[spaceships] Proximity Warhead damage

[Mr. Hamato]

Spaceships rules state that if a warhead is wired for proximity burst, not only does it get +4 to hit, but every MoS counts as 10 hits, at regular damage but without the armor divisor.

I'm having trouble understanding the fact that the damage of the missile is the same as each of its fragments. since damage should scale with kinetic energy, and the warhead probably fragmented to 100 or more pieces, shouldn't each piece do 1/100 times the full damage?
Even if the pieces are 3 times faster than the missile, the damage should still be about 10 times less.

I feel that it makes more sense this way. Average missile fragment damage for a 16cm missile at 10mps would now be 84, instead of 840. max damage would be 144 and even one SM+13 Nanocomposite armor system would stop it completely, making big ships more viable.

Of course, this still does not change the PD vs. Missile problem, and a full missile hit is still a one-shot killer (but that is just physics).

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Mr. Hamato

Spaceships rules state that if a warhead is wired for proximity burst, not only does it get +4 to hit, but every MoS counts as 10 hits, at regular damage but without the armor divisor.

I always thought the "or 10x that number" applied to the maximum potential number of hits, not the actual number of hits. I.e., if you succeed by 3 with a salvo of 3 shots, you would hit with all three, but if you had fused for proximity burst you would hit with 7 (due to the additional +4 to hit), and 23 "shots" would miss.

The way I believe David Pulver has explained it before is that a proximity burst isn't smaller pieces, it's just much more, using the housing of the final stage of the missile as additional projectile mass. That material isn't really designed for penetration, thus you lose the armor divisor.

[Mr. Hamato]

Reading that paragraph again I agree that 10x refers to the max number of hits you can make, not 10 hits per Mos.. I've been reading this the wrong way since I got the book!

using the housing of the final stage of the missile as additional projectile mass.

But the damage for a full hit takes that mass into account too, doesn't it?
Even if it does not, I would think that the warhead would be about a third of the missile's mass. So the damage per fragment should still be about three times less than the full damage.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Mr. Hamato

Spaceships rules state that if a warhead is wired for proximity burst, not only does it get +4 to hit, but every MoS counts as 10 hits, at regular damage but without the armor divisor.

Uh, each missile can yield up to 10 hits...you don't get 10 hits per MoS.

Originally Posted by Mr. Hamato

I'm having trouble understanding the fact that the damage of the missile is the same as each of its fragments. since damage should scale with kinetic energy, and the warhead probably fragmented to 100 or more pieces, shouldn't each piece do 1/100 times the full damage?
Even if the pieces are 3 times faster than the missile, the damage should still be about 10 times less.

Insofar as damage scales with kinetic energy, it definitely doesn't scale linearly with kinetic energy. Projectile penetration (in the bullet range) scales approximately with the square root of KE. GURPS uses a cube-root relation for energy weapon damage.

Also, the cross-section that energy is spread over is critically important, and unlikely to be the same for missile fragments and intact missiles.

...I'd also note that the missile impact is imagined as something more complicated than just the whole rocket plowing into the recipient, so we're really in the dark for the physics. Regardless, it is quite true that the game mechanics make it nearly impossible to justify ever not using the fragmentation mode.

[vierasmarius]

I've also considered adjusting the Spaceships missile rules, if not for realism then for playability. Even just giving missile fragments a fractional armor divisor (0.2 or so) would greatly reduce damage against large armored craft, without nerfing its ability to annihilate small or undefended ships. It also makes sense to me; each fragment "hit" probably represents multiple individual pieces striking the target over an area, so they shouldn't be as hard to deflect as a single solid chunk. And yes, I know that at the velocities in question collisions get messy (figuratively and literally), but this houserule at least makes proximity detonation no longer a no-brainer.

[jacobmuller]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Regardless, it is quite true that the game mechanics make it nearly impossible to justify ever not using the fragmentation mode.

As genre flavour you could have the non-use of proximity/frag mode justified by space opera force screens. Torpedoes not Missiles - proximity missiles explode outside your force screens and are therefore useless, but a torpedo can make it through the screen to impact. It would stop the blast from nukes/ antimatter too.

[Mr. Hamato]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

And yes, I know that at the velocities in question collisions get messy (figuratively and literally), but this houserule at least makes proximity detonation no longer a no-brainer.

That's what I was trying to do. I understand that without any handwaving at all missiles rule space combat, but I want to try and keep it to a minimum without going to super science (except for the FTL), which is why I thought about low mass fragments. It lowers the damage but you can explain it using "real world" physics.

The thing is, I'm trying to emulate Traveller, and I just can't get the same flavor. Traveller ships don't have PD batteries, they don't fire huge numbers of missiles, and missile damage is not so high. Using the Spaceships RAW I simply can't get that.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Mr. Hamato

That's what I was trying to do. I understand that without any handwaving at all missiles rule space combat, but I want to try and keep it to a minimum without going to super science (except for the FTL), which is why I thought about low mass fragments. It lowers the damage but you can explain it using "real world" physics.

The thing is, I'm trying to emulate Traveller, and I just can't get the same flavor. Traveller ships don't have PD batteries, they don't fire huge numbers of missiles, and missile damage is not so high. Using the Spaceships RAW I simply can't get that.

I generally don't like the SS treatment of missiles. It fits for some settings, but there's very little that can be done to replicate other settings' feels.

Most notably, I like the Elite feel, where a missile lock is a Major Event - it's unlikely to get locked by more than one missile at a time (in fact, four is a lot), it is a near-sure kill if it hits, it gets jammed and dodged furiously, and it isn't automagically shot down by PD.

[Mr. Hamato]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Most notably, I like the Elite feel...

Any suggestions on how to emulate that?

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Most notably, I like the Elite feel, where a missile lock is a Major Event - it's unlikely to get locked by more than one missile at a time (in fact, four is a lot), it is a near-sure kill if it hits, it gets jammed and dodged furiously, and it isn't automagically shot down by PD.

That's substantially a jet-fighters-in-space sort of model, isn't it? (The other possibility that comes to mind would be subs-in-space, but I know Elite isn't that.)

You'll probably have to first assemble a setting that doesn't work anything like real space before it makes any sense.