Re: Space tactics

Without sarcasm, I say to those who think a quick strike is hard or 
impossible to stop - your own velocity is the weapon I use to kill 
you. At the speed you'd be travelling, just as it gives the defending 
ships at the planet little time to act, it gives your moving ships 
scant time to react. Lets say you're moving 280" with thrust 8, I 
just mine (using hard to detect mines) your path. You can't change it 
that much because of how feeble your thrust is wrt your velocity 
vector. So you barrell through my minefield. It could even just be 
space garbage at that speed - it'd punch right through your hull. But 
it wouldn't be, it'd be bomb pumped lasers or whatever mines are 
these days. Your ships chance to dodge would be negigible since your 
speed would exceed most projections of sensor ranges I've seen so 
far, so you wouldn't even see the mines coming in time to dodge. I 
don't have to 'intercept you' and catch up with you, I just have to 
know where you are headed and mine the space around the planet. Then 
your own velocity kills you. And if you slow down, then my pickets 
gang up and attack you. 

As for how do I know where you are? I put sensor platforms on some 
likely approach routes and they might give me a warning. If not, my 
minefield is set to go off when anything without the right IFF comes 
through it. So you zip in, and boom. 

I'm not saying the ultra high-vee attack isn't practicable but
1. You'd need sensors that exceed your speed by an order of 2 to 10 
times - otherwise you'd be foolishly risking your ships by such 
velocity - and that would give warning of your arrival. 
2. You'd need to be capable of sweeping or avoiding mines, which 
suggests a slower approach or at least a sacrificial wave of ships to 
take the hit, far outvaluing the minefields value. 

Plus the political consideration that if you do it to them.... they 
do it to your worlds too. Most governments have the sanity to realize 
what this means. 

I don't think this attack is the 'be all and end all' in space 
combat,and I think kamikazee captains whose speeds exceed their 
ability to manoevre or their sensor ranges would get yanked by an 
Admiralty board so fast it would make your head spin. This isn't 
chess with little plastic pieces that have no lives - this is 
manoevres with million ton battlecruisers with hundreds of crew each 
of whom is expensive to recruit and train. Things one could do in the 
game world (if you treat it as a game) are things that may well be 
eschewed by more realistic players who realize the implications. 

Tom.