UT Explosive warheads calculating damage

Has anyone worked up explosive warheads using the new Explosives in Pyramid 3/51: Ultra-Tech Too?

It's the usual issue, we have set listing of damage for actual weapons in UT and Pyramid 3/37, and we have the rules for calculating explosive force by weight from explosives of different REF's and we have different REF's, but no listings for weaponising those difference explosives in actual warheads.

UT pg153 gives a +1 damage per dice for HE (and similar kind of bonus for other explosive warheads. However that doesn't really seem to match the kind of increase in REF in either UT, and certainly not the advanced ones in Pyramid 3/51.

Now you can do some quick write ups based on some assumptions of proportion of warhead filler to total weight (recent thread regarding HT here)

So lets use that 30% for standard HE warhead

From UT pg146 and Pyramid 3/51 pg25 the 100mm rocket is 25lb 30% of that is 7.5lbs


The rated explosive cr damage in UT for the 100mm is 6dx5 at TL9 and 6dx5+6 at TL10+)

using the equation on Basic pg 415 6d x (weight of explosive x 4 x REF)^1/2

in the case of the 100mm warhead that's 5 = (7.5 x 4 x REF)^1/2

or rather 25 = (7.5 x 4 x REF)

which means REF = 0.83 (the extra +6 from higher TL makes little difference to that calculated REF)*

So that means that the percentage of warhead which is filler is less than 30% or they are using way less effective explosive than is available to their demolitions?


If you plug the higher REFs from UT & Pyramid 3/51

TL10 High-energy explosive REF 6 and the equation on Basic pg 415

n = (7.5 x 4 x 6)^1/2 = 13.42

so explosive damage is 6dx13 with the REF 6

if you use the TL10 Isomers with REF 100 from the advanced listing, you get:

n = (7.5 x 4 x 100)^1/2 = 54.77

so explosive damage is 6dx55 with the REF 100 filler


oh and the 400mm cruise missile that weighs 2,500lbs and assuming the same filler proportion

you get n = (75 x 4 x 100)^1/2 = 173

so explosive damage is 6dx173 with a REF 100 filler (in comparison to 6dx40)


Obviously this seriously increases the damage of HE rounds



There is an inherent issue in taking a flat percentage of warhead weight as filler I guess but has anyone come up with any other guidelines?

There is also an issue in comparing rockets and missiles to 'bullets' as weights are radically different.

And of course not all explosives are suitable for warhead filler.

Of course there also the issue of working out different effects of more specialised explosive warhead (HEAT, HEMP etc).



*the problem is when I do the same calculation for the 64mm missiles is 2lbs so filler @ 30% = 0.6lbs and with listed HE explosive damage of 8dx2 (equivalent to 6dx2.67)

so 2.67 = (0.6 x 4 x REF)^1/2

7.13 = (0.6 x 4 x REF)

REF = 17.11!!

So either the comparative weights 64mm vs 100mm are wrong, or they use significantly different proportions of filler or they use for some reason significantly different explosives (Or I'm messed up my maths, always a possibility)


Given on Pyramid 3/51 pg25 it states that the 400mm warhead weighs 64x** as much at the 100mm warhead and thus does 8x explosive damage (i.e. SqRoot)

and 100mm war head weighs 12.5x the 64mm and does 2x damage (by SqRt it should be 3.5x damage so I think the 64mm is high or the weight is low, or the proportion significantly different)

Anyway this is really not my area any thoughts anyone? (I should do HT warheads as well to compare and contrast, but this post is messy enough as it is)


**although in the listing teh total weight is actually 100x not 64x. Maybe the proportion of warhead to missile differs the 400mm cruise missile is very long range, there are basically a lot of unknowns in all this)

UT Explosive warheads calculating damage