Nope. Big slow meteor striking at km/sec. Lots of energy transfer.
Role and cost. Don't see another reason at the moment.
Grain of sand was to illustrate that there is a scale you can use, dependent on mass and velocity. I'm just not sure how to quantify the effects. And I'd like to be able to do so to get an answer to the question if a kinetic strike can take out a hardened target without too much collateral damage.
Misunderstanding. I was talking about using orbit-based kinetic weapons for tactical combat (like killing tanks). More in the vicinity of 1kg rounds with a speed of a few dozen km/s. To take out tanks, for example. In this scenario you started planetary assault after you took care of the fleet. Or split your fleet - that one destroyer won't make a difference in the naval battle.
Now where did you go and get a silly idea like that from? No one, outside of ParSec and the Alliance, has anything that can handle our Pilums. Even then the only reason the Tiger did so well was the Anti-Missile System shooting down the majority of missiles before they impacted and that very same quarter we upgraded our Pilums to include shield and the ability to dodge which heavily reduces the effectiveness of Anti-Missile Systems
Consider the speed of most tanks, especially with the introductions of repulsor technology and the fact that a 1 degree adjustment in the angle of your weapons will lead to mile difference in the impact zone. There's the problem that everything is constantly moving in space, so you have to adjust for that too. Not really feasible to juggle all the variable until you instal fire-control AI on your ship. At the moment, you really can't snipe a tank from orbit. You can snipe that tank general location, sure.
Yes the possibility exists that someone may steal some Tigers and use them in the future. Fortunately that's a problem that is almost certainly years away and by then the Tiger will be obsolete.
...people have already tried this. Twice. It didn't work out either time. There is a reason we have (most) of a fleet overhead and an army's worth of ground based defenses.
That creates an over concentration of force. If you're building two laser weapons you, ideally, want them on two different systems due to the increased versatility.
I point you towards the Kasa Guardian Angel system:
As you can see in the section I underlined there is no need for physical meat shields to stand in the way.
I'm sure we could build an amazing MBT. The question is if the MBT still has a role on the battlefield of tomorrow. I'm not entirely convinced it does.
I don't believe so. We do have Arcane Blur which reduces the effect of lasers by increasing how much they scatter but I don't think we have anything that can, outside TIR which IIRC has serious issues inside an atmosphere, straight out no-sell lasers.
If you combine that with aerosol grenades?
Looking back over the details it turns out I was wrong. Arcane Blur doesn't scatter the laser. Instead it absorbs and distributes it somewhat, as a side effect of it's anti-RADAR and anti-LIDAR abilities, so the effecting target area is larger then it actually is:
How certain can we be of this? We are shipping Tigers out to SA military, can you say for absolute certain that something like, say, an insurgence won't happen?
Sometime, concentration is a good thing. Mostly logistic concerns. It's easier to maintain and transport one MBT than 10 Legionaires.
That would be all fine and good if there's no miniturized laser cropping up that completely ignore kinetic shields. Beside, PA offer strong shield, a MBT would offer both strong shield and a big meaty block between the VIP and whatever is shooting at them.
The battlefield of tomorrow is pretty much what Paragon Industry says it is. But I'm not really convinced on conventional battle tank either. What I've been advocating is a mobile base that can immediately provide medical relief and rest for personnel, scavenge and scrap all nearby material to roll out new equipments to replace lost and damaged ones, as well as setting the stage for our own Reaper Destroyer. With something like that on the field, we can greatly reduce attriction and strike deep into enemy forces without worrying about supply lines.
That base will be one prime target.
Well, the more effort dedicated to pounding the base, the less goes toward shooting at the ground force or our navy. Considering that it would probably be fitted with an industrial scale Arc Reator and planetary shields, it's gonna take them a long, long time to crack the shield.
Um. Please clarify? If you're asking about the possibility of the Alliance military trying to perform a coup well I find that incredibly unlikely and even if they did they'd win by default simply due to controlling space and all the really powerful space based weapons.
Eh. With the number of Legionaries being outputted odds are basically every frontline soldier in the Alliance has one. So it's really not a logistical concern. Plus phasing out MBTs would reduce logistical stress by reducing the number of different things that need maintaining.
This presumes a rapid proliferation of laser technology to hostile forces. This isn't Marvel that sort of thing takes time.
I'm not sure such a thing is possible. While spaceships and ground vessels certainly have differing limitations that may change this answer we know that a Lab I requires a Heavy Cruiser in excess of 500 meters. Our most basic factory, Factory I, is about the same size as a Lab I so we're talking about something over three times the size of a Reaper Destroyer here.
Not that I'm sold on the idea, but a LEGO-platform with repulsors as base for the other stuff could work; the insane shield and the Eezo requirements ...
No, I mean an internal coup, a rouge faction trying to take control. Something like Cerebus.
Yeah, I concede. I don't even know why I was on the tank case anyway. I've already stated that's not my stand.
Well, it's not something for literally cranking out out new equipments, not with our current tech base, although I'm sure we have some good miniturization down the line, perhaps even industrial nanobots.
... and produce special ammunitions?
I thought those come from the omnni-tool?
Not the anti-ship rockets. For example.
I guess fitting a ammo plant on it won't be too hard, although was leaning toward outfitting it for medical care mostly
You will want your medical care base to be a low priority target, not something that stops the attacker from conquering the planet. Because the thing that does so will get a lot of attention in form of heavy bombardment (which is bad for anyone trying to enter the base).
Well, that Reaper mech had anti-laser armor (it would have never reached us if it didn't), but from what @Hoyr already told us we know that thins is stupidly, ludicrously expensive: it had eezo impregnated directly into the armor. Can't find the quote right now, but from what I remember it was a "well if you want it you can get it with your current materials tech, but you kind of don't want to because it's not economically feasible" type of tech.
So you're thinking that one terrestial Earth nation will try to conquer another? Hm. Well, I'd like to say it's very unlikely given that everyone right now is afraid of all the aliens who keep invading, but it is theoretically possible I suppose, but not right now; right now all of PI's tech is going to be watched and tracked far too closely, both by the Alliance Military and the individual member nations, as it's being appropriated and transported around for the Batarian war effort.
