[Spaceships] A reevaluation of missiles and point defense

[joelbf]

Originally Posted by Dinadon

What about the fact the missile explodes to get that many fragments? It doesn't just break up.

And why would not that explosion do damage to the target i non proximity detonation cases?

Fact is you can (and in some cases will, since rcl is often 1 for projectiles) do 10 times the damage with proximity detonations. Makes no sense at all.

[Dinadon]

Originally Posted by Boobis

And why would not that explosion do damage to the target i non proximity detonation cases?

Fact is you can (and in some cases will, since rcl is often 1 for projectiles) do 10 times the damage with proximity detonations. Makes no sense at all.

Sorry, your grammer is a bit off. Are you asking if the explosion is what's doing the extra damage? That wasn't my point. The missiles don't just break up, they explode and explosions can be a good source of kinetic energy, especially from inside an object. So instead of having one missile coming at your hull, you now have several fragments of missile heading towards your hull at a higher velocity. The difference in velocity can assumed to be countered by the fact the fragments have a smaller mass, so the damage done by each fragment can be assumed to be the same as the original missile, and since the explosive has already been spent the fragments won't get the amour divisor of the normal missile. (assuming the expolsive is there to aid penetration in a normal missile)

[joelbf]

Originally Posted by Dinadon

Sorry, your grammer is a bit off. Are you asking if the explosion is what's doing the extra damage? That wasn't my point. The missiles don't just break up, they explode and explosions can be a good source of kinetic energy, especially from inside an object. So instead of having one missile coming at your hull, you now have several fragments of missile heading towards your hull at a higher velocity. The difference in velocity can assumed to be countered by the fact the fragments have a smaller mass, so the damage done by each fragment can be assumed to be the same as the original missile, and since the explosive has already been spent the fragments won't get the amour divisor of the normal missile. (assuming the expolsive is there to aid penetration in a normal missile)

Why wouldn't that explosion do extra damage if the entire missile hit the ship? Why would someone design a missile that could do extra damage when proximity detonated, but that would fail to explode if it penetrated armour from a direct hit?

[Ulzgoroth]

Given that missile damage is essentially collision damage, I don't think there's a warhead doing anything terribly important here.

[joelbf]

I don't know where that last comment was directed but I'll explain this again as simple as possible.

A slug/missile contains kinetic energy and possibly explosives (1). The maximum amount of damage you can do is if you transfer ALL of your kinetic energy, and all energy in any potential explosion. That probably means for the impactor to embed itself in the middle of the target and then explode. In any case, if a direct hit occurs the target will be damaged by impact + explosion.

Any other case should do strictly LESS damage, since you lose energy/mass by splitting up, or waste explosives by fragmenting (part of the expanding gas will provide energy to mass going the wrong direction).

Or to rephrase: since kinetic energy is linear in mass, you can'possibly do better than to hit with the entire mass. Especially if you wast whatever small explosive you have outside the target.

If this were for some strange reason wrong, why don't all slugs proximity detonate prior to impact just to tenfold your damage potential?

1) Slugs are very close to standard APHC/APFSDSDU penetrators in damage and armour piercing qualities, at least up to 12cm which corresponds to a 120mm tank gun. They should not be carrying significant amount of explosives.

[vicky_molokh]

IDHMBWM, but why do I suspect that ProxDet makes ten times as many missiles hit, and not 10x hits per missile?

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Molokh

IDHMBWM, but why do I suspect that ProxDet makes ten times as many missiles hit, and not 10x hits per missile?

Nope, it specifically allows you to score up to 10x as many hits as shots fired. SS60.

[joelbf]

Originally Posted by Molokh

IDHMBWM, but why do I suspect that ProxDet makes ten times as many missiles hit, and not 10x hits per missile?

Proximity Detonation makes it possible to hit with up to x10 missiles. Given that missiles have rcl 1, sAcc ~2, your target say sm+10, and no range penalty, on a 20 second scale it will be quite common that you launch 1 missile doing 6dx6(2) dDMG and hitting with 10 missiles doing 6dx6 dDMG.

[vicky_molokh]

As I said, I don't have the book available ATM. I'm REALLY suspicious it's just bad wording.

[SuedodeuS]

I appears I've been working under a false assumption about proximity vs impactor warheads. I had thought that they were actually the exact same shells, just set differently. However, the fact that the impactor warheads have essentially identical stats to KE penetrators, while proximity warheads can, obviously, explode, means that they have to be completely different shells.

I'll ignore the logistics implications for now, but I can now more readily except the fact that proximity warheads have the potential to deal more damage against a lightly armored target. I still think their base damage should be lower than that of the KE warhead, however.

Of course, on the topic of point defense, I'm still going to stick to my decision that each hit destroys one shell, rather than each hit negating one hit. A proximity warhead that detonates 100 miles out isn't much of a proximity warhead, after all.


EDIT: I just realized that I never actually defended my "proximity warhead doesn't work at 100 miles" decision. Basically, if a proximity warhead's shards all stay together, they really aren't going to add to accuracy - at space scale, the difference between a dog-sized missile and a man-sized swarm probably isn't enough to justify a +4 bonus to hit. Then there's also the fact that modern proximity warheads are meant to always detonate very close to the target, and that it's much less of a stretch to go from the book's description to "just like modern ones" than to go to "something completely different."
Provided my knowledge of modern proximity warheads isn't completely off, of course.