Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => Aurora Suggestions => Topic started by: Steve Walmsley on June 08, 2009, 10:09:01 PM
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I am just musing on whether to display missile warhead strengths as Megatons instead of raw numbers. So instead of a strength-5 warhead, a missile would have a 5 megaton warhead. Does that add more flavour or is it better to leave the raw numbers so that players can interpret them as desired? Similarly, I was considering displaying beam weapon damage as megawatts instead of raw numbers. So instead of a 15cm Ultraviolet laser that causes six points of damage, it would be a 6MW Ultraviolet Laser. Or if that seems too small a power output, perhaps a 60MW or 600MW laser to represent 6 damage. Or maybe Megajoules may be more appropriate as a measure of discharge energy for lasers and kinetic energy for gauss cannon and railguns.
I am interested to hear comments on the general idea or perhaps on appropriate units of measurement
Steve
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I would say stick with the size of the weapon. In modern terms one speaks of 125 mm smoothbore Rhinemetal guns of a specific calibre...admittedly the British rated them by the weight of the shot they fired but most other people used the size-calibre. A 6 MW laser would be rather small potatoes, 6 GJ pulse laser is far more reasonable and the missile warheads likely aren't in megatons but 100 kiloton per point. The missile tech speaks of fission warheads anyway which don't have megaton yields (possibly even 10s of kilotons would make sense). Rail and Guass weapons are still more likely to be rated by size, mass of shot or size and acceleration rating. Of all these something like 10 cm Guass launcher and 12.5 cm spinal mount railgun sounds more reasonable. Also you would use joules not watts as what matters is the energy transfer to the target in terms of damage. So a 6 GJ 10 ns pulse 500 Hz, 20 cm focal array equivelent free electron laser, the power requirements of which are likely to be 600 MW.
Our lab laser is a 50 mJ, 10 ns pulse 10 Hz YAG laser. This is considered a class 4 laser (extreme care required).
Damage should remain damage just in points because its probably best to keep it abstracted as you need to see what sort of armour you might want to have (which is in points) and it makes it easier to compare weapons.
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Maybe let this stay as user defined flavor text. Maybe add something to the weapon design that allows for user input of a description, similar to the name of the system.
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I agree with John and Erik. Keep it abstract. It will reduce arguments. You can state what effect that one point of damage will do. If you call that point a megaton, you'll have people coming out of the woodwork saying that a megaton would have X effects with Y side effects, etc.
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I agree with John and Erik. Keep it abstract. It will reduce arguments. You can state what effect that one point of damage will do. If you call that point a megaton, you'll have people coming out of the woodwork saying that a megaton would have X effects with Y side effects, etc.
Errrrrr did you mean "Paul and Erik"? Or do I need to start wearing my tin-foil hat again? 
The scary part is that "abstract" is exactly the sort of word I could easily have used if I had responded....
John
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I seem to recall it happening one time before...clearly we channel one another. Either that or because we both had Pre-TNT starts we run into similar situations a lot. If you do elect to use the tinfoil hat though make sure to ground it.
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Nice to get a consensus :)
Steve
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I agree with John and Erik. Keep it abstract. It will reduce arguments. You can state what effect that one point of damage will do. If you call that point a megaton, you'll have people coming out of the woodwork saying that a megaton would have X effects with Y side effects, etc.
Errrrrr did you mean "Paul and Erik"? Or do I need to start wearing my tin-foil hat again? :oops: but don't put the hat away just yet. <grin>