Sci-fi Military Tactics and Strategy

In a large tank battle, would APCs and other armored vehicles trying to help out, be a net benefit or a net hindrance? Assuming the other side only had tanks.

Also lets assume it takes place on favorable, terrain.

In combined arms everyone has a role to play. APCs wouldn’t help out by shooting at enemy tanks as if they were an MBT, but by moving their infantry into the battlefield, suppressing enemy infantry in concert with friendly forces, or providing supporting fire with ATG Ms.

Properly carried out combined arms almost always trumps monolithic forces. They have more flexibility, can surprise the enemy with a variety of capabilities, and brings a broader range of weapons and tactics to the field.

For a very simplified example take US Bradleys and Abrams tanks. The Abrams provide long-range heavy firepower capable of swatting most threats but they are still vulnerable to ambush from infantry with ATGM's or vehicles lobbing similar weapons. IFV's can also potentially defeat or mission kill tanks by leveraging their manoeuvrability and getting shots at the more vulnerable back 3rd of the vehicle.

The IFV's help secure flanks, act as scouts, provide supporting and suppressing fire, firing ATGM's usually from the flanks or from ambush, and move infantry in position to threaten enemy assets with their own heavy weapons. The IFV's also help suppress enemy infantry and destroy light vehicles that can possibly mount ATGM's or at least draw their fire away from the tanks. Throw in assets like rotary wing units like the Apache and Cobra gunships which add highly maneuverable fast moving weapons platforms that can ambush tanks and other armor from around or above terrain with ATGM's and their auto-cannon caliber chin mounts are good against everything short of a tank making them rather valuable assets. You start adding components of artillery platforms, fixed wing, and heli born troops and you basically have a force that has a lot of portable fast moving and maneuverable firepower that can leverage those advantages to flank, ambush, and outmaneuver their enemies.

It's why in Mecha settings of mine, whether on the ground or in space, combined arms is the way to go.

I seem to remember that in Afghanistan, the Soviets took some heavy losses, because they had too many tanks and not enough IFV's.

Monoblock forces are a bad idea, for as long as humans have been fighting we knew this and mixed them up.

Even Greek phalanxes and Roman centurians had auxiliaries protecting there flanks.

The Soviets got sloppy and tried for the heavy-handed approach. Then again they weren't first or last to do so.

Do ifv have better optics then tanks? Because the biggest complaint I always hear from tankers is the optics suck, and they are blind without other forces pointing things out for them.

Edited by Imca on Aug 11th 2018 at 2:38:11 AM

x5 The problem with that is mecha have no real role in combined arms, there’s nothing they do that conventional vehicles don’t do better or more reliably. I think if you’re going to do mecha you have to go the Gundam route and just make them front-line units in a way that isn’t really questioned.

Honestly depends on the vehicle. Though the “can’t see shit” complaint is usually more about field of view and situational awareness than low quality optics.

Edited by archonspeaks on Aug 11th 2018 at 3:40:30 AM

Archon I know it's unrealistic. I didn't ask if it was real or not. I'm going the VOTOMS route where they are used in combined arms as armored infantry.

"It is like trying to fight while wearing blinders" I mean yea, that's about a field of view, but I would still argue that is a problem with the optics, since well built ones would provide the crew with better situational awareness, maybe the whole "VR helmet and camreas" thing could be ported to tanks.

As for mecha depending on how big they are.... EX: Not big, maybe you could get away with arguing there taking the role of infantry.

For most of my mecha settings I treat them like they’re treated in mecha anime, where they’re basically independent maneuver units. I always just feel like when they work too closely with tanks the reader starts to wonder why everyone doesn’t just use tanks

They’re already porting that to yanks. The Israelis supposedly have it up and running and it’ll probably be on next-gen US tanks.

Building a system of optics that provides good situational awareness is a hell of a lot easier said than done.

Tanks can’t really do much of anything without help, even just trying to fit into a garage or something can be a hassle. In combat they absolutely need other units to inform their situational awareness.

Edited by archonspeaks on Aug 11th 2018 at 3:51:49 AM

I think there's room for both Mechs and Tanks in settings. Such as the Canadian made tabletop game Heavy Gear, which has both VOTOMS style mecha alongside conventional tanks.

The questions only come up when you have hover tanks, which beg the question of why have mecha at all.

Unless you are Star Wars, everyone stopped questioning you a long time ago.

Even wheeled/tracked tanks would arguably be superior to mecha in a lot of situations. One concept I toyed with was mecha-MRLS, where the mechs are ultra-mobile launch systems for missiles and rockets.

With the invention of hover tanks I think the attack helicopter and tank would start to blend together. Attack helicopters would add more armor and weapons, and tanks would fly higher and higher, until they were all just one thing.

That aside, I thought of something recently.

Say you have a setting that uses space fighters, don't question why, that's not the important part here. My question is what would logically make a lot of sense for a small maneuverable craft?

Wouldn't a dedicated fighter look more like a Starfury from Babylon 5 with reaction control all over instead of a space plane we commonly see like Star Wars or the Starfuries?

Star Wars EU/Legends material had the wings, aka S-Foils were actually radiator units that were folded out for better heat management when the ship needed to preform more tasks than "Fly from point A to point B".

I mean, maybe for a multirole fighter where it can transition from space to atmosphere.

Depends on how the ships get around in that setting. In Wing Commander, the fighters basically used something like tractor beams to maneuver the ships at lower speeds (the same technology allowed them to scoop up free hydrogen to fuel their engines, justifying the omnipresent air intakes on the WC universe's space fighters). When operating in an atmosphere, they'd dial the grav scoops way back but would basically maneuver the same way in an atmosphere.

IIRC, in the old EU, fighters maneuvered by interacting with some kind of ether (I just assume they're actually interacting with a physical manifestation of The Force, which as you know flows through everything and binds the Universe together.) It's not quite making rocks float and messing with people's minds, but it tracks.

Worth noting, Wing Commander was basically Chris Roberts doing his own version of Star Wars because Lucas Film wouldn't let him make an X-Wing game (before Lucas Film went ahead and made their own, mind you).

Too bad Chris Roberts became more interested in making films than games toward the end of Wing Commander's run. While I will freely admit that Freespace was the superior space combat sim, the arcade-like feel of WC combat remains unmatched in my opinion, particular Prophecy.

Anyway, I can't think of any popular space combat sim that's ever tried to make ship movement accurate.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 11th 2018 at 9:35:03 AM

I think the Jackals from Infinite Warfare are apt here. The Fighter is tripostitional, and has 96 RCS ports according to Word of God, which open up once the fighter reaches upper atmosphere and low earth orbit. You can see it during gameplay as Jackals and Skelters are maneuvering through small adjustments through and when it makes hard stops the ports are much more “forceful” and visible.

When operating in an environment with atmosphere (such as Titan or Venus) the ports close, and it acts like a traditional fighter.

This was probably the best depiction of a space fighter imo

One big engine oriented toward the rear, rotate the entire fighter to change direction.

I, to, have never found an accurate space combat sim.

Edited by DeMarquis on Aug 12th 2018 at 9:26:10 AM

What about Space Engineers where if your engine output doesn't evenly match, you are left drifting as you try to bank around your target?

The deciding question is:

Do your starfighters ever operate in atmosphere?

@Echoing

Also when you turn off the "inertial Dampeners" The ship doesn't auto-break so you're full newtonian. Most players use this to go long distances without wasting fuel.

Space Engineers has 2 biases. First, rockets will self-destruct after a set distance and second there's nothing that can help calculate lead for fast moving targets. Combined, this means combat tends to be very short range with space battles being very jousty.

That problem is balance.

In fact that's the problem with a lot of space sims. Balance, not just in terms of gameplay but also in terms of computer power.

In fact that's the problem with Children of a Dead Earth I hear, it tends to crunch computer power like nothing else to maintain realistic space combat.

Well, there's Children of a Dead Earth "The most scientifically accurate video game ever made!" But it doesnt have space fighters in it.

Another problem was that I said, this isn't a question of realism, if we focused on realism alone then this conversation would be over with "space fighters will never exist".

The question is, why would anyone make a fighter ship look like a plane?