Vampire's and Nukes

[GJD]

The tritium is used in the nuclear triggers, not as part of the warhead, that is still enriched uranium or plutonium.

Even without a nuclear explosion, it wouldn't take a great deal for a vamp to force its slaves to strip out the warheads and build a bunch of dirty bombs. Topical, seeing as they are allegedly the weapon de jour for terrorists at the moment.

G.

 

[mike wightman]

The enriched uranium or the plutonium are fissile materials.
It's the tritium that undergoes fusion.
Thus the fission reaction is used to initiate the fusion reaction - a fission/fusion thermonuclear weapon.

A larger yeild can be achieved by encasing the whole thing in uranium (no need to enrich this) so that a fission-fusion-fission reaction occurs.

Most thermonuclear weapons are of the first type.

You can find a bit more about it all here , or just spend a few minutes googling nuclear fusion bomb physics

 

[Theophilus]

Of course this all assumes that 3000 years of technological advancement does not lead to a different triggering mechanism!

 

[mike wightman]

True enough.
After all, nuclear damper technology gives high tech cultures the ability to control nuclear reactions.
Add high tech capacitors, gravitics technology etc. and you could have a laser ignition system for a fusion or fusion-fission bomb (no need for plutonium or enriched uranium).
You could even use an antimatter trigger to initiate the fusion reaction

 

[Badbru]

Regardless of the type of detonation circuitry or ignition system I think the Imperium would mandate some type of device or control system that prevented atmosphere detonations for nuclear pumped xray laser warheads. Nuclear weapons were supposedly tightly controlled by the Imperium, the use of nuclear weapons being one of the few "automatic" triggers for Imperial intervention in a war. Also even in the Imerial Navy there could be "rogue elements" that Imperial interests would not want to have be in control of nuclear weapons.
Savage, How would you have it? Players launch nukes, emp wipes all bots on Promise, players plot jump to next planet. End Story?????
Equally dull and limmited I feel.

 

[Elliot]

Badbru - it is somewhat of a mystery that nukes were the weapon of choice in CT/MT starship battles (and they were not nuclear pumped xray laser warheads - that was a TNE addition), yet the use of nukes was considered black war stuff by the Imperium.

Look at any canon CT/MT book on ships - there is no mention of any restriction on something as piddly and civillian as a Free Trader carrying a triple nuke missle launcher turret. One wonders how any world got by without a disgruntled merchant pressing the red button.

 

[savage]

Nukes weapons of choice...not!


Laser...Mesons...those are weapons...nukes destroy the Imperium.

Savage

 

[Elliot]

Look at Kevin Connolly's article (he was the TCS champion at one time) in JTAS No.14 on page 9 -

'... in a clash of fair sized and moderately armoured ships, only three weapons stand a reasonable chance of damaging an enemy ship to the extent of removing it from battle: nuclear missles, spinal meson guns and spinal particle accelerators'

Mr Connolly makes the point that in the opening moves of a HG/TCS battle the focusing of missile fire by missle corvettes on the capital ships can effectively reduce the M gun to such an extent that the battle can be won in the opening.

He also makes it clear that loading your ship with any other weapons (lasers, fusion, sand) is a design mistake that is going to end up in defeat (JTAS No.15 p.35).

Having read that article, I have always loaded my Type S with missle racks rather than lasers.

 

[shield]

Re nuke missiles.

The old CT book 2 has the civilian ship to ship missile with a HE warhead. And the traveller Adventure has a sternmetal free trader going to extreme lenghts to hide the fact he has got nuke missiles, and this is definately a high law crime.

High Guard covers battles between governments (Imperial / zho etc.) who have given themselves the right to use nukes.

This stops the average free trader nuking planets as they go. TNE messed that up with the nuke detonation laser ooops!

Cheers
Richard

 

[mike wightman]

The use of nuclear weapons in space combat by civilian and paramilitary ships is a feature of the MT Hardtimes background.

On page 40:

Many ship's masters carry nuclear tipped missiles, despite Imperial regulations that outlaw their possession. Upon entering a Safe system the nukes are hidden; the old restrictions are stringently enforced in the Safes.

 

[Elliot]

Ahh - a bit of canon I always missed - probably because I played Mayday/HG rather than Bk2 combat.

So it goes to the point that nukes are going to be pretty rare by 1126 - which makes them a diminishing concern as the virus era goes on.

 

[shield]

yes, the original He missile from Book 2 only cost 5000cr, the TNE nuke version costs about 2MCr a shot.

I think the average trader will go for the cheap version.

Cheers
Richard

 

[mike wightman]

It is still a mystery to me why the excellent missile rules in the Missile Special Supplement were not adapted to High Guard and then MT, and then extended to TNE and T4

Perhaps they could be adapted somehow

 

[Badbru]

Possibly it's due to the revised combat system and damage in TNE's Brilliant Lances. Even something as small and low tech as a TL 9 20cm HEAP warhead is going to do well over 150 points of damage. If a TNE Jayhawk with it's AV 10 got hit with one of those it would do a Critical hit and several "H" major damage results whereas a 200kt yeild N-pump X-ray warhead will do 1d6 hits each being one "H" major. Roughly speaking. So having warheads that actually "Hit the Hull" in TNE space combat would make missiles exceptionally dangerous, though with the RCEG's rule supplement for AEMS designation warheads I can't see a reason (other than the one I've just given) that HE or HEAP warheads aren't adopted. A 300,000klm AEMS could be used to designate just as well as any other AEMS system. I fear it would seriously unbalence the combat though.

 

[mike wightman]

I've often thought that mass drivers/rail guns should be available as starship weapons in Traveller.

 

[DED]

The reason why HE or HEAP missiles don't exist in TNE space combat is due to anti-missile fire from the ship's laser weapons. If there are any TNE gearheads lurking they can explain it better than I can. Basically, a laser turret fires so many times in the course of a combat turn that no missile would survive long enough to even reach the hull.

 

[Badbru]

Can't say that I agree with you on that one DED

Under the "Defenses" section it states;

"Naturally, any weapons which were used for anti-missile fire have done their fire for the turn and are not eligible to fire at any other targets"
BL pg 20.

So use of lasers is a trade off. If you use them against missiles you can't use them against opfor ships vs if you use them against opfor ships you can't use them against missiles.

In addition under "Fire Eligibility" one of the criteria for weapons to be able to fire;

"The vessel must have a current sensor lock on the target."

Now missiles are "Sub-micro" targets which gives them +2 Diff mods to be sensed and they can be launched from 12 hexes and traverse said distance in the same turn. Makes it difficult to get that lock if you've only got a 3 or 4 hex passive running.

Strict interpretations of these rules IMTU got my players killed too easily so I allow a "Last shot option" which essentially means you automatically have a sensor lock on anything in the same hex as your ship. Still when your ship only has two lasers and that SDB lets fly 10 missiles you ARE going to come up short.

 

[DED]

<shrug> I'm just relating what the TNE gearheads have been hitting me over the head with over the years. I can't explain it. I don't use TNE ship combat. I just know that with several hundred shots over a turn that enables anti-missile fire to render HEAP warheads useless.

But perhaps they were referring to military starship combat and not civilian starship combat.

 

[Antony]

As a TNE Gearhead, the highest rate of fire for a laser is 800/30 minutes. However this is calculated as an abstract single "barrage" with a modifier difficulty bonus. Several of my ship designs carry lasers with this sort of RoF.

In combat this means that a single missile is targeted by the laser every turn, it fires its barrage of laser bolts, hits the missile (a missile hit by a ship mounted laser is a kill). However no more than 1 missile can be killed by a laser every turn (a generous GM could rule that a critical success which results in 2 hits could destroy a second missile).

This (In TNE) makes missiles more useful, it is possible to simply swamp a target with missiles. (Note though that standard warhead sizes will NOT penetrate the hull armour on battleship, though an effective combat kill can be achieved by scraping hull fixtures off).

Incidently it may also make a case for the return of KE kill missiles in TNE since the game mechanics mean point defence is not that good.

Also note there are 2 versions of the TNE/FF&S1 rule books, the first one had more firing phases within a combat turn making point defence better. The second has a single firing phase.

 

[mike wightman]

So how much damage does a 0.1kt nuclear warhead do to a ship if it detonates on contact???