the problem with explosive railgun rounds is that they massively increase the cost for little benefit, a railgun round can easily be made of a solid lump of magnetic metal and work just fine but trying to include an explosive disposal charge causes lots of engineering and supply problems
Star Wars: Ship Designer Quest (1.5)
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Soldiers, fairly often, about in line with what happens with IRL soldiers, (I saw somewhere where modern combat has like ~500 rounds per kill.) Starfighters and Capships tend to be very 'Ship of Sail' due to the capability of shields to absorb 'impacts' being higher than a ship's capability to dish out punishment. This only really changes in the Imperial Era, with small-craft becoming more relevant.
The necessary infrastructure for a Railgun to be a '1-hit' weapon requires the creation of an Onager-style platform where the ship is built around the railgun, forcing it into a Sniper/Marksmen role, and in that situation, wasting shots is a very bad idea.
Railguns, for a multitude of reasons I don't want to have to outline here because it'll probably become a derail, are not viable as a 'turreted' or 'broadside' weapon, in comparison to Turbolasers and Ion-cannons.
Turbolasers are quite capable of punching through Capital armor, as seen in the multiple times where a ship goes down within a short time of their shields popping unless they significantly out mass the attackers (SSDs versus most anything else,) or are noted in-universe for their abnormally large amount of armor, (Dreadnaughts.)
As Thorgon has said:
But there's also the issue of trying to find an explosive material that produces enough force to make it advantageous to reduce the overall mass of the round. Something like Nuclear or even Fusion weapons might not be enough, making the round itself less potent.
Also, as a final nail in the coffin, SW FTL allows you to drop basically on top of your enemy, making it extremely difficult to maintain the type of range that puts Railguns into a dominant position over plasma and other 'short range' weapons. No sense putting a big ass hole in your ship if all it'll do is provide easier access to your reactors.
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If you think that shot waste would stay the same with railguns you would probably be better sticking with turbolasers then, as the lessened logistics concerns and the bolts decaying over distance means that the "cost" of missed shots would be orders of magnitude less. I believe that it would be much more likely that the captains of the ships would be smart and switch to a slower, more precise targeting style if they were dealing with railguns and their limitations though.
Also, the explosive and fuse would have to be hardened enough to survive the magnetic force and acceleration from launch, as well survive the impact long enough to go off. There was a reason I specified the niche for railguns as an anti-fighter weapon, with the kinetic energy of the shell itself taking a lesser priority than the shells ability to propel shrapnel as you wouldn't be looking for direct hits.
Basically, I do not think railguns are going to be a viable weapon until the fighting kicks into high gear and war economy plus the need to beat the CiF trump cost and the question of what happens if a shell hits a planet. And even then given how well laser based weapons fill the niche for capital armament, for railguns to see any major use outside of limited production highly specialized ships would require a shake up of ship building doctrine on the scale of the launch of HMS Dreadnought.
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I've said this before, Railguns are a Sniper Weapon, not a Brawler weapon. If you're in the thick of combat, things have gone wrong.
Onagers and ships like it are where Railguns shine.
Which means, if one really wants to use them effectively. They kinda need interdictors to force the enemy to advance in STL, or risk facing a madman that somehow calibrates a tactical jump right on top of the sniper ships.
That's the problem, Star Wars space doctrine is brawler doctrine. It's big ships closing to visual range and blasting the shit out of each other until someone's shields fall and they blow up. If we want railguns to be accepted for more than over specialized limited production ships, it's not enough to just have a good gun, we would need to make something that upends the entirety of space combat as people know it like HMS Dreadnought changed naval combat.
And then there is the fact that thanks to ftl. The most reliable combat range is at the point interdictors cover to. So there are probably need for better interdictors depending on their current range, to make long-range combat more viable.
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Pulse mass mine
Pulse mass mines were a type of space mine developed by the Hapes Consortium. Deployed from pulse mass generator tubes onboard Hapan Battle Dragons, they generated artificial mass shadows. Pulse mass mines were large silver orbs[2] developed by the Hapes Consortium. Developed by Hapan scientists...
starwars.fandom.com
Trouble is, the tech is Hapan in origin and good luck getting their secrets from them, but it exists so it can be reinvented. That said, there's your "better interdictors" but that still relies on sensor range and ability to trigger at the right time.
But if you could pulse-mass-mine an enemy to pin them in place, you could regular-mine an enemy and just blow them up.
the empire made their own version and combined it with a EMP bomb to fry cap ships
I'm wondering if interdiction fields might not be that common in the Galactic Civil War. They're good if you know that you will win the cage match that you are locking your fleets into. Not letting them escape and be annoying elsewhere is then a bigger problem than actually winning the fight, like in the post-war era when it was the Galactic Empire and all it's industry facing down the Rebellion.
From what I recall of the Civil War though, there wasn't as much of an overwhelming advantage toward either side in most space engagements, so neither side could get a guarantee that they would win the cage match. And with fleets that are more evenly matched, replacing the specialized ship that spends a lot of it's volume on interdiction equipment with one that spends it on more weapon systems could have a much bigger impact on your chances of victory. In addition allowing the losers to run if the tide turns against them, while meaning that the ships can be repaired and returned to the front, means that the victor's fleet will take less damage in return as they won't be facing an enemy backed into a corner and fighting until the bitter end.
From what I recall of the Civil War though, there wasn't as much of an overwhelming advantage toward either side in most space engagements, so neither side could get a guarantee that they would win the cage match. And with fleets that are more evenly matched, replacing the specialized ship that spends a lot of it's volume on interdiction equipment with one that spends it on more weapon systems could have a much bigger impact on your chances of victory. In addition allowing the losers to run if the tide turns against them, while meaning that the ships can be repaired and returned to the front, means that the victor's fleet will take less damage in return as they won't be facing an enemy backed into a corner and fighting until the bitter end.
The Alliance to Restore the Republic only really became "something" after Yavin, before that you couldn't really call it a military force. So rather than being evenly matched it is more likely that small strike forces quite reasonably avoided the rare interdictors in service.
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In most engagements until after Endor did the Empire dominate the battlefield if it came to an honest battle. This is why the Starfighter Corps became so important for the Rebellion. That way they could force engagements to there likings and avoid major battles.
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Or you could bank the money you'd use to build one and then live off it the rest of your life, at least according to Kell Tainer.
Yes, but my point was that if you think that you might not win that cage match, you may be better served by replacing the interdictor ship with one that spends the mass on more weapons instead to increase your chance of winning the battle. A loss for you would be the same either way, with your fleet retreating with or without the field needing to be shut down. OTOH a victory where the enemy fleet retreats is still a victory, even if it's not quite a decisive as if you wiped out the whole fleet, and may be more likely achieved than total destruction since you have more warships with you than you would if you replaced one with an interdictor ship.
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Fair, hard to quantify the impact. I really hate when the bad guy "gets away" to cause trouble in the future (though I understand why it happens in stories) so I'm a fan of the idea. If you can take any victory and completely destroy your opponent without letting them salvage their people or ships (aka demolish anything they would have escaped with) it could be worth the loss of direct force. Especially if you've got the intelligence on your enemy to be able to pick your battles. Not sure how repair vs new build affects the math on a resources & time point of view but an enemy having to replace talented personnel also feels like it would slow them down a ton since they'd not have as many opportunities to learn from a loss or pass on tips as veterans.
Fair, hard to quantify the impact. I really hate when the bad guy "gets away" to cause trouble in the future (though I understand why it happens in stories) so I'm a fan of the idea. If you can take any victory and completely destroy your opponent without letting them salvage their people or ships (aka demolish anything they would have escaped with) it could be worth the loss of direct force. Especially if you've got the intelligence on your enemy to be able to pick your battles. Not sure how repair vs new build affects the math on a resources & time point of view but an enemy having to replace talented personnel also feels like it would slow them down a ton since they'd not have as many opportunities to learn from a loss or pass on tips as veterans.
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Thing is in real life you can't just wipe out an empty force every chance you get. Letting the enemy run let's you avoid losing more of your own people from either death or mental break downs from slaughtering an entire army/fleet.
Cost and affect are king. And sometimes, giving an out is far more beneficial than facing a cornered enemy. Which is part of why rules of war like surrendering are generally supported. It gives an out that means enemies might not just fight to the last man.
Eh, they could always surrender and you plop 'em on a prison world and blow up their ships. Either way they're out of the fight. Suspect there are many factions in Star Wars that wouldn't have an issue with exterminating an enemy if that's how you want to set policy.
Agreed, cornered rats and all. That being said having the option to eliminate their ability to run gives you the control. It's up to your forces to choose how to exercise it.
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Yeah, I get the feeling too. Unfortunately sometimes total victory by destroying, capturing, or having the entire enemy fleet surrender is just not feasible with the forces you have on hand. On the strategic scale, it's not like every battle has to end in a total victory for you to win the war either, as a fleet that decides to cut their losses and retreat will still take time and resources to repair that would other wise go into expanding their navy, and cedes territory just as effectively as if they were all destroyed. My personal opinion is that as much as I would want every battle to be a total victory with the entire enemy fleet destroyed or captured, if you can't guarantee a victory to make total in the first place your resources are better spent trying to guarantee a lesser victory, rather than making every engagement a coinflip between total victory or some level of defeat.
Lets not start talking about setting a policy of extermination, okay? Okay.
However, if we want to switch from armchair admirals discussing galactic strategy back to our position as a tiny shipyard, if interdiction ships aren't going to be that common that might mean they are more feasible for us to produce. Even if we expand massively in the time between now and Geonosis there is no way we are going to be able to compete with giants like Kuat, so it's unlikely that we are going to be making lots of Star Destroyers. But while interdiction vessels may not be ubiquitous with one in every fleet, that doesn't mean they won't be useful at all so a smaller production run might be within our grasp if we can come up with a good enough design. Even better, the idea slots into Star Wars brawler doctrine easily too, with some prior exterimentation with tractor beam based variants, so it wouldn't have to clear that hurdle either.
Hell, people don't really even need to win battles to win a war. The whole concept of pyrrhic victory exists for a reason. I mean, it is entirely possible for one side to win every battle only to collapse, because to do so they exhausted their ability to wage war at all.
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