Nukes

iltharanos

Mongoose
I just recently bought the 2nd ed B5 game and have yet to find any rules regarding nukes (besides the obvious plot device). Are there rules for nukes in ship to ship combat or whatnot in any of the new 2nd ed ship books (or the main book that i somehow missed)?
 
if one goes off at close range your dead, your ships dead, even a shadow ship is dead, its a nuke its suitably insane to be

Not Suitable for Combat
 
That's what I figured ... I guess they did not put any specific game info about nukes. Granted it wouldn't make for a very interesting space battle (game-wise), but why don't more of the species in B5 use nukes as ship-to-ship weapons given their deadliness (from several episodes on the t.v. show)?

Sure you have issues with radiation, so you wouldn't be likely to use it near any of your population centers ... but if you're invading an enemy's territory or dealing with a tough opponent, why not? Particularly what comes to mind is the Earth-Minbari war. We saw how effective the nukes in the asteroid field were against the Minbari flagship ... why not put multiple nukes on each of your small fighters and have them approach to close range and let loose? Sure you'll lose a lot of fighters against the Minbari, but if even one nuke from one fighter gets to close range with the Minbari capital ship ... buh-bye. Sounds like a fair trade off to me, you lose a squadron or three and get to kill a Minbari capital ship.

What do you all think?
 
There's no good reason not to nuke your way to victory in space- It's a big, empty, radiation- drenched environment anyway, so what's to ruin, apart from the enemy? Particularly when your opponents are mindless enough to use big, clumsy, very expensive ships that cost thousands of times more than what you need to take them out with.
Large, unshielded starships in a nuclear environment are playing to lose; it's as simple as that. Going atomic would quite literally kill off an extremely large part of the feel of the game. It wouldn't be Babylon 5 any more.
 
I'm guessing nukes would be in the same category as mass drivers - banned weapons that would draw a great deal of condemnation from every other race if used in warfare, especially on a civilian target.

Hmm. Game stat wise, Offence would need to be in the region of 200ish to do what it did in the series, and that's assuming the Shadow bioarmour isn't ready for it. Off the top of my head:

Nuke 'Em!
Order Type: Offensive
Skill Check: Gunnery (DC20) or Operations (systems)(DC20)
Arc: Any one or Special
This order has two forms. The Gunnery form is used if the Nukes are being delivered using a missile launcher (few modern ships use missiles); the Operations form is used if the Nukes have been placed as a booby trap in convenient asteroids.

Success: The nuke explodes near the target vessel. The target vessel suffers an attack with 1d8x50 Offence. Any vessels in the close range band relative to the target also take an attack with offence of 1d20x10.

Failure: The nuke explodes far from the enemy ship. All ships in the close range band relative to the target suffer an attack with offence of 1d20x10.
 
Slightly Norse John said:
Large, unshielded starships in a nuclear environment are playing to lose; it's as simple as that. Going atomic would quite literally kill off an extremely large part of the feel of the game. It wouldn't be Babylon 5 any more.

Yeah, true enough ... I suppose it's more of a sacrifice for the sake of dramatic effectiveness that nukes aren't standard issue, along the same vein as how "heroes" don't immediately get shot and killed in movies and instead are placed in escapable situations. :)

Mongoose Gar said:
I'm guessing nukes would be in the same category as mass drivers - banned weapons that would draw a great deal of condemnation from every other race if used in warfare, especially on a civilian target.

This sounds like a good in-game explanation for their lack of standard use, since I can already see several of my players exploiting the use of nukes ("Yeah, so I equip all of my thunderbolts with 6 nukes each.")

Hmm. Game stat wise, Offence would need to be in the region of 200ish to do what it did in the series, and that's assuming the Shadow bioarmour isn't ready for it. Off the top of my head:

Nuke 'Em!
Order Type: Offensive
Skill Check: Gunnery (DC20) or Operations (systems)(DC20)
Arc: Any one or Special
This order has two forms. The Gunnery form is used if the Nukes are being delivered using a missile launcher (few modern ships use missiles); the Operations form is used if the Nukes have been placed as a booby trap in convenient asteroids.

Success: The nuke explodes near the target vessel. The target vessel suffers an attack with 1d8x50 Offence. Any vessels in the close range band relative to the target also take an attack with offence of 1d20x10.

Failure: The nuke explodes far from the enemy ship. All ships in the close range band relative to the target suffer an attack with offence of 1d20x10.

Sweet. It also stands to reason that any race with interceptors would be able to take out any nuclear missiles as per normal incoming fire (non-beam), so this particular use as a booby trap gives me something solid in the event that my players get their hands on a nuke. Thanks a bunch!
 
Hmm - how's this for some radical extramapolating. The development of nuclear weapons is one of the most common causes for a race blowing itself to extinction. Therefore, when the Vorlons were manipulating other races, they implanted cultural suggestions warning them off nuclear weapons. However, as Humans were only lightly touched by the Vorlons until recently (we got out teep upgrade much much later than anyone else), the cultural conditioning wasn't as strong, hence our willingness to use them.

This theory is obviously true, as Sheridan turns to another race who weren't touched by the Vorlons at all to get his bombs - the Gaim.
 
also there is the slight point that nukes are big slow and easy to spot when switched on, (at least ones that are going to give enough bang while outside) the minute a nuke is on its way i imagine any race is going to have a radiological weapon alarm go off (ala battlestar galactica) then that ship gets toasted first, that missiles gets shot down, so far everytime sheridan used them in the series it wasnt possible to deliver them by missile/ship etc they were being left as mines and activated by remote,

sides humans care about their pilots (and their furies) they arnt going to put a giant BLAST ME FIRST sign on them, in fact the only time a 'small' nuke is used is the handheld device in thirdapace but that is going to be a really really small bomb and only useful if its inside something,

the only nuke we get to see upclose are the person sized ones the gaim handover for b5, bombs that big do not good missiles make
 
Unfortunately, the characteristics of nuclear weapons change drastically in the vacuum of space. This is one of the things the show got Very Wrong.

First, blast disappears completely without an atmosphere. This means there's no shockwave, which typically accounts for 40%-60% of a weapon's total energy.

Second, thermal radiation also disappears. There is no air to absorb the high frequency radiation and convert it to heat. Thermal radiation typically accounts for 30%-50% of a weapon's total energy.

Third, because there is no atmosphere to attenuate the radiation, it travels much further and diminishes only in proportion (inverse square) to the distance from the detonation.

What you essentially end up with is a lot of gamma rays and neutrons, for which we can assume most ships, especially those of the First Ones, have a high degree of shielding. No BOOM. No fire.

Sorry to disappoint.
 
Sorry to disappoint.

Don't worry...you didn't. This is science fiction, and space explosions are WAY cooler when they don't get bogged down by so much reality. :wink:

As for rules for nukes...check page 57 of the Shipbuilder's Manual under Energic Trauma Weaponry.

You'd think I'd forget nukes? Bah...I love big booms.

-Bry
 
Mongoose Steele said:
Don't worry...you didn't. This is science fiction, and space explosions are WAY cooler when they don't get bogged down by so much reality. :wink:
That's fair, though I could rebut with the fact that B5 is supposed to be grounded in reality to a far greater degree than most science fiction. Anyways, hopefully people will at least find it marginally interesting to learn that nukes behave so differently in space. Be well.
 
Actually, chulbert might have found the answer to the problem of the low use of nukes: they don't work well in space.

As I recall, nukes were used only 3 times on the show.

Za'h'dum: In atmosphere, no problem.

Thirdspace: Maybe there was an atmosphere in the ship or the matter in the structure was sufficient.

In the Beginning: That one is harder. Maybe the mater in the asteroids somehow helped. Mayby a "Tactical Nuke" contains something like a huge amount of gas to react with the radiation. That would make them huge (they certainly don't look small on the asteroids) and heavy and therefore impractical as missile heads.

That way, nukes are still cool and can make big booms but just in some very specific situations.
 
Ahh, Shipbuilder's manual for nuke rules, I don't have that book ... yet.

Nice, I did not realize the drastic differences between nuke in an atmosphere and nuke in a vacuum. Such a difference would definitely account for why it's not used by any of the major races with any regularity.
 
Mongoose Gar said:
They also had nukes at Coriana 6, IIRC, which has the same problem as 'In The Beginning'.

There's actually no problem.

The nukes were attached to asteroids, a significant portion of which gets vapourised by the blast - there's you expanding ball of plasma straight off...

Besides, these are also fusion devices - whose damage potential is mostly caused by the plasma they fuse which then, funnily enough becomes a big expanding ball of plasma...
 
chulbert said:
Unfortunately, the characteristics of nuclear weapons change drastically in the vacuum of space. This is one of the things the show got Very Wrong.

Less wrong than you think...

chulbert said:
First, blast disappears completely without an atmosphere. This means there's no shockwave, which typically accounts for 40%-60% of a weapon's total energy.

Second, thermal radiation also disappears. There is no air to absorb the high frequency radiation and convert it to heat. Thermal radiation typically accounts for 30%-50% of a weapon's total energy.

You're kinda missing the point here. The energy does not just disappear. That's a blatent breach of the laws of thermodynamics and that CAN'T happen.

The two cases you cite above are the SAME THING. The shockwave in an atmospheric detonation is caused by the rapid heating of the media. Now, without an intervening media, you get these effects at the first media encountered instead... That would be the hull of the nearby ships.

chulbert said:
Third, because there is no atmosphere to attenuate the radiation, it travels much further and diminishes only in proportion (inverse square) to the distance from the detonation.

And here you've provided your own petard to be hoist upon...

Basically, these effects actually travel further (radiation isn't just nasty gamma rays and the like), so the blast of energy (rather than a medium transmitted shockwave) has a further reach, and you get the primary effects you'd get from an atmospheric detonation much further out...

chulbert said:
What you essentially end up with is a lot of gamma rays and neutrons, for which we can assume most ships, especially those of the First Ones, have a high degree of shielding. No BOOM. No fire.

Sorry to disappoint.

Erm no (see above)
 
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