Evyn replied to me:
Ok, there are couple of ideas here the first is decide what your model
of combat is. How do you fight your wars? Which theatre are the big
questions answered in, in that in the Navel model the concentration of
your military expenditures are fleet assets, with which strive to
achieve Space/air Superiority over the contested Planet in this case.
This model works in that once achieved the High Ground the rest is mop
up by garrison troops that you can land at your leisure. This model
assumes that residual opposing ground forces will be forced into the
primitive aggressor in a Asymmetric conflict.
There are two aspects to this -- what is "dictated" by the technology,
and what can be "decided" by the writer of the setting? Even without
near-C rocks, it seems that the space force can always devastate a
planet. Some missiles will get through. That has to be neutralized by
political means in the setting, or only the Navy counts. It could be a
formal treaty, an unilateral declaration by somebody with enough power
to make it stick (cf Traveller, or David Weber), it could be MAD, it
could be the inherent value of earthlike planets in a setting which has
few of them.
So assume that mass orbital bombardment is out.
The other model is the
ground warfare model, where ground based assets can resist/attack
space based assets with some impunity, thus a forced landing and
ground conflict is required to silence said space threatening assets.
If space assets must stay in orbit -- because hypering in and out would
make precision strikes impossible and area strikes are unacceptable --
the ground forces have the advantage of hiding in ground clutter. But
can a tank-sized ground asset hurt spaceships, and would a
battleship-sized ground asset remain immune from saturation bombardment?
It could be that something this large justifies some collateral damage.
My current draft for a TL11 "Navy Aerospace Craft" does 6.4 G loaded and
8 G light, with DR 1,000 armor and force screens. It would clearly be
vulnerable to tank-sized laser batteries which hide under some trees, or
in a garage, and get cued by ground sensors before the ship comes over
the horizon.
In this case Close Air Support alongside ground based artillery
support is necessary.
Are ballistic tube artillery or bombardment rockets survivable against
point defense?
As is the combined arms force landing, which
circles around to who provides Air Support and Ground fire Suppression
support and with what sort of assets. Dipping into the Traveller model
here as it supposes that all High Tech vehicles are air mobile the
exact line where a tank and a transatmospheric fighter/bomber/CAS ship
gets real blurry. And that lime might all depend on what that ship's
loadout is on that day.
I think there is a clear difference.
The tank is optimized for a direct fire duel with accurate,
armor-piercing, low-collateral-damage rounds. It can resist some hits in
this class, at least beyond 1/2D range, at least on the frontal arc. The
point defense is designed to deal with ATGM-equivalent missiles, which
are shorter-ranged and more numerous than SAMs.
The transatmospheric fighter or gunboat is optimized for quick firing
passes, which release a variety of ordnance in a short time before
getting the hell out of dodge. The armor is not enough to resist their
own weapons. The point defense is designed to deal with SAM-equivalent
or shipkiller missiles. The fighter might be re-armed for CAS or
counter-ship strikes, but it won't become a tank.
Sidenote; there isn't a whole lot of difference between a MBT's main
Gun and a Ship's 5 gun, other than the amount of ancillary hardware
supporting the weapon.
Two points here:
The 3" or 5" gun on modern ships is no longer the main weapon. It is a
backup to the missile silos, with cheaper and smaller ammo.
And there are differences. The tank gun is optimized for maximum punch,
at the expense of RoF and range. Consider how many are still manually
loaded. The naval gun has about three times the RoF and several times
the ready rounds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OTO_Melara_76_mm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otobreda_127/64
I kinda hit all this with my above commentary. But also consider this
how big is the smallest effective combatant got to be? then doe the
trade offs for endurance from those minimal figures...
The smallest effective hyperspace warship needs to:
- Travel between inhabitated star systems.
- Detect stealthy warships at useful engagement ranges.
- Carry weapons which can put small to medium ships at risk.
- Carry armor and point defense to degrade the attack of other very
small ships, but not stop it.
Note that I'm calling for an "overarmed" craft -- it can threaten
something several times larger, but it will be terribly at risk.
Call it 100 tons, with four 4-ton shipkiller missiles and a decent laser?
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