locarno24 said:
What is the range of the Gravatic sensors.
Not enough, clearly.
You could postulate a sensor type which can detect a vessel at warp from much further away.
The only effective ship-to-ship weapon is, I suspect, going to be something warp-capable itself. Essentially, you've entered the realm of drone and anti-drone-drone missile engagements.
Ok lets pop the lid on this can of worms then, its a quiet afternoon :lol:
Warp 1 is basically the speed of the slowest target, warp 2 is more the sort of speed most players and the slow bulk ships are going to be doing. Warp 4 is your fast liner type speed and warp 6 is the truly fast stuff.
Now warp 1 (the slow stuff) is moving at 169.52 times light. Or 50,800,000 Km/Sec.
To get one minutes warning of the approach of a warp 1 craft would require a warp detector range of 3,000,800,000 Km. One minute isn’t much time to power up your own warp drives and move to a position where you can chase or attack. Your detection area is a sphere; the target could move across one edge and be gone in seconds even with that radius of sensor.
Now you can park at the mid point of the optimal flight path from A to B, and have a crack crew on battle stations all the time, and have your engines powered up ready for full warp speed in seconds. Or you could be pirates not the state navy.
A simple 10 minute warning would require sensors with a range of 30,000,800,000Km. We are getting a lot of noughts on these numbers.
Now as to shooting them down.
Light speed weapons are out since you are well above light speed.
Warp Torpedoes or missiles as Lorcarno24 said.
To fire a warp speed missile or torpedo you need to be able to build warp drives tiny enough to fit into the casing of the micro craft. They can be cheaper designs with a drive life of an hour or less but you are still looking at something coming it at 1Dton for the Torpedoes and under half a Dton for missiles.
The Torpedoes need to be fast enough to catch a warp 6 ship, the missiles need to be fast enough to catch a torpedo. So warp 10-12 at the top end. How expensive is that going to be. A 100Dton craft with Warp 2 pays 10,meg for its drive which comes in at 10Dtons. A drive a tenth of that size, is it going to cost one tenth the price or is miniaturising something that small going to make it more expensive.
Let us say for example that a 1Dton warp 2 torpedo drive costs a tenth the price of a warp1 scout drive. Mcr1. The unit is also designed to burn out after a short time but must also be made of components that are reliable enough to maintain the warp field in flight and hit the target. Is the enough to reduce the price to a tenth again, its up to the ref but I doubt it, still let us assume you can reduce the price down to a mere Kcr100. This is warp 2, we need to increase it to warp 10 say, so that is a five fold increase making the Torpedo drive cost Kcr500. Add in the warhead, guidance, sensors etc and you are well past the half a meg mark.
Not a problem for your navy with big budgets. Massively more problematic for your pirates. When you are firing several million credits of ordinance at a ship you need to take the ship as well, getting a million credits of cargo from a small freighter that cost you 3 million to stop is going to put your pirates out of business very fast.
Still let us imagine that the costs are much lower. Warp torpedoes at Kcr100 each or Kcr50 each. Defence missiles at Kcr5 each.
We now have pirates firing at ships and ships firing defensive missiles all the while being in warp. Insanely dangerous if you take any sort of damage that interrupts your warp field for even a second, a flickering warp field dumps your ship or part of it back to real space for a thousandth of a second and its goodbye ship, hello plasma flare and dust cloud.
So the pirates fire a torpedo or two at the freighter, if it’s a big Corp job it will have a point defence set up and some anti warp torpedo missiles on board, even players may have a few in a turret. Say you get a torpedo through and do some damage, enough to drop the ship out of warp and back to normal space, if it doesn’t disintegrate, you then have to find it. If it is totally crippled you can turn around and go back to where it left warp, plot it’s most likely course and go find it. If it retained movement or you are not exactly sure of its point of entering real space every second by which you delay your own return to real space puts you 50,800,000Km away from the target.
I’m not saying it cannot be done, navies would develop the techniques and ex navy types can use the less advanced pirate tech to try the same thing. Its going to be a bit hit and miss though.
Alternatively you could have a warp torpedo with a massive Gravatic field generator that burns out in seconds but mimics the gravity well of a moon acting like the 1000D limit and dropping the warp ship into real space. Still going to be expensive even if you go for the really cheap ones.
Another point to consider. Warp capable torpedoes and Missiles requires miniature warp drives. If a 1Dton unit can drive a torpedo to warp then a 5Dton unit can drive a 50Dton small craft to warp. If the cost reduces in line with size that gives you cheaper warp capable craft. A 2Dton unit costing Mcr2 could drive a 20Dton warp launch at warp 2.
You are entering the realms of Star trek with the warp capable shuttles and runabouts that could be used to make FTL runs to other systems with just a few people or a small amount of cargo on board. Or star wars with Warp capable single man fighters.
If you have warp speed missiles you also have warp speed small craft. Fighters than can make their own warp runs over short distances, a carrier drops them off a light hour out, they warp in, attack, warp out and are gone before the light speed signature of the carrier even arrives.
You are moving more towards the Star Wars idea where even small craft can do FTL runs. Its not going to change the dynamics of trade but you could have players being with a squadron of ex fleet FTL capable fighters maybe with one of them flying an old 50Dton warp shuttle with 10Dtons of cargo and room for some passengers (to carry the loot from the raid). :lol:
