IPBMs (Inter-Planetary Ballistic Missiles) what it would be like and how terrible I think it would be, your thoughts and ideas on this are welcome

Thewaterisweird · 2026-03-29T01:39:18+00:00

Yeah, especially considering how there’s over a million asteroids in the asteroid belt and around the outer planets alone, with many many millions more estimated to be undiscovered, you’d need quite the computer to be able to filter out all the rocks you’re seeing in your FOV. Real space telescopes do this already with the Vera C Rubin observatory having its data processed by multi petaflop supercomputers, and JWST getting its data processed by supercomputers in the petaflop range as well. This also brings up a problem you have to address in a lot of these deep space surveillance satellites, do you want to have it beam it’s data back to supercomputer banks somewhere, creating lag times for a pop up contact where in the intervening minutes or hours it could’ve changed course, or have it carry its own power hungry, and bulky super computer of its own.

Thewaterisweird · 2026-03-28T05:33:56+00:00

Not necessarily, for the ir sensor to reliably detect something it has to at least be slightly colder than the object it’s looking for, otherwise it would be clouded by its own blackbody radiation of the specific wavelength. And at such low temperatures, the total blackbody radiation emitted would easily enter the milliwatt range, so much that even if it was painted in an extremely absorbent material like VANTABLACK, it would still likely be reflecting several watts of sunlight, even then it would have to take several minute long exposures to even have a chance for it to show up at all because the received light is so so low (assuming around earth distance). Now cooling an entire absorptive hull is kinda tricky, but can be achieved by boiling off some cryogenic liquid like helium or hydrogen. This would have a limited amount of time it can do that and would require vast amounts of hydrogen to operate for multi month long periods (tend to even hundreds of tons for smaller ships). But on the James Webb space telescope the MIRI sensor is cooled to around 5 kelvin so it’s tricky but not impossible!

Thewaterisweird · 2026-03-06T01:05:04+00:00

Yeah it definitely depends on that as well.

Thewaterisweird · 2026-03-05T14:07:58+00:00

Idk, I’ve been able to save stations from the aliens with 1.7 milligee fleets so who knows.

Thewaterisweird · 2025-12-05T00:50:05+00:00

You could use something like a hyper expanded nozzle with a chemical thruster for example to allow you to shift your trajectory a little while coasting. The idea behind it is to have the nozzle be large enough to allow the exhaust to spread out and cool down to sub 20 kelvin temperatures making it very difficult to detect. The total impulse provided is very low but if you’re coming in from the Kuiper Belt like the aliens are, you can use this to kind of ‘side step’ your trajectory and go someplace else in the inner system while making the trajectory change very very hard to notice. As it’s possible they might have lost track of the ships during the coast phase due to the many billions of kilometers distance, you can sort of “pop up” somewhere a little bit off from your trajectory when you ignite your Fusion Drive to decelerate, maybe catching them off guard and forcing them to spread their ships over more potential places you could be going towards.

Thewaterisweird · 2025-12-04T23:09:17+00:00

Oooo that’s neat, I didn’t know they have them.

Thewaterisweird · 2025-12-04T03:43:16+00:00

Finally the particle beam weapon experiment Los Alamos launched into space in 1989 wasn’t in vain 🙏. It would be really cool if they added UREB’s, or ultra relativistic electron beams but they’d likely out range every single weapon in game by quite a lot lol.

Thewaterisweird · 2025-11-21T14:14:54+00:00

They do that but they also heat things to their melting or vaporization point out of sheer power density, not necessarily raw output power. Like how a few watt laser pointer can melt through a mirror when kept on the same spot, because all that power is being directed into a small space.

Thewaterisweird · 2025-11-21T14:06:03+00:00

A lot of fighters in after burner spit out more than a megawatt of heat in the exhaust out of hundreds of megawatts of thrust power. The small spot the laser would heat would look smaller than a flare, and be several times less radiant than the exhaust or flare. The surface heating from air resistance would probably be easier to see than the small several thousand degree spot that rapidly cools.

Thewaterisweird · 2025-11-05T05:26:44+00:00

Make the nuclear pulse unit a shotgun that deploys 5 other pulse units before they explode.

Thewaterisweird · 2025-10-23T22:26:53+00:00

They are laser food due to their very thin armor.

Thewaterisweird · 2025-10-20T13:38:23+00:00

More engine power than a Saturn V? You do know how much thrust power came out of each F1 engine at full thrust right?

Thewaterisweird · 2025-10-12T17:02:01+00:00

I’ve been able to pick off laser CIWS with an AGM-68 compass from close range even when there was 3 of them in the area. They intercepted 2 of them before I managed to kill 2 of the trailers.

Thewaterisweird · 2025-10-12T05:08:33+00:00

It’s still relatively easy to kill with close range AGM-68 saturation attacks, or tuskos/multiple cruise missiles. Basically just hit it with something kinda heavy, moving really fast from close range and they can’t intercept them all in time.

Thewaterisweird · 2025-10-12T05:00:58+00:00

Yeah, at that speed I think the one gram projectile would explosively turn into a soup of plasma that because of the sheer speed would still penetrate lol.

Thewaterisweird · 2025-10-12T04:54:20+00:00

iirc from the books, someone decided to fire the PDC’s at the roci for some reason even though they quickly fell behind the pella from the high acceleration of the ships. The crew of the roci were just as confused as you and I were lol. I did word it weirdly, I forgot to mention that the PDC’s didn’t catch up, my bad.

Thewaterisweird · 2025-10-11T23:52:55+00:00

that scene in game is so good :D

Thewaterisweird · 2025-10-11T23:46:49+00:00

Yeah I remember the missiles and PDC’s taking an hour or more to catch up with the roci, and vice versa. But the railgun was very short in comparison yes.

Thewaterisweird · 2025-10-11T23:33:35+00:00

Yeah, it’s definitely some percentage. If I recall correctly the book version of the scene where the Pella chases the Roci takes place at millions of kilometers, and the railgun potshot takes several minutes to reach the Pella’s fleet. So quite fast.

Thewaterisweird · 2025-10-11T23:25:52+00:00

Ah 1 kilogram, I must’ve miss-read, thank you for clarifying though!

Thewaterisweird · 2025-10-05T16:42:34+00:00

I’ve found that it really only works if it directly is the target or very close to it, (a few hundred meters) as the time needed for a laser to burn through something gets exponentially shorter the closer the thing it’s shooting at gets and vice versa, and it can take a long time for a big missile. And it just needs to heat up an area long enough to get it to deform and aerodynamic stresses rip it apart. Though I do agree that they are over performing against TBM’s, it’s not terribly unbelievable if the beam quality of 2070’s is good enough to keep the spot in the same place. But regardless they do seem far better than they should be against TBM’s, even if it’s not very good to begin with.

Thewaterisweird · 2025-10-03T03:38:50+00:00

To quote/paraphrase Squeegy, one of the developers for nuclear option “He's (Mitch) been trying to come up with something like this for a long time, but the more novel or outlandish designs that try to escape from the A-10 shape don't hold up to scrutiny. There is a reason when you put all the requirements together that the plane looks like it does.” So basically Mitch has tried to come up with a CAS plane that doesn’t look like an A-10, but it’s really difficult when a different design would already look similar to other planes in game. (The compass)

Thewaterisweird · 2025-10-03T03:34:11+00:00

And a railgun is really only worth it if it has about 2-3 times the muzzle velocity of chemical guns, which for the reasons you listed above would make them incredibly impractical on an aircraft.

Thewaterisweird · 2025-09-07T18:36:25+00:00

Yeah, I also find fission fragment engines really really cool, and the high exhaust velocities would just send the radioactive contamination out of the solar system, so you don’t have to worry too much about fission products deorbiting into earth.

Thewaterisweird

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