Aeson
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quote:
Light based weapons: lasers and phasers, and their race specific brethren, have the highest range and almost instantly strike the target. They move at the speed of light so the weapons travel speed will be as fast as the speed of light, so 20k speed or maybe higher.
If you're using the base game's numbers, then the maximum possible speed of light is roughly 2000 range units per real-world second at normal game speed (Warp Bubble Generators allow your ships to move faster than light and have a maximum speed of 2000 range units per second, so c <= 2000 r/s). Maximum theoretical speed of any of the main drive thrusters is 420 r/s (Starburner III, and not an attainable speed), so if you assume that any speed attainable by main drive thruster components is subluminal, that's a lower bound for c. Just something to consider.
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Torpedoes: The oldest weapon in the history of human war
Says who? The oldest weapon in the history of human war is probably something along the lines of a club, and the oldest ranged weapon something along the lines of a thrown rock (a very basic 'mass driver'). Torpedoes, depending on the period, could be explosives which need to be attached to or run into the target and then set off (e.g. CSS Hunley's spar torpedo), a floating explosive with a contact trigger (a device which would now be referred to as a naval mine), or a self-propelled explosive device which may or may not have a tracking guidance system and which is generally detonated by a contact or proximity fuse of some form. None of these qualify as the 'oldest weapon in the history of war.' I don't believe that naval rams were ever referred to as torpedoes (at any rate, I cannot recall ever hearing them named as such), so they're probably out as an earlier form of torpedo, and they're still not the oldest naval weapon.
I'd honestly say that mass drivers have a better claim to being "the oldest weapon in the history of human war" than torpedoes do. Slings, bows, guns, your arms; all of these things are basic forms of mass driver, launching unguided or passively-guided projectiles at a target, with the damage of the projectile mostly being dependent on the projectile's mass, velocity, and form.
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Missiles: I REALLY dislike the concept of missiles in a space setting. They require volatile fuel to gain velocity and they they are still too slow for any ships PDS system. Their payload is abysmal when you can have any other weapon system do the same job at much lower risk to entire crew by simply housing them on the ship. A torpedoes payload will remain inert even if hit by a weapon, they are kinetically fired into space with a programmed trajectory prior to being fired and are steered by small ion thrusters towards the intended target. Missiles, not so much... Their tracking systems are electronically loud and engine heat would make them easy targets for any PDS system.
The most commonly used definition of 'missile' with which I am familiar is that of a self-propelled projectile with an active guidance system. If the ion thrusters on your 'torpedo' can be used to drive the 'torpedo' in the forward direction, then your torpedo meets all the criteria to be called a missile by the preceding definition. In space, there's little reason why a missile would need to continually expend propellant. Thus, having the ability to fire a thruster in a direction that produces forward motion is sufficient to meet the self-propulsion requirement. This is in contrast to a missile within an atmosphere, which would need to constantly fire its main thruster in order to maintain speed due to air resistance. Now, there may be reasons why you might want a space missile to constantly expend propellant (particularly at a variable, and preferably somewhat unpredictable, rate), as if it's constantly expending propellant it should be accelerating, which should make it more difficult to hit than a constant-velocity target, but carries the downside of being more visible than a constant-velocity target (incidentally, your torpedo is not a constant velocity target unless it never makes use of its ion thrusters).
There's no reason why assisted launch could not be used for missiles, and indeed some modern military missile systems use assisted launch. Thus, that feature of your 'torpedo' is not sufficient, at least in the real world, to distinguish it from a missile.
Your torpedo also has an active guidance system, as it's capable of following a preprogrammed course and has active course correction in the form of the ion thrusters. Target tracking, while useful, is not a necessary feature of an active guidance system or of real-world missiles (e.g. V2 ballistic missiles, and I would assume also many ICBMs; the intended targets are immobile and have known locations, so there's no need for target tracking).
Finally, there's no reason why a missile's payload necessarily must be more volatile than that of your 'torpedo,' unless you're counting the propellant (but on the other hand, there's no real reason why you could not use the same propulsion system on the missile as the 'torpedo' uses). Kinetic impactors, high explosives, nuclear devices, one-shot lasers; all of these are possible payloads for space missiles and space torpedoes alike (and also space shells fired by space guns; this isn't, of course, to say that they're equally valid payloads).
I will further add that a properly designed tracking missile system should have a range advantage over a basic mass driver due to the ability to track the target. Basic mass drivers are limited in maximum effective range by your ability to predict where the target will be by the time the mass driver can reach it and by how accurately/precisely you can point the gun. Both of these limitations are relaxed to some degree by incorporating an active guidance and tracking system into the weapon. As far as the counter of "but PD" goes, a kinetic missile is approximately as immune to PD as a solid projectile from a basic mass driver, depending on relative sizes and the speed of the missile's final stage relative to that of the mass driver's projectile, and something like a bomb-pumped laser is more immune to PD than the basic mass driver's projectile. The missile, at least in theory, can be launched from beyond the effective range of the mass driver (the kinetic missile's final stage should have a similar, though possibly somewhat lower, effective range to the basic mass driver, so the overall range of the weapon should generally be greater), so the question is essentially how much are you willing to pay in ammunition capacity and ammunition cost per unit for greater range.
As far as the stealth aspect of your torpedoes goes, I'd say that that's likely a no-go. A basic mass driver is more stealthy than anything of equal size that can adjust its course by means of firing ion thrusters (at least, unless we allow for magitech), and if you can get the torpedo to a predetermined location using an active guidance system that relies only on passive sensors and a predetermined course you can probably (though not certainly) get a mass driver's projectile to the same location. If your torpedoes lack a homing device, as seems to be the case, then at best you've eliminated the range restriction based upon aiming accuracy, but your range is still limited by target position prediction and projectile speed and your projectile speed is likely slower (because the projectile is likely both larger and more fragile than a basic unguided projectile). You'll also have a higher per-unit cost for the ammunition, and likely less total ammunition capacity because the torpedoes are likely larger than the unguided projectiles you'd use with a basic mass driver, and also (if magitech is allowed) due to the addition of a stealth system.
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Light based weapons: lasers and phasers, and their race specific brethren, have the highest range and almost instantly strike the target.
Effective ranges for laser-type weapons depends on:
- Beam spreading. The tighter the beam, the more effective it is at close range and the further out it can reach before the incident power per unit area becomes too low to matter.
- Your ability to predict the position of the target. If you can predict the target's position no more than 1 second into the future, the effective range of your lasers is going to be about 1 light-second unless it's limited by other constraints first.
- Your ability to point the laser in the direction you want to fire and the size of your target. Higher aiming accuracy lets you hit targets of a given size further out than lower aiming accuracy. Larger targets can be hit from further away with a given aiming accuracy than smaller targets can be, though the size differences in game may be slight enough that the resulting maximum effective ranges are effectively equal (e.g. if I can hit a size-100 unit at 10 light seconds and a size 1500 unit at 10.1 light seconds, that's only a 1% difference in effective range and so you might consider there to be no real difference in effective range).
Effective maximum range for unguided projectile weapons depends on:
- Your ability to predict the position of the target and the speed of your projectiles. If you can predict the target's position no more than 1 second into the future and your gun's projectiles move at 0.9c, the effective range of your gun is going to be about 0.9 light-second unless it's limited by other constraints first.
- Your ability to point the gun in the direction you want to fire and the size of your target. Higher aiming accuracy lets you hit targets of a given size further out than lower aiming accuracy. Larger targets can be hit from further away with a given aiming accuracy than smaller targets can be, though the size differences in game may be slight enough that the resulting maximum effective ranges are effectively equal (e.g. if I can hit a size-100 unit at 10 light seconds and a size 1500 unit at 10.1 light seconds, that's only a 1% difference in effective range and so you might consider there to be no real difference in effective range).
- How well the projectiles fired by your gun follow the path along which the gun was aimed. Basically folds into the accuracy and target size constraint above.
You cannot say with absolute certainty that lasers and laser-type weapons will have the greatest effective range of all unguided weapons. If target position prediction is the dominant constraint of both laser and unguided projectile weapons, then sure, lasers will have the greater effective range. It's conceivable for the other constraints on maximum effective range to come into play in such a way that unguided projectile weapons have a greater effective range than the lasers do, especially if your laser weapons have to be much larger than equivalent projectile weapons. That said, I would say that lasers are not particularly unlikely to have the greater effective range, especially if the circumstances of space battles are such that projectiles can be detected in time for ships to take evasive action (which imposes a more severe limitation on target prediction for projectile weapons than for laser weapons, as lasers cannot be detected before they begin hitting the target under standard physics; this however may not be in play depending on detector sensitivity and the ECM picture).
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Brainstorming Weapons Overhaul - 
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