Space Combat
POSTED BY: citizen
UPDATED: Monday, May 22, 2006 21:09
VIEWED: 8604
PAGE 5 of 5
A way to avoid all of the problems of disabled ships and their corresponding massive debris fields would be to think of space combat as similar to 18th and early 19th century naval combat rather that more modern tactics. During that period ships sought primarily to capture the enemy vessel and their cannon were primarily used to immobilize the other ship so that it could be easily boarded. In a situation involving space vessels this could be acomplished by reviving the old purpose of marines. The warship would use its weapons to disable the enemy's engines and weapons and any energy shields that it might have so that a smaller transport loaded with marines could penetrate its perimeter and attempt to capture the vessel. If the marines were sucessful, the boarding ship would transfer a small crew from the main vessel to pilot the captured ship to a friendly port
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Yes, this is an entirely feaseable possibility. Though if you were to use conventional 'cannon' in the disabling of enemy vehicles, you would still have the problem of debris. I think this would lead to the use of Electro Magnetic Pulse weapons to leave the enemy vessel drifting, though to the best of my knowledge these are only acheivable by way of high altitude nuclear explosion. Could be wrong on that though.
If anyone gets nosy...Shoot em.
Shoot em sir?
Politely.
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Yes, projectile weapons would cause a great deal of debris. Thus, I think that for the reasons I mentioned above that the use of Directed Energy Weapons would dominate space combat. Also EMP generation need not come from an atomic device, there are probably books at your local library to tell you how to make an EMP generatior; albeit at great cost and it would be difficult to do without a professional lab.
Making the pulse into a directed weapon would be the difficult part. The difference is seen that a pulse disrupts everything in a given radius, friendlies nonwithstanding. This would be similar to the EMP seen in The Matrix. A directed EM weapon would be similar to the weapon used by the Reavers in the BDM , Mal's refering to it as EMP was a slight misnomer, it was not a pulse per se but it conveyed the idea well enough. The advantage of an EM DEW is that it affects only its target and not all vessels in the area friends and enemies alike.
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I think that the Matrix's version of the EMP was one of the most realistic depictions ever on film. That's how I believe it would work, because if all of your friendlies power down immediately before you use the EMP, they would be free to power up again immediately after, no? I could be wrong in that respect, but if I'm right, that would give a force the upper hand, as they would be able to manoeuver unlike their enemies.
If anyone gets nosy...Shoot em.
Shoot em sir?
Politely.
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