• @UnderpantsWeevil
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    25 months ago

    at such long ranges you could move your ship and avoid a directed energy weapon

    But how would you know an energy weapon had fired? Wouldn’t you be constrained by the speed of light, regardless?

    • @KISSmyOSFeddit
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      45 months ago

      If Star Trek sensors were constrained by the speed of light, warp travel would be impossible.

      • @UnderpantsWeevil
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        35 months ago

        If their engines aren’t constrained by speed of light, why would their weapons be?

        • @KISSmyOSFeddit
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          55 months ago

          Just fire warp-capable drones at the enemy.
          This is also an idea behind the Dark Forest Hypothesis, a proposed explanation for the Fermi Paradox. Any spaceship fast enough for interstellar travel can be used to destroy planets just by flying into them.

          • @UnderpantsWeevil
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            35 months ago

            This is also an idea behind the Dark Forest Hypothesis

            I think that’s less about warp-speed weapons and more about natural resource constraints and the unpredictable nature of technological advancement causing advanced civilizations to preemptively obliterate one another.

            But yes, the only practical defense against superluminal weaponry would be to avoid getting spotted.

          • Flying SquidM
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            5 months ago

            In the real world, you wouldn’t even need drones. If some alien civilization saw us as a threat, even if we were a significantly more advanced technologically than we are now, they would just have to start altering the orbits of asteroids, comets and meteors, which could be done by just changing their albedo in certain areas and at certain levels.

            Basically, they could destroy us with paint and math.

    • @Geek_King
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      25 months ago

      Yeah, you wouldn’t, but in those books, the ai of ships have random evasive movements they perform to make some shots miss.