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Old 11-05-2015, 10:50 AM   #46
Varyon
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Default Re: Dust Explosion - Grain, flour, wheat

For REF, I simply used Nereidalbel's information of 1 lb flour = 4 lb TNT at optimal mixing.

Now, with the way thermobaric explosives work in GURPS, we don't really need to figure out the dimensions of the detonated flour cloud - rather, we just need to know how much flour it contains at the optimal mix, and where the epicenter is. I don't think we have any way to properly estimate the first, but the second would probably be based on a roll by the PC - essentially an attack roll probably using Combat Engineering, with scattering as usual. Let's assume 15 yards between the epicenter of the blast and the army beneath. At that height, cover from others caught in the blast should be negligible.

An explosion of 100% (2 tons) of the flour is going to deal around 6dx125 cr ex3. Every -2 SSR to the amount of flour that actually blows up is -1 SSR to damage. So, an explosion of 1% of the flour - which is -12 SSR - corresponds to 6dx12.5 cr ex3 - which is -6 SSR.

Have another chart. This time I'm assuming the foes have LADR 12. In this case, the listed yards aren't yards from the actual epicenter (which is somewhere up in the air), but yards from the point at ground level that is directly below the epicenter.
Code:
%	15d	10d	5d	3d	2d	1d
1	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	8
2	N/A	N/A	N/A	7	12	19
3	N/A	N/A	4	13	19	25
4	N/A	N/A	9	18	23	30
5	N/A	N/A	13	21	27	35
10	N/A	9	24	34	41	52
15	5	15	31	43	52	64
20	10	20	37	50	60	75
25	14	23	42	57	68	84
30	16	27	46	62	75	92
35	19	29	51	68	81	100
40	21	32	54	73	87	107
45	23	34	58	77	92	113
50	24	37	61	82	97	120
Note you need to get a decent amount of the flour involved to get a lot of casualties. I've no clue how the enemy is likely to arrange itself, but with 2 yards between each warrior your fireball wands wouldn't be likely to injure more than 1 foe with each shot (average damage is 21, divided by 4 for 2 yards distance and ex/2 means 5.25 damage, insufficient to pass DR; shooting between two warriors would yield an average of 10.5, which also wouldn't get past DR on average but could on a decent roll), so we'll assume the enemy has arranged itself like that. With these being elite troops you probably need 5d injury for them to become casualties, so that means no casualties with 1% or 2%, around 16 casualties with 3%, around 81 with 4%, and around 169 with 5% (square the yards to determine number of troops at that concentration that would suffer that level of damage). This assumes the troop arrangement includes a square with length/width equal to the listed ranges.
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