Author Topic: Apocalypse Scale (holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit)  (Read 26625 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline General Battuta

  • Poe's Law In Action
  • 214
  • i wonder when my postcount will exceed my iq
Apocalypse Scale (holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit)
Just for scale, the Apocalypse standard-issue antimatter-tipped ship-to-ship missile fired in swarms of four or eight is 40 meters in length. Longer than a Titan II ICBM.

The ordnance expended in Aristeia alone could probably match a good-sized Cold War nuclear exchange. A full artillery duel between a Narayana team and a GTVA battlegroup would be apocalyptic in proportions.

 

Offline -Norbert-

  • 211
Re: Apocalypse Scale (holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit)
Must be fun for GTVA pilots to hunt down missiles that are bigger than their fighters ^^

 

Offline General Battuta

  • Poe's Law In Action
  • 214
  • i wonder when my postcount will exceed my iq
Re: Apocalypse Scale (holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit)
Must be fun for GTVA pilots to hunt down missiles that are bigger than their fighters ^^

Knowing how huge FS fighters are...I'm not sure that's true.

 

Offline Kobrar44

  • On Suspended Sentence
  • 29
  • Let me tilerape it for you!
    • Steam
Re: Apocalypse Scale (holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit)
Hmm... By the size and type of its explosive... shouldn't it be just as strong as nuke in WINGS?
Oh guys, use that [ url ][ img ][ /img ][ /url ] :/

 

Offline Snail

  • SC 5
  • 214
  • Posts: ☂
Re: Apocalypse Scale (holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit)
Well-known statistic: The Harbinger apparently has a payload of 5000 megatons. The Fury has a payload of 2 kilotons.


(these numbers make no sense)

 

Offline Scotty

  • 1.21 gigawatts!
  • 211
  • Guns, guns, guns.
Re: Apocalypse Scale (holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit)
Antimatter explosion (is that even the right term?) =/= Nuclear explosion.

 

Offline NGTM-1R

  • I reject your reality and substitute my own
  • 213
  • Syndral Active. 0410.
Re: Apocalypse Scale (holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit)
Antimatter explosion (is that even the right term?) =/= Nuclear explosion.

Depends. A relatively small antimatter weapon will equal a large nuke.
"Load sabot. Target Zaku, direct front!"

A Feddie Story

 

Offline Snail

  • SC 5
  • 214
  • Posts: ☂
Re: Apocalypse Scale (holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit)
Antimatter explosion (is that even the right term?) =/= Nuclear explosion.
The units are TNT equivalent. If it's an explosion, the units can still be used.

 

Offline General Battuta

  • Poe's Law In Action
  • 214
  • i wonder when my postcount will exceed my iq
Re: Apocalypse Scale (holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit)
Hmm... By the size and type of its explosive... shouldn't it be just as strong as nuke in WINGS?

Nope. It scales properly with other FreeSpace bombs, and the nuke in WINGS is a piddling tiny little firecracker compared to FreeSpace weapons. The low-end Harbinger bomb had a yield of 5000 megatons!

Most of the size of the weapon is probably tied up in its enhanced range versus other FreeSpace anti-warship secondaries.

 

Offline -Norbert-

  • 211
Re: Apocalypse Scale (holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit)
If the missile is so big, couldn't they fit some ECCM in there?

 

Offline General Battuta

  • Poe's Law In Action
  • 214
  • i wonder when my postcount will exceed my iq
Re: Apocalypse Scale (holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit)
If the missile is so big, couldn't they fit some ECCM in there?

Sure, vast amounts. But in general I think we assume that the ECM environment is as ridiculously overscaled as the warhead yields.

 

Offline Scotty

  • 1.21 gigawatts!
  • 211
  • Guns, guns, guns.
Re: Apocalypse Scale (holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit)
Antimatter explosion (is that even the right term?) =/= Nuclear explosion.
The units are TNT equivalent. If it's an explosion, the units can still be used.
I know, but claiming that the numbers make no sense when two entirely different types of explosive are used is fallacy.

 

Offline General Battuta

  • Poe's Law In Action
  • 214
  • i wonder when my postcount will exceed my iq
Re: Apocalypse Scale (holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit)
Antimatter explosion (is that even the right term?) =/= Nuclear explosion.
The units are TNT equivalent. If it's an explosion, the units can still be used.
I know, but claiming that the numbers make no sense when two entirely different types of explosive are used is fallacy.

He's claiming the numbers make no sense because they're ridiculously huge compared to the effects seen in-game. (Plus I don't think Fury damage scales to Harbinger damage at all, but blast TNTonnage doesn't necessarily = damage points I guess.)

An antimatter blast actually would behave pretty much like a nuke: you'd get a ton of gamma, an EMP (moreso in an atmosphere than in space), and a neutrino pulse. The rule of thumb I've seen (it even made it to Wikipedia, looks like!) is that a kilo of antimatter, annihilated at high efficiency, is about as good as a 20mt thermonuke.

Don't believe the myth that a matter/antimatter blast converts 100% to destructive force. You lose about half the blast energy to neutrinos. (If the neutrinos were crazy dense enough, they could cause breakdown of nearby fission weapons, hilariously enough - rendering nearby nukes inoperable.)

 

Offline Delta_V

  • 26
Re: Apocalypse Scale (holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit)
I always thought that was a scary thought: two kilograms (one matter, one antimatter) could be as powerful as some of the most powerful nukes ever created.  Of course, with antimatter, the actual bomb would probably be huge compared to the amount of antimatter it contains because you have to store the antimatter in a a way that it absolutely cannot come into contact with any form of matter, so the containment mechanism would probably be very complex.

I was reading some of the tech entries in WiH the other day, and I was wondering, how much antimatter did you guys envision the UEF's weapons, from their torpedoes to the mass drivers, using?

And yeah, the numbers [V] threw around for their weapons seem ridiculous.  I don't know how effective nukes and such would be in space, but if they're even a tiny fraction as effective as they are in an atmosphere, a 5,000 megaton nuke should shatter a destroyer in one shot, and yet a Sathanas shrugs of 5+ gigaton Helios (Helios>Harbringer) like its nothing.  Basically, I've never taken those numbers seriously, and regarded them as some game developer throwing numbers around.

 

Offline General Battuta

  • Poe's Law In Action
  • 214
  • i wonder when my postcount will exceed my iq
Re: Apocalypse Scale (holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit)
We envisioned them as having not much antimatter. The UEF has a lot of the stuff, as antimatter goes, but it's gotta be handled carefully.

 

Offline Spoon

  • 212
  • ヾ(´︶`♡)ノ
Re: Apocalypse Scale (holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit)
Must be fun for GTVA pilots to hunt down missiles that are bigger than their fighters ^^

Knowing how huge FS fighters are...I'm not sure that's true.
FS fighters are around 20-25 meters long
So yes, they'll be hunting missiles that are bigger than their fighters
Urutorahappī!!

[02:42] <@Axem> spoon somethings wrong
[02:42] <@Axem> critically wrong
[02:42] <@Axem> im happy with these missions now
[02:44] <@Axem> well
[02:44] <@Axem> with 2 of them

 

Offline Hellzed

  • 28
Re: Apocalypse Scale (holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit)
I feel that something does not match...
Size, speed, weapon power, there's definitely something wrong in FS.

Each week, I take a train that goes faster than 220 mph... In 2336, my fighter : 80 mph. :lol:

I liked the way IWar 2 Edge of Chaos handled speed : it was more a matter of acceleration than absolute speed.
And I want nuke effects like in Battlestar Galactica, or some more understandable figures in the tech room.
« Last Edit: October 27, 2010, 11:10:39 pm by Hellzed »

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

  • The Academic
  • 211
  • Bad command or file name
Re: Apocalypse Scale (holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit)
Don't believe the myth that a matter/antimatter blast converts 100% to destructive force. You lose about half the blast energy to neutrinos. (If the neutrinos were crazy dense enough, they could cause breakdown of nearby fission weapons, hilariously enough - rendering nearby nukes inoperable.)


I don't see neutrinos involved, really.

Electron-positron annihilation produces only gamma photons of about 511 keV energy (or more if the particles had lots of momentum before their collision).

Proton-antiproton annihilation (at lower than about 2 GeV energies) produces four gamma photons and a chargeless pion, which decays into two gamma photons.

Neutron-antineutron annihilation produces two gamma photons directly.

What you lose in destructive force is the fact that gamma rays are stupidly penetrating stuff. Most of the gamma radiation passing through stuff like human tissue just goes through doing nothing, which means you need quite large intensities of gamma radiation to actually cause a harmful amount of ionizing impacts on the tissue (this level depends on the tissue, some are more sensitive to damage than others). Additionally, the intensity (of course) reduces fast as distance grows, in the inverse square of distance.

Hence, despite the massive amounts of raw energy unleashed, harnessing it into mechanical work is not quite straightforward. The gamma radiation itself doesn't cause immediate damage unless it is so dense that it transfers huge amounts of energy into nearby materials and vaporises it, but due to the penetrating properties of gamma radiation this would require quite a massive yield, and most of the energy would still escape.

The best way to actually utilize the energy of gamma burst released from the annihilation is to encase it in a non-solid fragmentation shell made of lead or other very dense element (but lead is probably the cheapest, depleted uranium tends to be a bit sparse) which would attenuate the gamma radiation significantly, heat up by a corresponding energy, and turn into expanding cloud of lead vapour and parts of the outer fragmentation shell. This could cause more damage in the vacuum.

In atmosphere, similar system could increase the amount of energy captured at the blast site. If that were not done, the annihilation would produce a mass of gamma rays which would probably heat up the air enough to cause an impressive fireball and lots of radiation sickness nearby, but if there was a shroud around the annihilation that would gather the majority of the gamma rays released, it would constrict the energy release to a much smaller area, and would likely result in pretty much larger destructive power overall.

EDIT: Typio
There are three things that last forever: Abort, Retry, Fail - and the greatest of these is Fail.

 
Re: Apocalypse Scale (holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit)
Oh, I love those discussions.

Now, I'm not entirely sure, but isn't the 100% efficiency only when the proper particles are used? Electron and Positron will result in 100%, but weren't there actually ways a positron could react with a proton or neutron if they are forced into each other properly? I think the standard model and sub-hadron mechanics played a role there...

Hm, I really would have to go back and try to read that stuff again, if only I could remember where that was. I might be confusing stuff altogether here as well. But IIRC there were many different particles that could result from different antimatter-matter reactions. So without knowing about what exactly is in those warheads, we shouldn't be able to really make a call on what the explosion would be like.

And as for the flight physics not being anything like real spaceflight would be like - I love Freespace, but when I want (pseudo)realism, I go for Elite 2 or 3 (with fanpatches). BP does a good job in being authentic in it's own frame of reference without trying to bring "real" realism into freespace.

 

Offline -Norbert-

  • 211
Re: Apocalypse Scale (holy shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit)
Quote
The gamma radiation itself doesn't cause immediate damage unless it is so dense that it transfers huge amounts of energy into nearby materials and vaporises it, but due to the penetrating properties of gamma radiation this would require quite a massive yield, and most of the energy would still escape.
Considering that the hulls are made to block cosmic radiation and withstand nuklear weapons (like the torpedoes) wouldn't that mean they aren't easily penetrated by gamma rays?
So unless they found a way to deflect radiation away from the hulls, wouldn't that mean instead of going through without causing harm, those gamma rays instead heat up the inside of those armor plates?

Apart from possibly making those plates softer till they can cool off again (depends on the material I guess) that should also raise the ships internal temperature causing the crew some discomfort and reducing the effectiveness of the cooling systems for beams and reactors.

Also antimatter tipped warheads sound like a shaped blast to me, so in front of the impact site there would be intense energy released, probably enough to vapourise the hull there. And if that material get's into the corridors of the ship, it'd be rather catastrophic I think.