How realaistic will drop team be....

[Peter Cairns]

As a big fan of CM I have to question the idea behind drop team. Although I am sure it will be a good game, the question is will war in the far future be anything like this.

With the future of armour in doubt today are we really going to be airlifting in individual tanks in 100 years when a micro UAV the size of your hand can feed real time to orbit where a Rod of God can deliver a pin point strike that hits like a small nuke in under 60 seconds....

I like SciFi but I always laugh at the fact that although since almost the dawn of warfare ranges have increased and forcces have dispersed in the movies they seem to think that in the future the effective range of an assalt rifle will be about six feet.

I'd have though that if anyone could come up with a "realistic" idea for what future combat might be like it would be the Battlefront team, as opposed to a copy ( all be it with a good game system) of your standard hollywood Buck Rogers GI in Space.

Peter.

[Moon]

Have you read the background story of the game at all, Peter?

[Peter Cairns]

Yes and it still doesn't wash,

You can talk about particle beams and hover tanks and the like, but it's just mechanisied warfare with different names. All the units just look like modern tanks , I've seen virtually the same in "Total Annilation" years back.

Don't get me wrong it will be a good game and worth the cash, I might even buy it, and it will probably bemore realistic in terms of the physics than most SciFi games, but in terms of war in the far future forget it.

A half our trawl of the internet will show that current future studies are dealing with more andvanced concepts than Dropship.

If it was called Iraq 2030, I caught say "OK it could well be like that", but the far future, sorry but no...

Peter.

[ClaytoniousRex]

Hi, Peter. I sympathize with what you're saying, but I think you're still overlooking the pertinent parts of the background story that Moon was alluding to. Maybe you had the reaction that many of us have when reading background stories for games: your eyes glazed over by third paragraph or so and you began mumbling to yourself "yeah, yeah, massive empire, yada yada, big civil war, yeah yeah, lots of planets..." and then you moved on to the Units page to get some "real info". So, here's a condensed version:

Game play takes place in the wake of a massive conflict, a conflict which used exactly the kind of "Rod of God" weapons you described. It was so violent that civilization was shattered, leading to a sort of Dark Age. The higher knowledge and technology required to make more "Rods of God" has been mostly lost, at least in the region of space where DropTeam takes place (The Rim). The tattered remnants of civilization are now trying to pull themselves back up out of the darkness by their bootstraps, using whatever old "Rod of God" technology they might still have left over (and still be able to maintain), but also using an ever-increasing amount of more primitive, home-grown technology.

Therefore, military forces in The Rim utilize a patchwork of technology. Most of it is vastly inferior to the "Rods of God" used during the original conflict with the Mu Arae, because they're only able to use those things that they can build for themselves and/or maintain over the years as higher knowledge continues to dwindle amongst the embattled predatory survivors trying to scrape out an existence in the charred waste of what used to be civilization. There are still "Rods of God" out there, but they're few and far between, and becoming less common as time goes on. This will continue to be true until either The Rim emerges from its Dark Age (probably due to unification by force), or is once again visited by outsiders from the presumably still-civilized Mu Arae direction of space.

Even without the whole "collapse of civilization" element to the story, we could probably agree that "Rods of God" are never going to *completely* replace the grunt with a basic weapon on the ground, as history has already taught us (anyone want to guess when exactly infantry will become obsolete? My money is on "never.")

Think of it this way. Imagine that the modern-day United States of America became embroiled in a protracted, pitched war (not an asymmetric war like Iraq - this is against another hypothetical nation with similar staying power.) Yes, during the first months of such a war, the "Rods of God" would define the conflict. High tech miracle weapons would shoot instant, accurate death from the skies. But as months go by, and the war drags on, how many "Rods of God" are being manufactured compared with the number being consumed in pitched combat? How long does it take for the "Rods of God" to slowly, inevitably give way to the far less fashionable, far more easily produced, tank and foot soldier? If this war were truly a protracted struggle for survival spanning years, then how long would it take before expensive chobham armor and elaborate APFSDS munitions needed to be replaced by cheaper, easier-to-produce tanks made with simpler steel armor, and simpler munitions for their guns?

Anyway, even if you don't agree with that point of view, then luckily we do, in fact, have the whole "collapse of civilization" element. :D Hopefully one or both will sate you for now, because we're terribly busy trying to finish some programming over here...

[ August 24, 2005, 10:04 PM: Message edited by: ClaytoniousRex ]

[Peter Cairns]

Problems with that scenario are that things like tanks aren't cheap to produce, they cost millions. the point of micro UAV's is that they can detect and target for a fraction of the cost of a helicopter let alone a fighter jet.

We are already moving in to an era that could see the Tank going the way of the Battleship, to slow and big to survive a missile attack.

Over the last decade it is the increase in accuracy that has revolutionised warfare not firepower.

A laser can move at the speed of light, about 300,000,000mps (three hundred million metres a second), so to cut a hole with a 1m circumferance it could do 300m rotations a second. If it had the accuracy to cut to within a molecule, then it cut by nudging atoms slice a hole in a tank with the power of a pen light.

Look at todays innovation, few nations are putting money in to a new generation of big tanks. So in the event of emerging from a colapse, going back to tanks when networked dispersed remotes are cheaper and more effective, is like us emerging from a nuclear war and going back to Galleons, and ignoring aircraft...

Peter.

[Peter Cairns]

Problems with that scenario are that things like tanks aren't cheap to produce, they cost millions. the point of micro UAV's is that they can detect and target for a fraction of the cost of a helicopter let alone a fighter jet.

We are already moving in to an era that could see the Tank going the way of the Battleship, to slow and big to survive a missile attack.

Over the last decade it is the increase in accuracy that has revolutionised warfare not firepower.

A laser can move at the speed of light, about 300,000,000mps (three hundred million metres a second), so to cut a hole with a 1m circumferance it could do 300m rotations a second. If it had the accuracy to cut to within a molecule, then it cut by nudging atoms slice a hole in a tank with the power of a pen light.

Look at todays innovation, few nations are putting money in to a new generation of big tanks. So in the event of emerging from a colapse, going back to tanks when networked dispersed remotes are cheaper and more effective, is like us emerging from a nuclear war and going back to Galleons, and ignoring aircraft...

Peter.

[Cameroon]

Argh I want to offer counterpoints to Peter's, but I have to go to work!

Ok, time to make myself a reminder smile.gif

[ClaytoniousRex]

going back to tanks when networked dispersed remotes are cheaper and more effectiveBut networked dispersed remotes are only cheap to produce because of the massive technological, specialized, industrial base that produces them. If this base were significantly eroded, then they would no longer be cheap at all. You're taking it for granted that the world will always be the way it is today: a relative golden age where highly specialized, exotic technologies are mass produced because we have a broad, deep, stable, civilized base to draw upon. As an extreme example, what if in today's world there were suddenly only 2 or 3 plants still capable of manufacturing high quality integrated circuits? Would it still be cheap and efficient to build an army of networked remote killing machines? Not until you rebuilt some more of those plants that used to exist, right? In the mean time, you would have to make do with more primitive technology.

is like us emerging from a nuclear war and going back to Galleons, and ignoring aircraft...This is not a valid analogy at all. It's actually more like us emerging from a nuclear war and going to conventional, manned aircraft INSTEAD OF networked, autonomous, unmanned robotic flying machines, at least until we can rebuild enough civilization to once again reach the high levels of specialization required to build more exotic technologies.

Over the last decade it is the increase in accuracy that has revolutionised warfare not firepower.For a short, asymmetric battle where your limited supply of super weapons is sufficient to win, this is absolutely true. Though that scenario is often what we see for big western nations in today's world, that is not necessarily the absolute future of all warfare for all people and for all time to come.

[Gen. Lee Annoying]

How might you suggest holding the terrain you just obliterated?...... and for what purpose would obliterating something that in the first place you may have wanted for your own?...... few wars are started for the sole purpose of destroying another but instead to deny access or more likely secure ones own access to a certain feature or resource?......... The "ROD OF GOD" is usefull only as a deterant.Not to mention far more expensive than any conventional technology. Look at it this way. Of all the nuclear weapons in existance how many of them have been fired in hatered? .... 2....... no one refutes the effectiveness of a nuclear weapon but it's the ramifications both physical and ethical that have hindered their use for their intended purpose. And I have a very difficult time thinking that the future would change these fundamentally human concepts.
As far as your suggesting that the tank is dead I would merely say that they are going through more of an evolution then an extintion. Take for instance the US Army's Future Combat System which at this time is a traked armoured fighting vehicle (Tank) which will use a 120mm main cannon borrowed from a Tank? Now I'm not saying your points are invalid just that you have no way of predicting the future of warfare any better then our friends developing this very interesting and for me anticipated game. Everything we experiance in life is from our own point of veiw subject to our own bias and opinion. In this case the point of view is from that of the games developers hence they can and should take any license they need to realize the vision they have set out to conjure. If in the process they miss the mark on actual future combat systems only time will tell..... but hell I can't wait to find out.......
I applaud them for treading into the unknown and offering us something that is not only plausible but fun !!!!!!!!!

Once again this is just MHO feel free to ignore it if it dosn't fit your frame of refference.

[ClaytoniousRex]

Those are great points, General, and I think you'll have a great time playing DropTeam! I always enjoy reading your posts.

But with regard to nuclear weapons, I think Peter was talking more about high-precision tactical weapons than about high-yield nukes: smart missiles fired from UAV's, high power laser beams with autonomous targetting, probably all the way up to nano-scale self-organizing networked weapon systems, etc. His "Rod of God" is not a high-yield nuke but an EXTREMELY smart, high-precision pin-prick of death that is never seen nor heard and against which there is virtually no defense.

[Gen. Lee Annoying]

I'm gald I've been able to add a little flair and differing view. Nothing like a good counter point or fresh suggestion to get the forums jumping. I'd like to hear more about that nano-scale-self-oraganizing networked weapons system as I have little idea what you're describing..... nano tech materials alone have some interesting properties with regards to toxicity alone..... simple materials we take for granted as safe can be down right deadly when structually manipulated at a nano level. The inherint danger of nano technology is a very real concern especially in the hand of the other guys....... muah hahahahaha

[Gen. Lee Annoying]

So in the event of emerging from a colapse, going back to tanks when networked dispersed remotes are cheaper and more effective


Might I add to the above we already have these they are called landmines and man are they a bitch to remove after the conflict especially if they aren't yours.


My appologies for the excessive posting......

[flamingknives]

Originally posted by Peter Cairns:
A laser can move at the speed of light, about 300,000,000mps (three hundred million metres a second), so to cut a hole with a 1m circumferance it could do 300m rotations a second. If it had the accuracy to cut to within a molecule, then it cut by nudging atoms slice a hole in a tank with the power of a pen light. I think that is overstating the case a tinsy bit.
You've still got to deal with atmospheric interferance and actually focussing the laser on the target to that level of precision. The two are nearly mutually exclusive.

There's a certain amount of energy that holds materials together. It's been a while sincel I did any molecular theory, so i don't recall how much it is, but it's going to be more than you can supply with a pen light.

Finally, to make a laser anything like that you would need a phenomenally high tolerance production, which would be correspondingly expensive.

[Peter Cairns]

Been away a while so a couple of points.

The "Rod of God" idea is about precision as much as power, with as few as tewnty or thirty in a single pass(quarter of an orbit taking less than half an hour) you could take out just about the entire oil refining capability of the USA.

Secondly if you look at something like Flight Internationals annual UAV survey you will see that the nature of the technology means that there are literally dozens of developments.

The idea that we would abandon these and go back to Tanks or planes assumes that they are harder to make. Once you understand a technology it's down to resourcing.

The aeroplane is more advanced than the galleon, but in terms of time manpower and resources it costs a fraction of the amount. In the time it would take to make a large sailing ship you could build dozens if not hundreds of biplanes with the same labour and resources.

Finally the penlight example is a bit extreme although they are currently using low powered lasers to move molecules in Nanotech experiments.

The point I was making is that the basic idea that war in the future will resemble war today is flawed,

DT will still be a good game and I like the look of it, but just as the gun revolutioniesd warfare, then the plane and the missile and ultimately nukes, so future war will be very different.

If there are consistants over centuries it's that forces disperse, engagement distances increase and that accuracy improves. If these continue in to the future and short of a "Post Apocalypse" fudge there is no reason to assume they shouldn't, a future war with Tanks and Dropships doesn't add up.

Peter.

[flamingknives]

Just for the sake of argument: Biplanes are dependent on the existance of internal combustion engines or similarly efficient power sources. These in turn are dependent on suitably advanced machining technologies, metals and fuels.

[Gen. Lee Annoying]

I recall a line of thinking that had airforce F-4's aremed with only missiles as no pilot would ever have the chance to get close enough to use a built in cannon in a dog fight? As exciting and plausible as this sounded at the time reality steps in and shows not all theories or supositions ring true in the face of actual combat. Only time will tell, how can we predict the future face of combat to any certainty when the short falls of this new technoogy have yet to be explored or let alone exploited to the advantage of one's enemy. No technology is infallible or undefensible. For every advance another usually follows closely to balance or overcome. Those who belive contrary will end up questioning how things could have gone so wrong.

[wlibaers]

Originally posted by flamingknives:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Peter Cairns:
A laser can move at the speed of light, about 300,000,000mps (three hundred million metres a second), so to cut a hole with a 1m circumferance it could do 300m rotations a second. If it had the accuracy to cut to within a molecule, then it cut by nudging atoms slice a hole in a tank with the power of a pen light. I think that is overstating the case a tinsy bit.
You've still got to deal with atmospheric interferance and actually focussing the laser on the target to that level of precision. The two are nearly mutually exclusive.</font>[/QUOTE]Completely impossible, and not even due to precision issues, but because the nature of laser beams prevents it. Even UV lasers have wavelengths longer than 100 nm, about three orders of magnitude more than the size of an atom. Then, you never focus lasers to a single point, it just doesn't work due to diffraction.
http://www.mellesgriot.com/products/optics/gb_2_1.htm

Note, you might think, after reading that page, that you can have a very small beam waist if your divergence angle is beig enough. That is correct. The problem is that, for a weapon system, using this would mean walkng up to the enemy tank, attaching a microscope objective to its armor, and then aligning the laser to go through that objective. tongue.gif

There's a certain amount of energy that holds materials together. It's been a while sincel I did any molecular theory, so i don't recall how much it is, but it's going to be more than you can supply with a pen light.Oh, a single penlight has more than enough energy to cause chemical reactions (rearranging, i.e. breaking chemical bonds and then allowing different bondt to be made), and it is in fact powered by such reactions in the battery. Applying that energy so that it is a useful weapon can, again, be considered impractical.

Finally, to make a laser anything like that you would need a phenomenally high tolerance production, which would be correspondingly expensive. And wouldn't really work anyway.

[Moon]

wlibaers and others, you touch precisely upon what we think will differentiate Dropteam from virtually any Sci-Fi game out there. The guys from TBG are determined to make a game which is compatible with real world physics as we know today. No "it's so advanced we cannot explain it" stuff which, in effect, is just masking the fact that publishers focussed solely on spectacular effects.

Peter Cairns:
DT will still be a good game and I like the look of it, but just as the gun revolutioniesd warfare, then the plane and the missile and ultimately nukes, so future war will be very different.Is it really that different today from what it was in WW2? In the end, it's still about the guy with a rifle and guts. He's better trained maybe and has more gimmicks to be at the right place at the right time, but is it really so "very different" than it was 50 years ago?

One could argue that 50 years in the context of the next centuries doesn't mean anything, but physics today has actually shown up some basic limits in what is and what isn't possible in this universe, so the technological advance of the past 100 years might actually be an outlier, not the norm.

Martin

[Panzeh]

Well, I don't think a game about dropping rods on each other and using wacky 'remote killing machines' would be all that fun. Would you want to play a game like that?

[Jack Carr]

I think this is one game that I wouldn't expect to be so adhering to realism. The premise/storyline sounds interesting. The fact that the entire thing is in a futuristic setting and based on a fictitious conflict would lend itself to being a more "what if" type game. The one thing that I would expect is quality. I'll be buying this one because I'm a Sci-Fi fan. How realistic can a Sci-Fi game be?

[Jack Carr]

Originally posted by Jack Carr:
I think this is one game that I wouldn't expect to be so adhering to realism. The premise/storyline sounds interesting. The fact that the entire thing is in a futuristic setting and based on a fictitious conflict would lend itself to being a more "what if" type game. The one thing that I would expect is quality being that Battlefront has gotten involved. I'll be buying this one because I'm a Sci-Fi fan. How realistic can a Sci-Fi game be? Whoops...sorry. I meant to edit the original post.

[flamingknives]

I think it depends on how you use the term Sci-Fi. Using it accurately should mean that it will be very realistic.

Common usage is a bit different though.

[Moon]

Thanks for the faith, Jack.

Dropteam will be realistic as far as applying today's known physical laws is concerned. Ballistics, air resistance, armor penetrations, gravity, atmospheric density and so forth are taken into account when simulating combat on the various planets (and moons) of the Space Vikings universe. The cool thing about it is that you can really "feel" this stuff working under the hood during combat - how your units behave racing across a low gravity moon, or how firing your guns on a high density planet is affected.

Damage effects are simulated in high detail - no simple hit points, but detailed armor penetration calculations that work the same on earth as well as anywhere else in the universe. Damage or destroy a track or a tire or the engine or... and you'll get the proper effects. Ever tried to drive with a wobbly wheel across a cratered moon at 0.1 gravo? Dropteam does that and gives you the feeling that it's "honest" and actually reasonable.

Of course there is a certain limit as far as realism goes, too. But Dropteam is an "intelligent man's" Sci-Fi game that delivers realism with surprisingly little need for "explaining away or around" stuff.

Oh, and it's tons of fun, too. Because besides realism the other core element is teamplay and tactics. You can give orders to your bots or fellow human players, and in fact you have to, because without cooperation you won't get anywhere - the battlefield is way too lethal for that. Hmmm... perhaps it's time for some kind of AAR now that I think about it...

Martin

[Des]

The problem here is with the future we don't really know what is going to happen. We could have the revolutionary effect that could drastically alter warfare like the gun did. However, we don't know that they will even be fully developed.

To say that with the knowledge there we can build it is nonsense. During WW2 the Japanese knew full well how to build jets, unfortunately they didn't have the proper industry to back it up and produce jet-grade steel. Yes they had some late in the war, but the base wasn't there when they needed it.

For some of these Rod of God technologies, how many people do you think will know how to build them. Only with the fall of the USSR did nuclear weapons become more widespread and even now only so many countries have them. A great example of the non-dispersal of information is greek-fire. Sure we developed napalm and things that are close to it, but we never found out what the Byzantines actually used to make it.

[Gen. Lee Annoying]

If I may add my bit..... the point here is not what our future will look like but instead what a plausible future could look like and to make it more plausible by making that future subject to the so called immutable laws of physics which all technological developments aim to take advantage of and conversely are governed by. How many laws of physics have we overcome in recent years? or should I say since we began to exist? ..... why then should we think that in the framework of this game it should be any different?

P.S. The backstory says nothing about the home world being earth. What if for arguements sake the history depictded is that of an alltogether different galaxy, one that evolved along the same lines as ours but does not share all details of our history? How then would anything that happened in our past relate?..... The only constant would be the universe in which we exist and the laws of physics that bind us........ Interesting little thought no?

[Tarquelne]

I think Peter Cairns is fundamentally correct, in that warfare in the distant future - as distant as DropTeam's - will most likely be very different from current warfare. Much more different than DropTeam's, IMO.

But that's just "most likely".

First, looking at the history supplied: The Traders supplying arms to the Rim worlds wouldn't necessarily have supplied the best or most advanced weapons. Ease of maintenance, political considerations, legal restrictions - or just profit margins - could have greatly limited what the Rim warlords had to play with.

The Rim lost it's fight with the big E. despite it's much lauded experience - maybe because it didn't have enough of those things that'd make future warfare so different.

Now, with the Space Vikings (I have to admit it took a bit of effort to type "Space Vikings" with a straight face) relying primarily on old LiveShip production facilities (IIRC) the game DropTeam will be fought without those most-advanced systems. And the available units - lo and behold - are primarily "sci-fi" versions of units familiar to us from Real Life.

Secondly, there's the question of countermeasures. Why not use nano-based "grey goo", self-organizing fleets of UAVs, or all sorts of super-high tech sci-fi devices? Maybe it's because of counter-measures. Anti-goo goo, computer viruses, super-duper ECM, I dunno... but for some reason most "super weapons" don't work due to counter-measures kept on hand by everybody in the DropTeam universe. Everyone just deploys the stuff that can't be easily countered. In the case of DropTeam what's left looks a lot like upgraded versions of today's stuff...

Or maybe it's a question of scale: The armor, or ECM equipment, or power sources, or whatever required to function on the battlefield just don't scale down well. So we've got tanks, but none of those very tiny, very smart and excessively lethal weapons systems that seem likely to make the future battlefield so different from today's.

(Actually, I think it'd be interesting if the war of the E. against the Rim mentioned in the history featured the E. using plenty of super-sci-fi type weaponry... like say a dozen troopers that appear to be wearing light armor and carrying wands assaulting a city held by a battalion-sized Rim force of "advanced" AFVs.)

[Tarquelne]

Just a couple more comments:


in the movies they seem to think that in the future the effective range of an assalt rifle will be about six feet.And note the Bad Guys often still can't hit anything at that range.

What gets me is the space-based weapons that don't seem to have a range much greater than 600 feet.


I'd have though that if anyone could come up with a "realistic" idea for what future combat might be like it would be the Battlefront team, as opposed to a copy ( all be it with a good game system) of your standard hollywood Buck Rogers GI in Space.
There's a lot to be said for Buck Rogers GI in Space. As a game. I expect more from a book. I wish for more - but expect less - from a movie. Think of it, perhaps, as pushing current trends to an illogical extreme. The familiar... but with a fun sci-fi twist.

I'm very much looking forward to a sci-fi game (even if it's space opera) that still takes realism seriously.

[TheTris]

A laser can move at the speed of light, about 300,000,000mps (three hundred million metres a second), so to cut a hole with a 1m circumferance it could do 300m rotations a second.You need to play/watch/read more Science Fiction Pete! :-D

A laser can move with the speed of light, sure. That doesn't place a limit on the speed with which you can track a laser across a surface. If I draw a laser pointer across something far enough away, I can track it across at much more than c.

c is the limit for travel from the pointer to the end of the beam, not the limit for the end of the beam moving from one place to another.

So there is no limit on the number of rotations a laser could do per second to cut a 1m circumference hole. but I'm not sure why this is relevant?

I believe this then comes down to the cutting power of the laser, and the dispersion effect caused by material already displaced by the beam, which would have an attritional effect on the cutting power the longer the laser was focussed on the same surface.