Re: [GZG] A Heavy Missile Question

["john tailby" <John_Tailby@xxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "david smith" <bifsmith207@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> > I always think of heavy missile warheads as being bomb-pumped laser that 
> > fire from a few hundred km away. If you picture it the same way, then 
> > "no."
> >
> > If on the other hand you picture a missile warhead as being, oh, a sticky 
> > bomb or a nano swarm or something else that makes physical contact with 
> > the target, then "yes". Pick whatever PSB gives the result you want.
>
> I always thought of MT missiles as a large nuke (50 to 100 MT range, afyer 
> all the ruskies did detonate a 50 mt bomb once and using the layered 
> warhead there is no limit on the size possible). The dammage was due to 
> the effects of the explosion itself (did post a liink once to the effect 
> of a nuclear detonation in space).
>
> Of course, this raises the effect of a MT missile being able to effect 
> more than  one target at once, ut it also allows a bomb pumped x-ray laser 
> missilewarhead varient for the MT missile. I would propose some vareint of 
> the MKP packs as used by the KV to represent the armour piercing effect of 
> the lasers (after all, a x-ray laser with the energy of a nuke behind it 
> would definately be counted as having enough energy to go through any 
> armour you care to place).
>
> How about this.
> MT missile laser warhead.
>
> When gets within 6MU of target, detonates firing a hegehog pattern of 
> x-ray lasers in the front arc.
>
> Targeted ship rolls a D6. On a 1, the lasers miss. On 2-5, take a K4 hit 
> (including reroll). On a 6, take 2x K4 hits (including rerolls).
>
> Cost=? (no idea).
>
> Somebody care to run average dammage Vs standard MT missiles? I think this 
> would be more powerfull than a normal warhead, but how much would determin 
> the tweeking required. Or we could keep it this powerful, after all, with 
> the old ship design rules, the MT missiles were a lot more deadly than at 
> present (the hull DP`s have increased but the dammage of the MT missile 
> warhead has not increased).
>
> This has raised another idea for the MT missiles. With the nuke warhead, 
> how about allowing dammage to increase the closer to the target the 
> missile is? Say at 4MU, 1D6, and going up by 1D6 per MU closer it is?
>
> BIF
The decayed blast radius effect is probably best accounted for in the anti 
matter missile.

Whether even a large nuke has any radius effect in space depends on what you 
define 1mu as equal to in real units like miles of kilometres.

If you define the MU in terms of a planetary scale where say an earth sized 
planet equals 6mu in diameter then each MU is a pretty big distance so the 
effect of the nuclear explosion would be very limited.

If you go for a much smaller scale where 1mu = say 100kms then would a 
nuclear explosion have much of a blast radius? In space there isn't any 
atmosphere so there isn't any blast wave. You might get a better effect if 
you made the warhead into a directed charge and put some material that could 
be fragmented by the explosion at the target. A nuclear powered shotgun 
blast.

I think that you will get the game all confused if you try and take a space 
opera type game and apply real world hard physics.

John 


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