I veto on the grounds that Aurora is not supposed to be so easy as to allow "one hit kills. "
In regard to shaped charges, there is the option to use laser warheads. I have never used them, personally, but my understanding is that they work to the same end that a shaped charge would against armour. Aurora is complex enough without requiring me to micro between various different types of missiles as you suggest.
Also. . Your idea of the Aurora nuke seems to be something like this, whereas I think the usual strength 6 or 9 or 12 warheads are only a fraction of the size of that. Now, if you create a size 100 missile with 99 points in warhead. . . Okay, then we're talking a big nuke.
I read up on Laser Warheads, and the damage template seems to be the same as a normal missile hit. Whether or not that was intended is another matter. I know Steve was meaning to look into improving how laser warheads work. I would still value the different types of missiles however, so you could have dedicated bombardment ships, for softening up big fleets, and then have dedicated single-combat ships that pretty much go one-on-one with their TN shaped charges. I just don't think variety can hurt really.
Nuclear missiles would be a lot less effective than you'd think in space. In atmosphere, most of the damage is actually done by compressed air moving at very high velocities. In vacuum, most of the energy of a nuclear explosion will just radiate harmlessly into space. You need nearly a skin-skin contact to make a nuke work at all in space.
If it bothers you, imagine that the missiles are actually detonating a short distance (like a few hundred metres) from their target to ensure some damage, rather than relying on one-shot-kills from skin-skin contacts, which would be astonishingly difficult to arrange, as the combined closing speed of some objects might be a respectable fraction of c
>> How strong must Duranium be if it can survive anti-matter hits?
Nuclear devices != anti-matter. That's something altogether different
The thing about the atmosphere is a fair point, and it dawned on me right after I hit post. A little off-topic, but doesnt that also mean nukes wouldn't even be bright in space? Since most of the light we see from them is actually ionized air?
The end-game warheads are antimatter aren't they? I'm aware nukes aren't antimatter, but warheads are warheads as far as Aurora is concerned.
