Z
Zack
Queen's Slave, 188604 Starport.
"JAAAACK! LETS GO!" Uso shouted, sounding quite excited as she adjusted her slim space suit. "You ready to learn some shit!?"
"We are conducting the space defense training lesson today." Vier said. "Jack if you could..."
Before Vier could finish, Uso would just drop her space helmet and just walk off, having lost intrest in doing things that weren't 'punching someone while in space'.
"... come over here we can begin. Do you remember what Uso covered earlier regarding the Onion method and how to approach combat?"
As Vier spoke, a single point would be displayed on the display table of the Queen's slave, text hovering below it would simply read 'station'.
"Also keep in mind that for this exersize, we will be approximating ship designs. Do not feel constrained to using only what we have in store, as we can build equipment to spec later."
"Yeah detected, seen, hit, penetrated, and dead. Simple enough. Not that much different from a ground engagement in theory. The one witht the coolest head, and quickest minds tend to win in any case." Jack said as he stood there in his power armor looking over the display.
Vier nodded,
"We must start with detection. You will be unable to defend your space station if you are unable to detect hostile actions against it. In the large scale, you will need to develop intelligence sharing capabilities... not just with myself, USO, Ragnarok, and the Skyguard, but with our partners and allies as well.
Closer to your station, you will need assets that can detect the approach of starships, as well as disrupt the detection for opponents. Our formations usually include U1s spread out 20 to 30 light years from the point we are looking to protect. Combining their FTL sensor packages and FTL communications we can determine if something is approaching the station, and its FTL exit point. These ships can also be used to disrupt attempts to observe the station from extreme range.
As we will likely be positioning your station in deep space, outside of Anti-FTL zones, early detection, and the few seconds of early warning it provides, will allow you to FTL your station away from an attack before it has an opportunity to materialize." Vier explained.
"Wouldn't we get early detection warnings from allied controlled space as well, and keeping a manned detection system seems like it would take a lot from ou forces here. Why not comm bouys, or small satelite sensor arrays arranged in a geosynchronis network?" Jack asked, as he scratched his chin thinking over the described arrangement. He was trying to question setup, as much as he was to trying to figure limitations, or possible improvements.
"Possibly, however we can not trust that their warnings will arrive in time. Since your station will not be inside of an FTL-exclusion zone, it can be attacked by a ship as soon as that ship exits FTL. This means the time to react from detection of the hostile, to when the station is destroyed, could be as low as seconds.
We do not use comm bouys only because we do not have a design for those avalible at this instant. The U1 is used not because it is optimal, but because it can go to the required location, be remotely piloted, and carries gear that will work for this job. Also, the defensive sensor network would need to be spread over light-years, meaning it will need to ether be dropped off by an FTL tug, or have its own FTL system." Vier explained.
"Good point. What about station defenses themselves, turrets, point defense, capital turrets, and countermeasures? Some of my people have been passing around a concept for a shield matrix for the station." Jack said pulling out his datapad.
"In order." Vier clarified, not wanting to talk about turrets and weapons until they've gotten to that part of the Onion model. "Of course moving the station will not be a suitable response to every threat. You will need shielding systems as well as weapons of various grades in order to ward off or mitigate smaller scale threats.
With detection covered. We need to have a plan in place to keep your station from being seen during an attack. While you can jump-away we also need a plan in place for keeping the end-point of the jump hidden. For this I would suggest a similar setup to the station defense, with sensor and FTL-sensor jammer units stationed around a wide area so that your station has a location to jump to.
This also covers not getting hit somewhat, as the station itself is too large and slow to effectively dodge incoming fire from extreme range."
Vier would point to a representation of one of her armed C5 drones being escorted by several cargo versions of the drone.
"A possible application of your shield system would be to equip it on cargo-ships." She explained, showing the C5 opening fire on some unseen target, and that target returning fire. The incoming beam strikes being absorbed by the cargo C5s that stepped in the path of the shot. "Basic drone ships that can also be used for transport can be re-purposed during combat to act as ablative armor. Body-blocking for more important ships should be something you keep in mind when developing your work craft."
"Similarly, if the station can be hit from extreme range, then it is unlikely that the station's weapon systems will be able to effectively engage a target at extreme range. While we have detection covered around the station with the sensor bouys, we also need to include mobile fire power that can respond to a threat. COnsider that we already have detected the enemy, and know where their FTL exit point is. An FTL equipped ship will be able to make a short jump and immediately fire at the FTL exit point as the enemy ship arrives. As the enemy has only just arrived, their sensors will not have had time to see our ships.
A properly exicuted leapfrog attack like this will lead to destruction of hostile targets with minimal threat to our own ships."
Vier would then give Jack a moment to process the information.
"I'm not a stranger to that tactic. Sacrifice a few smaller assets to protect the main larger asset. This whole model is basically a way of developing countermeasures, and defenses. Defending something as large as a station, is going to be a nightmare." Jack said scratching his head, " So it basically comes down to either try to remain hidden and get your ass out of there, or neutralize the threat before they can be a threat, which are dictated by time of detection, and size of opposing force."
"As for using cargo drones for armor, with something this big, we're either going to need thousands of them. Or we use something quite bigger, as your "shield" must always be a proportionat size to what your protecting." Jack continued as he watched the vid again before looking back at the display of the station model.
"Defense in depth. We will need to wrap multiple layers of protection around the station, including a defensive fleet of ships that can respond to threats." Vier explained, "We will also need to plan for various scenarios and develop specific countermeasures to them, though we can deal with highly specific details later. You will also need to operate a large transport and mining fleet from this facility, so it makes sense to have these ships be able to pull double-duty."
Things seemed to be going well, Jack was quite receptive to what Vier was laying out, which was pleasing for her.
"There is much room for adaption and improvization in the remaining parts of the model. This includes things like opaque shields to block direct-targeting and various missile deployment methods for best results. However what I would like you to consider for now is weaponry. Do you know why my drones largely use lasers as opposed to other weapon systems?"
"Larger ammo capacity, high damage output, and better accuracy compared to conventional ballistic weapon systems?" Jack asked with his best guess as he actually hadn't ever used energy based weapon platforms before.
"Lowest time to target," Vier replied, "At the usual maximum engagement range, your targeting data will already be delayed by 3 seconds. You then have to determine where the enemy will be, and fire your weapon at them. With a laser the travel time for the beam would only be another three seconds. With a wide angle beam, you can provide a high hit probability and immidiately force the enemy to react. If the enemy is using a weapon system such as a particle beam, rail gun, or missiles, the laser will always hit the target first and disrupt their firing and tracking systems.
By spreading the beam over the enemy's hull the beam will be doing less damage than a convetional attack, however this assures that the strike will hit sensitive areas of the ship such as sensors, radiators, and other systems that are impossible to armor. Flash-frying the insides of ships that have windows is also a plus.
This is not to say that railguns and particle beams have no place in warfare, just that you should consider such factors beyond basic fire control when selecting your weapon systems.
"So frontline offensive should be laser weaponry in the initial attack followed by the heavier ordinance to finish. Leave em blind then drop the hammer as my old drill sergant would say." Jack said reminising slightly to a time when things might have been considered good.
"Anymore on weapons or are we on to the next thing, because I'm following your lead on this." Jack asked looking forward to what was next.
"We have one last common topic before we start getting into specifics. Namely detection of enemy starships. Though ships have a variety of stealth systems, there is no effective means of concealing a starship in space long term.
Provided a ship has rendered itself invisible, it still must move. To move it must obey physics. It will either be exerting a gravitational force to propell itself, or it will be using reaction mass such as rocket exhaust which is highly visible to thermal imaging.
The limited ability for stealth to be employed exsists in extreme range. Jamming FTL sensors can create an FTL sensor deadzone that is not easily detectable. Of course once the light from your ship reaches the enemy sensors you will be detected. Explotation of this effect is a very situational move though I would like you to keep it in mind."
"Would the ECS system under development get around the detection due to visible light?" Jack asked remember the system since it was in development for the Revenant power armor.
"Visible perhaps, but consider that the ECS system produces a non-zero amount of heat. This makes it contrast with the cosmic background temperature. In space, on a thermal camera, it will be an extremely bright point against a dark background.
Naturally, planetary operations are a different enviroment with additional considerations." Vier explained. "There is enough clutter that emissions can be effectively blended into the background as to be undetectable when inside of a planet's atmosphere."
"Well damn, just when you think you found multiple applications, and physics flips a bird." Jack said with a sigh.
"This concludes the basics," Vier stated, "If you wish to continue, we can get into specifics as they arise. You should take some time to consider how you want to lay out your defenses, then we can Red Team your setup to improve upon it."
"Available ships, and their class would be nice. It's always good to know what resources you have to work with." He answered looking over each display in turn with more attention.
"Lets start with what we have now, and how you would use them. If there is custom equipment or designs you want we can discuss setting those up." Vier explained.
"Yeah about 95% of our fleet is modified freighters, and only a few of them at that. I mentioned before we had designs for new ships, and actually designed for to handle combat. We have an assault frigate meant to be fast and hit hard, as well as a strike cruiser armed with more punch and capable of pursuit as well. I forward you the data, though mind you we have a couple other designs in the works." Jack said swiping data files, and compiling information packets for upload.
*Bloop*
*bloop bloop... bloop*
The display infront of them would start making noises each time a file was uploaded to Vier. She would quickly process the data and give Jack some representations to work with on the display.
"How would you deploy these ships to defend the station?" Vier asked.
"JAAAACK! LETS GO!" Uso shouted, sounding quite excited as she adjusted her slim space suit. "You ready to learn some shit!?"
"We are conducting the space defense training lesson today." Vier said. "Jack if you could..."
Before Vier could finish, Uso would just drop her space helmet and just walk off, having lost intrest in doing things that weren't 'punching someone while in space'.
"... come over here we can begin. Do you remember what Uso covered earlier regarding the Onion method and how to approach combat?"
As Vier spoke, a single point would be displayed on the display table of the Queen's slave, text hovering below it would simply read 'station'.
"Also keep in mind that for this exersize, we will be approximating ship designs. Do not feel constrained to using only what we have in store, as we can build equipment to spec later."
"Yeah detected, seen, hit, penetrated, and dead. Simple enough. Not that much different from a ground engagement in theory. The one witht the coolest head, and quickest minds tend to win in any case." Jack said as he stood there in his power armor looking over the display.
Vier nodded,
"We must start with detection. You will be unable to defend your space station if you are unable to detect hostile actions against it. In the large scale, you will need to develop intelligence sharing capabilities... not just with myself, USO, Ragnarok, and the Skyguard, but with our partners and allies as well.
Closer to your station, you will need assets that can detect the approach of starships, as well as disrupt the detection for opponents. Our formations usually include U1s spread out 20 to 30 light years from the point we are looking to protect. Combining their FTL sensor packages and FTL communications we can determine if something is approaching the station, and its FTL exit point. These ships can also be used to disrupt attempts to observe the station from extreme range.
As we will likely be positioning your station in deep space, outside of Anti-FTL zones, early detection, and the few seconds of early warning it provides, will allow you to FTL your station away from an attack before it has an opportunity to materialize." Vier explained.
"Wouldn't we get early detection warnings from allied controlled space as well, and keeping a manned detection system seems like it would take a lot from ou forces here. Why not comm bouys, or small satelite sensor arrays arranged in a geosynchronis network?" Jack asked, as he scratched his chin thinking over the described arrangement. He was trying to question setup, as much as he was to trying to figure limitations, or possible improvements.
"Possibly, however we can not trust that their warnings will arrive in time. Since your station will not be inside of an FTL-exclusion zone, it can be attacked by a ship as soon as that ship exits FTL. This means the time to react from detection of the hostile, to when the station is destroyed, could be as low as seconds.
We do not use comm bouys only because we do not have a design for those avalible at this instant. The U1 is used not because it is optimal, but because it can go to the required location, be remotely piloted, and carries gear that will work for this job. Also, the defensive sensor network would need to be spread over light-years, meaning it will need to ether be dropped off by an FTL tug, or have its own FTL system." Vier explained.
"Good point. What about station defenses themselves, turrets, point defense, capital turrets, and countermeasures? Some of my people have been passing around a concept for a shield matrix for the station." Jack said pulling out his datapad.
"In order." Vier clarified, not wanting to talk about turrets and weapons until they've gotten to that part of the Onion model. "Of course moving the station will not be a suitable response to every threat. You will need shielding systems as well as weapons of various grades in order to ward off or mitigate smaller scale threats.
With detection covered. We need to have a plan in place to keep your station from being seen during an attack. While you can jump-away we also need a plan in place for keeping the end-point of the jump hidden. For this I would suggest a similar setup to the station defense, with sensor and FTL-sensor jammer units stationed around a wide area so that your station has a location to jump to.
This also covers not getting hit somewhat, as the station itself is too large and slow to effectively dodge incoming fire from extreme range."
Vier would point to a representation of one of her armed C5 drones being escorted by several cargo versions of the drone.
"A possible application of your shield system would be to equip it on cargo-ships." She explained, showing the C5 opening fire on some unseen target, and that target returning fire. The incoming beam strikes being absorbed by the cargo C5s that stepped in the path of the shot. "Basic drone ships that can also be used for transport can be re-purposed during combat to act as ablative armor. Body-blocking for more important ships should be something you keep in mind when developing your work craft."
"Similarly, if the station can be hit from extreme range, then it is unlikely that the station's weapon systems will be able to effectively engage a target at extreme range. While we have detection covered around the station with the sensor bouys, we also need to include mobile fire power that can respond to a threat. COnsider that we already have detected the enemy, and know where their FTL exit point is. An FTL equipped ship will be able to make a short jump and immediately fire at the FTL exit point as the enemy ship arrives. As the enemy has only just arrived, their sensors will not have had time to see our ships.
A properly exicuted leapfrog attack like this will lead to destruction of hostile targets with minimal threat to our own ships."
Vier would then give Jack a moment to process the information.
"I'm not a stranger to that tactic. Sacrifice a few smaller assets to protect the main larger asset. This whole model is basically a way of developing countermeasures, and defenses. Defending something as large as a station, is going to be a nightmare." Jack said scratching his head, " So it basically comes down to either try to remain hidden and get your ass out of there, or neutralize the threat before they can be a threat, which are dictated by time of detection, and size of opposing force."
"As for using cargo drones for armor, with something this big, we're either going to need thousands of them. Or we use something quite bigger, as your "shield" must always be a proportionat size to what your protecting." Jack continued as he watched the vid again before looking back at the display of the station model.
"Defense in depth. We will need to wrap multiple layers of protection around the station, including a defensive fleet of ships that can respond to threats." Vier explained, "We will also need to plan for various scenarios and develop specific countermeasures to them, though we can deal with highly specific details later. You will also need to operate a large transport and mining fleet from this facility, so it makes sense to have these ships be able to pull double-duty."
Things seemed to be going well, Jack was quite receptive to what Vier was laying out, which was pleasing for her.
"There is much room for adaption and improvization in the remaining parts of the model. This includes things like opaque shields to block direct-targeting and various missile deployment methods for best results. However what I would like you to consider for now is weaponry. Do you know why my drones largely use lasers as opposed to other weapon systems?"
"Larger ammo capacity, high damage output, and better accuracy compared to conventional ballistic weapon systems?" Jack asked with his best guess as he actually hadn't ever used energy based weapon platforms before.
"Lowest time to target," Vier replied, "At the usual maximum engagement range, your targeting data will already be delayed by 3 seconds. You then have to determine where the enemy will be, and fire your weapon at them. With a laser the travel time for the beam would only be another three seconds. With a wide angle beam, you can provide a high hit probability and immidiately force the enemy to react. If the enemy is using a weapon system such as a particle beam, rail gun, or missiles, the laser will always hit the target first and disrupt their firing and tracking systems.
By spreading the beam over the enemy's hull the beam will be doing less damage than a convetional attack, however this assures that the strike will hit sensitive areas of the ship such as sensors, radiators, and other systems that are impossible to armor. Flash-frying the insides of ships that have windows is also a plus.
This is not to say that railguns and particle beams have no place in warfare, just that you should consider such factors beyond basic fire control when selecting your weapon systems.
"So frontline offensive should be laser weaponry in the initial attack followed by the heavier ordinance to finish. Leave em blind then drop the hammer as my old drill sergant would say." Jack said reminising slightly to a time when things might have been considered good.
"Anymore on weapons or are we on to the next thing, because I'm following your lead on this." Jack asked looking forward to what was next.
"We have one last common topic before we start getting into specifics. Namely detection of enemy starships. Though ships have a variety of stealth systems, there is no effective means of concealing a starship in space long term.
Provided a ship has rendered itself invisible, it still must move. To move it must obey physics. It will either be exerting a gravitational force to propell itself, or it will be using reaction mass such as rocket exhaust which is highly visible to thermal imaging.
The limited ability for stealth to be employed exsists in extreme range. Jamming FTL sensors can create an FTL sensor deadzone that is not easily detectable. Of course once the light from your ship reaches the enemy sensors you will be detected. Explotation of this effect is a very situational move though I would like you to keep it in mind."
"Would the ECS system under development get around the detection due to visible light?" Jack asked remember the system since it was in development for the Revenant power armor.
"Visible perhaps, but consider that the ECS system produces a non-zero amount of heat. This makes it contrast with the cosmic background temperature. In space, on a thermal camera, it will be an extremely bright point against a dark background.
Naturally, planetary operations are a different enviroment with additional considerations." Vier explained. "There is enough clutter that emissions can be effectively blended into the background as to be undetectable when inside of a planet's atmosphere."
"Well damn, just when you think you found multiple applications, and physics flips a bird." Jack said with a sigh.
"This concludes the basics," Vier stated, "If you wish to continue, we can get into specifics as they arise. You should take some time to consider how you want to lay out your defenses, then we can Red Team your setup to improve upon it."
"Available ships, and their class would be nice. It's always good to know what resources you have to work with." He answered looking over each display in turn with more attention.
"Lets start with what we have now, and how you would use them. If there is custom equipment or designs you want we can discuss setting those up." Vier explained.
"Yeah about 95% of our fleet is modified freighters, and only a few of them at that. I mentioned before we had designs for new ships, and actually designed for to handle combat. We have an assault frigate meant to be fast and hit hard, as well as a strike cruiser armed with more punch and capable of pursuit as well. I forward you the data, though mind you we have a couple other designs in the works." Jack said swiping data files, and compiling information packets for upload.
*Bloop*
*bloop bloop... bloop*
The display infront of them would start making noises each time a file was uploaded to Vier. She would quickly process the data and give Jack some representations to work with on the display.
"How would you deploy these ships to defend the station?" Vier asked.
