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RiskASTA said
I’m unsure what laser technology is like in this particular setting, but I think it should be noted that lasers take time to destroy a target; lasers are dissimilar to standard ordinance, such as conventional cannons, coilgun, railgun, or any of the two unique gun types I listed in the post predating this one, in that they do not have the ability to score a disabling hit upon an incoming missile with a single round. Cannons and the sort do (for obvious reasons). If you do have access to lasers of such high caliber, I will begin to question how you’re dealing with the waste heat and how the optical technology you’re using in such a laser is able to withstand a beam of such intensity without failing. Depending on the pulse rate of the laser, the spectrum you’re using, the material your laser is trying to burn through, the presence of suitable electronic countermeasures/stealth technology (disrupting the laser’s fire-control systems by jamming the space station’s radar suite, IR-targeting module or otherwise creating a very stealthy cruise missile of sorts), your station could fall to an incoming missile without even realizing it. Missiles could also be deployed on the other side of the planet and ride the Earth’s orbit towards your station—engines cold and undetectable--- with the missile’s stealth systems engaged until it was within suitable striking distance. The missile could even be equipped with an ablative surface that takes the brunt of the laser beam by burning away in the process. An active-cooling casing could also be integrated into the missile system, which would allow it to further resist laser fire. Also, point-defense is not infallible. The modern CIWS ()—which is mounted on modern warships to protect them against anti-ship missiles—has a relatively poor success rate. You could increase the chances of scoring a hit against a missile by implementing overlapping coverage with many CIWS-type units, but then the enemy could simply saturate your point-defense by launching literal missile swarms. You can’t shoot all of them down, Wilson. That’s not how real-life PD works. Even railgun point-defense is not perfect, because you still need to keep in mind that railgun rounds still are constrained by travel time. It’s rather foolish to think that missiles suddenly stop developing because railguns and lasers come on the scene. I’m going to assume that this energy screen is a standard science fiction energy shield. When something hits it, one of several things will occur:1) The shield will lose energy and eventually collapse from enduring too much energy. Suitable time passing will cause the shield to reappear. 2) The shield will stop the projectile from penetrating, but it will not stop the projectile’s momentum from being imparted onto your station. Ballistic vests work on this same basic principle, in that while a round may not penetrate the vest, the ribs are still broken, bruises still form and the body’s internal organs may suffer damage. However, the wearer of the vest still lives.3) You’re trying to pass this shield off as an invincible barrier of doom, in which case you need to reexamine your nation and correct it as Duck instructs you too. As for armor:A nuclear missile is pretty much going to vaporize whatever you’re coating your station in. Did you read any of the links that I posted? They’re rather interesting reads if I do say so myself. Try Googling the effects of a nuclear explosion, or perhaps question Google about the temperatures generated by the detonation of a nuclear armament. Also, you can still fire from a deep bunker. Why wouldn't you be able to? Have you ever seen a shore gun emplacement before? What about the ballistic missile sites that are buried around the United States?EDIT: Wilson, if you are worried about your nation suddenly being wiped out, you should take into consideration three things:1) No one is going to randomly destroy your nation. That would be powerplaying and, quite frankly, not very fun. 2) As a vulnerable space-based nation, your faction should seriously consider not attacking the surface of planets. Your faction is woefully outgunned when compared to even one of the smaller powers of Earth. They can and will destroy you if you anger them. 3) I’m shocked your faction hasn’t been greased already, because you do in fact pose a serious risk to national security seeing as how you’re making use of very powerful surveillance equipment and can attack cities, military bases and other ground targets with shocking ease.
The Captain said
And this is also discounting the capabilities of a MIRV missile, which would further confound said point-defense systems.And, well, push comes to shove it wouldn't be uneconomical to just shove an asteroid into Ceres Independence installations, if we're already at the point of space combat.
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The Ceres Independence has two installations. Ceres, and New Point. They have nothing else.
Ceres has an impentrable armor, called a giant asteroid, and has point defense and intercepter missiles on chunks of asteroid taken off of Ceres and moved into an artificial orbit around Ceres. And there are point defense on Ceres. And shuttles could be launched with more intercepter missiles.
New Point, on the other hand, has only a dozen hand-made defensive satellites meant to exclusively protect it from harm. Multiple targets will get through, but one or two will not.
And the energy screens are sort of number one: they absorb the blast and the energy goes down. However, they recover. If you fire steadily at it, it'll take much longer than firing everything you have in one barrage, because the screen keeps regenerating. The energy screens work from a fusion reactor, not a giant battery. The fusion reactor will pump up energy output to 100% and continue to do so as long as the energy screen needs energy. If there are half a Class 3 Mark-VI fusion reactors, the likeliness of someone blasting their way through the energy screen is very small. However, there is only two Class 3 Mark-V fusion reactors, and they are both, more or less, experimental versions with engineering crews refining it every time something might come up.
A nuclear missile will damage, but the station is not small. It's not like today's ISS. It's much bigger, and holds well over one hundred people. Over five hundred. There are miners, station crew, extra pilots, a couple squads of CI marines, researchers and scientists, engineering crew and construction workers.
A nuclear missile would certainly break the current energy screen, but the CI are trying to make it so that it won't. Nuclear missiles are the most common space-faring missiles, since they go up and back down. An engagement between to space powers would undoubtedly be measured by who can withstand more nuclear missiles, with the line of thinking you all inhabit.
And you say everything as if point defense would not have advanced. As if it would have stayed the same or become inferior, even though scientists that are closer to a feat that no one else has even begun to encounter the possibility of are also working on making point defense efficient and powerful enough to stop weapons before they are tested against energy screens.
You are not going to be talking about how everything would be so against point defense if it could have advanced farther than missiles have. I do not see missiles being fired every day across oceans. There is not as much need to make an anti-point defense missile, and so the funding and progress of such would not be as fast as a group of researchers with materials that others would never get in the same amounts with technology that is more durable than others with as much funding as they need. It is lower priority elsewhere to make weapons that would render point defense useless, while the advancement and usefulness of point defense is vital for the Ceres, and so it will be going much faster than the anti.
So no, you would not be able to just wipe out the station with a flick of your finger. If push comes to shove, the station would be evacuated and pushed out of orbit, towards, say, the Moon. Then they would start claiming the Moon and Mars for the Ceres Independence, claiming that because they are unwelcome in Earth and in orbit around it, they'll just absorb all those superexpensive colonies up there like the Antarcticans did to the Antarctic outposts countless years before.
And besides, you sound more like this is supposed to be superrealistic instead of just a roleplay. Point defense will have expanded more than the superduper unstoppable missiles that you keep blathering on about, and Duck has already said no orbital weapons platforms, which means you won't have the type that fires nuclear missiles or projectiles in the first place, which eliminates the need to have advancement in that area in the immediate future.
The New Point is safe from nuclear attack unless you waste more than two missiles on it.