odyssey vs superhive

[thekillman]

after taking a direct hit from a nuke.

[webxro]

But the nuke was made by us , so it's still our weapons .

[thekillman]

but the point is, the kinetic weapon wasn't really effective. the nuke was

[bradly08]

but the point is, the kinetic weapon wasn't really effective. the nuke was

The nuke would have impacted outside on the Armor, meaning that the armour took the brunt of the damage. The railguns caused explosions inside the ship, were it is less protected and such secondary explosions really damaged the hive.

[thekillman]

BS IMO

i'ts like nuking a bunker, and then going in with a strike team to clean up and claiming the strike team destroyed the bunker.


i quote Mckay

i'm having a hard time finding something to overload. hive's pretty banged up

the railgun fire was just the icing on the cake

[bradly08]

BS IMO

i'ts like nuking a bunker, and then going in with a strike team to clean up and claiming the strike team destroyed the bunker.


i quote Mckay

the railgun fire was just the icing on the cake

I wasn't sujesting that the railgun did the most damage, I was simply using it as an example of how kinetic weapons can be usefull against the wraith

[thekillman]

i don't consider them very effective at all. only as CIWS. nukes have proven to be far more effective, and our APBW's are dozens of times more effective than nukes.

[bradly08]

i don't consider them very effective at all. only as CIWS. nukes have proven to be far more effective, and our APBW's are dozens of times more effective than nukes.

True but at the time the could be usefull against the Wraith.

[thekillman]

bows and arrows were once useful

[webxro]

where a club was useful to a caveman , but this doesn't mean we can't use it today to hit people

[Ouroboros]

Saying that the Daedalus' railguns are weak and therefore the entire concept of kinetic weapons is useless is completely ridiculous.

The Daedalus' railguns were weak vs enemy cap ships because they were simply too small for that job. It's like shooting a .22 at a tank and then wondering why it's not working so hot.

A true captial scale kinetic weapon would likely run the entire length of the ship from bow to stern and fire slugs more in the naighboorhood of 16 inch shells or larger, only solid.

You could also use it as a nuke delivery system. Not to fire nukes through armour or anything like that but to fire them over massive distances. With naquadria boosted warheads it might be something worth doing, that is, the yeild might exceed that which you'd get from a purely kinetic impact.

Make no mistake though, kinetic impacts are pretty nasty in their own right, especially if we're talking fractions of lightspeed, and can't really be directly compared to things like nukes just in terms of energy. That's to say you can't really say "oh my 50 megaton nuke is way nastier than your railgun with only 1 megaton of kinetic energy."

An object with one megaton of kinetic energy and all the momentum that comes with that, is almost certainly going to ruin your **** a whole lot worse than a 50 megaton nuke if you're something like a spaceship. That is if you're something hard and difficult to melt/burn easily.

An impactor like that could very well go through one side of the ship and out the other, unless of course it's designers were especially nasty and designed it to shatter after impact. Then you'll just get huge chunks of hypervelocity shrapnel flying through bulkheads inside the ship gibbing people and turning structure and equipment into more shrapnel.

[webxro]

Well a even better kinetic bullet would be one that can change mass in space , well you waste the energy to fire a 1 kg bullet and before the impact it becomes a 1 ton bullet , that impact would ruin you day (or week )

[bradly08]

You could also use it as a nuke delivery system. Not to fire nukes through armour or anything like that but to fire them over massive distances. With naquadria boosted warheads it might be something worth doing, that is, the yeild might exceed that which you'd get from a purely kinetic impact.

Stick a nuke inside a kinetic launcher, and have it to detonate inside a hive. That would be a very effect weapon system. We also know that goa'uld shields work on the basis of osiclation, so i'm sure there is some way we can take advantage of that.

Well a even better kinetic bullet would be one that can change mass in space , well you waste the energy to fire a 1 kg bullet and before the impact it becomes a 1 ton bullet , that impact would ruin you day (or week )

Thats what happens in Mass effect. They use element Zero to manipulate the weight of an object.

[thekillman]

Saying that the Daedalus' railguns are weak and therefore the entire concept of kinetic weapons is useless is completely ridiculous.

The Daedalus' railguns were weak vs enemy cap ships because they were simply too small for that job. It's like shooting a .22 at a tank and then wondering why it's not working so hot.

i wasn't saying that. kinetic weapons are awesome, but railguns are just total crap against anything shielded.

A true captial scale kinetic weapon would likely run the entire length of the ship from bow to stern and fire slugs more in the naighboorhood of 16 inch shells or larger, only solid.

a massdriver, yes. a railgun won't work at those sizes. so while a railgun is pretty neat, and in reality would be very powerful, in SG they're pretty much crap.

You could also use it as a nuke delivery system. Not to fire nukes through armour or anything like that but to fire them over massive distances. With naquadria boosted warheads it might be something worth doing, that is, the yeild might exceed that which you'd get from a purely kinetic impact.

i'm not sure if a nuke could withstand such accellerations. i'd go for a nuclear rocket. IE big naquahdriah warhead and a naquahdah engine

Make no mistake though, kinetic impacts are pretty nasty in their own right, especially if we're talking fractions of lightspeed, and can't really be directly compared to things like nukes just in terms of energy. That's to say you can't really say "oh my 50 megaton nuke is way nastier than your railgun with only 1 megaton of kinetic energy."

against shields you'd only get like 45% efficiency. a railgun creates a far more directed burst. the energy density in the impact is higher. a 1Mt slug delivers 1Mt on the impact site, which is a few cm's. a nuke delivers the energy over a far greater area.

so yes i agree here

An object with one megaton of kinetic energy and all the momentum that comes with that, is almost certainly going to ruin your **** a whole lot worse than a 50 megaton nuke if you're something like a spaceship. That is if you're something hard and difficult to melt/burn easily.

shields are generally the problem with railguns

An impactor like that could very well go through one side of the ship and out the other, unless of course it's designers were especially nasty and designed it to shatter after impact. Then you'll just get huge chunks of hypervelocity shrapnel flying through bulkheads inside the ship gibbing people and turning structure and equipment into more shrapnel.

if it can penetrate the shield...

Well a even better kinetic bullet would be one that can change mass in space , well you waste the energy to fire a 1 kg bullet and before the impact it becomes a 1 ton bullet , that impact would ruin you day (or week )

impossible. inertial dampeners can't even do that.

[Ouroboros]

i wasn't saying that. kinetic weapons are awesome, but railguns are just total crap against anything shielded.

a massdriver, yes. a railgun won't work at those sizes. so while a railgun is pretty neat, and in reality would be very powerful, in SG they're pretty much crap.

A lot of the perceived crappiness of the point defense railguns is also down to how they're depicted. It's not some sort of computer linked fire control system nailing things at hundreds of kilometers away from the ship like it should be, it's a garden sprinkler waving around in space shooting little yellow dots at nothing in particular.

i'm not sure if a nuke could withstand such accellerations.

It could if you stuck an inertial damper in it, the same sort of things they use in 302s only it wouldn't need to last as long.

I probably wouldn't bother though. The added expense of making nuke rounds probably wouldn't be worth it in the end.

shields are generally the problem with railguns

If you had a rail/coil whatever gun of sufficient size I think it would actually be quite effective. If you look at episode like Beachhead where the supergate fragments obliterate Ha'taks and badly damage the Prometheus it doesn't look like their shields deal with collisions particularly well.

The exception of course would be the Ori shields. Against those mass driver's probably wouldn't be any more effective than any other weapon of similar yield, you would get a lot more range from them though so could hit the Ori repeatedly from well outside their deathbeam range.


That's really the main problem with pretty much all gateverse space combat. Lack of projectile velocity leading to ridiculously short effective ranges. A projectile from even a .01c mass driver would cover almost 3000 kilometers in a single second.