Fusion only weapon for Trav

[sideranautae]

Currently in Trav, Nuc Dampers protect against nuc missiles by "dampening" the fissionable material and the associated radioactivity. A fusion only weapon would negate that defense in its entirety. Given the laser technology in Trav a fusion only warhead would be very doable. It would give the heat of a conventional nuc and REALLY heavy neutron blast that would kill people very effectively...

 

[Jeraa]

I don't know about previous version of Traveller, but MGT nuclear dampers work against fusion weapons.

Nuclear dampers project a series of nodes and anti-nodes where the strong nuclear force is enhanced or degraded, rendering nuclear warheads ineffective. A nuclear damper reduces the damage from fusion weapons and nuclear missiles by 2d6 when affected.

 

[sideranautae]

I don't know about previous version of Traveller, but MGT nuclear dampers work against fusion weapons.

Nuclear dampers project a series of nodes and anti-nodes where the strong nuclear force is enhanced or degraded, rendering nuclear warheads ineffective. A nuclear damper reduces the damage from fusion weapons and nuclear missiles by 2d6 when affected.

It only works against fission-fusion weapons. Which is what current fusion weapons are. The "strong nuclear force is enhanced or degraded" is only useful against fissionable material. You render that inert and no fission material to set up the fusion. So, NOT effective against a Fusion only weapon.

This will help you understand http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon#Fusion_weapons

 

[Jeraa]

It only works against fission-fusion weapons. Which is what current fusion weapons are. The "strong nuclear force is enhanced or degraded" is only useful against fissionable material. You render that inert and no fission material to set up the fusion. So, NOT effective against a Fusion only weapon.

You can argue all you want about MGT rules (you seem to like that) but the rules are very clear. It works against fusion weapons. That would include FGMPs, starship and vehicle scale fusion guns, any any homebrewed fusion warheads.

 

[sideranautae]

You can argue all you want about MGT rules

What ARE you going on about now? I'm simply pointing up a fact. And a new weapon. What IS your problem exactly? Also, no where in the rules I've seen does it state that they work against the heat from a fusion gun...

 

[Jeraa]

Also, no where in the rules I've seen does it state that they work against the heat from a fusion gun...

I quoted the core rulebook (page 112). Let me quote it again.

Nuclear dampers project a series of nodes and anti-nodes where the strong nuclear force is enhanced or degraded, rendering nuclear warheads ineffective. A nuclear damper reduces the damage from fusion weapons and nuclear missiles by 2d6 when affected.

Fusion weapons. Not "fission-fusion" weapons (which do not appear in the rules), all fusion weapons. In the rules a fusion weapon is a fusion weapon. A MGT nuclear damper works against fusion weapons. Considering the only fusion weapons in the same book as the nuclear damper are fusion guns, it must work against them.

 

[sideranautae]

Fusion weapons. Not "fission-fusion" weapons (which do not appear in the rules), all fusion weapons. In the rules fusion weapon is a fusion weapon. A MGT nuclear damper works against fusion weapons.

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Sorry for the brain overload. I'll be more careful in the future.

Anyway, to move forward past the ranting, nuc dampers don't stop fusion from happening. (otherwise you could shut down the fuion PP's of an adjacent ship using Dampers) They only help against radioactive decay and associated EM radiation (precluding defense against fast neutrons). This of course means that ships fusion guns still do non-radiation damage against ship hulls and that a pure fusion bomb works the same way. Just point blank delivery of a fusion beam.

Now when comparing against a conventional nuke missile, the neutron damage potential against humans would be the majority. One made today would kill almost everyone out to 500 miles from the detonation. So, maybe about 8D6 crew hit for a ship missile sized one in Trav.

 

[Sigtrygg]

In the TNE adventure Guilded Lily a star port nuclear damper is used to do just that - stop a ship's fusion power plant from powering up. Note that since typical Traveler ship combat ranges are way beyond the effective range of a nuclear damper this can not be used as a tactic in space combat (until much longer ranged dampers become available at very high TLs, by which time they morph into disintegrators anyway).

Ever since dampers were introduced in LBB4 people have been ignorant of what the description says.

In layman's terms the nuclear damper can enhance the strong nuclear force or weaken the strong nuclear force, so they can speed up or slow down fission or make it easier or harder for the strong nuclear force to overcome the coulomb barrier to fusion thus making fusion more or less likely.

It is a reasonable assumption that the increase in efficiency for high TL fusion power plants is due to the inclusion of damper tech in their operation.

Damper tech is one of the Traveller technological breakthroughs that is not explored or the ramifications thought through fully enough.

 

[dragoner]

It is a reasonable assumption that the increase in efficiency for high TL fusion power plants is due to the inclusion of damper tech in their operation.

Like a supercharger. Nice.

Damper tech is one of the Traveller technological breakthroughs that is not explored or the ramifications thought through fully enough.

To give the devil their due, when all the ideas do get included, big books like T5 are the result. I have seen plenty of threads on dampers over the years, but usually they are inconclusive due to the nature of the tech being rather fanciful.

 

[sideranautae]

In layman's terms the nuclear damper can enhance the strong nuclear force or weaken the strong nuclear force, so they can speed up or slow down fission or make it easier or harder for the strong nuclear force to overcome the coulomb barrier to fusion thus making fusion more or less likely.

Yes, I know exactly how it is meant to work. However, it works away from the ship when used as a shield. Not within the ship or even at the hull (otherwise Fusion PP problem). You could deactivate a fission item by causing rapid decay while passing through the field on the way to the ship. In Trav they fuse plain H2. Once the a missile gets through the field and hits the ship, that's when the fusion only warhead would activate. Thus, no protection.

As far as helping the fusion process. Far more likely to end up learning how to induce quantum tunneling as that is what happens in the Sun to allow P-P fusion.

So, in the final analysis, a Damper does nothing to help against an impact pure fusion device.

 

[phavoc]

It only works against fission-fusion weapons. Which is what current fusion weapons are. The "strong nuclear force is enhanced or degraded" is only useful against fissionable material. You render that inert and no fission material to set up the fusion. So, NOT effective against a Fusion only weapon.

This will help you understand http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon#Fusion_weapons

CRB - Nuclear dampers project a series of nodes and anti-nodes where the strong nuclear force is enhanced or degraded, rendering nuclear warheads ineffective. A nuclear damper reduces the damage from fusion weapons and nuclear missiles by 2d6 when affected.

I'm not sure what information you are trying to use to prove your point from the wikipedia article. The section on fusion weapons (i.e. h-bombs) states that all fusion weaponry requires a fission reaction to occur. A nuclear damper renders fissionable materials to be non-weapons grade and thus incapable of causing a nuclear explosion.

I have read of new fusion testing that is relying upon a laser to ignite the hydrogen to start the fusion process. Except that this isn't weaponized - it's a massive reactor. We have no idea if it's even possible to weaponize the technology. We also know that, at present time at least, it takes more energy to start the reaction than it releases. This is in direct contradiction to how the nuclear weapons detonate. In our current fission and fusion explosions the amount of energy required to start the process is vastly exceeded by the amount of energy that is released.

Nuclear dampers are definitely part of the "wunderkund" type of technology present in Traveller. They sound neat (like jump drives), but it's not necessarily correct to state that they must work a certain way when we don't have anything like them today. Of course in your ATU it's quite possible to change the rules to suit your player's style, but OTU canon rules state something completely different.

Here is what the wikipedia article states:

The other basic type of nuclear weapon produces a large proportion of its energy in nuclear fusion reactions. Such fusion weapons are generally referred to as thermonuclear weapons or more colloquially as hydrogen bombs (abbreviated as H-bombs), as they rely on fusion reactions between isotopes of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium). All such weapons derive a significant portion, and sometimes a majority, of their energy from fission. This is because a fission weapon is required as a "trigger" for the fusion reactions, and the fusion reactions can themselves trigger additional fission reactions.

Only six countries—United States, Russia, United Kingdom, People's Republic of China, France and India—have conducted thermonuclear weapon tests. (Whether India has detonated a "true", multi-staged thermonuclear weapon is controversial.) Thermonuclear weapons are considered much more difficult to successfully design and execute than primitive fission weapons. Almost all of the nuclear weapons deployed today use the thermonuclear design because it is more efficient.[citation needed]

Thermonuclear bombs work by using the energy of a fission bomb to compress and heat fusion fuel. In the Teller-Ulam design, which accounts for all multi-megaton yield hydrogen bombs, this is accomplished by placing a fission bomb and fusion fuel (tritium, deuterium, or lithium deuteride) in proximity within a special, radiation-reflecting container. When the fission bomb is detonated, gamma rays and X-rays emitted first compress the fusion fuel, then heat it to thermonuclear temperatures. The ensuing fusion reaction creates enormous numbers of high-speed neutrons, which can then induce fission in materials not normally prone to it, such as depleted uranium. Each of these components is known as a "stage", with the fission bomb as the "primary" and the fusion capsule as the "secondary". In large, megaton-range hydrogen bombs, about half of the yield comes from the final fissioning of depleted uranium.

Virtually all thermonuclear weapons deployed today use the "two-stage" design described above, but it is possible to add additional fusion stages—each stage igniting a larger amount of fusion fuel in the next stage. This technique can be used to construct thermonuclear weapons of arbitrarily large yield, in contrast to fission bombs, which are limited in their explosive force. The largest nuclear weapon ever detonated—the Tsar Bomb of the USSR, which released an energy equivalent of over 50 million tons (50 megatons) of TNT—was a three-stage weapon. Most thermonuclear weapons are considerably smaller than this, due to practical constraints from missile warhead space and weight requirements. Edward Teller, often referred to as the "father of the hydrogen bomb"

Fusion reactions do not create fission products, and thus contribute far less to the creation of nuclear fallout than fission reactions, but because all thermonuclear weapons contain at least one fission stage, and many high-yield thermonuclear devices have a final fission stage, thermonuclear weapons can generate at least as much nuclear fallout as fission-only weapons.

 

[Infojunky]

Thermonuclear bombs work by using the energy of a fission bomb to compress and heat fusion fuel. In the Teller-Ulam design, which accounts for all multi-megaton yield hydrogen bombs, this is accomplished by placing a fission bomb and fusion fuel (tritium, deuterium, or lithium deuteride) in proximity within a special, radiation-reflecting container. When the fission bomb is detonated, gamma rays and X-rays emitted first compress the fusion fuel, then heat it to thermonuclear temperatures. The ensuing fusion reaction creates enormous numbers of high-speed neutrons, which can then induce fission in materials not normally prone to it, such as depleted uranium. Each of these components is known as a "stage", with the fission bomb as the "primary" and the fusion capsule as the "secondary". In large, megaton-range hydrogen bombs, about half of the yield comes from the final fissioning of depleted uranium.

Virtually all thermonuclear weapons deployed today use the "two-stage" design described above, but it is possible to add additional fusion stages—each stage igniting a larger amount of fusion fuel in the next stage. This technique can be used to construct thermonuclear weapons of arbitrarily large yield, in contrast to fission bombs, which are limited in their explosive force. The largest nuclear weapon ever detonated—the Tsar Bomb of the USSR, which released an energy equivalent of over 50 million tons (50 megatons) of TNT—was a three-stage weapon. Most thermonuclear weapons are considerably smaller than this, due to practical constraints from missile warhead space and weight requirements. Edward Teller, often referred to as the "father of the hydrogen bomb"

Wow, talk about digging into the memory banks, I remember some years ago discussing the effects of space rated Particle weapons on thermonuclear weapons. In that the interaction of a stream of neutrons igniting the outer layers or in reverse order thus causing increased containment thus a stronger explosion because the ration of fused/fissioned material was increased. I also recall much to-ing and fro-ing over it. My layman's assumption is the asymmetric ignition would cause the device to ignite along the impinging beam blowing the device apart before it could reach its designed yield.

 

[phavoc]

We already know that nuclear devices have to detonate exactly as designed or they just won't work (at least as a nuclear explosion... flinging plutonium or u-238 at a starship is a very expensive form of sticking out your tongue - and just as ineffective).

I would imagine that it wouldn't take much from a damper field to render a nuclear weapon useless. I doubt weapons would be created with "extra" fissile materials just in case of this, so maybe even as little of 1% of the fissile material was altered by the field of a damper would render it inoperable as far as a nuclear weapon goes.

Nukes really should have damage comparable to their size. A torpedo would have the space for a much more deadlier nuclear weapon than a standard missile, or at least there should be a lot more dice rolls!

Has anybody ever come out with a home-grown enhanced radiation warhead (i.e neutron) for their game?

 

[Reynard]

As kids of the Fifties and Sixties, it was a Big Oooo factor when we were told a fusion bomb was activated with an atomic bomb! Oooooo!

 

[Michaellox]

So the question is why is the Combat SMG and Tactical PDW in weapon packs only? I would much rather just buy it on its own because i just dont want to buy a weapon pack and get a bunch of random guns that i dont need just to get the weapons. And it would be cheaper to buy the weapons on their own rather than in a weapon pack.

 

[Reynard]

Ever remember the original Star Trek and how primitive nuclear missiles could send a heavy cruiser rocking even with shields up? Yeah, need to be like that.

That said, I assume we are seeing those famous Traveller nuclear Tac missiles with tiny warheads but a bit more dangerous than the standard. These are nor ICBMs in space.