[SS] Reigning in Projectile Damage

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

Ah, right. And because the energy of the explosion is proportional to the mass, that's equivalent to an explosion of 1/2500 the mass. For a 25kt nuke (dDam 6dx80) at 50 yards, the thermal burst is equivalent to 10 tons of TNT, roughly 6dx6 dDam .

I do not beleive this to be accurate. Normal Gurps explosion damage is not proportional to mass of exposives in a linear fashion. There's a square function in there.

So uisng normal RAW if 1 lb of TNT does 6Dx2 or 42pts on average then 2500 lbs does the square root of 2500 x (6D x2). That should be about 50x as much of an average of 2100 pts.

So a 2100 hp explosion in a vacuum at 1 yard reduces by 2500x or round down to 0 pts damage at 50 yards and not 42hp.

Replacing the normal square function in calculations of Gurps ex damage with a cube would affect the starting number of dice and not how it reduced over distance..

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I do not beleive this to be accurate.

I think he was using "energy" in a literal sense: Ten pounds of boom-brick has half the Joules released than a 20-lb. boom-brick.

How that translates to GURPS damage is obviously the next step, but I don't think he was taking that step in his post at that instant.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

I think he was using "energy" in a literal sense: Ten pounds of boom-brick has half the Joules released than a 20-lb. boom-brick.

How that translates to GURPS damage is obviously the next step, but I don't think he was taking that step in his post at that instant.

It's the important step and particularly since he was talking about nukes where even "generic energy" is not proportional to the mass of the whole bomb. It might be proportional to the mass of the actively fissioning/fusing material but not the initiators and casing.

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

I think he was using "energy" in a literal sense: Ten pounds of boom-brick has half the Joules released than a 20-lb. boom-brick.

How that translates to GURPS damage is obviously the next step, but I don't think he was taking that step in his post at that instant.

Yes, exactly. At that step I was talking about the real-world energy released, which is directly proportionale to the equivalent TNT mass. If my own math / reasoning skills were better, I might have been able to jump directly from there (GURPS damage equal to cube root of real-world energy; energy diminished by square of distance) to the final formula (damage at range equals base damage divided by the two-thirds power of range). As it is, I had to work indirectly: energy diminishes by square of distance, so the TNT mass equivalent is divided by distance squared; compute damage-at-range based on new TNT mass equivalent.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

It's the important step and particularly since he was talking about nukes where even "generic energy" is not proportional to the mass of the whole bomb. It might be proportional to the mass of the actively fissioning/fusing material but not the initiators and casing.

Again, I'm not talking about the mass of the warhead, but about the yield of the warhead in equivalent TNT mass.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

I'm not talking about a direct hit from a kinetic warhead, but a proximity burst, striking only with sub-calibre fragments. By RAW, that only drops it from AD (2) to AD (1), which strikes me as far too generous. It's the equivalent of going from a single armor-piercing shotgun slug [5d(2)] to 25 pieces of buckshot [1d, +4 to-hit] yet still penetrating as though it's a normal slug [5d]. So unless all those fragments are APEP rounds (but for some reason the primary warhead is not) the fragment penetration makes no sense.

EDIT: Hmm. Now I'm tempted to scrap the RAW proximity attack rules, and replace it with the Multiple-Projectile Load rules from High Tech. Projectiles could have different warheads with varying numbers of submunitions, increasing effective RoF while decreasing damage per hit.

A must agree that I've got no satisfactory explanation for why the fragments should individually have the same damage as the non-fragment impactor.

My issue is primarily with the base damage being the same. There's no reason for the impact-fused attack run to combine the masses of 10 submunitions to deliver the performance of one.

[apoc527]

Has anyone upgraded the x-ray laser warheads from SS4? Being limited to 10d(5) is pretty weak, despite the ever-increasing RoF. I'm trying to convert the laser warheads from 2300AD, NOT the Honorverse, if that makes any difference.

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by apoc527

Has anyone upgraded the x-ray laser warheads from SS4? Being limited to 10d(5) is pretty weak, despite the ever-increasing RoF. I'm trying to convert the laser warheads from 2300AD, NOT the Honorverse, if that makes any difference.

Let's see... a 20cm X-Ray Laser warhead is effectively 10d(5), RoF 10, equivalent to a Rapid Fire 100MJ beam (SM+9 Major Battery). This means the 20cm missile (SM+5 Major Battery) is as damaging as a beam weapon 4 SMs larger than it. I don't think it's prudent to scale up the warhead damage as quickly as a beam's damage, however - that could make large Xaser warheads far more efficient than equal-sized beam mounts.

By RAW, the RoF increases linearly with the warhead's diameter, doubling every 4 SMs, or increasing by a factor of 10 roughly every 13.3 SMs. For beams, a ten-fold increase of increase in RoF cuts damage in half. Therefore, if RoF stays constant, damage of the warhead would double every 13.3 SMs, gaining about +5% per SM. Clearly, this is not a significant increase in damage; however, this is based solely on the RAW RoF increase, and I'm not sure how realistic that is anyways.

To give usable numbers which don't overpower large-scale Beam weapons, you could just keep RoF at 10 and give them damage equal to 1/2 calibre. Again, I've no clue if that's at all realistic, but it seems gameable. Hopefully Luke can show up to inform us on the realistic mechanics of Nuclear X-Ray Warheads; they seem right up his alley. =P

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

Again, I'm not talking about the mass of the warhead, but about the yield of the warhead in equivalent TNT mass.

I don't know why you're taKing this sidestep though. Determine the damage for the warhead at 1 yard and then reduce the damage for distance. This is a great time saver if you have multiple targets at different distances. Figure damage only once and modify for a simple factor.

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I don't know why you're taKing this sidestep though. Determine the damage for the warhead at 1 yard and then reduce the damage for distance. This is a great time saver if you have multiple targets at different distances. Figure damage only once and modify for a simple factor.

I had to go that extra step because I wasn't sure what the "simple factor" was. Now that I have that factor for Thermal bursts (two-thirds power of range) I can just use that instead.