Comment Re:A good site for extrapolating from current scie (Score 1) 409
Mirrors:
Defeated with a group of very tiny droid satellites scattered for multiple angles.
Really long away: Can't really hit the enemy, and if you can see the enemy, they likely will see you too.
Lasers: As fast as light soooo -> best weapon to use if target doesn't have reflection
Getting away: Better be the fastest around, otherwise you are screwed
Getting hit: Your course will change as well, even if hit by laser, tho with laser it is very minimal amount of course change.
Shooting anything with mass or which generates surface heat: Your course will change and you need equivalent opposite force.
Mass drivers OR in other words: Rail gun is going to be super effective as there is practically zero drag except gravitational.
Targeting systems will be of utmost importance too.
Missiles, rockets, space torpedoes: Can be very fast in space, with huge acceleration BUT distances are so long that they need to be guided. Unless you are shooting a scatter of tiny rockets.
Initially as well everything will be very weak, get hit by pretty much anything and you are totally screwed, single hit will often be quite enough until we can get sufficient payloads sufficiently cheap into space to build any sort of armoring apart from reflectors.
Dark paint: I would guess visual cues are only semi important, anything in space will have infrared etc. so you might as well paint your warship bright orange, won't make much difference.
Battles are most likely to be very long and mostly quite boring tactical undertaking due to the vast distances and vast detection ranges.
Kind of playing chess in 3D, where movements are dictated by your engines and position (gravity etc.)
Decisions needs to be quite swift but not fraction of second swift usually, you are likely going to have quite a bit of time to see where it leads.
Probably also will be alot about psychology: Knowing your enemy and knowing how they will react.