Where do all those nukes come from?

[rancke]

I've always seen the 'No Nukes' prohibition as 'Don't use nukes against your neighbors!' Remember, the Imperial Rules of War are unwritten. They say what the local Imperial decision-maker says they say. And their entire purpose is to reduce the destruction wrought by local conflicts. The Imperium sees it as impractical to prevent local wars; at best it sees them as the lesser of two evils, not a good thing. "So, children, if you must fight, play nice. Governments, don't carpet-bomb your own citizens, even with conventional bombs, don't gas them, don't use biological weapons, and DON'T USE NUKES! And revolutionaries, same goes for you!"

Also, the Imperium may need some sort of decent excuse to interfere with the affairs of member worlds, just to avoid making the other member worlds (the high-tech, high-population ones) nervous.

But all this is down on planetary surfaces with civilians around. I'm not at all sure the Imperium would bat an eye over two sides in a local (intra-system) fight between opposing warships using nukes on each other. (One system invading another is, of course, a no-no; protecting a member world from attacks from outside the system is IMO one of the things a membership treaty specifically obliges the Imperium to do).


Hans

 

[Dreadnought]

I agree with everything Rancke said.

(Not like he needs me to; he knows he knows what he's talking about. I'm just enjoying conversing.)

Especially the stuff about nukes in "deep space." The issue is biospheres/ecospheres.

 

[silversides207]

Even In Universe, the distinction between tactical and strategic weapons is usually pretty obvious, though the precise line could be arbitrary. City busters = violation. tactical yield = legal. The precise dividing line could be pretty arbitrary but probably somewhere around a megaton, though you could make the argument for anywhere between 100kt and 500kt. None of the nuclear pumped x-ray weapons come close to that (highest is 500kt) and TL8 high explosives can approach those yields anyways (particularly when you get into thermobaric weaponry, etc).

Any fission warheads or deliberately "dirty" weapons should count, as well.

After all, your average Far Trader as a kamikaze could make a mean impact coming in at max acceleration from 100D out... so the simple "nuclear" = bad smacks too much of the 70's environment Traveller spawned from.

The separation between strategic and tactical is about a megaton? Interesting. Most US tactical nukes were on the order of 5 kilotons or less, although the 280mm Atomic projectile was about 15 kilotons.

Have you checked the yield of current US ballistic missile multiple warheads?

 

[McPerth]

About nukes prohibition by the Imperial Rules of War, unless they changed from MT to TNE (where I guess they are only enforced in the Regency, so no rules apply elsewhere), are quite clear:

From MT:IE page 28

one prohibition is clear and firm throughout the Imperium: use or possesion of nuclear weapons, if discovered, and regardless of size ant type.

As said, this is MT, and in the same IE, in the referee's section of the library date specifies that the Imperium keeps for itself the right of its possesion and use, but, as said unless TNE substantially changes it, you can see that the fact they are tactical or strategical weapons is irrelvent, with regard to IRW.

 

[silversides207]

I guess that I would also be curious as to where all of the Plutonium-239, Uranium-235, and possibly Uranium-233 bred from Thorium-232 is coming from. If you are operating a fusion-powered society, the only way to get those isotopes is set up separate production facilities. Those do tend to be a bit expensive, and in the case of Plutonium, require some fairly elaborate handling facilities to process it.

 

[Uxi]

The separation between strategic and tactical is about a megaton? Interesting. Most US tactical nukes were on the order of 5 kilotons or less, although the 280mm Atomic projectile was about 15 kilotons.

Have you checked the yield of current US ballistic missile multiple warheads?

Sure. I was partially extrapolating for where I think the line should/would be in the 57th century, not where it is now. Of course, a bit of perspective and rudimentary history shows the yield of current US warheads is well below the peaks achieved 2-4 decades ago (the 25Mt Mk41 warheads were retired in 1975 and even the 9Mt W53 didn't make it past '97 or so).

Realistically today, I'd probably put the line at a kiloton with the way it is, but depending on the if people today could be more rational about it, probably closer to the 500kt range depending on the specific materials and a clean or dirty secondary, etc. Of course that mindset is partially based on the scorn from the results of space exploration we got shaving ounces with chemical rockets and the shuttle boondoggle instead of sending dozens to hundreds of crew with hundreds to thousands of tonnes of payload on 125 day round trips to Mars and back in an Orion pulse drive instead....

 

[Antony]

Is it possible to get a Chemical Laser Cartridge laser into a standard sized missile and have the same effective range for the laser as the ND types? Presumable about half a hex - 15000km to match the 0 hex range like most ND types have listed. What about battery or fuel celled powered DEI lasers? I'm sure someone had a go at at least some of these.

 

[whartung]

Is it possible to get a Chemical Laser Cartridge laser into a standard sized missile and have the same effective range for the laser as the ND types? Presumable about half a hex - 15000km to match the 0 hex range like most ND types have listed. What about battery or fuel celled powered DEI lasers? I'm sure someone had a go at at least some of these.

Well the design sequence can sorta work with a CLPC. You'd have to play with it a little.

For example, without doing the math, and based solely on the damage numbers, the 1/14:43 damage of the 50kTon yields warhead is equivalent to a 300Mj laser. Using CLPC that's either 300 or 150kg of cartridge (based on TL). Other warheads are obviously larger.

A bomb pumped missile gets 1D6 hits on the target, so you need at least 6 of them.

Within those parameters, it would probably mostly work, but I think that the way the Bomb pumped laser warhead is portrayed, there are several rods (more than 6) in place, in a spherical orientation.

But it probably could be done reasonably well.

 

[silversides207]

Of course that mindset is partially based on the scorn from the results of space exploration we got shaving ounces with chemical rockets and the shuttle boondoggle instead of sending dozens to hundreds of crew with hundreds to thousands of tonnes of payload on 125 day round trips to Mars and back in an Orion pulse drive instead....

Ah, yes, Project Bang Bang. Not a bad idea as long as you did not live downwind of the fall out pattern from the initial shots, and it would be very interesting to see what the result of the EMP effects of the really big explosions needed to place it in orbit and the escape from orbit to head for Mars.

 

[whartung]

Ah, yes, Project Bang Bang. Not a bad idea as long as you did not live downwind of the fall out pattern from the initial shots, and it would be very interesting to see what the result of the EMP effects of the really big explosions needed to place it in orbit and the escape from orbit to head for Mars.

Nonetheless, I will see a Footfall movie solely for this sequence, if nothing else. Hell, I'd love them to just shoot this sequence.

"Maneuvering!" *BAM* *BAM* *BAM* *BAM*

Pump up the volume, man!

 

[Uxi]

Ah, yes, Project Bang Bang. Not a bad idea as long as you did not live downwind of the fall out pattern from the initial shots, and it would be very interesting to see what the result of the EMP effects of the really big explosions needed to place it in orbit and the escape from orbit to head for Mars.

Even then they had a plan to use a couple Saturns to take it up in pieces and assemble in orbit. With modern devices, you don't have to worry about fallout with clean secondaries and the big ones don't go off until you need serious acceleration outside the atmosphere. EMP could definitely be a concern but could probably be precise with the launch site and/or assemble in orbit. For the first, I think you just gotta bite the bullet and send up the initial moon base in one piece and then get an intermediary station built at L1.

Chemical thrusters will always suck in comparison and the biggest tragedy is my mind is that Orion could have been built for the same cost as Apollo and we could have been all over the solar system with 1960's and 1970's technology instead of pudding around with the dinky shuttle.

Footfall is my favorite Niven & Pournell but even the 60's USAF "Doomsday" Orion Battleship rocks compared to what we've actually gotten. The only thing Archangel lacked was a Casaba Howitzer...

 

[TheDS]

There was a discussion on this in one of the challenge mags. Someone at GDW did some calcs and determined that a missile could not get closer than about 30,000km before a point def laser had a 100% lock (based on the missile not being able to evade the laser spot in the time it took for the laser burst to arrive). Therefore no missile would ever hit its target.

This forced all missiles to become bomb pumped lasers and hence all space missiles became nukes.

FF&S allows you to build missiles with any sort of warhead, but using the TNE logic, they would be pretty useless in space combat and were probably ground attack weapons.

Hence no rules for non-nuke missiles in the basic rules.

But this did blow a hole in the old Imperial rules of war that said only the Imperium had nukes (allowed for responsible planetary govts for defence against evil zhodani)

I don't know that the exact range was ever stated, but the auto-kill range must be closer than that because the missiles have to enter the same hex as the target before they can attack. Their range is very short.

I did a little math a few years back (and I think I posted about it then) regarding sensors and auto-hits and the kind of stuff that Dave talked about. As a summary, the relevant bit is something like this: if you divide distance to target in half, the diameter of the target doubles. There is a threshold that sensors can detect things (not very well represented in the rules, but it exists IRL) which basically means that your target has to consume a certain percentage of the sky for you to be able to see it. Frex, the human eye can see things that are about 1 square arc-second. It doesn't matter if it's a battleship 10 miles away or a baseball 10 meters away, these are about the same size to the eye.

1. Because missiles are so small, they can't be seen until they're close, especially if they're stealthed/quiet/non-maneuvering/etc.

2. The standard laser only fires once every 3 minutes. How far do you think a missile can travel in that amount of time? If the enemy sensor can't see your missile until it's within 3 minutes of hitting, that laser might not get a shot off.

3. So launch two missiles and saturate the target's defenses. Or since they can have two lasers, give them something else to shoot at. Dummies, or battleships or sensor ghosts.

4. The smaller the missile, the closer it can get before being detected. This might be mere seconds, depending on the missile and the sensor (and the operator's skill).

5. While a hit might be "mathematically certain", there are plenty of engineering reasons why the ship will still miss. The Challenge article mentions some of them, but there are many more. One need only read accounts of radar-guided guns in WW2 still requiring dozens of shots to score a single hit, and the kinds of things they engineered to overcome these problems. Imperfections are everywhere.

Skin-to-skin is exceedingly plausible, but you then have to ask how many missiles you want to fire to make it happen. A few rounds of Harpoon (the game) will tell you that you often need to put several missiles in the air to get one hit. Space missiles might cost more than Harpoons (the missile).

Dave has stated elsewhere he didn't feel that clouds of missiles fit the genre (this isn't Robotech), and that leaves det-lasers.

Personally, I would give players a choice: detonate your missile now, for a reasonable chance of a little damage, or run the gamut for a small chance of severe damage - and in the latter case, there's no reason why you can't try to saturate the enemy defenses; it isn't all that hard unless they're a dedicated anti-missile ship.