Author Topic: Aurora missiles don't need warheads  (Read 4066 times)

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liam newton

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Aurora missiles don't need warheads
« on: April 17, 2017, 06:51:55 PM »
So it popped into my head earlier, thinking about meteorite impacts and how devastating they can be due to their mass and speed.  then i thought about missiles, and did some calculations.

so first i calculated that each msp is equal to one 20th of a HS, meaning 1 msp is equal to 2. 5 tonnes
(1 Msp thruster produces 5% the thrust of a 1HS engine, so i am assuming that the EP is equal by weight and just uses more fuel).

then i looked at the speed, and at my point in the game with internal confinement drives i managed to get a size 6 missile to 112,000 km/s, or 112,000,000 meters a second for a 15 tonne missile.

so lets do a little maths, to calculate the kinetic energy we simply multiply the Mass by the missile Velocity.

112,000,000 m/s X 15,000 kg = 1680 Terra joules of energy, or 401 kilotons of TNT all in one point of impact.  this is the same yield as 84 fat man nuclear bombs, the main difference is that its not an explosion, but merely a BIG bullet.

using the cobalt warheads at my stage in the game which are 5 times more powerful than conventional explosives, (which i am assuming "conventional" means TNT) you would need to have a warhead weighing 80,200 tonnes to equal the same yield.

and all this is without even optimising for as much kinetic energy as possible, if it were in the game, you could potentially build huge missiles that could blow up planets with end-game tech

Any thoughts on this? i think its kinda funny thinking about how OP missiles would be if kinetic energy mattered
 

Offline MarcAFK

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Re: Aurora missiles don't need warheads
« Reply #1 on: April 17, 2017, 09:19:11 PM »
Theres been many discussions about the potential for kinetic damage to be modelled
. However usually we came up with the idea that the current mechanics make sense if you consider Auroran engine physics to be non-newtonian.
When an engine is running a ship has immediate acceleration, it stops instantly when the engine is off. So technically there is no kinetic momentum to transfer to a target, perhaps i's warp physics? who knows use whatever technobabble you want. Basically the current system works and adding something like that might just add more unneeded complexity.
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Offline alex_brunius

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Re: Aurora missiles don't need warheads
« Reply #2 on: April 18, 2017, 04:46:35 AM »
using the cobalt warheads at my stage in the game which are 5 times more powerful than conventional explosives, (which i am assuming "conventional" means TNT) you would need to have a warhead weighing 80,200 tonnes to equal the same yield.

I'm pretty sure all the explosives in Aurora are nuclear (fission or fusion). The 3 per MSP tech for example is called "Implosion Fission Warhead".

This is actually a way of designing real nuclear weapons as can be seen here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_design


It's also reasonable to assume that the Transnewtonian technology is able to channel or boost the nuclear explosion outputs considerably, bringing it up to similar levels as the impact weapons like rail guns / gauss guns achieve or higher.
 

Offline littleWolf

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Re: Aurora missiles don't need warheads
« Reply #3 on: April 18, 2017, 01:09:51 PM »
So it popped into my head earlier, thinking about meteorite impacts and how devastating they can be due to their mass and speed.  then i thought about missiles, and did some calculations.
.....
Any thoughts on this? i think its kinda funny thinking about how OP missiles would be if kinetic energy mattered

You forget that the missiles of TRANS-Newtonian, and there is a classic (inertial) laws are not working. Otherwise, just stop the ship after overcoming the section of the route (e.g. when the target or damage to the engine speed for 5 seconds changes from thousands km/s to 0) would be allocated enough thermal energy to turn the ship in pairs. In the second, explosive warhead does not require direct hit on target.