|
| If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|||||||
| Register | FAQ | Members List | Calendar | Mark Forums Read |
![]() |
|
|
LinkBack | Thread Tools | Search this Thread | Display Modes |
|
||||
|
For unreal physics: pretty much every space battle in David Weber's "Honor Harrington" series. The tactics used are often pretty creative (or certainly seemed so on a first reading).
For slightly-closer-to-reality: the space battle in Niven's Protector. Although, I must confess this is nowhere near as creative as some of what has been described in this thread.
__________________
The quarrelsome oarsmen were rowing, The great violinist was bowing; But how is the sage To tell, from the page: Was it pigs or seeds that were sowing? |
|
||||
|
Quote:
Creative, yes, but just like Heinlein's tactic in "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress", packs less punch than advertised. The bullet would have hit the neutron star at about 0.5 C. M-16 bullet weighs about 8 grams. Say, it was a high-caliber rifle with a 40 gram bullet. Impacting neutron star it would produce a 200-250 kiloton explosion. I doubt that would harm a spacecraft tough enough and/or far enough away to survive neutron star's usual effects.
__________________
Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint. |
|
||||
|
Quote:
But, if memory serves, there was an even more OTT "unreal physics" tactic in E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman series: essentially, they neutralised the inertia of a whole planet, dragged it halfway across the galaxy, then switched off the machine that neutralised its inertia, so it resumed its original velocity (which was, of course, very large and in the opposite direction from the target planet).
__________________
The quarrelsome oarsmen were rowing, The great violinist was bowing; But how is the sage To tell, from the page: Was it pigs or seeds that were sowing? |
|
|||
|
Quote:
__________________
If our brains were simple enough for us to understand, we'd be so simple we couldn't QQR |
|
||||
|
Am I the only one who prefers the tactic of firing daffy duck through a cannon only to leave a duck-shaped dent in the enemy craft? it's better than a guided missle because he always manages to make it inside and finds the big red "do not push" self-destruct button. It never fails. And I've never read of an anti-mallard defense system.
__________________
I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part. "In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars." |
|
||||
|
Ilya wrote:
Quote:
Never underestimate the Brennan-monster.
__________________
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers. |
|
||||
|
Quote:
His battles try to recreate sailing ship warfare in space, with some 3 dimensional aspects added. Thus with the top and bottom protected, there's the sides and ends only open, making combat, especially single ship actions, more 2 dimensional. Shields can close the sides (but can be beaten down like Star Trek shields), however the ends are open (for most of the series). Thus the enemy commander always tries to maneuver to get the "up the skirt shop" through the unprotected stern gap. Akin to "crossing the t" of naval warfare where one side could rake an enemy ship, or line of ships, while the enemy couldn't do anything as their canons wouldn't transverse that far, and only the stern chasers of the aftermost ship could fire. The battles get interesting at times, although the constant need to one-up the previous book started raising the bar quick and got into some rather far-fetched battles. He co-authored the books based on the Starfire games, I can only remember The Shiva Option at the moment. It was a good series, but The Shiva Option went over the top on one-upping. |
|
|||
|
Quote:
Generic missile has a multiple bomb-pumped x-ray laser emitter as a warhead. The lasers were the damaging system, on the assumption that an impact on a ship was unlikely. The missiles are capable of pretty ludicrous accelerations (tens of thousands of g) and if the target was immoble, they would be used as kinetic weapons. He co-authored Crusade, In Death Ground, The Shiva Option, and Insurecction. |
|
|||
|
Re: Weber's Honor series.
Yes the physics is a bit ... off, at times. Yes some of the later books get too far into politics and info dumps and the like. I still like them. The grav drive system used has already been covered further up this thread. Missiles basically come in 3 warhead flavours - no warhead when you can generate an actual hit (apart from hitting a planet or as a stealth attack on a sleeping foe, not much use), nuke (out of date, getting a missile close enough to a combat ship for a nuke to be useful is extremely rare, mostly used in for cleaning up after a battle) and the x-ray laser (the missile only has to get to within 20000 km of so of the target). Even with munitions that pull 90000 g acceleration, 6 light minute engagements give plenty of preparation time ... |
|
||||
|
That was not in HH novels -- it was in "Armageddon Inheritance" (and possibly in "Apocalypse Troll"). But what you people are saying about HH does not change my opinion of Weber. If I want to read about Age of Sail naval battles... I will read about Age of Sail naval battles.
__________________
Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint. |
|
|||
|
The other thing about the tactics in Webbers HH is that the ships are protected by both active and passive defenses - any missile boring straight in for a KE kill would not reach the target. In fact at the start of the series the technology was such that even with stand-off warheads the probability of scoring a hit against a similar warship was practically zero, and the main tactic was to try & swamp the enemies defenses.
I'm not that much of a physicist so I can accept the propulsion system and inertial dumps as handwaviums without two much problems, but I do have problems with the massive crews his ships seem to carry - 6 people to each secondary weapons system in case of control run failure does seem a bit excessive. His ships also seem to have few of the compromises seen in real life - massivly armored plus massive defences plus massive attack power in one ship would probably make his navies unfordable even fo0r multi-planetary bodies. Mark |
|
||||
|
Quote:
And, 90,000 xg does not sound so extraordinary to me. I have used a centrifuge that is capable of generating a relative centrifugal force of 400,000 xg. I think the best thing about Weber's HH series is: it's like Age of Sail naval warfare, but with bigger guns! You just have to accept lots of arm-waving not-compatable-with-laws-of-physics stuff to enjoy them. The nature of compromise in ship construction is touched on here and there in the novels. Heavy arms and armament versus manoeuverability versus cost. Anyway, I've already mentioned that I think some of it is quite creative, so let's see if the thread can get back on-topic...
__________________
The quarrelsome oarsmen were rowing, The great violinist was bowing; But how is the sage To tell, from the page: Was it pigs or seeds that were sowing? |
|
||||
|
The "stern chase" scene from "The Gripping Hand" is a fairly good space battle scenario, discounting the shields. A lot of waiting, while everything gets to where it's going, and trying not to be too predictable but still end up where you want to.
__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction." Shakespeare, Twelfth Night "The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves "Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort |
|
||||
|
The Greatest Space Strategists In Military History
Quote:
__________________
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling. |
|
|||
|
Somebody--Niven, I think--has a story from the Man-Kzin Wars period where Earth wishes to land an agent on a Kzin-controlled human colony world.
So they accelerate their warship to some impressive fraction of c, and jump it to the edge of the target system. It hurtles through the system in a matter of hours on a cometary trajectory, whipping around the star and back out again, where it finally jumps to safety. Along the way, it throws off a number of nukes and particle clouds, to deal with scrambling interceptors, shoot out sensor arrays scattered throughout the system, and cause general upheval and confusion in the defense organization. In the midst of all the hustle and bustle, they deliver a stealthy shuttlecraft to the colony planet's surface. |
|
||||
|
Quote:
Quote:
* "In a hard SF story you are allowed one tooth fairy, but only one" -- Larry Niven
__________________
Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint. |
|
||||
|
i like the line about how the Empire fell "in a rain of Ewok claws"..
i always kind of assumed that the Ewoks were taken out in a "rain of half completed (yet fully operational) death star debris" after the movie ended.
__________________
"blacker than the blackest black... times infinity."- Nathan Explosion The.. Best.. Thread..Ever... |
|
|||
|
There was a short story I liked from the Man-Kzin War series dealing with the first contact between a Kzin & human ship. Humans had become so pacifistic they did a bit of mental editing on the the majority of the population & the history of man's warlike beginnings was taught to only a carefully chosen few. So when the Kzin ship attacked (of course) it took the humans an long time to figure out something as simple as "Wow! They're trying to kill us. What's up with that?" Luckily one of the crew was one of the mentioned chosen few, who swung the whole ship around so their laser main drive sliced the Kzin ship in half. Examination of the wrecked ship gave them an idea of who & what they were dealing with, & they had time to rework their society into a more warlike footing before the first Kzin attack on Earth arrived.
|
|
||||
|
I liked the Firefly episode where Wash tells an angry mob he will "blast em". The guys see the ship and just assume some of the pointy things must be guns and back off.
Another nice tactic from BSG is when Starbuck plans an attack on the Cylon base by hiding fighters on a small ship. The Cylons jump at the small ship first, then Galactica jumps in and the Cylons turn around leaving the base unprotected to the first ship. They sort of glossed over the fact that Galactic may have had to clean up all of the fighters after the base was taken out. The episode ended with the Cylon fighters inbound... odd ending. My personal favorite is The Warriors by Larry Niven. The Kzin telepathically scan a ship to check on combat capabilities and don't find any because the humans don't believe in violence. When the Kzin attack, one of the humans uses the communications laser to cut the Kzin in half. Tools are weapons sometimes. ![]() |
|
||||
|
John Amalfi was a good tactician in that he usually got others to do his fighting for him. Nick van Rijn was similar.
__________________
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers. |
|
||||
|
The best MAD one was when the Tralfamadorian test pilot, during experiments with a new fuel, pushes a button and the entire universe disappears.
__________________
A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document. |
|
||||
|
Quote:
Quote:
__________________
Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint. |
|
||||
|
I've always loved all of Niven's space war tactics; the use of the communications laser as a weapon and the incredibly slow, time-delayed fight between the two Pak spaceships especially. Amazingly smart and creative!
![]()
__________________
Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses. "Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you." |
|
||||
|
Haldeman's use of a collapsar to whip the projectiles into the bad guys at 0.99c, so they arrived almost coincident with their own light, no time to dodge.
John Amalfi flying the planet Hern VI into the Vegan Orbital Fort.
__________________
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers. |
|
||||
|
The conclusion to the Farscape saga was pretty inspiring. He opens a wormhole that's connected to thousands of points in spacetime, one of which happens to be a black hole. Starts out as a tiny anomaly in the middle of a space battle, but because of the enormous amount of matter it's consuming it begins doubling exponentially in size, swallowing dozens of ships and an entire planet.
|
|
|||
|
I've always liked Emperor Palpatine's plan to crush the Rebels in "Return of the Jedi". It may be true that it didn't work, but in my opinion, it should have worked. The only thing that saved the Rebels was the Ewoks taking down the shield, but those primative Ewoks and the small Rebel force, should never have been a match for the Imperial forces defending the shield generator. Slingshots and bows and arrows are no match against blasters and other advanced Imperial technology. I think that even with the shield down, the Rebel fleet was no match for the Imperial fleet.
I guess we just had to have a nice happy ending. |
|
|||
|
I keep seeing people complain about the Ewoks beating up the Stormtroopers, but I've seen one person say that that was not actually shown happening; what was shown instead was lots of scenes of Ewoks fighting the Stormtroopers but losing, not really making any progress against them, and people just recall it as if it had been different from what it really was.
I don't know myself which is more accurate. I've only seen it years and years ago. |
![]() |
| Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
| Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads
|
||||
| Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
| Can the Russians make a comeback ( 2007 ) ? | Manchurian Taikonaut | Astronomy | 6 | 17-February-2006 03:25 AM |
| 4th dimension | Kebsis | Astronomy | 37 | 13-February-2005 05:39 PM |
| Favourite astronomy book(s) | kashi | Astronomical Observing, Equipment and Accessories | 40 | 10-June-2004 10:36 AM |
| Private Space Tours | Planetside | Against the Mainstream | 30 | 19-May-2004 06:21 PM |
| IS SPACE CONTRACTING? | Richard J. Hanak | Against the Mainstream | 12 | 26-November-2003 07:34 PM |