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This is somewhat of an update to last week’s post – functional templates for large (capital) ships are nearing completion, and combat AI and movement scenarios are being tested. The decision-sets for large ships vs small ships will depend on their weaponry, but destruction is very easy to dish out, and very accurate, so things like acrobatic maneuvers will be of limited use.
The existence of precision technology is mostly ignored or even deleted from sci-fi worlds in which energy weapons are shown to move slower than wooden arrows, and are easy to dodge with physical reflexes. There are robotic aiming systems even today which can strike targets faster than they can physically evade; it makes sense that this would only become more refined in the future.
When confronted by a shielded and well armored vessel which has many banks of long range, highly destructive weapons, combat pilots would have realized very quickly that no ship has the ability to physically dodge faster than the speed of light. In the slightly more realistic vision of sci-fi future that is presented in Exalted Seracthon, other measures are used in space to deal with these kinds of threats.
This is not to say that battle between ships doesn’t happen – it certainly does. But if and when your enemy outclasses you by many orders of magnitude, there will be no lucky shots or fancy dodges that will save you. You’ll have to use your head, and be smarter about it 🙂
