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Old 04-10-2020, 12:14 PM   #1
Michael Thayne
 
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Default [Spaceships] Nuclear and antimatter warhead damage seems off (errata?)

I've been thinking of writing up some quick rules for using TL9 Ultra-Tech style mininukes with Spaceships, and I got curious if the damage scaling is consistent between the two sources. To my surprise, Spaceships doesn't even look consistent with itself.

25 kiloton 4dx1,000 burn ex rad sur + linked 3dx1,000 cr ex
100 kiloton 8dx1,000 burn ex rad sur + linked 6dx2,000 cr ex
2.5 megaton 8dx5,000 burn ex rad sur + linked 6dx5,000 cr ex
10 megaton 8dx10,000 burn ex rad sur + linked 6dx20,000 cr ex

The burning damage progression is sensible enough: straightforward square root of energy. It happens to be consistent with UT to boot. But the crushing damage progression looks mostly linear (contradicting every other 4e source) except the 100 kiloton to 2.5 megaton step is only a factor of 2.5 increase. Maybe that's supposed to somehow reflect the change between fission and fusion warheads? But UT's mini-nuke is supposed to be a pure-fission warhead, so that seems wrong. Straightforward extrapolation from the mini-nuke with square-root damage all around would have yielded this progression:

25 kiloton 4dx1,000 burn ex rad sur + linked 6dx1,000 cr ex
100 kiloton 8dx1,000 burn ex rad sur + linked 6dx2,000 cr ex
2.5 megaton 8dx5,000 burn ex rad sur + linked 6dx10,000 cr ex
10 megaton 8dx10,000 burn ex rad sur + linked 6dx20,000 cr ex

Thoughts?
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Old 04-10-2020, 12:45 PM   #2
Rupert
 
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Default Re: [Spaceships] Nuclear and antimatter warhead damage seems off (errata?)

It's clearly a mistake, and the should go as you've listed, which is consistent with both UT and HT.
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Old 04-10-2020, 01:15 PM   #3
Anthony
 
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Default Re: [Spaceships] Nuclear and antimatter warhead damage seems off (errata?)

Or given that shock wave propagation is based on having an atmosphere, the crushing damage should just be deleted.
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Old 04-10-2020, 01:34 PM   #4
Ulzgoroth
 
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Default Re: [Spaceships] Nuclear and antimatter warhead damage seems off (errata?)

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
Or given that shock wave propagation is based on having an atmosphere, the crushing damage should just be deleted.
Addressed in the text. Spaceships has issues, but they're not on the level of 'the author doesn't understand vacuum'.
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