OMG Explosives

[jbalsle]

OK, my googlefoo has failed me and I can't find if this has been talked about before.

Explosives. Not the piddly grenades that you throw at people, but the big explosions you get in space settings -- like Star Trek!

So, let's take the typical photon torpedo. It has a roughly 50 to 60MT warhead (1.5kg of antimatter). Using the revised CubeRoot(WeightInLbsTnT * 8), which is supposed to address the square root of explosives vs. cube root of hit points issue, I come up with this:

CubeRoot((50,000,000 * 2,000) * 8) = 9,283
That's 6d*9000 damage from a photon torpedo hit.

In Space, that's 6d*900 damage, or roughly 18900 points for an average torpedo hit. A ship has to be SM+21 to even be in the range of surviving that. That's a 70,000yd monstrosity of a ship that masses in at 10 billion tons.

1.5 kilograms of antimatter can bring down a 10gigaton ship? Is that right?

Suggestions from the Collective on how to fix this, please? :D

[Langy]

Yes, that's right. Spaceships gives canonical values for nuclear and antimatter weapons, and they're around that amount of damage for a direct hit. Pretty much nothing can survive even a kiloton-level nuke.

You could have your high-yield weapons be proximity-detonated instead, which drastically reduces their damage (by a factor of 100 or so).

[jbalsle]

Originally Posted by Langy

Yes, that's right. Spaceships gives canonical values for nuclear and antimatter weapons, and they're around that amount of damage for a direct hit. Pretty much nothing can survive even a kiloton-level nuke.

You could have your high-yield weapons be proximity-detonated instead, which drastically reduces their damage (by a factor of 100 or so).

Yeah, seems to be the answer.

Mind you, Trek writers don't seem to understand what a 50MT nuke looks like. That's like setting the Tsar Bomba off.

Still, I guess nukes should be defined as being used as proximity weapons. I can then play with the numbers and make photons more proximity weapons.

Will go good with my Star Trek Online themed space game.

I eagerly await other replies though. :D

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by jbalsle

Mind you, Trek writers don't seem to understand what a 50MT nuke looks like. That's like setting the Tsar Bomba off.

That.
Remember the "low yield" nuclear warhead the Romulans jettisoned in thier first encounter in original series?
That was a proximity detonation and it pretty much took out the enterprise.
I think most photon torpedo hits are proximity hits and shields help real well against them. Most direct hits against unshielded foes took them out but even then the yield looked rather low.
Trek was simply not very consistent.

[jbalsle]

Originally Posted by Refplace

That.
Remember the "low yield" nuclear warhead the Romulans jettisoned in thier first encounter in original series?
That was a proximity detonation and it pretty much took out the enterprise.
I think most photon torpedo hits are proximity hits and shields help real well against them. Most direct hits against unshielded foes took them out but even then the yield looked rather low.
Trek was simply not very consistent.

In Star Trek VI, a photon torpedo makes a direct hit against supposedly unshielded hull. The explosion does blow through the saucer, trashing the state room royally, but the damage is localized to the area of the saucer the torpedo hit. And while I assume that a 23rd century experimental Klingon B'Rel class scout ship has photon torpedoes with less yield than those of a 24th Century cruiser, you'd still expect them to be over 100kt, what we use for modern cruise missiles.

As for the Romulans in Balance of Terror, I don't think their mine had that big of an impact. Have to watch the episode again.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by jbalsle

In Star Trek VI, a photon torpedo makes a direct hit against supposedly unshielded hull. The explosion does blow through the saucer, trashing the state room royally, but the damage is localized to the area of the saucer the torpedo hit. And while I assume that a 23rd century experimental Klingon B'Rel class scout ship has photon torpedoes with less yield than those of a 24th Century cruiser, you'd still expect them to be over 100kt, what we use for modern cruise missiles.

As for the Romulans in Balance of Terror, I don't think their mine had that big of an impact. Have to watch the episode again.

Balance of Terror that was it.
Yeah it did not noticeable structural damage but did knock out power and other systems. The hit was convincing enough that they played possum for awhile while making repairs.
I thought that torp in ST VI must have been a misfire.

However like I said consistency not a trademark of the series.

[jbalsle]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Balance of Terror that was it.
Yeah it did not noticeable structural damage but did knock out power and other systems. The hit was convincing enough that they played possum for awhile while making repairs.
I thought that torp in ST VI must have been a misfire.

However like I said consistency not a trademark of the series.

Yeah, just watched it. The mine did minimal structural damage, but did have an EMP effect on the ship and caused some minor radiation burns (McCoy said people on the outside of the ship, he probably meant to say people on the forward part of the saucer). And it was 100 meters from the hull, so that was pretty much a contact explosion. I can't imagine the saucer not being within the standard atmospheric fireball radius.

But yes. Trek consistancy is a problem. Makes my job more fun. :D

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by jbalsle

And it was 100 meters from the hull, so that was pretty much a contact explosion. I can't imagine the saucer not being within the standard atmospheric fireball radius.

100m from the hull would divide damage by quite a lot, actually.

[Jonas]

Originally Posted by jbalsle

OK, my googlefoo has failed me and I can't find if this has been talked about before.

Explosives. Not the piddly grenades that you throw at people, but the big explosions you get in space settings -- like Star Trek!

So, let's take the typical photon torpedo. It has a roughly 50 to 60MT warhead (1.5kg of antimatter). Using the revised CubeRoot(WeightInLbsTnT * 8), which is supposed to address the square root of explosives vs. cube root of hit points issue, I come up with this:

CubeRoot((50,000,000 * 2,000) * 8) = 9,283
That's 6d*9000 damage from a photon torpedo hit.

In Space, that's 6d*900 damage, or roughly 18900 points for an average torpedo hit. A ship has to be SM+21 to even be in the range of surviving that. That's a 70,000yd monstrosity of a ship that masses in at 10 billion tons.

1.5 kilograms of antimatter can bring down a 10gigaton ship? Is that right?

Suggestions from the Collective on how to fix this, please? :D

Apparently the way explosions scale in Gurps is incorrect but only really becomes apparent with very large detonations. There was a very excellent set of posts concerning how to scale nuclear weapon affects in a more realistic manner but I currently can't find the link.

[lexington]

Originally Posted by jbalsle

Yeah, just watched it. The mine did minimal structural damage, but did have an EMP effect on the ship and caused some minor radiation burns (McCoy said people on the outside of the ship, he probably meant to say people on the forward part of the saucer). And it was 100 meters from the hull, so that was pretty much a contact explosion. I can't imagine the saucer not being within the standard atmospheric fireball radius.

But yes. Trek consistancy is a problem. Makes my job more fun. :D

In space, with no atmosphere to transmit the force of the explosion, 100 meters divides damage by 10000.