How to Survive a Space Battle (Shields, Armor, Point Defence)

Spacedock delves into the various means of surviving a space battle in this week's thought piece.

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[Spacedock]

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[SamnissArandeen]

I've always found it far easier to explain from the POV of the hypothetical enemy.

- There's nothing there.
- It blends into the background.
- We know something's there but can't tell what it is.
- We can falsely identify what it is.
- We can positively identify it but can't target it.
- We can target it but can't hit it.
- Our shots are doing no damage.
- Our shots are doing manageable damage.
- We have scored a mission kill.

[kazmark_gl]

Unironically the Survivability Onion is one of my favorite infographics

[viddarkking]

Honestly to this day Galactica's holy wall of flack is still my favorite defence system from a pure aesthetic and in universe perspective.

[TheArklyte]

It's a pity that we don't see engineeringand damage control teams in sci-fi more often. Imagine plots that can be made with teams racing to lost ship to save the crew while another ship tries to use the hulk as a way to conceal itself thus putting the people in danger or boarding partially destroyed combat vessel to bring its weapons back online to even the odds all the while battle is raging around? Nope, can't have it😅

[ditzydoo]

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.

[cmedtheuniverseofcmed]

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.

[jimmyseaver]

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.

[Shadeem]

special mention for the USS Defiant for having shields and ablative armour

[SNPERx]

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.

[Comicsluvr]

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.

[kiwiwarlord]

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.

[jonumine]

The "Don't be there" is more specific to SURVIVE, not specifically to win a combat or encounter, even if that means escaping or retreating.
But can also count as outranging your opponent, can't be hit if you're out of range.

[rainmanslim]

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.

[hughsmith]

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.

[Blaze]

As an annex to armor, sometimes having more armor will actually make the effect of weapons worse. For example, a kinetic penetrator hitting barely any armor has a real chance of going straight through, overpenetrating and delivering almost none of its energy to the target. Similarly but in reverse, if a particle beam weapon hits heavy armor it will not go through, but it will instead produce braking-radiation, which are gamma rays that are shot out in all directions as the particles are stopped, which will promptly give the crew inside the armor acute radiation poisoning while frying all the electronics.

So with the extreme energies involved in space combat, you need to have really good armor on the places where you think you'll get hit, and none at all in all the other places. This also reduces the mass penalty somewhat. If your ships are relativistic, you'll probably need at least a front-facing strike plate anyways because specks of dust hitting your craft at 0.4 c will have the energy of a small cannon round.

[tymoteuszkazubski]

Stowing atmosphere when rigging for combat makes sense as it deals with most fires and reduces penetration impact.

[FearlessSon]

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.

[flfydragon]

Something I would like to add is that this onion is a great way to do passive worldbuilding.
Ship design follows a culture and you can use aspects of the cultures you're talking about to reflect on how their ships are designed and what they prioritize.

[anon_y_mousse]

I like shields. We may or may not ever invent such a thing for spaceships, but if we do, that's what I'd want.