Author Topic: Magazine Explosions  (Read 13878 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline King-Salomon

  • Lieutenant
  • *******
  • Posts: 153
  • Thanked: 38 times
Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #45 on: March 13, 2018, 09:05:28 AM »
Another question is whether penetrating weapons (lasers, particle lances) would have any advantage in hitting core systems.

guess they should.. a beam-weapon which is able to penetrate through m's of solid military armour would just go through a ship and all which is in its way till it is stopped from the armour at the other side of the ship... no matter what...  even if the "core" is armoured by itself it is not as thick as the outer armour plating... so whatever is able to penetrate the outer armour should knife through it like butter...

also I am not sure about a "core" mechanic at all... a magazine in the "core" would be hell to transport missiles in/out . and ejecting missiles from a magazine which is in the core of a ship would be really impossible...

hmm... sounds like a nice mechanic in theory but I am not sure at all...
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

  • Moderator
  • Star Marshal
  • *****
  • S
  • Posts: 11649
  • Thanked: 20350 times
Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #46 on: March 13, 2018, 09:13:31 AM »
also I am not sure about a "core" mechanic at all... a magazine in the "core" would be hell to transport missiles in/out . and ejecting missiles from a magazine which is in the core of a ship would be really impossible...

That is a good point, although what we really have is a mechanic to avoid magazine explosions. Currently we use 'Ejection' technobabble but we could use the equivalent of flooding the magazine instead (some process that quickly, safely and permanently disables the missiles). The ejection chance becomes the chance of this process happening fast enough (or at all) in response to damage.
 

Offline alex_brunius

  • Vice Admiral
  • **********
  • Posts: 1240
  • Thanked: 153 times
Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #47 on: March 13, 2018, 10:59:46 AM »
If any type of core is added it should IMHO be called a citadel and defended by a secondary armor layer ( which increase ship size less due to not covering all of it, just key components and can thus be made thicker ).

Edit:
It makes little sense to have it be protected from weapons rivaling nuclear detonations in strength by some components like Empty Hangars, Fueltanks or Maintenance Storage Bays.
« Last Edit: March 13, 2018, 11:26:01 AM by alex_brunius »
 

Offline Graham

  • Chief Petty Officer
  • ***
  • Posts: 47
  • Thanked: 17 times
Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #48 on: March 13, 2018, 12:29:08 PM »
But in game weapons are already shown not to penetrate components unless they have more than enough damage to destroy them, so having a “core” section which is less likely to be hit first makes sense to me.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

  • Moderator
  • Star Marshal
  • *****
  • S
  • Posts: 11649
  • Thanked: 20350 times
Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #49 on: March 13, 2018, 12:33:04 PM »
But in game weapons are already shown not to penetrate components unless they have more than enough damage to destroy them, so having a “core” section which is less likely to be hit first makes sense to me.

Yes, it would also be a lot simpler to treat weapons equally with regard to the core concept. The advantage of lances (for example) would be to penetrate armour in the first place.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

  • Moderator
  • Star Marshal
  • *****
  • S
  • Posts: 11649
  • Thanked: 20350 times
Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #50 on: March 13, 2018, 12:33:11 PM »
I've been thinking more about the core idea. One issue is that not many systems would work in the core. Weapons, engines, sensors, hangars, etc would all need to be close to the surface.

Systems such as jump engines and shields would depend on whether it is realistic to expect them to function from within a ship - probably not.

The systems that remain are on the lines of engineering, command & control, magazines and fuel.
 

Offline Bremen

  • Commodore
  • **********
  • B
  • Posts: 743
  • Thanked: 150 times
Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #51 on: March 13, 2018, 12:33:20 PM »
However, something else occurred to me. If magazine explosions can be this deadly, the solution would seem to be creating a lot of tiny magazines to reduce the potential damage from a single hit. That is 'gaming the system' but would be an obvious choice.

The discussion seems to have moved on, but I wanted to mention that I think, mathmatically, the result would be the opposite. If magazine explosions become extremely lethal then you'd want fewer, larger magazines, because any damage beyond what's needed to destroy the ship is irrelevant and thus decreases the average damage of the magazine exploding.

For example, let's say a 100 HS ship has 10 HS of magazines, and the destruction of each HS of magazine would be enough to destroy 20 HS of internal components.

If the ship has a single 10 HS magazine, then 1 internal damage has a 1% chance of destroying the magazine (10% to hit it and 10% to kill the 10 HTK magazine). The explosion would "do" 200 damage, but in practice it only does 100 because the ship only has 100 HTK. Thus the average damage is 1; 1% of 100.

If the ship has 10 1 HS magazines, then 1 internal damage has a 10% chance of destroying one magazine, doing 20 damage. Thus the average damage is 2, 10% of 20. And this ignores the odds of the 20 damage hitting another magazine, which in this case would be awfully high.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

  • Moderator
  • Star Marshal
  • *****
  • S
  • Posts: 11649
  • Thanked: 20350 times
Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #52 on: March 13, 2018, 12:36:16 PM »
The discussion seems to have moved on, but I wanted to mention that I think, mathmatically, the result would be the opposite. If magazine explosions become extremely lethal then you'd want fewer, larger magazines, because any damage beyond what's needed to destroy the ship is irrelevant and thus decreases the average damage of the magazine exploding.

For example, let's say a 100 HS ship has 10 HS of magazines, and the destruction of each HS of magazine would be enough to destroy 20 HS of internal components.

If the ship has a single 10 HS magazine, then 1 internal damage has a 1% chance of destroying the magazine (10% to hit it and 10% to kill the 10 HTK magazine). The explosion would "do" 200 damage, but in practice it only does 100 because the ship only has 100 HTK. Thus the average damage is 1; 1% of 100.

If the ship has 10 1 HS magazines, then 1 internal damage has a 10% chance of destroying one magazine, doing 20 damage. Thus the average damage is 2, 10% of 20. And this ignores the odds of the 20 damage hitting another magazine, which in this case would be awfully high.

In VB6 Aurora (and at the moment in C# Aurora) all magazines are 1 HTK, regardless of size.
 

Offline Bremen

  • Commodore
  • **********
  • B
  • Posts: 743
  • Thanked: 150 times
Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #53 on: March 13, 2018, 12:37:29 PM »
In VB6 Aurora (and at the moment in C# Aurora) all magazines are 1 HTK, regardless of size.

Ah.. then yeah, the advantage would go to smaller magazines, but that would be regardless of explosion chance. It just creates more internal HTK at no cost (unless you armor the magazines)
 

Offline alex_brunius

  • Vice Admiral
  • **********
  • Posts: 1240
  • Thanked: 153 times
Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #54 on: March 13, 2018, 01:25:10 PM »
I've been thinking more about the core idea. One issue is that not many systems would work in the core. Weapons, engines, sensors, hangars, etc would all need to be close to the surface.

Systems such as jump engines and shields would depend on whether it is realistic to expect them to function from within a ship - probably not.

The systems that remain are on the lines of engineering, command & control, magazines and fuel.
Power Plants, Damage control, Crew Quarters & Flight crew berths, Cargo & Storage/Transport probably could be core as well? ( With cloaking device being "maybe" just as jump engines/shields ).

And it also depends on your viewpoints. The part of the engines that is susceptible to explosion and is sensitive is probably the powerplant, which could probably be located deep inside a ship.

Huge spinal weapons along the length of a ship also might have some central part of them inside the core.

Hangars could be connected from the core with catapults to quickly launch Fighters ( but probably not so practical ).



Looking at historical warships the two main critical components to protect internally ( under secondary citadel armor ) would be engines and magazines.

If we think about other Sci-Fi components that could potentially be protected ( but are currently not in Aurora ) we could also imagine data centers, and energy storage ( batteries/capacitors ) would be located in the core.


In VB6 Aurora (and at the moment in C# Aurora) all magazines are 1 HTK, regardless of size.

Can't you armor them to have more?
« Last Edit: March 13, 2018, 01:29:24 PM by alex_brunius »
 

Offline Bremen

  • Commodore
  • **********
  • B
  • Posts: 743
  • Thanked: 150 times
Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #55 on: March 13, 2018, 03:45:30 PM »
Putting the engines in a protected location is a lot more practical for a seagoing ship than a space vessel, though.

I'm kind of ambivalent about "core" components myself. It makes sense, but I don't think the damage model needs to be too detailed either.
 

Offline alex_brunius

  • Vice Admiral
  • **********
  • Posts: 1240
  • Thanked: 153 times
Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #56 on: March 13, 2018, 04:14:38 PM »
Putting the engines in a protected location is a lot more practical for a seagoing ship than a space vessel, though.

That depends greatly on the type of Sci Fi.

In most Sci Fi universes the powerplant / reactor that powers the engine is in the very core of the vessel, and in some of them the thrusters are no bigger then a propellers & rudders are on a seagoing ship and engines extend into the very central parts of the ship.

One example would be Star Trek where the red impulse engines are very small:
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/memory-gamma/images/0/07/USS_Enterprise_%28NCC-1701-D%29_enters_asteroid_field.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20180101041459



I don't think it's a good idea to use the ineffective rocket engines of today as a model for how Sci Fi space ships would look, since inevitably with 20-50% mass being engine & fuel and 50-80% being payload Sci Fi ships should look alot more like seagoing ships in terms of mass distribution then they would look like our primitive Rockets.
 

Offline Hazard

  • Commodore
  • **********
  • H
  • Posts: 643
  • Thanked: 73 times
Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #57 on: March 13, 2018, 04:51:22 PM »
Sort of yes, sort of no. It really depends on how the engine works; a rocket engine benefits greatly from putting the reaction chamber as closely as possible to the nozzle. It means a much lower amount of things to cool for one. For a seagoing ship with propellers? Drive shafts are very efficient ways of transferring energy, which makes it possible to extend the distance between the energy source and the propeller.
 

Offline jonw

  • Chief Petty Officer
  • ***
  • j
  • Posts: 36
  • Thanked: 5 times
Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #58 on: March 13, 2018, 07:04:36 PM »
It doesn't necessarily follow that weapons need to be close to the surface. I have always imagined laser weapons to have the beam generation in a internal plant, and the turrent only represents moving mirrors/focusing optics. Things like spinal weapons or railguns which we would assume to extend the full length of the ship would probably be internal too.

I'm not sure the concept of extremely sensitive magazines ever made much sense to me. Nuclear weapons are insensitive to shock and even if the conventional explosive lense were to detonate, this would likely not be sufficiently symmetrical for criticality. Volatile power plants, engines or jump engines always made more sense for secondary explosions to me!
 

Offline chokuto

  • Petty Officer
  • **
  • c
  • Posts: 23
  • Thanked: 8 times
Re: Magazine Explosions
« Reply #59 on: March 13, 2018, 07:26:57 PM »
Quote
1) Larger magazines receive additional HTK due to size (probably square root of size as with Shields), plus any additional HTK due to armouring.  In VB6 all magazines are 1 HTK.
2) Larger magazines are more effective at ordnance ejection (perhaps explosion chance is divided by square-root of size).  This would be used in conjunction with option #1 above.  So for larger ships, magazine explosions are very rare but almost always catastrophic.

I think these changes would have a balancing effect.

Like people have said, if your anti-ship missile ship is within range of a beam ship the consequences are severe if they can penetrate your defences (or they are meson based). 

That leaves the main worry being shock damage from stray missiles.  Would it make sense for magazines to have 'shock stabilisers' that reduce the shock damage to magazines.  That means having higher HTK and better shock stabilisers would leave a larger magazine less vulnerable to shock damage.  Shock stabilisers could be another tech line for magazines. 


I think the idea of 'core' components could get very complex very quick and I wouldn't think that core components would be any less vulnerable to shock damage so doesn't really solve that issue.  I think it is also a little limiting to people's RP as everyone is going to have differing opinions on what the technobable means for ship shape and locations of various components in the ship