Self-Destruct is Irrational Component

[Baron Munchausen]

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Originally posted by Marty Ward:
Does a master computer provide boarding defense?

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As far as I know, no. This is the trade-off for immunity to Crew ConVersion.

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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Yes, another request we've made many times before. Even the 'Quantum Detonator" in MOO II had a 50 percent chance to fail. There ought to be a chance of the SDD in this game failing, too, if only 20 percent or something like that.

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The self-destruct does have a chance to fail. If it takes damage (easy to do once the shields are down) then it will not work

There's no dice required. If you want to capture a ship that has a SDD, get your gunners to carefully cut out the offending device.

When I'm playing a Pirate race, Self-Destruct Devices have approximately a 75% failure rate

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 01 June 2001).]

[jc173]

I find it's pretty hard to nail a SDD in a large ship especially if the ship mounts components that take up a large amount of the available volume. If I understand SEIV damage correctly, once you damage an internal component all further damage that gets past armor or shields will continue to damage that component until it is destroyed. While I'll agree that a larger component should be more likey to hit I think it's kind of bogus that all subsequent penetrating shots will continue to damage that subsystem. So when attacking larger ships especially those with the larger weapon mounts it seems that you generally tag the weapons and anything else useful that's bigger than 10kt.

[dmm]

You guys keep missing my point. I'm not saying that I'm displeased with SDDs from a game-play point of view. I agree with suicide_junkie: it is unlikely that you'd want to board an escort with a mother ship, so it doesn't really matter to the game play. But what bothers me is that a super-powerful SDD doesn't make sense from a story-line point of view. I'll say it again: if SDDs are so powerful, then why wouldn't an empire just make ramming suicide escorts with SDDs that could be detonated just before impact? They could destroy any other ship. For that matter, why not SDD-equipped fighters?

Of course, I don't want this to be allowed in the game, because it would ruin it! So, what I'm asking for is a logical pseudo-scientific story-line explanation for why SDDs don't work this way. And I really feel that no one has even attempted to give one yet. (For instance, suicide_junkie's explanation for why SDDs can be so powerful only reinforces my point, from the story-line point of view.)

[geoschmo]

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So, what I'm asking for is a logical pseudo-scientific story-line explanation for why SDDs don't work this way.

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from components.txt file
Name := Self - Destruct Device
Description := Computer controlled device which overloads a ship's engines and destroys the ship. This will be used automatically if a ship is successfully boarded, destroying both your ship and the attacking ship.

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Given this is the explaination for the SDD, then it kinda makes sense the engines would be unusable for manuvering during the terminal overload stage, which would be required to get it close enough to the enemy ship.

If you accept this you have to ignore the fact that the SDD still works when the engines are destroyed, but you asked for psuedo-science, you got psuedo-science.

Geo

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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But what bothers me is that a super-powerful SDD doesn't make sense from a story-line point of view. I'll say it again: if SDDs are so powerful, then why wouldn't an empire just make ramming suicide escorts with SDDs that could be detonated just before impact? They could destroy any other ship. For that matter, why not SDD-equipped fighters?
Of course, I don't want this to be allowed in the game, because it would ruin it! So, what I'm asking for is a logical pseudo-scientific story-line explanation for why SDDs don't work this way. And I really feel that no one has even attempted to give one yet. (For instance, suicide_junkie's explanation for why SDDs can be so powerful only reinforces my point, from the story-line point of view.)

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Well, for a fighter, 10Kt is most of your space. You'd have a devastating ramming ship with no ability to catch and ram an undamaged target .

How about this for an explanation. Ditch the stack of nuclear warheads as the SDD, and have a large tank of antimatter.
Shields would be able to deflect the antimatter just like any normal interplanetary gas (such as solar winds).
Against armor, the antimatter annihilates with the matter in the armor/hull, and boom you die.

So, you have to wait for a boarding attempt, when the enemy drops their shields before you can self-destruct with much effect.

All ships could be imagined to have basic particle deflectors/shielding to keep their hulls from ablating away when they cross a solar system in one month (thats 1% of the speed of light )

quote:

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Given this is the explaination for the SDD, then it kinda makes sense the engines would be unusable for manuvering during the terminal overload stage, which would be required to get it close enough to the enemy ship.
If you accept this you have to ignore the fact that the SDD still works when the engines are destroyed,

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As you've shown, the description is not quite accurate, and it is also the easiest item to change in the game .
So what I think we need is an explanation for why the SDD works the way it does, and paste that into the description of the component.

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 04 June 2001).]

[dmm]

Thanks geo and sj. That's a start. Maybe destroyed engines are only MOSTLY dead. And I like the idea about every ship having basic deflector tech, which also must be lowered to board. Maybe destruction of other ships comes about due to electronic control system overload by a high energy electromagnetic pulse (HEEMP) from the SDD. The military used to worry about HEEMPs from atmospheric nukes back in the cold war days. What a relief that we don't have to worry about nukes anymore, since it was only the Soviets who'd ever do anything like that.