How to Survive a Space Battle (Shields, Armor, Point Defence)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
- Spacedock delves into the various means of surviving a space battle in this week's thought piece.
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Hey Spacedock. Are you going to make a video about a ship or ships in Nebulous Fleet Command?
Great video, but you left out another potential method to avoid or reduce some damage: the barbecue roll.
If you're going to take a hit from something approaching in a continuous fashion (a string of multiple projectiles, a lengthy beam from a weapon, etc.), if you execute a barbecue roll, you may be able to distribute the damage across the shields or armor and hopefully protect key systems. The barbecue roll can also be used to obscure parts of the ship to prevent a target lock.
* O N Y O N *
One thing not mentioned but very important to space combat. Pumping the air out of outer layers of the ship most likely to take damage.
Do you think the deployable armor from Voyager could be altered to be man portable? Sort of like pseudo power armor.
Unironically the Survivability Onion is one of my favorite infographics
All hail the Survivability Onion.
at least that onion doesn't induce tears.....
why ya crying Jack?
I'm not crying, you're crying!
head chef: it's the onions dipshit, leave Jack alone and let him cry in peace
wom wom wom wom lolz
oh and there's no crying in sci-fi!
It must be unironical since onions don't have much iron in them, around .2 of a microgram per 100g...
Didn't you mean the survivability ohnyon?
@@LarixusSnydes A SCIENCE dad joke?! You win!
Honestly to this day Galactica's holy wall of flack is still my favorite defence system from a pure aesthetic and in universe perspective.
"holy wall of flak" has somebody been watching Science Insanity?
@@VallornDeathblade What can I say It was one of his best lines.
While it is visually spectacular, whenever I see it all I can think is Kessler Syndrome...
Especially a tight enough FLAK Cloud works against EVERY kind of weapon. Projectiles hit the srapnells. Missels have to get punch through it without getting destroyed by them. Lasers might melt particles but that takes energy off it even if it is just a few seconds till it "melted through" the cloud till new shrapnell block it. Plasma-Balls or such lose energy working through the cloud.
And last, flying through a cloud with your ship first might cause damage to your own ship.
Not seen Galactica at all but that what happened in "Enders Game" in the final battle kinda works exactly like my idea: You can't hit the big gun if your weapons can't even melt the Cloud of drones around it.
@@Scoutter love the Ender's Game reference
You actually got a lot of the ideas that I use in my own stories. Surviving in space depends on several things:
- Space is absolutely huge. You usually have plenty of room to decide if you're going to charge into battle or run away.
- Space is so huge that it's difficult to find places to hide.
- Intelligence. Having recon and information makes a drastic difference in avoiding battles or preparing for a battle that you know you can win.
- Technology is your friend. Resources are your partner.
- Plot armor is only so good in small doses. Find ways to utilize engineering design and defenses to show why your ship can survive. A little bit of luck is ok.
I would add to your last point, tactics. Head on charges are just gonna end up in a slug fest, out manoeuvring your opponent to get the maximum amount of firepower on a section of fleet whilst minimising incoming fire is the way to win these engagements.
While the TV version obviously had to compress for broadcast ( no one wants to watch a week of a ship "in transit", THE EXPANSE did a pretty decent job of trying to make the size of just the Sol system alone clear. Add in the size of the RIng Space, and then transiting from Ring to the Ilus planet, and it really starts to add up.
The point about space being huge doesn't make sense.
@@shrayesraman5192 It means you can see farther than you can touch. Sure, you could lob a projectile at a station to hit a month from now, but it will likely be seen and intercepted long before it gets close. Same with moving a fleet, its not like hopping from port to port, you need to transit. So in the time your reinforcement fleet jumps from your military port to when you arrive the entire war might have been brought to peace.
@@shrayesraman5192lready been replied to by someone but essentially your sensors will reach further than your ability to act upon. There is also infinite ways to approach and create problems in an infinite void, you have to make your points of interest line up logically and scientifically unless your universe has warping everywhere or something
The purpose of "Don't be there" is that proper scouting and route recon planning can easly mask your units' movements from direct contact until you are ready to imitate said contact.
Also implies picking one's battles, and avoiding unnecessary military action.
@@SamnissArandeen well said.
I read the don't be "there" part as not being detected. Camouflage theory/ force protection runs like this: 1. Avoid detection as a location of interest. Once the observer deems the location to be of interest, then it becomes a target area. "Captain, there's possibly something on that vector." "Focus Lidar and let's have a better view, I don't want us shooting at shadows and scanner noise". 2. Avoid identification as a valid target object in the area. "There's a solid object on this vector." 3. Avoid identification as a specific type of object. "It's a ship." 4. Avoid identification as a class of Friend/Foe. "Enemy, Light Cruiser confirmed." 5. Avoid an accurate firing solution. "It's jittering in heading." "It's gonna be tough to hit it at this range" "Fire a spread." 7. Avoid being hit. "They've deployed counter measures and pulled a double bluff, acting like a decoy for the decoys, 6 missiles took the bait and detonated prematurely or off target." "One dumb one got through." "Lucky 7." 8. Avoid damage. "Ablative armour absorbed most of the missile's pulse drilling/boring laser. The missile detonated against the hull" 9. Avoid the damage affecting operability. On the Terran ship; "So we lost the mess hall, the only ship facility the designers didn't think to double up on, I guess it's MRE's for the next week boys." "Weapons Officer, how did that frigate fair after our missiles hit it?" "They never even saw our stealth missiles inbound, I bet they were celebrating their hit when their ship went bye-bye."
@@rrossouw100 imo "don't be there" refers to you not physically be there, not being undetected. It's don't be somewhere where you can be at risk. For instance, don't drive into a mine field or into an openfield where the adversary can see you.
@@delfinenteddyson9865 Your interpretation of "Don't be there" does not make sense on the onion graph, as you have to be there to do the job - someone has to go into the lions maw to pull its teeth. If the teeth don't get pulled because everyones avoiding contact, then the war continues...not useful.
In camouflage design, we attempt to make our guys "not appear to be there", while they are very definetely there to do the enemy in before they even knows the fight is on. My favourite saying is - if you find yourself in a fair fight, then your tactics suck. If the fight is fair or you're overmatched, then withdraw and try again - you have try until you can have a succesful engagement.
FTL taught me these ideas through this. If my shields/defense drones can take more than your offense can make, you are no threat to me. Though I am reminded from FTL that my ability to counter my target offensively still has a role in its defense. If my ship is completely vulnerable, but can hit at twice the range of any target against it, or can disable an opponents attack prior, that is a defense all its own.
Being twice the range of your opponent is technically the first layer on the onion "Don't be there"
Think this is known as the glass cannon. Super effective offense, little no defense. Ideally screened by other ship types/specialties in a fleet battle
Nebulous is a wonderfully brutal and visceral game and should be exposed to a wider audience. Though not hardcore in its realism (I mean, engagements are within a few kilometers of combatants because anything further out would be boring and involve lots of equally-boring sand canister throwing), it _does_ do quite well with the basic principles of the value of electronic warfare and the importance of damage control. Next major update will even let players do entire system-wide, long-term campaigns where logistics is just as important.
It's a great naval-combat-in-space game
- hoojiwana from Spacedock
A pity that there isn't an option to see several light seconds distance battles. Yes, it'll take missiles and shells several minutes or even hours to arrive. But there's that chess game of trying to predict the movement of a ship in regards to combat with weapon that can't be detected before you're hit ie laser.
It'll also highlight the weird duality of missiles in space combat as they're both the shortest(due to speed) and longest(due to ability to correct course) ranged weapons... unless you can somehow make hybrid shells for lasers that will use your beam as propulsion, but are equipped with mirrors to later on redirect the beam when they're closer to the target. But missiles are still superior in long term if said long term implies that it can track targets for years😅
Missiles and time multiplication would work. Sub sims do this just fine, and while a mark 48 isn’t a nuclear rocket, it works out similarly.
@@HuxleysShaggyDog hmm, haven't thought about it that way, but good point.
It is a fun game, I just need to scrape off the rust whenever I put it down since it is rather technical to play properly
Goddamn man, so many fantastic references in the clips of this episode. Knights of Cydonia, Stargate, Starsector and so many more. The crew of the Spacedock are clearly people of quality and culture.
I would love a video on ECM. Not just active usage like jamming, but passive use that ships just, have on. It is actually one of the most believable reasons space combat is always shown in visual range, ( other than because it looks cool) is because the enemy ships can't achieve a hard lock until they close in to visual distances due to countermeasures preventing it.
I liked that in Battlestar Galactica the raptors had ECM officers. It was a nice touch, and in the opening miniseries we saw Boomer and Helo sifting through sensor ghosts before finding out how many raiders were coming after them. Also, the playing dead and letting their ship drift to Caprica was a great level of detail. Playing possum by shutting everything down seems like a great way of building tension if the show calls for waiting for an adversary to approach while the heroes’ ship is in a temporarily vulnerable state.
This is something Gundam does a lot. Most of the settings in that series has some kind of equivilent to justify why most combat takes place on such close ranges.
A thing that I think can be added, is that sensors and detection systems actually play a massive part in protecting your ship. If you can detect your enemy before they can detect you, it will not only give you an incredible advantage in aggressive actions, but also defensive actions. This does not just count onboard sensors, but also scout craft or drones and their range and effectiveness in relaying their information.
All the point defense in the world won't help you if you can't detect incoming missiles. All the shielding and armor won't save you if your enemy ambushes you. Only plot armor or sensors that avoid such encounter will. And as such, I argue that sensors are just as important as systems that make you undetectable.
This should be a sub-item of the first layer: not being there. You can only avoid the enemy if you know where it is and where it will be. That can be done a number of different ways, sensor arrays being one of them.
Except stealth is EXTREMELY difficult in space. A James Webb Space Telescope resolution sensor vs a simple infrared sensor won't differ too much in useful info.
Scout ships will be even less necessary since hiding is so difficult.
You'd be able to see ships an entire solar system away with just a simple IR sensor.
As for missiles the same applies. Missiles want to accelerate as fast as possible to the target ship.
This produces large amounts of waste heat they cannot hide
Considering the distances of space combat, it will take missiles minutes to potentially hours to impact. And you'll be able to see them as soon as they exit the enemy ship since infrared (IR) travels at Lightspeed.
The only way sensors can be important is for minesweeeping, since stationary mines can be kept cold in space. In this case radar might help
There can also be stealth missiles that are launched from the enemy ship or use cold gas propulsion until they get close enough and then turn on their boosters. But 1. Unless you're using springs, any form of launch will produce detectable heat (and springs will not produce enough of a launch) and 2. Cold gas propulsion is extremely inefficient so although your missile won't be detectable for a while, the enemy ship will have accelerated too far away for it to do anything even if they turn on boost phase.
Stealth and detection in space does not need to be speced into too hard unless you're building a ship for a specific task (stealth ship a la helium steamer or stealth ship detector)
@@hoominbeeing While I have to agree, Id still like to point out that, yes in hard sci fi visual range is like it should be, but in softer sci fi such as star trek or star wars visual range seems to be severely limited.
And even if that is the case, it is one thing to see a ship or missile from long range, it is an entirely different thing to identify it. Sure you could with ai be able to indentify a certain heat signature as a starship, but there might be a risk that that starship is either a sun, a planet, a friendly ship, a freighter, another natural phenomenon or anything else producing a heat signature. What many seem to forget ist that sensors aren't magic know-it-alls, especially on long ranges such as in Space. Its often very hard to calculate distance.
But in any case, you are absolutely correct.
One thing I find fun to consider, is that light doesn't travel instantaneously, so if you spot a vessel far away, it might not actually be there. It may have been there eight minutes ago, but not any more. (In the case of sun-to earth, I think its eight minutes)
And as for stealth missiles, if you ship has tractor beams or artificial gravity it can just simply push the missile out slowly. A missile needn't be launched rapidly, just launch it, wait until it is a safe distance away from your ship, and it can start it's cold-propellant burn.
@@moteroargentino7944 I agree
@@hoominbeeing, if I'm trying to scape another ship and accelerating away from it while it goes towards me, I can release turned of missiles together with flares and things like that, if the opponent do not identify them, I can activate right when they are passing by the missiles.
I was reading a battle report from a game of Star Fleet battles told in character. The Federation ship took a single point of damage on the Hull, destroying one Hull box. The Captain asked if the damage was serious. The Engineer replied that the bowling tournament would have to wait until repairs were made. Everyone chuckled. In WWII several classes of bombers were armored in the vital areas only...the bomb bays, crew areas, and fuel tanks. The other spots were all aluminum skin which allowed many shots to simply pass through and waste their energy. I can see a starship being built with all of the non-essential areas just inside the armor as a dead space to absorb some of the damage.
Basically the all or nothing armour scheme of British and American WW2 combat ships
Many aircraft are built with the idea of the most/best armor protecting the crew and that's about it. The A10 comes to mind with its "titanium bathtub" and I'm fairly certain there are Russian planes and helicopters with similar features.
@@Brigand231 The Fairey Swordfish planes that torpedoed the Bismark into a mobility kill weren't "completely missed" by the Bismark's anti-aircraft gunnery.
Instead, the rounds just passed through the fabric of the wings and fuselage, not encountering enough resistance to set off the explosive rounds (for those rounds which were explosive) as well as the gunners having trouble depressing some guns low enough, and fire direction not properly accounting for the slow laden speed of the Swordfish planes.
Indeed, that's what "torpedo blisters" (aka anti-torpedo bulges) are on a lot of bigger ships.
This happens in FTL. I'm always glad when an enemy missile hits an empty room because nothing gets damaged.
Stowing atmosphere when rigging for combat makes sense as it deals with most fires and reduces penetration impact.
It also creates more problems.
The requirement for crew to operate in vac suits leads to all kinds of problems when the time the crew is required to remain at action sations exeeds a few hours.
Bodily waste comes to mind, And while it will be primarily a comfort and morale issue for the first couple of hours, it will become more serious.
While things like air, power and coolant can be replenished, just keeping a crewman supplies with fluids and nutrients can be more challenging.
Then there's isues like filters clogging up and visibility slowly being degraded by the visor getting dirty from both sides.
Plus, a crew wearing vac suits will simply not be able to reach the same peak performance as one opperating in a shirt sleeve environment.
@@Bird_Dog00 Combat depress makes sense when in active combat/excepting it quite soon not during whole high alert.
During combat you want everyone in vac suits in case of unplanned decompression.
Except accidents visors would take quite a while to get dirty.
Body waste can be solved with diapers or integrated waste removal if you want to go the hi-tech or kinky route.
Drinking ports are mandatory equipment for modern military gas masks so no issue there.
Combat vac suits must provide significantly higher mobility than currently developed space suits anyways.
@@tymoteuszkazubski2755
While I supose many problems can be solved - I'd stay away from any more "complex" waste disposal setup though as hundreds of spacers hurriedly self-cathing with the CQ allarm blearing in their ears will only lead to trouble - I still don't think you'd put your entire crew in vac suits basically for the same reason modern day silors don't wear scube gar when taking their submarine into battle.
Unless you handwave the whole issue about decompression sickness away, a vac-suit will not preserve your crew's combat effectivenes in the event of explosive decompression. The bends is a quite debilitating condistion...
Plus, in most situations it wouldn't save you anyway. If your compartment gets breached by anything nasty enough to get through your ships armour in the first place, chances are, said nasty thing's behind armour effects will kill you long before decompression get's a go.
And if you by a miracle survive unharmed and with your suit intact, chances are you now find yourself trapped in a trashed compartment unable to do much of use to your ship.
@@Bird_Dog00 to be honest ai would expect battle ready ship to be running partial pressure unless pressure suits can sustain combat operations at full pressure. Another reason to stow atmosphere is to make it possible to move between sections of the ship. Imagine a damage control party that needs to get to the reactor room but accessways were punctured. Lack of atmosphere makes it significantly easier to traverse damaged sections of the ship.
@@Bird_Dog00 I mean, the expanse made a pretty good case for vac suits, since there you could be hit by PDC's and shrapnel that go through your ship without destroying vital components or necessarily hitting you. VAC suits in this scenario are kind've like bomber crewmen with flak jackets, not likely to protect from direct rounds and more cumbersome to wear, but necessary protection from explosions and grazing rounds. (Except in this context it'll protect you from the vehicle taking damage, and means you'll loose less/no air in combat).
Something that I would like to add is that it's also a good idea to think about this from the other perspective too: how do you penetrate an opponent's defensive onion?
Barring some fresh development in defensive technology (and technology doesn't stay fresh for long in the context of competing military forces) antagonists in a conflict will have a good general idea of how they expect their opposition to try and resist their attacks and so they will calibrate their offenses appropriately. Getting through the onion is also why it's a generally good idea to have a mix of weaponry in a given force, be that different weapons on the same ship or fleets with ships specialized for different combat roles. Since there are so many layers, with each layer having it's own resistances to overcome, using different combinations of weapons increases the likelihood any one of those can make it through.
Do they have electronic counter-measures or decoys to avoid target locks? Then you need combinations of different sensors that could composite their inputs to avoid any one of them getting too disrupted. Do they have counter-missiles and kinetic or energy point defenses? Then you need to overwhelm them with large salvos or have decoy missiles of your own to draw the defenses' fire away from your actual offensive missiles. Do they have energy shields? Then you need some setting-specific weaponry that's good at stripping, overloading, or penetrating that (a nuke for an EMP blast is probably a good bet.) Do they have armor? Then you need something that'll get through the armor or won't be mitigated by it (something that sticks to the armor and administers a huge electric shock or has a shaped-charge that drives a penetrator on impact.)
Things like that.
Ive read a whole bunch of Sci Fi Series lately, that have done space combat really really well in my opinion.
The first one is "Lost Fleet"
Then there is "Terran privateer"
"Starship Mage"
"Castle Federation/Space Carrier Avalon"
They all have different Tech levels or premises, but they do space combat really really well within their own reality. Good fun.
It only applies indirectly, but "not being there" is a totally valid tactic and usually achieved by information warfare, ie making the enemy believe you are somewhere else. Then you end up being where you want but the enemy isn't so you are not where they would have liked to battle you.
My favorite starship is undoubtedly the Omega class from Babylon 5. Although, I don’t believe they ever mention it on screen, the Omega‘s and earth force in general have a hell of a lot of armor. And Omega is about a mile long and the carousel section has armor about 60 feet thick. Hence, it can take a pretty massive hit and end up with only a 10 or 15 foot hole in the hull. And hence the Agamemnon can get the absolute living hell beat out of it and go through an exploding weapons platform at point Blank Range, and come out the other side, massively damaged, but still apparently reasonably secure. Or another omega takes away*crashing into the hanger bay in the front and apparently survives minus the hanger bay.After the ISA is formed, presumably, a lot of ships got dispersal ship, plating, which doesn’t stop incoming energy, you, but distributed over a much larger area, so that it has less effect. I am sure other franchises have use something like that, but I’ve only ever really seen it explicitly used in Babylon 5.
I am quite fond of the shield barrier from the original Macross, which absorbs energy, and then releases it disastrously in all directions once it hits a certain level of saturation. So the shield is also potentially a weapon, which I love. I and while it is pretty much just a generic spaceship shield in the 2014 space battleship Yamato, I do like that. They can only run it for 10 minutes at a time, which is an interesting wrinkle that I have not seen used anywhere else.
Speaking of the Yamato, while it is slightly off-topic, I do like that in the 2014 show, they establish that Reagan’s cannot be fired and hyper space because they just don’t work, and then the Yamato manages to win a battle by firing physical shells at Deslock’s ship
I think the absolute worst way to go in a space battle is rapid decompression as you get 'sucked' out the hole in your ship.
This happens to a minor character in the book Hyperion (1989) by Dan Simmons and, well, let's just say it's not pretty what happens.
One of the earlier Expanse shows deals with this. The popular conception of decompression is much, much more violent than what would likely happen even with what we'd think is a pretty big hole. In the episode, the crew have a decent amount of time to deal with a fist-sized hole in what's actually a fairly small compartment.
@JBBell I'm not talking about the cliche head-exploding stuff. I mean, having an extreme case of the bends that may be lethal even if you are rescued from vacuum.
(Oh, I see, you're talking about the meat grinder scene)
@@JBBellmech won't survive such losing limb
He looks fairly dramatic when you see it in the movies and stuff but I don’t think it’s actually that big of an issue. I mean first of all everyone running around inside a ship in combat probably should have a space suit on for exactly that reason. And secondly, we are used to the concept of a massive torrent of air pouring out endlessly like we see in movies but it’s just not gonna move all that fast. Imagine 100 gallon barrel full of water with a 1/32 of an inch hole in the bucket. Yes, the bucket will drain, but it’s gonna take a very long time to do so potentially days.
That clip of the chef working with the onion brings me a lot of joy.
Plot armour is the best defence
Bruh
xD
I'd definitely be interested in more videos like this. They're so helpful. The one on stealth/low observability ships particularly catches my eye.
Think this is the soonest I have watched a video after its released.
A video on ECM itself would be fascinating, in my opinion
Glad to see footage from Knights of Sidonia! For a mecha anime it has a great deal of realistic(ish) aspects of space flight.
Talking how much armor is needed depends on what it's being hit with just reminds me of early encounters between the UNSC and the Covenant. UNSC ships had a full meter or two of Titanium-A armor that was adequate against their own weapons as they only fought other humans before, but the Covenant's plasma weapons melted straight through it like a hot knife through butter.
There was one battle where a single UNSC destroyer (the class with the most armor and a second MAC gun) took out a Covenant light destroyer and two frigates while a Covenant carrier largely stayed out of the fight. During the battle, the UNSC ship just barely grazed it's counterparts' shields which resulted in the human ship shearing through 2 full meters of armor and breaches on every lower deck. The Covenant ship, meanwhile had it's shields overloaded and unable to stop previously fired plasma rounds from gutting it.
The TFS Ingenuity Series by Tori L Harris introduced something i had never seen which was gravitic shielding. The humans in the series never figured out traditional shields but use targeted gravity spots using the ships FTL drive to deflect small caliber rounds or energy weapons. Its a neat idea. Could do a video about stuff like that.
It's also present in Star Carrier book series.
Thank you for including the 'On-Yoon' man at the end. I watched him when I was younger. Cooking 💗
Another Knights of Sidonia shot. Still waiting for the video on Sidonia itself. I have hope...
The onion effects all types of combat, and is a good examole of how to explain these concepts.
I liked andromedas approach to defense. Combat Drones that could be several light seconds ahead of the ship, missiles and attack drones, and then point defense turrets. The ship was covered with a frame that could spread armor designed to intentionally be hit far away from the main body of the ship so any explosions wouldnt damage anything important.
Chef Jean-Pierre nice. Great episode, and yes please to vids expanding on the various subjects mentioned (particularly damage control/mitigation). I'd love to see stuff about related subsystems as well, ecm/eccm, sensors, various types of comm and C3 systems. You cover stuff like this really well so I hope you'll consider it.
The dont be hit bit
Is the technical term in the military for a single word.
DODGE.
Or Evasion.
The Onion is a nice short hand for getting the idea across to a layman.
The full deal is a flow chart deql that constantly jumping around different layers, with multiple ones be used at any single time. All working together as a team.
The most important not mention is be able to take the hit.
Which comes from good hull design with multiple compartments, like seen in BSG and Expanse.
Cause after all.
No matter how good the Armor.
Something will find its way in.
I think the survivability onion is a mental tool to help standard people understand military design and the reasons for the design.
Pretty sure "Don't be there" involves fighting using remote controlled (drone etc) or autonomous (mines etc) means. If you can sink the enemy without putting yourself in danger at all, that's for the best.
The survival onion is about, well, survival. Not winning a battle/destroying your enemy.
And obviously the easiest way to survive a battle is to not be in the battle in the first place.
War is not just killing your enemy. There are other missions that don't require you to do any physical damage to the enemy, and it is best if you can achieve them without the enemy ever being aware of your presence at all.
@gokbay3057 While I understand where you're coming from, the survivability onion is intrinsically tied to combat. We're not exactly talking about cruise ships here. If you can do your job on the battlefield while not even being on the battlefield, your mission was an unqualified success.
Also stand-off weapons
@@gokbay3057it’s about combat so naturally the use of stand-off weapons and or fire and forget weapons directly plays into that for instance a fox 1 type missile vs a fox 3 type. Fox 1’s have much worse survival rates for the firing aircraft cause you can’t not be there you need to guide in the missile all the way whereas with a fox 3 you can turn away and the seeker on the missile does it’s own thing. Thus keeping you alive and much safer
The ending bit was glorious
i didn't realize i needed a "l'oignan" supercut, but it turns out i did, thank you again, Spacedock
Chef Jean-Pierre and Spacedock - a combo I had not expected.
7:45 - When the 500m 250mtn MCRN Donnager was at battle stations only the citadel retained its atmosphere. This was to prevent massive venting of atmospheric gas during battle damage, causing a loss of manoeuvring ability at a critical moment. This is a clear weakness of mega-ships in Sci-Fi, which I think assume each bit of damage is randomly distributed and individually small, but coordinated attacks will often hit the same part of a Mega-ship giving it a “vent-list”.
I remember the Traveller Roleplaying game had a defensive system called Sand which would deploy a cloud of granular crystals whose purpose was to attenuate laser and particle beam weapons.
Sand casters were for shredding incoming missiles, Glitter casters were for diffusing lasers
“If you get hit and it affects you don’t die”. The last but ever so important layer
I like how the focus on different layers of the onion gives different factions across sci-fi different identities. In Sins of a Solar Empire, for example, the human TEC faction focuses on heavy armour and sturdy hulls. Their shields are more often than not rudimentary and just a first layer of defense, not the last. Their rival, the Advent, vengeful psionic humans, focus much more heavily on shields. It's harder to break through them, but once they're lost, their ships are much weaker and more fragile. The Vasari, the alien faction in the game, exists in more of a middle state between the two, they have decent hull and shield, but aren't super focused on either.
Something similar is seen in Halo, where the Covenant rely more on shielding, while the UNSC go for more armour.
1:56 I love how the Normandy and the Normandy are the only instances (mainstream) Sci-Fi got the idea of stealth right 😂
One advantage of very large ships is the square-cubed law. Armor is more efficient per mass on a larger ship.
There's also various types of active armor ranging from explosive reactive armor and electric armor that dynamically counters against certain penetrators like HEAT or rods (to an extent).
Don't forget about soft-kill or hardkill methods (you touched upon this some) for an incoming projectile (namely missiles). Soft kill could be something like electronic jamming or confusing a missiles sensors such that it doesn't land.
Hard kill methods include something like the real world Arena, Drozd or Iron Curtain that actively fire protectiles back at a incoming missiles to destroy it before it does serious damage (or atleast lessen the blow to shields and underlying hull armor). PDCs in The Expanse (and IRL on naval ships!) are great examples of this.
1:11 I'm interested!
Thx for the video!
The SSV Normandy is an excellent example of this. A ship the size of a frigate that emphasizes stealth. Lightly armed for a frigate, lightly armored as well, it's main features were it's GIGANTIC drive core, and the heat diffusal stealth systems. The only way to know the Normandy was there was to see it manually.. or know it was going to be there ahead of time. It's entire career of venerable service it went with nary a scratch... until that one fateful day however.
This highlights the cost of specialization. Focusing on so many layers of that onion and one layer of the onion that could be important will be what gets you killed.
At long enough range, when it comes to dodging shots, it's not just the travel time of the attack, but also the light speed delay from you to the person shooting at you to see you. Star Trek mentions this in one episode, where they meet some civilization that doesn't have sensors that work faster than light, like every other advanced civilization in the setting has. If you're far enough away, and have enough acceleration, you can dodge lasers, although it would take improvements in lasers to even maintain a tight beam over that distance, instead of spreading out wider than a ship.
Dodging shots is one place where fighters and bombers make the most sense in space. You need to move by your size in whatever time it takes an enemy to see you and the attack to reach you. A smaller craft has less distance to move, so it can get closer and still be able to dodge. And if you can't manipulate gravity, any manned craft can only accelerate at speeds the pilot can handle. One advantage of unmanned drones and missiles is they can accelerate harder without killing the crew with g forces.
More Spacedock analysis vids are always good. Bring on the Fleet Command video!
I was wondering if use of polished armor, or mirrors makes sense in sci-fi, i.e. in defense agaisnt lasers or as stealth thingie ?
ASide form that, I realy would love any material about Nebulus Fleet Command :)
YES PLEASE, I love Nebulous fleet command so much, and would be delighted to see your takes on it
on the topic of preventing being affected: one thing I haven't seen in scifi, though might exist, and mainly seen as a tactic in Space Engineers is the idea of, if you are in a big ship or station heading into battle in space, depressurizing the internal atmosphere ahead of the battle, so that if you do get damaged enough that armour is penetrated, you don't get explosive, sudden depressurization and fly out the hole(s) into the void of space as so many red shirts in Star Trek do.
just to add on: one thing I think was missing from the bit on armour is the composition. by that I mean if you are in a universe with energy weapons you might use metals, alloys, and other materials for armour that are good for absorbing and distributing the impacts, especially the heat, of those energy weapons, but that armour might also then be susceptible to more purely kinetic/ explosive weapons. on the flip side you might have armour that provides good protection against kinetics and explosives, but may be weaker/ more susceptible to impacts from energy weapons.
they do that in the expanse
This is done in "Andromeda." They use kinetic kill missiles for long range (up to 10 light-minutes) then defensive kill missiles to intercept incoming, along with Point Defense Lasers, Anti Gravity to deflect, extendable battle blades to sacrifice in place and to top it off, depressurization of the majority of the hull to allow rounds to go through without hitting anything or causing secondary damage through shockwaves by passing through atmosphere.
Loved this, but that editing at the end was a nice treat. Thanks
Always love survivability onion topics - though most sci-fi severely simplifies it.
I may not like The Expanse TV series overall, but... every time I see footage from its attempt at visualizing 'hard sci-fi' engagements, I just adore it!
CGI (and Game Engines) have finally allowed the creation of absolutely fantastic depictions of realistic/Newtonian space combat. IMO, The Expanse easily tops BSG in believable-feeling close-quarters ship-to-ship combat. -hope the folks that worked on that series' VFX have 'gone places' with their careers, they earned it!
For the armor shaping, going with a pyramid shape would work as well, while also making for a flat surface for mounting things like external weapon turrets or easily hidden hardpoints for things like torpedo tubes at the edges.
I also recently thought of a layer between don't the don't get detected and evasion. That is, convincing the enemy to not fire. This could be either being much bigger than the enemy, like a lone X-wing in Star Wars facing an entire fleet of Star Destroyers or managing to pull an electronic warfare of forced-perspective trick that makes it look like they will be easily destroyed if they fire. Alternatively, there could be the threat of breaching a treaty, like how in Star Trek, the only thing that's preventing open war between the Federation and the Romulan Empire during the original TNG show was the Treaty of Algeron, and if either ship were to fire on the other would be made to be in breach of the treaty, leading to full-blown war. The MAD (mutually assured destruction) theory of IRL nuclear warfare is also a part of this and was the primary defense from the United States and the Soviet Union blowing each other up during the Cold War.
So glad Chef Jean-Pierre could teach me how to properly chop a battlestar.
The Outer layer of the onion is more about avoiding conflicts as best as possible through reconnaissance and intelligence. if you can avoid getting into a "Slugfest" battle you can avoid a lot of other problems.
BAHAHAHAHA, I love the touch of Chef Jean Pierre at the end! Two awesome channels in one video!
Hey Spacedock,
I'm creating a sci-fi world of my own. I have to say, your channel has been a great resource in terms of sci-fi world creation.
Please keep these contents up, and know that you are integral in creating the next generation of sci-fi worlds.
The Andromeda from the eponymous show doesn’t have any shields. Her primary defenses are point-defense lasers to shoot down missiles and fighters. But she also has “battle blades”, a set of blade-like armor plates that extend to cover vulnerable spots way in advance of those spots (like the example of layered armor shown in the video). In addition, the ship is designed to encourage overpenetration. If a shot does hit, it has a good chance of passing entirely through before detonating, which reduces the damage to the ship and the crew. Considering that most missiles in the setting travel at something like 90% of c (and many don’t even have warheads), overpenetration has a good chance of working.
Evasion is also a possibility at long range, as ships use artificial gravity to reduce their effective mass to a tiny fraction, allowing them to maneuver like fighters
A video covering ECM’s and other electronic warfare measures would be awesome
The battlefleet Gothic videogames (and of course the old tabletop game they're based on) use the entire onion, which is neat, even if not every single layer apply to every faction.
Yes, even the don't be there bit thanks to micro warp jump and similar.
You've got gas clouds and asteroid fields you can hide in to be undetected, as well as silent running.
Then you've got all ships being unidentified blips until something gets close enough to identify you. And ways to drop back into an unidentified blip, augur disruptor, dipping into a gas cloud.
Then you've got the prevent being hit, which the various flavours of space elf does with holofields.
Shields of some sort are used by most factions. The Eldar forgoing shields for the above holofields on everything that isn't stationary, and the necrons not bothering with shields at all.
After that you've got armour, which everyone use some degree of.
And after that you've got the damage mitigation where most hits just take a small chunk of hit points and nothing more, and critical hits being the only thing that actually hits something important. Critical damage further representing redundant systems and damage control systems by being broken down into light and heavy. Light disables a system, but can be repaired, where's heavy critical damage means the system is destroyed. Unless you're a Necron with their self-healing living metal that can turn heavy critical damage to light damage. Which then self-repairs after 30 seconds. And even their hulls partially regain lost hit points over time.
The fact that this video is even possible shows how much the genre has calcified. The current gen of extra-hard scifi hasn't run its course yet but i kinda want to see a return to 80's anime absurdity with orbital spider mechs, telekinetic space pirates, and psychic girls who can create black holes
I often see the Andromeda Ascendant from Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda left out of these discussions, which saddens me.
Andromeda's doesn't have the energy shielding tropes like many sci-fi shows.
It does have layers and multiple practical solutions.
It has sensor/combat drones that increase the sensor range, attack distant targets, create false sensor data to the enemy vessels, and intercept incoming missles/ordinance.
Then they have battle blades that extend over outer zone like a knights shield. Between the blades are a webbing of cables that shred some missles/ordinance or cause them to explode. Once they are in pieces the material is redirected away from the ship (or slowed) by antigrave fields.
Next is some reactive armor on the actual hull, which detonates incoming munitions.
After that the hull itself is lightly armored. Strong enough to deal with small munitions, shrapnel, some energy weapons, but thin enough that when faster or bigger items hit they pass through without sending shockwaves across the hull or through the superstructure (which is also designed for pass-through).
Many outer compartments along the inside of the hull are decompressed creating a vacuum in those areas. If munitions penetrate, the is no air to compress, ignite, etc..
Objects like smaller MAC rounds go in one side and out the other making a small hole compared to big explosive holes, and creates light damage in a straight line (easier to repair) instead of damage that radiates outwards in multiple directions.
And to finish it off, Andromeda has repair drones & nanites that are effecting repairs during the fight.
Oh and it can maneuver like a space fighter, making it incredibly agile and hard to hit.
all this talk of onions is bringing tears to my eyes
the dice-rolling shenanigans is how battleship guns work
Moar Nebulous Fleet Command. I love the fact that it is starting to get more news, I do my best on my channel XD haha.
7:49 I love being apart of a group that’s recognized for “No Armor is best armor” and leaking classified documents, lol
There is a series of books called StarCarrier America where they do a sand-dump at super-luminal speeds. Comes in as a wave and basically melts the enemy fleet.
I have this defensive armor called Nano armor which is probably in the third to last section of the Onion, basically if the ship is hit, the nano armor would instantly mead that damage, and as long as they don't run out of nanobots the ship should be fine. in this world the nano armor is used on the gunboats, the Corvettes in this world don't have nanobots or shields so they have to rely on point defense, the gunboats are too small to have shields but big enough for the nano armor, and then any bigger ship has shields. so destroyers to the command cruisers.
I also have this idea for what I call magnetic hull plating, which is basically just magnetize the hull plates to each other to make the whole hull of the ship stronger. though it is mostly used as a last line of defense that comes after shielding.
A thing to think about in ship design is what parts of your ship can afford to take hits from kinetic weapons. Yes, it's a clever strategy to armor the vital areas and potentially let nonvital portions take kinetic hits because the projectile will just pass through without significant energy transfer (depending on multiple factors), but how many of those really are expendable? And how are they laid out so that if the projectile passes through, it wont endanger the parts that do need armor? At most, I think that a portion of the crew cabins can be sacrificed - not many people would be at rest in a battle and alternate arrangements can be planned until repairs or replacements are made - and maybe even cargo because depending on the life support needs and present staff it wont threaten lives if it got shot up.
Compared to earthbound aircraft, wings are unnecessary in vacuum; compared to seaworthy ships, we have no need for buoyancy when operating in 3 dimensions. Fewer parts to get shot at, surely, but everything is that much more critical. Like someone else said, submarines are probably representative of what we might find realist inspiration in.
I think there is another aspect of space survival that needs mentioning - maybe even in a video of its own, as it has no proper analogue in modern warfare.
Cost of evasion. In a setting without magical inertial dampening a spaceship is often likely to be able to accelerate - linearly or rotationally - faster than some of its elements can handle. And it becomes very important at Evasion layer of the survival onion.
As an example, in Knights of Sidonia (clip from which made me think about it all) there is a situation when Sidonia, a giant city-ship, is shot at by a massive projectile. The bridge crew assesses that Sidonia can evade it - but only by exceeding acceleration limits that its civilian infrastructure is built to. So here they have to compare possible damage from the attack and the evasive action. They choose to perform an evasion and the attack misses, but at the cost of massive damage to civilian housing and hundreds of people being injured and killed by being thrown against the walls with little to no warning to brace.
So while the attack did not hit it still did a lot of damage, bypassing external physical defenses and affecting the last layer of the "onion".
This is something very rarely seen in sci-fi. The only big example I can recall are several scenes in The Expanse where Rosinante had to limit its maneuvers due to a crew member not being strapped in.
But it could be a powerful narrative tool, where the ship's crew is placed in loose-loose situation, and has to consider that doing nothing and taking a hit will be preferable to an evasion maneuver that will cause internal damage with high g-forces.
Finding the video a few months late, but a subset of the layer that avoids being affected by being hit is rate of damage repair.
You mentioned damage control, but there is something to be said for the Wolverine strategy. If you can rapidly repair damage, you force your enemy to not only hit you, but to outpace your ability to restore functionality to core and redundant systems.
the finale with chef jean pierre is flavorful!!
great video. hilarious ending
This video also points out the logical extrapolation that ships, once damaged, tend to stay damaged until they can put into a well-equipped yard for complete repairs. "Damage control" can only do so much. This is one of the reasons I enjoyed an old tabletop game called Starfire (Task Force Games) from the late 70s / early 80s. In Starfire, ships could apply damage control to reset shield systems and (hopefully) jury-rig combat and life support systems. Jury-rigged equipment would work normally, but had a chance to fail during combat and would be totally destroyed if hit again. That is, instead of repairing it properly in a space-yard, you would have to completely replace the destroyed system. In shows like The Expanse, this concept was well demonstrated throughout the episodes with the Rocinante being seriously damaged and having to put into a port to be fully repaired/refurbished. Star Trek hardly ever did this until the 'Xindi' arc of Enterprise. During that season, many of the plot elements revolved around Enterprise's gradual deterioration and that added greatly to the stories and tension in general. Most other Star Trek series just had ship's damage apparently magically disappear between episodes. One exception to this was Voyager's 'Year of Hell' two-part episodes where Voyager was slowly beaten to scrap metal by the constant attacks of the Krenim ships.
3:01 I’d like to point out that a cold projectile at over 0.5c speed will be completely undetectable thus not dodgable, any EM wave won’t have enough time to travel back and the projectile itself doesn’t emit anything.
Correct, although your target will still be able to pick up EM emissions burst from whatever weapon used to fire such projectile, like a electro-magnetic mass driver, and change course to avoid being hit. As your projectile cannot maneuver this would be an effective tactic.
One thing worth mentioning with spacecraft, they do not normally suffer from any form of "critical existence failure." This is rather different from, say, aircraft or ships. If a plane loses a wing or an engine, it will likely be a crater soon. If a ship has a gaping hole in the hull, it will be promoted to submarine in short order. And if a submarine gets even the slightest dent, it is instantly sent to the second dimension along with everyone onboard. Planes and boats are also prone to catching fire and forced or natural convection ensure an unlimited supply of oxidizer is available for that fire.
Spacecraft do not act this way. Blast off a maneuvering thruster or put a hole through an engine and it will probably not be very good at maneuvering. It might even spew radioactive debris into the living sections. Put a hole in the life support and people can't survive indefinitely there. Put a hole in a compartment and people there might be thrown around or suffocate. Put a hole in the propellant tank and it will bleed propellant. Hit a certain types of ammo storage and there could be an explosion.
And yet... it's still a ship. It's still moving in roughly the same direction it was before. There is still probably a computer onboard with an intelligent or even sentient AI. There may be a fire control system and weapons onboard. It may be a derilect, but unless it is utterly obliterated, there is still a chance it could complete its mission. A ship that is 60% destroyed is 40% still a threat.
Also worth noting when considering kinetics: the “Eyeballing it” conundrum from Mass Effect, or the fact that any kinetics fired will keep going until they hits something, which could be an ass-biter for any military operations in a given region of space, especially around stars that could keep kinetics in an orbit for a long time.
For some reason I love the Binary Rifle from Halo 4 and 5. It looks cool(also comically long), shoots antimatter, and has a really nice sound in both games(its different in 5).
Onyon is really good way of thinking about it
I do envision a layered spaced armour, where outer hull is covered by "rails" for movable segments of explosive armour. That will mean, wherever you will be fighting, the side of your craft turned towards enemy will be covered by explosive armour, and even if one or several segments get used (did explode), the "gap" left by the spent charge can be covered by moving on the spot different, non-spent segment. Than between the outer layers i see special gel-like substance with hard particles inside it, to cool and de-energize the shrapnels and the explosive cone. Than, either between the innermost layers, or only around the most sensitive areas (like reactor, rocket magazine, fuel tanks, bridge) - that according what will be lighter - one inteligent liquid armour (it gets stronger and denser the more power is in the hit).
I do belive, this combination will make the ship into flying TANK, even witouth fancy spaceshields.
Another possibility in REALISTICAL setting will be an Orion type of craft defending itself by possitioning the pusher plate between itself and the source of the threat.
The ship should utilize naval doctrine of emergency systems (if the machine wich does lets say X stops to operate, the ship have another at LEAST 2 other mechines able to step in instead of the first machine). Decentralisation is a good thing too in this view.
BTW fight in a spacesuit inside depresurized ship is also a good idea. The crew is ok, when not directly hit, AND the airless surroundings will protect against fire, and blastwaves (wich both witouth air does not occur in spaceships).
Kudos for the Everspace soundtrack
I can't believe you used the radar jamming scene from Spaceballs.
The offensive viability of kinetic weapons depends primarily on engagement range. Space is big, even if you accelerate a projectile to a significant portion of the speed of light it's still going to take a prohibitive amount of time to get to where you want them to be if engagements take place even at relatively close ranges.
I originally said your onion lacked damage control. I was wrong except for how casually this last part was glanced over..... It won an entire World War, it deserves better attention.
Love the everspace music
From what I can tell, in missile-dominated settings, Agility always wins. Not that you can dodge a missile at the last second, but rather that you can shoot outside the enemy engagement range and then leave, and as long as your total VEHICLE delta-V greatly exceeds that if the enemy's missiles, their only real option is to fire missiles in every direction ahead of time, but still, this splits their forces and makes them easy pickings for point defense, while you can mass volley them with all of your missiles. A small advantage in TWR is worth a lot because it allows you to set your missiles on an intercept course while outside the MAR of your opponents' missiles and then break away. There is the potential your opponent breaks in the same direction desperate to close the gap and get a shot off, but it is only really an issue if you have very similar acceleration. And it's always possible that you don't fire your missiles on an intercept course so you're opponent can't do that trick or it's a serious concern. Again there might be some funny bait and switch tactics where a low acceleration fighter silently dumps a missile ahead of time and then the missile only activates once the high acceleration fighter unwittingly enters the MAR, so that these edge shots are punishable, but such techniques don't feel like they're a great solution to the problem. They just give a low acceleration fighter some hope of retaliation.
I haven't really fully wargamed the last tactic. It does seem that it you can deploy missiles undetectably that there might be some hope of equalizing against a more maneuverable opponent, say, one with 20% better acceleration. Still, it doesn't work for milligee acceleration battleships against multi-G fighters. And it also doesn't stop the high acceleration fighter from magdumping the low acceleration one, and then forcing it not to dodge while it performs the aforementioned anti-disengage bullrush. It also requires the low acceleration fighter to split its missiles between the trap and the rush, so that's basically a 50% reduction in firepower to get away with this tactic, and that's only when there are *small* differences in ship acceleration.
I think a better option when the difference in acceleration is large is to have fleet or carrier tactics, with the fighters acting as a defensive screen while the large ship acts as a tug that can prevent disengagemen and portable resupply facility, as well as potentially acting as a sort of sensor platform, with fighters there to prevent things from engaging the carrier without risk. There might also be a use for the capital ship to carry heavy beam weapons that could have some hope of outreaching a multi-stage chemfuel missile, and of course carrying stuff like landing craft, marines, ground vehicles, etc. The idea here is basically that the only way to attack the carrier is to go through the fighters, so that does mean the fighters need to operate far enough forward that nobody can shoot too many missiles at the carrier within the MAR unless they also engage the fighters. Considering MAR against a carrier might well be measured in hours and vast, more than planetary scale distances, the fighters would be operating way way way ahead. Like 100000 km or something. Enough that there might be noticeable light lag between their comms. If it were me, I would also station heavier fighters near the middle of the swarm and lightweight high thrust fighters at the edges to create the greatest threat to anyone who thinks they can pick something off. You also might want a secondary screen of fighters to stop anyone from trying to recommit. Honestly it might even be a good idea to have dedicated rescue and salvage vehicles on the carrier because fighters could end up being disabled or destroyed zooming away from the carrier at kilometers per second, sitting a good fraction of Earth moon distance from the mother craft. For example if a fighter gets mobility killed sitting 150,000 km away and zooming radially at 10 km/s, the minimum dV to rescue the pilot or any part of the vehicle at all ever is 20 km/s, possibly adding a fighter or parts of one to your weight mid flight. Of course if you want to reach the pilot within about 8 hours, that means you need to have a forward velocity of 5 km/s as well, and then cancel that velocity. So now we need 26.2 km/s. It's gonna be several more kms to get back to the carrier in any reasonable period.
It seems like having dedicated salvage and ambulance vehicles would be prudent in this situation. At least if you value the survival of pilots and the recycling or servicing of damaged ships. You honestly probably need a small NTR or NER on your ambulance and salvage vehicles too.
As I keep leaving these messages, I would love an episode that addresses the relative "scale" of technology of certain sci-fi technologies,
A "path" of development so to speak. Such as with weapons tech, would a logical progression be rail guns, then particle accelerators, then lasers? Or is there more to it than a straight progression?
Another example would be comparing sci-fi technologies based on their relative placement on a scale of, "near future," "future," and, "far future" tech,
An example of this would be nuclear power (current tech), fusion power (near-future tech), anti-matter (far-future tech), "tachyon" power (soft sci-fi tech).
Hello Spacedock. Could you explore numbers vs quality? Glass cannon vs heavy armored?
I never thought I'd live to see Shrek properly credited for his immense contributions to the star-defence industry.
This truly is a great day for Ogres everywhere.
I think you forgot the most outer shell of the onion: Intelligence!
If you're able to scout ahead and gather as much intelligence as possible, you can prepare, can take measures to avoid being spotted. In return, the power shifts into your side instead.
I would also like to think about ships that are (at least partially) made out of Nanocites. If your ship is 100% shape-shifting you could predict the trajectory of incoming projectiles and form holes in your vessel so they pass through. This would also cut down on armor somewhat since you can just order more nanomachines(, son!) to parts of the ship under fire and reinforce that way. This would also open up other interesting things like if the ship is under sustained fire for too long, too many nanobots could he destroyed and other vital parts like structure or habitable space might be disassembled to free up more nanocites. Think of the villain of Big Hero 6, he was ultimately defeated when he ran out of bots to command (I watched the movie a long time ago and might not remember right but there was a scene where he couldn't reach something because the tower of nanobots he was standing on just couldn't get higher). Another spacecraft with a similar idea to what I have in mind is the impromptu Replicator ship from Stargate SG-1. Sadly they didn't do much with it, it never really fought AFAIK and the Replicators prefer hijacking normal spaceships.
"Not Being There" was a real issue for the 1980's US program known as SDI (aka "Star Wars"): an anti-missile laser on orbit was typically modelled as having to shoot the laser over 1,000 km to reach a given target... trouble is that at sub-orbital speeds typical of the MIRVs/warheads involved, the targets were smaller than the distance they were likely to move between the firing of the laser and the impact of the beam, meaning any random jinking they did could easily result in the target "not being there" when the laser finally arrived. It would seem reasonable to assume that this SHOULD be an issue common to Sci-Fi combat... but often isn't taken into consideration. =)
I would have a great idea for a scene if I could make a space war movie. A new weapon is being prepared on a fighter/bomber for trails. But something goes wrong and the bomb detonated (would be technical). But because the ordinance was meant to heavily damage capital ships, did the explosion cause massive damage to the ship. Almost fully, quote: deleting the hanger bay and damaging the ship structure.
As the initial shock takes fades does the action begin. Fires spread fast and uncontrollable through the ship. Several crew are outside the ship in space suites, 1 is even thrown into the hanger of another ship. Its a race against time. The fire is spreading to 1 of the energy supply cores and to the main magazine. If either of these things goes, the ship's gone. All the while the fires have cut the ship in half with several crew on one end, and the rest on the other.
In the end, the fires don't reach the energy cores and because of some smart thinking did the crew throw out the ammunition before the fires got to the magazine. When the last fire is under control and put out will the ship get repairs to make it hyperspace worthy. Then receive an overhaul and upgrade from the Mark II Battlecarrier to the new Mark III battlecarrier design.
Dense smoke can also be a good countermeasure to lasers as it disrupts a direct path to the target and weakening its effectiveness. Think of light passing through a cloud.
Stargate Universe had a perfect description of how Shields in Sci-Fi generally work. Because Capital Ships never know what frequency the energy attacks are firing at, the shields cyucle through various frequencies rapidly taking the majority of the impact which is why even though you have shields you still take damage. Missiles would on the other hand impact he surface of a shield and depending on the shield type the debris from the missile might pass through into the ship causing damage.
Came for the survivability tips, stayed for the ONION
The actual defense onion is as follows:
1. Don't be seen.
2. If seen don't be locked onto.
3. If locked onto don't be fired on.
4. If fired on don't get hit.
5. If hit don't get penetrated.
6. If penetrated don't die.
That's it.
Hay Spacedock, I think you would find it an intresting/fun chalange to make a video, based on the shifting Tech balance of the Manticore/Haven War. In David Weber's "Honor Harrington" book series.
I’d be interested in E-warfare videos. Maybe also one on space fighters/strike craft if you haven’t already (can’t do a thorough search right now).