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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 9730984" data-attributes="member: 22779">Yes, but, you could always ram.  Which then detonated your engines.  But, your point is still very well made.  They were basing things off of the TV show, which obviously had different priorities than a wargame.  That's kinda what I mean though.  When you want to discuss the logistics of space battles, there aren't really any ground rules.  When we talk about Napoleonic miniature battles, we have a very solid baseline.  No one is using a tank or an F-35.  In SF combat, all the bets are off until those baselines are constructed.Take the idea in the OP about orbital bombardment.  Now, if the baseline is alien invaders and modern Earth level technology?  FIne and dandy.  But against two similar technology levels?  A ship in orbit is a honking big target.  Any weapon you can mount on a space ship, you can mount on the ground and make it ten times bigger.  Never minding what sorts of defenses you can have in orbit.I used to play an RPG called Sufficiently Advanced (great game) where it was set in Transhuman SF.  You could literally make a character that could shoot things in orbit from the ground.  A ship in orbit is visible to half the planet with a direct line of fire.  We can make guns now that can achieve orbital launch.  Advance technology a couple of hundred years and an invading fleet has a HUGE disadvantage.All that being said, again, it depends on technology.  In the Expanse universe, they send in "stealth" asteroids to bombard the Earth. Even then, within a fairly short time, that threat is neutralized.  At horrific cost, of course, but, again, when you have the resources of an entire planet against an invading fleet, the planet has a lot going for it.  If your system uses anything like Newtonian physics, that means that approaching ships are pretty limited in their approach.  There are only so many ways you can travel from A to B in space.  Gets back to the whole "space is really, really big" thing.  Miss your approach by a couple of degrees and you'll miss the planet entirely.  So on and so forth.</blockquote>

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