[Spaceships] Piercing And Other Damage Types

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

Using (non-nuclear) explosives in space projectiles is generally unneeded. The amount of energy contributed by conventional explosives is pretty miniscule compared to the energy of the impact itself, and there's no atmosphere to carry concussive shockwaves. Warheads can be set for "proximity burst", but that's more of a shotgun effect - showering the target with numerous sub-caliber slugs.

Considering the overall level of detail of the Spaceships line, I wouldn't worry about whether shells are technically pi++ or cr ex, and just stick to Wound Modifier x1.

Agree. When it comes to cannons, I'd really rather have armoury and vehicles anyway, though those (especially Armoury) will never come out in my lifetime, so that's just dreaming. Still, beams have a million different types, and guns just have "proximity or not" because APEP or hyperdense rounds aren't a thing in space, I guess. Or plasma lance rounds or vortex shells or whatever.

Hmmm. I wonder if you could work out a semi-reliable system for making alternate shell-types work.

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Hmmm. I wonder if you could work out a semi-reliable system for making alternate shell-types work.

Some of the warheads from UT could be used as-is. The main problem is that they tend to be lackluster compared to standard kinetic rounds. For example, a 10cm Plasma warhead deals 6d dDam, compared to a normal 10cm's 15d dDam (at 1 mps). Specialty rounds may look more promising, but again it can be hard to make use of them. A 10cm Psi-Bomb warhead has a radius of 16 yards, meaning you'd need a dead-center hit to engulf an SM +7 ship, and larger ships would only be partially affected. These would still be useful for capturing enemy ships intact.

EDIT: Decided to drop by the Designer's Notes to refresh my memory on the Plasma Lance warhead. That's one that could actually be competitive with some projectiles, because of its high basic damage and armor divisor. A 10cm Plasma Lance deals 12d(10); a kinetic warhead would need a relative velocity of 4 mps to achieve the same penetration. Of course, spaceships tend to have far weaker armor than what's found in UT, so there may not be much demand for it. Plus, the Plasma Lance is TL11^, by which point spaceships may be packing Gravity Guns with a minimum velocity of 5 mps. These warheads may still have a niche as cheap bunker-buster bombs (using the bomb rules from SS4).