Sci-fi related questions about submarines.
 

Hello, I need some help with ideas and some clarifications regarding possible technologies to be used in sci-fi submarines (using super science if needed). I need this because I'm developing this sci-fi submarine game and it is time to make some serious decisions regarding the technology submarines will use.

1 - Imagine that power output in future would be absurdly high (reaching gigawatts); would be possible to fire powerfull laser beams underwater? Could it, by any chance, be used successfully as a weapon?

2 - Would it be possible to use an energy type of weapon underwater at all?

3 - If I was to develop energy shields how would they operate? How could they work? (I really need a sort of energy shield before detonations or any hazards can reach the subs armor and hull.)

Thank you for any possible information or ideas regarding this peculiar subject.

Yeah, it would probably take a fission reactor to create the energy needed, which we don't have, but might have in the next 20 years. mind you they would be about the size of an apartment block.

Any type of weapon similar to a laser would refract from the glass/acrylic cap stopping water getting into the weapon into the water, making it inaccurate. You could however have a directional EMP blast.

I'm not sure how you would be ale to effectively shield a sub from an EMP, have fun figuring that bit out :O:

It's possible to fire a laser underwater, but it would require ridiculous amounts of energy to make it a successful weapon because of diffraction and energy absorption from the water, and even then it would probably only work at very, very close ranges. So I'm not sure it would be very practical.

I'm also guessing that unless your lasers are improbably efficient, you would have to vent a similarly humongous amount of waste heat into the water, which could leave you open to detection in some circumstances.

If by energy weapons you mean lasers, then yes, as I said, you could theoretically fire them underwater. They wouldn't work nearly as well as they would in the air or in space, though. Particle weapons would also suffer from the same problems that lasers have; probably even worse in fact.

They wouldn't without a generous application of magic. The only 'energy shield' I know could theoretically work under physics as they are currently understood is a charged particle field, which could block attacks by charged particle weapons. I doubt that would be very useful underwater, though.

Fission reactors have been on submarines for the last 60 years. You're probably thinking of fusion reactors...

Some kind of sonic pulse weapon. Sound wawes travel faster in water. If you could make a wawe of water dense enough it would destroy the enemy. But make its use chalenging, since wawes tend to bounce from seabed and rocks so you'll have to think when to use it and how to evade.

A heat mine for the lack of a better name. You drop it under the enemy and it starts boiling the water around itself. The bubles that rise to the surface decrease the bouyancy of the water and the ship just ''fals'' trough.

Red octobers catterpiller drive

ROV with sensors that goes to the surface and allows you to observe while being deep bellow.

Frigin sharks with frigin laserbeams on their frigin heads

Thank you very much for the replies!

Grabbing the laser concept. How much energy would require to effectively use a laser beam underwater? How much energy would it require and possible effective range?

The thing with lasers was initially to serve as weapons. But if that is simply too ridiculous I can just use them as short distance defense lasers to pop incoming torpedoes.

As for the energy shields. Could energy be used over the sub's armor to increase its toughness? I don't know, something like holding the armor together by generating a strong magnetic field?

This would also play as a strategic role, because when the energy shield would be switched on, the sub could be easily located.

USN was developing some short of "shield" system to defeat shaped charge warheads of ASCMs. I don't have time to search it out now but if I remember correctly it was being considered for Ford class CVNs. Propably you could use that for ideas.

A laser underwater would be completely impractical
the light would be scattered to buggery and absorbed in a short distance,
light doesn't travel very well through water,

An energy weapon such as a photon torpedo or plasma pulse could be effective, it would have to work on the same principles as supercavitating torpedo's such as the Russian VA-111 Shkval to travel at high speed through the water without contacting it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VA-111_Shkval
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercavitation

Assuming ridiculous amounts of energy, magnetic shielding may be possible by projecting a strong magnetic field around the boat you could in theory deflect or detonate incoming weapons away from the hull, however the field itself would give away your location

Very interesting! Thank you very much!

Microwaves.

Ok. Lets summarize the key info:

For weapons we have:
- Sonic Pulse (Directional sound waves which can compact water above the enemy. Most useful if the enemy ship is stationary)
- Plasma / Photon torpedoes that travel in water through supercavitation.
- Conventional torpedoes (with devastating power but limited payload).

For defense we have:
- Magnetic Shield
- Short Defense Laser (to pop incoming torpedoes)

What about a sort of weapon that could froze water at a certain location so it could block incoming torpedoes? Maybe this could actually be explored and turned into a defense shield?

Or the sonic weapon used in defense. The same wawe that's used to destroy can also be used to stop a torpedo

Yes. All kinds of weapons can be used against incoming torpedoes but I'm thinking about other possibilities so I can manage advantages and disadvantages for each type of weapon. I want the player to think about the offensive and defensive capabilities his sub has as the player itself is the one who builds his own subs from scratch, with the exception of the chassis creation (for now).

Here is what I was talking about:http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htsurf/20070814.aspx
Defence against shaped charge warheads and limited utility against plasma weapons?

For weapons: super sound pulse; super accurate, explosive, quiet, and fast torpedo.
For defense: the same super sound pulse; short range lasers; and super deceptive decoys. The same kind of deflector shields that are used on Star Trek.
For power: this is the future, what the heck, use fusion
For propulsion and maneuverability: jet drive nacelles
Remember, this is the future. It can operate with minimal crew, make it a small boat.

Why not a laser? If you have enough energy, a tight beam would just vaporize the water molecules in its way to burning holes in a target. The Navy has succeeded in shooting down a drone though air molecules already. The diffraction effect of the water is meaningless.

Thank you very much for the ideas!

But let me talk about the game itself and how it will unfold so your possible ideas and further suggestions take into consideration the game's features. I will create a single player campaign first which will serve as a tool to tune all game play aspects.

The main reason that took me starting to idealize such game is because there isn't any game similar to what I intend to do. Well, at least I'm not aware of any game like this.The game will be turned based and rendered in 2D.

The main reason, is above all, to create long exciting battles, where the captain of each sub can perform a wide variety of tasks (these will cover later). These tasks will be heavily dependent on how they have built their sub.

Throughout the campaign the player will be able to build different sorts of ships as technology increases (from smallest to largest):
- Scout
- Frigate
- Destroyer
- Cruiser
- Assault cruiser
- Battle Cruiser
- Battleship
- Dreadnought
- Titan
- Kraken

As ships increase in size, players will be able to fit more equipment. They will be able to the fit more and also fit bigger equipment modules. However, as ships increase in size their speed decreases and their signature increases (naturally).

Larger ships will can hold larger weapons but as weapons become larger they get less effective against faster and smaller subs. The player will have to think hard on his tactics for each mission / patrol.

When building submarines players can fit the following type of modules (they can fit as many has they like as long the chassis's limited space permits it:

- Engines (The speed output is heavily dependent on the subs mass).
- Power cells (this provides energy to storage cells. Produced every turn)
- Storage cells (this is the energy pool from everyone equipment drinks power from)
- Energy Shields (The subs primary defense mechanism which has a nasty power upkeep)
- Sensor Arrays (Defines the sub's capabilities to detect other subs)
- Electronics (Used to modify the ships efficiency and to fit special modules like a cloaking device)
- Berthing Areas (this will tell how many actions the captain will be able to perform per turn)
- Droid bays (Areas design to control robots that will be used to effectively repair the sub or perform other logistic tasks)
- Torpedo Room (this will create areas to hold weapons, defensive mechanisms and even hangars to hold tiny ships. A kraken sub can be easily converted into a carrier).

Let me talk now a bit about how battles will unfold. The first thing would be explore a given area and listening for possible contacts. Here the sensors from both friendly and enemy sub will play an important role. Who ever detects first, gets to shoot first. But shooting can be rocket science because you can give away your position immediately, depending on the weapon you choose to use.

Subs have 2 types of protection before damage reaches the hull. Energy shields is the primary defense mechanism and when shields are down the sub relies on armor to avoid damage. Only when the armor is down the hull begins taking damage. Each time the hull suffers a hit it will have a chance of damaging that located area. As hull gives away in that particular spot the chances of damaging that comportment will increase. The equipment inside that compartment will take damage and the compartment will flood if unable to be repaired. As compartments flood the ship will gain additional weight. How soon the sub begins to sunk will be defined but the subs positive buoyancy, total mass, total flooding and engine power.

Lets simulate a battle:
- The player is in a battleship and detects 3 contacts.

- Each contact is positioned in 3 different ranges, one being close, another in medium range and the remaining contact at extreme long range.

- If the player fitted lasers he can aim for the close ranged contact. The close target reads as a battleship and seems to have strong energy shields. The lasers will prove to be effective against shields but will give away the player's position immediately.

- Since the player fitted large torpedoes (non-energy weapon) he can shoot them with a lower chance of being detected. But unlike lasers, torpedoes have a limited payload and are most effective against armor.

- The medium target is a destroyer, which is really fast and can aid the enemy battle ship in just a few turns.

- The long range target is a Dreadnought. You really don't wanna that one involved in the battle. He is slow and is far away but he has long range weapons.

- The player decides to shoot 4x medium torpedoes at the destroyer, hopping the ship will suffer heavy damage. He also decides to fire a the short range large laser on the close battleship after the medium torpedoes are about to hit the destroyer. The player will hope the battleship doesn't spot the medium torpedoes. So he uses stealth torpedoes which do less damage. This will reassure that the destroyer will only notice the torpedoes when it is already too late.

- Unfortunately only 1 torpedo hits the destroyer which had his shields offline. The torpedo punches through the destroyer's armor causing medium damage to its stern's hull. Maybe an engine was damaged?

- The battleship begins to survey the area with active sonar and detects you.

- The enemy battleship fire a full load of torpedoes. 6x medium torpedoes and 2x large ones.

- the player activates the energy shields and the magnetic shields (Gladly he fitted magnetic shields which are fairly effective in disabling ferrous made of torpedoes).

- 1x large torpedo and 4x medium ones hit the shields. The shields drop bellow 20% of strength.

- It seems the enemy battleship has no lasers, which is good. The player disables some components in his own submarine to canalize spare power into the storage cells. He then performs an emergency shield recharge, draining almost all the ships power. The shield recharges almost to 80%.

- The player's sub has no power stored to shoot lasers now but he has 4x large torpedoes and 4x medium ones ready for action. He shoots everything with a success rate of 100% disabling the enemy's battleship shields and causing armor damage in some areas.

- The enemy battleship also performs an emergency energy shield recharge bringing it to 60%. No one shoots now because torpedoes are reloading.

- Meanwhile the destroyer approaches at slow speed. It seems it did get is engines damaged. The player also notices that the dreadnought is now also moving. He needs to make a serious decision right now. Will the player stay and fight or flee?

- The player decides to stay and fight. His torpedoes are now ready to fire. His storage cells recharge but still don't have enough energy to fire lasers yet.

- Both factions exchange torpedoes and both factions suffer damage but the player has the upper hand. The enemy battleship lost a few compartment while the player lost only one, a compartment containing a large torpedo launcher. Both factions issue repair orders.

- The dreadnought is now in fire range and triggers 8x large torpedoes!

- The player unleashes a full round of torpedoes and lasers towards the enemy battleship. The target looses 2x large torpedoes launchers and 1x energy shield cell and 2x small power cells.

- The enemy battleship begins to travel away. The 8x large torpedoes from the dreadnought close in.

It is in this moment that the player decides to trigger the EMP bomb. He needs power for this so he disables all shield cells, sensor arrays and weapons to trigger the EMP bomb. The EMP bomb will knockout the sensor systems of every ship (the player's ship included) and add extreme noise signatures in the player's current area.

- The player takes this opportunity to flee to someplace safe to initiate repairs. He is decided to take out the damaged vessels.

This is a SMALL example of the tactics involved during a battle. Damage will also unfold at a slower rate than shown in the example, leaving more time to decisions and other type of actions. There are MANY other tactics and features in a battle that were not covered in this small example.

So feel free to comment add suggestions and thoughts.

:hmmm: It seems my last post destroyed everyone's enthusiasm...

No, just too much to absorb from snatching looks from work.

I confess I didn't read it all through but I like the idea. To me basically, you are describing a space battle game transplanted into an aquatic environment. That is very cool as most actual filmed space battles act as if they are maneuvering in a fluid environment, just not as thick of an environment perhaps. Never the less, that is the familiar reference all space battle films utilize.

Your fluid environment need not be planetary bounded, but could be formed by immense drops in space?

EDIT: The drops could, or maybe should, be man made as habitats.

Yes your are right. It is a space game set underwater. There are some reasons for this world setting. First of all, I do love submarines and I think handling water adds more strategy value. You know, handling floods and crush depths; in space you basically just handle damage and range (roughly speaking).

I might post a screenie soon, showing how subs are assembled. I just want to finish adding equipment symbols before this, so the picture has a clearer meaning.