Re: Nukes and such.
Mysteryman Bob (gr8scott@airmail.net)
Thu, 21 Oct 1999 01:06:05 -0500
Josh Yuan wrote:
>
> Here is my 2 cent about the nukes.
> I think all missiles in space combat in LoGH are nukes.
>
> 1) From some of the battle scents, there are instances where a small
> imperial gun boat was able to destory a FPA Destoryer with a single missile.
> 2) At the distances the battles are occuring normal missiles just don't
> have the energy to do damage unless a direct hit.
> From another battle scene. I think this is the one where one of
> Rienhard's commanders was fighting the second in command on the noble side.
> The
> other prince guy. Anyway, I remember he said something to the line,
> "don't fire til you reach effective range of 2 million km."(For the
> particlebeams/lasers).
I agree with your assessment.
If everyone will recall, many decisive moments in the anime series'
space battles is when the fighters successfully close with the ships or
when the fighters are destroyed on board the carriers. Given the effect
of the Imperial missile boats and the FPA's close-in laser fighters, it
is clearly a baaaaaaad idea to allow the small fry in close.
Apparently it is taking all the shield/power technology available to
protect the front arc of the big ships from long-range laser shots, thus
allowing long-range side shots and close fighter-borne lasers and nukes
to do the bulk of the damage.
> If the combat range is at such great distances, a single nuke would only
> have enough energy to destory one or maybe 2 ship at once.
True, the distances combined with shield tech would limit large nukes
effectiveness. Although those big missiles launched from the
battleships seem to be pretty fearsome.
That missile strike Yang decoyed with the catapult launchers looked like
a world of hurt had it hit.
One other general note on nuke effects in space- it is true that there
is no atmospheric compression to do your damage and space is big, etc.
etc. But space is also empty, therefore effects that are mitigated in
atmosphere are not in space.
The big one for nukes is x-rays- an atmosphere has charged particles
that draw off x-rays but in space there are relatively few, therefore
the x-rays travel in a relatively straight line and deliver an energy
impact. Sadly the Department of Defense has neglected to inform me of
how many joules are delivered per megaton, but it should be
substantial.
Of course, Our Galactic Heroes have advanced shields and energy sinks,
so the nukes must be delivered close-in to survive spoofing and point
defense.
>
> Anyway, I found that the old sci-fi RPG game TRAVELLERS/MEGA
> TRAVELLER/TRAVELLER "The New Era" have weapon ranges and effects similar to
> what I seen in the anime version. If you could find them, I think the
> company went bankrupt.
GDW was disbanded, and Marc Miller got Traveller
out of the mess. I do not know what state his company is in.
Traveller could probably be adapted for LGH, but it would take a bit of
doing and a lot of TL11 and up would have to go.
>
> At 22:05 10/20/99 -0400, you wrote:
> >> 1) Hard radiation from a nuclear blast would be deadlyat between
> >> close and medium ranges - no atmosphere to stop the radiation pulse,
> >> so even the "light" stuff would go a long way. Gamma rays don't stop
> >> for much of anything anyways, so they'd be a killer no matter what.
> >
> >Any real starship would have to have massive amounts of radiation
> >shielding anyway, or the crew would die the first time they happened to be
> >in-system and the sun had a bad flare. This is one of the major problems
> >facing any manned Mars missions right now, actually.
Our Galactic Heroes do not seem to suit up for rads, so the ship through
shielding and/or hull must protect them up to the point of being nuked
at point-blank range.
