[Spaceships] Crash Landing: not-so-minimal velocity, boom

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

What's interesting is that it is the same speed as the delta-V needed to land vertically with active engines. So . . .

After shedding orbital speed by aerobraking or engine braking....

. . . the damage from a crash-landing is equivalent to the damage sustained if the engines failed at the very beginning of a vertical, wingless, engine-assisted landing . . . what?

Seems reasonable. Either aerobraking or engine braking gets you down to 360 miles per hour. From there, you can either glide in or land on your jets. Either way, if you crash you're doing 0.1 mi./sec.

[Snoman314]

Hmm, interesting. I never really clicked how much damage that was. Of course it was changed to a 0.1mps collision as an errata, with the original being worded as "a very low-velocity collision".
a high probability of complete destruction doesn't quite seem to go along with the spirit of this, assuming the errata was simply to nail down an actual value. I'd agree that the damage feels like it should be more in the range of 1/5 as given. This would still mean destruction is possible, but the most likely outcome is more losing a couple of systems.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

In a realistic game, yeah, planetary collision = *poof*.

In a realistic scenario, even hitting an atmosphere of substantial density could be devastating for a spacecraft moving at high velocity (such as spacraft speeds).

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by lexington

You'd need to calculate in armor, which should reduce the effects slightly, and it says the damage is done to one location in either the front or central hull.

Very, very slightly. E.g. a 15-dHP ship with Streamlined Nanocomposite gets 3 dDR of protection even at TL10 (per system dedicated to armor).

And damage to one location 'bleeds over' to others.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

And damage to one location 'bleeds over' to others.

In the rather improbable event that the ship as a whole isn't destroyed, it will suffer one system destroyed, one system disabled, and the effects of non-positive HP. While it's not like it's benefiting from blowthrough, the ship's overall capabilities won't be effected too much if it doesn't fail entirely. (For basically the same reason that GURPS characters never come out of a car accident with a broken arm, a broken leg, and head trauma.)