[Suggestion] ground to space weapons

This would be nice

one of our poor modders on the Distant Stars mod is having a lot of trouble with this. We have managed to give the planets passive abilities, by the same guy

Im rooten for you -Ue_Carbon

Thanks buddy!

This has been suggested since the original Sins beta, and since it hasn't been included yet, i don't think it'll happen. Maybe in Sins 2?

This would basically render siege frigs useless, don't you think?
They already have a hard time being of much help.

I would think they promote siege frigs usage. After all a planet only has so many guns. You cant just use Caps if it works out like I plan.

This issue in Sins breaks my willing suspension of disbelief.  Not having planetary guns/missiles is completely and fantastically unrealistic!

/my $0.02

I could imagine a future where space bourne weapons are the natural defense against space bourne threats. I believe that's how it is in universes like Halo, for example. I imagine the trip through the atmosphere alone would cause a lot of logistical problems for ground based weaponry, though I'm no ballistics expert.

For the most part, yes.  See, you can somewhat explain away most of the 'science' in Sins.  I just can't explain away why nobody on those planets/or IC thought 'let's target some ICMBs and blow it outta the sky'.  That's why it's so wierd to me.

/I'm wierd like that sometimes. 

Then the inverse of that is also true, no?  The atmosphere should cause lasers targetted at the planet to greatly dissipate.  If you're gonna drop bombs or rocks at a planet, then you could also chuck missiles/slugs at the ships from the ground, no?

Missiles would be the ideal surface-to-space weapon system; though relativistic-velocity (>0.14c (14% Light Speed)) coilgun and railgun weaponry would also be excellent (but much more power intensive); energy weapons would suffer from thermal (and electrostatic in the case of particle beam weaponry) blooming.

For ideas on surface-to-space weaponry, I suggest looking at the site 'Atomic Rockets', here. It has quite a bit of scientifically-sound information on weaponry; some of it I assume would be applicable in the surface-to-orbit role.

EDIT: Kitkun noted the difference before me; though I would like to elaborate- it is MUCH easier to drop something onto/into a gravitational body because not only is the energy that you launch it with going to get it there, but the objects gravitational pull also helps get it there.

Firing at a space-borne object is harder because you need to get something moving at a speed of at least 7 miles/second. This is the speed necessary for a single-stage (or surface-to-space-gun-propelled) mission to the moon; it would likely need at list this much (far more likely a higher velocity) to do damage to a target that could be anywhere from low to high orbit.

I agree, we should get ground-to-space weapons. I mean, any modern US navy missile cruiser is equipped with ant-satellite missiles. How could the much-more advanced races of SOSE not be able to do the same thing?

Actually, I think this option would make siege frigs much more important, because it would make it necessary to kill a planet quite quickly, before they did unnecessary damage to your fleet. It would, however, make using “wolf packs” of siege frigates to knock out enemy planets (a tactic the “hard” AL seems to love) a much less viable tactic.

In order to provide an counter-tactic, how about giving carriers a specialized ground-attack bomber, which is extremely weak against space targets, but capable of bombarding planetary surfaces?

hmm, space-to-atmosphere attack bombers, I LIKE IT.

 Yea, I thought it would be a good idea. They probably wouldn't be as powerful as bombers, as they would need bigger engines (and more fuel) to get them back out of the atmosphere, once they got in.

Possibly they would also affect enemy culture? After all, an enemy bomber screaming overhead is going to scare the tar out of the enemy population.

seems to me that ground to space weapons are unrealistic.

Think about it like Ground based Telescopes don't do near the job that space based telescopes do.

Only reason we still have ground based Telescopes, is becouse we havn't conqured space yet.

However, Spy satilights work great. 

In short, it is very possible to shoot things in space from the surface, but it is much more practicle (assuming the industry is there, as it is in sins) to shoot things in space, from space.

I like the idea and dont think it would be unrealistic. We can already shot down space satelites. The advantage of ground based weapons is obvious - much more energy, ammo and infrastructure support compared to limited supplies on warships and also cover-up(its not easy to pinpoint exact location of missile launches from space because of the atmosphere). It would add even more combat depth into the game, so why not? 

erm... wrong... actually.  through the power of 1337 h4x, we have been able to compensate for atmosphereic distortions from the atmosphere in real time from the ground...

which basicly means we can magicly remove the atmosphere from the view of our telescopes...

which means we can build really really big telescopes that are much more powerfull than space-based telescopes for less.

found this for you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_optics

Partially right.  The UNSC's Super MACs are spaced based, however their power generators are located on the planet and transmit power up to space.  That might make for a good planet upgrade though: all defenses within a certain distance of the planet get a boost(Starbases could get the boost also with, say their second weapon upgrade).  There could even be large defense stations(say between 2 and 3 tactical slots) that require the planet upgrade to fire.  If the planet upgrade has multiple levels, the large stations could get more of a boost from it compared to regular defenses.

Overall, planetary defense depends on the level of technology you have.  Anyone with anti-gravity technology could use it to lift missiles to the edge of the atmosphere before they ignite the engines(and depending on the anti-gravity technology they could have built up considerable velocity).  Combine it with factories making more missiles in the middle of battle and you have a very large threat for any attacker.  Depending on the technology, energy weapons could also be a good way to destroy ships in space(Bolo universe novels are a good example of this).  I really can't think of any race in science fiction that uses kinetic weapons for ground to space combat.

If not planet based weapons. how about a nuetral asteroid that doesnt have mining capabilities. But a structure slot where you can basically turn a asteroid in your gw into a SB of sorts this would be useful when you have a dead roid as a chokepoint that directly links to your HW. while the gw would still have slots for GRG's and an other tactical slots as additional defensive capabilities adding to the difficulty of actually wiping an enemy from the facce of the earth but a Roid based SB that has all the same slots that a normal SB has. Instead of wasting money on building a constructor to waste money on building a SB you just immediately waste the money on the SB.

kinetic weaponry is of greater use than say, a big laser, because a laser experiences what is known as thermal blooming. Essentially, due to heat density in the air, it dissipates. It can be alleviated with a big lasing device to keep energy density too low to allow it to bloom.

Additionally, lasers are also subject to the mediums they are lasing through. Drastic and numerous changes in atmospheric conditions between a laser's origin and its target are going to make the laser less effective.

A kinetic weapon suffers none of that, however the main problem with it is getting it to move fast enough to actually make it into space and do damage.

and yet vasari's bombardment lasers, which ransacks entire planets, seems to be immune to this ......

to the ppl who are citing real life science....this is a make belief game where we have shields, spaceships and phase travel, i dont think ground to space weapons are problems,

also, it is just plain fun.......for those of you who still have/play star wars EAW/FOC, dont tell me that u didnt enjoy disabling a star destroyer with the ion cannon, or blowing up a alliance frigate with the HVG.....

Yeah, but at the same time, EAW doesn't feature as robust orbital defenses to preserve some balance between defense and attack.

well, the Vasari's bombardment lasers aren't actually lasers (by game standards, and likely by real-life evaluation), the seem to be much closer to some kind of super-intense Particle Beam weapon.

And if you look at the researches for bombardment weaponry, TEC&Advent get damage (presumably better warheads, or higher launch velocity/density of warhead), while the Vasari have range.

And FTL-travel can be done in SF in a semi-realistic way. Just start with the effects, not the causes first.

i tend to agree..... upper atmospheric combat is where its at..... the height at which bombs can be dropped with most efficiency

the ground offers the space to create some truly massive weapons. You simply can't build guns as big as planetary guns. It would unbalance the game wouldnt it though? To have super weapons on all the planets?