Nuclear Technology

[sovereign]

this is true. anti-matter annihilation is a complete 100% conversion of mass to energy. the best nukes we have today is approximately 2% i believe. to continue to use the best technology of the 21st century in the 23rd century is a little silly. any ordinance using anti-matter annihilation IS more efficient and therefore better than nuclear explosives.

now maybe in an RP sense it could be more expensive and owned only by the state of the art militaries backed by govt funding. maybe pirates and other poorer organizations could use nuclear technology as anti-matter technology is beyond their grasp. which actually now that i type this out here, makes me think that would be a cool idea, make 2 classes of BIG guns based of of the ordinance it uses. and diff factions would have access to one, or the other, or both. idk maybe thatll diminish the dependence on the SNAC and mix it up a lil with diff factions having their versions and what not. (if the reason we all use the SNAC is bc the admins dont want one faction being better than another, then id support both types of ordinances ultimately having the same result, but idk just look and feel a bit diff)
-and idc how what physics say, a mine that produces a blinding nearly system wide flash and shockwave would be absolutely epic ingame-

Correction. While antimatter annihilation is a complete conversion, half of the energy is lost to neutrinos (which are almost entirely useless). However, the scaling you presented is still about right, as nuclear weapons are closer to .7%.

I'd like to note that there was a proposal a year or so ago for variant SNACs, but that it was eventually decided to just keep one statline for balancing reasons- "Do not question the holy SNAC, for all of disco is balanced around it" or some such. The Nomad Singularity Cannon has the exact same stats as the SNAC for this reason.

While I think that a system-wide flash and shockwave are a bit inappropriate for a mine, a superweapon involving a Nomad Power Cell, nanocapacitors, and nuclear devices would be awesome beyond words. Such devices should be limited to events, though.



@plasma-based torpedoes: We have plasma weapons already, and given plasma's properties it is more suited to short range flamethrower type weapons than anything else. A plasma torpedo would be very awkward, and you'd need to have some weird setup to keep it from dissociating and yet not fry whatever is holding it together.


@Friday's comment about the device casing; I forgot to mention that in my earlier post. Small nuclear weapons have the problems NASA outlined, but if you put enough material around it then you can carry all of the force to your target. You could even try shaping it so that you delivered the entire shockwave into a small area to punch through battleship armor, since there would be no loss to the surroundings. Not to mention what would happen if you detonated a nuke inside a Freelancer nebula, which appear to be almost atmospheric conditions (as compared to real nebulas, which are still basically vacuums unless you have a ramscoop).

---