| From: | Adam Getchell <acgetche@****.UCDAVIS.EDU> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: Explosive APDS Rounds |
| Date: | Mon, 3 Oct 1994 10:29:02 -0700 |
Still, I went through the calculations before, and Rat's pretty
much right. Assuming the entire mass of the payload end of the bullet is
explosive, you add from 30% to 100% of the kinetic energy of the round in
explosive kinetic energy, depending upon catridge dimensions.
One of the worst shapes to have a payload-carrying round in is
long, narrow and pointed, like a penetrator in an APDS round. Current
APDS rounds are about 7:1 length:diameter, great for delivering kinetic
energy but do pi*r^2*h calcs and you'll see that's not very good for
volume to surface area, in terms of getting more volume (bang) for the buck.
Furthermore, the purpose of a penetrator is to penetrate armor.
That means the penetrator has to maintain structural integrity while
violating the armor's. Hollow it out, and it becomes enormously weaker
_from the tip_. The Romans noticed that columns tend to support most of
the weight on the outer edges (they filled the interiors with sand) but
then they were distributing weight on the outer edges. A penetrator
takes the stress on the tip of the nose, which radiates stress outward at
all angles in the material.
If you really want "explosive APDS" you'd have to use a cubane
nose-cone on a cubane cylinder, with, say, crystalized hexogene in a
diamond matrix. Even then, the explosive probably wouldn't even shatter
the cubane unless you pre-stressed it, or increased your volume to
surface area ratio.
Even here, the cap would be vulnerable to face-hardened armor,
like say dikoted or cubane-layered.
So, the short answer is no. The long answer is, maybe, but it'll
cost and the effects are probably not worth the expense. Nonetheless,
here are stats:
Explosive APDS Avail: 24/1 month Street Index: 4 Cost: 100 per
round. Effects: No increase to Power (do not add +1 for Explosive
rounds). If the base Power is less than or equal to the original armor
rating, halve armor rating as for normal APDS but decrease Wound Level by
1. If this armor level has been augmented by dikoting and is greater than
or equal to the base power of the round, the round does no damage (the cap
has shattered). If the base Power is greater than the armor rating, halve
armor and increase Wound Level by 1.
These have been in my game, but no one has ever used them. Only
places like Saeder-Krupp and Ares have the technical equipment to make
these things, and even though they're 400 a pop to players its really the
Availability Rating that makes them hard to get. Unless their source is
Ares or S-K, I just make the roll and say something like "Say, if you
ever *do* find these maybe drop us a sample and we'll do some business..."
+-------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|Adam Getchell|acgetche@****.engr.ucdavis.edu | ez000270@*******.ucdavis.edu |
| acgetchell |"Invincibility is in oneself, vulnerability is in the opponent"|
+-------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
