Interesting data on nukes in space

[sideranautae]

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php

In short, even considering an "unarmored" Trav hull, unless a large nuke goes off within 100 meters, the ship is safe.

 

[Reynard]

Since Traveller space nukes do considerable damage, they must therefore be the mentioned shape charge type. Makes sense. Standard missiles might also be shape charge as a default. Same idea with today's weapons vs. vehicle armor. A shape charge will expend its tremendous energy at, rather than near, the target.

 

[sideranautae]

Since Traveller space nukes do considerable damage, they must therefore be the mentioned shape charge type. Makes sense. Standard missiles might also be shape charge as a default. Same idea with today's weapons vs. vehicle armor. A shape charge will expend its tremendous energy at, rather than near, the target.

Yep. AND, they get REAL close before detonation (~200 meters). Those are teeny, tiny missiles after all.

The standard missile would need to be a kinetic vehicle. Using the entire mass of the missile pushing on a small dense (like hull material) penetrator after a large build up of velocity. A non nuke charge would be nothing to a hull (see prior thread about hull toughness).

This makes non-nuke missiles almost useless as they have to impact. They would be toast even using computer guided small arms mounted on the hull. Their own velocity would kill them when hitting a small projectile.

One of the top reasons I dropped them from my game.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

One of the top reasons I dropped them from my game.

Why would you drop them?

 

[sideranautae]

One of the top reasons I dropped them from my game.

Why would you drop them?

I dropped non-nuke missiles for the reasons I outlined. Nukes for similar reasons.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

One of the top reasons I dropped them from my game.

Why would you drop them?

I dropped non-nuke missiles for the reasons I outlined. Nukes for similar reasons.

But why though? Why is that your reason?

 

[sideranautae]

I dropped non-nuke missiles for the reasons I outlined. Nukes for similar reasons.

But why though? Why is that your reason?

Reread the reasons I gave until you understand the plain English...

 

[wbnc]

Missiles are not completely impractical.



Getting a guided warhead within 200 meters of a target is not that hard to do, missiles in MgT are thrust 10 projectiles which means they can execute maneuvers that modern missiles cant. Since it makes some sense that a Starship mounted missile uses a gravity type drive they are fully capable of chasing down and striking a starship directly, or at the very least getting within 100 meters of the target.

A vehicle launched AGM-114 Hellfire can penetrate 1500mm of solid steel., a Harpoon Ant-ship missile carries a 221kg warhead.

A starship missile is larger than a Hellfire, based on volume of the missile system..


a missile fired from 50,000 Km ( range band distant) will hit it's target in one hour, so thats 50,000 KPH....so you can infer that Traveller missiles are using gravitics for drive systems.

 

[phavoc]

I dropped non-nuke missiles for the reasons I outlined. Nukes for similar reasons.

But why though? Why is that your reason?

Reread the reasons I gave until you understand the plain English...

He dropped them because he thought they weren't powerful enough. He thinks kinetic energy weapons would be superior.

The issue I have with that logic is you are circumventing standard logic. A kinetic energy kill requires a direct hit, an area effect weapon just requires you get close enough. I see no problem in applying real-world physics to the game, but you shouldn't pick and choose what laws of physics you adopt.

First off, in the real world all intercepting missiles are detonation-type weapons. When the fuze detects the missile (or shell) getting close enough it detonates. Nobody makes direct contact weapons because if you miss by a meter, you miss by a kilometer. You have better odds detonating and throwing a bunch of shit at your target to damage or destroy it.

Secondly, in the real world we have to deal with things like velocity and vectors. Traveller doesn't. In the real world your missile might not be able to overtake your target - assuming you get lucky enough on your vector that an intercept is possible in the first place. And ships can jink at the last moment. Since Traveller uses Newtonian movement, you have to account for changes in your velocity. That makes missile combat more problematic, especially since they are relatively low velocity weapons.

Also, a nuke allows you an opportunity to do radiation damage, which normal kinetic energy missiles do not. One of the potential downfalls of nukes though is the nuclear screen, which can make your nuke weapons just a bunch of expensive pieces of flotsam. Which is why there are standoff type missiles.

Using the website you mentioned at the beginning (cool find by the way), 1 second of output from an average commercial nuclear power reactor (850 MW) is equal to 203kg of TNT. A W48 155mm nuclear artillery shell is .072 kilotons worth of explosive goodness. Assuming a Traveller laser is firing in the megajoule range, a beam laser does 1d6 damage with the explosive equivalent of 203kg of TNT. A nuclear warhead like the W48 on the tip of a missle does 354 times that, plus there is the radiation factor.

So yeah, you really should be concerned about a nuke detonating 50m off the port bow. IF you can hit a target with a nuke it should be doing a LOT more damage. Unless I got my numbers wrong...

 

[phavoc]

a missile fired from 50,000 Km ( range band distant) will hit it's target in one hour, so thats 50,000 KPH....so you can infer that Traveller missiles are using gravitics for drive systems.

Houston, we have a continuity problem here. According to HG, missiles are TL-6 weapons, which means they HAVE to be using reaction style drives. Maneuver drives aren't available until TL-9, and at TL-8 they would be too big (and expensive) to fit inside a standard missile.

I would assume that "modern" Traveller missiles are TL-9 creations, which would make total sense to me. But the official TL of missiles makes that assumption officially incorrect. I'm happy to ignore the TL-6 rating however.

 

[wbnc]

a missile fired from 50,000 Km ( range band distant) will hit it's target in one hour, so thats 50,000 KPH....so you can infer that Traveller missiles are using gravitics for drive systems.

Houston, we have a continuity problem here. According to HG, missiles are TL-6 weapons, which means they HAVE to be using reaction style drives. Maneuver drives aren't available until TL-9, and at TL-8 they would be too big (and expensive) to fit inside a standard missile.

I would assume that "modern" Traveller missiles are TL-9 creations, which would make total sense to me. But the official TL of missiles makes that assumption officially incorrect. I'm happy to ignore the TL-6 rating however.

If I remember correctly that tech level is when a functional starship grade missile first becomes available, not the standard tech level of a Missile in current use.

I believe that the TL-6 is the tech level missiles would be reaction drive missiles, with gravitic missiles replacing them as soon as they are available. Also I do believe, the game stats and combat rules assume your using the imperial standard level of tech which would allow for a gravitic drive missile to be the standard for most military fleets.

 

[phavoc]

By the rules, the TL of any system or weapon is when it first becomes "standard". You can purchase it one TL earlier if you are willing to pay the penalties (size and cost), and you can purchase them later (up to 3 TL's), which gets you discounts (and in some instances you get to add in the additional features like longer range, accuracy, etc).

I think that this is another concept that slipped by. I did go back and check the HG manual and maneuver drives start at TL-7, so, in theory, I guess you could slip one in a standard TL-6 missile. However in the same paragraph it states buying it one TL earlier means that it costs 50% more and it's twice as large. So I will chalk that one up to a rule miss.

Speaking of logical holes, it's interesting that missiles are limited to 10G's, but yet you can build a smaller ship that can get up to 16G's. Makes you wonder why missiles don't have a higher power/mass ratio.

 

[wbnc]

Speaking of logical holes, it's interesting that missiles are limited to 10G's, but yet you can build a smaller ship that can get up to 16G's. Makes you wonder why missiles don't have a higher power/mass ratio.

Longer range, high speed missiles do exist, (High Guard Pg48)
which have thrust 15, and an endurance of 7 turns.

 

[Reynard]

Striker let you build missiles. You can conjecture space missile performance by the surface missile rules there and yes you can make missiles more powerful and faster but at increasing expense and, get this, they get larger thereby needing bigger launchers. Space borne missiles must fit a standard launcher. It must be a certain size so anything you do to speed, power or special features must lose other features to compensate. That's why there are torpedoes. Just a bigger missile.

The space borne nuke isn't just a 1950s atomic bomb, it's using the crude power of a large compact blast to defeat ship armor. The TL represents this crude mechanics for the bomb but it still needs space borne propulsion and targeting to work as a space weapon. It needs to be adjusted as an anti-ship weapon so it makes sense it's a more sophisticated shape charge atomic bomb.

 

[EvilDM]

That site also has a section about the Traveller Meson Gun together with the oter special/relativistic weapons.

 

[phavoc]

Striker let you build missiles. You can conjecture space missile performance by the surface missile rules there and yes you can make missiles more powerful and faster but at increasing expense and, get this, they get larger thereby needing bigger launchers. Space borne missiles must fit a standard launcher. It must be a certain size so anything you do to speed, power or special features must lose other features to compensate. That's why there are torpedoes. Just a bigger missile.

Yes, it did. Special Supplement 3 - Missiles did as well. You could tinker with warhead, drives, duration, etc. It was, like most classic Traveller stuff, heavily table-based. But it didn't really get into building bigger missile bodies, so you were constrained by the size available to you in a standard missile.

Standardization is a requirement for any sort of weapons system that expects you to stop off anywhere for a refill. But torpedo's (or capital missiles) don't scale properly for their size when compared to a missile. A Torpedo is 30 times the size (1/12 vs 2.5 dtons) of a missile, but do NOT do proportionally more damage.

The space borne nuke isn't just a 1950s atomic bomb, it's using the crude power of a large compact blast to defeat ship armor. The TL represents this crude mechanics for the bomb but it still needs space borne propulsion and targeting to work as a space weapon. It needs to be adjusted as an anti-ship weapon so it makes sense it's a more sophisticated shape charge atomic bomb.

I would think that future tech would allow for smaller warheads as you get better with electronics and shielding, but as far as I remember my physics, the amount of radioactives you need to cause a nuclear reaction to go critical is a fixed constant. Trav nukes are supposed to be pretty clean compared to current nukes, which actually works against you in space unless you can convert the energy to x-rays. If anything you'd want increased radiation to provide more damage to crew.

A shaped atomic bomb blast is, from what I understand, possible, though not in the same way say a HEAP round works. The Orion program used a similar concept to provide propulsion in a more economic way (spherical detonations would waste a lot of energy). The only issue I would have in regards to that is a shaped explosion more or less requires a direct hit. Which is counter to what we see today in missiles. A cone-shape would be a reasonable trade-off of all the potentials.

That site also has a section about the Traveller Meson Gun together with the oter special/relativistic weapons.

Yes, it sure did. I enjoyed the breakdown comparison of the various 'booms', as well as the explanations on the physics behind some forms of weaponry.

 

[sideranautae]

Getting a guided warhead within 200 meters of a target is not that hard to do, missiles in MgT are thrust 10 projectiles which means they can execute maneuvers that modern missiles cant.

Getting it there (within 200 meters) in space at those very low speeds against super computer aimed lasers would be impossible. Also against computer aimed kinetic kill weapon counter measures. The maneuverability in space vs. atmosphere is EXTREMELY degraded. Missiles are VERY soon to be made obsolete against ships in real life because of the same tech. I'm willing to have TL's >7 actually be greater...

Heck, I'm even hand waiving the impossible Δv of these TL 6-7 missiles in this argument. If I put that in, the missiles are impossible as written anyway.

 

[Reynard]

And yet, in the Traveller Universe, ship lasers do miss and missiles do reach their target. I don't remember any rule saying missiles are auto-kills by lasers. In Traveller, our real world impossibilities are fun and exciting as they work and all that hand waving just means the game table remains cooler.

 

[sideranautae]

And yet, in the Traveller Universe, ship lasers do miss and missiles do reach their target.

Correct. And in the trav universe electronics & computers are lower TL that today. :roll: I have corrected the rules to reflect TL's above 7 for those items.

I don't remember any rule saying missiles are auto-kills by lasers.

CRB rule on star ship weapons vs. vehicle/personal sized targets. Insta kill.

 

[Reynard]

Yet a moment earlier you say ships have supercomputers to make missing impossible. Now they suck? Which is it?

For the second statement, we have been discussing ship's weapons, lasers and missiles. How does suddenly referencing vehicles and people equate to the topic? Are ships throwing grav cars and crew members at each other?