Looking for Commonalities

[mike wightman]

If fighters are also being discussed, I'd say that unless you have some way to mitigate damage other then something that would need to get fixed then fighters may be less FIGHTer, and more recon craft for getting close scans and fixes on hostile ships. The idea of sending a small ship to go get beat up and potentially destroyed in battle when the exact same drive system in theory could just carry a really frickin huge bomb and blast whatever is on the other end to bits.

It would probably help if we stopped calling them fighters. They are not analogous to aircraft in any way, but more akin to MTBs

Forcefields or Shielding would make something like a fighter feasible in that it could get hit lightly, and then leave an not take permanent damage

The only forcefield in Traveller is the black globe. Technically you could get one on a heavy fighter but to what end?
And if a fighter can carry such a screen as you describe why can the capital ship not have a bigger one?

A Fighter with laser and shields would be a nice idea compared to a massive bomb.

No shields in Traveller.

Keeps your expensive carrier a nice 5 or so light seconds away, dodging about to prevent a good hit from landing (You'd need a 10 second lead on the target at 5 ls. 10 seconds hoping that very little changes on that ships course, assuming energy weapons.

5 light seconds is short range in High Guard.... :toast:

The fighters just have to be tough enough to not get smeared by PD, and the mass of fire from the fighters could be enough to overcome the capitals (presumed) shields, or just bypass them completely with a something like missiles that may not be affected. (Yes, I know the OTU has repulsors that kill missiles, and that Beams are the ones that are free to blast, but fighters already need a lot of changing to be fighters in the sense Hollywood likes to think of them as.)

Ahh - you want Star Wars not Traveller then. :devil:

Fighters would likely have to be flown by humans, or by rather advanced computers that are smart enough to fly and perhaps dogfight with other fighters like a human would. The possible lag from fighter to carrier would make drones unfeasible, except as recon craft or dumb gun carriers.

No dogfighting unfortunately.
If you are close enough to actually see your opponent, a few km, their laser weapons are guaranteed to hit and kill you.

Any small craft from the Traveller RAW likely are as the other folk have described, large(r) torpedo ships that intend to launch torps from a distance that makes PD hard, and to ensure that they don't get blapped from long distance on the way there. They don't have staying power to keep in the fight and they wouldn't have the ammunition anyway. Heavy armor would require heavy hitting to push through and most small craft don't have the armament necessary to fight a battle ship with maxed armor, unless they resort to having limited ammo. Carriers and Fighters (Bombers may be more appropriate to what they do, with Torpedo Boat being nice and specific) may be dragged along to have a sudden wave of hard to stop torpedoes pop out of the fighters, or to provide CAS for Planetary Assault, but they would be Auxiliaries to the Battleships and Cruisers for fighting.

This is TL dependent. At the low end of the TL scale space fighters can decide battles, it is when computers get big and (energy) expensive that fighters begin to suffer.
The computer rating in HG represents computer, ECM, ECCM, sensors etc. A fighter just can not carry the same electronics as a big ship and remain cost effective.

So, as a summary; Fighters with Shields, feasible as small light ships that can be a persistent threat on the battlefield, considering the other changes that some form of shield would have on ship design (lighter immediate armor, shields taking the place of the lost armor). Fighters without shields, short wave of firepower that then have to rearm.

This thread is for discussing ship combat in Traveller not Star Wars, although Star Wars certainly had an influence on the big ships paradigm.

In a OTU world (which I get the feeling is what was mostly being discussed), fighters are going to be auxiliaries there to perform jobs other then fighting the big capital ships. Battleships win the Space, Fighters win the Planets.

Yes, the tread is for discussing ship combat paradigms in Traveller and the OTU, not houserules, homebrews or alternative universes. You've made some good points about how to make fighters more effective in an ATU

 

[aramis]

But that amount of energy isn't really that significant, right? A couple of kilowatts out millions of kilometers away isn't going to be detected. Well, we detect signals from the Voyager 1 space probe at a distance of 18 billion kilometers and its signal is only 20 watts, and that's with TL 8 equipment.

Actually that is not a fair example, we know the course of that object to a fine certainty having made measurements of it's trajectory for the past 40 years or so. It's a tracking job not a detection job, we are using a very small field of view sensor that is pointed exactly where we expect it to be. A more fair detection task is the search for near earth objects that may be on trajectories to come near or impact earth, and these objects are receiving heat from the sun at a rate of: measured by satellite as being 1.361 kilowatts per square meter, and yet some bus sized objects (3 to 4 Dt) manage to approach to within hours of their closest approach before being detected.

We also use times the surface area and a massively more sensitive antenna than the signal... that's considerable gain. (We focus that roughly 706 square dish on a tiny antenna set...

In order to reach the 2m dish on voyager, NASA uses about 20kW on a 30m or 70m dish with the DSN. (For voyager, recent instructions allmost all go via the 70m dish... which has a field of view of about 0.3 degrees... which also gives a significant gain in decibels at target.)

 

[warwizard]

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-051

Asteroid can't be seen by earth based telescopes due to line of sight being too close to the sun, so we can't determine it's orbit.

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/2008tc3.html
Asteroid detected 21 hours before it hit the earth but many others this size hit each year without ever being detected. No more than a few meters in diameter. Detected approximately 920000 km out (31 hexes)

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news165.html
10 m asteroid hit earth, not detected.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/2004/85.cfm
Discovers dwarf planet 13 billion KM out, spritzer telescope unable to detect it's heat puts upper bound on it's size. Yup we just visible light detected an object 1000 miles in diameter at that range, but could not get it's heat signature.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-207
Gives a summary of the populations of NEO asteroids, we haven't even found all the "Big" ones so far.

So look over the site and enjoy the science of detecting cold moving objects in space. http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/stats/

Back to Traveller,
A. You DO have terrain when attempting detection from a planet, the local star will swamp out the other signals during daytime, so if the system does not have a robust amount of sensors in the Trojan points a fleet could sneak into the system just by jumping to the star's 100D limit on the other side from the planet. and the approach could be made keeping a 10 to 15 degree or less viewing angle between them and the star.
B. Your approach from the direction of the local star denies the enemy your reflected signature and gives them a large IR and visible background radiation to hide your signatures in even if they are not trying to look through skies brightened by dust illuminated by the star.

I would provide more details but I'm falling asleep.

 

[aramis]

The Solar Observatory has more than once confirmed an asteroidal transit of the sun, because they happened to be looking when it did... and the dot was moving the wrong direction.

An interferometer can reduce the glare considerably. This effect alone is why planetfinders want more of them, and want them in space. As a side benefit, they can resolve objects against the glare of the solar disk reasonably well.

 

[Meeko100]

Yeah, I just kinda got on a tangent a bit. Watched a certain new movie a bit too many times recently.

That tangent took me along the idea to a idea I had a bit ago for a ATU, with all sorts of different tech jam. Sorry bout that.

I skimmed the thread earlier and saw the MTB thing about the Naming. Hadn't decided to Google it until now (It was 10 last night when that post was written. I was decidedly against adding even more to that wall of text). It makes sense to name them that. A better analogy.

I haven't really read HG that well (I have the PDF of it, haven't sat down and studied the thing. Been using MgT more then CT, so that's what my thoughts call back to) and I don't even remember HG from MgT much either. So why would Fighters be useful at lower tech levels? Like what the parentheses say, I keep gliding back to MgT, and there the Armor is capped at TL. Even at Tl10, Most weapons that small craft could feasibly haul around are not going to beat the armor without a very lucky shot. Except for torps. Or maybe a barbette. But then your "Small Craft" starts getting bigger, and looks more like a tiny scout compared to a big fighter (however bad a name that is).

And whoever can hit something with a rather small beam of light/subatomic particles with a 10 second lead deserves a fricking medal. I don't want to imagine the trouble hitting stuff at Long Range. . I'd applaud a computer program capable of that, when you don't know what the target is going to pull next. But, in rues that's what it is. Maybe I read to much into the rules.

 

[robject]

Re "Sub Hunt"/ship detection

I can think of one possible evidence that detection can be spoofed or avoided, if the analogy to submarine warfare holds true: commerce raiding.

Consider:

1. Interstellar Trade affects empires like International Trade affects us.
2. Commerce Raiding is a reality in the Traveller Universe, and it essentially works like it does historically on Earth.

and, perhaps the most powerful argument:

3. Commerce Raiding is perfect fare for role-playing games.


Commerce raiding does not equal "sub hunt" or invisibility, but they are certainly a subset of it, and form a kind of "Chesterton's Fence" sort of argument that must be understood and considered before dismantled.

 

[Reban]

It would probably help if we stopped calling them fighters. They are not analogous to aircraft in any way, but more akin to MTBs

Except where they are also atmospheric capable and not armed with a torpedo/missile analogue. Most MTBs had a crew of five or more which is a bit far away from the one man ten ton "fighter".

Attacker might be a better fit than Fighter if you want to remove the dogfighting connotation. Pursuit, interceptor, hunter are also terms that might fit.

Although I'm sticking with fighter, because fighter pilots of the far future will likely insist on calling themselves that anyway :smirk:

 

[esampson]

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-051

Asteroid can't be seen by earth based telescopes due to line of sight being too close to the sun, so we can't determine it's orbit.

When spotted it was past the orbit of Mars. The only problem that existed was we couldn't see it from our position on Earth to predict its exact path (see below).

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/2008tc3.html
Asteroid detected 21 hours before it hit the earth but many others this size hit each year without ever being detected. No more than a few meters in diameter. Detected approximately 920000 km out (31 hexes)

Much smaller than the examples you were quoting. A few meters in diameter is not anywhere close to the size of a bus. It is doubtful it was absorbing much beyond 5.5 kilowatts due to its size. It would be radiating less than that since it was coming in from further out and so it was heating up (meaning that energy being absorbed wasn't being radiated). Assuming it was carbonaceous it would take an awful long time for 5.5 kilowatts to heat up 50 tons of rock.

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news165.html
10 m asteroid hit earth, not detected.

Useful because it does seem a good example. It also tells us this occurs about once every 2-12 years (again, see below).

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/2004/85.cfm
Discovers dwarf planet 13 billion KM out, spritzer telescope unable to detect it's heat puts upper bound on it's size. Yup we just visible light detected an object 1000 miles in diameter at that range, but could not get it's heat signature.

1000 miles is an upper limit. It is quite possibly smaller than that. None the less, using that as our figure we can work out that it is currently absorbing around 2 terrawatts of solar radiation. That is the whole pamn danet absorbing less energy that what is put out by a power plant in Traveller, and its not even radiating all of that energy as it is probably still heating up (at its furthest from Sol it was receiving about 3 kilowatts).

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-207
Gives a summary of the populations of NEO asteroids, we haven't even found all the "Big" ones so far.

Useful. It does show that stealth in space is a technical possibility (which I haven't said it isn't, just that it is quite complicated). However, once again, see below.

So look over the site and enjoy the science of detecting cold moving objects in space. http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/stats/

Back to Traveller,
A. You DO have terrain when attempting detection from a planet, the local star will swamp out the other signals during daytime, so if the system does not have a robust amount of sensors in the Trojan points a fleet could sneak into the system just by jumping to the star's 100D limit on the other side from the planet. and the approach could be made keeping a 10 to 15 degree or less viewing angle between them and the star.
B. Your approach from the direction of the local star denies the enemy your reflected signature and gives them a large IR and visible background radiation to hide your signatures in even if they are not trying to look through skies brightened by dust illuminated by the star.

I would provide more details but I'm falling asleep.

One big problem with this idea is that you can't have the local star behind you to all vantages. Sure, if the sensor system was entirely based on a single planet you could do it, but that would be rather foolish in Traveller. Instead there is almost undoubtedly a network of sensors based on the various planets as well as artificial platforms. Build a specialized observatory ship with no jump drive, a 1G maneuver drive and good fuel tanks and have it take position over the pole of the star (over meaning the direction, not a location of extreme proximity). Use the rest of the space for crew, sensors, and communications and use system shuttles to refuel and rotate crew. Now the only way to have the star between you and the ship (or to be between it and the star to hide in its glare) is to expose yourself to the planet.

You could fly close enough to the star to hide yourself in its glare, but that would cause massive heating problems for the crew. Additionally you would be detected long before you get there and then tracked (we have problems detecting these small objects when we don't know where to look. One we do we are pretty good at keeping track unless they are on the opposite side of the Sun). Forgetting jumping in and having the glare cover you. No jumping in closer than 100D to the star.

And as I said in a previous post, when you jump in you create a massive signature. People aren't scanning the skies looking for you. They are scanning a very small section in space for the person who just jumped in and then failed to make communications contact with local authorities and who isn't showing a transponder signal.

Which brings us to my last point concerning Traveller vs. Real World. Real world examples show us the lower limits of what we should be able to detect in Traveller. They do not show the upper limits of what can sneak by. Sensor technology will be better in general because of the higher tech levels. Sensor coverage will be significantly better because there's a much greater need. Right now we are focused on tracking things that could collide with Earth with significant force, which appear to be somewhat rare (10m asteroids every 2-12 years). In Traveller you need to track ships landing with a fair degree of frequency (the exact frequency is a point of debate) and things that might collide with those space ships. Right now we view space beyond Earth orbit as largely static. We don't anticipate new objects suddenly appearing in our solar system (as in there is now a new object, not as in we have now found a new object). In Traveller you have to build a sensor net to accommodate things being dropped during all the EVAs being made, asteroid fragments being produced by prospectors, bits falling off ships, etc. We also don't anticipate people trying to sneak in to our solar system, something local authorities will be concerned with even with the difficulties of stealth.

This means that even at the same tech level as Earth you probably have much better coverage and detection capabilities. Sure, the sensors aren't any better than Earth sensors but now it isn't being paid for by an agency that some people think is a waste of money. Now it is being funded by something that is your local equivalent of the FAA.

 

[esampson]

Not just hard, you would have to re-write the laws of thermodynamics. :CoW:

Not necessarily. While it might seem that I agree with you my position is more one of 'it would be much more complicated than a coat of paint and some electronics'.

You absolutely don't need to re-write thermodynamics, contrary to some claims. If you could sink the energy for a prolonged period of time that would work. There's also nothing in the laws of thermodynamics that say you cannot take the energy, constrain it to a tight beam, and project it into deep space. Sure, we have no idea how it would be done but it still doesn't actually require a re-write of thermodynamics. I believe that if you had some kind of device that 'teleported' the heat energy elsewhere (similar to how the m-drive pushes against a large body so it isn't completely reactionless but there is no intervening force) that wouldn't actually violate thermodynamics (although I might be wrong about that).

 

[warwizard]

In a one on one encounter away from civilized systems approaching from sunward does provide benefits in detection of the enemy (get tgt lock 10X further out) in that the local sun will be reflecting off their hull and mostly your hull will not be illuminated from their point of view. Also waiting in the shadow of another object or near the terminator where you have hot and cold surfaces nearby, which may also give a lot of clutter to hide your heat signature.

There is a reason for all those 1.0 X10 to the sixth population worlds at TL7- , they are for the pirates to do their hunting in.

 

[whartung]

I can think of one possible evidence that detection can be spoofed or avoided, if the analogy to submarine warfare holds true: commerce raiding.

Commerce raiding on earth happens mostly in the deep ocean. In Traveller, there is (rarely) "deep ocean". The bulk of commercial traffic happens within 100D of the port.

Save for rare outposts the ships are willing to maneuver too rather than jump, in terms of intersystem traffic, plus planets shadowed by their stars. But there's no reason for interstellar traffic to ever really travel beyond the 100D limit.

So, commerce raiding could in theory happen, but it essentially has to happen in a much, much smaller and easier to patrol space in contrast to ships crossing the Atlantic.

 

[aramis]

Commerce raiding on earth happens mostly in the deep ocean. In Traveller, there is (rarely) "deep ocean". The bulk of commercial traffic happens within 100D of the port.

Save for rare outposts the ships are willing to maneuver too rather than jump, in terms of intersystem traffic, plus planets shadowed by their stars. But there's no reason for interstellar traffic to ever really travel beyond the 100D limit.

So, commerce raiding could in theory happen, but it essentially has to happen in a much, much smaller and easier to patrol space in contrast to ships crossing the Atlantic.

That changes when one uses stellar limits. Many systems become economically isolated because their worlds are well more than 5 days from the star's jump limit.

 

[Condottiere]

You can imagine what would happen to the North Sea oil rigs during the Great Patriotic War, if the British had started drilling in the Roaring Twenties.

In the Honorverse, it can be a complete sweep through a system, destroying all forms of economic activity that could in theory help a war effort, upto the primary planet.

You could argue about the resources that were diverted from the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe to build up the German surface fleet, but if any of those modern battleships had gotten loose in the Atlantic, those convoys would be kaput.

 

[whartung]

You can imagine what would happen to the North Sea oil rigs during the Great Patriotic War, if the British had started drilling in the Roaring Twenties.

Here you're defending valuable fixed points of infrastructure surrounded by a vast sea.

In the Honorverse, it can be a complete sweep through a system, destroying all forms of economic activity that could in theory help a war effort, upto the primary planet.

In Honorverse, you have choke points, and can thus control traffic by blockading a warp point. As long as the system can't produce ships faster then the fleet can kill them, then the fleet can effectively embargo then entire system without affecting (or engaging) the planet itself at all.

Also, this takes more of a fleet operation than a lone raider running about. The key point of commerce raiding is isolation of the target. In Traveller doesn't have these limitations, this is less of an issue as most ships operated in close proximity to the worlds themselves, which can more easily be patrolled. Thus making a commerce raid a much more expensive operation involving several ships designed to take on the patrol vessels (and possibly fixed defenses on the planet) as well.

You could argue about the resources that were diverted from the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe to build up the German surface fleet, but if any of those modern battleships had gotten loose in the Atlantic, those convoys would be kaput.

But only for a short time. The Bismarck did get lose in the Atlantic, but was hunted mercilessly. The German navy simply didn't have the numbers to successfully prosecute surface action in the Atlantic.

 

[Condottiere]

Commerce raiding is more than just your lonely auxiliary cruiser sneaking up on merchantmen and sinking them. If you can assemble a battle cruiser task force, you can sweep up everything if the opposing side doesn't have anything in the area to stop you.

 

[esampson]

In a one on one encounter away from civilized systems approaching from sunward does provide benefits in detection of the enemy (get tgt lock 10X further out) in that the local sun will be reflecting off their hull and mostly your hull will not be illuminated from their point of view. Also waiting in the shadow of another object or near the terminator where you have hot and cold surfaces nearby, which may also give a lot of clutter to hide your heat signature.

There is a reason for all those 1.0 X10 to the sixth population worlds at TL7- , they are for the pirates to do their hunting in.

While this is technically true it isn't exactly stealth, it's making a target lock harder. IMO to really be considered 'stealth' you need to be able to complete an objective before you are detected (sneaking past the enemy to land or jump, sneaking up close enough to launch an attack, etc.). In this capacity you want to be able to get close enough to an enemy ship to target lock them before they can detect you, ensuring they aren't making defensive maneuvers or using counter measures. I'm not sure this would do it.

(The argument that you are making it harder for sensors to lock on you constitutes stealth is not true. You can easily disprove this with chaff. Chaff makes it considerably harder for a weapon to lock onto a target, but it is by no means considered stealth.)

This also has large problems with alignment. How do you get to your position without being detected? You can't jump there, most likely, because of jump flash, jump scatter, and the 100D limit. If you are waiting for them to show up where are you waiting? How do you know where they will show up? Are you waiting for someone to jump in? The theoretical best arrival point is constantly in motion due to both the orbit and rotation of the planet and you still have the issue of jump scatter.

And in your example you are hiding from a ship, so the TL of the system doesn't matter. Hiding from the system you are back to the problem of multiple installations. You probably also are not dealing with TL-7 sensors. The TL of the system is only the general TL of what's available. In any system that is that much of a back water they would import the sensors from somewhere else (and if you want to think they wouldn't then how can you have anything better than a D class spaceport when the TL is 7 or less? They would lack all sorts of necessary technologies such as comms, fuel refining, or repair facilities).

 

[kilemall]

Let's start with the broadest of points- Traveller is at it's core an RPG not a milsim.

Folks have tried to make it into a milsim, and it certainly sprung from and inspired some milsimish games, but ultimately a lot of the things you would need to know to actually run a war in the professional sense are missing and the subject of much argument and conjecture here.

Just the most recent back and forth on ACS vs. BigShip means choosing one over the other ends up causing a radically different force, tech and tactics which would feedback into strategy and vice versa.

Many such 'how thing work' decisions end up being ultimately entertainment/aesthetic choices, even for OTU guys, the broadest of which is 'what Traveller version system to use'.

Even using minis/graph paper vs. Mayday vs. abstract ranging of various levels of nuance changes tactics.

So while I would agree with the basic fuel/map/choke point arguments most are putting on here, I would say a lot of how to characterize space combat depends on the system you use, what tweaks are put in, sensor/weapon/targetting mixes, and the aesthetic driving those choices.

 

[whartung]

Commerce raiding is more than just your lonely auxiliary cruiser sneaking up on merchantmen and sinking them. If you can assemble a battle cruiser task force, you can sweep up everything if the opposing side doesn't have anything in the area to stop you.

But now you're hitting infrastructure. Once the attack fleet is detected, the merchants can either jump to safety or go to ground near the planet, at which point the attacking fleet is basically in siege mode, attacking incoming ships and preventing ships from reaching 100D, and having to deal with the fixed defenses. Sure, they can start working on orbital facilities and such, but this is quite different from taking ships in deep space, or ambushing some merchant convoy on the high seas.

Certainly a fleet can wreak havoc in a rear area, but they're likely not going to limit it to unarmed commercial traffic. It's more like steaming in to hostile harbors with shore batteries trying to take out any anchored ships.

 

[warwizard]

We are getting hung up on some terminology here. Sensors and the detecting of objects is mostly about being able to scan large volumes of space quickly enough then filtering through all your detected point sources to sort out between the natural ones and the ones generated by intelligent activity, and then review the ones listed by the computer as needing human interpretation. A lot of our asteroid detections are made by taking photographs with narrow Field of views then come back months later and taking another picture of the same area and have a computer look for items that have moved. This method is not useful for tracking a fast moving spaceship in that the ship will be out of the FOV of the instrument when we go back for the 2nd look. So we have several points of failure that can be exploited by an intruder.
1). The intruder may mimic the emissions of a natural object while it is detected, it passes through the filtering and is not flagged for human intervention. Not Stealth, but it is spoofing.
2). The intruder has low observables (albedo .01 or less) and thermal inertial systems capable enough to mask heat signature for a few hours. Signature is small enough to not be detectible at range long enough to reach some terrain feature or position where they can safely dump the heat. This is stealth.
3). The intruder may radiate as an expected artificial object occupying the object's normal position and course. (E-7 world again: capture a satellite on the far side of the planet and come around the planet in the satellite's orbit transmitting the satellite's normal data) Passes through the filter flagged as a known object, not given to the operator as an object of interest, though the operator may request the readings on the object. Again not stealth, spoofing.

( And the Voyager example the 20W is a radio transmitter dish radiating exactly at the earth on a known frequency, it is NOT an IR detection of 20W the isotope on board produces more IR than that, but it's not what we are detecting. )

Now there ARE some things we can't avoid, if you are using antigravity systems you have a signature that gravetic sensors can pick up on. (Thrusters +2, Antigravity +1 Gravity compensators +.5) Each +1 is an order of magnitude further away you can be detected. (having all three is the assumed* normal 0 signature, having none of them is a -2.5 signature for gravetic sensors)
If you are thrusting with some form of rocket (Ion, Heplar, chemical rocket, fusion rocket) you are producing a stream of ions and or ices or radioactive isotopes that may be detectable and provide clues as to the presence of an intruder. (rocket exhausts impacting solar wind causing shockwaves, shockwaves heat gases causing emissions of radiation in EM spectrum)
Laser communications to remote controlled sensor drones may be illuminated by zodiacal dust ( or Heplar exhausts) and provide early warning that there is somebody else nearby.

*The T4 sensor rules baselines signatures based on a J-1 1g 100dt sphere using Thruster plates antigravity and gravity plates with no hull coatings other than normal paints. (bare metal +.5 visible light sig) so the engineering signature is for an object with 54 or so MW of hot fusion and the IR sig to match. Stealth features include changing configuration so that there are only 3 or 4 planes of reflection and less total surface area in the stealthy direction, Black paint, military black, and military ultra black hull coatings, and 10X and 100X the radiator surface area. Designs are rated in 4 signatures: Visible reflected light, transmitted heat, gravity, and neutrino (engineering)

 

[Condottiere]

Anti-stealth seems to be the ability of knowing where to look, and what to look for; how this works out three millenia from now, I couldn't say.

As regards commerce raiding, historical examples show it's practical until the event of real time communications (and powered propulsion), and even then, when it's done in force, depends on the capability of a similar strength squadron to intercept them.

In regard to a raiding squadron having achieved command of space around a planet, they can probably drop megatons of ordnance from a fairly safe distance to knock out industrial targets, while they tank up. Unless they've orders to capture and hold the planet, which I doubt, or there's an assault task group on it's way, in which case the raiding squadron would be more anxious to capture system industrial infrastructure, while the locals try to blow it up first.