Hello everybody, a steam ram is so much more steampunk than a battleship, which got me thinking. I'm talking 3E here.
* Ramming inflicts (HP * relative speed)/200 dice, to each of the ships (which have the same relative speed, but perhaps different HPs). * A ram is +1 per die to inflict damage, and -1 per die of damage to the reciprocal damage. * Flooding happens when the damage below the waterline (a steam ram surely counts) does more than HP/10 damage. Take two equal ships, one hitting the other ram-to-broadside. HP about 100k, hull DR about 500, fitted with rams. At 10 mph relative velocity, the ramming ship inflicts about 22,000 points of damage, and it suffers about 12,000 points. * No reasonable amount of armor will help. * The rammer gave about twice as good as it got, but both will be flooding. * Going slower might keep the damage low enough that the steam ram isn't flooding, but the victim is. That only works if the ram is as big as the victim or larger. Captain Nemo will have a hard time sinking merchant steamers, let alone warships. Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
