Pls hndl, thx.

http://gizmodo.com/5426453/the-physics-of-space-battles

fun article... but unrelated to the devs...
I mean, how the hell does the ship I fly strafe? Answer: I don't know, and I don't care.

I like the bit about explosions. Stupid flare monkeys.

Aye, but one thing they forgot was that explosive weapons aren't just pressure, they're usually fragmentation devices which, if you think about it, would be especially devastating in space... although there will never be a sort of space equivalent of a depth charge. I think, however, that enemy space ships would be incredibly hard to neutralize. Before flying over a target bombers would depressurize so explosive decompression wouldn't be a problem if they had a hull puncture from flak, but with terrestrial planes you can always take out a wing and watch a plane spiral downward. This wouldn't, thanks to free-fall, be a problem in space and, assuming that a ship would depressurize and the crew would put on space suits before entering battle, you would have to completely disintegrate a ship or kill/capture the crew itself to neutralize it. This is partly the reason why the idea of robot controlled space ships would be particularly deadly, for those of you who have read The Naked Sun.

I didn't read the entire article, yet, but that's just my particular theory about space battles.

Well, yes, a ship would be difficult to completely deatomize, but that isn't generally the goal. All you have to do to take a small spacecraft out of the fight is disable its engine and watch it spin off into infinity. This is roughly comparable to taking out a wing or engine on an aircraft, and not any more difficult to do.

You could always melt the enemy ship into slag and just not be in the way of the resultant projectile.

I don't think just cutting the engines will be enough to get rid of a space ship. For two reasons: the ship will probably have lots of little thrusters going in all directions and even if all the thrusters are taken out, then the ship crew could pull off a Das Boot style improvised recovery by, say, jettisoning a whole bunch of stuff and stripping their armor and then using their weapons' recoil to move their ship back into the direction of the battle. So you take out both the weapons and thrusters or kill the crew, I say. Killing the crew sounds like an easier method.

Interesting read, Lecter, thanks. Will post a more intricate reply later (this is a place-holder).

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3t.html

It is a long read, but it is based on proper physics. Also some insights in the other articles in there. If you like this stuff, the site reads like porn... it does for me.

If you like this stuff, the site reads like porn... it does for me.


Reads like an epileptic seizure to me.