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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8082941" data-attributes="member: 16814">Well, penrods are a very different thing from lasers, but here a lot of the damage caused by the penrod is due to the heat transfer you're talking about here.  Forming a plasma is all about pressure and heat, and the release of that pressure and heat is what does the majority of the damage from a penrod round.  It creates an over-pressure fireball in the target.Um, okay.  Stealth in space is very much the big thing -- it's what we're doing now with milsats.  IR radiation can be very much controlled so that unless you have a direct view of the emitter, you can't see it.  It's like a flashlight -- unless you're in the beam you won't see it.  Exhaust so rapidly cools that the bloom effect is minimal unless you have an after shot of the target.Stealth is very much a big deal for future space combat.Gun-lines?  The were super effective, and dominated naval combat for centuries, from the age of sail through the WWII, when aircraft made direct gun engagements obsolete.  When you're not expected to have to survive and fight in the gun line, you don't have as much need of armor.  Modern naval vessels still mount armor, though, just not as much.  It's still very effective against a lot of things even as it's less effective against high explosive shaped charge warheads on modern shipkiller missiles.  Armor can be effective against such things, but ship design is such that the trade-off isn't worth it.  Instead, you see a proliferation of point-defense and other countermeasures.In space, though, you don't have to have a hull that can cut through water, with large vertical sides that are difficult to armor well.  You can adapt a number of different shapes that can maximize armor effectiveness.And their sloped armored sides, designed to protect the troops inside from direct fire?  I mean, even if we're just going to accept that you think all IEDs are just blast waves and no penetrators are involved, you've ignored that the angled armor faces are everywhere in modern armor, which cuts against your statement that they're no longer used.  Modern heavy armor often includes reactive components that can defeat penetrators.  Have we discarded that as useful alongside angled armor faces?  What else do we need to toss out so that you can keep your argument that armor is useless?You're arguing against your earlier points.  The limit on ship dV isn't available thrust, it's the crew's frailty.  If I can produce enough thrust to get the same max dV with armor as without because the crew is the limit, then your argument here fails -- my max dV is already capped by something that isn't mass.And, in space, the most dV wins only after you've managed to get into the right positions and only if you can use that dV to bring your hit on their weakness.  When you postulate hyperV missiles that can blow through any armor, you're also reducing the effectiveness of any dV you can bring to bear because of the speed of the object will cause it to clear the engagement area too quickly.  The faster you go, the more dV you need for terminal engagement maneuvers, and you can only pack so much into a missile body.  Fuel and structural issues will rapidly limit the available final V and engagement percentages.  The better argument here is for slower missiles that use shaped charged warheads with penrods.  Which, coincidentally, armor is actually useful against.No, this is space.  Applying thrust in a new vector does not cause you to decelerate unless it's applied against the original vector.  You would only decelerate if there was a force, like air resistance, acting against your line of travel.  And, unless you're applying a deceleration force, you will not lose any momentum along the original line of travel.  In other words, until I cross 90 degrees vector change, I would lose no forward momentum from a purely lateral acceleration.</blockquote>

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