Thoughts on ship explosions.

[Trinity Zeldis]

Check out the Dreadnaught missile calculations here. Be sure to scroll down to near the end of the article.

[Cptn. Taggart]

If they have time to work it out then I would think they could pretty much crack a planets crust very effectively. The weapon could annhilate a moon as well. If they hit anything else I would just use the rules for ramming and for warp core explosions.

Since the Oberth class was not designed for planet fall then it would probably detonate in the atmosphere if there was not enough time to prep it as a weapon. An antimatter explosion of that magnitude in high orbit would strip a planet of its atmosphere and irradiate the planet below for hundreds of years. I would think the Federation would frown on such a thing unless it meant that such tactics would save the Federation as a whole.

[Lonoto]

When you look at the bottom and it says it is nearly as powerful to rip planets into fragments, you should read the article before believing that. It could be a mistake made by the writers that lead to that possibility (which, as we all know, it can happen that the writers make mistyakes.) So, I wouldn't assume it could blow a planet to fragments.

Its almost like taking approximately 750 photon torpedoes. This would make it powerful enough to probably destroy an entire moon, or devestate it. As a planetary weapon, think of hitting a continent with that much force, it won't take out the entire planet, but bye-bye continent.

In conclusion, I'd say it is an awesome weapon, and the one that you provided for your pod will be too. Just not enough to blow up planets.

If you want to know damage, take how many kilograms you have in it and divide by 3. That is about how many photon torpedoes it is equivalent to. Then work out the multifire damage for that many torps, or add them all together.

Lonoto

[USS Kochanski]

Okeh! Now i just need to find out kow many kg are in the pod....

Time to do some research!

[Greg Smith]

Originally posted by Lonoto

If you want to know damage, take how many kilograms you have in it and divide by 3. That is about how many photon torpedoes it is equivalent to. Then work out the multifire damage for that many torps, or add them all together.

Lonoto

That's how I figured the damage for the Dreadnaught in the Cardassian book. But that damage is only in weapons configuration.

I'd either use the Anti-matter container explosion rule (Spacedock P146) where a single pod hit with a photon does 2d6x100 damage to all ships withing 2MU radius; or the ramming rules (SD p 108) where a pod (call it size 3) at .7c will do 840 damage.

[StyroFoam Man]

This message has been removed on request by the
poster

[Robbert Raets]

Originally posted by StyroFoam Man
....Plus that whole "nailbomb" effect.

Heh, I'll bet the Big E-E has 'chunks' of souvenirs form it's run-in () with the Scimitar...

[Cptn. Taggart]

Originally posted by Lonoto
When you look at the bottom and it says it is nearly as powerful to rip planets into fragments, you should read the article before believing that. It could be a mistake made by the writers that lead to that possibility (which, as we all know, it can happen that the writers make mistyakes.) So, I wouldn't assume it could blow a planet to fragments.

Yes, but if the pod survived atmospheric entry and slammed into the planet then the stress on the crust from a ground burst M/AM explosion could easily cause tectonic shifting and a possible cracking of the crust. This is even more likely if the thing were to hit a nexus of fault lines or just a very unstable one. Such an evemt could cause a global catastrophe of extinction level. The very detonation of that much anti matter within an atmosphere could and probably would strip a planets atmosphere or make it unsurviveable for humanoid life. While it will not blow a planet to flinders, it will still decimate the world.

Of course if you just want to crack the crust you can use Tri-cobalt devices. place a couple of those in the right spots and the crust cracks open nicely so you can get at the nummy bits inside.