Personal scale to Ship scale conversion

[FentonGib]

Maybe I've missed it, but is there a conversion scale for personal weapons to ship scale? Though any player hit by a starship weapon would die horribly and quickly, some personal weapons are quite damaging, and could feasibly damage ships if used.

For example if players attached a Portable Nuke (10d6 damage) on an enemy ship they want to sabotage, how much would that relate to as starship-scale damage?

Thanx

 

[FentonGib]

Appendum: just noticed it says that you multiply ship weapons by 50 to get the damage on a personal scale, but how about the reverse? I'd expect a Portable Nuke should be able to damage a ship structurally, although if divided by 50 it'd do a max of 1 damage.

 

[simonh]

Appendum: just noticed it says that you multiply ship weapons by 50 to get the damage on a personal scale, but how about the reverse? I'd expect a Portable Nuke should be able to damage a ship structurally, although if divided by 50 it'd do a max of 1 damage.

You could use the rules for nuclear weapons in ship-to-ship combat as a guideline.

I doubt the 10d6 damage for a portable nuke is for a direct hit, zero metres from the warhead at detonation, but I don't have the rules handy. I'd have thought that would be infinite damage at character scale. However it would make sense for targets somewhere within a not-quite-survivable-but-almost blast radius.

Simon Hibbs

 

[DFW]

I doubt the 10d6 damage for a portable nuke is for a direct hit, zero metres from the warhead at detonation, but I don't have the rules handy. I'd have thought that would be infinite damage at character scale. However it would make sense for targets somewhere within a not-quite-survivable-but-almost blast radius.

Simon Hibbs

"The smallest possible bomb-like object would be a single critical mass of plutonium (or U-233) at maximum density under normal conditions. An unreflected spherical alpha-phase critical mass of Pu-239 weighs 10.5 kg and is 10.1 cm across.

A single critical mass cannot cause an explosion however since it does not cause fission multiplication, somewhat more than a critical mass is required for that. But it does not take much more than a single critical mass to cause significant explosions. As little an excess as 10% (1.1 critical masses) can produce explosions of 10-20 tons. This low yield seems trivial compared to weapons with yields in the kilotons or megatons, but it is actually far more dangerous than conventional explosives of equivalent yield due to the intense radiation emitted. A 20 ton fission explosion, for example, produces a very dangerous 500 rem radiation exposure at 400 meters from burst point, and a 100% lethal 1350 rem exposure at 300 meters. A yield of 10-20 tons is also equal to the yield of the lowest yield nuclear warhead ever deployed by the US -- the W-54 used in the Davy Crockett recoilless rifle.

A mere 1.2 critical masses can produce explosive yield of 100 tons, and 1.35 critical masses can reach 250 tons. At this point a nation with sophisticated weapons technology can employ fusion boosting to raise the yield well into the kiloton range without requiring additional fissile material."

Tons = equivalent tons of TNT.

http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/News/DoSuitcaseNukesExist.html