you may wish to include the objects and the targets themselves in your calculations. for example using the numbers you supply I get 1.7Mj / in^2 for the shell vs 19Mj / in^2 for the missile, which I'm casually guessing is an automatic penetrate even for 16 inches of case-hardened steel, and if traveller hulls are tough enough to resist THAT then battledress would be made out of something similar and be immune to any man-portable weapon even in traveller.
Oh HELL, I'm treating acceleration as the equivalent of muzzle velocity, not the right comparison, impact velocity.
Ok, I went back and reread the SS3 rule, which states that for every 300mm of accumulated vector between the missile and target, an impact will generate an extra hit.
100mm is the distance of a 1 G vector, 10,000 km in 1000 seconds, or put another way a vector of 10 km/s that you got to with 10 m/s during 1000 seconds of accel.
So if there were a head on impact between a missile going at 9 G and a target at 3 G, that's 12 G cumulative or 4 more hits over and above whatever the warhead would do (assuming it goes off, detonators can be messed with). I presume that is what is handling the 1-6 random result of the 'simple' LBB2 missile hit resolution.
So that's something like 22 kg at 30 km/s for what a starship hull can take.
Misremembered/misrepresented the C, it would be more like .0001c per hit.
Hopefully that settles any confusion I have engendered, and where I went wrong to make that assertion.
I do stand by the comparison at the postulated speeds, 50kg is darn light at a mere 2 miles per second and IS comparable to a 'mere' battleship shell.
The missile impact rules are part of why I want to get beyond the HG type simplifications and get into hard tactics.
Among other things, a 30G 5x6 missile will do 10 extra hits at near end of run against a 0 G target, stern chase ships could be in grave peril while their return shots do less damage.
Giving players 'cold equations' can give them a spacier experience, and maybe encounters play out differently then one would 'expect' the way most Traveller is played.
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If we were to get ridiculously RL realistic, part of the equation has to include metallurgy of weapon and target, and the dynamics of how a shell strike itself both starts a little bit of plasma/pyrophoric effects at higher ends AND the structure of the metal impact, possibly harmonics.
All of which most current best understandings of are basically national secrets seeing as how they effect modern weapons design and multidecade 'bets' on weapon system/defense mixes that will affect international destinies, so not worth it likely to go all out, we are unlikely to 'get it completely right', but we can get within reason.
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Now the reason I made the distinctions I did in my response is that converting this to Striker/HG makes for stranger results.
Striker tells us that the unarmored ships are at armor factor 40, equivalent to 13" of hard steel (typical of the second tier of battleships), and armored warships are on another level- HG armor 10 would work out to Striker armor 80 or 425" of steel. Of course our ships are made of hightech materials so they take much less volume for the same effect.
With an oblique hit, a kinetic impact might be treated as 80 for an unarmored ship and say 160 for an HG armor 10 ship, yielding an armor rating off the chart (highest it goes is striker value 120 for 13,543 inches of steel).
Battledress is rated at Striker armor 10, and armor 18 at TL14, which is equivalent to 1" and 2" of steel respectively. Puts a lot of the lighter stuff out of the range of hurting you, but doesn't help against RAM GL much less plasma/fusion guns.
I'm thinking there needs to be a class of suit that's more man-sized mecha as light tank/aerial recon-control/assault that would have the sort of armor level you are expecting. I'm working out the details.
Anyway, things get wonky because the way the rules work most of the ship missiles aren't going to do much to a ship, the KEAP (kinetic AP) rules are set for terrestrial hypervelocity not starship speeds and the warhead affects only approximate LBB2/SS3 if you somehow wedge in the demolition packages.
as for destroy, 'pends. hydrostatic shock in the fuel tank and piping will share the damage wealth far and wide. electrostatics may disrupt quite a few operating systems. penetrating the power plant, jump drive, or maneuver drive equipment seems likely to generate a shipyard repair/replacement requirement. and there may be some serious heat issues.
Studying actual naval battle results as opposed to theory leads one to rather a different conclusion. It's not so much blowing the fuel tanks, a hole in the engines as it is an accumulation of leaks, secondary system breakdowns that all add up to a slowdown or mission kill, or rendering the offense capacity to fire or defense to maneuver that leads to destruction, such as loss of turrets and fire control and steering/speed for Bismarck (along with the occasional spectacular catastrophe such as Hood).
During the battle of Taffy 3, Japanese battleships and cruisers closed and hit the CVEs several times, but had run out of the optimal HE rounds during earlier air battles and were firing AP shells, said shots went straight through the carriers and out the other side without appreciable effective damage that otherwise would have destroyed them.
I have that result VERY much in mind with my pass-through rules (you can read up where I am at in The Fleet post with the damage and drama thread).
So, maybe, maybe not.
The naval game Seekrieg does a very good job in this arena.
http://www.seekrieg.com/
