Forum: Story Discussion and Feedback

Please don't remind me of Tarayla..I regret everyday why I didn't save yhe story while reading...Now, all I can read is the free 27% as from my county I cant pay for the book..:-(

Sorry! Send me an email (myname)@msn.com and I might be able to help out. Have you read the Retvizan stories by Katzmarek? He has a bunch of other military stories besides the three in that series.

This is a new one. thanks the suggestion dude. I will contact you later today.

Code3SAm: The Tarayla Patrol

I saved the SOL chapters into a word document in April 2012.

The pre-edit-for-publication-version I think.

I don't have any opinions to buy things from Internet...paypal don't have service in my country and my bank can't authorize online transaction due to security measures..that's why I cant download the book.

thnks..it was very good at the beginning but by book 5, the series was becoming too complicated with so much going on with so many character in three different galaxy's and I was losing track then had to backtrack a lot just to make head and tail of the story. so, I left it.

It got worse and much more convoluted.

thnks for the reply. I have already completed all of Fel's book except Kit Vulpan series. they are great read. but for some reason honor series didn't appeal me that much. Same as TJ and Morg both are good stories,but I didn't like it that much.

I'm curious: for our military vets, which sci-fi stories ring the truest in relating combat experiences.

An interesting question. I'm not a vet but I too would be interested in the answers.

That said, I would not expect ship to ship space battles to bear too much resemblance to any real world experience of earth bound vets.

I kind of get annoyed when authors model space combat too closely on navel battles and the battles end up two dimensional (spatially not figuratively)

to sink each other. A submarine and spaceship both have to maneuver in 3 dimensions. When they fire at each other, there is a long delay between firing and impac

Not quite. That only holds if ship to ship weaponry is limited to missiles. It breaks down rapidly if they have directed energy weapons or very high velocity direct fire ballistic weapons such as rail guns.

With a missile, you can track it's movement once launched and can alter course after knowing the missile's trajectory.

With direct fire ballistic projectile weapons, particularly rail guns where projectile velocities in the mach 100 range are feasible, dodging after the shot is impossible and evasive maneuvers have to be planned in a way so as to avoid target lock/tracking.

Not quite. That only holds if ship to ship weaponry is limited to missiles. It breaks down rapidly if they have directed energy weapons or very high velocity direct fire ballistic weapons such as rail guns.

I tend to disagree. Space is vast. Now if your two spaceships are only a few thousand yards from each other, sure. A few hundred thousand miles? I would think a random number generator bouncing a spaceship around once every few milliseconds would defeat even a speed-of-light weapon. So if you fired your uber-laser from Earth at a target in Jupiter's orbit that was jinking and juking, you would have a zero chance of hitting it.

I tend to disagree. Space is vast. Now if your two spaceships are only a few thousand yards from each other, sure. A few hundred thousand miles? I would think a random number generator bouncing a spaceship around once every few milliseconds would defeat even a speed-of-light weapon.

You are wrong.

1. Space combat with directed energy weapons would take place at a distance of at most 1 light second, and probably under half a light second.

2. To change course that fast and move the ship far enough in that time span to avoid a laser aimed a the center of the ships cross section would take a huge amount of acceleration, and would likely be fatal to the crew. It might work for fighters and other very small ships, but it isn't going to work for capital ships; carriers, battleships and dreadnoughts.

3 How fast to you think a ship can be going and manage to stop and then accelerate in a different direction every millisecond?

4. If you are changing course that fast, that screws up your own targeting solutions on the enemy just as much as it screws up their targeting solutions on you.

5. Evasive maneuvers for ships larger than a fighter have to be unpredictable enough to fool the enemy but well enough known by your own gunnery crews that they can compensate for your own maneuvers.

1. Space combat with directed energy weapons would take place at a distance of at most 1 light second, and probably under half a light second.

2. To change course that fast and move the ship far enough in that time span to avoid a laser aimed a the center of the ships cross section would take a huge amount of acceleration, and would likely be fatal to the crew.

3 How fast to you think a ship can be going and manage to stop and then accelerate in a different direction every millisecond?

4. If you are changing course that fast, that screws up your own targeting solutions on the enemy just as much as it screws up their targeting solutions on you.

5. Evasive maneuvers for ships larger than a fighter have to be unpredictable enough to fool the enemy but well enough known by your own gunnery crews that they can compensate for your own maneuvers.

2 only works if one is wrong. Why only 1 light-second? You make a statement, but don't back it up.

3 again only works if 1 does. A micro-g is good enough if the distance is 1 light minute, not second. (One eighth the distance from Earth to the Sun.

4 Matters, sure, but that uber-laser pulse only lasts a micro-second, let the computers have their fun.

5 Again, only if the whole 1 light second thing works. If I'm your enemy, I just won't get that close.

Missiles are another thing, given even the state of modern technology they'd be useless. I mean the US, Army now routinely shoots down mortar rounds with a 20mm cannon. Imagine the chances of any missile against a laser beam (I'm substituting "laser" for any speed-of-light weapon). Truth is, the X-wing had no chance, nor did the torpedos it launched.

Why only 1 light-second?

1. The point of light speed directed energy weapons is that they hit the enemy almost instantly.

2, with a point weapons like a laser or a ballistic projectile it gets much harder to hit a moving target the farther away you are because a) you have to lead the target more and b) the enemy has more time to maneuver.

Such weapons will be tactically useless at anything more than 1 second to impact.

If I am off on this, I am probably high not low. That is, the effective range for point weapons will be shorter not longer.

Missiles on the other hand can be set up to adjust their own course (or have them adjusted remotely from the ship) as the target moves.

3. Guided missiles could be used at much longer ranges, however they are tactically limited by relatively small ammo supplies. ballistic shells for a rail gun will be much smaller than an equivalent missile because the shell need no propellant and directed energy weapons on a ship are effectively infinite ammo.

You just made my point. A ship could do the same, given the proper distance. No, you can't react to it, you can't see it firing at you, but a simple series of random movements would confound you all the same.

At a range of 1 light second a laser will hit it's target exactly 1 second after being fired. To dodge laser fire at that range, you have to move a distance of at least the full length or height or width of the ship depending on which direction you move.

Naval space craft of any given classification (frigate, cruiser, destroyer, battleship, carrier) are likely to be considerably larger than surface vessels of the same class.

An Iowa class battle ship is around 270m x 33m by 66 meters.

So to effectively dodge laser fire, with a ship that size, you have to change your velocity by at least 33m/s/s every second. That's 33 gs of acceleration in a constantly changing direction.

If that's your plan for evasive maneuvers, I don't even need to hit your ship. Your evasive maneuvers will kill or incapacitate your own crew in a matter of minutes.

Heck, go watch ANY episode of Star Trek for application of the same technology.

Yes, and if you pay attention, The inertial dampeners are mainly meant to counter the constant and predictable force of FTL and high G sub-light acceleration.

The crew still gets tossed around when there are sudden and violent changes in acceleration like from collisions or weapons fire.

You are talking about repeated extreme velocity changes at very high frequency. Even if we do develop inertial dampers, don't bet that they won't have limits.

So why are the Enterprise's crew tossed around the bridge by the relatively minor accelerations of a torpedo, when they stand on the bridge with no effect on their balance while they accelerate to a speed that makes astral bodies streak past them like shooting stars (i.e. a much higher rate of acceleration).

Because most inertial dampener systems don't actually negate inertia.

In Star Trek and most other science fiction, inertial dampener systems use artificial gravity tech to provide a counter force to the effect of acceleration.

With planned acceleration and normal course changes this is simple.

When the ship is suddenly shoved around by an outside force it doesn't work at all.

If you start throwing rapid random course changes in to the mix it gets hellishly complicated. No complex computer program can ever be 100% bug free. One tiny glitch and the crew is dead.

The initial suggestion was random course changes every millisecond. If the helm and the inertial dampener control system gets out of sync for even a millisecond the crew is dead.

So why are the Enterprise's crew tossed around the bridge by the relatively minor accelerations of a torpedo, when they stand on the bridge with no effect on their balance while they accelerate to a speed that makes astral bodies streak past them like shooting stars (i.e. a much higher rate of acceleration).

Because acceleration for maneuvering is calculated by the computer which adjusts the inertial dampeners to compensate. Basically, the computer knows what it needs to do for a planned action. Conversely, a nearby blast or a hit from a weapon is a force of unknown magnitude so cannot be completely compensated for.

rue, however the mass of each car is close to equal. The energy released by a torpedo compared to the mass and kinetic energy of the Enterprise is similar to a bumble bee hitting my car's windshield.

Seriously? You think that? A photon torpedo is a cruise missile with a matter/antimatter warhead. A direct hit by a single torpedo would obliterate a starship without shields.

most do that after about a dozen posts.

... or after a dozen beers :D

Missiles are another thing, given even the state of modern technology they'd be useless.

Not necessarily, First any interstellar ship will have missiles much more advanced than current technology. It depends on what the payload is and how they are used. I've read part of a science fiction series where they used missiles and directed energy weapons.

Missiles were fired at long ranges, in large volleys of hundreds of missiles from a single ship. But even the largest ships could only manage two or three volleys before they have to close to ranges where laser weapons could be used ship to ship.

to deal with defensive weapons shooting down incoming missiles, on top of the sheer size of individual volleys, rather than mere explosive war heads, the effective missiles were grasers (gamma ray lasers) powered by a thermonuclear bomb, so they detonated long before hitting the target. Interspersed with the effective warheads would be ECM warheads designed to either scramble the sensors for the anti-missile targeting systems on the target ship or to create ghost signatures for those same targeting systems so they waste time shooting missiles that don't exist.

Not necessarily, First any interstellar ship will have missiles much more advanced than current technology. It depends on what the payload is and how they are used. I've read part of a science fiction series where they used missiles and directed energy weapons.

Missiles were fired at long ranges, in large volleys of hundreds of missiles from a single ship. But even the largest ships could only manage two or three volleys before they have to close to ranges where laser weapons could be used ship to ship.

to deal with defensive weapons shooting down incoming missiles, on top of the sheer size of individual volleys, rather than mere explosive war heads, the effective missiles were grasers (gamma ray lasers) powered by a thermonuclear bomb, so they detonated long before hitting the target. Interspersed with the effective warheads would be ECM warheads designed to either scramble the sensors for the anti-missile targeting systems on the target ship or to create ghost signatures for those same targeting systems so they waste time shooting missiles that don't exist.

You've been reading Honor Harrington again, haven't you. I find it interesting that there are so many parallels between ship to ship warfare in her time with the naval warfare of the 19th and 20th centuries on Earth, especially in the days of sailing ships when the big race was to see how many cannon could be crammed into a single ship.

Apropos of nothing, one of my favorite songs is 'Sink the Bismark'. One line in the song pretty much says it all - 'the Bismark started firing fifteen miles away'. That is almost over the horizon, and explains the wings high up on the sides of the superstructure of battleships of the time. Without them, they would have been able to shoot farther then they could see. One of the tenets of the time was 'Steer for the splashes', on the theory that the enemy would be correcting their aim, and would therefore be unlikely to fire at the same spot twice.

Kinda gives new meaning to the old saying that everything old is new again, doesn't it?

started firing fifteen miles away'. That is almost over the horizon,

That is much farther than 'almost' over the horizon. If the guns were mounted 50 feet above the waterline, they could "see" 8.7 miles to the horizon.

If the guns were somehow mounted 100 feet above the waterline, they could "see" only 12.3 miles to the horizon... still far short of the 15 miles stated.

(One would also assume, of course, that optical rangefinders were mounted very high, to 'see' and compute a firing solution. So the ships are shooting 'blind' over the horizon, save for the mirrored rangefinder high on the mast.)

It's a critical factor. If I stand in my sailboat cockpit, my eyes are 9 feet above the waterline. So I see only 3.7 miles to the horizon. A cargo ship traveling at a typical 20 knots will be on top of me in 11 minutes; at 5 knots, I have precious few minutes to maneuver safely out of that ship's way.

Laser weapons are line of sight. Two ships equipped with laser weapons will need to be within 6.7 miles of one another (if weapon height is 30 feet) to hit each other. Even raising the laser to 100 feet, on a mast, they'll need to be within 12.3 miles.

A slight extension may be made for the overall height of the ship as far as visibility is concerned, but as seen from the examples, a few tens of feet has only a small effect on the sight distance.

Obviously the Defense Department needs to develop a curvature-following laser beam weapon. Or mount mirrors on blimps.

started firing fifteen miles away'. That is almost over the horizon,

That is much farther than 'almost' over the horizon.

Another possibility is that there was a reflection mirage which allowed them to see beyond the horizon. I remember reading a book many years ago that had a group of students questioning how they could see mountains that were beyond the horizon.

Most of the space battles I've read about in stories are fought at large distances.

Large distances for surface naval warfare, but not particularly large for space. I put the energy weapon range at 1 light second, that's 299792 kilometers. so even if you cut that in half to half a light second, you are still around 150,000 KM.

By the way, the series I mentioned above, with the large scale missile volleys, were launched at million KM ranges and the targeting solution could be re computed from the ship and course corrections transmitted to the missiles.

I would put knife range for a ship to ship space battle at around 10,000 km.

I would have to go back to the stories I read to get accurate numbers on the typical range of the fictional space battles.

There is a lot of science fiction out there with battles at much shorter range. Star Trek battles are typically at 1-5 km. Star Wars battles, with a few exceptions, are similarly very close range.

I would have to say, of the stories I have read, movies, and TV shows I've watched, space battles at anything over 50,000 km are exceedingly rare and battles at just a few km are common.

Personally, I don't think script writers produce realistic content. They are far more interested in the drama of a close range battle. I doubt the captains of 2 hostile warships would allow a knife range battle if it is avoidable. But that is good drama on TV and in movies.

I agree. However, as I have said before while in space, in theory weapon ranges are theoretically infinite, there are practical and tactical limits.

In my opinion, without either FTL capable weapons or guided munitions, ship to ship space battles at ranges beyond 1 light second are pointless. You are just wasting energy/ammo.

Now, there are exceptions, attacks against a target that isn't capable of active maneuvering such as a planet or space station can easily be fired at ranges beyond even a light hour.

If a laser beam is columnated tightly enough, its destructive energy would be just as great at one light year as it was at the source.

It's not quite that simple. There are apparently some basic physics type things going on that will cause some dispersion.

From what I have read, there are two main factors which affect the dispersion rate beyond the quality of the optics. Beam diameter at the emission point and wavelength of the light involved.

The wider the beam the less dispersion and the shorter the wavelength the less dispersion.

So a beam that is only 1 mm wide at emission in the visible light spectrum like a laser pointer will double in width every meter or so. Such a laser would not be an effective weapon no matter how much energy you put into it.

However, at just 4cm, the same beam would tavel a kilometer before it's width doubles.

A gamma ray or x-ray laser would have orders of magnitude more range than a visible light laser.

Now think about the main guns on a WWII battleship. A 40cm bore. have a spaceship that size and put 40cm x-ray lasers on it. Put terawatts of power into them. It is not inconceivable that such a weapons would be effective at hundreds or thousands of kilometers.

Which is nowhere close to a full lightyear's distance.

No, but the effective range we've discussed is one light second (just under 300,000 km.)

Precision of sensor data at long range and limits on predictive leading of targets for unguided munitions is likely to be at least as significant of a factor in limiting range below that level.

You are right.
Today we can write about it only as fight of fancy.

Why?

Do any of you know something about energy dissipation?

Let's say you fire energy weapon with exit energy of just 50 - 100 KW (that is in range of current largest operational military lasers).
Do you know how much of it is going to reach your target not larger than couple of meters (that's in range of 10-20 foot for you barbarians) at distance of 1 light second with aid of current best optical instruments?

Please google this.

They who have measured it in much smaller distances said that it is going to be very low...

Science fiction in general presumes more advanced technology than currently exists, so why make either of the presumptions you suggest? Those presumptions necessarily take you out of the realm of science fiction.

hey who have measured it in much smaller distances said that it is going to be very low...

I have done some searches and from what I can see there are two primary factors that determine the divergence rate of a laser in vacuum. Beam diameter
at the emission point and wave length.

The important factor is the Rayleigh range, the distance at which beam diameter will have doubled

This distance is will increase with increasing initial beam diameter or with decreasing wavelength

I found a calculator here https://www.edmundoptics.com/resources/tech-tools/gaussian-beams/

It craps out at anything with a Rayleigh range over 1 km. It doesn't take that much to hit that. A laser in the ultra violet at 100 nm with a bore of 4 cm will pass the km mark So an x-ray or or gamma ray laser with a large bore several cm that is typical of science fiction ship to ship lasers should be easily usable at very long ranges in space.

Direct fire ballistic projectile weapons including rail guns fire projectiles that travel in a direct line; the projectiles do not have target lock/tracking capability. Regardless of their high speed they are used at great distances and the travel time is not instantaneous. So the gun computers have to analyze the evasive pattern used by the target and predict where the target will be when the projectile arrives. There is no guarantee that a target employing evasive action will be where the gun computer predicts it will be when the projectile arrives at that point in space.

Yes, and while such a weapon in theory has infinite range in space, the greater the range, the harder it gets to predict the target location and hit it accurately. Since ammo is limited, as a tactical matter, such weapons would be saved for relatively short ranges so the limited ammunition can be used as effectively as possible.

If you haven't read Forever War by Joe Haldeman I would highly recommend it.

modern nations have put a premium on protecting soldiers

Consider how much it costs to train and equip a modern soldier, and that you have to recruit volunteers who won't if they think they will become kamikaze pilots charging machine gun bunkers.

Consider how much it costs to train and equip a modern soldier, and that you have to recruit volunteers who won't if they think they will become kamikaze pilots charging machine gun bunkers.

If your kamikaze pilots are charging machine gun bunkers, I think you're doing it wrong.

If your kamikaze pilots are charging machine gun bunkers, I think you're doing it wrong.

Nope, standard tactics from WWII for infantry to deal with a machine gun bunker (pill box) was to send a squad to charge the bunker head on hoping one of them would get close enough to toss a grenade or a satchel charge into the opening the machine gun fires out of.

It was generally considered a suicide mission.

Nope, standard tactics from WWII for infantry to deal with a machine gun bunker (pill box) was to send a squad to charge the bunker head on hoping one of them would get close enough to toss a grenade or a satchel charge into the opening the machine gun fires out of.

It was generally considered a suicide mission.

You appear to have completely missed not only the joke, but even that there was a joke there.

Again:
If your kamikaze pilots are charging machine gun bunkers, I think you're doing it wrong.

If your kamikaze pilots are charging machine gun bunkers, I think you're doing it wrong.

What, why wouldn't a kamikaze bomber be effective against a machine gun bunker? Just because the Japanese mostly used them against warships, doesn't mean that they couldn't be effectively used against land targets.

What, why wouldn't a kamikaze bomber be effective against a machine gun bunker?

True it would be effective. However, most attacks against bunkers during the time period the Japanese military was using Kamikaze planes (along with other ideas along the same lines) those bunkers were occupied by Japanese personnel.

What, why wouldn't a kamikaze bomber be effective against a machine gun bunker? Just because the Japanese mostly used them against warships, doesn't mean that they couldn't be effectively used against land targets.

Flying an airplane into something would not ordinarily be called "charging".

charging machine gun bunkers

The two books this reminds me of are Heinlein's Starship Troopers, where one of the ships was named Rodger Young in honour of the WW2 hero, and David Langford's SF novel The Space Eater, which opens with this scenario as a live-fire training exercise in which the protagonist dies, again.

And, as several people have subtly hinted, for the love of God don't post anything on the forums!

Is it really that bad nowadays? The "On Topic" used to be tolerable, "Off Topic" went totally Teaparty (later Trump) years ago. I'd imagine True Believers are still welcome.

I check in there 2x or 3x per month just to see what's been posted in the forums. Actually, since the November election IIRC there has been very little (maybe none?) talk about politics. As has been mentioned, Gina and most of the regulars are rabidly against anything even hinting at 'progressive' positions, so yeah, forum posts are decidedly one sided and very partisan.

Is it really that bad nowadays? The "On Topic" used to be tolerable,

I generally only read a couple of authors there, including GMW. On more than one occasion I've pointed out significant errors in the text (copy/paste errors, half a paragraph missing, etc) and pretty much every time I've gotten "don't post edits I don't want edits leave me alone!" replies. So, I learned from my experience and am passing my learning along...

did you find the story?