Wyrdysm Games

For the purposes of my game we genrally use an blaster that shoots extremley small and extremley fast bullets.

In order to fool Point defence weapons, fighters genrally have a missile that is extremley difficult to intercept, but does only 1 damage.

This often leaves larger warships that are lacking in point defence effectivley vulnerable. (Because of balance we use a point system to say how many weapons and of what type are allowed). I have seen a very large ship (around 250 in size) die to plasma cannon bombardment from afar coupled with 2 flights of interceptors. The point defence weapons were always distracted by the missiles, and the plasma (which is extremley powerful) got through.

ODST wrote:You do realize that only missiles would be affect by chaff, right? Because no targeting computer of a kinetic/energy cannon would be fooled by mere chaff. And no gunner would allow his guns to shoot at chaff for more than negative 5 seconds. Chaff works best on the tiny compressed brains of missiles.

Actually if you go with the popular theory on this forum, where bridges are embedded deep within the ships and there are no windows, then all targeting of any weapon would be done by radar, other sensors or future equivalent, which is exactly what chaff is designed to fool.
In any case, I was thinking of ships within bsf deploying smaller 'ships' as chaff, which actually would attract the attention of any weapon, but thats a subject for another thread.

Windows are the only way to see outside of a spaceship and radar is the only means of targetting an object.

HorseMonster wrote:Windows are the only way to see outside of a spaceship and radar is the only means of targetting an object.

... What? I... think you're being sarcastic. I hope you're being sarcastic.

Uuuuugh. This thread is hurting my brain.

Yes I was being sarcastic, I was responding to the notion that windows somehow have something to do with the ability of a gunner to see what he is shooting at, which is absolute nonsense, particularly in space where the distances involved as so huge that any optical targetting is not going to have anything to do with windows or the location of a ship's bridge and that because a ship has no windows it must be using radar to target all of its weapons so of course chaff would be effective.

I really don't want to further derail it, but I'm honestly not sure what you were reading when you made your argument. I actually said in so many words that windows wouldn't be a factor and radar might not be the only sensor used... I was reinforcing that in space a countermeasure like chaff would be that much more effective because visual targeting wouldn't be a factor like it was in WW2 and post era aerial dogfights, which chaff was developed for and where only missiles might be easily fooled because the gunners were targeting manually. If I am wrong still, please enlighten me though.

ODST wrote:You do realize that only missiles would be affect by chaff, right? Because no targeting computer of a kinetic/energy cannon would be fooled by mere chaff. And no gunner would allow his guns to shoot at chaff for more than negative 5 seconds. Chaff works best on the tiny compressed brains of missiles.

unsunghero10 wrote:Yeah, but it's tough chaff.

Unlike the flare, it absorbs some damage before being vaporized. It would be nearly unaffected by low powered lasers.

It would be like sending out patches of small asteroids. Probably a gif of the chaff would surround a central magnet.

Fluffwise, the Anti-PD flare is actually an armoured ball, probably about the size of a beachball, containing a high-powered ECM package that projects the image of a very powerful, very easily intercepted incoming missile, and is capable of adapting the image projected to enemy PD systems in case they do not immediately recognize it as the most significant threat on the battlefield. Since most PD systems would be automated (human reflexes are not the most reliable things ever) it's extremely good at what it does.

The armour plating around the ECM package is not very thick, and so they're not much use as actual projectiles. It also means the Anti-PD flare can take a few hits before going down, if it's lucky.