Fortress Command

vector math always threw me, thats why I was under the impression that one side is stationary and throwing missiles , and one side is moving and also throwing missiles.... that extra velocity is extra velocity, it's a bonus to whatever the missiles themselves put out.

If it's velocity towards the target, it's more range, if it's away then it's less range than usual. With enough of a velocity bump, you can launch missiles that are bumped in range, and anything that got fired back at you is easily dodged because you turned away the moment you fired.

Now just flipping end for end is no good, but turning anywhere from 15 to 75 degrees (same plane) is going to add quite a bit of displacement, and that's excluding the other directions you can add displacement after firing. A stationary fort would have to shotgun it's missiles to hope to cover every possible angle you might evade on, while you know it can move only a fraction of what you can displace and do it without the advantage of having built speed in any direction too boot.

Somtaaw wrote:Now just flipping end for end is no good, but turning anywhere from 15 to 75 degrees (same plane) is going to add quite a bit of displacement, and that's excluding the other directions you can add displacement after firing. A stationary fort would have to shotgun it's missiles to hope to cover every possible angle you might evade on, while you know it can move only a fraction of what you can displace and do it without the advantage of having built speed in any direction too boot.

No, because the fort can feed your maneuver vector to the missiles. So they will adjust their flight to intersect you and know where in space to look to lock you up. The reason you can move so far is because you are heading in that direction a long time, which means the fort can send guidance updates in plenty of time.

Somtaaw wrote:vector math always threw me, thats why I was under the impression that one side is stationary and throwing missiles , and one side is moving and also throwing missiles.... that extra velocity is extra velocity, it's a bonus to whatever the missiles themselves put out.

If it's velocity towards the target, it's more range, if it's away then it's less range than usual. With enough of a velocity bump, you can launch missiles that are bumped in range, and anything that got fired back at you is easily dodged because you turned away the moment you fired.

Now just flipping end for end is no good, but turning anywhere from 15 to 75 degrees (same plane) is going to add quite a bit of displacement, and that's excluding the other directions you can add displacement after firing. A stationary fort would have to shotgun it's missiles to hope to cover every possible angle you might evade on, while you know it can move only a fraction of what you can displace and do it without the advantage of having built speed in any direction too boot.

The problem is that that velocity that gave your missiles extra range in inevitably dragging you into the powered range of the fort's missiles (assuming both sets of missiles had similar resting continuous powered ranged).

Accelerating directly away from the forts is actually a best case. If you instead tried to build up a side vector over those 9 minutes you'd be 1.3 million km off to one side, but you'd still have been coasting inwards at 0.2c. So your range from the forts at the end of 9 minutes (when your max powered range missiles arrive) is now 62,0136,275 km. So your 4 minutes work pushed you 1.3 million km off to the side, but only 136,237 km further from the forts.
(For simplicity of calculation I assumed the original vector was pointed directly at the forts, but you can see what a small change it is)

You are now deeper within the fort's powered missile range as your missiled end their run as you would have been accelerating directly away. Then you'd have been about 1,300,000 km further from the forts instead of just 136,237 km.


And since you're in their powered missile range, and only managed to deflect their point of aim by about 1.2 degrees it's trivial for them to angle the missiles to an intercept course. As kzt said they don't need to "shotgun" anything because they can see you slowly building your side vector and have lots of time to angle the missiles slightly towards your new intercept point.

this makes my head hurt.... so it's not only BoMa that everyone suddenly acts like a moron, when they've got forts and the other side has only ships.

Second Yeltsin against Saladin (ok, yes like I admitted, the forts here are actually pretty useless with only contact missiles, no bubble wall, and crap technology), Fourth Yeltsin against Operation Dagger, BoMa...


all I can figure then, if it's so easy to not gain any effective range increase by trying for c-frac strikes, why do they keep using it as 'a threat we have to honor'?

Somtaaw wrote:this makes my head hurt.... so it's not only BoMa that everyone suddenly acts like a moron, when they've got forts and the other side has only ships.

Second Yeltsin against Saladin (ok, yes like I admitted, the forts here are actually pretty useless with only contact missiles, no bubble wall, and crap technology), Fourth Yeltsin against Operation Dagger, BoMa...


all I can figure then, if it's so easy to not gain any effective range increase by trying for c-frac strikes, why do they keep using it as 'a threat we have to honor'?

Because c-frac attacks are different. You're launching on fixed balistic courses from way out far enough that you do have time to crab your way clear of their defensive fire.
But the flip side is that you better be firing at a absolutely known predictable orbital target; while it's out past the limb of the planet, and be absolutely accurate or your going to achieve an accidental Eridani Edict violation.

To get an SDM to achieve a 0.9c burnout you need to launch from about 188,800 km/s; which is going to take a pre-war SD something a little over 14 hours of 90% acceleration to achieve. Oh, and a 4 lighthour running start.
And you now want the missiles to burn out well before they enter the enemy's defensive zone because the only way they can be practically tracked is via their (FTL) drive emissions. So you need them to burn out far enough back that the enemy doesn't have a good lock on them; then they come screaming in almost as fast as the radar returns coming off of them and slice through defenses designed to deal with only vastly slower terminal velocities. But they've got no ability to adjust course, and they burn out before their onboard seeker can likely even see their target - so they're only useful against complely immobile object. (Like the pre-war grayson forts, or most space stations)

It's a threat, and hard to stop if you give someone a day or so un-harassed to set up for it. But not a threat to your naval forces or modern forts - just to actual orbital structures; with zero ability to dodge even given many hours of warning.

Somtaaw wrote: Fourth Yeltsin against Operation Dagger, BoMa...

all I can figure then, if it's so easy to not gain any effective range increase by trying for c-frac strikes, why do they keep using it as 'a threat we have to honor'?

Grayson had extremely fragile orbital infrastructure, with critical life-sustaining platforms mixed with military manufacturing complexes. Which is why they moved all the mil tech stuff away from the planet later.