[TrashMan]

The guys who wrote weapon descriptions clearly had too much to drink the night they worked on missiles.
No imaginable armour can withstand a direct nucler impact.

Write your theoires as much as you want, but the fact remains that someone in Interplay screwed up here...

[StratComm]

Read the thread Trashman.  That's the whole point of this silly discussion; Nukes don't behave the same way in space that they do in an atmosphere.  Armor would have to withstand the direct radiation burst from the nuclear detonation, but not much else.  For once, I actually think :V: was on the right track this time.

[TrashMan]

I don't recall ever seeing a Nuke denonate in space...Did you?

I really don't know how much truth there is in this, but I'm too lazy to check it out now....

[karajorma]

Originally posted by TrashMan
I don't recall ever seeing a Nuke denonate in space...Did you?

Haven't seen atoms with my bare eyes either but I'm not going to dispute that they exist.

[StratComm]

Originally posted by TrashMan
I don't recall ever seeing a Nuke denonate in space...Did you?

No, but then, thank God, I've never seen a Nuke detonated on land either.  Nonetheless, it doesn't take a genius to figure out just why Nukes are so destructive; they produce light and most importantly heat (and lots of it) which rapidly increases the pressure of the air around the detonation.  This pressure, in turn, causes a sudden expansion and sets up the shockwave that so many people associate with a nuclear blast.  In space, there is not only too little matter to transmit the shockwave, there is also no matter to start the shockwave in the first place.  All you'd get is a large radiation burst, which I would think spacecraft armor was designed to shield out anyway.

[Jal-18]

I'd like to take this time to point out that heat is heat is heat.  Doesn't matter where you are, the amount of heat released by a nuclear device is quite lethal.  

All atmosphere does to a nuclear detonation is enhances it: a nuke is still a powerful weapon in space.

[karajorma]

We aren't saying Nukes are useless in space. Just that they aren't as powerful as they are on the ground.

[Jal-18]

I thought that was a givin?

[Shrike]

Originally posted by TrashMan
The guys who wrote weapon descriptions clearly had too much to drink the night they worked on missiles.
No imaginable armour can withstand a direct nucler impact.

Write your theoires as much as you want, but the fact remains that someone in Interplay screwed up here...

Evidently collapsed molybdenum can withstand nuclear impacts.  And well, too.

[Flipside]

The heat is a lot, but the Hiroshima bomb, I seem to recall, couldn't have have burnt through the ceramic tiles that are mounted on the hull of the shuttle. The radiation is dangerous, but radiation shielding is improving even in this day and age, who knows what we will be capable of in 300 years Most physical damage done by a nuke is the shockwave and the heatblast. Since the first is eradicated, it just means people have all the more time to consider how to deal with the other.

And also, the armour doesn't withstand it, it doesn't take many Helios to take down an Orion

The numbers ARE a bit ridiculous, I agree, but hey, it's a game

[Carl]

The most rediculous stat in the game is the yield of the tsunami bomb. 500^2 tonne mass to energy conversion. first of all, i don't know what a squared tonne is, but assuming that's a just a brain fart on their part, 500 tonnes of matter/antimatter turned into energy would create an 11 teraton blast, enough to create a mass extinction on earth, and over 2000 times as powerful as the Harbinger.

[Guyver]

I may remind you that FS2 has no physics. Its a WWII dogfighting game in space, that says enough about its realism.

Why bother comparing FS2-code to real life ? The Volition staff is not consisting of astro-physicans, you know.