Semi-OT: A General Tech Question Thread for me :)

[douglas]

Big rock vs stream of particles doesn't really matter. My point was that if you can get the stream going heavy and fast enough to penetrate the shield, it should be trivial to give it enough velocity over the minimum to do some major damage just from the impact. Adding the explosion from matter-antimatter annihilation is just extremely expensive overkill.

[Starhawk]

Not really "expensive" if you consider that by time this became a standard weapon it would probobly not cost any "money'per shot would it

[El_Phil]

Whilst there is no "overkill", there is a "waste of munitions"

[Starhawk]

As a wise man once said "The best way to kill is overkill." or something to that effect either way the military tends to like overkill weapons for a reason they not only ensure the job gets done but they scare the holy bejezzers out of anyone who is in front of them lol

Thats like explosive bullets definately overkill yet they are the "wave of the future" lol

And no "waste of munitions" as the ship isn't firing off munitions it's just using energy which reactors can replace which is another good reason for all my ships to have mini reactors in the turrets

Waste of munitions comes into play if I decided to use solid shot however, not to mention THAT would require money and the need ot buy more ammunition while with an energy weapon you buy it once pay for maint work and it's there for ever (until it's blown up)

[El_Phil]

Explosive bullets, being banned and all, probably aren't the wave of the future.

I'd also put money that the guy who said that wasn't paying for all the wasted muntitions and then got killed when he ran out of bullets. Now excessive force is good, but using a tac nuke to kill a tank is 'waste of munitions' for instance.

[Starhawk]

They are not banned actually because they are being planned for the OICW (I don't know what it's X-number is) with air bursting and explosive rounds to peirce body armor.

And it's also the opinion of a lot of authors and even some "real" military people that like it or not explosive rounds are going to have to come into play to more easily bypass such things as body armor.....and those nagging terrorist types who are so hocked up on drugs you can pump a mag into them and have em still shooting at you heh. Can't do that when you explode

Also 50-cal rifles fire "explosive" rounds.

Now White phospherous (Sp?) rounds were banned because they didn't increase kill they just burned horribly and crippled people in ways that are just not settling thinking about.


As far as "waste of munitions" well as I kind of said "waste of munitions" only counts when you have munitions if on the other hand you had a weapon with nearly unlimited fire then you wouldn't much care along those lines.
Thats like if you gave me a tank with an endless supply of ammo you can be darned sure I'm shooting every grunt, tank and mean looking rabbit I can with DU rounds hehe.

[El_Phil]

Depends what you call an explosive round. Hollow points are explosive rounds, as are mercury/glycerol cavity rounds. Both of which are out under the Geneva Convention.

Of course as that doesn't cover cops or spies, no problem.

On the other hand if by explosive round you mean 'small grenade' then your OK. The OICW is a standard 5.56 NATO ammmo gun, with an attached 20mm grenade launcher. This fires 20mm grenades. You can, I suppose, stretch that to be an explosive round, but its a grenade to anyone else.