Re: SG-Ortillary

--- Bif Smith <bif@bifsmith.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:

> > Railguns oops, K-guns rather: Standard solid
> munitions treat as a hit w/
> an
> > impact die of 1D12*(2+(Class of gun))^2.

Delusionally weak.

> These are probably the main weapon for use against
> ground targets (in my
> mind, anyway). Also, has anybody worked out the
> velocity of a K-gun round
> (30MU in a single turn (or half a turn)?).

Uhh. . . depends on your definition of turn and MU. 
IIRC, someone once worked out that if a MU is 1000km
and a turn is 7.5 minutes then each thrust point is 1G
of acceleration.  Which works out so nicely that this
is the Official Scale of the NREverse. (IMUD*)	Also
works out so nicely that I rather suspect that it's
not quite so, but I don't care.  

But since a K-gun round traverses this distance almost
instantly it must been accelerated up to a measurable
fraction of c.	At 30,000 km there's something like a
.1 second lag at lightspeed.  If K-gun rounds were up
to .1 c, then it would take a full second to traverse
their max range, which would explain why they are
quite hard to actually fire accurately at 30".	1.1
second lag built in from when the sensor signature
originates to when the rounds get there, and that
assumes quick-fast firing, but that won't be the case,
so say around 2-3 seconds.  Which leads me to believe
that K'V rail guns a) have really spiffy predictative
computers and b) fire long bursts.

So you've got this big alloy dart coming in at .1 c. 
If e=mc^2, then a 100kg dart is going to release
energy equivelant to what, a small nuclear weapon? 
I'll leave the conversion to precise kilotonnage to
those who are into that stuff.

Now fire a 30-round burst.

Sucks to be on the ground--and truly sucks to try and
drop this anywhere near real estate that you're
planning on moving onto.

Now, if your distance scales in FT are larger, your
railgun rounds have to move faster to realistically
hit the target.  Which means they have even more
kinetic energy. . . 

John
*It's My Universe, Dammit!

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