What TL For Anti Matter Torpedoes? (New Sub Topic)

Solomani666

Mongoose
At what tech level can you build antimatter torpedoes?

How much damage do they do considering that they are uneffected by nuclear dampers.


NEW SUB TOPIC:


Feasibility Question:

Assuming that the reason that nuke missles and torps only do 2d6 and 6d6 damage respectively is that they detonate some distance away from the ships hull. I can reach no other conclusion than this simply because a 100 ton scout ship can usually survive 2 nuclear torpedo attacks. (Note: I did not say 'and function afterwards'!)

Given the above assumption:

At TL 16 would a suicide drone such as the one described in Traders and Gunboats be feasible with an anti-matter warhead instead of the warhead listed?

Since the drone penetrates (or at minimum impacts the enemy hull) how much damage would such a weapon do?

The drone will be a needle configuration with an armor value of 16.

The plan is to have the drone guided by an AI or proto-AI. (I'll tell you the rest of this story later!)

Please answer in 'game terms', dice of damage, chance of impact, etc.

The drones will not be too common of an item. A frigate or destroyer might only carry 2, a mated pair. (More on that later!)

Please discard any notions of 'game balance' before answering. After all it's not like they have 'star triggers' or anything!

Please try to keep answers on topic until we have a few direct answers addressing the new topic.

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Black globes would still work against them

while you might get a 1000 to 1 increase in energy release
a nuke warhead does not need the kind of containment that antimatter will need
so your 1oz of antimatter does the job of 1000 oz U238
the containment for the antimatter takes up the all that extra space

you also have a weapon that is way more unstable than any other
and if it has any malfunction of it's containment the weapon blows up
 
At what tech level can you build antimatter torpedoes?

Not specified.

Best guess? According to High Guard:

"Antimatter plants......are only available from TL 17"

Whilst you might argue that nuclear bombs were created before nuclear power plants were in use, I would say that:
(a) it wasn't a full TL before
(b) Weaponised antimatter is not something to screw around with until you have COMPLETELY mastered the associated physics and engineering.

I remember a thread discussing this, and the suggestion was that the torpedos might well be stored 'dry', and that they be charged from a suitable store (which, if you've got the bloody stuff on board anyway, might as well be the primary power plant) as they are drawn from the magazine immediately before firing.


Damage? Hmm. Not a clue. It would be a Marvin-Style "Earthshattering Kaboom", but precisely what it would do? Not sure. Since a torpedo has a 2.5 dTon volume, there is pretty much no practical limit - one gramme of antimatter has an energy output in the 40 Kilotonne range. If you could pack even half a dTon of the torp with anti-hydrogen, that's a 40 GigaTonne bomb, or about 400 times more potent than the Tzar Bomba.

Of course, you would never have that much stuff sloshing about - it's dangerous and egregiously expensive to manufacture.

Compromise guess? Call it half again the yield of a nuke, in the same way a nuke is half again the yield of a conventional weapon. So 9D6.
 
Alien Module 3: Darrians has antimatter torpedoes at TL 17. Not needing the same as an antimatter plant I could see one being available at TL 16.
 
I agree, 50% to 100% more than a conventional nuclear warhead seems reasonable. WITH a radiation hit (or 2).

Handling antimatter is relatively easy using magnetic fields. If you can contain a fusion reaction, containing an anti-fusion reaction should be a relatively simple engineering problem (reverse the polarity). Of course it isn't really that simple, but by TL16+, it should be.

The biggest thing stopping antimatter warheads is not containment or handling, it is the availability of antimatter. The ability to produce antimatter reliably in any decent quantity would be an engineering nightmare, even with gravitics. THAT is what delays antimatter PPs to TL17, the ability to produce the fuel.

Of course, if you have a planetary system like Shionthy with bits of the stuff just floating around... maybe it isn't so hard.

Explaining how clumps of antimatter could still be floating around in a system with all that normal matter is an entirely separate issue of disbelief.
 
Solomani666 said:
At what tech level can you build antimatter torpedoes?

How much damage do they do considering that they are uneffected by nuclear dampers.

I don't have 'em in my MGT game but in MegaTraveller I think they came in at TL 17. iirc
 
barnest2 said:
As long as he is made of wood (and therefore floats like a duck)
.......
BURN HER!!!... HIM!!!!

ducky.gif
 
I predict thread deletion by the OP, and I cannot really blame him. While that would be unconstructive, the fault is not entirely his - some individuals seem to be deliberately derailing his threads.

I would request that everyone involved grows up. S666 does not need to delete threads, and other people do not need to keep baiting him. If they have a problem with what he does, they can surely simply not post to his threads.

If people stick to the topic when he asks questions, then the "problem" doesn't exist at all. If nobody responds to his questions for fear of deletion then he will most likely stop asking them here, and the "problem" is solved. However, the most immature option is that people keep responding off-topic and the OP continues to delete the topics as a result, which means the "problem" will not go away.

It seems that the options most conducive to good discussion and less hackle-raising is either to stay on topic, or don't post to the thread.
 
No-one was baiting here. Someone made (what seemed like) an absurd suggestion on the TL of anit-matter torpedoes. So me and DFW made a couple of jokes. It happens. His question was answered already, so it makes little difference.
I count 6 on topic posts, out of, I think, 10. Several of them were quite detailed, going into damage, possible design ideas, and reasons not too use them.
So man up, and stop being a whiner.
 
Blix said:
I predict thread deletion by the OP, and I cannot really blame him. While that would be unconstructive, the fault is not entirely his - some individuals seem to be deliberately derailing his threads.

Chill dude.

The question has been answered to the best of our abilities. Just having some fun.

If YOU have additional data on the antimatter torps. Post.
 
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