[Kraetos]

Originally Posted by Kickaha Other than waving your hands in the air and muttering something about "leading space-time distortions" as a warning effect? Not really...

Yeah, that's pretty much what I expected. I'm already doing enough hand waving with my FTL methods. (combination of wormholes and hyperspace... The Lost Fleet has a really good "there's more than one way to FTL" dynamic that I'm working with) I suppose I could theoretically do some song and dance about hyperspace distortions but... meh.

Balancing hard SF is tricky. You have to abstract the technology enough to get away with bending physics, but if you go too far then you end up in a Star Trek-esque technobabble situation where it starts to lose traction. Still, you have to get a little fantastical physics in, otherwise your options are too limited.

In my defense, FTL is the only way I'm really flaunting physics badly. But it's nearly impossible to write epic-scale military SF without FTL.

Wikipedia mentions that particle beams move "very near" the speed of light. What are we talking here? .9 c? .99 c? Enough where I could use it if the ships were sufficient distance apart?

If all else fails, I think I'm going to set it up where particle weapons do low damage so it's okay to let your shields soak it up. The fundamental tactic for my space battles will be: take down their shields and defense grid with particle weapons, then get close and blow them out of the stars with mass drivers/missiles/nukes. Projectile weapons at anything other than extremely close range are easy targets for weapons that move at light speed.

One thing you may want to look into is light-cones. They're a standard way of representing 'possible outcomes' in physics when you're dealing with these things, and would make a nice solid hard sf entry into making this much like a sub battle. "Okay, we know he was *here* x minutes ago, therefore his possible locations are *blorp* this area now, and since it takes our weapons y minutes to get to those points, we can fire on these locations here here and here to generate the most probable flak/mine field for him to hit at full speed, right when he gets there." It all comes down to probabilities and possibilities at that point, which *could*, if you were really sneaky about it, blend well with quantum mechanics computation in a battle computer.

Good idea. This is touched upon in The Lost Fleet but not in depth. It's how they target their mass drivers.

Of course, it's easy to hit targets that aren't moving. (or, rather, are moving on a 100% predictable path like an object in orbit)

Originally Posted by Capella Go with a senior noncom; David Weber makes good use of his nomcoms and enlisted. (Sorry to keep tooting his horn, but he's officially my favorite writer now.) It's also an excellent idea to have actual noncom presence. It also sounds fascinating to me to incorporate that leadership of 3 leaders idea. I'd say you sound like you're on a great track. 'Hopefully one of our real naval folk will step in and talk about whether or not a bridge crew is actually made up of jr. officers. Wish I could help with the physics stuff but I'm totally clueless. All I know is writing and reading.

Hey, no more than I'm pimping Jack Campbell in this thread

Where should I start with David Weber? His stuff's on the Kindle store, and I'm always down for more military SF.

Originally Posted by 709 One thing I've always wondered about wrt to lasers being used in ship-to-ship sci-fi battles is why every ship just didn't have a mirror coating. Granted, I know ass-all about lasers and particle beams, but is there a reason that wouldn't work? Seems like a kind of simple solution to getting your ship blowed up by laser beams.

Originally Posted by Kickaha You need sensor ports, or you're blind. Also, you need to have a coating(s) that will reflect a) all frequencies thrown at you, and b) at sufficient efficiencies as to not let the bleed energy exceed the damage/melting point of the coating.

And shuttle docks, weapon ports, engine ports, etc...

Also, what kick said: repeated weapons fire would melt the mirrors away. They can refract light, but heat is going to get through. See the ablative armor on the USS Defiant for a relatively good implementation of this idea. Basically, the ships hull can refract phaser fire, but the more it gets hit, the less refractive the armor gets. I'm probably going to work this in as well.

This is a really good discussion, guys A lot of good info in here, thanks.