In the CL33 After Action Barton Pyle posted how he likes to handle the Juggernaut 500 point explosion and I though to my self that perhaps there could be a "Very Large Explosion" rule. So I came up with this table.

EXP	range
STR	0	1	2	3	4
1-9	100%	----NA----
10-99	100%	100%	----NA----
100-299	100%	100%	50%	--NA--
300-499	100%	100%	50%	25%	-NA-
500+	100%	100%	75%	50%	25%

Damage is applied imediately in ranges zero and one. Damage are further ranges is applied as a wave front that expands out at one hex per impulse.

Any unit can only be hit once. The damage is applied on movement and the wave moves before any other units.


This could be used with the Juggernaut or for other explosions.

By Ed Crutchfield (Librarian101) on Monday, July 17, 2006 - 04:01 pm: Edit

Ah, back to the old explosion rules, what joy it brings to mind.

By Richard Sherman (Rich) on Monday, July 17, 2006 - 07:21 pm: Edit

That's almost exactly the rule Tucson uses for "cinematic explosions" during our house games.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, July 17, 2006 - 11:12 pm: Edit

Cool. It preserves the current rule for the most part for common explosion in common battles but add something interesting for the unusual events, such as a moon blowing up or the Juggernaut.

Heh, I guess I said that already. It's probably not an original rule but the implementation is that the current rules are still in tact.

By John Erwin Hacker (Godzillaking) on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 - 02:57 am: Edit

Hi everyone:

In a previous post ( I can't remember when or where on the board I put it), I came up with what I thought (and still believe in) is the most realistic explosion strength formula that a starship should have to go through.

The formula works like this:

For every warp engine box............4 points
For every impulse box................3 points
For every a.p.r. box.................2 points
For every battery box................1 point
For every 10 points of weapon damage.1 point
For every 2 other boxes on ship......1 point

Add up all the the above and the explosion strenght works like this:

Every starship/shuttle/item within the following ranges takes the following damage (rounded up, space is a dark place):

0-1 hex distance...............100% damage
2 hex distance.................75% damage
3 hex distance.................50% damage
4 hex distance.................25% damage

I am a strong believer that when a ships matter/anti-matter containment field/chamber becomes unstable and the starships can no longer hold it's integrity unholy amounts of power are released and this will cause catastrophic damage to anything within a certain range. Just look at the destructive power of one our latest thermonuclear bombs in the 21st century then magnify that by the fact that you have matter-anitmatter colliding with each other and powers that are far superior to anything we have today and you will see that what I have put forth is realistic.

I trully believe that the current explosion strengths of all starships in the SFB Universe is lacking because of the above said reasons and that are just popguns instead of the TRUE BANG that they should be. In my estimation each point of explosion strength is akin to a 1 megaton explosion in modern day thermonuclear warheads and that if a starship was to explode in say a planets orbit it would cause catastrophic damage to the planets ecosystem and might even erase all live on that planet because of the energies released. Now I will have to admit that I AM NO PHYSICIST OR NUCLEAR SCIENTIST or am really knowledgeable about thermonuclear interactions or the like but I do believe that the explosion strengths of the current system make a starships destruction downright whimpy.

These are of course my own thoughts and ideas on the whole explosion strength system and do NOT reflect anyone else's thoughts or ideas.

Until next time from GLORIOUS GHDAR PRIME..........

"THE GODZILLAKING".

By Michael Lui (Michaellui) on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 - 03:14 am: Edit

John

Yes, but they had to change the explosion rules because of the Romulans use of it by going right into the middle of an enemies formation under cloak and self-destructing a perfectly good ship to cripple/kill the fleet. Or, for the races that don't have cloak, the more common tactic of sending a ship through the enemy fleet and getting it to blow up there for the same effect.

However, if you wanted to use "more realistic" things, then convert the hexes/ranges into light seconds and work with that.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 - 03:48 am: Edit

Realistic damage reductions should be.

Range	Damage Multiplier.
0	1000% (or just 100% to keep it simple)
1	100%
2	25%
3	11.1%
4	6.25%
5	4%
6	2.7%
7	2%
8	1.5%
9	1.2%
10	1%

Damages should then be rounded down so ranges that generate less than 1 point of damage don't need to be calculated.
Explosions decrease in strength with the square of the range from centre of the blast...which makes throwing yourself on a grenade; a very bad idea.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 - 10:36 am: Edit

Gee, are we in the "let's make as complicated as possible" phase?

The idea wasn't to change any of the current rules except to add a tiny bit of fun to the rare circomstance of a very large explosion with a very simple rule.

If this is going to get into adding all sorts of detail then let's just can the whole thing right now.

John E. H.: You are returning the rule way back to something similar to what didn't work in the past. I don't want to go there. Also, I think you might want to think about just how much destructive energy a point of damage is. It's a lot but Starships are designed to handle these types of energy pulses in much the same way an airplane can take a lightning strike in mid-air with little damage but the same strike can blow a huge oak tree in half. A photon torpeedo strike would level several city blocks. A drone strike is a small thermonuclear explosion (maybe a bit bigger than a tactical nuke of today). The Anti-Matter on a Starship has to come into contact with matter to explode and not all the AM will do that since the initial explosion will disperse both the AM and the Matter into space. For an instant there might be thousands of tiiny interactions but for the most part the reaction isn't a controled one so you don't get the sort of explosion that you might expect from the amounts of AM on a Starship. A T-Bomb explodes almost as big with a fraction of the AM becuase it is a controled and fully mixed Matter/Anti-matter explosion.

MJC: Are you kidding? Seriously, why would you post such a thing. Of course EVERYONE knows that the damage effect can be reduced by smaller increments. And actually I don't think that having explosion reachout to 100,000 KM is realistic at all. How about adding that ships open holes in the wave front so that any ship behind them take reduced damage, too?

By Lee Winstead (Gonzo) on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 - 10:45 am: Edit

Remember, each hex is 10,000 kilometers. It's frankly unlikely that a normal explosion would do significant damage in the next hex, let along 100,000 kilometers away. I could see this for something like the Juggernaut with a 500 pt explosion, but not for normal ships.

By Patrick H. Dillman (Patrick) on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 - 11:38 am: Edit

I personally don't see a problem with keeping the explosion rules the way they are. Even for massive explosions. If a force is so strong as to cause damage past 1 hex, then it should be a wave front.

Just my 2/100th of a credit.
PHD

By Richard Sherman (Rich) on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 - 03:37 pm: Edit

Screw realism. It's cool and fun to have cinematic explosions with ships desperately trying to outrun the explosion:

1st impulse - ship brews up - 100% in hex only
2nd impulse - 100% - 1 hex radius
3rd impulse - 75% - 2 hex radius
4th impulse - 50% - 3 hex radius
5th impulse - 25% - 4 hex radius
6th and later - explosion over

If the explosion was less that strength 10, only 1st and 2nd impulses take place.

Fighters don't explode.

I personally have played games where the FF captain, desperate to get away from an exploding DN, does an HET and an unplotted acceleration away, watching some drones and one of his own shuttles destroyed behind him (even dropping a shield to beam the 2 BP that were on the shuttle home to safety).

Now just visualize that and tell me it's not cool.

By Michael Lui (Michaellui) on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 - 05:02 pm: Edit

Hmmm, I think someones been watching Star Trek II a little too much lately.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 - 09:38 pm: Edit

Are we talking about "normal explosions" or the effects of when superluminal debris no longer have a warp feild enveloping them?

By Glenn Hoepfner (Ikabar) on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 - 11:12 pm: Edit

Michael Lui, you not only don't understand what Richards been saying, you obviously haven't watched STII enough. Enterprise warped out moments before the explosion occured, not after, so your analogy doesn't apply.
Small but significant difference.
Now, I've watched TWOK WAY too much.

By Glenn Hoepfner (Ikabar) on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 - 11:14 pm: Edit

Superluminal Debri?
Correction, I thought I watched TWOK too much. What the •••• is Superluminal?
No no no no, don't tell me. I no longer deserve the badge of Alpha Geek.

By Michael Lui (Michaellui) on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 - 11:37 pm: Edit

All you have to do is to reason it out based upon the trend of the current conversation and by what the words mean. Super= better/faster + Luminal= light + debris= pieces. Superluminal debris mean pieces of the ship/base/whatever that are moving at faster than light speeds.

Can I have your badge?

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - 02:06 am: Edit

Richard Sherman,

the proposal at the top also has the multiple impulse expanding wave front to run from.

Of course to be fully realistic it would expand at one hex per turn but that's no fun.
I'm thinking that the energy in the wave front is different and is rooted in subspace so it can travel faster and affects things like Shtarship that utilize sub-space in most of their systems. So the wave front wouldn't affect a person standing on an asteroid much but would slam shields and fry systems as if it were a real space energy blast.

By Glenn Hoepfner (Ikabar) on Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - 03:09 pm: Edit

Michael,
yes, you my have it, but you have to wear it the same way I do.

By Michael Lui (Michaellui) on Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - 03:13 pm: Edit

Never mind then, I don't want to put it there.

By Barton Pyle (Bart) on Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - 03:35 pm: Edit

Well you could have the old explosion strength rules but keep the new explosion strengths of the ships to avoid the romulan suicide condor maneuver.

For Example: A D7 goes boom!!! For an Explosion Strength of 19.

Range 0 or 1 = 19 damage 100%
Range 2 = 14 damage 75% rounded down.
Range 3 = 9 damage 50% rounded down.
Range 4 = 4 damage 25% rounded down.

I for one miss the old exposion rules with the very big bangs. It was the one major thing that used to keep people from putting everything too close to each other. A.K.A. Duncepacking

By Michael Lui (Michaellui) on Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - 04:24 pm: Edit

Not bad, I like this one much better. The old explosion strengths were just too high. But, if you're going to do damage at range I'd prefer to start the progression sooner:

Range 0 = 100%
Range 1 = 75% Rounded down.
Range 2 = 50% Rounded down.
Range 3 = 25% Rounded down.

By William Curtis Soder (Ghyuka) on Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - 04:48 pm: Edit

Ah, the old explosion rules.

Man, does that bring back fond memories of a fully loaded Killerhawk getting popped at close range by a Terminator. Being in the middle of a Romulan fleet, a lot of Romulan ships got fried by that blast.

Still, that wasn't nearly as bad as the Dominator that went up with full panels and a full energy module. That blast was up there with the Juggernaut's. Ships got cooked even at range 4.

By Barton Pyle (Bart) on Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - 05:14 pm: Edit

Michael, I can live with that progression. It makes the numbers a little easier to figure out as well. I was just going by the old explosion progression from days gone bye.