"Weight/shape concerns for interplanetary scifi wars?" Topic
15 Posts
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Longstrider | 16 Mar 2015 1:52 p.m. PST |
So I've been thinking about how much I like the in-universe idea of the Dropzone Commander 10mm tanks – they're small, light, relatively inexpensive, and low on crew requirements because there are vast amounts of them manufactured groundside and shipped to in their thousands across the stars. I'm not one to predict on what the future would look like, but it seems plausible to me that this would be a consideration for future human civilization fighting mainly by transporting ground vehicles through space to other planets. Presumably low and slim profiles, or being able to fold into relatively small shapes – though I'd think joints would require a lot of maintenance and be vulnerable – would be beneficial. DzC makes the point that a lot of the human vehicles are single-crewed with AI support; again, I don't know how plausible this is for actual use, but it seems compelling – especially if a given civilization is fighting an enemy of similar technology and is relatively averse to casualties, for whatever reason. Of course, with enough handwavium one can get around those requirements easily enough – some kind of really light efficient power source, or perhaps a technological block in weapons development where massive slabs of weighty armour really do provide helpful protection, etc. I have NO idea about the logistics of anything in the real world, so I might be just be entirely mistaken, and the trend in modern militaries might be towards heavy things and there are ways to move them around. Any thoughts? |
Rich Bliss | 16 Mar 2015 2:19 p.m. PST |
Another though would be to extrapolate forward the advances in manufacturing technologies (3D printing etc.) and have on-site production of vehicles using local raw materials. |
Martian Root Canal | 16 Mar 2015 2:57 p.m. PST |
I'm with Rich on this one. You'd have to have your strike force to seize the ground on which to build your factory(ies), but for planetary conquest, I'd prefer to use raw materials already inside the gravity well. |
emckinney | 16 Mar 2015 3:41 p.m. PST |
"Another though would be to extrapolate forward the advances in manufacturing technologies (3D printing etc.) and have on-site production of vehicles using local raw materials." If the locals have the same technology, you're going to be a losing race. And your beachhead is going to be more vulnerable than their secret buried manufactories. |
emckinney | 16 Mar 2015 3:43 p.m. PST |
"I have NO idea about the logistics of anything in the real world, so I might be just be entirely mistaken, and the trend in modern militaries might be towards heavy things and there are ways to move them around." For any sort of realistic spaceship, mass is a huge factor. Volume requires more structure, which requires more weight, which requires more fuel/propellant, which requires more structure, but … reducing an M1A2 Abrams to a solid lumps, putting it on a rocket, and sending it anywhere is going to take an enormous amount of energy. Having it fully "inflated" is going to add a relatively trivial expense. |
javelin98 | 16 Mar 2015 4:32 p.m. PST |
You could have a starship that is essentially a core of propulsion, quarters, and whatnot, surrounded by a shell of armor plates. Each plate would have a combat vehicle attached to it (on the inside of the ship) and have some type of gravitic drop mechanism, so when the ship gets close, all the tanks just flake off and drop into the atmosphere. The ship's superstructure would then land and be disassembled into various necessary components -- 3D fablab, medical facility, comms, repair depot, etc. On its in, it would dispense dozens of small GPS and imaging satellites, giving the AFV crews instant access to real-time positioning and enemy location data. |
panzersaurkrautwerfer | 16 Mar 2015 4:44 p.m. PST |
In my nerdly science fiction reality: Initial invasion is first individual and team sized drop pods to secure landing zones and knock out key anti-spacecraft systems. Explanation: basically it's a good excuse to do the paradrops of Normandy only Scifi Follow on assault waves land via dropships and various landing craft. Initial logistics are delivered by ship to surface craft when "delicate" otherwise deorbited using specialized retrorockets and reentry packages. Due to simple gravity it's not quite an equal things-in to things-out capacity (or the standard tank lander can carry four tanks to the surface, but it can only lift two back to orbit) Explanation: Again, shamelessly ripping of Operation Overload, although from the sky, and not against strong opposition. Once the area around the LZ is sufficiently cleared, and enemy anti-orbital systems are suppressed, a series of ships with what amounts to a stripped down space elevator on each of them arrive. On the ground various point defense systems are established to protect the elevators themselves, and the dirt-side anchors are de-orbited. Once those pieces are in place the elevators are established, and follow on forces and supplies now are now brought down via elevator from orbit. Explanation: Space-Mulberries basically. Part of the problem with building on scene is it'll still be expensive to build what amounts to enough equipment to take over LV-456, but not be able to take those forces along for the follow-on campaign to liberate LV-457-459. Having a field manufacturing unit that does spare parts or stuff that wears out often (so, cranking out weapons magazines, tank tracks etc) or that's using local resources to reduce what has to be brought in (a planet's amber fields of grain might become endless loaves of bread to keep troops from having to live on stuff made many years ago in a galaxy far far away), but a lot of your major equipment will be from off world I feel. |
tberry7403 | 16 Mar 2015 6:02 p.m. PST |
The way I look at it all your heavy equipment would be manufactured in space from material mined from local asteriod belts/small moons. Once landed that was where they stayed. It just would not be economically feasible to move 50+ ton weights in and out of gravity wells. |
Lion in the Stars | 16 Mar 2015 7:00 p.m. PST |
While I agree that you're probably going to need an in-system factory making repair parts at the least, one unexpected issue with reducing tank crews is the amount of maintenance and heavy lifting. Personally, I lean towards the light-weight and small vehicle concepts the US Army was working towards with the Future Combat System, which was supposed to replace every tracked vehicle in the US Army. The FCS was transportable on C130s, so each vehicle only weighted ~18-20 tons fully loaded for combat. There were different versions of the FCS for all the different roles, from Cavalry Recon vehicle to Tank to artillery (both 155mm gun and 120mm mortar) to IFV, even repair, medical evac tracks and HQ tracks. I added a couple extras to the list, with artillery re-supply tracks, combat engineer vehicles, and even some heavily stretched amphibious vehicles for the Marines. One of these days, I'd like to make a set of the whole series and build an FCS battalion or so in 15mm. FCS were protected against 30mm across the front, 14.5mm and shell splinters all around, and used active defense systems to deal with ATGMs and maybe even main gun rounds. Basic theory being that if someone is shooting main guns at you, you need to leave that position ASAP. There is definitely something to leaving all the vehicles where you land them, as long as you aren't talking about antigravity devices in your setting. Once you can use antigrav, it becomes possible to lift massive loads into orbit. Or to have your grav tanks do individual orbital insertion and start shooting even before they reach the ground. I don't think building your vehicles on the ground after your land is a valid idea, since that leaves your landing troops desperately under-armed against the troops on the ground trying to kick them off the planet. I'd expect to have most vehicles dropped from orbit. A spare parts and ammo factory in orbit or at least in-system makes a whole lot of sense. It keeps your logistics trail down to a single solar system. It should be able to make whole vehicles, too. |
Mako11 | 17 Mar 2015 12:08 a.m. PST |
Weight is less of an issue once fusion power, and anti-grav tech become available. For my 15mm, Topgun range of Grav Armor, I suggested the following: "In our view, our grav vehicles are rotomolded in the Zero-G environment of space, from titanium, much like 20th and 21st century plastic kayaks were, in order to produce strong, lightweight hulls. This produces seamless hulls and turrets of incredible strength, since the super-heated liquid titanium is then quickly cooled, forming an extremely strong crystalline-titanium structure (very similar to the way in which samurai swords were hardened centuries ago). While lightweight is a relative term, when comparing grav armor to 21st century main battle tanks (they weigh much more than current modern tanks), it is much lighter than would normally be the case, using standard manufacturing techniques, in a gravitational environment. Actually, cost really isn't an issue, since the titanium is usually mined from asteroid belts in a star system close to the targeted planet(s), and turned into Grav Vehicles by the large, mobile manufacturing ships which support the invasion fleets. Fusion reactors are very efficient, powerful, compact, and don't need much periodic maintenance. They are rather like a smaller, but more powerful version of nuclear submarine powerplants, which don't need refueling for years". The above are from a couple of different posted replies to inquiries on the subject. [URL=http://media.photobucket.com/user/Top_Gun_Ace/media/15mm%20Grav%20Tanks%20and%20Armor/LightTankPlatoon1.jpg.html]
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wminsing | 17 Mar 2015 7:02 a.m. PST |
In a totally realistic view I'd argue that the classic sci-fi 'planetary invasion' scenario against established opposition isn't really feasible at all. You probably can't haul enough ground-fighting capability across interstellar distances to take on any reasonable number of defenders, and if you try to manufacture equipment (and troops?) on site using on local resources I can't see how one could hope to out-build the local planetary economy. Far more likely your 'invasion' consists of orbital blockade, orbit-to-surface suppression, and selected strikes by recoverable ground forces at the most important targets. You're hoping that the opposition's will to resist breaks before reinforcements arrive. A lot of caveats, etc: 1. A lot of this depends on what you're invading. If you're trying to invade Earth, there's 6 billion+ people, and the 10 largest armies alone have upwards of 9 million troops. Now the defenders would have trouble bringing all that to bear, but that's still a lot of enemy forces to defeat. But if you're invading some border colony with a million inhabitants and a militia of like 1% of the population (ten thousand) then things begin to look more reasonable. 2. Some settings have populations that don't particularly care who rules them. In Battletech for example a lot of the border worlds have changed hands multiple times over the last few hundred years, and the local population doesn't seem to really care who's flag is flying over the capital, the taxes are about the same. So there's no massive planetary military forces to overcome. 3. How vulnerable a planet is to invasion probably has a lot to do with how Earth-like it is (assuming humans vs. other humans or human-analogs). A very earth-like world could support active resistance groups in the countryside, lots of room for hidden bases for the defenders, etc. An inhabited non-Earth like world with 'domed cities' or similar and entirely dependent on power generation, atmospheric filtering, etc, would be much more vulnerable to an invasion. -Will |
lloydthegamer | 17 Mar 2015 9:00 a.m. PST |
Analog magazine had a great sci-fi story about battlesuits and the future of war. It was written in the late 60's early 70's. I just went looking for it but couldn't put my fingers on it. Basically it followed the evolution of combat armor through legged walkers, on to anti-grav single person combat suits, to the ultimate soldier. During this evolution a plastic deformable metal ws developed for joints, but eventually composed the entire machine. It was also used in everyday applications throughout the civilian sector. The ultimate soldier looked pretty much like a soldier of today, of course he was far more dangerous. A planetary attack would be conducted by these soldiers landing on a hostile planet. There the soldier acted much like a pathogen. He attempted to "infect" all the metal in the world to act as weapons he controlled. Meanwhile the planetary defenses were doing the same thring, trying to get the cook pot to turn into a weapon to kill the invading soldier. Meanwhile all the civilians were in Civil Defense bunkers deep underground while the fighting was going on. Interetng take on future fighting not at all like what most gamers imagine. |
Lion in the Stars | 17 Mar 2015 11:00 a.m. PST |
2. Some settings have populations that don't particularly care who rules them. In Battletech for example a lot of the border worlds have changed hands multiple times over the last few hundred years, and the local population doesn't seem to really care who's flag is flying over the capital, the taxes are about the same. So there's no massive planetary military forces to overcome. BT also has very restrictive Laws of War, that basically make "scorched earth" offensives not happen, and even most fighting away from cities/production facilities. People violating the Laws of War tend to get curbstomped by everyone else in the setting. |
JezEger | 18 Mar 2015 3:24 p.m. PST |
If you have the tech to reach another planet, a tank seems very dated to me. I always thought in terms of massed drones, manufactured onboard in their millions. Some tiny (think spider bots) for taking out enemy foot, some larger for bigger targets. All would fly, so that terrain was not an issue. This would maybe be backed up by humans, but not as combat troops as they cannot be easily replaced so far from home. A bit of aerial bombardment to take out enemy strongholds from the base ships and voila, you just added to your inter galactic empire. |
Twoball Cane | 18 Mar 2015 6:05 p.m. PST |
If I were to attack a planet ….destroy populace or subjugate them. I wouldn't invade a planet of 6 billion if they were a close match against my ground forces head to head. Instead of invasion up front. I would go to an asteroid belt, strap engines to largish asteroids and direct them towards the planet I wished to attack. Depending on the size of the asteroid I could dictate terms….I'll wipe your people(like the dinosaurs) or just kill off most, or destroy a few cities….etc. very effective for no loss in my forces…it could be done remotely as well. If the population did not resist I would drop several of my ships/bases on their planet and dare anyone to attack…like England did to wales….castle dropping in enemy territory is very effective……especially if your opponent could do nothing ( like wales) against it. If they did not resist at all, they would be allies and I'd try to convert their DNA to human as much as possible…and send them into regional wars….or leave them alone/ enslave them. |
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