Nuclear weapons

[IceMephit]

Are any of the weapons in-game nuclear?
If not, has anyone thought about making one?
Nuclear explosions in space are quite devastating. Large area explosion, EMP blast and radiation all in one big puff of destruction.
Doens't annnnnnyyyyone want to make one?

[Curudan]

All of the weapons that use the "thermo" damage type are nuclear weapons. It's short for thermonuclear.

[IceMephit]

Ohhhh, didn't realize that. Thanx.
For some reason Thermo didn't register in my little brain as ThermoNUCLEAR.

I would like to have a nuclear missile with a blast that also releases EMP in a small radius from the blast.

[ThePrivateer]

Curudan is correct, in a way. AFAIK, Thermonuclear specifically refers to nuclear reactions that release heat in great quantities. Regular old nuclear (whilst often producing heat anyway), often produces Radiation in large quantities, but in any case, they are almost indentical in terms of destructive force. (BTW, that's only grade 10-12 science, so any experts, please correct me. >.> )

As for a mod...I once made an Atomic Bomb...I believe it is included in ThePrivateer's GodMod (but it's been a while between drinks, so I'm not sure. Please find out for me! )

Can't remember if the Bomb made the final version, so please, if any uses that mod...I forgot.

[Drako Slyith]

I believe there is a weapon called an "Ares Micronuke"

[Atarlost]

Nuclear weapons only produce EMP in a tenuous atmosphere.

There is a way to make an EMP weapon using conventional explosives in a MHD generator.

And there is indeed an EMP missile in the northwind device pack. Or if you're using the stable branch this link. Be warned, it's pretty much useless. The line between useless and overpowered is very thin for area weapons and it landed on the useless side. I think the whole missile set may need rebalancing actually.

I really ought to put my mods in my sig some day.

[Ttech]

Nuclear weapons only produce EMP in a tenuous atmosphere.

There is a way to make an EMP weapon using conventional explosives in a MHD generator.

And there is indeed an EMP missile in the northwind device pack. Or if you're using the stable branch this link. Be warned, it's pretty much useless. The line between useless and overpowered is very thin for area weapons and it landed on the useless side. I think the whole missile set may need rebalancing actually.

I really ought to put my mods in my sig some day.

Wouldn't it be logical that an nuclear weapon would also produce radiation?

[LordSutekh]

Compare how much radiation a nuclear device puts out to the amount of radiation a star puts out. It's like pouring a teacup into an ocean.

[Song]

There's also an EMP missile in SM&M.....it's probably a bit overpowered, but hey, it works.

But yeah. Thermo= Thermonuclear= "H" bombs.
Now, I'm not so sure that *all* the 'Thermo' weapons are actually nuclear, but most (if not all) are probably enhanced fission (at the least) or fission-fusion/fission-fusion-fission weapons (more likely).

[Ttech]

Compare how much radiation a nuclear device puts out to the amount of radiation a star puts out. It's like pouring a teacup into an ocean.

So a thermo weapon puts out no radiation however a uranium laced weapon will put out radiation?

[Amilir]

I believe the idea is not that the uranium device emits a large amount of radiation, but that it dumps the uranium all over your hull. Given the prevalence of shield technology, I would guess that all ships have a minor shield which only blocks radiation. If the radiation source is within that shield, you have a problem. Okay, that's still a poor explanation, but you don't get hit by much thermo stuff before you have radiation resistant armor anyway.

[Song]

Well, uranium/plutonium *fission* will generate a pulse of radiation..X-rays, gamma rays, an a bunch of E-Mag stuff. The bigger problem is the fission products (just look at the XM300 Reaper).

However as can be demonstrated...the armor on many ships *can* withstand a point-blank nuking, even inside the shields....depending on the size of the nuke.

One hell of a kind of over-engineering.

[LordSutekh]

My point is, you're in a spacecraft which flies through constant background radiation and around stars which can put out tens of Sieverts (Sieverts are normally measured in thousandths). So, almost any spacecraft would have to be shielded. The atomic bombs in Japan put out about 10 Sieverts just half a kilometer out. Only about 5% of a nuclear explosion is ionizing radiation. So if you're slinging nuclear explosions around, I don't think radiation is going to be in your top 5 Stuff I Have To Worry About Killing Me Right Now.