06-08-2010, 10:23 AM | #11 | |
Join Date: Sep 2008
|
Re: Spaceships Questions: Guns
Quote:
Now let's get ridiculous and consider an SM+8 ship that the Hull consists of nothing but batteries, all facing one direction. A Major Battery fires 16 cm rounds, Medium 14, Secondary 12, Tertiary 10. To send the most mass flying, we'll want all Tertiary Batteries. Each battery sends 3/4 ton flying (again, assuming the propellant is massless), meaning 18 such batteries is going to move 13.5 tons at 1 mile/second. That will move the ship back at .0135 miles/second, or 71.28 ft/s (23.76 yards/second). That's a noticeable jump at human scales, but it's still nearly negligible for much of spaceship combat - it burns up .0135 mps of delta-v to correct for. And this is assuming a ridiculous design and massless propellant.
__________________
Quos deus vult perdere, prius dementat. Latin: Those whom a god wishes to destroy, he first drives mad. |
|
06-08-2010, 01:54 PM | #12 |
Join Date: Jul 2005
|
Re: Spaceships Questions: Guns
Thanks for the number crunching! I've never been good at that kind of math.
__________________
TWK "When the human race is clocked on the stopwatch of history, it's a new record every time." |
06-08-2010, 02:03 PM | #13 |
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Not in your time zone:D
|
Re: Spaceships Questions: Guns
Infinite range? have cannon rounds include a time limiter to detonate them if they fail to hit within a reasonable time. It can be switched off for bombardment of sessiles.
Recoil? Recoilless cannon? Venting system diverts gases for use as recoil compensation so even the negligible recoil is zeroed. Nice steampunk imagery too - all that smoke and flame.
__________________
"Sanity is a bourgeois meme." Exegeek PS sorry I'm a Parthian shootist: shiftwork + out of country = not here when you are:/ It's all in the reflexes |
06-08-2010, 02:20 PM | #14 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Shropshire, uk
|
Re: Spaceships Questions: Guns
I actualy think that this is pretty much reasonable. Given that although cannon rounds have a theoreticaly unlimited rainge and practicaly a very limmited rainge (the consensus so far) there exists a possibility of collateral dammage that more cautious planners may want to address.
|
06-08-2010, 03:27 PM | #15 | |
Join Date: May 2008
Location: CA
|
Re: Spaceships Questions: Guns
Quote:
|
|
06-08-2010, 03:50 PM | #16 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
|
Re: Spaceships Questions: Guns
Quote:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLpgxry542M |
|
06-08-2010, 03:51 PM | #17 |
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Not in your time zone:D
|
Re: Spaceships Questions: Guns
You're both right - it'd be really easy to include as a feature but highly unlikely to be included, until they actually manage to accidentally shoot something they shouldn't have, perhaps themselves.
I mean, what are the chances of hitting, and getting a one-shot kill, with a 22Rimfire at a range of 1 mile? But it has happened. The chances of cannon rounds hitting something they shouldn't are far less likely, but if you have a battle out by Jupiter and push 3,000 20mm cannon rounds in the direction of Earth's orbit, they might do something nasty, eventually. Murphy's Rules of Combat: the most accurate incoming fire is friendly fire?
__________________
"Sanity is a bourgeois meme." Exegeek PS sorry I'm a Parthian shootist: shiftwork + out of country = not here when you are:/ It's all in the reflexes |
06-08-2010, 04:07 PM | #18 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
|
Re: Spaceships Questions: Guns
Quote:
Of course, if you're playing in 'space is big', you're not too likely to have guns anyway, because their effective range is a joke.
__________________
I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
|
Tags |
spaceships |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|