Planetary artillery. Probably been suggested but ...

nice idea, very good!

You're right, this has been suggested before, ever since the beta for sins. I don't know if the IC guys have given any resons to not include this, but it doesn't seem likely for this idea to be implemented now.

too bad it seems like a good fit for entrenchment.

also, now that the war has been raging for so long in the time of entrenchment it would make sense that they would have built these emplacements.

Makes me think back to the Ground Batteries, Missile Base, Fighter Garrisons (Stelar Converter! gehehe ) and other such structures you could build on a planet's surface in Master of Orion II that worked alongside the Starbase you built in orbit to defend a planet (planet shield generators were built on the surface as well.) It makes sense to have developed additional ground based planetary defences, I agree, after having been at war so long.

Actually, it doesn't.

Think about it, if you want to fire from the planet to orbit, you have to get whatever you're using up into orbit.  That means bunching an energy weapon up through the atmosphere to hit an orbital target with enough force to be noticeable (which means you're going to be nasty things to your planetary weather systems as the extra heat leeches into the atmosphere); that means getting missiles up, out of the planets gravity well and then on course to target your opponent; the only system which even comes close to making sense might be fighters, and that assumes they have enough thrust to get up out of the atmosphere and still fight.

Ron hit the nail on the head.

You're really far /far/ better off just putting defenses in orbit.

I figured fighters and maybe multistage missiles such as the sort we use these days to orbit satelites. Surely if, in this fictional futureistic setting, where we can travel between planets with ease and have warships and space fleets we can have a missile system with a powerful enough engine to boost into orbit to attack a ship in close proximity to the planet, or alternately have fighters that can take off from a ground installation and reach orbit and still be useful. It's not like the ships and fighters in the game have fuel consumption in any case.

Those missiles are the size of skyscrapers in order to put small space craft into orbit, can be seen from space when they go off, and take a hell of a long time to get up there.  The fuel requirement to move something from the surface to orbit is massive, it's not a good weapon system.

i do have to agree that getting into orbit may make these weapons impractical, but i also have to think that the higher level of tech could make it happen.

also if the possibility of an armada bombing your planet into submission was a real enough threat i think i would want that extra layer of defense after the orbital slots are used, no matter how impractical.

what about ion cannons or the hypervelocity gun  like in star wars

well in Star Wars time is measured in parsecs .. you know not everything makes sense

Just a thought, but is it possible to use abilities?  Like the missile battery ability and place it in the planet ability slot, and have it auto activate and use it?   I have tried "some" abilities in the planet ability slots, but without success, but certainly it may have been i was not using an ability that was compatible.

Just an idea as it might make a least a "cosmetic" appearance of the planet defending itself with planetary defenses.

-Teal

p.s.  I will give this a try and let you know, unless someone has already done this and knows for sure it will or wont work.

:)  Not to disagree, but i disagree.  :)  What we are talking about is a "Game". And the "Cosmetic" joy of a player, of having surface elements involved in the fight to defend itself.

This is not a bad idea.

If we fought a war in orbit now, 2009, we would have little options other than to have surface missiles, or "cool" beam weapons, or high orbit "fighters" capable of orbital combat, possibly carried into orbit by rocketsleds, or piggy-back 747 launchers. 

This of course is only my "opinion" okie.  

But i' agree with the poster of the thread, i would LOVE to see ground emplacements in the game.

-Teal

Well.

In the tech setting that sins it is, beams are the only viable option for ground based defenses. Even today you can shoot Lasers into space.

However to put enough energy into that beam to

A.)  Compensate for the losses along the way due to the atmosphere

B.) Still have enough power in it to actualy do anything wortwhile

the planeta would have to have a massive power generation - in the ludicous scale of things.

In terms of gameplay, i do not think planetary defenses will "look good" .

Tiny planet shooting comparably large ships... nah.... would look awkward.

The UNSC had its super MACs in orbit powered by planetary based generators(Not that far fetched as we have small scale wireless power already).

There could be a planetary upgrade that gives significant bonuses to defense structures around a planet.  The upgrade could increase range, damage, and rate of fire of all turrets.  It would have to be very expensive to balance its power and prehaps have its maximum level determined by research.

Why do people think planetary weapon systems are unrealistic? First the traveling system is unrealistic phase space traveling has no justification scientifically and nothing currently understood could explain it. So you are using double standards when claiming unrealism.

The next problem is the fact that the setting is thousands of years in the future so it would be silly to assume the weapons would use exactly the same mathods we use now.

The justification is quite easily made because unlike other aspects of sins it is realistic. For one missiles would be great planetary weapon system for defense.  To get the missiles in orbit you could utilize more efficient and high powered thrust systems. You could use a mass driver (think railgun but different) to launch missiles high up and the missiles activate after the kinetic energy slows from gravity. A laser with enough power could go through the atmosphere. With advanced power sources and better laser technology their is nothing unrealistic about it.

An alternative pure defense system would be anti missile/anti-projectile systems like a laser to destroy kinetic rods (Advent) or anti missile missiles (TEC).

If you want unrealistic aspects i find it funny nobody mentioned the innacurate weapon systems and ranges or strike craft. The TEC weapons would be horribly useless in reality. Guns and railguns would be only useful against incoming missiles or meteroids for protection. IN likely space combat the ranges you would fight in would be so huge that they would basically be entirelly worthless for offensive purposes. Advent lasers and plasma weapons would have much much longer ranges then they do in the game. The advent would essentially kill the others before they even got within a fraction of the distance needed to close with their ships. Strike craft essentially wouldnt exist except maybe in the Advent form as remotely controlled drones that stay close to a ship and protect it.

*nerd mode enguage* The Kessel Run involves flying very very close to a cluster of black holes, so to make the run in under 12 parsecs it means that you have found a shorter route between the starting point and the safe point of the run. *nerd mode enter standby*

Just some sort of ground emplacement or support building might be nice.

-Gabe

I guess I failed to make my point properly: assuming you have the technology to build 'planet based' weapons... they'd be a heck of a lot more effective in space!  For any given technology, it's going to be more effective to use it from space than from ground, simply because it avoids the atmosphere / gravity restrictions that way, and can be more effectively defended by making it mobile.  (Anything on a planet is going to be a sitting duck when a ship sends an asteroid or a missile flying it's way).  While it would allow you to make use of the planetary power grid -- potentially speaking, that's going to be a lot of power compared to your fleet's power supplies -- you're still looking at a much more vulnerable weapon, located in a place you're trying to protect, not focus enemy fire on.

Depending on the nature of the 'projectile' (i. e. is it being launched at relativistic, or near relativistic speeds), railguns / coilguns could potentially be very useful space weapons -- on the same order as energy weapons.  However, the ability to generate a miss (evade a shot) would make them primarily a short-ranged weapons system (relatilivly speaking!) -- any ship with any sense is going to be jinking around as best it can, and at a range of light minutes it should be possible to do so.  Missiles, with their ability to adjust course, avoid diffusion (they don't have to be perfectly calibrated to avoid range based difraction from imperfect focus

Mass drivers could be useful except the alternatives on the enemies ships would kill you long before you even tested their effectiveness. Lasers would be extremely difficult to evade at any but the most extreme ranges most likely beyond reliable sensor range.

Missiles by far and large would be the absolute best weapons in space combat. They could be used stealthily and would be devastatingly lethal. This is where railguns and mass drivers have their use, as missile intercepts.

Missiles could be launched from a planet against bombardment vessels because for one any terran like planet (even though the likelyhood of a terran like planet is almost zero) Could have massively exstensive missile silos with massive engines and payloads. The gravity and atmospheric issues are entirely minimal compared to the advantages gained. The idea that they would be more efficient in space is wrong. For one maintenance would be far easier and it would be much more protected except against troop landings possibly.

They would be stationary but so would ships and orbital structures in geostationary orbits. The power grid you could utilize for energy weapons would be exponentionaly more capable on planet then in space. With enough power realistically you could cut straight through the atmosphere and hit neighboring planets if aimed correctly.

Look, it is completely irrelevant what "tech" setting the game is in - there are very few reasons for putting any sort of defense on the ground if it could be put in space instead.

The foremost reason for doing it would be to repel a ground invasion: Active planet based defenses makes excellent sense when the assumption is that any enemy wants to take the planet mostly intact with an invasion force. It should be abundantly clear in Sins that this is not the case: eradicating the population is not a choice of last resort, it is the choice of first resort - you don't send in an invasion force in Sins, you destroy the population centers and keep up blasting the planet until every last vestige of organize civilian opposition has been destroyed, and you do this from as distant a point in space as you can get away with.

A second reason could be if a ground based installation would be considerably more powerful than a space based one despite having further to travel and the athmosphere to pass through before getting to its target. It is a heck of a lot of work for any science fiction writer to come up with a good enough excuse for this one, but it can be done. The typical approach is "a lot of missiles on the planet and really bad point defense on the part of the invader and the invader, for one reason or another, not vaporizing the launching spots immediately when noticed - probably because you caught him in really low orbit directly over the launchers". Sure, it could work, but it doesn't sound like a plan to count on saving you from any enemy who prefers to hit the planet from extreme range. Flight time is a bitch.

The only thing that makes general sense regardless of science fiction setting is to place defenses in space - shorter range to their targets (unless you have your defenses hugging the planet), less problems for line of sight weaponry (assuming that any of your weapons are line of sight for purposes of guidance), less issues with collateral damage when the attacker starts wiping them out and to have shelters/city forcefields/whatever on the planet - things that actually help your people to survive..... and Sins already has all that, because that's really all that makes sense when the goal of any attacker is to wipe out the organised population, not to conquer it.

Interestingly enough, it is entirely possible that the planets, asteroids &etc in Sins already have significant ground based defenses to ward off invasion (in the minds of the designers of the Sins universe), but none of us would know since we are only extended the option to nuke 'em till they glow, then polish the world to perfection with our main batteries.

An advantage of having a planet based defense system, is you have all that atmosphere to protect you from lasers. If its hard for lasers to get out, its hard for them to get in. The PDC would be tied into a power grid that is far mor capable then that of a mobile fleet. Each PDC could cover large areas of the planet surface, and armored far greater then a space ship, for it doesn't have to worry about mass. The PDC wouldn't have to worry about moving, so all of that space and power could be used to put in even more missiles and high powered lasers.

And about missile and strikecraft launch. People have to be able to get in and out of the atmosphere fast, so obviously they found a way. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to crew your ships. So each base can support hundreds of strikecraft, missiles, and lasers, while drawing enemy fire upon itself, henceforth saving the cities.

PDCs are also better because a space station has unlimited numbers of attack angles, while the PDC only has to worry about one. A PDC can have magazines the size of starbases, while the starbase might run out of missiles in the middle of a battle.

The one real problem I have with sins is the whole nuking part. If you and an enemy go back and forth over a planet a few times, it should be a irridated waste land, incapable of being habitated by anything. Much better just to send in the Marines.

Do you have justification for why they would be inefficient? Your reasonings do not equate and scientifically and logically dont make sense. The problems you give are irrelevant compared to the advantage.

What reasons make it better in space rather then in space and on the ground? Missile systems would have minimal difficulty and laser or particle beam batteries would not have much problems either. If your using realism then you are using double standards so you will have to get rid of many other things also to be consistent.

Realistically their is no reason not to have planetary defense systems. Missiles and laser batteries would do great against planetary bombardment craft. Missiles with enough thrust could reach their targets in minutes faster then they could maneuver out of the way. And if they did evade they would have to stop firing on the planet and flee. A laser or particle beam powerful enough would simply cut through the atmosphere definitely far enough to do damage. With enough reinforcment they could effectively keep up a continuous bombardment form the planet. Far in excess of the reserves form ships.

The next point echoes what was said above and thats planetary bombardment is not useful on a wide scale. Troop invasions are far better with supporting air and space supremecy. Capturing cities and infrastructure intact outweighs the possible losses. If this wasnt true why have all wars fought the forces tried to capture all cities and resources intact if at all possible. Total bombardment was a last resort desperate measure never the first option.

Actually, realistically planetary defense systems would be a last-ditch system, at best, with severe disadvantages.  Your best bet is going to be to defend from in space.

Atmosphere will degrade outbound energy weapons fire to a horrendous degree (period the end, even if you just try to pour power into it you're still looking at a huge disadvantage as the air will defract the beam).  Any projectile/missile system is going to have to overcome earth's gravity, so the exact same system launched from space will be more effective.  Collateral damage will be a huge issue when the enemy strikes the platform, so unless you like civilian casualties, you don't want the platform anywhere near your civilians -- which basically means, anywhere on the planet.

Yes, if you're a space-faring civilization then you've overcome the difficulty of getting out of the grav well, but that does not translate into being able to ignore it.  Anything which has to climb it's way up out of the atmosphere is going to be at a disadvantage compared to the same system launched from space, and that's ignoring the fact that something that has to deal with atmosphere is probably going to be designed different (read less effectively) than something that only deals with space.

Traditional brute force beam weapons yes, all energy weapons no.  Most plasma weapons in fiction require a containment field for the plasma, so the atmosphere would only interact with the containment field.  Range would be reduced as the containment field would break down quicker, but the damage done by the plasma would stay around the same.  A stationary planetary plasma weapon would be able to have a stronger method of containment as there is plenty of room and power for it.

That depends on what type of war is going on.  In a war of extermination(like SINS is currently) then the civilians are going to die anyway if the planet is taken.  If surrender is permited then you are correct.

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Anything which has to climb it's way up out of the atmosphere is going to be at a disadvantage compared to the same system launched from space, and that's ignoring the fact that something that has to deal with atmosphere is probably going to be designed different (read less effectively) than something that only deals with space.

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The advantage the planet has is that is has more of the item in question and will probably be able to manufacture more if it runs out.  Considering a planetary defense installation will be heavily fortified physically and, if they have shield technology, mount a much heavier one than what a space based attacker could mount.  This gives the planet a chance to win by outlasting attackers, or to last long enough for reinforcements.

The main limitation on planetary defense systems is technology, with relatively low levels then all the problems pointed out are true.  At technology gets much more advanced, then problems begin to go away.