but not "accidental" impacts.
The EDF loves using bio-androids as soldiers, pilots and crew on starships. The prospect of machines being in control of nuclear weapons or orbital artillery scared even the most gung-ho members of the Joint Chiefs. As a result, EDF regulations allow bio-androids to become command officers in the ground forces but they top out at Commander in the Space Forces. They can only operate naval weapons or orbital artillery with a human in the chain of command. Fighters are okay (the XO must be a human), capital ships are not.
tl;dr - space stations can be fare game when the balloon goes up. Cities can have large chunks of space debris fall on them or get hit if they are judged a target.
During the "One Year War", Earth took back a few worlds from the Southern Cross by dropping their space stations on the people below. The EDF says it was an accident. The cities with military bases and factories weren't however. Then the Cay attacked Earth as the EDF was busy. The result was the Joint Security Area and a buffer between Earth and the Cay. The Southern Cross lost a few worlds, the ones they took back now had huge craters where cities and towns used to be.
edited 11th Oct '13 1:35:27 AM by TairaMai
I tried to walk like an Egyptian and now I need to see a Cairo practor....In the Honorverse, the big thing driving bigger missile development was the Manticoran decision to basically turn them into multi-stage missiles (the engines on the missiles are single-use, as a tradeoff for accelerating much faster than a starship engine could), along with various advancements in fire control and most importantly, faster-than-light communication (without the last bit, anyone could have made multi-drive missiles, but they would have had no fire control link to feed them updated targeting data)
rollin' on dubs
Here's my take on the capital ships in the Standard Sci-Fi Fleet:
The Cay Union as the oldest power has ships that are complex yet compact. The empire mastered "jump drives" and began to colonize nearby worlds. They fought and bested "the Masters" who ruled the Martissans. As a result the Empire gained Artificial Gravity and Warp drive. Over time they combined the two. Large capital ships can move faster than their size suggests, the largest ships don't bother since the power cost is too high. Smaller ships can stay "on station" longer due to have their own gravity. Even frigates can carry a dropship and thus land troops on a planet making a visit by the "War Fleet" a very bad day.
Earth in contrast found a ship under the ice on Europa. Studying that ship the UN reverse engineered a working jump drive. Overtime the bulky and fragile Earth ships found the Cay. Earth ships are larger than Cay or Martissan ship designs. Only the large capital ships have Artificial Gravity. Warp drives are now standard to cruisers and below, they are tasked with protecting the larger ships. Earth ships are larger and more bulky but can take quite a pounding. The newer Victory-class ships come close to Cay Union ships in size and speed but they sacrifice armor in exchange for sensors, weapons and speed.
The larger ships can carry one or more dropships with them if they don't have room on board. Others escort a modified freighter that carries many dropships. EDF Marines operate from small drop-ships that can operate from even the small frigates (but Marines don't really like being that cramped). The newer Victory-class will have room on-board for a company of EDF ground troops and can have drop-ships attach to the hull. The UEG hopes this will put them on an even footing with the Cay Union.
The Southern Cross has both Cay older ships and former Earth ships in it's navy plus whatever it can get it's hands on. Many older "capital ships" are just large freighters with guns and missiles bolted on escorted by fighters. Their "crusher ships" are descended from pirate raider and pillager class vessles: FTL ships that carry a load of dropships to attack a planet. They have started to build ships that have warp and jump drives. Most of their newer ships are based on Cay designs but they sacrifice weapons for armor.
The SCMC chose to have freighters carry troops and "crusher ships" carry the large Army divisions. They prefer to have the warships focused on ship to ship combat.
Since "warp" is a type of Alcubierre Drive, there is a bennie: stealth in space. The downside is that "A-fields" gobble up power and blind your sensors in addition to the enemy's. Heat can build up to dangerous levels or "blossom" when a ship drops the A-field to fire. It's a Reactionless Drive so there is all kinds of fun to be had, unless you're too close to a planet. Without a good computer a ship can crash or be thrown off course. If the A-field fails, the crew can become chunky salsa.
No Warping Zone: large planets and stars can cause a mis-jump if a ship is too close. Getting too close to a planet or star is problematic for warp drive as well. Too much power required to get faster than light and high gravity tends to mess with the drive and throw off the field.
Given the computations and that jump drives mug general relativity and take it's lunch money good computers are a must. Most civilian drives have a large (desk sized) computer that manages the ship and makes the calculations for the jump to the next planet. A warp drive can be used to move closer, making a years long trip across a solar system only a few days.
Military drives need more precision and more power. Raiders and pirates discovered that ships can jump closer in a gravity well but only if precise calculations are made. These pirate points shave time off the transit to a planet. Warp can be used closer to a planet but the resulting figures call for processing power beyond a mere computer. The Cay (and the masters before them) simply used convicts and "selected candidates" as the ships secondary computer via cybernetics. The Southern Cross uses volunteers who "plug" into a ship's computer and help it make the calculations. The EDF uses bio-androids that become the ship's computer (and in effect the ship itself).
edited 9th Oct '13 8:21:10 PM by TairaMai
I tried to walk like an Egyptian and now I need to see a Cairo practor....Thinking of doing a take on Deflector Shields that is somewhere between Star Trek (full coverage) and Babylon 5 (no shields at all), without getting myself set up with an appointment to meet David Weber's lawyers.
I'm thinking that if ships are going to travel at any reasonable speed within a star system at all to avoid single-system battles from turning into year-long affairs, they will need some protection from collisions with space debris (hit a pebble in space at a few million miles an hour and see how you feel), so I figure they have a shield that only provides forward protection. This also provides a nice bit of balance to my idea for destroyers equipped with spinally-mounted BFG-grade beam weapons or mass drivers, if you assume they have to lower their own shield to get a shot off, putting them in a very vulnerable state while they lay in their attack. If sensors can't see through shields, they might not even be able to aim without dropping trou in front of the enemy.
rollin' on dubs
The driving force behind Honorverse weapons development is that offensive weapons tech surpasses passive and active defenses pretty damn early in the story. Because of this, the best way to ensure a win is to make sure that you are able to kill the enemy before they can close to range and kill you, leading to bigger and bigger missiles and eventually multistage missiles with the greatest powered flight envelopes available (unpowered missiles can be dodged easily) as wells as FTL comms capable control missiles, pen aids and so on.
In later (poorer) books Manticorean ships frequently engage the forces of a much larger enemy which is also at least a hundred years behind in weapons tech, having not just come out of decades of nonstop war and arms races. This means that they can engage targets at two or three times their missile envelops, so a small force can destroy many times their tonnage without taking a single hit.
edited 10th Oct '13 12:58:12 PM by Mars444
Of course, in the later books, the driving conflict is more political intrigue rather than the military conflict. It's less a question of whether the Manties can clean the Sollies' chronometers and more a question of if they can deal with most of the known galaxy turning into a Silesian Confederacy writ large once the League unravels entirely.
EDIT: Not arguing with you regarding the relative quality of the books though. David Weber needs a more aggressive editor. They could have folded three or four plotlines of Shadow of Freedom into a single integrated plot and it would have made for a much tighter, more robust story. Instead we got three escalating variations on "Manticoran ships go to Solarian controlled world and kick the Sollies around, much to the delight of the locals."
Although the book has possibly the most cathartic example of an Orbital Strike in recent literature history.
edited 11th Oct '13 1:21:04 AM by AFP
I use shields (or a quantum equivalent), basically a minimal pocket universe that forms around a spacecraft to protect it from radiation and debris during an instantaneous FTL Jump. It dissolves shortly after the Jump is complete and takes a great deal of power to maintain so they're not used as defenses in combat, that would be impractical. I call them "Hawking Shields" in honor of Stephen Hawking, since my FTL system tries to follow his theories about wormholes as closely as possible. So, yeah, it's called a shield. But even though it could stop bullets, missiles lasers and particle beams, the vessel using the shield in combat would lose all power within minutes and wouldn't be able to fight back through the shield during those minutes. In other words, No Deflector Shields, no force fields. Spacecraft rely on armor to protect themselves from space hazards and in combat.
In other settings where instead of Jump Teach, I've designed Alcubierre Warp-capable spacecraft with massive "drive shields" (large, physical, hemispherical) attached to the front of vessels large enough to contain the necessary equipment. The drive shields contain a network nodes that disperse the photon-buildup so the ship doesn't destroy the planet it's headed to (they're often callled Photon Shunts}. This system can be weaponized and used to provide a directed energy version of a flak shield on arrival. Still, the rest of the ship is a spine of sublight engines and rotating crew modules and whatever else is needed for the mission like cargo bays or specialized sensor clusters. Usually the Warp Drive is contained (except for an external hoop with pods full of exotic matter used to warp space in the first place) inside the drive shield, at the front of the ship, thus pulling the ship. Other than the energy dispersal system, other weapons are faced aft, or at starboard and port.
Sometimes I acknowledge the problem of forming and dissolving an Alucubierre-inspired Warp Wave or Bubble as the theory describes by using an unspecified technology (Inhibitor Shields) and explaining that the Warp Drive is always turned on, there's no way to turn it off, and the only way to drop back to sublight is to turn on the Inhibitor Shields and nullify the Warp, rather than turn off the Warp Drive (which would be either impossible or extremely dangerous). I can't come up with a pseudoscientific explanation for the Inhibitor Shields, but at least it acknowledges actual impracticalities of Miguel Alcubierre's theory. So again, a "shield" that has to do with propulsion, not combat, and whose effectiveness or usefulness is combat is minimal or nil.
edited 11th Oct '13 4:17:01 AM by fulltimeD
Thank you. I figured it wouldn't make sense for space warfare to be unregulated, since every other field of human conflict has been.
As for other laws, I imagine that orbital bombardment is seen only as legitimate when used against military targets* or to clear/"prepare" zones, excepting infantry* and small-medium numbers of vehicles*. Civilian targets - including cities, but not industry - are not eligible for engagement. Accidental damage - as long as it is not excessive - is okay. Typical orbital bombardment weapons are kinetic devices of varying description and lasers/beam weapons. So really it's pretty much the same as how it is in Taira's setting.
Although pretty much every group involved has NBC capabilities, they are very much weapons of last resort, usually requiring release authority from the highest echelons of military command (and permission from civil authorities - nobody wants some loose cannon in the army to set off a NBC weapon without consulting their government).
One particular point of these conventions is that nanite weapons* that disassemble the target and use them to create more nanites* are allowed, but they are not permitted to be used on living beings, being seen as a cruel and unusual weapon when employed in such a manner. There is an oversight, however: they don't cover accidental deaths of organics due to the indirect use of nanites*, which has in the past been exploited. There have been repeated calls to close this loophole, however.
De-orbiting space stations or satellites is illegal under the laws of space warfare, though destroying military installations and satellites is again perfectly fine. They must not be destroyed in such a way that they cause undue risk to those on the ground, though*.
That's a very bare-bones outline of what is and not okay in my setting; it's liable to change.
edited 12th Oct '13 2:07:16 PM by Flanker66
Locking you up on radar since '09^ You are welcome. I would think those sort of regulations would work well in a mundane sci-fi or a Twenty Minutes into the Future setting where the primary sphere of space operations is a planet's orbit.
If your setting has FTL though or even sublight colonization of extrasolar planets like in Firefly, there are two considerations to keep in mind:
- Humans are territorial and given to ideological divisions that have nothing to do with resources or any other excuse except through propaganda, so an Off-World colony in another system might decide to go to war to expand its territory because of ideology and little else like practical considerations
- Alternatively, if your colonies are really spread out, figure a hundred worlds with between 5000 and a million colonists. There's plenty of room for growth, so those colonies probably wouldn't need to cook up an ideological or propaganda-driven reason for war when there's plenty of room on the rest of the planet.(And if there's no FTL they wouldn't be able to invade another colony in another star system anyway)
I use both of these concepts in my works because I want to portray the complexity of the human condition. My settings usually come with some form of FTL that is portrayed based on current scientific theories and has limitations, for example in combat or navigational constraints.
I also have nanotech in my verse but it's heavily regulated, though regulated differently by different countries on different planets or moons, system-wide coalitions, etc. Basically, civilians can by nanotech for medical or constructive purposes, but they buy it with preprogramming to prevent abuse or a runaway "Gray Goo" scenario. Hacking nanotech would be a major crime most places, but since my 'verse has very few interstellar coalitions, the space between colonies and star systems is pretty much neutral and a planet could risk diplomatic problems with another planet by seizing a vessel in neutral space. Neutral space is pretty much the realm of the Starfarers (people who live and work in space and who WILL break your nose if you call them Space Truckers).
Militaries would have more leeway with nanotech, but since nanotech is owned by corporations, there'd still be a lot of negotiations limiting its usage. IE it can't be programmed for genocide or assimilation of enemy spacecraft or installations, but a military spacecraft could like a small capsule containing nanites in orders to disable another vessel's engines or main reactor, or communications, or all vital systems except maybe life support.
I also try to be realistic. The smaller the spacecraft in my 'verse, the more percentage of its volume is dedicated to fuel and the FTL drive, especially for space vehicles designed to land and take off. Larger (non-atmospheric, non-landing) vessels might have more passenger accommodations or room for scientific or cargo or medical facilities or whatever, but a huge bulk of them contains the main reactors (sometimes 2 or 3), the auxiliary reactors, the internal and external components of the FTL Drive, and a bunch of big rockets for sublight travel, and of course fuel tanks. Space is at a premium on most fully crewed vessels except for dedicated passenger ships or cruise liner type spacecraft. The main vessel (Starfarers don't like the word "ship") is an obsolete spaceplane-type design. It's a stock freighter with boxy, non-atmospheric but FTL equipped cargo shuttles (in contrast a Bulk Freighter would be too huge to land, and would use a small fleet of atmospheric but prob. not FTL-capable shuttles to transport goods from surface to freighter). It's about 240 meters long and about 200 meters wide counting wingspan. Other than the two cargo bays, probably 70-80%, is dedicated to propulsion (sublight and FTL) and life support. The rest is living quarters, two auxiliary vehicle berths, the multi-leveled engine room, three decks each with a corridor between the aft and bow, and the cockpit or flight deck in the Command Module (NOT the "bridge"). Warships have bridges. Freighters have cockpits. Like I said, Starfarers get really hung up on language. Call an FTL Drive a "hyperdrive" and they'll kick your off their vessel. Only warships and colonial or passenger transports get called "ships." Freighters and pretty much every thing else are "spacecraft," or "rigs," "boats," "crates," "vessels," etc.
edited 13th Oct '13 4:21:21 AM by fulltimeD
If your setting has FTL though or even sublight colonization of extrasolar planets like in Firefly, there are two considerations to keep in mind:
I'll explain a little bit further: I imagine there are two major spheres of military operations in space for my setting.
1. Planetary orbit, as you said. This may occur for practical reasons (They need [xyz] resource or it might be a strategic position) or for ideological/propaganda purposes (There might be something of great symbolic value to the defenders or attackers, for example*).
2. Deep space. In my setting, deep space is defined as any area of space that is [x] distance away from a planet and/or a civilisation's sphere of influence, similar to the concept of international waters today. Warfare may occur in deep space due to chance meetings (which are not very frequent due to how vast space is), because one fleet has decided to specifically intercept the other*, or as a result of one fleet hunting an opposing one, which will likely be performed for similar reasons to interception (and indeed may directly cause the interception in the first place!).
Generally, space combat is either short and nasty or drags on as one side disengages to lick its wounds* or the initial fighting proves inconclusive; another possibility is that what starts as a skirmish between light patrols snowballs into a major fleet action as more ships pile in to assist the original combatants*.
This can and has happened in the past in my setting - FTL travel is very common (though civilians are stuck with the Link Gates, as described previously), so most powers of note have quite a few worlds and systems under their aegis*. It's not unheard of for systems to rebel, but this usually isn't very successful; unless the world in question harboured major military resources or has public opinion on its side, the rebellion is normally quelled quietly by the appearance of a fleet in-system and/or boots on the ground.
Where insurrectionists are successful, however, usually they try to grab nearby territory to act as a buffer when they feel they're strong enough. The success of such forays can be mixed.
Nanites/nanomachines are used in medical applications, among other things, but one of the prime users is the military. The Confederacy's Special Activities Force (SAF) enhances its agents solely through nanites, and the Union has quietly invested in similar technology, though it relies predominantly upon genetic engineering and chemical means. Every new type of nanite is subjected to a thorough battery of tests to avoid the grey goo scenarios you brought up; they are required by law to have inherent limits to their population and so on.
Once again, all of this is subject to change.
I would comment on the composition of my setting's fleets, but I don't know enough about how to go about it in a sensible manner.
edited 13th Oct '13 10:57:45 AM by Flanker66
Locking you up on radar since '09
rollin' on dubs
Here's some things to consider:
1) While lots of industry can be put in orbit, raw materials have to come from somewhere. Some things are easier to make on a planet.
2) "If it can't be grown in must be mined." A saying of most miners and mining engineering. The flip side is that food has to come from large tracts of airable land. Sure you can have a colony in orbit pointed at the sun, but it's easier to just plant seeds in the ground. Ship the surplus to transports in orbit.
3) Habitable worlds. In my setting there is one nation under a resource crunch (the Cay Union) and two that are at odds over border worlds (Earth vs. the Southern Cross).
So aside from the "we can't allow Planet X to leave our nation and join the other side" argument, there are reasons for fighting for planets. Maps can get redrawn by force.
One of the sad parts of strategic planning is that industry and factories have cities sprout next to them. That warrants a defense and down the line the area's a target.
IRL: in the World War Two and the Cold War cities were targeted (and in WWII bombed) repeatedly. If bank robbers rob banks because that's where the money is, the same logic goes into the firebombings of WWII and the MIRV's and "Grand Tours" of the Cold War. The Space "X" version adds Orbital Bombardment and/or invasion.
I tried to walk like an Egyptian and now I need to see a Cairo practor....^ But there was always a line of logic that prevented WMD deployment post-WW 2 in any potential Cold War conflict. It's that pushing the nuking of civilians pushes the other side beyond the Godzilla Threshold. In short it appears as if one side is going for genocide so the other has nothing left to lose and no reason to show any mercy towards the other side. Thus Mutually Assured Destruction if one side went nuclear.
The same applies in space. Start flinging rocks and glassing planets and you mark yourselves for eradication. And any side capable of fighting you will put it that way and destroy you to the last child. (Or barring them, their friends.)
edited 13th Oct '13 12:20:00 PM by MajorTom
Unfortunately, bombing the cities proved to be an entirely useless idea. Factories kept inside the cities were an exception but targeting the civilian populace didn't inspire terror or break their resolve to fight. In fact, bombing a civilian target usually inspired them to rally against you. Worse, striking deep into enemy territory often becomes a costly affair. The allies lost more bombers due to air raids on major cities than they did to raids on axis bases.
It makes more sense to target the enemy baggage train or the enemy it'self.
rollin' on dubs
In The Yugoslav Wars, the NATO campaign did get the Serbs to the table. Japan had a blockade and strategic bombing.
The Cay Union suffers from Aliens Are Bastards because they think they are Proud Warrior Race Guys but are really the People's Republic of Tyranny. They just has the fastest ships and some of the biggest guns. They are (for now) the biggest fish in my 'Verse.
Earth suffers from the "hearts and minds" approach they inherited from the US/UN and the Fantastic Racism humans have for the Cay and some of the other aliens. On one hand they send the EDF to take and hold a city. On the other hand, bombing cities from orbits that have military bases and factory arcolgies are "acceptable losses" if they are Cay or the "Southies".
The Southern Cross is Fighting for a Homeland. They would like Earth to negotiate, but they want the EDF to leave them alone. The Cay Union sells them ships, spare parts and supplies. They hold the leash and let the SC know it. They want to see Earth losses and less talking. The humans and visonary aliens in the SC might want peace, but they know that Earth will attack and the Union's support is what keeps the blood thirsty parts of the EDF at bay. (Thanks for Sf Debris for giving me this idea! Video here
).
edited 19th Oct '13 10:04:28 PM by TairaMai
I tried to walk like an Egyptian and now I need to see a Cairo practor....The effectiveness of the Allied bombing campaigns in WWII is hotly debated. By the Gulf War in 1991, the airpower strategy had evolved to something called Warden's Five Rings
. An enemy has five centers of gravity, or "rings": Leadership, Organic/System Essentials/Key Production, Infrastructure, Population, and Fielded Military Forces. The idea is to hit as many of the rings as you are capable of simultaneously to cause maximum disruption (in conjunction with sea and land forces making similar efforts. Like the WWII bombing strategies, the application of this is open to debate.
It's also been argued that one of the biggest things that strategic airpower brings to the table is that the enemy is forced to expend additional resources protecting their interior. All those Patriot batteries, AA gunners, Stinger troops, radar operators, etc. can't be sent to the front line to fight the enemy's ground advance because some asshole in a plane could drop a bomb on you anywhere in your territory. Even the mere threat presented by the capability to launch air raids into the enemy's interior forces them to redistribute their forces and spread themselves out, even before you consider the additional possibilities of air-deployed ground forces (one tactic used from time to time: Send in a force of paratroopers to seize an enemy air field, then mob-rush it with transports laden with troops, heavy weapons, and armored vehicles to establish a new beachhead deep in enemy territory).

Size Comparison - Science Fiction spaceships
Deviant Art link and what a link it is...
You're welcome.
I tried to walk like an Egyptian and now I need to see a Cairo practor....