What in the fuck is the point of a fighter in interstellar space?
Does the trend of classifying air/sea platforms as fighter/bomber/interceptor/frigate/cruiser/carrier/battleship/destroyer have in relevance in a space?
Would completely new classes have to be created instead
There isn't
Believe it or not Star Wars isn't based on real life. Psychic laser-sword wielding monks don't actually exist.
>>29869860
My miserable friend, take a drink, discard your teenage sarcasm and eventually someone of note will like you.
>>29869832
Depends entirely on what happens. I could see boarding actions as highly likely due to how expensive ships are, and you'd want to steal theirs.
I could also see small guided torpedoes being used to blow up ships, and possibly lasers or machine guns to defend against them.
I can see large supply/transport vessels (maybe even repair) needing to be protected by smaller, faster, ships to run interference before enemy ships get in range.
Hard to imagine things now in the same way that modern computers were hard to imagine 30 years ago. We don't quite have the technology to do much more than strap a gun on a ship to rip apart another ship and whoever hits something vital first wins.
https://youtu.be/YYoCvgAAiQ8
We Starfury now
>>29869896
You can't get mad at the fact Star Wars has fighters then try to get all high and mighty when someone points out how stupid you're being.
i think fighters would be used as escort for the heavy / supply ships.
now before anyone says that the "heavy ships can defend themselves if you strap enough guns on them" remember that's what the USAAF said about the B-17's and B-24's and look how that turned out
The concept of the fighter depends on having a drive system that accelerates a smaller vessel faster than a larger one, a compact weapon system that is capable of inflicting damage on a larger target and a method of damping inertial changes so that the vessel can make vector changes sufficient to avoid lightspeed targeting and weapons. They're still a valid weapon system, just harder to implement.
All ships are called "Ships of Line". Final destination.
>>29869947
There is absolutely no reason for fighters in space other than the fact that it is dramatic for the audience.
>>29869832
>Does the trend of classifying air/sea platforms as fighter/bomber/interceptor/frigate/cruiser/carrier/battleship/destroyer have in relevance in a space?
No.There's no difference between a Cruiser or a Destroyer nowadays. The classification is already obsolete on Earth.
>Would completely new classes have to be created instead
Yes.
>>29869947
Boarding actions are basically impossible in any realistic context. Unless one ship is already in orbit with no way to change course or defend itself.
>>29870365
Space is not WW2. The side with the bigger lasers, better targeting system and larger heat sinks is going to win. The closest you will get to a 'fighter' is a disposable suicide drone with missile launchers to generate more targets for the enemy ship to handle.
>>29869832
I imagine that those classifications would remain simply out of a respect for naval heritage, although their capabilities and roles will be vastly different from what we see now.
>>29870460
This is a major development that manned space fighters would need. Without some sort of G-force compensation the pilot would be torn apart by high acceleration maneuvers.
>>29869832
I feel like once you get it into space, bigger is always better as far as starships go. I mean, if you have the technology to travel the stars, then you unlimited resources. You can harvest raw material from any uninhabited planet. So you use you ship, to be build a bigger ship. And then you use that ship to build an even bigger ship.
Repeat infinitum.
Long story short: unlike marine navies, speed is not a significant factor in space warship design, unless you are getting into obscene sizes. Since speed is not a significant factor and stealth impossible, there are no fast ships nor subs, meaning the destroyer has nothing to do, thus would not exist.
Submarines depend on stealth, and since there is no stealth in space, there are no submarines in space.
A battlecruiser is a ship meant to be able to outrun anything it can't outgun - it had the speed of a lighter cruiser with the guns of a battleship. In real navies, this was usually achieved by taking armor off a battleship. However, since speed is not limited by mass in the given order of magnitude, a battleship and battlecruiser would have the same speed: the battleship would be a clearly superior vessel. Thus, no battlecruisers. (Now, if you have FTL, then that might create a battlecruiser class, but I am trying to avoid talking about magic in this discussion, since as the author, it is entirely up to you what the magic can and cannot do.)
A destroyer escort is a small, relatively slow ship used to escort merchant ships and protect them against submarines and aircraft. But, in the real world, aircraft can threaten a ship due to its superior speed and submarines due to stealth. So neither of them are there, making the destroyer escort worthless. Frigates or battleships would have to be doing the escorting, since they are the only things that can stand up to what they will be fighting: other frigates or battleships.
Now, a little more on what I mean by frigate. It is basically a smaller battleship, built simply because I am presuming they will be cheaper to produce and maintain, thus allowing more of them to exist. With more of them, they can be in more places doing more things. Cost is the only real benefit I can think of: if for some reason you could crank out and operate / maintain battleships for the same cost, I see no reason why you would not.
>>69832
Fighter pilots make interesting main characters than some swabbie on a star destroyer.
Also Lucas had/has a huge hard on for footage of ww2 fighters, and most of the dog fights are inspired by that.
>>29869832
Atomic Rockets is THE website if you're interested in writing a realistic sci-fi. They have equations for all sorts of theoretical weapons and answers to questions like "would a laser rifle be able to blind the target?" It's a fun place to archive binge because they make everything pretty accessible and have a lot of cool retro-sci imagery.
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/misconceptions.php
Their official position is that there is absolutely no reason to have a "fighter" in outer space.
>>29870503
Frigates and destroyers are also basically interchangeable, different countries call the same ship either depending on their own system.
>>29869832
We'll definitely have bombers or strike craft but it would not be a tiny one man piloted ship.
"Fighters" will be drones that are basically flying guns or missile pods in space
Future star wars will be based on computational power over long distances
Sublight: when two ships actually want to fight it will be them zipping around controlled by a computer making random changes and doing insane acceleration maneuvers. The crew will be in a vat or someother means in order to keep them intact. That's only assuming missiles can go faster than . If not then they could just run away all the time. Missiles will need super advance guidance systems that would need to operate for months and make quick changes to reach their targets.
In the future being on a station or planet is certain death. Google relativistic missiles and see why the future is horrifying. Anyone that thinks there will be boarding, fighter squadrons and dreadnoughts are fooling themselves.
>>29870791
and as a side note;
Realize that the more technologically advanced we are, the easier it is for the regular joe to destroy everything. Right now people have access to materials and tools that allow them to make guns. Imagine the future where regular joe has a ship that can go near light speed. Let's say he crashes his ship, or accelerates a rock towards earth. This would be unpredictable and unstoppable. All of life could be destroyed by regular joe.
>>29870834
Which is why you get rid of the most dangerous common denominator.
The regular joe.
>>29869832
I remember watching something I think on discovery or nat geo about space combat.
I remember they had a simulation and it was all cube-shaped ships, jerking around on various axises, not flying in the traditional sense.
Imagine a cube jerking back and forth, up and down, side to side, all while shooting lasers in all directions. Looked messy as hell desu.
>>29870897
>jerking around
I'm not sure if thats how physics works.
>>29870897
Now imagine the two cubes are 2AU away from eachother, accelerating between all directions at around 10k m/s dodging missiles going just as fast
>>29870924
oh look, a pedantic asshat
>>29871067
He has been a little shithead for most of the thread. Give him some slack.
Why do people seem so skeptical of the concept of fighters (manned or not) in space? If everybody was using large ships then it would stand to reason that the bulk of weaponry would be designed for targeting large, slow ships. If that was the case then it seems reasonable that it would occur to somebody to build smaller, faster drones/ships in order to out-maneuver them.
>>29869832
>completely ignoring the fact that all of those "spacecraft" are also used in-atmosphere
>>29871181
What if capital ships were made up of smaller fighter ships that fragmented and came back together to form capital ships?
>>29870585
>a battleship and battlecruiser would have the same speed
Top speed, yes, but you would need larger thrusters on a battleship to achieve tje same acceleration as a battlecruiser
>>29870479
*wall.
You're thinking in two dimensions.
>>29870952
Why even live
>>29870722
This sounds plausible.
Or perhaps a swarm of drones that would work like a network of highly mobile CIWS platforms.
I liked how they used something similar in the Ender's Game movie. With sufficient AI and enough units, they become almost like force field around the mothership.
>>29871287
Ender's Game shows how stupid it is to have high ranking members in fighter craft.
They are essentially aerial versions of infantry, why would they be field grade officers?
>>29869832
Your ship classes have zero relevance to modern navies to begin with, seeing as how they change by country and random whims.
Any any case, you can just rehash the classic generic arguments of choosing small war machines over big war machines and vice versa.
>>29871181
>out-maneuver them.
How do you propose to 'out-manoeuvre' a laser? Especially one several orders of magnitude more powerful than yours that has a much longer range?
>slow
Fighters won't be faster, they could be slower if anything. Its not like Earth where ships and fighters operate in different mediums with different design principles.
>>29871536
Lightspeed limit. By the time he shots, in fact before he sees you are moving, you are already moving at 10 m/s at any direction. Yes, battle ranges are going to be counted on light-seconds.
>>29871536
> Its not like Earth where ships and fighters operate in different mediums with different design principles.
Maybe so, but it will cost less to change direction for smaller craft. Propulsion systems would make smaller craft more maneuvrable , for example because they expand in power with the square of a shape, while mass expands withe the cube.
>>29871683
Can you install a mega-ton nuclear reactor on a fighter?
>>29871696
No, because a megaton is a unit of energy, not power, and therefore meaningless as a unit of measure for a reactor.
>>29869832
Well you posted a snippet of a video of Star Wars.
In Star Wars their laser weapons are actually a sort of encapsulated plasma bolt and the anti-ship guns work like WW2 AA cannons. Its also explained that AI for things like ships or turrets is basically shortbus retarded (think the droids from Episodes 1-3). So your AA devices are either controlled by humans or robots with Down's syndrome. Thus a fast and capable fighter can evade them.
I could see fighters being useful in a future reality if they were 1) robotic and 2) had some sort of impulse movement system allowing them to "bounce" quickly from side to side, like a hummingbird, as they approach. They would have enough armor to absorb actual laser weaponry and would move erratically enough to dodge in and out of the beam. They would be little missile carriers, delivering missiles at close enough ranges that laser countermeasures would be unable to burn the missiles quickly enough. But thats just me being a speculative nerd.
in the future of space wars the aim will be for everyone to kill themselfs because AI killer robots will put you inside a bubble that keeps you alive and tortures you forever
>>29871352
>high ranking members in fighter craft.
Elaborate?
Conventional warfare and tactics are irrelevant in space. Long-range (10,000+ miles), guided nuclear weapons will reign supreme.
>>29871977
Pic related. At least with the F-22, it has command capabilities
>>29871882
Why not give the missile the hummingbird like motion and greater resistance to lasers?
>>29871635
Where would you store your propellant on this fighter that is so small? How will it increase its relative velocity to other ships without a lot of propellant?
>>29869860
REEEEE! It's not a laser, it's plasma in a magnetic containment field, you fucking casual!
The stuff in star wars was originally made by movie people, but now it's made by genuine nerds who provide scientifically plausible explanations for how stuff works.
>>29872108
Which did you mean?
The drone swarms were remotely operated - to some degree at least - from their respective motherships.
>>29869832
Spaceships will be outrageously expensive and pirates / military will want to leave them as unharmed as possible. Both ships will instead launch armed drones from cargo bays that will battle it out between the two, taking care not to let any projectiles or lasers strike their prizes. The defeated party must submit to boarding and capture or they will absolutely be destroyed by the opposing party's drones.
These swarms of drones will eventually be replaced by fewer and fewer of them as they get more massive in order to boost their armor and offensive capabilities. This will eventually result in swarms of small drones being replaced by either armed flying robot mechs who battle it out to defend their respective ships.
OP
This may come as a shock to you
But space
Is kinda like the ocean
>>29873163
If by "kinda" you mean "not at all remotely," sure.
The commonality begins and ends with there being a large amount of space without much in it of note.
>>29869832
>Would completely new classes have to be created instead
>star fighter
>star bomber
>star cruiser
Just add star.
>>29869832
IMO military space vessels will be separated into
- Unmanned attack ships with lasers, which will use powerful engines and low weight to intercept other vessels and evade fire
- Bombardment vessels with officer skeleton crews and massive, diverse nuclear arsenals for surface attack
- Logistics/command vessels which will support and maintain everything else while staying hundreds of thousands of miles away from actual combat
- Unmanned fuel and supply vessels which will almost certainly be civilian contractors
ship classes will probably be determined by their total reactor output (which determines laser range) and their power/weight ratio, since these are basically the only things that matter
pic unrelated because space-to-ground invasions would be incredibly impractical
>>29871246
In traditional wet navy terms, battlecruisers were often MORE massive than battleships, but had better speed due to having a larger proportion of their displacement devoted to propulsion systems.
>>29872260
If a fighter is small, it wouldn't need as much propellant in the first place.
>>29869947
/thread
If anyone has played a space fighter game simply need to look at how their ship is used as well as the other ships around.
Try playing Freespace. Large capital ships get their strategic points damaged by much smaller bombers. That allows for your capital ship to get the upper hand.
This thread is confusing. Can I sign up for these classes or not?
>>29870513
>Boarding actions are basically impossible in any realistic context. Unless one ship is already in orbit with no way to change course or defend itself.
Not that guy, but you should probably include "Barring any unforeseen bullshit technical advances like, i don't know, teleporters or some shit."
>>29872706
>REEEEE! It's not a laser, it's plasma in a magnetic containment field, you fucking casual!
Lightsabers are lasers though, it's blasters that use plasma.
>>29871181
>irl target tracking totally works like it does in EvE online
>>29873426
Think of it this way.
If I have a bigger ship then that means I have a bigger, much more powerful laser. And it also means that I have a larger heat-sink so I can fire my laser for a longer period of time before I have to stop firing due to heat concerns.
So while your "space fighter" is trying to poke at me with its tiny laser, I can destroy it with my laser before you get close enough to do any real damage. Why? Because my laser is more powerful and thus it has a much longer range.
If the only sane design decision is to build a bigger ship based on price and tech constraints, then just return to the old age of discovery naval classes: Ships of the Line.
Your largest and most powerful craft is always the 1st rate SotL, build anything smaller and call them 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc depending how extreme it is.
If you invent a newer more powerful or just plain bigger model, that becomes the 1st rate while the rest get demoted.
>>29873652
>Not that guy, but you should probably include "Barring any unforeseen bullshit technical advances like, i don't know, teleporters or some shit."
why wouldn't you just teleport exploding nuclear weapons onto their bridge instead of redshirts
>>29875638
star trek did that because they were an exploration mission and intended to reduce casualties when practical
other people might beam aboard redshirts or drones to wipe out the crew so they can take over the otherwise undamaged ship and sell/use it
>>29873669
Nah. Use wookiepedia or wikipedia and you'll see. In-universe, 'tards called it a laser sword. Most blasters use particle beams, but a good amount are plasma based.
>>29870513
>The closest you will get to a 'fighter' is a disposable suicide drone with missile launchers to generate more targets for the enemy ship to handle.
AKA missiles with submunitions, which would need to be transported long distances via larger ships.
>>29874123
Think of it this way.
If you have a smaller ship you will have a larger surface area for cooling fins and heat sinks, and have more ships.
So your "space battleship" is trying to poke them with it's inefficient laser. Meanwhile they can focus fire with a billion effiecient lasers and destroy your lumbering hulk
>>29870513
>Space is not WW2. The side with the bigger lasers, better targeting system and larger heat sinks is going to win.
Arguably not. Lasers are absolutely wimpy when it comes to actually destroying things. The latest in tactical lasers takes a few seconds to burn through the thin sheet metal hull of a missile, something an assault rifle can do in an instant. Efficiency is also an issue since not only are laser emitters inefficient, you can't plan on the target cooperating with you. They'll use ablative hull materials and angle the armor. They'll maneuver so you can't focus on one spot on the hull. Sure, you might eventual kill them but it's going to take all day.
On the other hand, if they get into effective kinetic range then there's not much you can do. You can dodge but that means burning fuel and if they force you to burn enough delta V you're dead in the water, so to speak.If they use fragmentation rounds they can toss entire clouds of shrapnel at you to sandblast your hull clean.
Missiles are another issue. Yes, you can shoot them down but this is space. The cloud of debris they'll form will provide protection for the next wave of missiles. Granted, this means you'll need a fuckton of missiles to pierce the PD sphere of a warship but missiles have theoretically better range than even lasers.
And then you've got E-War.
Space combat is going to be complicated and I doubt there's going to be one good solution.
>>29870585
Acceleration will replace speed as far as mobility goes. A ship that can pull 2 gravities of acceleration can outrun a ship that struggles with 1 G.
This will actually start factoring into the structural integrity of the ship as well as the square cubed law. It's going to be a lot harder to engineer a larger ship to function at high acceleration than a smaller ship. For one, the support struts are going to need to be proportionally thicker.
>>29869832
Space combat would be done on the scale of hundreds of miles away, minimum. You'd never see your adversary with a naked eye. Worst case would be a lance of high energy particles of some kind or another appearing suddenly on the side of your ship and vaporizing everything. Best case is a warhead with a payload so large it couldn't be used in an atmosphere.
The game is 3d long-range stealth where the first person to target and shoot wins every time, at least until we develop something resembling shields.
>70 posts
>no mention of blue lasers or space prussians
>>29878818
Space is vast though, and lasers work fine if they're powerful enough. If you have the ability to engage them at the speed of light upon seeing them, you win. And even if they're not within LOS, and are instead launching kinetic vehicles into your orbital path, a laser gives you the ability to rapidly knock their projectiles off course.
>>29878937
Space as a background is pretty damn cold, only a couple degrees above absolute zero. Anytime you made a burn or fired a weapon you're going to show up on infrared.
There's no real way to hide your infrared signature so most people believe that true stealth in space is impossible.
>>29878966
Yeah, most people don't care about LoGH
Frankly, I find it dated at best.
>>29871536
bitch those lasers need to turn and aim.
fucking duh.
>>29878990
Space may be vast but engagement envelopes are small. Even if you can see an enemy light seconds away doesn't mean you can kill them with a laser. For one, you've got to deal with the mechanical precision of the guns. At 100 kilometers, if you've got a margin of error of one tenth a minute of arc your shot is landing somewhere in a 290 cm circle.
Also, keep in mind that saying "A powerful enough laser" is a bit like saying "A long enough lever". It's possible but ridiculous. The MTHEL is at megawatt levels and struggles to defeat thin skinned rockets and it's using a high output deuterium fluoride chemical laser.
Lasers struggle for 30 percent efficiency and enemy action can reduce that efficiency even further. You'll destroy your own ship before you kill your enemy.
Meanwhile, they'll rush at you at 10-20 km/s and fire more railgun rounds than you can ever hope to intercept.
>>29879019
>There's no currently known way to hide your infrared signature so most people believe that true stealth in space is impossible.
I fixed yer post fer ya.
>>29879177
>For one, you've got to deal with the mechanical precision of the guns.
If you can see them from that distance, you can aim an optical assembly at them.
>The MTHEL is at megawatt levels
It was a megawatt *chemical* laser, which is vastly less efficient and more importantly, it was firing from sea level against targets that had short exposures.
Get into space and your only limit is getting a good enough lens, which is also easier when you can run big flexible membrane mirrors, etc without having to worry about gravity.
>Meanwhile, they'll rush at you at 10-20 km/s
So lasers are inefficient, but using that much delta-V to close with you, while also firing energy-hungry railgun shots at you isn't? For the record, the energy used to fire a railgun like what the USN is currently testing uses as much energy as a 1MW laser (factoring in the inefficiency) firing for about 10 seconds.
>>29876289
Lighsabers are energy passed through focusing crystals. Thus a laser. Blasters take gas and superheat it into plasma. Where the fuck are you getting particle beams from? Do you mean capital ship turbolasers?
>>29879207
...true.
>>29879301
>If you can see them from that distance, you can aim an optical assembly at them.
Most of the time we don't look directly at a target, we just take a picture of a part of the sky that a target is in. That could be entire square degrees if we want.
>It was a megawatt *chemical* laser, which is vastly less efficient and more importantly, it was firing from sea level against targets that had short exposures.
So what would you use? Free Electron Lasers? Please, those things are so bulky that the enemy could simply out build you.
>Get into space and your only limit is getting a good enough lens, which is also easier when you can run big flexible membrane mirrors, etc without having to worry about gravity.
And enemy armor. And sublimated armor. And space debris.
>For the record, the energy used to fire a railgun like what the USN is currently testing uses as much energy as a 1MW laser (factoring in the inefficiency) firing for about 10 seconds.
Said railgun also smashed through several plates of steel in an instant rather than one sheet over about 6 seconds.
Piercing through armor is more efficient that melting it.
>>29869832
I imagined space combat would involve huge ships which are just massive rail guns with some engines attached, taking shots at each other from millions of kilometers away.
