Orbital Control

 

Orbital Control

Another aspect not often seen in sci-fi wargames is the fight for control of the planet’s orbit.

If a planet is being invaded, you can assume that all friendly assets in orbit have been destroyed or seized.

However, if both sides are planet based with orbital assets – is there a space frontier and on an ongoing battle in orbit as well.

Are there weapon systems in orbit that are designed for anti-satellite warfare? Are there weapons systems in orbit capable of ground strikes?

Are there armed humans in orbit trained and equipped for orbital warfare? Or are there just autonomous or remote-controlled weapons systems?

What about space stations?

Is there just a hacking war of passive orbital assets?

If starting a sci-fi campaign from scratch you should consider these things at the very start and whether it will potentially involve battles above the planet for orbital assets, whether it be gaining control or the sabotage and destruction of orbital assets.

Another thing to consider if there are armed orbital assets are they capable of ground strikes? If so, are they capable of precision strikes i.e. a shard of metal impacting on an enemy tank from orbit or a map grid square destruction kind of asset i.e. a rain of fire over a few square miles?

These are all things that should be seriously considered as they can add several new dimensions to a wargames campaign and the battles that occur within that campaign.

Obviously, if you decide to include these things in your campaign, you will need to find a way to wargame them.

What will influence who has access to what will be their tech level. If you are including low and mid-tech factions as well as high tech factions, you will need to decide who has what at the start of the campaign and give each of them a chance to have some influence on each of the other factions assets to keep the campaign interesting and challenging for all players.

Datacentres and Quantum Computers

The perfect place for data-centres and large quantum computers is space.

For data-centres it is because they require a lot of energy as well as a lot of cooling, space is ideal for solar power arrays as well as the passive cooling of space itself being a vacuum and all that.

Soon there will be datacentres in orbit and on the moon – datacentres are already very high-security and in the future, in space whether it be in orbit as a satellite or on the moon, they will require physical security. Whether this is done with remotes, drones, and bots, or humans themselves on a 3- or 6-month shift, or both, is yet to be seen, which will be the same for maintenance and repairs also.

Quantum computers are very powerful, fast computing systems that use qubits which themselves can be in 3 states, instead of the binary two states, but also, due to entanglement, can influence each other, regardless of location in relation to each other.

However, quantum computers are vulnerable to noise and vibration. Therefore, a good place to put them for energy, cooling, and interference reasons, is space. So again, like satellites and datacentres, these will be physical assets in space that a hostile force will either want to seize, or destroy.

All these things combined can generate endless unique scenarios through hacking, sabotage, drone warfare, and assaults and are definitely worth considering in a sci-fi campaign.

There will be battles in a vacuum, on moons, and on colonized planets like Mars, as the war rages on the main planets surface.

To the winner, the solar system.