NationStates Jolt Archive

Yeah, yeah, you've all seen 'em and presumably if you clicked this thread you know what they are.

Some users of SDs insist they can be defeated conventionally, without another SD.

My question to you, ladies and gentlemen of II, is how would you do it?

Assuming a tech level of postmodern (which is what SDs are at), what weapons and what techniques would you use to get rid of one?

Please refrain from posting silly suggestions (eg boarding and so forth).

Superdreadnought users, feel free to chip in on how one of your ships might deal with the tactics come up with here.

Personally, I gave up trying to think up ways of defeating superdreadnoughts with conventional weapons and got myself an exclusive license to build Doujin-class ships from the Freethinkers.

The best strategy I could ever come up with was using space-based kinetic energy weapons to punch holes in the ship from above, although that has been proved to have a lot of problems when the ship is on maneuvers, it isn't so much a problem when it's sitting in port or replenishing at sea since it'll need to keep parallel with the AOE.

That's all I've got for my $0.02.

Arguably the "cheapest" solution to take out a SD without the requisite retaliation against a tactical nuke would be to use torpedoes. Surface ships are and remain vulnerable to torpedo attack from submarines. Granted, the big SDs will be relatively well-protected, so a regularly-sized torp probably won't do the trick. Your best bet is likely to deploy a large torpedo (somewhere in the 650 mm range or higher) to attack a SD.

Besides that, I'd use naval gunfire since missiles generally don't work against all the layers of armour. I'm using an experimental naval gun developed by Soviet Bloc which has kinetic properties that greatly exceed those of railguns (which themselves only cause heavily localised damage that isn't very effective against surface ships).

If you've got some type of kinetic energy weapon, that's your next best bet to deal with SDs if you're adamant about not building any of your own.

It's much like with MBTs, IMO. You can shoot shitloads of stuff at them and somehow manage to break the thing, but the best way is to counter with another, same sort of a vessel. If you're absolutely determined to not to use them, then I gues a rather big group of arsenal ships blasting their whole load at the SD in the same time, or plenty of smaller b-ships. Or even a missile strike from fleet of submarines.

It's much like with MBTs, IMO. You can shoot shitloads of stuff at them and somehow manage to break the thing, but the best way is to counter with another, same sort of a vessel. If you're absolutely determined to not to use them, then I gues a rather big group of arsenal ships blasting their whole load at the SD in the same time, or plenty of smaller b-ships. Or even a missile strike from fleet of submarines.
Quite.

In 1906 when the Royal Navy launched the Dreadnought, the admiralties of the world did not sit around a table and try to come up with ingenious ways of swarming them with Pre-Dreadnoughts or torpedo boats, or sneaking up on them with cruisers, they got on with it and built their own Dreadnoughts!

Subsurface attack is the key here, which should be also complemented with a concerted air- and surface-based attack against the SD's escorting battlegroups. I won't divulge on the details, but I've seen some pretty effective submarine-based systems for doing so, and I have a similar system of my own too.

I have an idea, have an anti-submarine type bomb swim under the belly of this thing and explode, indirectly creating enough water pressure to break the ship apart. How about that? I might be wrong, and probably am.

Two different strategies come to mind....

First, kinetic energy weapons from orbit... even a medium sized rock or hunk of iron will do if it is released from a suitably high enough velocity by a spacecraft. One spacecraft launches its rock or projectile, while another system which could be surface, airborne, very high altitude atmospheric or low earth orbit provides the final targeting information just before release of the weapon. At sufficiently high enough velocity the projectile will be moving fast enough that course correction or alteration in speed by the ship will not be a factor. Sufficient kinetic energy will release sufficient impact energy to be equal to a small nuke.

Second, there are a number of weapons that exist now that are designed for tank killing that attack vertically, where the armor of a tank is the weakest. A similar technological approach for torpedoes could be developed. Instead of vertical top attack, you go for vertical bottom attack. A torpedo is designed to dive deep and then come up from below aiming at the bottom of the hull. Such technology is certainly doable with brilliant and even smart weapons. A decent sized warhead on a 650 mm torpedo will do immense damage.

Most heavily armored vessels will have torpedo blisters and dead spaces to defeat torpedo hits below the waterline. But no vessel has ever been designed to have such armor and protection on the bottom of its hull. If it was added, it would reduce significantly the amount of usuable tonnage for other systems like weapons. If not added, the ship is vulnerable to having its bottom ripped out. Basically it works like a mine, and targets the most vulnerable part of the hull. If nothing else, it could take out the rudder and propellers or what ever else the ship is using for propulsion. A mission kill works almost as well as a hard kill in most situations anyway.

I reccomend (which this is on the verge of PMT/FT) Supercav tech (go to freewebs.com/supercav for more) or the all-inclusive I.G.N.O.R.E. cannon Mk I through Mk VI

I find, using Corporate forced entry units C12 to be highly effective, specialist DU shells with a tungsten steel - Penetrator Tip, go through sections of the armour relativly easy, the shell is packed with as much C12 as possible, and C12 is designed to level buildings or City blocks if taking and holding them proves too difficult, So the shell has a delayed timer, so when the shell goes through the armour and is nestled nicley inside, the C12 detonates, ripping the SD apart from the inside, the explosion is enough to cause extensive damage.

Another shell, is one that deploys Stabalising fins that if the shell misses acts as proximity sensors, either you have an anti shipping shell, or an anti shipping mine... (Note: these shells have remote detonators so if you need to clear the area it can be done so)

I reccomend (which this is on the verge of PMT/FT) Supercav tech (go to freewebs.com/supercav for more)
Supercav torps are (on the whole) too weakly armed to do much damage. The space required for a rocket engine kind of displace the warhead somewhat.

or the all-inclusive I.G.N.O.R.E. cannon Mk I through Mk VI
That's just pathetic...

I think subs or SD's themselves would work, or you can get lukcy and sneak a crusier or somethin' in, then again I don't know much about naval stratagy.

Perhaps disabling them with an EMP device or something along that lines could prove effective. No way it would be an easy thing to do, but potentially making them blind, deaf, and dumb could help against them.

Problem with that is if there is a close order battle your fllet could be damaged too. You'd have to do it from space, by liuancinhg and exploding several nukes aboce thier fleets or ports. The blast would not do any damge, but the emp, that isa deffrent story.

Problem with that is if there is a close order battle your fllet could be damaged too. You'd have to do it from space, by liuancinhg and exploding several nukes aboce thier fleets or ports. The blast would not do any damge, but the emp, that isa deffrent story.

True, but if you are going to do an emp strike I doubt you'd place your entire fleet next to the area of effect. Sending a small advance fleet to intercept and detonate a deviced followed by the main fleet could potentially be devestating if it proved a success.

Let's wipe nukes out of this conversation. There is no point discussing using any tactical nuclear weapon because we ALL know the consequences.

Seriosuly though, the best method is to hit it with similar cannons of it's size. Or Omz' statement about subsurface... I believe mine and Prae's underwater SD has 90" torps.

I find, using Corporate forced entry units C12 to be highly effective, specialist DU shells with a tungsten steel - Penetrator Tip, go through sections of the armour relativly easy, the shell is packed with as much C12 as possible, and C12 is designed to level buildings or City blocks if taking and holding them proves too difficult, So the shell has a delayed timer, so when the shell goes through the armour and is nestled nicley inside, the C12 detonates, ripping the SD apart from the inside, the explosion is enough to cause extensive damage.

Problem with this nestling idea is, how much penetration does the tungssten tip have? I know the warspite has 2 metres of armour (layered) in it's thickest parts, and then you have the fact it's a trimaran... Does this tungsten tip have enough penetration to get through?

Let's wipe nukes out of this conversation. There is no point discussing using any tactical nuclear weapon because we ALL know the consequences.

Seriosuly though, the best method is to hit it with similar cannons of it's size. Or Omz' statement about subsurface... I believe mine and Prae's underwater SD has 90" torps.

Sorry if it sounded like I was sugesting nukes (I've seen too many people suggest MAD over that happening to ever want to try it.) but an actual emp device to disable any electrical equipment on the ship. Not sure how many people would accept it as a non godmod though.

There was an interesting idea I came up with a long time ago that I just started to say I had, but never really documented. Way back when the Doujin first came around.


A warhead (on a missile or torpedo) which is heavy. It hits the armor, causing a spark. Almost within light speed a TNT charge is activated with a cesium-aided reaction that sends a solid tungsten ramming rod into the armor. The explosion itself could give some damage, but the power is in the ramming rod. It is not made for critical damage, but could penitrate the hull. The same principle I have used against other submarines (my Oured-class SSN carries this type of torpedo, the Yk51). Only problem is massive damage, but if you shot a few hundred of those, spending about a couple million on the operation, and create enough of a destraction for rocket bombs (AGMs but faster and smaller but unguided) to hit them, or maybe even launch a salvo of missiles. I am sure if there is a lot of hull breaches, power would be redirected to closing and sealing the sectors.

But then again, I don't like to RP with SDs, they are very bulky, and why have one when, for the same price, you could have an auxilary fleet with just as much fire power, but less sizable targets and faster than a big bulky mammoth.

It's most definetly not a godmod. The problem is though, most SDs are plated with anti EMP materials (I'm not too sure how this works, ask Sarz or Prae) that will make EMP weapons do little to no effect.

The ironic thing is that I'm naming all my SDs now :p

It's most definetly not a godmod. The problem is though, most SDs are plated with anti EMP materials (I'm not too sure how this works, ask Sarz or Prae) that will make EMP weapons do little to no effect.

Man they really plan for everything with these ships now don't they.

The ironic thing is that I'm naming all my SDs now :p

I would name mine the NSS Cuddles. For effect of course. :p

Problem with this nestling idea is, how much penetration does the tungssten tip have? I know the warspite has 2 metres of armour (layered) in it's thickest parts, and then you have the fact it's a trimaran... Does this tungsten tip have enough penetration to get through?

The Shell is fired from a 670mm ETC with EM rifling Cannon, the Velocity of the Cannon is enough to penetrate most armours, however the Shell is capabable of going through the Front turret armour of, what i belive to be a SD

although im not up on ammuntion and ballistics, it was a concept i tried out and was aparantly quite effective

Hmm.. I see. Well, if it is emplaced too far into the SD, the explosion won't be the right sort of explosion to do anything except make an air pocket in the armour (do you know what I mean?) since it would be so well layered and tightly packed. Either that or the torp/missile could bounce off because of sloping.
However, it's actually a very good idea.

Btw, can anyone suggest some better names, some here are a bit crap.
HOGSWEATIAN SHIPS
SUPERDREADNOUGHTS

SDN 01 Warspite
SDN 02 Warrior
SDN 03 Wizard
SDN 04 Weapon
SDN 05 Warhead
SDN 06 Westland
SDN 07 Wellington
SDN 08 Waterloo
SDN 09 Weathered

SDN 31 Revenge
SDN 32 Resolution
SDN 33 Repulse
SDN 34 Renown
SDN 35 Revolution
SDN 36 Rectum Warrior
SDN 37 Resolution
SDN 38 Ruthless
SDN 39 Reprisal
SDN 40 Retribution
SDN 41 Ranger
SDN 42 Raymond
SDN 43 Raptor

SSDN 105 Project Dorsalgrad
SSDN 102 Project Danagrad

I assume Gaussic weapons are out of the question? Because I generally find that a hydrogen-coated depleted uranium nugget the size of an eight-year-old often offends most kinds of armour.

Otherwise, just build more SDs.

yeah, we're assuming gauss and MAC are out of the question here.

Hmm.. I see. Well, if it is emplaced too far into the SD, the explosion won't be the right sort of explosion to do anything except make an air pocket in the armour (do you know what I mean?) since it would be so well layered and tightly packed. Either that or the torp/missile could bounce off because of sloping.
However, it's actually a very good idea.

Btw, can anyone suggest some better names, some here are a bit crap.
HOGSWEATIAN SHIPS
SUPERDREADNOUGHTS

SDN 01 Warspite
SDN 02 The Desolator
SDN 03 Carnage
SDN 04 Belphagor
SDN 05 Deviator
SDN 06 The Warhound
SDN 07 The Baskerville
SDN 08 The Testement
SDN 09 Axis of Power

SDN 31 Revenge
SDN 32 Resolution
SDN 33 Repulse
SDN 34 Renown
SDN 35 Revolution
SDN 36 Rectum Warrior
SDN 37 Resolution
SDN 38 Ruthless
SDN 39 Reprisal
SDN 40 Retribution
SDN 41 Ranger
SDN 42 Raymond
SDN 43 Raptor

SSDN 105 Project Dorsalgrad
SSDN 102 Project Danagrad


Oh, trust me C12 is enough to do plenty of damage internaly, true it would create an air pocket, I assume you mean, just an internal damaged area but not actualy causing any external damage apart fromt he entry point, and thank you btw

C12 as stated before is used by Capitol police forces, when assaulting a rebel controlled building, it can often proove to be to difficult to dislodge the Rebels defenses and sometime the Corporation doesn't really care if the building stands or not, so the CP advance and place the C12 against the building, Then retreat to a safe distance, about 500 - 700 yards away, depending on the charge, the C12 is detonated and the building is collapsed, now in some cases areas can be held by rebels such as city blocks, 2000lbs of C12 is enough to level the city block.

So a shell from a 670mm ETC with EM rifiling would be half that, the internal damage would be horrendous, and most probably cause some logistical problems with in the ship, possibly even detonating the Ammunition storage areas, as I assume there will be internaly within the ship

EDIT: Renamed some of your Ships

yeah.. I see what you mean now. I'm not all top notch on armour so someone else may want to comment about how much damage it would do. I know what you mean though, and the ammunition boxes on most SDs are implacably defended.
We learn from Jutland :)

While I have nothing at all to contribute to this discussion, I would like to say that Hogsweat should name one of his ships after me.

*hides*

*Slap*
Maybe.

Quick question here, but who originally came up with the first SD design here?

*emerges from hiding with a bruised face*
It's the only way I'm ever going to get an SD to be named how I want it to be; Yaforites believe in the "smaller is better principle".With that said, I am gone. (*poof*)

Ive only ever killed an SDN once, i swarmed it with Anti-Shipping missiles and AtG weapons aimed at there CIWS and SAM systems, once they were gone and the ship had fire pouring from several places, i sent in bombers with 500kg ONC IR guided bombs, straight at the fires raging in gaps in teh hull, bombs fell in and exploded, and i had one hell of a fireworks display

Ive only ever killed an SDN once, i swarmed it with Anti-Shipping missiles and AtG weapons aimed at there CIWS and SAM systems, once they were gone and the ship had fire pouring from several places, i sent in bombers with 500kg ONC IR guided bombs, straight at the fires raging in gaps in teh hull, bombs fell in and exploded, and i had one hell of a fireworks display

Whos SD was it? And what type was it? What sort of escorts did it have? more info, please.

yeah, we're assuming gauss and MAC are out of the question here.

No we arn't. Rail guns and gauss guns and so forth are quite possible in a postmodern setting.

Hit it with a nasty chemical weapon. I think Kraven Corp developed a bacteria that ate through rubber and plastic, destroying gas masks, then you can just hit them with chemical weapons, bio-toxins, diseases like Ebola...

Or you could do the thing that made battleships and dreadnoughts obsolete, and Air Strike it into oblivion. The tops of ships are never very well armoured, and you can hit the bridge, crew members on deck, guns...
ICBMs would work.
Tactical Nukes would work. (I know, thats already been mentioned...)
Submarines would work.

Hit it with a nasty chemical weapon. I think Kraven Corp developed a bacteria that ate through rubber and plastic, destroying gas masks, then you can just hit them with chemical weapons, bio-toxins, diseases like Ebola...



That I did, and its nice to see my work being noticed *beams*

Plasma yield weapons... And yes, I just finished rereading some Dale Brown books :p

Hi angle US 5"/54 calibre guns ;)
Well Hogsweat might get that joke....

Actually rapid fire high angle long rnage hi velcoity guns would be a interesting way of doing it, hmmm i wonder how far my 12" ETCs would go if elevated to 85 degrees... (actaully with the right guns you coudl use this as a cheaper version of ortillery).

Or you could do the thing that made battleships and dreadnoughts obsolete, and Air Strike it into oblivion. The tops of ships are never very well armoured, and you can hit the bridge, crew members on deck, guns...
ICBMs would work.
Tactical Nukes would work. (I know, thats already been mentioned...)
Submarines would work.

Right. Let's get the facts straight here. Dreadnoughts were not made obsolete by aircraft, they where made obsolete by Battleships. Battleships were not made obsolete by air strikes, they were made obsolete by idiots. And in fact, I seem to remember Superdread battlegroups have escorts. Moreover, the tops of ships in fact ARE well armoured, because people who design SDNs have figured out that "oh golly gosh, just MAYBE the enemy will attack us from the air." That and the simple fact that crew members generally aren't on deck during an attack, they're at battle stations. Alot of modern SDNs have protection againnst ICBMs and tactical nukes.

Subsurface is really the main way to take out an SDN.

Hi angle US 5"/54 calibre guns ;)
Well Hogsweat might get that joke....

Actually rapid fire high angle long rnage hi velcoity guns would be a interesting way of doing it, hmmm i wonder how far my 12" ETCs would go if elevated to 85 degrees... (actaully with the right guns you coudl use this as a cheaper version of ortillery).

ROFL :D

Anyway, that's another idea. Surely you'd lose range though?

Here are my favorites:

1. Take out the propeller screws with a barrage of torpedoes. Now you have a nice big floating, going-nowhere-anytime soon target. Hope the country also invested in a lot of ocean-going tugs. Because they'll need a flotilla of them to drag the pig back to drydock. Uh, no, ships do not carry a spare, and you are unlikely to be able to install them and change the propeller shaft at sea. I predict at best about 5 knots speed on your home voyage.

2. Hypervelocity weapons. (http://www.popsci.com/popsci/aviationspace/18235b4a1db84010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html) Whether a Mach 7 rail gun, or an orbital satellite that drops tungsten rods down with GPS guidance vaporizing through meters of armor to destroy the CIC, speed's the way to go. A Superdreadnaught needs to fear. It is slow, it is impossible to hide -- I don't care what 'stealth' technology it's using, it's the size of an island that does not belong on the map. So praise the Lord and pass the speed of sound!

3. UUVs with massive explosive charges. Just as attack submarines are capable of acoustic stealth, an unmanned underwater vehicle -- a UUV -- is the equivalent of a robotic kamikaze attack. Have it simply sit under a likely avenue of approach of the SD, and then, when its passive sensors detect the massive movement above it, it shoots up at rates impossible to achieve with a manned submarine and explodes underneath with tons -- literal tons -- of explosives. Now you have one less Superdreadaught. Or, more likely, two half-Superdreadnaughts.

4. More aerial attacks than it can reasonably defend against. Pummel it to death with long range cruise missiles until its CIWS ammunition is expended. There are actually limits to combat stores aboard every ship in existence. After a while, there's going to be hits. Then more hits. Then boom.

5. Incendiary attacks. It is rather sad but true that fire is a ship's worst enemy. Surrounded by water, ships can still burn. Napalm them. Explosives in turrets can start to cook off. There is a way to make aluminum vaporize and ignite with sufficient force. There is a way to make steel melt.

6. Cook them in a can. This is slightly FT, right? Have solar power satellite stations in orbit? Redirect them just a few degrees, minutes and seconds of arc from their normal ground recievers. Narrow the beam. Microwaves and microwave lasers can be effective if you want to truly get at crew. Stealth characteristics? Perfect. Stealth means it's absorbing those rays all the more efficiently. I laugh at your shielding.

7. Arrange a surprise party. War is hell. During wartime while in port, do not attack it, but attack and take a nearby oil tanker in the port. Ignore the harbormaster's warning and slam the engines up to full after pointing it in the direction of the battleship anchored in the highly unmaneuverable waterways. Leave a present aboard that goes "boom." Put the captured crew in a lifeboat if you want to obey the Geneva Conventions. Bail overboard in scuba gear long before it hits. Smash the controls. You have just created the world's largest combustible torpedo.

8. Top-down attacks. Who really cares about belt armor? Decks are usually nowhere near as thick as belt armor. And if they are, someone is fudging the laws of physics. That would be one top-heavy SD which would be all-the-more-likely to capsize if it was rocked oh-so-gently.

ooc:

Look at the US Navy. It spends billions to field a carrier battle group. Most of the force is directed at protecting the carrier. Why? Because it is huge, it makes a huge target.

A superdreadnaught is the same, but different, and worse. At least the carrier has squadrons of aircraft to keep threats at least 400-600km away.

Yes, a Superdreadnaught can likely take a lot of punishment from conventional munitions. The Yamato took a pounding from the air, as did the Bismark from naval guns and torpedos.

The way they got the Yamato was by sending not one squadron, but 400 aircraft after it. It took 10 torpedos and many bombs. It finally went down after capsizing to port and exploding. That was a clear "loss" for the battleship, the same way Pearl Harbor was a clear loss.

As for Bismark (http://www.fpp.co.uk/History/General/Battleship_Bismarck/scuttled.html), she took a beating, but apparently scuttled rather than be boarded. She was pummeled into submission and was taking on water in her outer hull which might have led to her sinking, but the crew is believed to have set off scuttling charges along the keel.

In real life, the largest ship ever sunk was the USS America (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7081234/), after a battery of attacks to determine just how survivable a big ship can truly be. Results are classified.

Official Tactical Reply from Anagonia

I use Nukes, nukes are my friends. Super Dreadnoughts melt with nukes, nukes are good!

Don't MAKE me go Nuclear on your arse! RAWR!

*sing*One-eight Hundred, Anny Nuke'em! - Oh oh oh oh, Nuclear Anny!*sing*

Lol.

Anyways, in all seriousness, if you plan on sending a massive fleet to invade me, your going to have problems. I specifically USE Strategic Nuclear Weapons for defenses, and I will NOT refrain from using them UNLESS the Attacking player requests such.

If the request is given that I can't do anything in the Nuclear Catagory, well, I haven't thought of that, so I would be screwed. But I have many battleships, so that should help.....IF your talking PMT or MT.

I have both MT and FT forces just to make clear.

Supercav torps are (on the whole) too weakly armed to do much damage. The space required for a rocket engine kind of displace the warhead somewhat.


That's just pathetic...
Aha. No, I mean using Supercav SUBS. Like I said, check freewebs.com/supercav for more.

And actually, the sheer kinetic force of a Supercav torp is quite staggering...

Artillery Get modernish (That means modern, not fifty-year old Iowas) battleships, ~ 300 meters/ 9- 12 ~ 42cm main arty.

Have them in your own Very Shiny Battlegroup (tm)

Reach SD arty engagement range.

Have a couple AWACS or whatever fly high and watch incoming arty shells. Oh, and ensure air equality (Minimum), we don't want your Watcher in the Sky shot down.

Avoid the salvos (Over the SD engagement ranges I've seen, plus modern artillery muzzle velocities, it takes somewhere between 50- 150 seconds for the SD main gun shells to reach you (Minimum, assuming ETCs/ railguns. Twice that with more conventional designs). As SD supporters pointed out in another thread, an SD shouldn't have any issues avoiding orbital artillery and its comparable time-on-target. So, why should your battleship/ battlegroup?) until you're in range for your own arty.

Fire. You'll fire considerably faster than the SD, and while your shells are doubtlessly less destructive than SD main arty - Hence, why you should have more than one battleship, as you're facing a one hit missionkill situation - they should be more than sufficient to get through and achive a proper missionkill. Essentially, you're risking (And you will lose some of) considerable assets, but assuming success, it should be worth it.

Oh, and of course, you'll also face escorts and all. You have your own for that, though.

Missiles In an age where SDs are practical, high-velocity cruise missiles going Mach 3 (Seaskimming) are, too. Well, not necessarily cruising speed, but terminal velocity when reaching the target, with sub-machs/ low supersonic for the rest of the time.

Have a bunch of cruisers and battleships fire a few hundred of them. At a terminal velocity of Mach 3, missile-countermeasures will generally have issues. They wont be entirely useless, of course, but you should be able to slowly bite your way through the battlegroup, first the destroyers, then the cruisers... Eventually reaching the SD.

Nukes First of all, they have issues. Specifically, they have the same problem reaching the target conventional warheads on Torpedoes/ Missiles have. Second, forget high altitude or distant detonations. Armour's shiny. Nonetheless, an on-contact/ close detonation, and more specifically, directed energy blasts, should wreck the target for good.

Of course, there are this odd MAD strategies (I never really got how a nation can attack another - Nuclear-Enabled - nation and still expect that nukes are left aside 'Because everything should be fair', as the logical solution to being attacked by a MAD-using nation is instantaneous mass nukage, but perhaps it's just me).

Type one: 'You nuke my SD, I nuke your entire fleet'. Solution: Funny, who says your entire fleet is in range for his missiles? There's a good chance for considerable assets to survive, as the fleet you're currently engaging him with may be the only one in range (Especially considering NS geography, where an ICBM is essentially an IRBM) - And when you nuke first, he may not have enough resources remaining to stage a successful second-strike against your fleet.

Type two: Insta-MAD. Why, yes. If such a strategy is in place, the war would - Logically - go nuclear from the first minute on. But lets assume it's not. Well, you need strong nerves while your opposing leader decides what is better: 1. Retreat and keep both nations alive, accepting the (Apparently unfamilir) fact that attacking another nuclear-enabled nation may not be the smartest idea in the universe (tm) or 2. DEAT for both sides.

I know what I would choose... And what the vast majority of a not-hiveminded population would choose. But hey... NS...

Of course, there's also this thing... If ETCs or railguns on SDs exist, why shouldn't heavy airborne lasers - Forget about bomb-pumped xasers in orbit. Maintenance costs are prohibitive until you can stage cheap enough ground-to-orbit transports to be considered full-scale space faring - be possible? They're certainly tested, well... Today. I suppose that a ten-warheads-until-impact killquote per plane should be well within the realm of possibility. Possibly multiple times that (But then we're slowly entering the realm of improbability). Assuming NS-scale nuclear arsenals, this will of course not be sufficient to shoot everything down... But enough to ensure survival.

Submarines Yes, because sneaking up under a battlegroup with manymanymany ASW-specialised vessels is so easy... Not impossible, of course, but even here I'd suppose that slow battlegroup-chewing is necessary. No way one's instantly reaching the SD.

Of course, one could go with fission-powered interoceanic toepedoes... Ahem. Nevermind.

There's a third type for using nukes: Build a strong and effective ABM shield prior to using nukes. MAD gets thrown out in that case.

It's most definetly not a godmod. The problem is though, most SDs are plated with anti EMP materials (I'm not too sure how this works, ask Sarz or Prae) that will make EMP weapons do little to no effect.

The ironic thing is that I'm naming all my SDs now :p

EMP protection is basically making the ship like a car, a gigantic faraday cage.

There's a third type for using nukes: Build a strong and effective ABM shield prior to using nukes. MAD gets thrown out in that case.

This is what I do :)

Of course, you're not accounting for the many nations who have enough nuclear arsenals to get through any ABM shields (since they're not going to be 100 percent effective) and wipe your country off the map. And let's not forget the allies who will fire a huge shitload of nukes to support their ally's nuclear attacks. So even if you shot down 95 percent of those ballistic missiles (which I HIGHLY doubt), the five percent that got through would still be enough to wipe you off the map.

And that's not even taking into account the countries that isolate you economically or diplomatically because of your stance. If you start getting into economic dire straights (which few people ever RP, but still), you wouldn't have very extensive good will capital built up with nations that could help bring you out of the economic strife.

And I almost forgot, countries that choose to send SDs against you will likely also launch concerted strikes against your ABM defences. With the kind of intel that's possible in a PMT world, it's awfully hard to hide them from a country that's advanced enough to use spy sats to spy on the next door neighbour getting undressed or listen in on a "private" conversation between an accountant and his mistress.

Nukes First of all, they have issues. Specifically, they have the same problem reaching the target conventional warheads on Torpedoes/ Missiles have. Second, forget high altitude or distant detonations. Armour's shiny. Nonetheless, an on-contact/ close detonation, and more specifically, directed energy blasts, should wreck the target for good.

Of course, there are this odd MAD strategies (I never really got how a nation can attack another - Nuclear-Enabled - nation and still expect that nukes are left aside 'Because everything should be fair', as the logical solution to being attacked by a MAD-using nation is instantaneous mass nukage, but perhaps it's just me).

Type one: 'You nuke my SD, I nuke your entire fleet'. Solution: Funny, who says your entire fleet is in range for his missiles? There's a good chance for considerable assets to survive, as the fleet you're currently engaging him with may be the only one in range (Especially considering NS geography, where an ICBM is essentially an IRBM) - And when you nuke first, he may not have enough resources remaining to stage a successful second-strike against your fleet.

Type two: Insta-MAD. Why, yes. If such a strategy is in place, the war would - Logically - go nuclear from the first minute on. But lets assume it's not. Well, you need strong nerves while your opposing leader decides what is better: 1. Retreat and keep both nations alive, accepting the (Apparently unfamilir) fact that attacking another nuclear-enabled nation may not be the smartest idea in the universe (tm) or 2. DEAT for both sides.

I know what I would choose... And what the vast majority of a not-hiveminded population would choose. But hey... NS...

Of course, there's also this thing... If ETCs or railguns on SDs exist, why shouldn't heavy airborne lasers - Forget about bomb-pumped xasers in orbit. Maintenance costs are prohibitive until you can stage cheap enough ground-to-orbit transports to be considered full-scale space faring - be possible? They're certainly tested, well... Today. I suppose that a ten-warheads-until-impact killquote per plane should be well within the realm of possibility. Possibly multiple times that (But then we're slowly entering the realm of improbability). Assuming NS-scale nuclear arsenals, this will of course not be sufficient to shoot everything down... But enough to ensure survival.

Somehow I just KNOW this was directed towards me, but I'll take it one step at a time and put it this way:

I ONLY use nukes IF the other party AGREE'S to allow such NUCLEAR WEAPONS. At no time WITHOUT PERMISSION will I EVER launch NUCLEAR WEAPONS towards an Opponent. To me, that would be a GODMOD, to me. In certian cases I will employ STRATEGIC NUCLEAR MISSILES that will fit in the 1 Kt range and on B-1B BOMBERS. THIS AGAIN is if ONLY they are ALLOWED.

Like I said earlier, if NUCLEAR WEAPONS are NOT ALLOWED, I will think of a better way to DEAL with the SITUATION. I mainly use NUCLEAR WEAPONS for my NUCLEAR TORPEDOES in FUTURE TECH role plays. Rarely have I ever used a NUCLEAR WEAPON in the MODERN TECH scheme for a long time.

Now, with that rant over, I'm done.

<snip>Your reading comprehension skills are lacking, ya'know.

Tell you what: Read what I wrote.

Again.

And again.

Until you eventually get the meaning of what I wrote.

Hint: It's not what you believe I meant.

And let's not forget the allies who will fire a huge shitload of nukes to support their ally's nuclear attacks.Assuming that they take part in the conflict, risking to be nuked by the allies of the other side, of course. Which, in the case of their own ally being the aggressor, I doubt.

Somehow, I am under the assumption that rational regimes wouldn't risk nukefests and simply wouldn't go to war with other nuclear-enabled nations, until they gave up MAD and just went with accepting the existence of nukes as tactical weapons.

And even then it would only be highly limited wars, never total wars, as the latter would doubtless and with absolute certainty result in MAD.

It's simple. In a nuclear world, war is suicide. Why are you commiting suicide?

And that's not even taking into account the countries that isolate you economically or diplomatically because of your stance.My stance being that I'm willing to defend myself when attacked?

Oh, and for the record, my main nation (With which I'd post right now, weren't it for me presently writing an IC post with this one) has done plenty of tac-nuking, and has plenty of economic partners regardless of this fact :) What with its conflicts being either internal or defensive...

Matter-of-factly: What's riskier for the world, in terms of continued existence as well as economic stability: MAD doctrines essentially threatening the nuclear annihilation ofn billions, or tacnuke doctrines threatening the nuclear annihilation of... Single... Ships...

And yes. I know. MAD is supposed to prevent the use of specific pieces of equipment - nuclear weapons - to begin with. Just as tactical nuke strategies aim at preventing the use of (Surprise) specific pieces of equipment - In this case, SDs - to begin with.

In any case. While MAD as a purely defensive strategy makes sense... NS has plenty of vaguely aggressive MAD supporters. And they are a vastly greater threat than defensive tacnukes supporters.

Of course, you're not accounting for the many nations who have enough nuclear arsenals to get through any ABM shields (since they're not going to be 100 percent effective) and wipe your country off the map. And let's not forget the allies who will fire a huge shitload of nukes to support their ally's nuclear attacks. So even if you shot down 95 percent of those ballistic missiles (which I HIGHLY doubt), the five percent that got through would still be enough to wipe you off the map.

If they have enough nukes to saturate my defenses, then they either severely outnumber and outproduce me, or they don't spend anything on their regular forces. ABM defense is the top priority of our military and is funded accordingly.


And I almost forgot, countries that choose to send SDs against you will likely also launch concerted strikes against your ABM defences. With the kind of intel that's possible in a PMT world, it's awfully hard to hide them from a country that's advanced enough to use spy sats to spy on the next door neighbour getting undressed or listen in on a "private" conversation between an accountant and his mistress.


And in order to do that, they'll need to breakthrough the ABM defense first.

Your reading comprehension skills are lacking, ya'know.

Tell you what: Read what I wrote.

Again.

And again.

Until you eventually get the meaning of what I wrote.

Hint: It's not what you believe I meant.

I have indeed noticed lately I have gone off on rants and useless spamming quests for absolutely no reason. This time, it was a wrongful Rant. I respectfully stand down from my past position and submit to the higher player, you.

Forgive my lack of intelligence on this matter, I seem to be going over the edge for some reason.

(BTW) Never been snipped before, lol.......oh Lord, whats wrong with me....

I need to once again point out that nukes does and will escalate the conflict into eventually the demise of two or more nations (since it is accepted as a conventional weapon at far lesser degrees than true conventional weapons, would be frowned upon, yada yada...), regardless of what it might seem and regardless of whether it will result in instant strategic-nuke or not. There's a good point about fairness - what is fairness? Is bringing a SD fair? Is nuking a SD fair? Neither of them, no. So where is the fairness that can effectively separate tactical nukes used against ships from other forms of nuking, and stopping it from escalating eventually to tactical nukes used against populated harbours and in the very end ICBMs lobbed like air in a slap-fight? There's none.

Let's assume this scenario. I nuke your SD. You nuke my fleet. I nuke your harbour, which stores maybe one or two of your own SDs (or whatever smaller flagship it is). You nuke one of my entire task force while they are underway in the middle of the ocean. So I nuke yours. You nuke my harbours again, this time causing 1 megadeath. Since you've killed one million of my people anyways, what's there to stop me from carpet tac-nuking your entire nation? So I do so. You then ICBM me back. I ICBM you back. The end.

I may agree, depending on the scenario, that this is not the case. But as our friend DPUO pointed out in another debate about this a few months ago, nukes create uncertainity. It, given its status, creates fear, paranoia, doubt, and fear for the uncertain. So, given this, what's there to safe guard this so-called "k fair play, we tacnuke ships only thx lol" mess from escalating when everyone's at a heightened degree of paranoia and are either illogical or over-logical - both that will result in escalation?

I'm not saying that it absolutely shouldn't be used, but one also must accept its consequences. It will escalate, especially in II where the use of SDs are the most common. Yes, some are the exception, but they are pre-planned and the conduct of the players in it governed by a set of conditions, aren't they? There are clear separations between nukes and conventional weapons that may determine whether if nukes are or are not used in a conflict (Even with the presence of nuclear-capable nations, I must add), but like conventional weapons, nukes knows no bounds in itself.

And this is still assuming a 1 vs 1 war. I won't even get into when multialliance (compromised of nations of equal powers) wars are fought - it will be worse.

If they have enough nukes to saturate my defenses, then they either severely outnumber and outproduce me, or they don't spend anything on their regular forces. ABM defense is the top priority of our military and is funded accordingly.And many of the countries that have these policies can and do outnumber and outproduce you. If you choose to use tactical nukes on my SDs, you'll have to accept the consecquences. And those consequences could result in the end of your nation.

And in order to do that, they'll need to breakthrough the ABM defense first.As I've indicated, it's highly unlikely that a ABM defence will be as reliable as those who conceive it claim it to be. People claim CIWS systems can knock down about 95 percent of all inbound missiles in field testing, but in actual combat, those numbers go down dramatically. If a country fires a massive nuclear assault against your nation and the same sort of outcome happens, your nation becomes a radioactive smudge.

I'm just going to say this: If someone nukes my SD, or any of my fleets, I would be forced to reply in kind. This is not MAD, but simply that, at that point, my nation would open up with orbital assets, such as particle weapons, xasers, and Kinetic Hit-To-Kill devices.

This is for several reasons:

1.)My people would become angry at the government if it "acted weak" and accepted such a bloody nose.

2.)My military would see it as a test, to see if we were willing to step up to the next level.

3.)The ISA plays by Realpolitik, which holds that "signs of weakness" in international relations would be worse than MAD. That is: it is better to both die, and have it over, than to suffer indefinately as a subjugated state.

However, we employ several tiers of warfare:

1.) Limitted. No targetting of civilians. No orbital weaponry or bombing raids.
2.) Comitted. No targetting of civilians. Tactical weapons now and option.
3.) Total. Victory is imperative, no deliberate slaughter of civilians, strategic weapons now an option.
4.) Code Omege. Enemy is so radically destructive that coexistance is not possible. The only rational outcome of the war is elimination of one of the belligerants. Victory or MAD are the only allowable options. Deliberate targetting of enemy populations.

Also note, however, that Code Omega has never been needed, and only exists because this IS NS, and some race like the Zerg might exist. Anywho, end hijack.

My SD's are very well armoured but if you have enough ships with 20" ETC guns bombarding it, it will be disabled. My SD's are a seconday armour layer much thinner than the main armour. It's used if it's badly damaged to be able to retreat to the back of the fleet and eventually back to port for repairs while other ships in the fleet covor it's advance. Enough pouding in the same would do the trick though.
I also have production rights from another nation for high velocity-high heat missiles that are used ecspecially for SD's. They are some big poppers.

Another one of my person techniques is to just use a massive misile salvo. All ships equiped with Cruise missiles and Anti-Ship missiles launch a X amount of hundred missiles at it with convential batteries being fired at it all at once. Nothing would be strong enough to take that kind of hit.

Somehow, I am under the assumption that rational regimes wouldn't risk nukefests and simply wouldn't go to war with other nuclear-enabled nations, until they gave up MAD and just went with accepting the existence of nukes as tactical weapons.


We are not a rational regime. We will not accept nukes as tactical weapons, simple as that. You nuke our SDN, or in fact anything of ours, we will waste you back to the stonage. THAT is the consequence of using nuclear weapons and that is why you shouldn't imagine that tactical nuclear weapons are just something to be thrown around. It's not just me either - I can name five people that would respond in kind if you did the same to them.

Your ABM is 99% efficient, let's say that. I have 130,000 ICBMs packed with nuclear, thermonuclear, biological, and chemical weapons in silos, submarines, and bombers. It would take me maybe.. eighteen minutes to get the submarines launch codes patched, control keys activated, and missiles in the air: My air strategic detterent is constantly on the get go and the ICBMs could launch in the same time as the submarines.
What's 1% of 130,000?
1,300, correct?
Therefore with a 99% accuracy I have still got 1300 nuclear, thermonuclear, biological and chemical weapons onto your nation.

Space based kinetic kill weapons, ortillery, whatever you call it, I have fourty satellites ready to fire these things at any moment. While they aren't a nuke, maybe each one could achieve the effect of a big FAE or a MOAB.

Therefore, you are fucked, even with 99%. Let's go with 90%, 13,000 TNBC weapons onto your soil. 95%, 6,500 TNBC weapons on your soil.

NEVER overestimate nation's capacities.

Again, I don't see why people think that missile spam does anything.

Say you launch 10,000 missiles at me.
Let's take in a 50% destruction factor from escorts.
Then, a 50% from the SD itself, missile defenses, THELS, CIWS, Flak. You just hit ~2500, 3000 missiles at my SD - so what? Because they aren't concentrated, and most SDs are too heavily armoured for missiles like Harpoon and Tomahawk to do *anything*, you won't achieve much, if little. That and it will cost you a fucking fortune.

Using that same principle, however, your nuclear agression by 'stoning him back to the stone age' will also have consequences, as you have so clearly spelled out for his regard. Indeed, the chances are that you too will be cratered with nuked by the end of the nukefest, underscoring the phrase, mutually assured destruction.

Therefore, by 'fucking' him over, you're 'fucking' yourself over.

Using that same principle, however, your nuclear agression by 'stoning him back to the stone age' will also have consequences, as you have so clearly spelled out for his regard. Indeed, the chances are that you too will be cratered with nuked by the end of the nukefest, underscoring the phrase, mutually assured destruction.

Therefore, by 'fucking' him over, you're 'fucking' yourself over.

That's true, I don't expect to win in a situation like that. Oh, and please don't point at me like I'm the nuclear aggressor in this situation. Let's not forget who dropped the big one first.

There's a big difference between launching a nuclear tipped missile against a fleet, than there is launching a huge nuclear stockpile onto a country in general. The difference is that the fleet will cost materialistic losses, true, and most likely the loss of at least twenty thousand sailors. However, the assured destruction of two nations assured the destruction of billions of people.

Personally, if someone was to nuke my fleet I wouldn't exxagerate that and launch a strategic nuclear strike on their nation. I would most likely reciprocate it and launch a nuclear strike on their fleets - but that could be a fun role play if done the right way, and both nations don't bitch.

Personally, I prefer to have a fun, original, role play [like a well done nuclear war], than to win.

That's true, I don't expect to win in a situation like that. Oh, and please don't point at me like I'm the nuclear aggressor in this situation. Let's not forget who dropped the big one first.That and you seem to be going on the assumption that none of Hogsweat's allies will respond to a massive nuclear strike on him after someone tac nukes his SD and he gets "nuked back to the stone age." I'd like to see a ABM defence handle having a MILLION nukes going after a country. Even at 99 percent efficiency, that still means enough destruction to wreck a planet the size of Jupiter.

All that because of some insane policy of nuking someone's superdreadnought.

Personally, I prefer to have a fun, original, role play [like a well done nuclear war], than to win.

As would I. Note that most people use nukes against SDs because they see no other way of killing it and they see it as an obstacle against their victory (OOC, IC). Clearly people that would use nukes against ships are people that would play the game to win rather than to have a good roleplay. Just because you get your arse kicked, doesn't mean it can't be fun.

*points to his rise of nation, 1v7, toughest, games*

You seem to be going on the assumption that none of Hogsweat's allies will respond to a massive nuclear strike on him after someone tac nukes his SD and he gets "nuked back to the stone age." I'd like to see a ABM defence handle having a MILLION nukes going after a country. Even at 99 percent efficiency, that still means enough destruction to wreck a planet the size of Jupiter.

All that because of some insane policy of nuking someone's superdreadnought.

Can I suggest that, for the sake of the discussion, that we limit ourselves to "what weapons destroy SDs" and leave debates over MAD for another thread?

A nuclear weapon can take out an SD. We've agreed.

If I took out an SD conventionally, someone could still nuke me in retaliation -- say, through frustration that they just lost their favorite toy.

So arguing about where the destruction of an SD goes next is beyond the argument. The point is proven. Nukes = SD kaput.

The point is proven. Nukes = SD kaput.


Er, no? Even some mid yield atomic or nuclear bombs wouldn't be enough to mission kill the most hardened SD.

<snip>So, given all this - Doubtlessly correct - risks, why are two nuclear-capable natiosn each other? As soon as they open fire upon each other with conventional weapons - On a large scale, that is, not a just-below-war border skirmish a la Russia/ China - both have already accepted the risk of nuclear annihilation.

And many of the countries that have these policies can and do outnumber and outproduce you. If you choose to use tactical nukes on my SDs, you'll have to accept the consecquences. And those consequences could result in the end of your nation.Both your nations, really... Which is the whole problem, ne?

I'm just going to say this: If someone nukes my SD, or any of my fleets, I would be forced to reply in kind. This is not MAD, but simply that, at that point, my nation would open up with orbital assets, such as particle weapons, xasers, and Kinetic Hit-To-Kill devices.All of which have yields vastly inferior to tacnukes, and can be eliminated by killsats... And indeed, would already be (Largely) eliminated, as space superiority is the first goddamn thing anyone should care about, once weaponised space is possible (So, say, since the eighties, from a purely technological perspective).

1.)My people would become angry at the government if it "acted weak" and accepted such a bloody nose.More so than getting angry at it for starting a conflict with a nation it knew could and would use nuclear ordinance, sacrificing thousands to a predictable outcome?

3.)The ISA plays by Realpolitik, which holds that "signs of weakness" in international relations would be worse than MAD. That is: it is better to both die, and have it over, than to suffer indefinately as a subjugated state.Mhm... I tend to enjoy being alive, but then again, maybe that's just me.

We are not a rational regime. We will not accept nukes as tactical weapons, simple as that. You nuke our SDN, or in fact anything of ours, we will waste you back to the stonage. THAT is the consequence of using nuclear weapons and that is why you shouldn't imagine that tactical nuclear weapons are just something to be thrown around. It's not just me either - I can name five people that would respond in kind if you did the same to them.That's good for you. Thing is, your regime (Well, anything Hogsweatian, really) wouldn't survive, either. And given Hogsweat's decidedly aggressive policies, this policy is flatout suicidal. If you declare an aggressive war against outspoken tacnuke users, well, you'll have it coming.

PS: Weren't Hogsweatian military assets tacnuked without it responding with a total annihilation strike? I seem to vaguely recall something regarding Hellfire-and-stuff.

Your ABM is 99% efficient, let's say that. I have 130,000 ICBMs packed with nuclear, thermonuclear, biological, and chemical weapons in silos, submarines, and bombers. It would take me maybe.. eighteen minutes to get the submarines launch codes patched, control keys activated, and missiles in the air: My air strategic detterent is constantly on the get go and the ICBMs could launch in the same time as the submarines.
Now, if you'd read my first post properly, you'd have noticed that I never assumed 100% ABM efficiency... Though I'd note that given NS distances, your ICBMs might as well be incapable of reaching me - Well, my PMT nation. It's hard to fire ICBMs into the Gamma Quadrant - which would result in MAD in NS becoming utterly pointless.

The joys of a ludicrously huge earth...

Space based kinetic kill weapons, ortillery, whatever you call it, I have fourty satellites ready to fire these things at any moment. While they aren't a nuke, maybe each one could achieve the effect of a big FAE or a MOAB.Which would be long gone, as mentioned, re: Kaukolastan. Oh, and of course, orty-enabled nations would lose their SDs in somewhat different ways, as I'd resort to orty myself. Worse, if Orty's used, your missile silos would be history within a considerably short timeframe, as this would offer a wholly new field of asymmetrical warfare.

Especially with LEO-stationed medium-sized CPBs (Which are existing, though of course neither orbital nor with sufficiently high yields - But they fit into the PMT range.

Therefore, you are fucked, even with 99%. Let's go with 90%, 13,000 TNBC weapons onto your soil. 95%, 6,500 TNBC weapons on your soil.Again, correction: Both nations would be fucked.

Well, yes, AMF nuked Cariya as a plot device. It was agreed between the both of us and I was going to suggest it anyway.

Founders, you are assuming that I would not establish space superiority. Trust me, my systems are "vewy vewy nice", as Elmer Fudd would say. Let's not even get into pre-supposing orbital superiority, mmkay?

EDIT: And on "I prefer to be alive"... that's because you're a normal person, not a world player. Annihaltion vs Subjugation is a BIG thing in International Relations. WWII in the Pacific happened because both the US and Japan believed total war was less dangerous than being "embarassed" by backing down. A lot of idiosynchratic things happen in Realist Thought, but they do make a cynical sense. /EDIT

Anyway, I agree with what the other guy said... let's get off of MAD and onto SD killing.

So, given all this - Doubtlessly correct - risks, why are two nuclear-capable natiosn each other? As soon as they open fire upon each other with conventional weapons - On a large scale, that is, not a just-below-war border skirmish a la Russia/ China - both have already accepted the risk of nuclear annihilation.
The problems with this assessment are as follows
a) Conventional weapons are _conventional_ weapons. Nuclear weapons, having been frowned upon much more, are _unconventional_ weapons. As I've said earlier, there's a clear separation between nuclear weapons and conventional weapons, IRL or in NS. Unless one side actually takes the initiative in using nuclear weapons in a first strike (which will evidentally result in a nuclear confrontation of massive scale), what you will see is only a heated-up conventional war. Yes, both conventional and nuclear weapons sees no bounds in themselves, but there is evidentally a bound between the two.
b) This is NS, not IRL. People operate with a different mindset and mentality. Which means that you won't see a NATO/Warsaw Pact scenario where tactical nukes will sooner or later be used in a first strike (by either side) during the course of slugfest. However, given that this is NS and the fact that probably 99% of the nations here does have nuclear weapons, people will be forced to fight a conventional-only war since nuclear weapons would certainly mean death. And they want to fight a war, to resolve disputes of course.

If the "conventional wars between nuclear-capable NS powers" is really a rule in NS, then we'd see much less conflicts going on because of the deterrence value of nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, that isn't the case - and we still see plenty of wars being fought here, between nuclear powers, without nuclear weapons at all. Well, I've certainly fought more than one where that's the case.

It is possible not to trespass the boudnary between TNT and hydrogen bombs -- but if you really decide to trespass it, you are entering a whole new realm.

You seem to be going on the assumption that none of Hogsweat's allies will respond to a massive nuclear strike on him after someone tac nukes his SD and he gets "nuked back to the stone age." I'd like to see a ABM defence handle having a MILLION nukes going after a country. Even at 99 percent efficiency, that still means enough destruction to wreck a planet the size of Jupiter.

All that because of some insane policy of nuking someone's superdreadnought.


I assumed nothing, that is what Hogsweat directly implied. However, this is irrevelant to the discussion, and as for that later snip, there was no argument for the use of AMB defenses, it was an argument based on the fact that because those AMB defenses are not as effective as people think they are, both the agressor and the agressed are most likely dead meat in a nuclear holocaust.

Then, a 50% from the SD itself, missile defenses, THELS, CIWS, Flak. You just hit ~2500, 3000 missiles at my SD - so what? Because they aren't concentrated, and most SDs are too heavily armoured for missiles like Harpoon and Tomahawk to do *anything*, you won't achieve much, if little. That and it will cost you a fucking fortune.Try to read what I wrote about the missile strike, again? You know, it said somethign about proper (Fast) missiles, it said something about hitting the escorts first to prevent being constantly shot at by their CIWS etc...

And it was all disregarded. Can't say I'm pleased.

That's true, I don't expect to win in a situation like that. Oh, and please don't point at me like I'm the nuclear aggressor in this situation. Let's not forget who dropped the big one first.You're the aggressor, point (Yes, I feel justified saying this, given Hogsweat's tendency to start wars). If you attack a nation with nuclear capacities, a nation that has also publicly stated that it'd resort to tacnukes when it sees them as being efficient, then you've brought it upon yourselve, not the other way around.

That and you seem to be going on the assumption that none of Hogsweat's allies will respond to a massive nuclear strike on him after someone tac nukes his SD and he gets "nuked back to the stone age." I'd like to see a ABM defence handle having a MILLION nukes going after a country. Even at 99 percent efficiency, that still means enough destruction to wreck a planet the size of Jupiter.

All that because of some insane policy of nuking someone's superdreadnought.That's assuming that Hogsweat's allies are willing to follow Hogsweat into an aggressive war with a nuclear-enabled nation, whose nuclear strategy is public knowledge, and which will itself have plenty of allies which will do exactly the same to Hogsweat's allies.

And thus, instead of fucking two nations, we've now fucked twenty nations, and somewhere between fifty to hundred billion people.

Rather than a battlegroup.

Personally, I'd think that starting the war to begin with was the insane move, not starting the nuking.

As would I. Note that most people use nukes against SDs because they see no other way of killing it and they see it as an obstacle against their victory (OOC, IC). Clearly people that would use nukes against ships are people that would play the game to win rather than to have a good roleplay. Just because you get your arse kicked, doesn't mean it can't be fun.*Raises Eyebrow* That's a nice prejudice. Of course, using them has nothing to do with strategic doctrines, national characteristics, the fact that a nation would rather point out that it can annihilate you if you go any further ('So, we nuked your SD. Come any closer and we'll engage in a full scale nuclear war. You didn't believe that we'd use them, now you have proof. Mind backing off?') or any such things?

Of course every player using nukes MUST be an OMFG I N00KZ YUO! noob rather than writing on, say, the Eurusea, or Chimea level?

Clearly, every player resorting to nukes expects INSTANTANEOUS VAPORISATION! YOU DIE! rather than missionkills, crippled ships draging themselves back home, trying to at least stay afloat?

Piss off.

Er, no? Even some mid yield atomic or nuclear bombs wouldn't be enough to mission kill the most hardened SD.Ehehe... So why respond with a strategic strike when the tactical strike doesn't do anything?

In other news, depends on the actual yield of the bomb ('Mid-yield' is somewhat vague), the way it's constructed, and where it actually detonates.

Well, yes, AMF nuked Cariya as a plot device. It was agreed between the both of us and I was going to suggest it anyway.In other words, what you said earlier simply isn't correct, as historic precedence proves.

After all, every war should have ooc consent between the participants and sufficient ooc working out to allow for such things, and you'd never attack without ooc consent and then go OMFG I N00KZ YUO!!!11 when the (Kinda unwilling) opponent gets a bit desperate, would you?

Gerald Bull's supercannon would be one answer. Another would be a supermortar. An 18" rocket-propelled gun, fired at a very high angle, would plunge down at frightening speed. If designed to home in on an infrared relection or equipped with an onboard guidance system, such a "smart shell" could achieve supersonic velocties and then, just a few hundred feet above the target, shed its outer casing to expose a tungsten core.

Bull's supercannon has a range of 1500nm and is essentially a suborbital weapon. It, too, could be a "smart" sabot shell.

Bull's weapon, as we all know, was being built by Iraq just before the First Gulf War; that war (and Bull's assassination in Brussels) ended the project.

Kinetic energy - it's a wonderful thing.

Also, keep in mind that HE will clear all deck structures off any warship (if enough is used). This might not destroy a ship, but could render it blind.

(Of course, I still love torpedoes, being a submarine man.)

On the issue of nuking SD's, I believe that it is indeed an acceptable tactic - but only if you believe that allowing the SD to defeat your navy will lead to your nation being conquered.

Most of my governments - and especially my democracies - would rather die in a nuclear war than submit to foreign conquest (especially if the conqueror is your typical NS genocidal tyrant).

Try to read what I wrote about the missile strike, again? You know, it said somethign about proper (Fast) missiles, it said something about hitting the escorts first to prevent being constantly shot at by their CIWS etc...

And it was all disregarded. Can't say I'm pleased.

The entire bottom part past "Again" was directed at someone (I forgot who) saying that firing alot of cruise missiles would work. NOT you.

You're the aggressor, point (Yes, I feel justified saying this, given Hogsweat's tendency to start wars). If you attack a nation with nuclear capacities, a nation that has also publicly stated that it'd resort to tacnukes when it sees them as being efficient, then you've brought it upon yourselve, not the other way around.
This is pretty much an egg/chicken argument. I can easily understand why anyone would blame me: although I can also easily understand how you could blame someone for allowing a poliy where tacnukes are basically conventional weapons.

That's assuming that Hogsweat's allies are willing to follow Hogsweat into an aggressive war with a nuclear-enabled nation, whose nuclear strategy is public knowledge, and which will itself have plenty of allies which will do exactly the same to Hogsweat's allies.

And thus, instead of fucking two nations, we've now fucked twenty nations, and somewhere between fifty to hundred billion people.

Rather than a battlegroup.
Again, egg and chicken, if you didn't think it was a good idea to tacnuke ships in the first place it wouldn't have happened.


*Raises Eyebrow* That's a nice prejudice. Of course, using them has nothing to do with strategic doctrines, national characteristics, the fact that a nation would rather point out that it can annihilate you if you go any further ('So, we nuked your SD. Come any closer and we'll engage in a full scale nuclear war. You didn't believe that we'd use them, now you have proof. Mind backing off?') or any such things?

Of course every player using nukes MUST be an OMFG I N00KZ YUO! noob rather than writing on, say, the Eurusea, or Chimea level?

Clearly, every player resorting to nukes expects INSTANTANEOUS VAPORISATION! YOU DIE! rather than missionkills, crippled ships draging themselves back home, trying to at least stay afloat?

Piss off.

Same point can be said about superdreadnoughts. We use our SDNs in gunboat diplomacy, you KNOW how our people feel about our military (I can pretty much guess who this is. Why do you use different nations anyway?)
"Of course every player using nukes MUST be an OMFG I N00KZ YUO! noob rather than writing on, say, the Eurusea, or Chimea level?"
This is not what I meant. What I meant was that for the *most part* in International Incidents (Do Eurusea or Chimea RP in II? Not IIRC) people would use a tacnuke on SDNs because they think they are some superman "unit" that can kick anything conventional's ass and that a superdreadnaught will destroy their entire nation unless they go nuclear on it.


Ehehe... So why respond with a strategic strike when the tactical strike doesn't do anything?

In other news, depends on the actual yield of the bomb ('Mid-yield' is somewhat vague), the way it's constructed, and where it actually detonates.

I don't know. What I do know however is that a post WW2 battleship survived fourteen direct atomic blasts before being sunk.

In other words, what you said earlier simply isn't correct, as historic precedence proves.
Eh?


After all, every war should have ooc consent between the participants and sufficient ooc working out to allow for such things, and you'd never attack without ooc consent and then go OMFG I N00KZ YUO!!!11 when the (Kinda unwilling) opponent gets a bit desperate, would you?
Dropping a nuclear missile on a Superdreadnaught isn't desperate. In fact, it's a first strike for many of the people arguing for it on this thread.

Problem with the supercannon is that it's meant to shell, not hit something directly, especially when its manuevering like a ship. I would suspect that at a range of even five hundred kilometers a shell would take about eight to ten minutes to traverse that range. Although, sure, a ship might not have moved that much when considering its position in the water around it, it's a huge difference when considering that the ranging done on that shell, if off by a few decimal points, can miss; meaning, at that range, it wouldn't hit an SD, and if it did, the damage would be enough to penetrate the hull, but it would necessarilly put it out of action, and at the rate of fire of the supergun, it wouldn't be an effective way of dealing with a ship in general.

Having seen SDs I was just wondering if anyone made a ship to the effect of a super carrier? I remember seeing something about a dreadnought/carrier somewhere and wondered if anyone ever built/tried to build something like that.

Hogsweat, I was going to look up your nation on NS, and I accidently logged in with the name Hogsweat and with my password, so you're going to get a message that said one unsuccessful login..that was me on accident.

Founders, you are assuming that I would not establish space superiority. Trust me, my systems are "vewy vewy nice", as Elmer Fudd would say. Let's not even get into pre-supposing orbital superiority, mmkay?So why are you assuming orbital superiority? In all likelyhood, the orbital networks of both sides would be largely dead.

EDIT: And on "I prefer to be alive"... that's because you're a normal person, not a world player. Annihaltion vs Subjugation is a BIG thing in International Relations. WWII in the Pacific happened because both the US and Japan believed total war was less dangerous than being "embarassed" by backing down. A lot of idiosynchratic things happen in Realist Thought, but they do make a cynical sense. /EDIT
Japan risked defeat of its military forces, not its complete annihilation. Note that it kinda... backed down... As soon as it did risk it.

Note further the utter lack of conflicts between nations/ Alliances where both sides possess nuclear capacities, ever since, well... Ever since we've had the bomb. Never have two nuclear-capable nations in the real world fought each other, instead resorting to negotiations and, indeed, to 'Backing down' (Note that total subjugation of a nuclear power is impossible).

Why? Because annihilation has become a real possibility. And nobody's risking it.

a) Conventional weapons are _conventional_ weapons. Nuclear weapons, having been frowned upon much more, are _unconventional_ weapons. As I've said earlier, there's a clear separation between nuclear weapons and conventional weapons, IRL or in NS. Unless one side actually takes the initiative in using nuclear weapons in a first strike (which will evidentally result in a nuclear confrontation of massive scale), what you will see is only a heated-up conventional war. Yes, both conventional and nuclear weapons sees no bounds in themselves, but there is evidentally a bound between the two.1. What evidence? I've seen multiple uses of nuclear weapons (Even on a strategic scale) that didn't result in total nuclear annihilation, in NS.

2. What kind of war? For what? I can see this happening in a conflict over a minor issue (Which shouldn't result in a major war to begin with), but full-scale invasions staying conventional? How? The full-scale invation (Unlike a tactical nuclear strike against a ship) is threatening one's existence, and the whole point of a nuclear arsenal is to prevent such a thing.

b) This is NS, not IRL. People operate with a different mindset and mentality. Which means that you won't see a NATO/Warsaw Pact scenario where tactical nukes will sooner or later be used in a first strike (by either side) during the course of slugfest. However, given that this is NS and the fact that probably 99% of the nations here does have nuclear weapons, people will be forced to fight a conventional-only war since nuclear weapons would certainly mean death. And they want to fight a war, to resolve disputes of course.This argument just isn't sound. 99.99% of the nations wont be involved in the conflict to begin with. If anything, the widespread existence of nuclear weapons should prevent most wars to begin with. It doesn't. Nuclear weapons in NS mean no more death than in the real world. Really, why would the widespread proliferation and production of nuclear weapons force people to fight conventional wars.

How?

If the "conventional wars between nuclear-capable NS powers" is really a rule in NS, then we'd see much less conflicts going on because of the deterrence value of nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, that isn't the case - and we still see plenty of wars being fought here, between nuclear powers, without nuclear weapons at all. Well, I've certainly fought more than one where that's the case.Well, this is true (Not sure why. ICly, anyway. oocly, I can see why. Kinda.). Thing is, I've seen plenty of wars being fought with nukes, too. Without resulting in MAD.

So...

Having seen SDs I was just wondering if anyone made a ship to the effect of a super carrier? I remember seeing something about a dreadnought/carrier somewhere and wondered if anyone ever built/tried to build something like that.
Yes, we have Supercarriers, to name one off the top of my head, Hogsweatian Illustrious CVN, 984m.

Roger That Mac.

Oh, and Changeling Founders, I did reply, on page 5, dunno if you saw it.

Well, I'm replying and replying, occasionally missing posts...

Anyway.

<snip the first four points>Well, fair enough. Some mild disagreement in some cases, but meh.

I don't know. What I do know however is that a post WW2 battleship survived fourteen direct atomic blasts before being sunk.From considerable distances (Generally > 500 metres) and insignificant yields (Generally < 30 kilotons), I think. A 100kt on-contact detonation (Assuming that it gets through CIWS etc.. Which I would incidentally count as a vastly sounder argument against nuking SDs. Getting through the CIWS would require a load of nuclear missiles which would, in turn, cost a lot. Using conventional missiles for a normal missionkill would most likely be cheaper) should wreck it with relative ease.

Now, an actual tacnuke (say, five kilotons) might actually leave the SD afloat.

Missionkilled, certainly, but afloat. Possibly, depends on where it hits, I guess.

(I can pretty much guess who this is. Why do you use different nations anyway?)
<.< As I wrote before, was posting IC with CF, earlier. Ok, now I've already written it, but as you might be able to gather, logging into the proper nation takes time. >.> Given that I've listed my puppets in my NSwiki profile, anyway, it's not like it's a secret.

1. What evidence? I've seen multiple uses of nuclear weapons (Even on a strategic scale) that didn't result in total nuclear annihilation, in NS.
"in NS."
This is a thread in II. You gotta take account of the fundamental differences.

2. What kind of war? For what? I can see this happening in a conflict over a minor issue (Which shouldn't result in a major war to begin with), but full-scale invasions staying conventional? How?
Err... Yes, full-scale conventional invasion. Of my own country - and it didn't escalate to nuclear war, either. I've seen plenty of others happening that corresponds to this case.

This argument just isn't sound.
More realistic than your constant assumption that NS oeprates on the same mindset as IRL, surely?

99.99% of the nations wont be involved in the conflict to begin with.
Err... I'm talking about the nations that actually roleplays. It should be overly obvious.

Really, why would the widespread proliferation and production of nuclear weapons force people to fight conventional wars.
I thought it is simple enough to comprehend to begin with, but since...

How?
...by essentially serving as a deterrence against the usage of nuclear weapons, which will most certainly result in teh annihilation of both nations? And since nations would choose to fight anyways, evidentally they are going to stay in the conventional realm.

Well, this is true (Not sure why. ICly, anyway.
Err... When nations in NS operates on a different mindset than IRL, why wouldn't they operate on it on an IC basis?

Thing is, I've seen plenty of wars being fought with nukes, too. Without resulting in MAD.
Is this the NationStates forum section? Nope. II. Are these RPs you've mentioned truly planned in a sense? Probably, yes.

Can we stop arguing about nuking SDs please? It's been done to death, and the disagreement is as follows:

Anti-SDer: If you use an SD I'll nuke it.

SDer: Err... I'll fire back.

Anti-SDer: Then it'll go to MAD.

SDer: Ok. I guess it's better to risk invasion than to certainly lose your nation, so I dont think you will actually nuke.

Anti-SDer: Yeah well I guess it's better to risk not being able to invade me than to lose your nation so I dont think you will actually deploy an SD.

Ok. We get the picture. This has happened in at least half a dozen damn threads and we all get to the same point. Regardless of who is right (depending on the nation and circumstances, both are probably right) a nuclear solution is inherently flawed because there is a chance that it will go to MAD and if that happens everyone uses. Now what people really want (and what Im interested to see if the Anti-SD brigade can actually get past the "ZOMFG n00kz" thing and think up) is a conventional solution which can be done using naval forces. In my opinion, the best way is to build another SD. You don't decide not to build any planes and instead threaten to nuke any planes anyone else uses, you build some damn planes yourself.

From considerable distances (Generally > 500 metres) and insignificant yields (Generally < 30 kilotons), I think. A 100kt on-contact detonation (Assuming that it gets through CIWS etc.. Which I would incidentally count as a vastly sounder argument against nuking SDs. Getting through the CIWS would require a load of nuclear missiles which would, in turn, cost a lot. Using conventional missiles for a normal missionkill would most likely be cheaper) should wreck it with relative ease.

Now, an actual tacnuke (say, five kilotons) might actually leave the SD afloat.

Missionkilled, certainly, but afloat. Possibly, depends on where it hits, I guess.

<.< As I wrote before, was posting IC with CF, earlier. Ok, now I've already written it, but as you might be able to gather, logging into the proper nation takes time. >.> Given that I've listed my puppets in my NSwiki profile, anyway, it's not like it's a secret.

^_^ all above points noted.

For nations without the resources to build or/and purchase a quantity of superdreadnaughts, some of Listeneisse's suggestions - especially in regards to underwater-type countermeasures, are excellent. One must remember that submarines are not near the point of extinction just because of the invention of the ASW helo and sonobuoys (not that the sole usage of them can be considered as a proper tactic, of course), and the placement of ships in concentric rings. The mastery of new UUV technologies, the effective evasion of the notice of various ASW platforms, and the magic of the thermocline are crucial if one decides to use submarines as the primary platform in a SD attack.

Ok, another puppet I'm required to post with.

"in NS."
This is a thread in II. You gotta take account of the fundamental differences.Except of course that I meant the entirety of the RP forums, and the example mentioned by me/ confirmed by Hogsweat was in...

II...

Err... I'm talking about the nations that actually roleplays. It should be overly obvious.Ok. 99.9%.

...by essentially serving as a deterrence against the usage of nuclear weapons, which will most certainly result in teh annihilation of both nations? And since nations would choose to fight anyways, evidentally they are going to stay in the conventional realm.
'Evidently'? This is true in some cases. There are plenty of others where it, ah... Isn't. That's a possibility, it's certainly not evidence.

Err... When nations in NS operates on a different mindset than IRL, why wouldn't they operate on it on an IC basis?The mindset being 'I just play this nation, and its billions of inhabitants are just a bit of code. Hey, fuck all In Character considerations, lets just risk nuclear war! Yay!'?

Now, why might I not really take this serious. Why... Just why...

Is this the NationStates forum section? Nope. II. Are these RPs you've mentioned truly planned in a sense? Probably, yes.Guess you should look to what I wrote at the beginning, really. It happens in II. Get the fucking idiotic assumption that the two forums are entirely and inherently different/ seperate worlds out of your head, it's wrong.

Though yes, this is going the wrong way. Back to our regularly scheduled outgunning of ships, rather than nations.

Stepped around the nuke discussion for a moment...It's most definetly not a godmod. The problem is though, most SDs are plated with anti EMP materials (I'm not too sure how this works, ask Sarz or Prae) that will make EMP weapons do little to no effect.You can protect the internal systems, but the antennae have to be outside the cage and exposed, so some systems will function, but the ship will be blind and mute.

If someone has created an anti-ship missile or a torpedo, could I have the production rights. But the missiles or torpedos must be able to fit inside my ships like the Arleigh Burke Destroyer, Ticonderoga Cruiser, Seawolf Class Subs, Arsenal Ship, DD-21s, and Iowa Battleships.

Stepped around the nuke discussion for a moment...You can protect the internal systems, but the antennae have to be outside the cage and exposed, so some systems will function, but the ship will be blind and mute.
^^ This is true, Hogsweat. HOWEVER, larger ships have space for shock absorbers and other such stuff I used to know the names of but no longer do. In essense, they provide protection against surges up to a certain rating, and on an SD that rating can be pretty damn huge. As for EMP hardening... well a ship is essentially a Faraday Cage, according to Verdant Archipelago, and so if you turn off all the exposed sensors you're safe.

If someone has created an anti-ship missile or a torpedo, could I have the production rights. But the missiles or torpedos must be able to fit inside my ships like the Arleigh Burke Destroyer, Ticonderoga Cruiser, Seawolf Class Subs, Arsenal Ship, DD-21s, and Iowa Battleships.
Can you stop being an idiot and go away while we have a serious discussion for a moment please?

Could just build a whole bunch of really big mines (perhaps with some bit of self-propulsion), and wait for them to get close enough to go boom. Cheaper than all the other solutions really.

Could just build a whole bunch of really big mines (perhaps with some bit of self-propulsion), and wait for them to get close enough to go boom. Cheaper than all the other solutions really.
I think Artitsa does that. Anyway Prae, what it means is that EMP isn't really extremely efficient like people think it is.

Can you stop being an idiot and go away while we have a serious discussion for a moment please?

I'm not trying to sound stupid. I also want to discuss and read.

Is it possible to disable their communications and Radar with HARM missiles. Some number of aircraft can load a shitload of HARM missles to disable the antennas, so the ship is vunerable to anything because it has it radar gone. But we have to deal with the CIWS. Maybe the CIWS can be disabled with HARM missiles to prevent the ship from firing against missiles and aircraft. The numbers of ships or submarines can fire conventional rounds, torpedos, and anti-ship missiles.

OOC: Hogsweat, it's not your damn place to tell people to leave a thread while the "serious discussion" takes place.

As well, the best way to kill a superdreadnought is to make sure some ooc details are sorted out before hand else NS will be inflicted with more childish rants and chestbeating.

Honestly, I tend to think that one of the reasons why SDs were created was so that players who have them can "win" the RP. If that wasn't the case, then why do we see quite a few SD owners saying, "I'll flatten your nation if you use a nuke on my SD". Are nukes the only option? No. Are they the best? Given the thinking of some nations, certainly not. But it sometimes is a tool of last resort. And perhaps, just perhaps, some nations aren't keen on seeing a potentially hostile SD floating around their waters.

As for EMP hardening... well a ship is essentially a Faraday Cage, according to Verdant Archipelago, and so if you turn off all the exposed sensors you're safe.Yeah, but you'll have to be able to identify EMP weapons before they get too close. Assuming you had a way, what do you think would be the best course of action if there were also conventional munitions coming at your ships?

Honestly, I tend to think that one of the reasons why SDs were created was so that players who have them can "win" the RP. If that wasn't the case, then why do we see quite a few SD owners saying, "I'll flatten your nation if you use a nuke on my SD". Are nukes the only option? No. Are they the best? Given the thinking of some nations, certainly not. But it sometimes is a tool of last resort. And perhaps, just perhaps, some nations aren't keen on seeing a potentially hostile SD floating around their waters.
In every SD thread it happens. Someone accuses SD users of "just wanting to win" and being "many other mean and nasty things" because they dont like the idea that something they've ICly put lots of money into and OOCly put lots of time and effort into just being wiped off the map by a single attack that an 8 year old could have worked out. Perhaps the truth of the matter is that the SD-nukers jsut cant handle that they might come up against something that they dont know how to beat? Perhaps. Personally, I am not that cynical, and not that quick to launch personal attacks against people who I dont know.

Yeah, but you'll have to be able to identify EMP weapons before they get too close. Assuming you had a way, what do you think would be the best course of action if there were also conventional munitions coming at your ships?
Me? I would let my shock absorbers do the job. Just as a quick side note, no one actually knows if EMP weapons are even possible (at least without a large preceeding nuclear explosion): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_bomb

Get the fucking idiotic assumption ...
Calm down. No need for all the commotion. Though in the interests of not starting yet another argument about yet another controversial issue (the NS/II division)...

As for the EMP weapons - it is indeed possible (hence why there has been constantly all these discussions IRL revolving around E-bombs), just that their exact status and deployment are clouded in a shroud of secrecy.

My solution to the problem of taking on superior ships - albeit I don't use battleships or dreadnaughts, so that isn't specific to SDs - during my last war with Azazia (who has a kickass navy) was to use lots of cheap anti-shipping missiles to cripple the combat effectiveness of the enemy fleet. I achieved this (mostly) from shore instillations, though the principle can be applied to airborne, ship borne, or submerged operations in most cases.

First, clear the decks of enemy troops. How do you do this? Make it hell for them should they come onto the surface of the ship. Specifically, I accomplished this by flinging Exocet and ASMP Cruise Missiles laden with Nitrogen Mustard that had been thickened in organic solvents. This essentially creates a sticky, burning, foul smelling goo that splatters across targeted areas of the ship, rendering them off limits until a hazmat team has time to clean the effected area - and seriously, how many ships have teams equipped to handle that kind of attack? If you can, target openings into the interior of the ship (hangar doors, elevators, etc, etc) to provide coverage even below deck.

NOTE: If you want to play down an dirty, any time before your surface fleet rolls in you can revert to this tactic, or use airborne chemical weapons as a means of attack. This is particularly useful when the SD has been disabled (rudder gone) or is out of ammunition for whatever missile defenses are onboard.

Second, use lots and lots of cheap missiles. If you have 'em, use 'em. At this point in the game, the idea is to get the SD or other ship to waste away its CIWS ammunition and wear down the crew by forcing them to stay on combat alert for hours or even days. Remember, their life is already going to be hellishly cramped and suffocatingly hot if you did step one correctly (the attacks will keep cleanup operations stalled, forcing the crew to sweat it out below deck longer.) This verges on psychological warfare, and is most important in that regard. A couple dozen Exocets aren't going to kill an SD even if they get through, so don't even make that your point. Just wear the ship down.

NOTE: At step two, escorts should be targeted with equal amounts care and ferocity. Kill the little buggers so they don't bother you later. An SD is surprisingly vulnerable without a compliment of ASW and AA vessels.

Three, keep it coming. At this point, you may tire of the game and go in for the kill. Don’t. SDs are extremely dangerous in any regard. Use each and every opportunity to decrease that threat before attacking. Just keep the missiles coming from your ground instillations, remembering to vary the time and size of the attacks for maximum frustration. If you can pull step two out for 24 hours, do so, then start attacking using you two other (reasonably) safe means – submarines and aircraft. Submarines should attack not only during the down times between missile barrages, but also when ground instillations and aircraft are already both engaging. Make your attacks overwhelming. Aircraft should stay at a distance and attack from all sides, presenting too many targets for the SD (hopefully with minimal escorts by this time) to target. Focus on hitting vital sections of the ship – the bridge, radar, CIWS, SAMs, and ammunition storerooms ought be on the top of the list. Torpedoes should go straight for the rudder and props. Expect to start laying the damage on during this phase, and for that reason, don’t pussy foot around anymore. The bigger the bomb, the better. In fact, if you have the option between a 1,000 lbs bunker buster or a 300 lbs cruise missile, use the bunker buster. These weapons are intended for higher penetration that normally used against a ship, but an SD is no ordinary ship.

NOTE: In step three, if your aircraft take heavy losses at first, don’t stop. Rather, try using decoys for a while (old large cruise missiles or UAVs can fill this role) and then once they get comfortable, hit ‘em hard.

Finally, bring in the surface fleet. If you have any SDs, use them now. If not, expect some losses as your fleet gets into range, but otherwise proceed as planned. Move in as fast as possible and start to pound the shit out of the enemy. Battleships, dreadnaughts, cruisers, and even lowly destroyers can all be used. Focus on attacks using large caliber guns, missiles, and torpedoes. Keep the submarines and aircraft coming, but if needed divert them to the task of finishing off the escorts. Let your surface fleet be the thing that finally kills the bastard. If you’ve held out the previous steps for long enough, the SD will likely be on its last reserves of ammunition for CIWS and SAM systems, and very open to missile attacks. It also may be disabled and unable to maneuver. Either case will give you a huge advantage, so use it.

Most of my governments - and especially my democracies - would rather die in a nuclear war than submit to foreign conquest (especially if the conqueror is your typical NS genocidal tyrant).

Admittedly a side issue...

Looking up your nation (http://www.sunsetrpg.com/economystatistics.php) shows a different story...

Government Waste (20%): $1,006,821,577,733
National Loyalty (Individual): 34%
Worker Enthusiasm: 74%

Perhaps most of your government might, but most of your people would probably not mind a change of pace. You can call them happy employees of wealthy companies, but not exactly patriotic citizens.

Of course, a nuclear exchange can galvanize a population's will against an aggressor. But at the same time, it can also cripple and demoralize it to the point of capitulation.

Meanwhile, back to the issue of what destroys an SD...

A nuclear weapon in the 13-25 kiloton range (Hiroshima/Nagasaki) would do it. It would not need to be in the megaton range.

The typical cruise missile warhead (such as the W80 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W80)) can range in yield from 5 - 150 kilotons (you can select the setting; the bomb varies its yield dynamically).

It probably would not need to go higher than a 10 kt yield (http://www.unitedstatesaction.com/nuclear-low-yield-weapons-impact.htm), giving a fireball radius of 100m.

That would more than likely destroy the ship operationally. You probably do not have a completely lead-lined ship, but you might claim you have some level of protection inside. 10% are killed instantly. If they lived through the blast and any sympathetic explosions in the magazines, your crew are likely going to be fighting a massive fire on a dying ship or vomiting and shaking due to radiation poisoning. The ionizing radiation has likely fried even hardened and shielded equipment.

25 kilotons would create a fireball bathing an area 150m in radius. The ship was probably not just decimated by the blast, it was probably broken open. If anyone is alive aboard the ship, they are dying. The ship will rapidly sink. This presumes a direct hit. The USS Nevada, BB-36, was supposed to be hit by a weapon of this magitude, but it landed astray (http://www.radiochemistry.org/history/nuke_tests/crossroads/) by more than 300m short and 600m left. The ship it did hit was immediately destroyed. Nevada, however, survived. It was mostly a charred wreck, but it was floating. It was later sunk by gunfire. Also note that if the blast lands close enough (but not directly overhead to burst her seams and crush it), the damage may the cause wounded ship may heel over and capsize.

At 150 kt (http://www.atomicarchive.com/Example/Example1.shtml), the ship is gone -- mostly obliterated. The fireball spans 300m radius. What is not immediately vaporized is torn apart and destroyed in the intense shock. The ship implodes and crushes the crew inside. The munition bunkers and stored weapons go up also. No one within the radius of the fireball lives. It won't be the heat that kills them, but the ship collapsing on top of them due to an intense blast wave and overpressure. What remains of the hull after the blast likely is in many pieces. No one lives.

A 150 kt weapon is still a 'tactical' nuclear weapon, since it can be delivered by a tactical weapon system, to wit, your everyday household cruise missile.

No need for megatonnage. That's overkill.

A couple dozen Exocets aren't going to kill an SD even if they get through, so don't even make that your point.

I beg to disagree.

Each Exocet has a warhead of 165kg of explosives. Not simple TNT, but an HE shaped charge.

Just dead-weight that's 4 tons of explosive material.

Shaped charges are designed to melt metal, and turn that intensely-hot liquid into an aerosol spray to cook anything inside the far side of the wall it penetrated.

While it might not get through belt armor, it will penetrate superstructure. It can set off fires and explosions in the smaller gun turrets (I will give the benefit of the doubt that it would not penetrate the larger turrets).

They said that about a dozen-well-placed Exocets (http://www.barbeefilm.com/bb-62.htm) would be needed to get through the armor of the big US Iowa-class battleships. Most such exercises are against the 12" thick maximum belt armor, and usually ignore the fact that there is much less armor on other parts of the ship. While it is still significant armor, it is not impenetrable or invulnerable. It is not "magical" armor.

It obeys, unlike the Starship Enterprise, the actual laws of physics.

It's worth pointing out that if someone used a tac weapon to blow up one of my big ships, I would only use nuclear weapons to blow up one of their big ships. I have no desire in escalation, and thus I wouldn't even if the opponent did, unless they escalated to the point where my nation is threatened with destruction. :)

You can reduce the effect of nuclear weapons on fleets by spreading them out anyways.

I beg to disagree.

Each Exocet has a warhead of 165kg of explosives. Not simple TNT, but an HE shaped charge.

Just dead-weight that's 4 tons of explosive material.
Umm, how is 165kg equal to 4 tons?
Shaped charges are designed to melt metal, and turn that intensely-hot liquid into an aerosol spray to cook anything inside the far side of the wall it penetrated.

While it might not get through belt armor, it will penetrate superstructure. It can set off fires and explosions in the smaller gun turrets (I will give the benefit of the doubt that it would not penetrate the larger turrets).
Umm, you forget the fact that both the Iowa and NS SDNs carry large numbers of CIWS, also while most NS SDNs have around 1.8-2.2 meters of armor they are made of much stronger material then steel(just take a look at the SDN in my signature), and most SDNs consist of 3 hulls, much more protection against missiles. And super structures are more armored then the belt armor. (17 inches of armor on the conning tower vs. 12 inch max belt armor)
They said that about a dozen-well-placed Exocets (http://www.barbeefilm.com/bb-62.htm) would be needed to get through the armor of the big US Iowa-class battleships. Most such exercises are against the 12" thick maximum belt armor, and usually ignore the fact that there is much less armor on other parts of the ship. While it is still significant armor, it is not impenetrable or invulnerable. It is not "magical" armor.
Again most SDNs have better armor then the Iowa-Class battleships, and more on the "lighter" protected parts, and all of this is assuming a ship carrying a dozen Exocets manages to make it past an Iowa's escorts, the missiles them selves aren't intercepted by the Iowa and it's escort's missiles/CIWS.

It's worth pointing out that if someone used a tac weapon to blow up one of my big ships, I would only use nuclear weapons to blow up one of their big ships. I have no desire in escalation, and thus I wouldn't even if the opponent did, unless they escalated to the point where my nation is threatened with destruction.Wouldn't logic dictate that once nuclear weaponry is considered legitimate, you'll generally use the weapon that can get the desired result - Elimination of the target within a given timeframe, while having minimal (Monetary) casualities (This includes missiles, shells, etc.) - most efficiently, no matter what kind of weapon it is, rather than 'a nuke for a nuke'?

The latter is just retaliation, not too different from MAD, and definitely silly for one with your (And for that matter, mine) strategic/ tactical concept, which allows for tacnukes.

I'm not going to waste nuclear ordinance to sink a cruiser I can (Cheaply) get with a few chemExplosive warheads just because one of my cruisers received a megaton-range nuke. I'm quite content with the enemy wasting his, really.

Umm, how is 165kg equal to 4 tons?

Do the math. The comment said "Dozens of Exocets."

2 (dozen) x 12 (in a dozen) x 165kg (each) = 3,960 kg.

That's about 4 metric tons.

Umm, you forget the fact that both the Iowa and NS SDNs carry large numbers of CIWS, also while most NS SDNs have around 1.8-2.2 meters of armor they are made of much stronger material then steel(just take a look at the SDN in my signature), and most SDNs consist of 3 hulls, much more protection against missiles. And super structures are more armored then the belt armor. (17 inches of armor on the conning tower vs. 12 inch max belt armor)No, I did not "forget." We are calculating force of impact. If 2 dozen hit, what would be the effect.

As for the claims of such armor, I really wonder if anyone here ever calculated the volume, density, and mass of the Superdreadnaught above the waterline, and how quickly it would go belly-up if rocked even by high seas.

Or, for that matter, whether instead it would sit low in the water and get swamped over the bow regularly, causing speeds in even moderate winds to be cut significantly.

If the armor is as thick as it's claimed to be, it is not magically thicker at no cost in weight. You have to explain how it occurs. I'd like to hear the material science around this.

It can certainly be some level of handwaving "just pretend," but I refuse to fight against "magical" ships.

Sure... I can't wait to get a gander at this SDN. I want to compare its displacement against the laws of science.

You still haven't explained how to protect against a large UUV or even a submersed rocket fired straight up into the keel gets protected.

And super structures are more armored then the belt armor. (17 inches of armor on the conning tower vs. 12 inch max belt armor)
Having a superstructure more armoured than the belt sounds absurd to me. Most ships have virtually no armour on the superstructure, if they did they would be excessively prone to capsizing even due to bad weather.

Anyway, my answer is nuclear torpedos fired from long range. Good luck surviving that.

Oh, well, there's your problem....

You've already beached yourself.

There is not a single harbor in the world where you can actually dock the thing. Deep-dredged channels for supertankers in Singapore only get to 18m deep.

You're certainly too big for Panama or Suez. Can't go that way.

The Malacca Straight is 21m deep. So you can't go that way.

So you'll have to head the long way around to get where you're going.

I note the thickness of a hatch is 1,704mm. I presume all hatches are powered doors? Since it's too heavy for a human to move.

Meanwhile, you have two carrier decks. I presume these have elevators.

I presume you've actually calculated the weight of one of these elevators, given the density of the armor you say it's composed of, and have properly figured the power required to lift a bird from the hangar level to the deck?

And also please describe the method used to hide from external exposure the hangar deck level when the elevator is in operation. Usually there is either a side-access, or a top-access to the hangar level during some period of time. That would present a time of opportunity attack.

It still seems to have miscalculated things here. Displacement I have (in tons/m^3 under the waterline) for a Nimitz-class carrier (102,000 dwt) or even the largest actual ship in the world, the Ben Nevis (564,763 dwt), should be about .66-.68. I gave all ships the benefit of the doubt and simply multiplied length, beam and draft.

However, your ship is not a solid brick in the water. It's a triple-hull design. Which means there is a significantly smaller amount of m^2 touching the water within its length and beam dimensions.

It already means you might need to increase the draft more. Possibly down to about 39m. If not more.

That adds drag to a ship. Also makes turning on a dime impossible. In fact, stopping this thing is going to be near impossible.

The water jets thing is a nice idea, but you will be sucking so much water into your intakes that plumbers in Sheboyan will be hearing the noise up the loos they're plunging.

It'll have an acoustic signature quite similar to nothing else, seeing how at the rate of speed it is travelling at and its mass it will be creating churn behind it and a wake unparalled in human history.

To destroy it would take a device far less costly than it's $256 Billion.

I again propose the UUV about the size of an attack submarine which would sit and wait in -- quite predictable because of its size -- Sea Lines of Communication. The system can sit in passive mode on the bottom somewhere. Wait wait wait.

It could have robotic limbs to spread decoy coverage overhead. Make sure that sonar found little but nice friendly bottom. Of course you'd want to make it out of materials that did not show up on most subsurface scans. And you didn't need to worry about pesky details like human support systems.

Yes. Park those along lines of advance.

Once it rolls overhead, the system goes active, rockets up underneath and explodes, ripping open the keel.

Not a little bitty bomb either. It needs to be something quite handy-sized to crack open the bottom.

It might cost a billion or two for your first prototype. Perhaps a half-billion or a billion to make each. It would be conventional, as opposed to the economical nuclear weapon.

You'd probably need three, since it was a triple-hull design.

Any weapon to take out a Superdreadnaught should be designed for the mission.

I believe the biggest issue is the 'armor' issue. You've given it nearly 2m armor all around.

What we need to do is to heat that to 1675º C to get the titanium to melt, or 3260º to boil off. Now, you might also have carbon-compound layers in your armor, but they are harder to melt or boil. Carbon melts at 3500º and boils off at 4827º. But it does oxidize nicely.

This presents a problem, in that thermite such as iron (III) oxide usually only burns at up to 2500º. Thermite explosives will destroy the titanium and aluminum, and possibly set the carbon materials ablaze, but it would not vaporize them directly.

If you were to fill a few thousand exocet missiles with thermite. Say, about 5,000 of them, this will cost you about $1.25 Billion dollars. Oh, go ahead and double the price to modify them to deliver thermite. So, $2.5 Billion.

Launch them a nice big old volley at the incoming pig-on water.

The metal will turn to molten titanium and aluminum.

You've just made a volcano.

For 1% of its cost, you've created an effective and cost-effective conventional deterrant.

Want to have insurance? Double your production run. Thermite is cheap to produce relatively compared to titanium. So, wow. You've spent 2% of the cost of the enemy weapon system to destroy it.

You cannot intercept 10,000 incoming enemy thermite cruise missiles.

So sorry.

(I'm not even sure where you're *getting* all that titanium, but that's another matter. At least it has the similarly ludicrous price tag of $265 Billion on it.)

Of course, you could have saved a lot of money and simply dropped nukes on it. That's even cheaper, and the thing will still melt and explode.

In the case of this weapon system, I believe nuclear weapons would be warranted.

Not because you cannot kill it in other ways, but because this would be the most efficacious means of destruction.

Anyone who whined about losing the equivalent of the GDP of a continent should seriously question what they were trying to do with this vessel in the first place. It's a target.

It's the equivalent of a silly-big battleship and two carriers.

So build twenty carriers and 50 cruisers for the same cost or cheaper.

Waste of money and raw materials.

Clarification for earlier comments on why this won't capsize... He made a triple-hull.

He basically made a nuclear-jet-ski off-shore platform.

So, thermite. Fire for effect.

The thing here is, that big fat ship will not propably swim alone there. It will not just sit, waiting for you missile flet to come and fire the volley of thousands of exocets.

That's what makes your whole explanation silly.

With the same logic you could say that carrier is a useless thing, as it costs much more than, what, 10? 5? exocets fired at it. Aircraft carrier cannot take 10 hits by exocets! Bwahahahaha! What a waste of money!

No.

It has a fleet around it, just like SD does. SD has its own weapons (and even airplanes) too, and together with propably the bulk of the whole navy (because SD's are harldy ever used in nothing but the greatest battles) you cannot just expect that your missile fleet can just come and fire shitloads of exocets,

BECAUSE THE OTHER SIDE CAN DO SOMETHING AGAINST IT TOO.



There will be a fullscale naval battle with all types of ships and airplanes taking part, in massive numbers. In that battle, couple of these supermegahugemassivehyperbattleships can do pretty well against other types. That's what they're made for.

Not to sail around alone taking shitloads of missiles hoping to survive only with their armour.

One should always remember that the battle wouldn't occure between the "target", "pig-on water" and the clever enemy trying different types of countermeasures against it.

The battle would take place between two massive navies, with all their ships included. That's a whole different story.

Wouldn't logic dictate that once nuclear weaponry is considered legitimate, you'll generally use the weapon that can get the desired result - Elimination of the target within a given timeframe, while having minimal (Monetary) casualities (This includes missiles, shells, etc.) - most efficiently, no matter what kind of weapon it is, rather than 'a nuke for a nuke'?

The latter is just retaliation, not too different from MAD, and definitely silly for one with your (And for that matter, mine) strategic/ tactical concept, which allows for tacnukes.

I'm not going to waste nuclear ordinance to sink a cruiser I can (Cheaply) get with a few chemExplosive warheads just because one of my cruisers received a megaton-range nuke. I'm quite content with the enemy wasting his, really.

My nation's nuclear policy only allows use of nuclear weapons in a few special situations: against SDs, against large amounts of incoming missiles (as an area effect antimissile system), as part of our SDI system, and against things that present an immediate threat to the homeland-- eg flights of strategic bombers headed for the border that can't be intercepted in time, that kinda thing.

Also, nuclear bunker-busters may be employed against targets too hardened to handle with conventional weapons, but that's such a rare occurance it hasn't come up.

(Civilian nuclear devices, of course, are used for assorted purposes, though I doubt anyone cares about those. =p)

Could just Hibex them.

Hibex was an experimental missile (that worked) that was designed to be used in the American ABM system. It was a last-ditch point defense missile capable of accelerating at 400Gs (before you say that's impossible, the Sprint missile, which was operationally deployed briefly, accelerated at 100; Hibex was designed to intercept warheads under 20,000 ft.).

Let's assume that it launches from a standing start, weighs 500 kilograms, and has had the warhead removed.

These numbers all assume I did the math right, so don't take them as gospel.

Assuming a three second burn:
Impact velocity: 11,772 m/s^2
Energy released on impact: 34,644,996,000 joules. 34 gigajoules.
TNT equivalent: 8.2 tons

Assuming a two second burn:
Impact velocity: 7,848 m/s^2
Energy released on impact: 15,397,776,000 joules. 15 gigajoules
TNT equivalent: 3.2 tons

Assuming a one second burn:
Impact velocity: 3,924 m/s^2
Energy released on impact: 3,849,444,000 joules. 3.8 gigajoules
TNT equivalent: .9 tons

Needless to say, interception of one of these is impossible for MT or probably PMT and a hit will insure a mission-kill at the least.

... and for how long can a cone-shaped, rocket-propelled, 5.2 meters long missile travel?

... and for how long can a cone-shaped, rocket-propelled, 5.2 meters long missile travel?

Long enough apparently. They did work after all.

In every SD thread it happens. Someone accuses SD users of "just wanting to win" and being "many other mean and nasty things" because they dont like the idea that something they've ICly put lots of money into and OOCly put lots of time and effort into just being wiped off the map by a single attack that an 8 year old could have worked out. Perhaps the truth of the matter is that the SD-nukers jsut cant handle that they might come up against something that they dont know how to beat? Perhaps. Personally, I am not that cynical, and not that quick to launch personal attacks against people who I dont know.

OOC: I guess I am that cynical because otherwise why else do we see some SD owners accuse others who might use a tactical nuke as a bunch of 8 year olds. That's the impression that I'm getting here.

Perhaps you can show me some links where SD owners actually bit the bullet and watched their SD sink to the bottom of the sea. I mean, it's really no different than when anyone makes up some kind of "super" weapon and then see it destroyed in a relatively cheap and efficient manner. Of course that would be a real downer watching all your hard work disappear in a puff of smoke, but then, isn't that a part of warfare?

... and for how long can a cone-shaped, rocket-propelled, 5.2 meters long missile travel?


Not long enough, that's why the Hibex was designed with a ceiling at 16,000 meters.

The thing here is, that big fat ship will not propably swim alone there... {snip}

You're missing the point.

The entire point was that this ship can be destroyed.

That's all that was presented.

It did not postulate whether there were other escorts.

But, please, go ahead and add in the cost of the escorts. Now your budget is not just for an SD, but for an entire SD protection fleet.

Take out all the escorts too?

And it still costs less to defend against this weapon than it takes to float it.

In fact, let's give the poor SD a break and paint a more realistic picture. We'll need aircraft. There's no reason why this has to be a navy-to-navy battle. There's a thing called an aircraft that can deliver the missiles. They work quite well off land bases.

We're defending against this attack, so there's no need to pay for aircraft carriers.

Let's mount up 4x on aircraft designed for firing Exocets.

Let's give those aircraft a nominal price tag of $60,000,000 each.

To carry 10,000 missiles aloft, you'd need 2,500 aircraft for a cost of $125 Billion.

So, even counting only half the cost of just the SD, we can completely overkill the SD. We need to do it again? Return to base, sortee once more. Need to get every escort also? Return to base, sortee once more.

With that many aircraft, I don't think you're going to be getting air superiority any time soon either.

Meanwhile, if we wanted to risk the SD of coming within range of the coast we could save a lot of money and launch from trucks. Such launch systems cost more in the low $100k's range rather than tens of millions of dollars.

I don't even think you'd need 10,000 missiles to bring the thing to its knees. But hey, let's not go half-way. It needs to die. We need to defend our homeland.

While I agree that this sort of ship presents a significant challenge to any nation's military, it is not undefeatable. But it is a "Maginot line" of the sea.

It cannot hide. It is the center of attention. It will be targeted, and it can be sunk.

This is a legitimate military target. If it was dispatched to attack my nation, it needs to blow up like the Death Star. If you actually care about economics, a nuclear weapon is the way to go.

No whining.

Not long enough, that's why the Hibex was designed with a ceiling at 16,000 meters.

But was that designed ceiling due to:
1. Missile evaporating away.
2. Lack of accuracy at higher altitudes.
3. The fact that it was a last-ditch missile, and Sprint and Spartan were to cover those higher altitudes.

But was that designed ceiling due to:
1. Missile evaporating away.
Err... So a SAM would somehow evaporate away at those altitudes? Why didn't that SA-2 melt away when it hit Gary Powers' U-2? Read up on basic science.

2. Lack of accuracy at higher altitudes.
Urm... It's a missile. A missile that has guidance. And how does it somehow magically lose its accuracy at higher altitudes?

Though again, like above, I have never read anything that suggested the Hibex would "melt away" and is "so inaccurate" at high altitudes. And it's very unlikely, given the logic of science and rocketery, for them to do so anyways.

3. The fact that it was a last-ditch missile, and Sprint and Spartan were to cover those higher altitudes.
That's why it's so short ranged and have such a limited ceiling. Because it can't travel that far from the start. You could not expect a 5 meter missile to fly for such a long distance - if it really can travel further than it is intended to, then it wouldn't be a last-ditch missile from the start. However, if the Hibex can really travel as far and is only handicapped because it is somehow classified as a last-ditch solution, then with what reason would the Sprint and Spartan not be a last-ditch solution? Then with what reason can't the Hibex cover the higher altitudes?

If the Hibex could really travel so far as you proclaim, then the Patriot should have an unlimited range and altitude. But that's not the case, is it? Because the missile's physical size prohibits it from carrying so much fuel as to allow it to travel far with that great of a ceiling. Stating that the Hibex could travel much further than it is designed to is as ridiculous as saying that you could make the Tomahawk travel 20,000km. But it won't - because of simple engineering.

And if you suggest converting this, into an effective anti-ship missile... You are kidding. Now, some naval SAMs do have an anti-ship function (such as the Standard, e.g. its usage against Iranian gunboats during the Tanker War), but they are certainly not designed to do that as their primary role. If you are taking it a step further and using it against heavily armoured battleships, well... The results need not further explanation.

If we want to go competely science fiction and fantasy, you can also call in legions of angels by divine intervention that can appear inside the vehicle and slaughter the crew.

Now let's get back to actual MT and PMT that has rational explanations and stop godmoding.

Depending on the SD and the proximity to land, one could use stealth bombers to sneak up from above and attack the VLS racks and joints of the guns, thus acheving a "mission kill".

If the SD is too far from land for land based bombers to reach and the country trying to take out the SD has no carrier based stealth bombers, conventional bombers could be used en masse, depending on the escort (it would probably be best to take out any escorting AA cruisers with missle-launching destroyers prior to the attack on the SD).

Space-Based high yield conventional bunker buster missles should work.

Kamikazie attacks from highly fueled airplanes on autopilot.

Raming the SD with explosive laden submarines/destroyers

my .03 USD

While you are correct on the vulnerabilities of VLS systems, stealth bombers can only be so stealthy. Though the number of stealth countermeasures systems that a battlegroup collectively has can vary, there are more than enough ways to foil such attack - and you'd still be hundreds of kilometers away from the SD itself (which is in the middle of overlapping concentric rings, not just a row of ship as many people would think).

Conventional bombers are indeed valuable, but keep in mind that if you use aircraft in large numbers during the initiation of the attack on the SD, then losses will be very heavy. Use them carefully, but don't throw them into the cauldron carelessly, until there isn't enough left of a cauldron.

As with space weapons, I'm afraid that the accuracy issues with such systems has already been addressed. Along with the cost, of course.

The effectiveness of all this depends on the escorts, true. The weaker escorts, perticularly the AA ships and radar ships would need to be eliminated before most of my strategys would work.

For the submarine-sized system, this would be an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV).

It can sit inactive with passive sensors waiting for the escorts to pass by. When the sensors detect the SD coming, it goes active and launches upwards directly towards it.

Of course, you have a network of smaller UUVs similarly taking out all the escorts as they approach.

Such UUV drones are smaller than conventional manned submarines but far bigger than torpedoes.

Use your airforce instead to take out the ASW helos proceeding the escorts. Since most escorts only have 1-2 ASW helos, you should be able to swarm them at extreme range from the central SD's air cover.

Once deprived of AMCM (airborne mine countermeasures), and sustaining losses to standard antiship attacks against the escorts as well as UUV attacks, you pre-position a squadron of anti-SD UUVs and wait for the big lumbering target to pass by.

Launch a good few at the main keel, as well as a few at each of the outriggers in the trimaran design.

Underwater explosions are usually about 10x as effective as surface explosions due to the hydraulic pressure.

In this case, your aim is to crumple and snap open the hull. They could range anywhere in the 1,000 tons (smaller than modern attack sub; about the same as a WWII boat) to 10,000 tons (a bit bigger than Seawolf-sized) range. If you had smaller models, you could simply use more of them to swarm any ASW attempts at intercept. Though trying to intercept something coming up directly under the ship is difficult.

The aim of these would not be "armored piercing," but simply to stave in and crack the hull with massive concussive force.

My nation's method is to attack with a fair-numbered naval and land based fighter-bomber formation with guided armor piercing bombs, hitting it in critical areas if possible. If not, they would aim for the main turrets, so that our own battleships can engage with impunity.

Submarines are the alternate method as well, and is usually used in conjunction.

Err... So a SAM would somehow evaporate away at those altitudes? Why didn't that SA-2 melt away when it hit Gary Powers' U-2? Read up on basic science.

I was referring to it evaporating due to friction. Poor choice of words.


Urm... It's a missile. A missile that has guidance. And how does it somehow magically lose its accuracy at higher altitudes?


Hibex didn't have guidance past being launched in the right direction. Fins and other such niceties aren't exactly up to 400Gs.


Though again, like above, I have never read anything that suggested the Hibex would "melt away" and is "so inaccurate" at high altitudes. And it's very unlikely, given the logic of science and rocketery, for them to do so anyways.

I was giving possible reasons why.


That's why it's so short ranged and have such a limited ceiling. Because it can't travel that far from the start. You could not expect a 5 meter missile to fly for such a long distance - if it really can travel further than it is intended to, then it wouldn't be a last-ditch missile from the start. However, if the Hibex can really travel as far and is only handicapped because it is somehow classified as a last-ditch solution, then with what reason would the Sprint and Spartan not be a last-ditch solution? Then with what reason can't the Hibex cover the higher altitudes?

I think you missed my point: The reason that it had that ceiling limit is because we had the Sprint and Spartan all well to go and it was designed as a point defense missile. There's nothing to prevent using the technology developed in Hibex in later versions of the Sprint and Spartan.


If the Hibex could really travel so far as you proclaim, then the Patriot should have an unlimited range and altitude. But that's not the case, is it? Because the missile's physical size prohibits it from carrying so much fuel as to allow it to travel far with that great of a ceiling. Stating that the Hibex could travel much further than it is designed to is as ridiculous as saying that you could make the Tomahawk travel 20,000km. But it won't - because of simple engineering.

And if you suggest converting this, into an effective anti-ship missile... You are kidding. Now, some naval SAMs do have an anti-ship function (such as the Standard, e.g. its usage against Iranian gunboats during the Tanker War), but they are certainly not designed to do that as their primary role. If you are taking it a step further and using it against heavily armoured battleships, well... The results need not further explanation.


Except that I was talking about using a modified version of it. Hibex as the base design and to demonstrate that it is possible, and then the player would modify it for anti-surface strikes.

I was referring to it evaporating due to friction. Poor choice of words.
I am talking about it evaporating due to friction. Remember, it's going up, and likewise it wouldn't be travelling at too high of a speed anyways.

Hibex didn't have guidance past being launched in the right direction. Fins and other such niceties aren't exactly up to 400Gs.
And that is relevant to the altitude that the warhead is at because...

My nation cannot be harmed at all by super dreadnoughts. I have constructed a defensive barrier that cannot be breached by these monstrous naval vessels. That's right: I'm landlocked.

And that is relevant to the altitude that the warhead is at because...The farther the missile gets from its launch point, the farther it'll stray from its intended course. Without guidance, it can't get back onto course.

The farther the missile gets from its launch point, the farther it'll stray from its intended course. Without guidance, it can't get back onto course.
I'm not talking about the range (or for the matter of fact, its relation with the ceiling), I'm talking about the ceiling itself. However, this is still irrelevant since the Hibex does have guidance.

But since the main point is not that the missile will get inaccurate at higher altitudes but because it simply doesn't have the fuel to get that far as proclaimed, the whole issue isn't all that important anyways. Nor for the matter of fact, have I seen any evidence and indication that suggests that guidance & accuracy does have an impact on the missile's ceiling.

I'm not talking about the range (or for the matter of fact, its relation with the ceiling), I'm talking about the ceiling itself.I know. I was talking about the missile traveling in a vertical direction and straying from its course in a horizontal direction.
However, this is still irrelevant since the Hibex does have guidance.Oh.
Nor for the matter of fact, have I seen any evidence and indication that suggests that guidance & accuracy does have an impact on the missile's ceiling.I don't think I've seen a number for the missile's ceiling -- just the altitude it's used to engage targets under.

OOC: I guess I am that cynical because otherwise why else do we see some SD owners accuse others who might use a tactical nuke as a bunch of 8 year olds. That's the impression that I'm getting here.
I didnt say they were 8 year olds, I said that their attack could have been thought up by an 8 year old. So could mutliplication, but that doesnt mean that anyone who uses multiplication actually is an 8 year old, it just means that it's a simple concept. :rolleyes:

Perhaps you can show me some links where SD owners actually bit the bullet and watched their SD sink to the bottom of the sea.
It has happened before, although not in any thread I am subscribed to and I really cant be bothered to trail through pages upon pages of posts looking for it. I know that in Hogsweat's and Scandavian States's war (which was retconned because Scandavian joined the army and could no longer RP, but that's besides the point as it was nothing to do with the SDs) Hogsweat lost 2 SDs to "rods from god".

I mean, it's really no different than when anyone makes up some kind of "super" weapon and then see it destroyed in a relatively cheap and efficient manner.
I dont understand. What is the precedent for this statement? If you look back through history, cutting edge ships (HMS Dreadnought, IJS Yamato, KM Bismark etc) were notoriously hard to destroy. That's the very point - there SHOULDNT be an "easy" way to destroy SDs built into them just because certain people cant be bothered to think up a proper war.

Of course that would be a real downer watching all your hard work disappear in a puff of smoke, but then, isn't that a part of warfare?
Having your whole navy randomly sink for no logical reason? Err... no?

How about you just fire a ton of tiny missiles and take out the poorly-armored radar, missile silos and gun tubes? If you fire enough, like several dozen, and enough of them hit they will spray shrapnel and explosive all over the place. Or just use anti-radiation missiles like the HARM. It won't sink it, but the ship will be worthless if you kill the weapons.

How about you just fire a ton of tiny missiles and take out the poorly-armored radar, missile silos and gun tubes? If you fire enough, like several dozen, and enough of them hit they will spray shrapnel and explosive all over the place. Or just use anti-radiation missiles like the HARM. It won't sink it, but the ship will be worthless if you kill the weapons.

Because you'll need hundreds of missiles at a minimum, and if you're going to missile spam, you might as well do it with very large warheads.

These SDs cost dozens of billions of dollars. One of these SDs costs like $40 billion, probably half the cost of the entire US Navy combined. It's worth it.

The Tarlag Air force has taken a page from WW2 in dealing with SD's. A 20,000 pound bomb called the Grand Slam. This bomb was able to penetrate 16 feet of concrete and had about 10,000 to 12,000 pounds of explosives. This was the precursor to to days bunker busters.
We have made a few improvements to the design to increase its effectiveness. The forward casing of the bomb is a DPU armor it will not only increase penetration but prevent AMS systems from penetrating the bomb.
A radar absorbing coating ( if you can't see it you cannot kill it).
If the bomb hits water it explodes. If the bomb lands close to the target or penetrates the hull and goes through the bottom the target will be damaged.
This is also precision guided,the method is left up to the tec crew of the bomber.
We have a special high altitude bomber to carry the device to target. drop height is 105,000 feet to 120,000. This altitude is not only above most if not all sea born anti-aircraft systems but above most radar systems max detection heights.

Actually, the SM-2ER Block IV has a ceiling of 110,000 feet and that's on the low end of the NS spectrum (of course, that and range will drop if you use high speed aircraft with heavy jamming).

now, this is a bit of a long shot, but have you considered In Situ Vitrification?
load up a sub or two with all the high-voltage equipment you can carry, get in close enough to get a few cables on board, and hit the switch. of course, getting that close in the first place is a bit of a problem.

I didnt say they were 8 year olds, I said that their attack could have been thought up by an 8 year old. So could mutliplication, but that doesnt mean that anyone who uses multiplication actually is an 8 year old, it just means that it's a simple concept. :rolleyes:

It has happened before, although not in any thread I am subscribed to and I really cant be bothered to trail through pages upon pages of posts looking for it. I know that in Hogsweat's and Scandavian States's war (which was retconned because Scandavian joined the army and could no longer RP, but that's besides the point as it was nothing to do with the SDs) Hogsweat lost 2 SDs to "rods from god".

I dont understand. What is the precedent for this statement? If you look back through history, cutting edge ships (HMS Dreadnought, IJS Yamato, KM Bismark etc) were notoriously hard to destroy. That's the very point - there SHOULDNT be an "easy" way to destroy SDs built into them just because certain people cant be bothered to think up a proper war.

Having your whole navy randomly sink for no logical reason? Err... no?

Who cares if using a nuke on a super dreadnought is a simple eight year old concept? If it works, then why not? Using the nuke would obviously escalate the conflict, but then the SD is a military target, no? It’s not like the nuke is being used on a civilian target such as a city. Let the nation who uses the nuke bare the consequences. Conversely, the nation that casually sails their SD around ought to be mindful of the attention that the SD generates. Not everyone is keen on having these things so close.

Secondly, if you can’t be bothered to find the links, then I guess I am not convinced. I’m willing to change my mind on this point if I can see the evidence; otherwise I’m relying on your memory. Would you rely on my memory if I was trying to make a point or would my argument be better supported if I can actually prove what I said? If the links are truly wiped from the system, then I’m willing to make allowances since Hog and SS are decent roleplayers. Still, if it was retconned, then one could (if truly anal) argue that that incident never happened.

Thirdly, my comment about the “super” weapon was in response to your seemingly dismay if someone used a simple stratagem to defeat it (such as a nuke), thereby resulting in all of their hard OOC work going up in a “puff of smoke”. Would I be mad if someone destroyed my wonderful Titan guns? Sure, but then again, that is part of warfare.

Maybe I am wrong here, but the more elaborate the plan to kill something, the more likely that it will screw up. What I have seen in many rps is the “no nukes” warning when really, nukes are a viable option if used carefully. Why do some SD owners insist on limiting the rp by declaring “no nukes” when that option is perfectly fine? Not all rps degenerate because of a nuke. Rps tend to go downhill when one side is unwilling to compromise. In other words, if an SD owner becomes upset that their super ship is defeated by a “simple” tactic, then that’s their problem.

Related to that point, of course the Bismark and other ships were notoriously hard to destroy, but only by using conventional weapons. I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt that Hog’s 2 SDs were destroyed by SS’ “rods of god”. Clearly, kinetic weapons are a fairly simple (and I would think cheaper) solution in destroying an SD Much cheaper than launching your own SD to fight the enemy. If the British or Germans had a technology that was simple yet deadly enough to destroy a dreadnought, would they have utilized that? Or would they say, “Well, we can’t do that because…er…it’s not fair”. Let’s face it, a nuke is a cheap way to hurt or even destroy an SD unless SDs are now nuke proof. Whether the nuke can get there is not important right now since I’m strictly talking about damage. Yes, I know that there were tests involving the detonation of nukes near battleships. SDs are an NS concept, and certainly NS nations have far more powerful nukes than back in the real-life 1940s.

I honestly don’t understand your last remark about a navy being randomly sunk for no logical reason. Do you mean that an SD owner cannot understand why someone would sink his SD by using a nuke? I suppose it comes down to what response a nuke would generate and perhaps the SD owner would think that the nuke-launching nation is a bit off their rocker. Perhaps you can answer this: why would an SD owner sail his SD near a hostile (or even neutral) nation and expect everything to be hunky-dory? Try sending an SD near Melkor Unchained or Kalessin. Do you really think you would get no response? Some nations do perceive SDs as a legitimate target and are not morally constrained by utilizing whatever it takes to eliminate them. To that nation, it wouldn’t be “illogical” at all. In fact, what would be illogical to them (not necessarily MU or Kalessin since I'm not speaking for them here - but let's say a nation lacking scruples) would be why does this SD come so close to me? Is that nation trying to bait me? Many folks seem to think that SDs grow on trees and send them willy-nilly all over the place because they can.

Lastly, you could refrain from rolling your eyes at me. It’s not conducive to the dialogue here. I would appreciate that.

Gefland, you're better off firing EMP at the SD.

Has anyone ever played Ace Combat 5. It has the Scrimfaxi (a massive missile submarine) firing off these ballastic missiles with plasma reaction warheads that could destroy whole fleets at a time (in 1 strike they wipe out 2 out of 3 of Osea's carriers and many escorts. Also quite useful to take out large aircraft formations with.

Could just use die Teufelbombe. Rocket launched 600 ton conventional bomb.

Has anyone ever played Ace Combat 5. It has the Scrimfaxi (a massive missile submarine)

i sank it in 2 minutes with an F-18 :)

The easiest way i have found to take out SD's, is to overpower them with light supersonic missiles in close waves, so they can block some, but most make it through causing light damadge all over the ship multiple times, or you can just use my death weapon.

Torpedos are realistically your best conventional choice, and any number of methods can get them close enough, even dropping them from planes. Plus there are lots of ways you can rig them to explode.

~Somebody mentioned very early on using torpedos exploding under the ship. My personal favorite, this uses the weight of the ship aganst it, as the explosiogn forces the water out from under the ship. The ship then procedes to buckly under its own weight. I'm not sure how effective this would be against thriple-hulls and really big ships, but its worth investigating.

~The previously mentioned strait-up from below style. In which the torp dives deep, then comes up and strikes the hull's weakest point.

~Strait-on attacks. Depending on how competant the SD designer wasn't, this could be very inadequately defended against. And below-the-waterline strieks are bad news for something this heavy. And just becaseu it's got three hulls doesn't meant that one of them partially filling up with water isn't bad news.

Moving on from topedoes, I think that ground-based weapns are an excellent choice, especially with a layered defense strategy. Any gun they can reasonably put on a ship, you can definately put on shore, with better armor protection. Whatever the range of their weapons, including cruise missiles and UAVs, you can match or exceed with land-based firepower. The only advantage they have here is the ability to run away. And that's pretty much what you want anyway. Puls you can put more of them, have more ammunitoin for them, and have more air support for them. A truely ideal strategy would be to only engage escorts as they cross the ocean, making them decide whether or not they want to turn back. If they decide to push toward your coast, by the time they get there their fleet will be bare-bones, since you didn't waste any firepower on the SD. Then you can turn their ship to pulp with your heavy guns. Since it can't destroy them all with one or two lucky shots as it could if engaging another SD, it would be forced to run from this unsinkable battleship. An effective victory, at little cost to your own fleet.

Good thinking with the ground based artillery.

The problem with torpedos is that they can be countered by supercavitating guns, which most SDs nowadays carry.

There is always the old lighthouse joke that also is applicable here. According to this source, the conversation never did happen, but it does bring to light something important; know your enemy's terrain. For example, too often people seem to want to sail within 25 nautical miles of the FKC - usually south of Dyelli Beybi (assuming that our region actually cares about "international law") and then, much to their dismay, find out that he has laid out a vast minefield. Or that they come too close to Greenbeard (formerly Jiggady) and whooooops, he has reefs. Not saying that a SD admiral will knowlingly waltz into a dangerous area, but certain avenues can be predicted.

As well, many regions do have active satellite sweeps of their coasts and extending oceans. Provided that an SD has a sufficient escort, the fleet will be detectable from space. I don't think that they will be able to sneak up on anyone anytime soon.

http://www.navy.mil/navydata/questions/litehuse.html

The lighthouse joke:


US Ship: Please divert your course 0.5 degrees to the south to avoid a collision.

CND reply: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.

US Ship: This is the Captain of a US Navy Ship. I say again, divert your course.

CND reply: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course!

US Ship: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS CORAL SEA*, WE ARE A LARGE WARSHIP OF THE US NAVY. DIVERT YOUR COURSE NOW!!

CND reply: This is a lighthouse. Your call.

I have a idea. just but a ram rod that drill into the SD. Just piercing all 3 layers.It first this going to look like a spear. And than have the rod expand into a sometime type of a grapping hook. You need to do this a several points at one side of the ship. Have a huge powerful jet or subramine hook to the other end and just flip over.:)

All the suggestions so far have been a bit on the 'blow the hell out of it'.
It's big, often ridiculously so (see: Islands).

It is also designed to be punished more than it is resonably suspected anyone elses' navy can manage. That being said, and given that this is FT, why not simply move a cloaked island into it's path, and wait? It might sound a touch sophomoric, but most SDs are reasonably fast; if they his shore going full tilt, they're going to do some serious damage, which, if not permament will be crippling, and rather hard to explain back home.

'Ship on fire' ideas aside, why not simply mine it? Not ordinary explosives, mind you, but reasonably large tanks on the sea floor. They breach very quickly, nearly missle-fast, and from much closer.. For single-hulled SD's, if I catch your draft with what is essentially a pair of chained balloons, then shift the gas dramatically from one side to the other, I can simply tilt it and leave the rest to nature.

Speaking of unexpected, why not simply attack the water around it? SDs rarely have icebreakers or diggers of some form (at least, I've not seen a design with an obvious one) so the simplest approach may be to either flash-freeze a couple cubic kilometers of ocean, or to let loose some mass form of water-catalyzed polymer gel from above (mind you, this is rather heavily pollutant). Then pick it apart at will.

Also from the 'it's FT, live a little' bin, why not nanomachines? If I unleash a cloud of self-replicating water loving disassembly factories, I can eat your hull to ribbons, hopefully before even one of your integrity alarms sounds. They've got all that expensive hull plate to make more of themselves from, too.

-Nairatsa (Flame on!)

Why don't we use nanobots like the US is developing to clean up oil spills. We can create nanobots to eat up the armor of the SD. We can send a swarn of nanobots like locust to start eating the armor away. Almost like using acid on the armor. But I have doubts on this idea. Like many SDs have Depleted Uranium plating. How could we combat that?

DU plating?

Is anyone a little worried about radiation poisoning?

DU plating?

Is anyone a little worried about radiation poisoning?


Depleted uranium doesn't offer radiation poisoning. The problem on the sabot is that it gives off a cancerous dust. When it's smacked tightly between two different armour platings it doesn't give that sideeffect - hence, why our tanks crews in Abrams and British tank crews in the Challengers don't die every few months.

There are certain things on the ship, windows, radar, weapon mounts etc. that just can't be armored without getting in the way of the ship's operation. These SDs cost like $20 billion, almost half what the whole US Navy's annual budget is! Just fire thousands of little missiles at it, some will get through and wreck radar, missile mounts, gun tubes, etc. The big idea of the Harpoon and other modern ASMs is not to sink the ship by incinerating it, but by starting small fires and throwing tons of shrapnel around.

Actually Athiesism, they normally cost about two-hundred-billion and above.

Depends on which nation I'm using.

Fourspades (Navy Intensive) - The operation to take down the SD would consist of several mission.

Mission 1 - Starve it - A Sqaudron of Submarines would concentrate on taking out supply ships that seem to be aproaching the SD. A naval vessel that huge is bound to need constant resupply. By denying the SD the ability to get basic food and repair parts, you weaken the SD without getting in much danger.

Mission 2 - Isolate the Escorts - Ensure that your submarines are going to have a semi-clean shot at the SD. This means taking out any anti-sub cruisers or enemy subs that may be gaurding the SD

Mission 3 - Stop it - The Squadron now turns it's attention to the SD itself. Firing multiple torps at the same time The Sqaudron would engage the SD at multiple angles, but aiming primarily for the props. Once the SD is dead in the water, the subs leave the scence as the SD's escorts will be really angry by this point. If able, the Subs should empty thier torps into the SD.

Mission 4 - Kill it - With the SD unable to move, the SD can be destoyed in a series of hit and run attacks via sub.

For Fourhearts, we have the Airship. To use this method, air domiance must be utilized. Granted, Airships are not a commonly used thing, but that's what makes Fourhearts so special. :)

The first few airships would fire several dozen basic Harpoon missiles. Why? So the SD will waste thier countermeasures on the Harpoons. The missiles may not do much damage, but every little bit counts. With luck, a few radar systems will be out and the SD will have used up all it's counter measures. The next tatic is to use guided 'bunker buster' missiles. Normally, these missiles might not get past the anti-missile systems, but since they're fresh out, the missiles will reach their targets just fine. With the large ordinance hitting the guns, there stands a chance that ammo the might catch fire and explode. That's the fun part. Pretty much, the various airships would rotate launching ground missile after ground missile until we hit something that blows up and renders the SD non mission capable.

Well in my opinion the benefits of a SD are outweighed by the costs if one is destroyed. I mean, simply a fleet of submersibles could easily take one down without suffering any significant losses. If they can't, they could just as well stop it from moving for a satellite strike. An SD might be huge, but if you're optimistic you can view it as one gigantic, slow moving target.

Another thing has to do with the armor belt. Real battleships couldn't armor their whole hull, or else they'd be way too expensive and too heavy to float. So they only have a thick "armor belt" covering the boilers, about 16 inches thick, and the rest of the hull is covered with 4 inches of armor. Now I know that SDs will probably have a little thicker armor, but there's a limit to how much heavy stuff you can put on a ship before it sinks, and no SD could possibly have 16 inches of armor everywhere.