[spaceships] Proximity Warhead 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.