...Now, about G-compensators. They have their limits, and that is the limits of the M drive. Kinetic Energy from missiles can impart G to the ship that can overwhelm the G-compensators. It really isn't that hard when the ship only has 1 or 2 g g comps. We are talking about 20 m/s^2 change. This includes the sudden, sharp breaking that can be caused by a series of explosions in direct opposition to the movement vector.
But we are going to physics arguments, and you guys tell me over and over again that they make no sense in this game. Please point me to a canon source that declares DEFINITIVELY AND NOT INTERPRETIVELY whether passengers inside a ship are affected by combat maneuvers or not, and that ship vectors are or are not affected by nearby explosion.
Again, if it is not declared in clear text, I do not consider it a definitive statement.
Megatrav Referee's Manual: "Inertial compensators, when installed, allow high-G maneuvers while interior G-fields remain normal. Inertial compensators negate the effects of inertia, so the occupants of a moving craft have no sensation of motion."
Note that in Megatrav, these are distinct from the grav plates, which provide the ship's internal gravity but do not compensate for thrust or maneuver.
As to ship vectors, I can't find anything in MegaTrav, CT book 2, or Mayday that suggests a ship's vector is affected by a nearby explosion. No rule says the vector is changed at all. However, a ship's vector in those games represents at minimum 20 to 100 minutes under 1g acceleration; a vector change from a missile explosion may simply be too small to be represented on that scale while still being very, very noticeable to the occupants. Doesn't take much to send you into a bulkhead.
This of course depends on how quickly the gamemaster decides those compensators can compensate. If they're quick enough, you may only have a tiny fraction of a second before the compensator kicks in and matches you to the ship's new vector; end result is you just feel a slight lurch and maybe lose you balance if you overreact to that. Maybe lose your lunch if you have to put up with a lot of that. If they're not quick enough, your head's impacting the bulkhead - and your brain impacting the inside of your skull shortly after that - before the field can grab you.
A kilo of TNT puts out around 4 million joules, dynamite around 6, I think. Given that only part of that energy's going to be applied to the ship, I'm thinking a 1000 metric ton (100 dT) ship, for example, is getting no more than about a couple meters per second velocity vector out of it, enough to have you falling against bulkheads and maybe cause a concussion, not much more than that. Typical missile probably has several kilos of something powerful in that warhead, so it's likely to be quite uncomfortable on your typical free trader or smaller, but of course the larger the ship, the less it will react.
However, my physics days are about 3 decades behind me, so I'm not entirely sure I figured that right.
It would exist, especially if a pilot red lines a ship's drive in an accelerated manoeuvre on a radically different vector to evade during combat.
OK, if you have a M1 drive providing a maximum inertial compensation field of 1G, then rapid manoeuvres to avoid an incoming high velocity object (read: missile) would impart stresses during that instant of that manoeuvre. That would be no different than a person on ground within a 1G environment feeling some stress when they make a rapid change of direction or influenced by an outside force, such as a jolt or shake.
So additional stresses are momentary but there as the inertial field would take a moment to adjust, particularly as the field is constantly maintaining power allocation to the gravity plates built into the ships decks. Why else would Starships still need acceleration couches? If the ship had a 100% perfect inertial compensation field where they would feel no movement at all, then the need for acceleration couches would not be needed.
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One G is one G. A 1 G drive produces 1 G. Doesn't matter how hard you jab the button. The maximum stress on the ship is 1 G from the drive. Inescapable physics.
What HG said. Moreover, a competent engineer is going to design the ship so that the compensators are timed to the ship's maneuvers. You jab the button, a signal goes to the compensators and to the drives, timed so that the drives trigger in precisely the same instant that the compensators kick in. (Which leaves open some interesting possibilities to throw at those who fail to keep up with scheduled maintenance.) Your only problem is going to come from forces which can't be anticipated - turbulence in atmospheres, missiles exploding against the hull - and then it depends on the specifics of the compensator and how quickly it reacts (for which there is absolutely no guidance in the game that I know of, so I'd say go with whatever makes things most dramatic without killing your party.)
