			    TRAVELLER Digest 103

Topics covered in this issue include:

  1) Re: Question about penetration	by CyHiggin@aol.com
  2) Re: Droyne	by CyHiggin@aol.com
  3) Anti-matter accidents	by michel_v@cpx.Prograph.Com (Michel R. Vaillancourt; ACP)
  4) Re: Anti-matter accidents	by merrick@RT66.com (Merrick Burkhardt)

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Date: Wed, 16 Nov 1994 10:11:06 -0500
From: CyHiggin@aol.com
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Re: Question about penetration
Message-ID: <941116101045_590553@aol.com>

From: Stefan Matthias Aust

>Nearly every hand weapon has a penetration rating of nil.  That means
>that every piece of armor, for example a normal space suit with AV 0,
>will stop any round.  (The 2 to 4 points of blunt damage are not worth
>mentioning here.)  If a weapon (with DS or HEAP ammunition) as a
>penetration rating of 1, the normal AV 6 battle armor will block up to
>6 dice of damage, more than normal weapons have.  Is this correct?  Or
>do I have missed some rules?

This is correct; you are not putting the numbers in perspective.
Specfically:


>Nearly every hand weapon has a penetration rating of nil.  That means
>that every piece of armor, for example a normal space suit with AV 0,
>will stop any round

All modern armor, you mean.  Archaic armor and clothes don't stop bullets.
Modern armor is *designed* to stop pistol bullets, at the very least.  If it didn't,
it wouldn't be armor.  The spacesuits are perhaps overarmored -- I think
someone thought they needed a suit that would keep out micrometeriods and
resist minor tears and punctures.  Put people in those light-duty spacesuits
if you don't want most spacecrew wearing light armor.

AV 6 battle dress: again, put it in perspective.  This is as much armor as
the front of a M113 APC!  (Which was *designed* to keep out small arms fire).
I should hope that AV6 armor stopped pistol and rifle fire!  (Source for APC
armor: Twilight 2000 American Combat Vehicle Handbook -- systems are the
same for weapons & vehicles from T2K to TNE.)  You aren't going to put down
someone wearing the equivalent of light APC hull armor with a TL10+ M16A2
(or TL10+ G3 in your case :-) ) , you need a serious anti-armor weapon.

>If the above rules are correct, it's impossible to damage someone
>wearing a body protection with AV 2 or higher with pistols or AV 4 or
>higher with rifles.  Both with guns and armor of the same TL.  (Ok,

Yep.  It's true in the Real World (tm), too.  Some more examples from T2K
Vehicles, to provide Real World vehicle equivalents:
         AV 1 = chassis of truck, jeep or car
         AV 3 = LAV-25 hull side
         AV 4 = side armor of M113 APC.
         AV 6 = front armor of M113 APC, LAV-25

The flaw, if any, is that with the arbitrary "TL" system thrown in, you
don't see the constant cycle of "better offense, better defense, even
better offense, repeat" that you do in the Real World.  Personal opinion
is that battle dress is expensive enough and so training-intensive that
only elite troops wear it until very high TLs; the average soldier wears
TL 9 combat environment suit (AV 1) thru TL 12 combat armor (AV 3).
-- which can be punched thru by contemporary infantry weapons
(TL 10 7mm ACR, TL 12 4mm Gauss).  Squad support weapons
should be able to nick the guys in battle dress, if you fight such
types very often.

As for lasers, there's a note in the Upgrade Booklet that only
rigid ceramic or metallic armor protects against lasers -- ballistic
weave doesn't do a thing for you. Battle dress, however, is the
rigid stuff that shrugs off laser fire...

I haven't playtested the combat rules yet, but they look reasonable,
and they've undergone several generations of shaking out (these
are an evolution of the T2K-C&D-DC combat rules).  Hope this helps
you sort things out.

                                             -- Cynthia

P.S. Back in both Classic Traveller and Megatraveller, soldiers in
Battle Dress were considered practically invulnerable to anything
short of a PGMP or FGMP.  Think "Starship Troopers".


------------------------------

Date: Wed, 16 Nov 1994 10:11:21 -0500
From: CyHiggin@aol.com
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Re: Droyne
Message-ID: <941116101111_590788@aol.com>

From: Hugh Foster

>>a new problem and this is Droyne. Mainly their TL. In fact I have thought to
use them in Karaguuka where they have a secret underwater base with (hopefully)
high TL stuff in it. <<

>Nope. Modern Droyne have a maximum TL of about 12; they also have a
>superstitious fear of all things Ancient and won't use any of it if they can
>help it. There are no _known_ establishments of Ancient-level Droyne in real
>space

I questioned one of my sources on this, one Droyne Sport Twi; it said:
"Interesting how far that bit of disinformation has spread.  It has done a good
job of keeping you non-Droyne from doing things like harassing us to spill
the secrets of the Ancients, holding Droyne populaces hostage until we
build "Ancient superweapons" for you, etc, etc.  Unforunately for us, Leader
Lucan was so paranoid he wouldn't believe our disinformation, an example
of the exception proving the rule."

My best sources tell me that most Droyne have no *need* for anything
beyond TL10 or so --- so they don't bother building it. If they do need
something, technicians are assigned to build it.  Everything ever
invented by a sport or designed by a leader whose world and Droyne
population still exists is available to the psionic/racial memory of the priest
drones or within the antique Droyne databanks carefully maintained by
the technicians as they have always been maintained, for uncounted
thousands of years.  Only Droyne populations that lose casting
(become chirpers) or die out entirely lose their memory.

Admittedly, a great many Droyne populations lost casting between the
Final War (300,000 BC) and the introduction of Coyns (75,000 BC), but
not all.  Many Droyne populations with the really advanced TL were
wiped out along with their patron Child, but a very few technologies filtered
out to the general Droyne culture ( jump 3+ drives, psi tech).  The
Zhodani's loss of their companion Droyne on Zhdant was more tragic
than they realized, because this was a population dating back to the Ancients
that had not lost casting...

OTOH, I'll bet that the Droyne have a "superstitious" fear of anything that
might be one of Yaskaydroy's personal toys, and it's a realistic fear, not
a "superstitious" fear.  He's an undead demigod who shatters worlds and
exterminates whole races when something ticks him off.  He might come
out of his hole if someone were foolish enough to get his attention, and
do you think any sane Leader or Sport wants that to happen?

                                                    -- Cynthia


------------------------------

Date: Wed, 16 Nov 1994 14:24:19 -0500
From: michel_v@cpx.Prograph.Com (Michel R. Vaillancourt; ACP)
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Anti-matter accidents
Message-ID: <9411161824.AA01956@Prograph.Com>

        Hi there.  I was in an odd mood today, and was thinking about how
much anti-matter all of those Alliance designs that keep going by have.  I
decided to figure out how much DV would be done to a bystander at 1L-sec
away if ONE ton of AM detonated.
        The math follows, but I explain what I did, and I hope someone can
find fault here.  I say this, because otherwise the alliance just spent a
huge amount of cash on fleets that can be destroyed by *1* lucky shot.
        I believe the real-world AM/M energy yeild is E=MC^2.  Lets assume
that a 1 ton AM pod ruptures, and only 50% of its contents react with
matter.  That leaves us with a yeild of 45 000 000 000 000 000Mj.  Weapon
intensity in FF&S is equal to the Mj divided by the square of the range (in
thousands of Km).  I used a range of 1 light-second.  This gives us an
effective I of 50 000 000 000Mj.
        Damage Value is equal to 5 times the root of I.  I further decided
that I am no mathematician nor physicist and therefore divided the
resulting DV by a "fudge factor" of two to deal with any high-energy
phenomena I am not familiar with.
        The result is that a one light second away, a bystander ship would
that just over 1,767,700 points of damage.  Per ton of AM exploding.
        At one light minute, one has somewhat better odds, with only 29,460
points of damage being inflicted.  At one AU (which is 8 light minutes, if
I remember correctly), it is no worse than a solid thwack from a spinal
mount with a mere 3,680 points.

        At this time, I have decided that until someone shows me where my
math is wrong (PLEASE!), I am having my empire BAN research on antimatter
systems in populated star systems.  Think about what would happen to a
world caught in a blast that reaches out *TWO AU* in diameter with enough
force to shatter starships...  Not to mention any incidental space traffic
or stations around that world.
        Anti-matter production facilites would have to be kept in empty
subsectors for both safety and strategic reasons.  One nut with a
death-wish could genocide a star system by causing a power-failure on the
AM holding pods.  Or an enemy Navy using a heavily armored and screened
drone ship doing a Kamakazi attack at 30g's.

        Here is my math;  I used a spreadsheet to sort it out and just
pasted the results into this message.

e     = m       c^2
9E+22 = 1000000 9E+16

throwaway       "e" as MJ=
50%             45 000 000 000 000 000

I     = Mj                              / R^2
5E+11 = 45 000 000 000 000 000          90000

DV          =      5 * I^.5
3535533.91  =      5 * 707106.781

Fixed DV=       DV     /        Fudge Factor
1767766.95      3535533.91      2

I hope this gives some rise to interesting conversation...

Regards,
   Michel
--
    -+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=-
 Michel Vaillancourt            Written from, not for:
 "Live, Love, Learn"            Prograph International
 MetroCity 2.0.2.0 BBS          2745 Dutch Village Rd,
    902.835.9766                     Halifax, NS
1:251/17@fidonet.org            "Watch your language!"






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Date: Wed, 16 Nov 1994 12:33:42 -0700 (MST)
From: merrick@RT66.com (Merrick Burkhardt)
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Re: Anti-matter accidents
Message-ID: <9411161933.AA19125@RT66.com>

>         Hi there.  I was in an odd mood today, and was thinking about how
> much anti-matter all of those Alliance designs that keep going by have.  I
> decided to figure out how much DV would be done to a bystander at 1L-sec
> away if ONE ton of AM detonated.

> 9E+22 = 1000000 9E+16
>
> throwaway       "e" as MJ=
> 50%             45 000 000 000 000 000
>
> I     = Mj                              / R^2
> 5E+11 = 45 000 000 000 000 000          90000
>
> DV          =      5 * I^.5
> 3535533.91  =      5 * 707106.781
>
> Fixed DV=       DV     /        Fudge Factor
> 1767766.95      3535533.91      2
>
> I hope this gives some rise to interesting conversation...
>
> Regards,
>    Michel


Even without your throwaway, I get 3.979E-9 MJ cm-2

The rules talk about 1 MJ cm-2 needed to penetrate 1 cm of steel... the
energy above wouldn't warm the hull much.

The problem with the math above is that you channel *all* the energy
onto the target in the 1cm^2 that the rules use to measure
damage/penetration.

You need to take the total energy released, and divide it by the area of
a sphere at the range you are interested in (the area in cm^2, since the
rules deal with MJ delivered to a 1 cm^2 area).  The damage value
associated with the AM above would be on the E-16 order.

-Merrick

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End of TRAVELLER Digest 103
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