WC2 Armaments

Ijuin said:
The size of torpedoes leads me to believe that nukes and antimatter bombs are too bulky to use against fighters. Remember, for a fission nuke you need a minimum critical mass (about 10 kg of isotope plus detonators plus structure plus enough shielding to protect your loading crew), and for a fusion nuke you need a fission bomb as a detonator. For an antimatter bomb you need a failsafe magnetic bottle generator to keep it from going kaboom ahead of time.
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It'll be hard to get all those antimatter shells into the guns because one hole in your EM field will blow half your ship away, whereas AntiMatter guns just generate their own AntiMatter and is focused into an ElectroMagnectic beam towards a target, thus decreasing the chance of a self-mutilation, worst case scenario, the gun is lost. There is litle matter in space, therefore AntiMatter doesnt go off like shells that are made of metal and are densly packed with each other ready to be loaded and fired.
 
The size of torpedoes leads me to believe that nukes and antimatter bombs are too bulky to use against fighters. Remember, for a fission nuke you need a minimum critical mass (about 10 kg of isotope plus detonators plus structure plus enough shielding to protect your loading crew), and for a fusion nuke you need a fission bomb as a detonator. For an antimatter bomb you need a failsafe magnetic bottle generator to keep it from going kaboom ahead of time.
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Yeah. I was thinking more along the lines of some of the US Navy's older tactical nuke arsenal. It has been more than rumored that in the 50's and 60's, the Iowa class BB's were equipped with 16" Mk.23 15-20 kiloton shells. It is a fact that at one point the Navy was using Mk.33 nuclear torpedoes in submarines as well. These devices, although rather low yield, were still greatly more powerful than any conventional weapon. If Confed used shell throwing 'Flak Guns' in the 27th Century, couldn't they have some sort of equivalent?
 
The USA had a sixteen-inch artillery piece dubbed "Atomic Betty" that could fire tactical nukes. Nuclear physics prevents a nuke getting much lighter than about 50 kilograms plus shielding.

Let us suppose that the Concordia were to use 100 kg nuclear shells. To sustain the rate of fire necessary for fighter suppression, the ship would have to use up at least ten tons of them per minute. This would imply that either the Concordia must carry thousands of tons of mini-nukes, or else it will run out of them in a very few engagements.

Also, the nature of the Mace missile tells us that you do NOT want one of these going off too close to your own hull, which means that nukes for point defenses is a no-go. In sum, nukes are best kept for use against something big or slow-moving that you would want to use a torpedo against.
 
Unless they equipped Mace missiles with a mechanism that didn't arm the missile to explode until it travelled a certain distance from launch (like a real world submarine torpedo). They would be great as capship defense armament against large fighter/bomber formations or against corvettes, though Origin obviously didn't (and wouldn't) implement this because it would throw traditional WC balancing out the window (the WC universe, as a result of being a starfighter game, makes fighters the outright dominating military force). As for nukes- there is no nuclear physics rule requiring nukes to be approximately 50 kg. Suitcase nukes can weigh as little as 10.5 kg. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,76990,00.html.
 
10.5 kg is the minimum amount of nuclear isotope that you must have for a fission bomb. The other 39kg. is for the detonators and explosive charges that compress the isotope, for the control circuits, for the batteries that power the circuits and detonators, and for the shructure that holds and houses all of the above.

The smallest nuclear bomb design known in the real world is the Mk-54 Davy Crockett, which yielded 10 tons (0.01 kilotons) when tested. It measured 400 mm long and 127 mm in diameter, and massed 23 kilos. Add the propulsion charge (assuming that you are not using a magnetic gun to fire the shell--which you wouldn't want to, because it would scramble the detonator control electronics), and you get at least 40 kg.

The only nuclear shell ever actually fired from an artillery piece (as opposed to a static detonation) was the W-9 warhead, measuring 1384 mm long and 280 mm wide, and massing 365 kg with a yield of 15 kilotons (this was the famous "Atomic Annie"--I stand corrected on the 16-inch "Atomic Betty" comment above).
 
Maybe, but you do NOT get a chain reaction from radioactive materials unless you have a critical mass of them, and you have to smash the pieces together at bullet-like speed or they will be flung apart by the detonation before they can be consumed. I do not doubt that the detonators or circuits or batteries could be made smaller through better technology, but the isotope and the radiation shielding are pretty much constrained by quantum physics.
 
We've barely scratched the surface, in terms of the periodic table. There's no telling what sort of radioactive isotopes they have in the WC era. (Besides, even nukes can be of a smaller size, for tactical use... I've read of nuclear artillery rounds, as well as personnel-borne rockets.
 
I posted above that the smallest nuke ever designed, the Davy Crocket, which was a man-carried rocket, massed 23 kilos and yielded 10 tons TNT equivalent. I don't think that you can go much below that.
 
Nukes dont work very well in space because there is no medium to carry their effectiveness-The Shockwave, which is basically nothing but a big pop unless it burries itself deep into an enemy's hull.
 
However, we see in the WC universe that the Mace is fairly destructive. I wouldn't say that WC follows real-world physics very closely, at all.
 
Manic said:
However, we see in the WC universe that the Mace is fairly destructive. I wouldn't say that WC follows real-world physics very closely, at all.
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I think I remember reading somewhere that a nuke in space would send a shockwave for infinity.
 
fongsaunder said:
Fo god's sake the Sun is a BILLION nuclear explosions at once, and does NOT send out shockwaves of infinity
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the sun is a big FUSION reactor, not FISSION reactor.

fission happens, when atoms get seperated in parts. an electron is cutting off, flying to the next atom, resulting in chainreaction.

fusion happens, when 2 atoms unite. hydrogen atoms form together to create helium if i remember right.

when u realize this, notice how much fission is different from fusion. fission creates the emp effect, which can destroy electronical devices. fusion instead, is just a big big boom.
 
I'm pretty sure the giant release of energy(Heat) does damage too. If anything, it should be more effective, since the transfer medium(Space isn't actually empty) is much less dense. That would allow more of the initial release to get to the...whatever it is next to the nuke.
 
suicider said:
the sun is a big FUSION reactor, not FISSION reactor.

fission happens, when atoms get seperated in parts. an electron is cutting off, flying to the next atom, resulting in chainreaction.

fusion happens, when 2 atoms unite. hydrogen atoms form together to create helium if i remember right.

when u realize this, notice how much fission is different from fusion. fission creates the emp effect, which can destroy electronical devices. fusion instead, is just a big big boom.
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Exactly, Specifically, I DIDNT mention if the Sun was either Fusion or Fission powered.
Shockwaves are like giant soundwaves, there is no gas whatsoever to efficiently let the wave travel through, therefore losing it's effectiveness
 
fongsaunder said:
Exactly, Specifically, I DIDNT mention if the Sun was either Fusion or Fission powered.
Shockwaves are like giant soundwaves, there is no gas whatsoever to efficiently let the wave travel through, therefore losing it's effectiveness
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I don't really remember exactly what the was said so I can't be sure about it's exact wording.
 
even if shockwaves go on to infinity, they will fall victim to the inverse-square law. their intensity would fall off really really fast.
 
What ever happened to the law of inertia? This whole alleged lack of a shockwave by a nuclear blast in space doesn't square off against it. To my knowledge (which is admittedly somewhat limited, as I have never studied nuclear physics), nuclear reactions don't require a medium to travel (such as air), because the atoms split to create the nuclear reaction themselves create the shockwave...

The only reason shockwaves die out in space is because space (especially in solar systems) isn't truly empty- there are still particles there (even if oftentimes these particles are microscopic) to stop the shockwave's inertia.

In theory, if space was truly empty, the sun would indeed send out shockwaves to infinity- and, depending on your definition of what a "shockwave" is, it nearly does- what do you think star light or solar radiation is?
 
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