(SPOILERS) The reasons for the Archangel's return

SWM wrote:Sigh. I'm afraid this entire thread needs to be marked as a SPOILER thread now. I can't participate in this thread any more.

Why?

Keith_w wrote:

SWM wrote:Sigh. I'm afraid this entire thread needs to be marked as a SPOILER thread now. I can't participate in this thread any more.

Why?

Because people forget what is in the last book and what is in a VERY long period of snippets(that is only half way completed.

Snippets are the next book.

For example if you reference a certain religious order it should be labeled spoiler.

Just the most thumb sticking up example. To me anyway.

T2M

thinkstoomuch wrote: quote="Keith_w" quote="SWM" sigh. I'm afraid this entire thread needs to be marked as a SPOILER thread now. I can't participate in this thread any more./quote

Why? /quote


Because people forget what is in the last book and what is in a VERY long period of snippets(that is only half way completed.

Snippets are the next book.

For example if you reference a certain religious order it should be labeled spoiler.

Just the most thumb sticking up example. To me anyway.

T2M

Yeah, I had forgotten that the info about St K's came from a snippet.

Thanks for the reminder.

AirTech wrote:

McGuiness wrote:..snip..
I'm not saying that the OBS system uses impellers on whatever type of KEW that it fires, but the evidence that its KEWs hit with much more momentum than mere gravity could impart is overwhelming. Why else would Merlin be nervous about flying the skimmer at high speeds? No rock that was merely "dropped" from the OBS would ever hit the skimmer flying at Mach 4, but a KEW fired at a sufficient velocity might.

Joat42 wrote:I think he was more afraid of being detected rather than being hit by a rock, but having a rock drop in the vicinity at a couple of km/s has a tendency to screw up most flying contraptions regardless.

And being detected may trigger the OBS to go into active detection mode instead of passive or it may also wake up whatever is under the Temple.

Of course, the responses that would be triggered by having a skimmer being detected is mostly speculation which we have covered before.

A couple of km/s is a non-event unless you are directly under it - that is standard artillery velocities ( lethal radius a metre or so). (Having a bursting charge seriously boosts this).
Kinetic energy weapons deliver peak energy in the direction of travel, anything else is a reflection of this unlike an explosive (or even nuclear) charge which is omnidirectional (but shapeable to a modest degree by containment). Even a near miss at 10km/s will just leave your ears ringing but a hit will blow a cylindrical hole through an impressive amount of armor (and the splattered hypersonic steel from this is seriously unhealthy).
One of the quirks of kinetic energy weapons is that they cause more damage to armored targets than unarmored ones - unarmored targets end up with a hole through the middle with little damage between.

Granted, but what I intended to write was "a couple of 10s km/s" but sometimes the typing goes faster than the brain. A larger object traveling at those speeds tends to create atmospheric shock-waves even before hitting something.

Regarding unarmored/lightly armored targets, over-penetration is a real issue and when for example APCR/HVAP-shells was introduced and used against some tanks the shell punched holes right through the tank without the spalling effect leaving the tank essentially intact. Even normal AP-shells can over-penetrate and there are accounts from WWII German Tiger tank crews or anti-tank crews that they continued to shoot at US or British tanks until they burst into flames just to be sure the tank was incapacitated since the 8.8cm KwK 36 and it's longer brethren had enough penetration for over-penetration at most distances against the majority of the tanks they faced on the western front and in North Africa. But I digress.