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Has anyone ever suggested modifying spinal cannon rounds to include some terminal guidance?

What about case shot?

Either of those, or even both, would drastically improve hit rates. Combining the case with the Geth impact-fusion warheads from Incompatible System would be terrifying to most ME tech civilisations. Without requiring a whole new ship design and Geth-level coordination to operate, too.

Edit: cased not canister. Thing that pops when close enough to the enemy.
 
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Somebody wants a great missile, using Taylor's tech? I would focus on stealth: EM spectrum? Squealer's stealth tech. Radiant EM spectrum, would be minimal with a GravTech drive, and EM stealth could eliminate the rest. What is left, detection wise; gravity waves due to mass? I wonder how well GravTech technology could manage that?

How do you intersect a missile that you cannot detect? Frankly its yield is the least of the issues, go ahead and use the S9 missile's solution.
 
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mp3.1415player said:
Making the missile artificially more massive won't make it harder to kill, though. It'll still blow up fine if you actually hit it, and if it's massive enough its own gravity well will tend to attract a near miss... While making the missile Very Fucking Fast™ is going to reduce the likelihood of a successful interdiction by a massive amount, especially if you make it low mass enough you can have it jinking around like a flea on meth on the way in :)

And unguided missiles are even worse than very fast rocks, in my view. Based on this sort of thing, humans by the time of canon ME should have absolutely slaughtered the Turians unless they were completely overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Remember that back in the early 1970s we had designs for missiles that could accelerate at over 400g as last ditch interceptors for incoming ballistic missiles. That one, the HiBex, wasn't actually fielded, but the Sprint missiles which accelerated at over 100g was, and it was doing this on chemical rockets... And it used a small neutron bomb as the payload, too.

200 years of development of this sort of crazy weapons system should have produced some fairly impressive stuff
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I'm not disagreeing with you at all. From the codex entries, it sounds like somehow the mass effect field is both making the rocket slower due to increased mass, and more durable again due to it's increased mass. And this makes no sense. You are in space. There is no atmospheric drag. Once the rocket is up to speed, changing it's mass should not change it's momentum. Nor should increasing it's mass be able to affect it's final momentum. It should continuously be accelerating as long as the propulsion method is in use. There's a reason why NASA uses short duration controlled burns to adjust trajectory. There's a reason a rocket doesn't actually fire it's engines the entire trip when going to the moon or Mars. Or even when going to the international space station. The thrusters are only needed to escape gravity, adjust course, and decelerate.

EDIT: Also, I think ME1 does mention that the Turians got slaughtered when the Earth military forces counter attacked, having to call in overwhelming numbers to overwhelm the human military... and the Asari stepping in to use diplomancy (and probably the power of Sexy Blue Alien Women) the situation. The initial "win" in the war was the the Turian ships attacking civilian ships and a mostly defenseless colony.
 
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FaerieKnight79 said:
I'm not disagreeing with you at all. From the codex entries, it sounds like somehow the mass effect field is both making the rocket slower due to increased mass, and more durable again due to it's increased mass. And this makes no sense. You are in space. There is no atmospheric drag. Once the rocket is up to speed, changing it's mass should not change it's momentum. Nor should increasing it's mass be able to affect it's final momentum. It should continuously be accelerating as long as the propulsion method is in use. There's a reason why NASA uses short duration controlled burns to adjust trajectory. There's a reason a rocket doesn't actually fire it's engines the entire trip when going to the moon or Mars. Or even when going to the international space station. The thrusters are only needed to escape gravity, adjust course, and decelerate.
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1 fiction tends to forget that Space has very little drag.
2 it could be argued that the missile conserves kinetic energy, thus speeding up and slowing down when its mass changes.
3 increased mass means damage has to displace more mass i guess
Eagle-1 said:
So, you guys are saying that ME ship-to-ship combat is akin to WW2 casemated tank destroyers trying to hit eachother and maneuver at same time?
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On ice
 
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FaerieKnight79 said:
I'm not disagreeing with you at all. From the codex entries, it sounds like somehow the mass effect field is both making the rocket slower due to increased mass, and more durable again due to it's increased mass. And this makes no sense. You are in space. There is no atmospheric drag. Once the rocket is up to speed, changing it's mass should not change it's momentum. Nor should increasing it's mass be able to affect it's final momentum. It should continuously be accelerating as long as the propulsion method is in use. There's a reason why NASA uses short duration controlled burns to adjust trajectory. There's a reason a rocket doesn't actually fire it's engines the entire trip when going to the moon or Mars. Or even when going to the international space station. The thrusters are only needed to escape gravity, adjust course, and decelerate.
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Admittedly a combat missile would probably thrust a larger percentage of the total distance, depending on fuel load and distance to target, but that is because it always intends to impact the target and a bit more velocity when it hits is just going to improve its performance at its job with just about any warhead.

Although in that case the only reason to ramp up the field any real degree of time before impact is a mechanical limitation of the field itself, but since there are people sized shield generators with a fast ramp time and these are anti-space-ship missiles I would assume they don't need the full flight time to build up the effect.
Also that would mean that they are a weapon system with a minimum range that is rather notable as it takes a noticeable time to ramp up.
 
FaerieKnight79 said:
There's a reason a rocket doesn't actually fire it's engines the entire trip when going to the moon or Mars.
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And that reason is that even the Sea Dragon couldn't carry enough fuel to do it with a conventional engine. A lot of speculative mission design has been thrown around for "what if we really could accelerate at 1g the entire trip?" Just in case someone comes up with a practical engine design with that kind of output. It turns out that Mars is a couple of weeks away like that and you don't have to worry about muscle and bone degeneration except at the flip over in the middle. Which is negligible anyway. NASA would love to be able to do it.

 
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I'm very tempted to write a fairly short ME story based on what would happen if the canon ME scenario ran into humans who'd kept the Cold War mentality going until that point... Not sure how they'd have actually survived doing this, but we can put it down to plot armor :D

Because that would in a way be grimly hilarious; Turians decide to 'punish' the new species for breaking a law that doesn't apply to them, take out a civilian science vessel, and try to invade Shanxi... Only to run into massive amounts of anti-shipping missile fire that takes out most of their drop ships with pinpoint neutron warheads, ground based lasers that punch holes in the capital ships, thousands of satellite weapons that were at one point aimed at each other but now are all aimed at them, and if any of them manage to get to the ground, they find the crazy apes are firing nuclear mortars at them! With neutron bomb warheads small enough to fit several in a backpack. And chemical weapons, and Spirits know what else.

And once all the invaders are dead, the humans go looking for where they came from, with an eye towards making sure they never come back... ;)

Hmm... A fleet of about ten thousand smart bombs with gigaton yields sent through the mass relay network aimed at Palaven? And as they pass through each Relay, a couple of dozen stay behind and nuke it.

It's the only way to be sure, after all :D
 
mp3.1415player said:
Economies of scale should make such a thing a fairly minor problem. A lot of the cost of a fighter after all is going to be put towards keeping the pilot intact enough to get them back after the battle. Removing all of that would make the missile much cheaper than the equivalent fighter regardless of how much it ended up costing. After all, a modern fighter jet is easily capable of pulling turns that will kill the pilot instantly and handling it without trouble, but because pilots tend to complain about this, it's limited to only a few g. Take the guy in the seat out of the equation and you could make even an F-22 turn about four times as hard quite happily...
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But if you made an anti-ship missile that cost as much as an F-22, you would never be allowed to fire one.

I don't think that the assumption that swapping a cockpit for a warhead is a vast cost savings stands up. (Not producing them in the relatively tiny numbers we do modern fighter would certainly help the unit cot, though that probably also applies to fighters used in ME.)

Also, space fighters or missiles can't use aerodynamic control surfaces for maneuvering, so it's not so cheap to perform extreme maneuvers.
 
mp3.1415player said:
I'm very tempted to write a fairly short ME story based on what would happen if the canon ME scenario ran into humans who'd kept the Cold War mentality going until that point...
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Isn't that effectively what the Good Skynet mini-series is though?
Edit since people are repeatedly asking for the link that's been provided several times:
mp3.1415player said:
Starts here.

I really must do some more of that one... It's rather amusing :)
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khe khem...
from codex:

" In flight, torpedoes use a mass-increasing field, making them too massive for enemy kinetic barriers to repulse. The extra mass gives the torpedoes a very sluggish acceleration, making them easy prey for defensive GARDIAN weapons. As a result, torpedoes have to be launched at very close range. "

So increase in weight is for barriers. It doesn't affect point defense.
 
mp3.1415player said:
Not sure how they'd have actually survived doing this, but we can put it down to plot armor
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No plot armor needed. Just have humanity be humanity and the first thing found in the Mars Archive be a warning from the Prothians. All those interesting little tools of war promptly get dug out of the filing cabinets and get modernized.
 
mp3.1415player said:
Well, there is something stopping this being practical, this being your thrust source. As I understand it, the mass effect drive isn't actually a drive in the normal sense you're thinking of, it merely lowers the mass of the ship to the point that Magic Happens™ and it can somehow accelerate past the speed of light. The actual thrust is produced by a fusion reaction drive, or in some advanced ships later on, by an antiproton drive. These are still rockets, and the main engines are going to be at the rear of the ship, producing a vector through the centerline. It's certainly not going to be set up to give omnidirectional thrust at the same power level, at least based on every image of a ME ship I've ever seen. Manouvering thrusters will allow you to turn, yes, and slide sideways, but not at anything even remotely close to the level you can accelerate on the main drive. And the ME field doesn't as far as I know entirely remove inertia, it just reduces it massively. So put together this means that if you're accelerating hard, there's a distinct upper limit to how far and how fast you can shift direction, especially if you want to keep your ultimate vector pointing at the enemy.

Plus, remember, the shots are completely unguided and unpowered. Once they leave the mass driver they're subject to normal inertia, so if you do have a vector that's got sideways motion as well as forward motion at the time you fire a shot, the projectile will retain that combined motion, and track sideways relative to the target. You're either going to have to compensate for that by firing off in the other direction and allowing the vector to bring your shot on target, or aim directly at the guy and have no off-axis motion at all. Which, again, means you're both going right down each other's throats :D

All the video I've seen of battles in the game show the ships firing in dead straight lines at each other, so logically they're doing the latter method.
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The thrust source doesn't change the basic physics of zero g movement.

Take a ship with a normal rocket engine that can be throttled. Aim across your opponents tail and accelerate to speed.

Stop thrusting, rotate your ship to aim your spinal gun at your target and coast at speed behind your opponent firing at them the whole way. The only thing you need to keep doing is tweak your rate of rotation to keep your weapon pointed at the target as you go by. Thrust source is irrelevant as you've turned it off. You've blitzed past laterally at high speed past your opponent, never approaching him directly. Yes you need to lead the target taking into account their relative velocity to you but you have to do that anyway to score a hit.

The only time the mass effect comes into things is if when you turn it on you WANT to immediately change directions. If you turn your thrust on while blitzing sideways passed your opponent but leave the inertial cancellation off you will accelerate forwards while maintaining your sideways inertia so you will travel in a curve passed the opponent despite only pushing thrust out the back while you point directly at them.

This is all just basic Newtonian physics applied to space combat. An object in motion and all that. You can rotate freely but to curve your path you have to apply thrust orthogonal to your direction of travel. Hence lots of going sideways shooting in whichever direction you like.

If you want direction of travel to always be "forwards" you have to dial the inertial compensation way up to reduce the ships mass enough that your piddly little manuevring thrusters can cancel out your sideways inertia when you make a turn so you end up with something more like atmospheric dogfighting but in space. This requires all the funky game physics to pull off.

As for the ships all just lining up and shooting directly forwards at one another I'd say that's just moronic doctrinal practice or the game developers not really caring about zero g combat mechanics in a game that's ultimately about infantry lol

Edit. Well that or every ship is just so incredibly slow and clumsy that trying to dodge is a waste of time as nobody ever misses.
 
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Aineko said:
But if you made an anti-ship missile that cost as much as an F-22, you would never be allowed to fire one.

I don't think that the assumption that swapping a cockpit for a warhead is a vast cost savings stands up. (Not producing them in the relatively tiny numbers we do modern fighter would certainly help the unit cot, though that probably also applies to fighters used in ME.)

Also, space fighters or missiles can't use aerodynamic control surfaces for maneuvering, so it's not so cheap to perform extreme maneuvers.
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A hell of a lot of a modern fighter is all the stuff needed to keep a human alive. That's why every military on the planet is designing drone fighters, you can field half a dozen of them at least per manned one, and they're only that expensive because they're entire fighters. They carry missiles, they're not actually a missile themselves. If, on the other hand, you want to make a fire and forget sort of thing, you're in the range of a Tomahawk cruise missile, only much quicker. Those things are about 1.5 million dollars apiece, which the US military seems to think is quite affordable. Proportionally the ME humans could easily afford to make thousands of things of this general nature by that point. Even hundreds would turn the tide of many if not most battles...

As far as the extreme maneuvers goes, that's what the mass effect fields are for; Reduce the mass of the missile to make it easy to throw around with fairly modest thrusters. If it works for fighters, and it pretty much has to or they'd be sitting ducks, it works for missiles :)

Zummers said:
Isn't that effectively what the Good Skynet mini-series is though?
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Kind of, but not. Those humans are horrifying but they're also not the sort to go killing off entire worlds. Except possibly in the case of the Batarians, should those idiots choose to try again, and by the time of that story the humans have nothing to fear from any of the ME species. They have much more dangerous opponents in the shape of the Berserkers...

HarbingerOfCrazy said:
Wouldn't that have about the same effect as moving one? Also probably best to do it on the way back.
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Yes. That's the point. Scorched earth policy on a star system scale :)

And these are missiles, they're not coming back. That's also the point :D

You blow each relay as your fleet of drone missiles goes through to prevent any surviving enemy retaliating, and the main fleet is to make sure there aren't any survivors.

Based on some of the ideas that were prevalent on both sides during the Cold War, this sort of concept is entirely plausible. Look at Project Pluto if you want to see some of the crazier ones :)
 
Eagle-1 said:
So, you guys are saying that ME ship-to-ship combat is akin to WW2 casemated tank destroyers trying to hit eachother and maneuver at same time?
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Machdisk said:
Take a ship with a normal rocket engine that can be throttled. Aim across your opponents tail and accelerate to speed...

Thrust source is irrelevant as you've turned it off. You've blitzed past laterally at high speed past your opponent, never approaching him directly.
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tl;dr: ME ship-to-ship combat is akin to WW2 casemated tank destroyers fighting each other on ice.
 
Ah that moment when suddenly there is a third guy you can point all your weapons at.
Machdisk said:
As for the ships all just lining up and shooting directly forwards at one another I'd say that's just moronic doctrinal practice or the game developers not really caring about zero g combat mechanics in a game that's ultimately about infantry lol
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Games generally don't use newtonian space combat because it's hard to get used to. In the end it's more about providing a fun experience than being realistic.

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mp3.1415player said:
Yes. That's the point. Scorched earth policy on a star system scale :)

And these are missiles, they're not coming back. That's also the point :D
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Somehow misread that as fleet with smartbombs, mb
 
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By the time of mass effect the only biological fighter pilots should be in command positions. I.e. Flight lead Wing Commander Commander airgroup etc. with the rest being drones. I'm surprised personally that no one made made a inter-seller equivalent of an ICBM. Basically adding a mass effect drive to existing ICBMs would be effective for interplanetary. Also anything with a mass effect drive would be a terrifying RKKV.
 
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mp3.1415player said:
I'm very tempted to write a fairly short ME story based on what would happen if the canon ME scenario ran into humans who'd kept the Cold War mentality going until that point... Not sure how they'd have actually survived doing this, but we can put it down to plot armor
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Do it. 283 different countries all trying to get the most resources and make better weapons than each other.

HarbingerOfCrazy said:
Games generally don't use newtonian space combat because it's hard to get used to. In the end it's more about providing a fun experience than being realistic.
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This is one of the things that made babalon 5 so ground breaking, as their fighters actually did use those physics.
 
Aineko said:
Economic considerations? You could build an antiship missile with the maneuver capability and sensors to dance around fighters. But if you did, it would cost at least as much as a fighter. If you want to fire a lot of them, it's probably worth cutting down to a more basic weapon...
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That's not entirely fair. If a few missiles that costs as much as a fighter can guarantee a hit, then it is actually likely best to use it. Economy of scale would bring its price down, but the two biggest factors are human risk and tactical superiority. Look at battle ships. Aircraft are significantly more expensive than the shells of a warship, and a battleship crew could easily bring down dozens of aircraft if properly equipped and trained. That didn't change the fact that those planes could and did regularly bring down battleships. For the price of a few aircraft and a couple dozen men, you could sink a multi million dollar ship and kill thousands of crew without having to risk your own multi million dollar ships and their crews (I'm looking at you Hood and Bismarck). The question isn't what is the cheapest weapons system per unit, it's what is the most cost effective at accomplishing the mission. If your anti-ship missile costs as much as a fighter, and is tactically effective as, say, five fighters, and three missiles are used for every fighter lost it's probably still best to use the missile.

Say you have a choice between three types of capital ships. Dreadnaughts, Carriers, and Missile Barges (look up the U.S.' supersized Zumwalt). Only an idiot would risk a multimillion (or billion) dollar ship and thousands of crew unless they have to, so they aren't closing to knife fighting range if they can help it, making Dreadnaughts just bad. Moving on to the other two, if they were of comparable size and crew(they wouldn't missiles take way fewer people to field) then the risk of loosing one is roughly equal, but the duration each one is at risk is very different. They both need to get close enough to launch their weapons, and missiles tend to have better range because their one way, so the Barges are farther away, making it harder for an enemy to catch them after a strike. The next thing to consider is that the carrier needs to stick around to recover fighters. More than one carrier was sunk because it had to stay in a vulnerable place to retrieve fighters after it was found. However, your barge could just launch a volley from the edge of its range then leave because it has no reason to stick around. It could stay close enough to launch further volleys if necessary, but it doesn't need to be in effective weapons range for that. Plus, all it takes is a few successful attacks using those missiles for naval tactics to change. Battleships stopped going out unless absolutely necessary once it was clear that they would just be sitting ducks for any aircraft, and it's likely something similar would happen with battleships and carriers if a few of them got destroyed in lopsided engagements with missile barges. They are just too expensive to risk being lost to the missiles, so instead you send out lots of small ships that are cheap and easy to field. Sure, the missiles will probably destroy them even easier that the larger ships, but there's less loss and the cost of the missiles is less justifiable.

TL-DR: Even if your explicit cost comparison of fighters to missiles has the missiles being twice as expensive, the implicit costs and risk assessment are 9 times out of ten going to make the missiles the better.
 
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