Naval Damage codes Options

[Garrowolf]

I am trying to find the damage codes for a naval simulation game that would be current and fairly accurate. Basically I want my space game to make some sense. I wanted some reference point based on something. So far I'm just guessing about most of it.

What I have is about 30 commercial vessels and a hand full of military vessels. Plasma Warhead Rail Cannons are the preferred fighter cannon type and also used as CIWS. I have large coilguns as the deck guns. They look like the large guns on the side of the SULACO. No beam weapons.

I need some missiles of various types and torpedos (anti-capitol ship weapons).

I'm trying to come up with so good details for them. Any thoughts?

[Telion]

This sounds like Rigger 3 to me.
Has an entire section about ship warfare and their heavy weaponry.

[Garrowolf]

I was thinking more along the lines of trying to find the walkthrough for a Naval simulator program. I cant seem to find a walkthrough for any of them. Something that would give damage for modern weapons compared to each other.

[Austere Emancipa...]

Only $2,480 for the online version!

[Garrowolf]

*cough* *cough* WHAT?!?
um.. how about a free source?

Actually I found something that might work. It is an online naval combat game. It's about WWII but it gave me a starting point.

Basically I figured out from it that I need to have torpedos (anti ship weapons) do about 20% damage x the number of successes to the ship it is designed to hit. That way it's not an instant kill thing all the time but a good number of hits will wreck a ship.

Now I'm trying to figure out the damage codes for the Coilgun Deckguns.

[Austere Emancipa...]

There's never enough shit being blown up.

In modern naval warfare the difference between the destructive power of torpedoes and missiles and cannon has increased fast as the old timey big guns have been phased out. The smallest anti-ship missiles around make bigger holes in ships than the biggest cannons the US Navy uses (5"). Current naval guns might, with continued fire, be able to sink small ships like corvettes, but that's not really what they're for.

WW2-era 14", 16" and 18" guns might be more capable of damaging heavily armored ships than many current ASMs -- it's hard to beat a one-tonne block of steel for penetration -- but I expect a Tomahawk will still make bigger holes into whatever it can penetrate. No naval gun ever made can match a P-270 Moskit, even without the nuclear warhead, and most torpedoes, like the one in the clip above, are ridiculously powerful.

[Slump]

Fortunatly, though, the reason why torpedos are absurdly powerful doesn't exist in space -- the water around the warhead.

My personal favorite nomeclature for space-based missile weapons is: Missiles are small, fast, and agile. Torpedos are slow, powerful, and lumbering. Missiles dedicate more space to fuel (for manuevering), whereas torpedos dedicate more space to warhead.

For anti-fighter use, you would use missiles. For anti-cap ships (if you're close enough) or anti-station work, you use torpedos.

Will you be using lasers? I can't find a decent article right now, but there is nifty little one-shot x-ray laser primed by a nuke that could deliver lots and lots of energy to a relativly small surface.

Basically, the nuke is surrounded by rods constructed in such a way and with such materials that when the nuke goes off, miliseconds before the rods are destroyed, they convert a huge amount of the nukes' energy to lasers that come out of one end of the rod array. Basically a way of concentrating the nuke's blast.

[Wraithshadow]

Honestly, I'd say once you're in space you'd have a simple choice- do you want the target intact or not? If the former, then you'll need to get creative. If you're just trying to get it to go away, and there's no real interest past that... well, then just go back to the basics. Proximity fuse missiles with a bundle of small metal rods packed around an explosive cone. Fuse sets off the explosive when the missile gets close, target gets hit with a cone of rapidly-spinning metal rods. Should shred anything you can afford to lift into space, I'd imagine.

[Kagetenshi]

Depends on how much you can build outside of the gravity well. If there's an effective extraplanetary mining operation, you might see some armored monstrosities.

~J

[sunnyside]

Alright since you're already leaving cannon and real world weaponry behind I think you should decide what you want weapons to do in your game, and then fit the rules and descriptions to them.


For example a "Plasma Warhead Rail Cannon" is pretty much just made up gobledygook. I mean railguns are real. But how fast do they send out your warheads? Are they like fancy naval gun or are they accelerating small warheads to relativistic sppeds? And what is a plasma warhead? That doesn't even really make sense.


Anyway the point is you have all the room you want to make things play the way you want. Don't like missles? They can't sneak around underwater or hug the surface in space. You could rule laser based systems can easily knock them down?

Like the old age of sail cannon barrages? Make sheild or whatever tough enough it generally takes a bunch of coilguns at short range to punch them in cap ship battles.

[hyzmarca]

In space warfare, there is no logical reason for capitol ships to be slower or less maneuverable than fighters. Fuel consumption scales linearly with mass but by a square with acceleration. Big spaceships with big engines should actually be able to accelerate faster than a comparable ship of fighter scale. The real limit to acceleration in space, aside from E, if the durability of the materials on board. The cargo and passengers will experience a normal force equivalent to their mass and the rate of acceleration as the ship pushes against them and teir internal organs will experience a similar force as the various parts of their bodies push against each other. A human body can only stand so much acceleration before failing. At high accelerations, individuals will be prone to blackout. At higher accelerations individuals will be ground into paste by the force.

The human limit can be partially mitigated by strapping everyone into a specially designed harness and having them all wear a special flightsuit. This can be done on a capitol ship, though it is much easier to do on a fighter. It becomes a question of how many people must be up and about for the ship to function and how many of those people can be replaced with robots. A well-designed space warship will have the bare minimum crew compliment, with most daily tasks being automated. Many would be completely automated, possibly directed from a central base and possibly left to their own devices.

[Garrowolf]

Nice! I like the Torpedo video. I guess I will increase the damage on those.

Well I am using that delineation for missiles and torpedos. Missiles are more shorter range anti fighter weapon. Torpedoes are anti capitol ship weaponry. I was thinking of making the torpedoes more drone like and missiles simpler and more direct. Torpedoes would also have stealth technology.

I am not using lasers as weapons but as targeting devices. I am trying to get away from the beam weapon scifi and have something more gritty. It isn't 100% realistic but I am going for a specific feel for it.

I have artificial gravity, Inertial Dampeners, and an Inertial Displacement Drive all based out of gravity control. On the other hand there are no force fields. There are anti rad fields and anti rad gel armor. There is also sort of an charged hull plating similar to on Enterprise.

All weapons are direct impact weapons. Basically the Plasma warheads are similar to Thermite Plasma rounds. It provides considerable Armor Piercing.

Small ships accelerate at +.1 to +1 kps. The large ships have Inertial Displacement Drives that go about 200-400 kps. It's pseudo science I know but it works for the setting.

I use CIWS to shoot down incoming attacks. This is why I was thinking that naval guns would come back as they wouldn't be effectively shot down. They would spread the effect.

[sunnyside]

[Garrowolf]

Well yes I do like you guys. You are a fairly intelligent bunch and this forum actually has some traffic on it. The game is in a bastardized version of SR4 rules so you have the most experience with it compared to most other boards. And other boards just want to convert it to d20 which I don't like.

The setting isn't based on Shadowrun but I have made a series of modifications to my shadowrun game that I have realized were really working towards this game.

In some ways I am turning SR4 into my own universal rules set. I also have a fantasy game as well, but I haven't found enough players for it yet. (plus my head has been in scifi mode for a while now)

[Pthgar]

Search "David Weber" "Dahak Series", "Starfire Series", and "Honor Harrington". Mr. Weber has put some thought into space combat. The Starfire books started out as a war game, in fact. Each of his series uses different technology.

The Starfire books are heavy with missiles, including anti-matter warheads.
Honorverse books have more of a mix of beam weapons and missiles including bomb-pumped x-ray laser warheads.
The Dahak books are planetoid sized super-advanced tech space ship battles.

You can buy the books or read them for free at http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/09-AtAl...D/AtAllCostsCD/

edit: Bah! Stupid IE won't let me linky the web address.

[Kagetenshi]

[Crusher Bob]

A pretty good source for spaceship related stuff is atomic rockets


As for naval wargames, harpoon is the benchmark modern one (either boardgame or computer).

In addition, there are plenty of free naval games of various eras available here.

[Garrowolf]

@Kagetenshi What other gravity control tech would you suggest?

@Pthgar Cool site. It looks like I will be busy for a while reading.

The reason that I decided to go with some gravity control was that the main setting is on asteroid cities called Tors. While I could spin them up, it didn't quite match the feel and it would produce a setting that is a little too Hard Scifi.

I want it to be a gritty space opera type setting with cyberpunk elements.

This is what I have so far for a commercial fighter

Hornet Medium Starfighter

Size 3 (+3) 12m
PD 3 M6 S8 H12 D14
ED 3 M4 S6 H8 D10
Acc +1 km/s Handling +2

Life-support 12h/ Stasis 6d/ 1 person
Short Range Commlink
Infomorph 2 Autopilot 2
IDF
Sensors:
Short +1/2km
Medium +1/70km
4 x 30mm PC (-4)x6 Fore
Grappling Arms

Here's a shuttle:

Standard Transfer Shuttle

Size 5 (+1) 30m
PD 3 M14 S21 H28 D35
ED 4 M6 S8 H12 D14
Acc +.4 km/s Handling +0

Life-support 5d/ 100 people
Medium Range Commlink
Infomorph 2 Autopilot 2
ArtGrav/IDF

Sensors:
Medium +0/50km
Standard shuttle for going back and forth amoung the stations around a Tor or from a large ship.

A fast liner:

Clipper Passenger Liner

Size 6 (+0) 70m
PD 3 M32 S48 H64 D80
ED 4 M6 S8 H12 D14
Acc +.4 km/s Handling +0
LDS 350 km/s \

Life-support 12d/ 450 people
Medium Range Commlink
Infomorph 3 Autopilot 3
ArtGrav/IDF

Sensors:
Medium +1/70km
Long +2/11Mm
Extreme +1/21Mm
These are the 747 of the setting. They are used for fast passenger travel.


and a megafreighter:

Joten Class Mega Freighter

Size 10 (-4) 2050m
PD 4 M800 S1200 H1600 D2000
ED 3 M6 S8 H12 D14
Acc +.1 km/s Handling +0
LDS 200 km/s Cargo 2.5MT

Life-support 20w/ 16 people
Long Range Commlink
Infomorph 3 Autopilot 3
ArtGrav/IDF

Sensors:
Medium +1/70km
Long +2/6Mm
Extreme +1/12Mm
8 x 20mm PC (-2)x4 Turret
These are really long cargo train freighters.

[Kagetenshi]

[hyzmarca]

[Crusher Bob]

Looks like he might be using the Linear Displacement Drive (LDS) from I-war which is essentially a sub-light stutter warp drive with a max speed based on the ship size and the amount of power the ship had available to it. Typical LDS speeds were roughly .3 c to .9 c, depending on your ship. Of course, they never addresses how you matched orbits with the various planets and stuff you went to, as the LDS drive did non conserve your velocity…

Looks like some of your life support numbers are a little too short. Using some very rough estimates, it would take you fast passenger craft the following times to get places (just comparing mean orbital distances, I have no idea about matching orbital velocities).

@ 350 km/s

Earth to mars:
Closest approach (~2 day transit time)
Furthest approach (~13 days transit time)

Earth to Jupiter
Closest approach (~21 day transit time)
Furthest approach (~31 days transit time)

The numbers for the freighter @ 200km/s are:

Earth to mars:
Closest approach (~3 day transit time)
Furthest approach (~23 days transit time)

Earth to Jupiter
Closest approach (~36 day transit time)
Furthest approach (~54 days transit time)

Of course, this is hardly SR related. I guess we'd better move this discussion to another forum.

[Garrowolf]

Well the idea behind the Inertial Displacement Drive is that it alters the way inertia interacts with the ship's mass (I know that this is a bunch of technobabble crap but bear with me). Basically as I understand it, when an object accelerates it alters it's inertial state. This change is what causes the increase of mass close to the speed of light. The IDD provides a field around the ship that increases it's inertial state but the ship itself doesn't. Basically as far as the ship is concerned it isn't moving very fast at all but as far as the field is concerned it is moving very fast.

However there are limits to this system. An IDD can only displace a certain amount of inertial difference before it overloads the system. Mass and power output are major factors. A large ship must have the thrusters to move a ship around to start with. If the ship isn't moving then the field will develop too much of a charge and not be able to release it. It uses IDD coils around the thruster bells to charge the exiting thrust and take the charge away. Then it has a limit based on the materials and power levels. Cargo ships usually go with the lowest useful rating which is about 200 kps. The ship will reach that speed in a few minutes.

Now if a ship where to hit something then it would hit with the inertial state of the ship - not the field. This means that IDD missiles are of limited use. They would get there quickly but their speed isn't going to improve their damage. They would be much harder to hit though. Torpedoes are equipped with IDD.

The other factor is that you can't move the field away from the hull. There are field coils all over the ship but they don't allow you to move it away. Also a projectile moving into an inertial displacement field doesn't change it's inertia. It already has that inertial state. It wouldn't do any good as a shield. The ArtGrav works by giving a bit of inertia downward to the crew.

Basically the tech right now is based on contained fields. The ability to project that away from the ship is outside of the tech level (but being researched).

Also it is a bad idea to use an ID Drive close to an active Tor because of the amount of traffic. You would run into too many things and your reaction time would suck at those speeds (though the standard practice is to have extreme range sensors that will give you a minute's warning of an object in your path).

Basically this means that fighters are useful in and around Tors. They are used when ships are defending a position or if they are pursuing a ship within dockyards. They have been partially phased out but are fairly useful in the main Belt because of the closed spaces and hiding places. Commercial ships sometimes use them to defend against pirates.

Also corvettes have replaced alot of the function of fighters on the capitol ship scale. They have IDDs and good firepower and are manueverable and are tough enough to stand up to CIWS fire around a capitol ship. Think the ships from Independence War. They also act as system patrol ships. They have considerable stealth tech as well.

Destroyers look similar to the Sulaco or a Babylon 5 EA Destroyer.

[hyzmarca]

Excelent technowank. I couldn't understand it, which is quite necessary for a good handwavium technowank.

Relativistic mass isn't actually mass. It could be considered a virtual mass that exists along a vector, but this isn't true, either. It is simply easier to think of it as so.

A basic consequence of E=mc^2 is that m=E/c^2. If one takes this to include kinetic energy, one gets the equation r=m/[root (1-[(v^2)/(c^2)])] where r is the relativistic mass. The issue is that velocity is a vector while c is not, kinetic Energy is a vector while Energy is not and this fact means that relativistic mass is a vector. An object is more massive in the direction of its motion than it is perpendicular to its motion.

There is also the issue of changing frames of reference. Every object is at rest in relation to itself and there is no absolute frame of reference for velocity, a fact that relativistic mass does not apply in the reference frame of the spacecraft itself, since the spacecraft always has 0KE in relation to itself. In that way, the passengers on the spacecraft would observe relativistic mass increase in the "stationary" objects that they leave behind.

This all relates to time dilation, as well.

Edit: I must ask, however, what happens if the field is turned off when the ship is moving. Does it instantly change velocity withou going through any of the velocities in between?

[Slump]

Here's an idea of why fighters exist when anything worth moving can outrun it handily: Easily Disruptable Engines.

Project a handwavioum powered techno-beam, and bam, the capships inertial drive shuts down. Now you have to fight, you can't run.

[Demerzel]

When you take the square of a vector you get a scalar. Mass is always a scalar.

I'm afraid to read much more of this thread however...