Ship Combat, Armour, and Damage.
- Thread starter peelseel2
- Start date
dreamingbadger
Mongoose
Rex said:
right ... I assume they would have no kinetic transfer...
Any contact warhead would have some kinetic transfer, though in the case of nukes, it would be negligible.
One thing that strikes me as odd is that nukes only do 2d6 damage. I realize that without an atmosphere to create a blast effect, they aren't as deadly, but a nuke going off a short distance from the hull is going to create a storm of x-rays that will boil away armor and cause massive damage.
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3x.html#nuke
One thing that strikes me as odd is that nukes only do 2d6 damage. I realize that without an atmosphere to create a blast effect, they aren't as deadly, but a nuke going off a short distance from the hull is going to create a storm of x-rays that will boil away armor and cause massive damage.
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3x.html#nuke
dreamingbadger
Mongoose
apoc527 said:
I think that's my point many seeking miss-iles are exactly that, they don't contact the target directly...
in the case of a nuke it does feel low , unless you are assuming a very low yield nuke or a very high probability of hitting you maximise the chance of hitting something.
Possible nuke house rule to simulate the reality of the nastiness of them going off close to the hull of the target:
Nukes receive 2xEffect in bonus damage calculated from their required to hit roll. I.e. if a nuclear missile is fired such that it hits on a 6+, then rolling a twelve will provide Effect 6x2 = 12 bonus damage.
Better yet, make the multiplier equal to the number of dice rolled, so a nuclear torpedo will be REALLY painful (Effect x6 I believe).
Nukes receive 2xEffect in bonus damage calculated from their required to hit roll. I.e. if a nuclear missile is fired such that it hits on a 6+, then rolling a twelve will provide Effect 6x2 = 12 bonus damage.
Better yet, make the multiplier equal to the number of dice rolled, so a nuclear torpedo will be REALLY painful (Effect x6 I believe).
Hmm, I may have read a few things wrong there above but am I correct in assuming folks think a Nuke, has no Kinetic Shockwave unless IN an atmosphere?
While there won't be the issues with Over Pressure, I can assure you, there is Impact. It's not just Bright Light and Radiation. Force Moves all that Air away in an atmosphere. That same Force is present without an Atmosphere.
Now as far as Kinetic Transfer from the Missile hitting it. Probably a non factor when dealing with the energy release of modern nukes. While certainly the limits are going to be more confined (as the link points out) to a Km or less, that's a KM diameter SPHERE. That's a LOT of area.
Now scale up to the type of Nuke you would have, is a setting with workable fusion technology, and you can get really BIG yields out of itty bitty objects. After all an FGMP is essentially, a man Portable Directed Nuke.
Now, take all that Nuke "oomph", and toss THAT, behind a bomb pumped Laser Warhead.
Ouchies methinks.
~Rex
While there won't be the issues with Over Pressure, I can assure you, there is Impact. It's not just Bright Light and Radiation. Force Moves all that Air away in an atmosphere. That same Force is present without an Atmosphere.
Now as far as Kinetic Transfer from the Missile hitting it. Probably a non factor when dealing with the energy release of modern nukes. While certainly the limits are going to be more confined (as the link points out) to a Km or less, that's a KM diameter SPHERE. That's a LOT of area.
Now scale up to the type of Nuke you would have, is a setting with workable fusion technology, and you can get really BIG yields out of itty bitty objects. After all an FGMP is essentially, a man Portable Directed Nuke.
Now, take all that Nuke "oomph", and toss THAT, behind a bomb pumped Laser Warhead.
Ouchies methinks.
~Rex
dreamingbadger
Mongoose
Rex said:
right .. i think the earlier house rule, damage + velocity/5 was the thing i was pointing out, that assumes that the warhead/vehicle hits the target, most modern weapons don't hit they explode to damage the target at some specifed distance form the target. if they don't actually hit the target physically then you shouldn't get the velocity (any fraction thereof as damage)
Rikki Tikki Traveller
Cosmic Mongoose
Classic Traveller used 1d6x1d6 for Nuke Damage.
That gives you from 1 to 36 damage from a single turret mounted weapon. That might give you want you want.
That gives you from 1 to 36 damage from a single turret mounted weapon. That might give you want you want.
dreamingbadger
Mongoose
Rex said:
yes a laser could be used to propel things, but you can't make the laser beam "faster" by putting it on a moving platform rule 101 says "thou shalt not add thy speed to the speed of light".
The nuke expands at light speed, even if you did and a missile had run its ten turns at a full 10g's, it still not be moving fast enough to make any difference (proportionally) unless the physical mass of the weapon slammed into the ship, which has just been vaporised by the nuke and is part of the expanding sphere, already moving at the speed of light so my missiles starting speed is not relevant.
The same is true to a lesser extent of a conventional warhead in a missile, the fragments are being propelled by the force of the explosion, already much faster than the orginal acceleration.
EDIT
sorry Rex i misread your post, i still think the actual answer is no though
if the ship is moving at 5g and hits the blast of a nuke, it still not proportinally going to make much difference unless itis moving at a fair clip of C, at most speeds they might as well be standing still.dreamingbadger said:Rex said:
yes a laser could be used to propel things, but you can't make the laser beam "faster" by putting it on a moving platform rule 101 says "thou shalt not add thy speed to the speed of light".
The nuke expands at light speed, even if you did and a missile had run its ten turns at a full 10g's, it still not be moving fast enough to make any difference (proportionally) unless the physical mass of the weapon slammed into the ship, which has just been vaporised by the nuke and is part of the expanding sphere, already moving at the speed of light so my missiles starting speed is not relevant.
The same is true to a lesser extent of a conventional warhead in a missile, the fragments are being propelled by the force of the explosion, already much faster than the orginal acceleration.
EDIT
sorry Rex i misread your post, i still think the actual answer is no though
But, math speaking, if two objects collide head to head at light speed?
heh. Space is fun. One of my favorite Space Chases deal an issue like this really (Startide Rising, David Brin, Oxywater Atmospher purged from the fleeing Terran ship in the front of pursuit, moving at a good clip of C).
Hmm, makes me want to run an Uplift game for awhile.
~Rex
dreamingbadger
Mongoose
then it will hurt...Rex said:
but the example here is closer to the ship travelling at 10,000km per hour, the sphere of energy from the nuke is expanding at 1,079,000,000km per hour (ish)... for every point of damage the nuke does , the ships speed will add 1/107900th of a point... (math is not my strong suit)
Mongoose Gar said:
I came late to this discussion, but..
What about reducing Armor as Hull is reduced (which would seem realistic). Armor 4, Hull 16 for example. Every 4 points of Hull damage would reduce Armor by 1 point (so that Armor reaches 0 as Hull reaches 0). Armor 4, Hull 4. Every point of Hull reduced also reduces Armor by 1.
This of course would only work with weapons that COULD cause hull damage vs. the armor value. It wouldn't help if the weapon couldn't penetrate the armor in the first place. But, I'm in the camp that believes some weapons shouldn't be able to penetrate some armors at all.
It would create the realism of a battered ship having a reduced armor value.
I'm not a MGT rules master, so if something like this is already in the rules don't slap me too hard.
Rex said:
Not quite, there's no such thing as "Force" in a nuclear explosion. The shockwave is created when the atmosphere absorbs the massive amounts of EM radiation from the nuclear release of energy. Most of the EM radiation is in the form of x-rays and a bit of gamma rays. The absorption by the molecules of the atmosphere causes the temperature, and thus volume, of the gas to expand rapidly--that creates your shockwave, which is the same thing as overpressure I think. (That's my understanding anyway, and I'm no physics guy.)
In space, without an atmosphere, there is no shockwave (special effects of most movies notwithstanding), but there would nonetheless be an incredible effect on any nearby matter that absorbs all those x-rays!
The kinetic transfer only matters if the missile directly impacts the target. And then, yes, it would be a minimal amount of energy compared to the nuke going off more or less in contact with your ship.
Definitely.
Rikki Tikki Traveller said:
Perfect! This makes me think about 2d6xEffect for damage simply to use the Effect rule (having been dealing with Ordinary, Good, and Amazing successes for years now with my favorite system, it's only natural for me to gravitate towards uses of the Effect mechanic).
This means Nukes could do between 2 and 12x6=72 damage in a single hit on a maximum Effect hit.
Yes, that seems crazy nasty but remember that given the way missiles work, there's never any real DMs to the roll and the base target number depends in the first place on the Effect of the Gunner check. Thus, you could only ever get Effect 6 if you first roll an Effect 6+ Gunner check followed by a 12 on the missile to hit roll. That's unusual to say the least and very accurately represents a nuke going off in your face. This is also why nuclear dampers are so important...
dreamingbadger
Mongoose
I would roll once to hit for all the direct fire weapons in a turret, but I would roll the damage individually.
dreamingbadger said:
My default is a Kinetic Kill weapon, in that there is far more energy potential in the kinetic strike than there will ever be in a conventional explosive warhead. Nukes on the other hand give you a near miss option.... (Hey, how about a +1 or so bonus to hit because of it?)
Side note in CT's special missile supplement every missile got +1 hit per 3g of velocity at impact.
dreamingbadger
Mongoose
Infojunky said:
Okay so if they are Hit-tiles
then that explains the small "difference" in damage between conventional and nuclear weapons...
