Re: setting with plausible Wing Commander style action?

On Mar 8, 5:20 pm, "wrosecrans" <wrosecr...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Okay, so I've decided I really like the idea of space fighters, but I
hate the Wing Commander physics model. Does it make any sense to have
space fighters in a society in orbit of a single planet? You can make
it around earth at LEO in under a few hours, so you really should be
able to cross the whole of the potential battlefield in a small one-
person ship and then dock back at a friendly starbase without needing
a big dreadnought carrier.

This is going to depend on what sort of weapons are being
used, and the ranges involved, of course.

It occurs to me that if there is an advanced civilisation on the
planet, they could probably just lob ICBM's up into LEO and make it
past any problems of space superiority. So, I think my premise only
makes sense if the civilisation on the ground is uninvolved in the
squabbles of the folks in LEO. A good old fashioned society
destroying ecological disaster should take care of that. So, there is
nobody on the ground with launch capability, and the folks in LEO
don't have much in the way of hardware that can re-enter the
atmosphere.

Alternatively, the planet in question could have been
uninhabitable in the first place. Saturn and Jupiter
have many moons with lots of resources, as well as
powerful magnetic fields to generate electrical power.
This makes the general area around these gas giants
promising places to colonize even if the gas giants
themselves aren't inhabitable.

On a smaller scale, these moons aren't such pleasant
places to be. I find it more plausible for the moons
to be used for mining raw resources but these resources
are lobbed into orbit to fabricate and support orbital
colonies.

Thus, you could have "carriers" for transfering from
one moon to another, where they deploy shorter ranged
"fighters" which orbit around moons.

I haven't decided if it makes sense to have several independent
political factions are fighting, or if it makes more sense to have a
semi-stable society with some pirates and privateers. It seems like
big space stations with all the civilian population would be fairly
easy targets, even for the limited availability of military hardware.
One good laser and line of sight ought to do it if you are trying to
kill the enemy population. OTOH, if the conflict is based on a
struggle between several small groups for *control* of the large
civilian population stations, then it would make sense that they can
remain intact long enough to have a good fun war.

Both Jupiter and Saturn offer geographies with natural
concentrations of orbital habitats around the large
moons. These locations are numerous to offer interesting
interactions, as well as close enough to wage human-scale
wars (but not too close). In contrast, stereotypical
Earth/Moon/Mars conflicts feature a very small number
of locations which are either too close (Earth-Moon) or
too far (Earth-Mars).

It's possible to limit the casual WMD effect with a
small number of reasonable assumptions. If you assume
there's no cheap/magical fusion power, and that there
are few available fissionables, then the Jovian civilization
may largely upon tether power, laser powered rockets,
chemical rockets, and mag-sails. Without high
performance fission/fusion drives, it's not as easy
to just lob colony-killing WMD attacks. At least, it's
not so easy if we assume the colonies are fortified
in response to a general climate of frequent warfare.

Does this much make any sense? Does anybody have any suggestions for
helping to make the obvious holes in the setting a little less obvious?

Isaac Kuo

.

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