Why do missiles show up so often in science fiction? | Discussion breakdown

[@johnsmithfakename8422]

I like how Expanse handles missiles. They are suicide drones. Advanced AI's so that the missile will actively evade incoming fire, and this makes them terrifyingly potent.

[@bohba13]

yup. once you get into space the difference between loitering munition and missile becomes noexistant.

[@Schlachti10]

Modern anti ship missiles already have a lesser form of that. They have pre programmed evasion pattern for their final approach to evade the targets AA.

[@soul1d]

The only difference between a Drone and a Missile is the Missile is a single use drone, and it predates the reusable drones by decades.

[@bohba13]

@@soul1d thing is Loitering Munitions, or Kamikaze Drones, blur that line, and most Scifi missiles are capable of that type of behavior.

[@muninrob]

@@bohba13 Oh, you mean like the skeet submunitions out of the JDAM?

[@QseftJohn]

A type of missile that is underrepresented are ones with a laser warheads. They don't need to touch you, they just need to get close enough to hit you with a bomb pumped laser beam.

[@doubt3430]

As a starsector player They keep hitting my fucking engines

[@Xenobears]

Reminds me of the Starfire (no relation to the DC character) series of books. There was a faction in the book “Crusade” that used bomb-pumped x-ray lasers as a primary weapon _in their ships_ that was terrifyingly effective despite the risks involved and their being decades behind the technology curve. Later novels in the series would feature missiles and independent energy weapons platforms that used the technology.

[@oseansoldier]

One series I read had torpedoes that when they got close to the target ship would convert into plasma. At that point they couldn’t be shot down but could no longer change their course.

[@pso1234]

The weapon of choice, in the Honor Harrington books by David Weber

[@TheCADDGUY]

thats some hilarious science fantasy that comes from a place if ignorance in what a warhead is and how it works

[@dark7element]

So, as far as the 40k torpedoes go, they aren't actually unguided, they just behave that way for gameplay purposes as a throwback to ww2 naval warfare. It's explained that the torpedoes will change course to intercept a target that's within a "small" space of a few million cubic kilometers in front of them. It's just that they have to be relatively close to a possible target before their sensors lock on and they enter their terminal boost phase.

[@xoso599]

Funny thing about real missiles is that they tend to be extremely fast and most don't leave smoke trails. I once watched a hellfire missile hit a target. I had an elevated observation position, it was over flat empty ground, during the day, I knew exactly where it was going to hit, I was told when it was going to hit with a 10s warring. The only thing I saw was the explosion.

[@LtCWest]

Most dont leave smoke cause they are legit out of fuel ^^ Most missiles have just enough fuel for a 5-10 sec burn, after which they only glide/coast towards their target, the Hellfire is one such missile, which is also why after launch they immediately notch up to get as much altitude as possible for their descent.

[@igncom1]

A missile is just a kamikaze spaceship.

[@theelectricgamer9889]

Imagine if it yelled KAMIKAZE!!!!! During its flight

[@andrewreynolds912]

@@theelectricgamer9889 on radio FM and AM frequencies

[@tuskegee87]

I mean he's not wrong😂

[@00yiggdrasill00]

Yeah that is not inaccurate.

[@Apyr404]

With nukes don't forget the nukes

[@SnakewithaGun]

Rockets: Unguided missiles. Missiles: Guided Rockets. Torpedo: Underwater Missile/Rocket (Depends if it's smart or dumb fired.)

[@Deadsnake989]

In the context of scifi, specifically capital ship combat I've always assumed it was this. Rockets are unguided with modest payloads meant for swarm firing in the hundreds. Missiles are anything with a guidance system, ranging from small to large payloads. And torpedoes are usually large payload unguided weapons meant to deal catastrophic damage to capitals with only a single to a small handful of confirmed hits.

[@r.connor9280]

Don't forget that Torpedo used to be a kind of sea-mine

[@GoranXII]

@@r.connor9280 True, but the _concept_ is older still, with the idea being originally conceived (at least as far as anybody knows) by Hasan al-Rammah in 1275.

[@redslate]

It's all kind of bullshit when there are Guided "Rockets" and Multi-Rocket Launchers (MRLs) equipped with "Missiles..." The only (somewhat) clear distinction is that missiles have separable warheads, whereas rockets' payloads are typically internal to the munition.

[@SpaceCowboyfromNJ]

@@Deadsnake989 I pretty much fully agree with the exception of torpedoes usually being unguided in the context of scifi. For me I've always seen it as more of a 50/50 weather or not they are guided or not. It's just when they are guided, they aren't as maneuverable as missiles, so where only fighters and maybe some of the smallest most maneuverable ships can potentially evade a missile, a torpedo is going to start struggling to hit something like a frigate.

[@aliceosako792]

A good example of the use of utility missiles (creeping into drone territory) was the Very Dangerous Array from _Schlock Mercenary_ . In short, Kevyn Andreyasn, the scientist responsible for developing the -Tear-Apart- Teraport (a man-portable, interstellar range warp drive/teleporter), needed to do some research in a war zone, while his commanding officer, Kaff Tagon, needed to detect incoming attacks. Kevyn solves both problems by equipping several hundred anti-capital ship missiles with teraports, Hypernet links, and long-range sensors, and has them scatter across the breadth of their current star system, where they could double as a sensor network and a very large array radio-telescope. Once a hostile was detected, several of them could then teleport into range and swarm them. This works out so effectively that it becomes SOP for Tagon's Toughs. It was summarized by Tagon as, "It's not astronomy ...It's Proactive Target Acquisition".

[@mustlovedragons8047]

Schlock Mercenary? A man of culture, I see. :)

[@Sinapus]

...and they were "smart munitions" controlled by Synthetic Intelligences. Since it would be immoral to design AIs whose only purpose in life was to die gloriously. ("I'm SMART! I can EXPLODE!" - Synthetic in this case, meant "Kinda stupid.") ;-)

[@Hybris51129]

Something that missiles also open up to a writer is logistics. In David Weber's Honorverse one later plot point is that their missile production being damaged suddenly makes their recent advances in bulk missile barrage null and void because they can't reload a fleet worth of ships with their current rate of production. We see a real world parallel to this with the Mark 14 torpoedo that along side its many design issues was it wasn't being built in the numbers that was needed to match the rate of expenditure which further compounded the search for the design issues and cause a lot of missed opportunities during the early part of WWII.

[@Dreamfox-df6bg]

And there are the Robotech/Macrosss missiles, where a rather small mech can fire an ungodly number of missiles, resulting in a multitude of explosions in the distance. Or any other effect as shown in the video.

[@FrarmerFrank]

Takes a bit for the missiles to regrow so you can run out if you shoot them faster then they can regrow Even the energy blasters energy bank takes a bit for protoculture generator to fefill

[@barrybend7189]

Well Macross has the constraint of limited ammo. Unless you are the Vajira who literally regrow ammo.

[@GamerM1235]

Micro missiles are fun. What's in the missile? Explosives? Absolutely not. How about just a ball of vector thrusters to go skull bash the enemy ship.

[@urbypilot2136]

Macross actually have multiple sizes of missiles. They have large, anti-ship missiles that are fired singly from long range. Those that are used for Itano Circus/Macross Missile Massacre are actually the smaller, close range missiles fired in the same way one fires a shotgun.

[@gawainethefirst]

Macross Missile Massacre!!!

[@JarodCain]

I think a great example of the dramatic use of a missile weapon was STVI, that scene where the Enterprise fires the modified torpedo and you just hear the beeps as the sensors track it on the bridge and then BAM suddenly everything is happening and you have both the Enterprise and the Excelsior unloading on the formerly cloaked Bird of Prey..

[@d3ltaohniner261]

"To be...or not... to be."

[@katdoral5277]

fun fact: Torpedoes used to be more akin to sea mines back in the day. The famous saying, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" (Or whatever variation you like) was about a ship literally making a run through a mined out seaway.

[@weldonwin]

In the naval contest, a Torpedo, is just a tube filled with explosives, which is why we got things like the Bangalore Torpedo during WW2, which was just a long, tube shaped explosive charge, used by infantry for clearing beach obstacles during amphibious assaults.

[@nbsmith100]

yep. and then someone got the bright idea "hey what if i stuck an engine to that mine?"

[@eruantien9932]

@@nbsmith100 The first "mobile" torpedoes were quite literally bombs on sticks. Torpedo boats would steam up to a target, and poke it with bomb sticks. Early submarines used the same type of thing, as a sort of explosive ram.

[@nbsmith100]

@@eruantien9932 yeah those were the davids from the US civil war... basically a human powered torpedo. which were among the first production submarines used in a war. one was successful the rest didn't If I recall right, altho another one might have been partially successful.

[@mill2712]

I think black holes would make for a great future video one day. Also nice use of Jose Pavli's "Showdown".

[@BladeEdge93]

Project Wingman is just missiles the game, plus showdown is just a kickass song. Couldn't have made a better choice.

[@mr.radovic702]

Photon Torps actually have a matter/antimatter reaction as the HE filler and I always thought THAT'S why the glow. Als looks good for the screen (if you pick on photons for that, pick on protons as well).

[@igncom1]

The glow is that they have armour penetrating plasma shields, so they can burrow into enemy ships and blow them up.

[@mr.radovic702]

@@igncom1 that, I did not know. Is it Memory Beta?

[@Nostripe361]

@@mr.radovic702I know there was a KZbin video that went over this. Basically saying depending on what beta canon you use it’s either plasma like the previous comment said or the raw gamma radiation radiating out of the warhead due to the matter antimatter reaction being activated

[@Nostripe361]

Certified ingame did a video on the difference between quantum and photon torpedoes

[@mr.radovic702]

@@Nostripe361 that I did watch

[@BaalAdvocate]

No mention of Honor Harrington? Peter F Hamilton also has some interesting takes on missiles.

[@AngryDuck79]

Came here to say this. Can't talk sci-fi missiles and not mention Honor Harrington.

[@cp1cupcake]

I think he doesn't like using examples which don't have video games/TV shows/films.

[@KellAnderson]

​@@cp1cupcake There actually is an Honor Harrington video game. But it's for mobile.

[@dwwolf4636]

Missiles as a weapon have more story hooks in their functioning. Limited supply. Counter measures. Counter counter measures. Target pilot actions. Put simply : they allow for a lot of story to be told.

[@alankohn6709]

In the Honor Harington series of books (one of the best military sci fi series ) the have all the types you describe armed with Bomb pumped Laser warheads small nuke and when the bomb goes off the energy is focused through rods into incredibly powerful energy beam since propulsion is achieved by generating insanely powerful walls of gravity above and below the ship which are impenetrable to any known weapon you suddenly have and excuse for sailing style broadsides with missile taking the place of cannon.

[@pso1234]

And in the end we have multistage self guided ai/real-time controlled extrem rage missel bundles which are more op than anything you can think off. Was a really good read.

[@RevantheBlack]

Keep calm and roll pods

[@promcheg]

@@RevantheBlack Awww... I wanted to use it. 😂

[@icecold9511]

Actually they had energy based weapons, but those were close range only. And Actually more powerful. I think originally the finger of God powerful. 32cm bore, I believe.

[@alankohn6709]

@@icecold9511 Plus lets not forget Plasma and focused gravity weapons the limitations of which the first book focuses on

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

There is a type that bridges between missiles and projectiles: the ancient drone weapons from Stargate. They are basically guided impactors that just crash into and fly through a target, making multiple passes until finally exploding. Like HE ammunition that can fly around corners to hit the enemy multiple times.

[@lordfirebeard8569]

The Honor Harrington books have been mentioned in the comments a couple of times, but I'd like to talk a bit about them. However, I should talk about the setting and the drive tech first. The standard stl drive in the setting is the "phased array gravity drive" or impeller drive, which uses bands of stressed gravity above and below the ship, angled into a wedge many hundreds of times larger than the ship with the narrow end to the rear of the ship, pushing the ship forward up too 600 gravities of acceleration, limited only by the ability of the inertial compensators to dump the extra gees into the "gravitational sump" generated by the wedge, with smaller ships being able to sink more acceleration than larger ones, allowing a cruiser to out accel a dreadnaught or super dreadnaught, although both eventually reached a max speed of ~0.8c, enforced by the lack of radiation and particle screens powerful enough to be effective at any higher percentage of c. The sides of the wedges are sealed by sidewalls that are just weaker versions of the stressed grav bands that make up the wedge, leaving directly ahead and behind wide open. The throat and kilt, as they are called in the books, can be sealed by their own sidewalls one at a time, but that renders the ship incapable of acceleration or maneuvering until they are opened back up again. The wedge itself is impenetrable for any known weapon, but the sidewalls are not, instead significantly weakening lasers and bending them about to new directions. Fleet engagements at the beginning of the books consist of two fleets sitting at near extreme missile range, which at the time was roughly twenty light seconds, lobbing swarms of missiles at each other hoping to get one or two a couple hundred or thousand per launch depending on fleet size through the ecm, counter missiles(which use their own wedge to collide with the missile's wedges and destroy both themselves and the missile) and last ditch laser PDF. The missiles themselves were "small," weighing multiple tens of tonnes with their own wedge and a bomb pumped laser array with at least six lazing rods, but usually many more, and detenated twenty to forty thousand kilometers from the targeted ship. Along with the ship killers, they'd had various utility missiles launched along with them, jammers, decoys, spoofs, and the like to make the job of the killing all the missiles as hard as possible. Not that a destroying a missile scorching in at you at 90,000G is an easy task to begin with. The only real limits to the range that combat could be held was the duration of the drives(they would burn out after about a half minute, iirc, although you could program in a ballistic phase that shut the wedge down at the cost of maneuverability), and the command and control loop. The missiles have to be constantly fed updates to the target's ECM to minimize it's effectiveness, and so fifteen to twenty light seconds one way was about the limit that light speed coms would allow. This changed with the gradual introduction and miniaturization of the grav pulse com(basically a gravity based morris code with a speed of roughly 64c) and multi-drive missiles, which allowed the engagement envelope to stretch from a mere twenty light seconds to over half a light hour at the end of the series. Another utility missile was used to make that possible, the Mark 23-E missile, or Apollo missile, had it's warhead stripped out and replaced with an ftl telemetry link, which turned it into a repeater for up to eight other standard Mk. 23s. If the Apollo missile was destroyed, the other missiles in it's cluster would act on the basis of their last upload. There are other examples of such creativity and lateral thinking, such as the Havenite "Triple Ripple," which was three waves of missiles, the first two of which were standard nukes which detented early to create a wall of radiation and EM interference to blind(and in some cases, burn out) the sensors and decoys deployed by the targets long enough for the final, laser headed, wave to make it too attack range. I could go on longer, but this is already a wall of text, and so I'll leave it here. Have a cookie if you read all the way through, though.

[@iamthe6366]

I wish there more advanced missiles in scifi like stealth ones and missiles with high grade EW systems . Theyre almost always used as cheap swarm weapons when u can put so much more on them because spaceships would always be way more expensive

[@josesanchezrodriguez1783]

Well, that's how Expanse missiles are. Compared to other Sci-Fi franchises, Expanse missile salvoes are pitiful, usually fired in the single digits compared to the hundreds of other series, but that's because of the sheer speed and maneuverability of Epstein drives.

[@kolman3178]

Come play nebulous fleet command. We got missles that cover all the combat needs with systems to cover ewar and multi stage capabilities. There are 2 types that get through PD really expensive missles that only a few can be fired, or cheap and spammable that overwhelm pd by sheer saturation.

[@evaman0182]

The wing commander movie had one. It would de cloak every few mins to re aquire the target and then cloak again.

[@lord6617]

Are you just talking movies? Because science fiction series like the Honor Harrington novels are full on missile combat.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

One episode in Star Trek Voyager deals with a guided missile. It's size is more like a small spaceship and it even has room for someone to beam in. In the episode the missile was supposed to hit a specific planet, but was thrown across the galaxy by the same entity that brought the Voyager there. And now the thing is locked in to a different planet. Basically the perfect example of what happens when a smart warhead goes rogue.

[@fangslore9988]

there's 1 issue concerning missiles in hard sci-fi, missiles when they detonate utilize air displacement to cause concussive damage in the area when they detonate, since space is a vacuum so there's nothing to displace to cause damage, a missile detonation in space would just be a bright flash of light followed by maybe some large fragments of the missile

[@johnfisher9692]

The Honor Harrington series by David Weber shows the advantage and limitations of missiles. Energy weapons have a much shorter range than missiles and require direct hits whereas a missile which detonates and focus that radiation onto the target. On the other hand missiles take up space on a ship and you only have a limited number of them, so running out of ammunition is a consideration whereas energy weapons just need power. There are pluses and minuses to both systems. In the Harrington universe the missile a small Destroyer fires is far smaller than those used on a massive Capital Ship.

[@icecold9511]

They tend to limpet mk24 pods to the hull for long reach. And have mk16s.

[@patrickdusablon2789]

Until the Roland-class destroyers, which are the size of a pre-War light cruiser, mounts tubes big enough to launch the Mk 16 multi-drive missiles we got introduced to in Shadows of Saganami, that Hexapuma used to gank a stack of Solly battlecruisers at Monica.

[@Dethneko]

At the beginning, what I consider the difference between rockets, missiles and torpedoes is: Rockets are short range, Missiles are long range, Torpedoes are the underwater version. Since space ships, being ships, usually adopt a naval structure, missiles and torpedoes... might have some difference? But, in general, missiles and torpedoes in space are interchangeable depending on if you want to go with a more army/air force name or go for the naval name.

[@phecto]

I've read plenty of sci-fi with missiles that are the fastest rather than slowest weapon. Launch missile out of ship at high speed and then missile activates it's onboard 1 time use FTL drive and it's at the target and delivering it's payload before the target even saw you launch it. Also seem them used because of range, if you start the battle at a light hour distant. Even light speed weapons aren't going to hit anything unless the target can't maneuver at all, but if you have a missile with multiple drive stages it can accelerate to the same sort of velocity as a projectile, then coast until it's closer and then engage 2nd stage of drive once it's close enough to get back on course to it's delivery appointment.

[@madkillerz007]

This right here, i missiles will be the premier space combat weapons once we weaponise space

[@TrangleC]

In the "Night's Dawn" series by Peter F. Hamilton, the ships use lasers, but they are a second rate weapon that doesn't do much to a proper war ship, so the main weapon they use are socalled "Combat Wasps", which are basically highly advanced and intelligent cruise missiles or drones with their own weapon systems and sub-munitions which get launched by the ships and then do all the fighting, attacking and defense at crazy speeds and with reaction times and forethought no human could ever come close to. That seems like a pretty realistic scenario to me, if there ever is something like warships in space and space battles. In the books it makes space combat very mathematical and logical. A enemy launches a combat wasp at your ship, you need to launch 2 or 3 to make halfway sure to intercept it. Who launches more wasps wins, unless the other side can do a hyperdrive jump in time to escape, which is unlikely because that needs time, or can pull off some trick, like hiding behind something. Maybe that sounds boring, but it really isn't. It is quite interesting and exciting to read how the A.I. in those combat wasps fight each other, try to blind each other with lasers and explosions, firing submunitions at each other and so on. When a author creates a very solid, kind of rigid system for combat he then has to adhere to, that not only makes the world feel realistic and believable, but it also gives him the opportunity to pull off interesting things that can happen within such a system. That is good writing, as opposed to lazy "everything goes" because everything is wishy-washy nonsense, which so many bad writers use.

[@duongquan4986]

My favorite scene is from the movie "Macross/Robotech Do you remember love" final fight, where the protagonist dumps a truck load of missiles from his mech into the big bad face. And my favorite 'Mech is the crusader

[@baker90338]

So you’re a MRM boat fan in battletech eh?

[@duongquan4986]

​@@baker90338 Yep I like my MRMs Crusader build with SRMs as backup.

[@christophvogel1080]

That movie was my first contact with, what I later learned, is sometimes called "MMM": Macross Missile Mayhem. I remember seeing each VF firing of a whole swarm of missiles and just went: HOLY CARP, YEAH.

[@Daemeous]

I'm that guy who'd like to argue that across a tonne of sci-fi universes: Rockets, Missiles and Torpedoes do very often differentiate each other: Rockets: Dumbfire, low tech, often cheap or rapid/multi fire. Missiles: Tracking, moderately powerful, versatile. Torpedoes: The big boi, may or may not have limited tracking but is intended to take out the biggest of the big. Depending on the setting, the first 2 may be specifically vs fighters and the latter vs capital ship (or bigger)

[@Schlachti10]

My favourite type of missile are the combat wasps from the Nights Dawn trilogy. They can be equipped with different mission pods like a nuke launcher, kinetic weapons, lasers, particle beams or an ECM suite. Depending on the loadout they either act as missiles or drones. They can be used to escort and protect other ships, launched as interceptors to stop an incoming wave of enemy combat wasps or used as a long range anti ship weapon.

[@lloydlego6088]

Peter F Hamilton I think understands the bigness of space a lot better than most authors. He also realized the issue with the Commonwealth saga with Pandora's Star, and Judas Unchained as they suddenly have to build a space navy and the weapons that can fight in space. Larry Niven gets it as well. If you have the time and are fighting something that you know where it will be, kinetic near light speed attack is undetectable, and you can not protect against it.

[@ericbunker6242]

Signal seeking missiles, HARM (Homing Anti Radiation Missles) lock onto the transmission source and fly to it to go boom. You can turn the transmitter off/go to standby, and the bugger will go to the last recorded location of the signal. Sophisticated electronics but pretty simple conceptually.

[@mrsamaritan6881]

The reason missiles are less prominent in settings with lasers is that once you introduce point-defense-lasers, missiles become nearly obsolete - because unless they've got an FTL drive - few things are faster than the speed of literal light.

[@Thurgosh_OG]

ST Photon torpedoes fired at warp speed, have warp field generators to keep them at warp speed for a little bit longer, sublight vessels wouldn't see anything coming.

[@AKUJIVALDO]

​@@Thurgosh_OGimagine expending massive energy to travel trough warp/hyperspace/subspace but you somehow are undetectable... LOL brainfarto.

[@justinthompson6364]

They don't need to be faster than light, just faster than the tracking system directing the light. Or tough enough to survive whatever brief exposure they experience before they hit. Or numerous enough to saturate the PD array. There are a number of ways around it, really.

[@Josh-iv2bw]

​@@justinthompson6364missiles are cost prohibitive in a "laser point defense" world.

[@justinthompson6364]

@@Josh-iv2bw That is entirely dependent on the conditions of the setting. And if a salvo of missiles can save a single ship, it is an excellent investment.

[@mrtengu5303]

My favorite use of missiles in sci fi is probably the one time Spike uses the hardpoint on the Swordfish in cowboy bebop. “These missiles are curving off course!” “Augh the cheap ones are always worthless…”

[@marsar1775]

With my own settings, i have missiles be for anti strike fighter and interception duty, maybe even smaller ships like corvettes. But torpedos are anti ship, and are armored, larger, and armor piercing. the king are nuclear torpedos, because even a single nuke torpedo hitting their target is an insta kill and the debris may even knock out nearby smaller ships.\

[@Duchess_Van_Hoof]

That is how it usually goes in science fiction.

[@The_Dark_Brother_Pierre]

I screamed "Itano Circus" Lets go at the montage. And was thinking you better name that now, and boom! Much love man❤️💥💥💥💥

[@admiralcasperr]

1:50 Technically Missile ~= Projectile. As seen in "magic missile", so popular as a simple dmg spell.

[@shardinhand1243]

in my own never completed story one of the technologicly advanced species of the story had missiles equiped with temporal drives so that when incoming anti missile weapons attacked them they would just leave current space time as they traveled to where they're targets would in the future be. as you may have guessed a key trait of this faction was mastery over time travel tech.

[@Progection]

What about Kinetic missiles/torpedoes that almost border on the (R)KKV mission- like in Andromeda series ? When there is no warhead, just a huge engine+fuel tank that flies at mach jesus towards the target and kinda immune to flac/interception missiles, because in the end it just turns it from 1 kinetic projectile into a lot of smaller kinetic projectiles that are still flying roughly into the same target.

[@richardkenan2891]

Runs into the same problem as other kinetic energy weapons - if your ship can fly at useful normal space speeds in space, it has to be hardened against impacts at a significant fraction of light speed. Somehow. Throwing more kinetic energy impacts at it is unlikely to do anything. Thus, they are relegated to science fantasy settings where the physics are kind of wobbly, or harder settings where ships hardly travel in normal space at all, and mostly rely on their FTL drives to get anywhere, even between planets. Battlestar Galactica is kind of both at the same time, thus the extensive use of kinetic energy weapons. Andromeda is 100% the former.

[@dragonturtle2703]

The pain pylons in some settings are also used to force an enemy to move to a less advantageous position. Like using a grenade to flush someone out of cover. That, and some targets are just too slow to dodge, like stations and super big ships.

[@LeonidSaykin]

I always thought that torpedoes in sci fi were large and missiles are a lot smaller

[@richardkenan2891]

Depends on the setting. Depends *ENTIRELY* on the setting. In some settings, torpedoes are constructed of pure energy contained in some form of force field, that may even be capable of guidance somehow. In others, they're just missiles fired from a ship, usually at another ship, and called torpedoes because naval terminology.

[@LeonidSaykin]

@@richardkenan2891 the more I think about it the less I like the use of the naval terminology in space warfare. Naval torpedo is a very slow weapon that travels in the ocean and now probably only used by the submarines. Everyone's else just use ship killing missiles that can reach the target by air across vast distances.

[@GoranXII]

@@LeonidSaykin Actually, lots of ships carry torpedoes, but the ones carried by surface ships are for use _against_ submarines.

[@jpartlow01]

I love how these depicted space missiles fired from space ships have fins on them for atmospheric maneuvers… so innovative

[@hamhouke]

The Expeditionary Force series did a fantastic job with missiles equipped with sentient AI, capable of a wide array of creative flexibility. At the same time, energy weapons are hugely discounted due to the enormous distances involved and the relatively slow speed of light. It was the best hybrid of hard and soft SiFi writing I have read in a long time.

[@gabrielherron8023]

A++ on the missile montage! Epic use of Showdown from Project Wingman

[@Sargonarhes]

No scenes of missile spam from Macross anime series?

[@warlok363]

Exactly

[@gamernist3050]

by the simple act of using Project Wingman music at 16:42 you have earned my sub

[@EvelynNdenial]

just that picture of missiles heading towards a titan in EVE. just reminds me of the greatest rush ive ever had playing a game. being in a stealth bomber fleet fighting the goons back in the day. i was only around long enough for one actual engagement (it takes so long to get into a bomber and for a fleet to actually decide to make a run, we were blueballed like 8 times before we finally did) and of course we jumped away before the bombs even went off but man creeping up on a hornets nest of a fleet and your dozen or so buddies dropping what you know is going to fucking annihilate those bastards while you gtfo is sooooo good.

[@KA24t]

The movie WING COMMANDER.. "Skipper Missile" scene.. fantastic

[@MrCDM6]

For a hyper specific and specifically hype implementation of the type 3 logistics missile, the equipment missile. There's no explosives, just a payload of fun goodies that need to get to the front FAST. You get a scene if your big hero breaking off from the fight and chasing after the big missile, latching on with their fighter/mech, and out pops a shiny new toy. A plot gun, new armor, more ammo or fuel, Hell even just converting the entire missile itself into a giant thruster pack a la Armored Core 4A. You could also count your Halo weapon drop pods.

[@Keemperor40K]

Honor Harrington books go into great detail on the relationship of missiles and interceptors (and point defense and EW as well). Interceptors make up the second layer of defense of a ship, against other ships missiles (the first being EW, the third being point defense weapons, the fourth being the wall and the last the hull). The thing about interceptors and missiles is interception times and the constrains on this small window of opportunity. Interceptors do invalidate missiles to a great degree, but it comes with the caveat that the defensing ship can see the weapon (part of EW warfare), track it effectively and create valid interception sequence and launch said interceptor, before the missile can hit. Everything else said in the video is still valid about the drama, tension, build up and release, but Honor verse explains not only when, how and why missiles work despite interceptors, but also the limitations of interceptors. In short, missiles rely on speed, maneuverability and numbers to overcome all the anti-missile defenses available, but the payoff makes missiles the kings of warfare, as they can deal the most damage in a short amount of time, over the longest possible distance (beyond which lasers and particle weapons are effective), which segways into the interception sequence and the algorithms surrounding such interplay. Honor verse admits that missiles are expensive, one-shot weapons and the it requires extensive logistics to work, but if you can do the logistics and cram as many missiles into a small package as possible, it is possible to launch thousands of missiles at an enemy, overwhelming and overpowering the defense systems of the other fleet and allowing the missiles to do the damage they can inflict. Eventually it is possible to develop more effective anti-missile countermeasures, even against such mind bending missile spams, but even then, quantity has a quality of its own and sufficient quality can overcome even that. It is fascinating to read how this technological race develops, as it showcases the advantages and disadvantages of systems and platforms to overcome the myriad of problems that allow or deny missiles their essential function (precise long range damage dealer).

[@anja2792]

The missile/ drone comments in here make me think you'd love talking about the SDS (Star Defense System) from battletech. Essentially AI drone swarms made for the star league that were taken over by Amaris and were insanely difficult to fight when the SLDF came back through.

[@dakkath414]

It wouldn't be a discussion of scifi missiles without the Itano Circus.

[@Zayphar]

Spacedock has an excellent series that discusses this issue in detail. Highly reccommend!

[@Duchess_Van_Hoof]

I had earlier decided to use torpedo as the word for bigger anti-capital ship warheads and missiles for smaller anti-torpedo/anti-pirate weapons. Then I saw a Daedalus class in Star Trek launch dorsal ballistic missiles against the Romulans and it was just too cool. And it reminded me of the Boomer submarines ballistic missiles from Red Alert 2. Very iconic, very threatening. The slow buildup of speed, the ascent and the imminent panic as they begin to arc your direction.

[@TomQuoVadis]

Swat Katz takes the cake for utility missiles. The writers were somewhat hamstrung for you broadcast standards meaning they couldn't use regular old missiles often, so they came up with a bunch of really absurd missiles with insanely specific uses.

[@CyFed_Republic_of_Kaltovar]

I use them in my settings because they're far more effective at extreme ranges than energy weapons, which lose power with distance. Instead, I use railgun accelerated guided missiles. Most of the thrust comes from the railgun, but the projectile can maneuver after the fact to track targets at ridiculous distances and account for the enemy trying to evade your fire. The damage done by the projectile is exactly the same no matter the distance. A WMD is a WMD no matter how long it took to get to you :3

[@smatthewson2613]

I agree, Something like 130mm automatic naval guns firing a rocket-assisted manueverable shell-like vulcano- gets about 2kps relative to firing platform, mounts for surface ships weigh 15-20tonnes (for 2 tubes, traverse and shell handling/loading system), great choice for hard/near future space combat.

[@AAhmou]

With enough speed an inert rock is a WMD.

[@CyFed_Republic_of_Kaltovar]

@@AAhmou That's true, but if you put a big antimatter warhead on it, it doesn't even have to make contact with the enemy!

[@frodo7287]

There was an old sci fi book series where x-ray (or something like that) was mounted on missiles and that weapons fired a hull killer shot. It was a hard sci fi series that was interesting at the time

[@Dcarp7]

Bruh, that montage gave me Ace Combat and Warship Gunner vibes. I love it!

[@ryank5424]

To add to your example, this one also in the BSG miniseries. Galactica's CAG when his squadron is disabled, sitting in his viper watching a missile close on ship. And not a fraking thing he do about it.

[@sfs2040]

In Honor Harrington missiles are pretty much fired with the expectation that they won't make direct contact with the target but have a "stand off" ability where if they explode at a certain distance away from the target or less it'll bombard that target with xrays and cause damage to it.

[@terricon4]

A lot of it in anime is showing the actual chase. You can fire bullets and track them but they fly pretty much straight forward, not the most interesting. Missiles, they can chase though, so you can have a chase sequence where someone franticly tries to evade or intercept the attacks, while you ge to watch these missiles turning and homing in on them, maybe some smash into intervening objects or get shot down, but in either case they end in a big explosion just pushing up the suspense for if one of these actually hits the target, you get a visually specatcular moment as these missiles chase a target, you get something slow enough to include some story beats or character moments in it, and it's got enough regular explosions and fireballs on screen to still have the cool factor of most things. And for Anime or shows and other visual animated media, there is the key part in particular of the visual effect itself. Framing, is a big issue. Long distance missiles are hard to convey as action or what's going on, spotting a target, firing a weapon so it explodes beyond visions of the original ship or fighter... hard to make cinematic, that's why close in gun fights are often prefered. But missiles, a guided missile that homes in can, if the target is trying to evade or intercept, let you track that attack forward with the camera, showing the progress of the missiles very cinematicly. You can convey that with mangas, words in novels, and other forms and still make it interesting, more so than just firing a bullet, but for animated scenes it just pairs really well with that medium. Also for pacing, in many fights where you say have two sides fighting back and forth, it's the low pacing during the fight. The higher stuff is where they shoot right next to the target, barely miss, are going in for the kill, barely evading, direct firing back, Gundam or Macross loves this stuff, but it's high intensity and while can be great it quicky just gets repetitive or confusing to the average viewer, you need a moment to break it up so you can register what cool things just happened. Having a chase with one target at greater distance from the other so it's less immediately hectic is one way, but missiles is another. They can launch a barrage of missiles, and then spend tens of seconds sometimes focusing on those slowly going in after the target and the evasions and intercepting and stuff, this acts as a low point of complexity, easily digestible for the viewer, but still can build up it's own stakes and suspense so it isn't a point of the fight that lacks action or anything either. Also it's often easier to plan out, imagine trying to come up with ideas for moves between two fighters/ships/combatants, where they outmanuever eachother, dodge the other, trick the other, etc... some skilled combat play if you will like again many anime like to have. Well, it's hard to come up with good moves that aren't done a hundred times before, you need to come up with it, plan it, animate it properly as it's own shot or such, integrate it into the rest of the battle... all for what's often a very short moment. Compared to a missile scene that can last much longer, this lets you pad out the fight durations when needed so they aren't super short, or super expensive to make in many cases. And of coarse this applies outside animes, like in the Expanse they do plenty of tricks or maneuvers to evade or get in a lucky hit or stuff, but they can only come out with so many of those. Missiles and PDLs and stuff are great for padding out a battles duration while still giving some good explosions and visuals for the viewer to look at that can also contribute to the story and overall battle itself. And ya, flexibility, guns in general (above a certain size) can also do this, but the advantage of physical munitions is the payload option. You can have a simple kinetic slug, a sabot or dart, a chemical shaped charge, or perhaps something more extreme like a Kassaba howitzer, or some special cryo round that freezes things, or incendiary to set everything on fire for awhile, or gas or poison, to spread toxic clouds over a large area or clear a forrest or kill fleshies without destroying a city or infrastructure, or a good old fashioned nuclear bomb or anti matter charge when you just want a really big bang. In my setting, physical munitions are liked because of their flexiblity. If the enemy has shield systems, likely dozens of overlaping types to protect against a variety of methods of attack, good luck getting a laser, or plasma, or particle beam past that. On the other hand you might have a projectile that contains tiny distruptors tuned for the given shield systems to break through or weaken various types of shields in the very localized area, meaning a specialized round might punch through multiple types of shielding and hit the target with a now reduce actual warhead, thanks to these other components on it. I mean, plasma weapons being ever worthless as magnetic plasma shielding is the most common thing in setting after a certain point in time to the level that small agile fighters likely just fly right through something like large covenant anti ship capital weapons without concern, they just redirect and disrupt certain attacks really well, like a master of dark souls that parries everything, you gotta come in with the right skilled counters actively countering their own counters to get through stuff because pure brute force rarely works against anything big enough to be a proper space ship, outside of truly extreme levels of what normally would count as overkill.

[@ornerylurker8296]

I see some took the time to really get into understanding what makes TV tropes great

[@Tobiasfowler]

Rockets, missiles and torpedoes in sci-fi are basically used instead of Fox one, two or three.

[@DarthStuticus]

David Webber's Honor Harrington Universe is a good example.

[@justino4567]

Can you do a breakdown of the Honorverse? Very hard sci-fi setting that more people need to know about!

[@smatthewson2613]

I second this very much.

[@richardkenan2891]

It's a very fun read, and David Weber makes serious efforts to keep the rules consistent, rather than just "That only worked that one time because Rule of Cool." He didn't always succeed - the weapon system which must not be named (*cough*Grav Lance*cough*) and the size and mass of the various ships in the early books being examples of his oversights - but he made the sincere effort to respect that his readers would remember what happened in previous volumes and notice if he changed the rules on them mid-series. That said, a series that is only in novel form with no other media adaptations worth mentioning is less likely to really take off as a KZbin subject.

[@cp1cupcake]

@@richardkenan2891 Well there was that time where he missed a couple zeros in an appendix which made some SDs less dense than cigarette smoke....

[@Lucifina-chan]

​@@richardkenan2891In fairness to David Weber, the grav lance/energy torpedo armament mix was only installed on the Fearless because of politics. Plus, as Honor so aptly demonstrated in the naval exercise, that sort of trick only works once.

[@Lucifina-chan]

​@@richardkenan2891The grav lance was widely regarded to be impractical in-universe

[@Yora21]

The only unguided space rockets I remember having seen are the Tempest from FreeSpace. They don't make a big explosion, but they are extremely fast and you can literally load hundreds of them into your fighters. And fire several per second. They are really used more like cannons than the other missiles in the games.

[@jamisonhutchinson8612]

There was an old PC game called Tachyon: the Fringe. It was a star fight game, awesome game, and had tons of weapons, including all these weapons, and otherwise in them. Seriously, check them out! Love the videos!

[@Furyhound]

As i understand it, the reason why photon torpedos glow, is because when their payload is active, it radiates so much energy that it causes the casing to glow. I think its something that generates photons, in such high amounts as to resemble a star

[@andrewreynolds912]

Space dock explains them in ways you couldn't. That's a fact in some ways, but you did a great job this vid for explaining the certain types of space dock never went over

[@Reddotzebra]

This is actually one thing I do have to praise the Starfire series for, while they sometimes do make some unfortunate choices as pertaining to what kinds of ships they focus on producing (The alien bugs having "superweapons" that are for all intents and purposes DEDICATED POINT DEFENSE SHIPS, oh noes, the horror!) they do at least focus on the whole gamut of missile tech, from interceptor missiles to hyperspace-capable, drone-deployed variants and area denial variants, as well as mine clearing options and the usual very big capital ship missiles. Each and every one with its own believably silly acronym, my personal favorite being the AFHAWK, Anti Fighter Homing All the Way Killer.

[@barrybend7189]

Macross loves it's missiles and use many types from regular munitions to anti fighter and anti ship interceptor missiles.

[@dariustiapula]

Love the Stargate Atlantis drones missile. They can phase through objects and whatnot.

[@Jcewazhere]

The yellow swarmer thingies? I thought they just burned their way through everything. Like a weaponized mobile kawoosh.

[@dariustiapula]

@@Jcewazhere Yes. I think the Earth people use it wrong. It was suppose to be reusable. But since air force pilots are use to regular missiles. Some of them are probably wasted.

[@michaellewis1545]

A cool missile idea is the stealth missile. For example from the movie Wing Commander. The Kilwrathy fire a missile that can cloak. The missile will travel cloak, uncloak to get a bearing on it traget, then recloak. So the only way to stop the missile is for the main characters to fly out in their fighters to shoot down the missile.

[@Ishlacorrin]

Did that one cloak or did it drop into sub space? I remember there being one called a 'Skipper Missile' that travelled in subspace and only dropped out to get target acquisition every 10 seconds or so and thus was only possible to shoot down during those times.

[@michaellewis1545]

@@Ishlacorrin sounds right it has been a while since I have seen the movie.

[@pso1234]

Stealth missiles are only possible if you have "Stealth technologies " a radar/lidar absorption paint is pointless if everyone in the system can see your heat/light emissions.

[@pso1234]

The biggest question in the movie for me was why don't have they this tech on their ships, deadly for them,etc. Energie was not the problem, they put it in a f....g Torpedo

[@michaellewis1545]

@@pso1234 my best guess since they could not see while in Sub space and to keep popping into real space to see and fight it doesn't make sense to put it on a warship. That or that energy costs is so great that a torpedo is the biggest thing they could put it on.

[@terrysaunders7107]

One of my favorites is battle Star Galactica - nukes in bound. Wait 5 minutes, the vessel tanks it like a boss. We can't take more hits like that. Add excessive tension.

[@thomasriecks4027]

My first thought when he mentioned the why guns video was "To get rid of Mr. Missile".

[@soul1d]

Missiles are finite, so that means people think they are useless. They are powerful, precise, and very useful. You don't NEED to spam them like a video game. That and you are not going to war without a logistics network in the first place. If you can bring your troops food and water, you can bring them munitions.

[@marrqi7wini54]

Not to mention it's possible to manufacture munitions if your ship has that capability and some metal rich asteroids.

[@soul1d]

@@marrqi7wini54 exactly! If you are going into deep space you will have some manufacturing capabilities onboard. if anything that is why in 4x games ships have such inflated costs

[@josephphelps5213]

Missiles get that lovely ammo thing, where they come in all kinds of flavors.

[@infinitygirlak]

Best use of missiles and FTL are in the Honorverse. They definitely use decoy / EW missiles and counter-battery missiles.

[@Weigazod]

I have always thought that + a missile is a self-propelled ammunition + a rocket is the engine that attached to the missile to deliver the payload + a space torpedo is a self-propelled ammunition that does not use rocket as their engine

[@Eorel]

i always thought that Rockets, Missles, and Torpedos are Ranked by there Explosive Potencial. So like Rockets are for Starfightet vs Starfighter Combat, Missiles are for Medium SIzed Space Ships like Corvettes and Friggates. And Torpedos are for Capital/Battleship vs Capital/Battleship Combat. I also always thought that Rockets are the Most Agile Targets like Starfighters, and Torpedos are more heavy to Manouver and therefore more for Slow and Big Targets.

[@xzardas541]

Honorverse had one of the best missile designs, with warheads shooting burst of short range lasers after closing in on target. And this universe absolutely loves missiles, like the most advanced battleships of the war, becoming glorified armored cargo haulers so they can drop hundreds of guided missile launchers out of thier cargo bays cause no ship can even get close to use any other weapons without being blasted by hundreds of missiles in this universe. With the most combat being done by Electronic Warfare supercomputers to guide and coordinate hundreads of missiles fired from hundreds of ships at once. And as boring as this description may sound it was realy good book series, and fights were not boring at all.

[@J_n..]

when I hear interceptor missiles in sci fi i think Honorverse

[@anthonycopley792]

What is the music in your montage? I love it!

[@grisom5863]

Jose Pavli's Showdown from the game Project Wingman. (The one with the plane.) The game has an amazing soundtrack! You should give it a listen!

[@tomastomasi975]

Offensive kinetic missiles in Andromeda move at 90 PSL. Defensive missiles accelerate twice as fast and only mass a third of a kilo. They are pretty cool weapons, though.

[@Varaldar]

I feel like a deliniation id use is that rockets are specifically referring to the method of propulsion. Like RPG is a rocket propelled Grenade. A missile is the whole thing, warhead included. A torpedo i would classify as something that does not have to take into consideration flight through atmosphere. So propelled bomb in space or in the sea is a torpedo. They dont need or have stabilizing fins **in the same way** that missiles do. If a missile that is capable of both space and atmospheric controlled flight is fired in space it is still a missile. If a torpedo is fired in the atmosphere it should not be able to act in a full capacity to be a torpedo.

[@buffewo6386]

You missed a subtype of standard combat missiles. These are the ones that are armed with nuclear/ antimatter/ similar "Close enough isn't really all that close" warheads. These are possible in the unguided flavor also. As a guided system, these would not just target the biggest ship, but look to disrupt formations and to knock out chunks of fighters/smaller ships. (The USAF had a nuclear air-to-air missiles intended to knock down Soviet bomber packs and disrupt air refueling points durring some parts of the Cold-War. AIM-26 Falcon if memory serves.) For reality about your EW missiles, search for the Tacit Rainbow program. Finallyn I have an issue with your boarding torpedo description. The payload doesn't say something about an Emperor. They say very specific things about the Emperor. Report to your Ship's Commissar for your heresy...

[@dragonturtle2703]

Do you take requests/suggestions for these? Just ideas to take if you like them or leave if you don’t.

[@scienceinsanity6927]

I do, but mostly just from my patrons as a bonus reward. Sometimes i see ideas from viewers i use but so far only once.

[@nicholastuttle2445]

Another thing with missiles in space is you can be sneaky with them. Dump them out of your ship to leave floating cold until an enemy gets close them they fire up and hit them. Seems like an underutilized tactic

[@rainmaker7667]

One use of torpedo in scifi which is not often depicted is area denial.

[@scienceinsanity6927]

Thats a really good mention, but i dont know if thats because nobody thought of it or just because like. Space big, so you need a lot of missiles to deny any amount or signifigant area. The expanse people fight at over 1000km all the time. thats a lot of fucking missiles to cover that distance.

[@fordprefect859]

Because it makes sense. If someone shoots a laser or a gun at you at a range of a few light-minutes, you can just jiggle around a bit and you'll be fine. Bit harder to do that against a guided missile.

[@Vantud391]

"Primitive Projectiles." - Phasesmith Karak

[@ObatongoSensei]

Frankly, in a SF setting there should be no space for unguided munitions, be they bombs or missiles. Since sensors and computers should be also a thing in those settings, avoiding any unguided munition would be trivial. So any such work where missiles just go on a straight trajectory is quite unbelievable, unless used against an unmoving target. One type of missile/bomb that has not been mentioned in the video is the towed one. They have a limited range, beyond which they just become dumb unguided munitions, but within that range, they are under direct control of their "pilot" and immune to every countermeasure but direct destruction. This type of guidance system is common in modern torpedoes, for example, in addition to the normal active/passive sonar for detecting nearby potential targets. The operator can tell the torpedo which contact to follow and the torpedo would still use the normal autonomous guidance systems if or when the cable is cut for some reason.

[@carloagustinpanamenovalien5185]

I would say that the differences between missiles and torpedoes are these: 1 Missiles: The missiles tend to be smaller in size, of course, is not going to be like that every time but what you want in your missiles is velocity, velocity is key if you have a big bulky missile it won't work as it is intended to be. 2 Torpedoes: The torpedoes are bigger they even have their own passive defenses, even shields if we go too far, normally the torpedoes are used to destroy capital ships or more heavy ships that the missiles are not capable to destroy unless you hit them too many fuckin times, that's why the torpedoes are bulkier and more powerful, of course this is not a rule, you have free creativity and you can do everything you want when it comes to create missiles or torpedoes.

[@erikcharrier5943]

It’ll be an arms race. A sensor friendly environment with no horizon is probably going to lead to viciously effective point defenses. The evolutionary counter for missiles to overcome this is bomb pumped lasers, high velocity flachets, and lots of electronic warfare. In other words, standoff distance and obfuscation. In a no drag environment, well timed chaff could easily conceal missiles and screw with point defense targeting is some situations - especially when missiles are coasting in behind and not burning at all points. There’s absolutely nothing subtle or sneaky about a cloud of high velocity chaff with a bunch of missiles and decoys lurking behind it, ready to burn like hell for the terminal approach once point defense fire starts getting dangerous. And it doesn’t have to be to elegant to work.

[@Nostripe361]

I think way few series use ew tech to screw with middle target locks. Maybe make the trade off be missiles able to deal with it are expensive or require a lot of resources to build. I could see interception missiles being used to take out anti capital ship weapons

[@Butcherbg]

I am gonna pause on 11:40 in before your video influence me more, to share you a bit of my mind... I liked your video thus far and it inspired me, ergo what I am about to type: So When I were younger ~in high school, I used to imagine a lot more ~organic, medieval stuffs... Of course heavily augmented by daemons, angels, magic, paragons, (of course it did include aliens... because not a "focused" thing but everything in a giant universe... In fact I had also this Giant Planet with artificially tempered gravity (because no regular beings would survive on actual giant planet... and I do mean ~Giant Giant... With possibly 2 or so suns spinning rather than vice verca... that ~could contain both Technological and medieval magical themes... not to mention societies of Dragons with of course the layers of realms ~a few for the demon side and 2 for the Heaven (angels) one :P. As you might expect of troubled teenager it were very gory and also sexual imagination... It were mutilation and jeeze all the time. However when I grew up to my current age (which in this particular video I am not admitting, because shame... I still childlike when not influenced enough by movies, events or occurrences straight up fantasize like a kid (which I dully admit is w8st of sleep or actual viable towards life activities) I started reside more into the Tech Side of "my realm" and of course it includes ~Space Ships... So when one of those shameful Space Meles happen to unravel in my brain... one of my favorite imaginary scenes is when amongst all other things 2 very large sized vessels end up on this inevitable death lock of a course one towards another... Their Fighter fleets or whatever`s left of them in flocks of skirmishes, all kinds of small large medium and other sized kinetic, energy or emp based artilleries go at each other and everything else... the Fighters, projectiles, missiles... whatever... When the two large ships start having an inch of side to side, board to board... the torpedo silos on each respective side being there for that exact reason and moment start opening... (and here`s a bit of a meaningless twist... do the energy shields get down for them to be launched or not... I am gonna go ahead with they have selective membrane like properties inside out) so Shields on port sides are cranked to 11, all blast doors are sealed shut... The port side large manned guns operators are saying their prayers... From nose to nose Silo Per Silo Torpedos the size of smaller ships start passing each other in space... Some exploding into the reinforced shields, some doing giga dents and chunks into super thick literal space material armor plates... some are gunned down by mentioned port side manned large canons, some even collide into each other mid flight... Those are large ships... long ones... with many... many silos per side... By the time they are passing each other, each of them looks like already exploded wrecks with somewhat operating engines... and one of them... might even of taken internal hull damage destruction go ~full wrecks... while the other one semi drifts into some safety for self repair to make to some sort of docks... Ahh :P Space Mayhem. I might have seen this first on screen in Battle Star Galactica in my school years... But than I enlarged it in my head to ~grotesque...

[@TheRezro]

I mean. Though bad writing do confuse rockets, missiles and torpedoes. The general consensus is that rockets are usually unguided small charges using swarm tactics to hit target. Torpedoes are usually large charges, with minimal guidance, used to eliminate capital ships and fortifications. When missiles typically have large drive sections, allowing them various maneuvers. Including return to launcher in some more advanced variants.

[@deepmind299]

Missiles make alot of sense in an environment where engagement differences range over light seconds. It's pretty easy to avoid a shot if that shot was fired at you 3 seconds ago. At least with Missiles the weapon can retarget itself itself as it gets closer and closer.

[@DSzaks]

Interceptor missiles are only as reliable as their targeting and capacity. So the idea that they would simply shoot down anything that came close is fairly easy to logically circumvent if you really want them in your setting. The first is Cluster Munitions (also sometimes referred to as DCIPM or MMWS) where a missile can break into several smaller munitions either to throw off counter measure accuracy or simply overwhelm the defenses systems capacity to effectively target and eliminate all income projectiles before they hit. Or you can just make incoming missiles hard to target, just like they are in real life. Hitting a small object with another small object both traveling at insane speeds in the vast openness of space is gonna be pretty difficult, even the slightest calculation error or imperfect location information will result in a miss. Or just introduce stealth systems or decoys or ECM.

[@PakornThaipituk]

40k torpedoes are so big driving by one or more nuclear fusion reactors (so called plasma reactor). They move like dumbfire rockets for 100000s km before thay become guided when they reach close to the target (around 1000s km).

[@nbsmith100]

well most likely because we are familiar with missiles from the real world. for lorecrafting practicality, they offer an extreme long range homing capability.. plus getting an oversized frag grenade near a target so it can perforate it with shrapnel would likely be useful in space combat. and have a whole slew of situations they can be adapted for. or if you want to deliver a nuke+ to someones doorstep while that person is moving around, a missile is what you're going to need (unless you have really good combat teleporter tech that can't be interefered with easily).

[@lloydlego6088]

unless you have magical inertia canceling technology, misses can travel at much higher velocities. If you can add exotic energy weapons on detonation that is a bonus.

[@Lantalia]

Wait, no Honorverse mention, the 20+ book romance series for missiles? Name dropping the Itano Circus without some proper Macross Missile Massacre footage? For shame.

[@CCthe13th]

I haven't watched the video. Only saw the title. Answer They Look Cool and "Nuclear Launch Detected!"

[@soumyajyotimukherjee4752]

"Interceptors are not seen in science fiction" : Honor Harrington would like a word.