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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Joerg Baumgartner" data-source="post: 9815526" data-attributes="member: 6893976">As with wet navies, the means of travel decide how space navies work.Hardly any SF setting acknowledges the vast emptiness of space. Most asteroid fields look like a fresh accretion disk. Travel times are reduced to intercontinental flight times, or at worst to the travel times of Diesel- or Steam-turbine driven transatlantic ferries.The  typical response of SF settings to the emptiness of space is to skip the empty portions using some form of FTL shift out of the regular space continuum, whether by creating a warp tunnel that compresses distances or by entering a dimensional or inter-dimensional realm, possibly tied to fixed entry points or gates. Interactions during such transits don't typically occur, but interesting story hooks bring them in.Other settings have gates or worm holes allowing for near-instantaneous transition from one node to another.Insertion into a gravity well and escape from it typically experience some hand-waving, often assuming some technology for localized gravitation control.The limitations of FTL traffic will define the ships and ship categories, and the (lack of) engagement ranges. If people use FTL-mode or assisted FTL-mode for longer in-system distances, ship encounters will be focused near the travel destinations. If microjumps are possible, fleet formations would have to adapt. If ammunition becomes FTL-capable, tactical doctrines need to adapt - possibly through FTL interdiction by some technobabble means. There might be "natural" forms of FTL interdiction, like required distance from gravity wells for safe FTL insertion.Space fleets are about controlling assets or taking control of them, or destroying hostile assets or combat power.Long range engagements typically involve masses thrown at high velocity, risking Kessler-syndrome for the space lanes where such conflicts happen. Most assets are rather immobile, such as inhabited planets or massive orbital or LaGrange habitats. Kinetic strikes require some acceleration of mass, and possibly some penetration aids against atmospheres or defensive measures. Self-propelled missiles or projectiles with explosive warheads (such as fusion bombs or matter-antimatter annihilation, possibly skipping on the matter for anti-matter war heads) may provide indirect hits on a targeted volume, roasting the volume with hard radiation and heat. Theoretically, some form of explosion-accelerated shrapnel is conceivable, but spatial saturation diminishes greatly along an omni-directional shockwave.Warheads might release directed attacks like focussed flechettes or somewhat coherent or focussed beams of energy or particles or plasma from comparatively close distance.Hypothetical gravitation-control technology should be re-direct kinetic strikes or beam weapons by changing the space curvature along the way, denying the (direct) path to the target. Same for warp-tunnel technology.Obviously, a fleet (and orbital installations) needs to be the platform for the weaponry employed. The fleet has to provide mobility and power to the weaponry, and ideally some form of protection from enemy strikes and ways to hide or at least obfuscate the actual position. It requires detection systems and communication between fleet elements.The typical fleet design wants units that are stronger (and more resilient) than more mobile units and more mobile than stronger units. You can have glass cannons able to destroy heavy units, but these glass cannons can be ammunition with AI targeting rather than crewed ships.Effectively, what is the role of crews in space combat, and why send biological organisms anyway? Teleoperation of drones comes with a lag that increases with distance, but drones can tolerate accelerations way higher than anything biological systems can survive. Teleoperation relies on stable communication between the operator and the drone, though not necessarily vice versa if the operator has access to sensor data from other sources.If you want an on-board operator, you likely take an AI. If you want to make it more personal, a cybernetical clone of the operator's decision-making, providing feedback from the operation to be integrated at least in the cybernetical clone patterns if not to the biological source for the operator.Cybernetic enhancements might allow for such "possession" of remote units without direct feedback, with re-integration of the experience (in case of doubt, making the operator experience a recording of the engagement as an immersive simulation).What are typical space fleet tasks? Engineering and maintenance are the routine tasks, keeping the system running. Logistics keep the ship stocked with fuel, ammunition, life support, and a modicum of replacement parts for damaged systems. Sensor systems and navigation are ongoing tasks, too. During combat, part of the crew gets combat roles - tactical decisions (influencing navigation, too), fire control (target aquisition, tracking), ammunition and energy logistics, and damage control - often more from in-combat abuse of engineering systems than from enemy fire.Crewed ships other than insertion chutes tend to be higher on the resilience side and limited on the mobility side. They might be little more than command and service modules for accompanying automated units, possibly similar to a carrier. Close escort craft could be remote-operated.FTL-communication would greatly reduce signal lag between operators and drones, but any kind of communication might be interdicted or jammed, except possibly quantum-coupled systems that allow transfer of single-use bits of information. (Whether such systems would survive FTL traffic or warp-tunnels would be another consideration.)Rather than military applications, crewed combat-able vessels may be used for "border control", customs and police actions, or for long-range expeditions into the unknown not trusted to AI probes.</blockquote>

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