Comments - VanDanimal

Actually, it would do the opposite. The original thought behind the creation of the neutron bomb was to leave all infrastructure intact, only delivering a lethal dose of radiation to the population, so that (insert country here) could occupy the city with all the goodies still there. As it turns out, nuclear radiation doesn't just go away in a few days... it takes many, many years, so the whole "march non in and take over" thing doesn't work to well. So, in theory, a very large neutron bomb would give the same "strong bombardment radiation" effect as the Novalith.

Instead of giving smartass answers this time, I actually have two questions:

1. Has the UNSC starbase been finalized yet, and what is it?

2. Will the TEC/Advent/Vasari still be playable/in-game? I know this has probably been answered already, but I don't feel like looking through 88 pages of comments :P

Keep up the great work, looks like its finally about to pay off!

You must be referencing the NOVA bomb. Neutron bombs don't actually deliver destructive energy; they just produce toxic levels of radiation. Although, the idea of the NOVA bomb is retarded as is, so I wouldn't put it past them to make such claims about a neutron bomb...

Haha, just trying to be consistent and convincing. I do work Saturdays though, after 3 P.M., and I give a 15% discount to any registered moddb members. 20% for you Canada if you can sneak me into the Alpha ;)

I don't mean to be an ***, it's just simply not possible for any foreseeable manmade munition to penetrate 27 miles of solid rock. I'm not trying to flame, just trying to set the record straight and conjecture as to the feasability of proposed features of the mod (i.e. MAC planetary bombardment). MAC bombardment would be one way to accomplish planetary bombardment, but peeple should realize that this in no way implies that the planet itself is destroyed. After all, if the planet was damaged, how could it be recolonized?

For the sake of consistency, I'll redo my calculations correcting for my error. 9 teratons TNT equivalent would be about 3.765x10^22 J, which is less than my *approximate* impact energy of the Yucatan meteor (feel free to check over those calculations, I wasn't working with a calculator in that post). Even if this energy was sufficient to puncture the Earth's crust, a 3000 ton MAC round would have to be traveling about 1.66x10^8 m/s to deliver this impact energy... a little over half the speed of light. There is no way the UNSC is going to accelerate any munitions at relativistic speeds... especially not from a small orbital platform in low planet orbit. I've been out of touch with the Halo cannon for some time, so I can't say for sure that 9 Ttons TNT equivalent isn't quoted in the series somewhere, but at that point I think it would be time to break from cannon...

The teraton would be a unit of mass, not energy.

For argument's sake, let's say that an orbital MAC Cannon can launch a projectile with 9 Terajoules of energy. Also, to make things simpler, let's assume that there is no friction through the planet's atmosphere. Then the impact energy of the MAC projectile would be 9 TJ.

The asteroid that hit the Yucatan Peninsula and killed off the dinosaurs was supposedly about 10 km across. Let's assume it's mass can be approximated somewhere near 1 trillion tons, or 9.07x10^14 kg, which is a pretty reasonable estimate. The Yucatan meteor impacted the earth with a velocity of about 10 km/s or 10000 m/s. KE = 1/2mv^2, of (.5)(9.07x10^14)(10000)^2 = 4.535*10^22 J or 45350000000 TJ -- 5.03888889 × 10^9 times the energy of the MAC round -- and didn't come close to cracking the Earth's crust (although it left a pretty legit crater).

A MAC cannon would definitely deal some damage to the planet's infrastructure but as for the planet itself, nothing man-made or covenant-made can cut through 27 MILES of rock.

Again, planetary bombardment in Sins doesn't involve damaging the planet itself but its infrastructure. This can be accomplished with a MAC cannon or a nuke or any ordinance that can take out a building (even a small bomb or missile would be sufficient). I think the Pelican raid is a unique and cannon-specific way to deal with planet bombardment. What would really be interesting is if the covenant had the choice to send dropships to take the planet of to glass it, making it permanently uninhabitable, but that may be a tough feature to write into the mod.

Anyway, keep up the good work guys; I've been following y'all for a while and I'm impressed each time you release new pics! Another news update might be nice though =)

Dinoff is completely correct, a MAC round (or any round for that matter) can not reach anywhere near the Kinetic Energy required to penetrate the Earth's crust. If you think about it, 27 miles of rock can't really crack at all. A large enough nuclear charge might dislodge a fault line that's already there, but no man-made ammunition is going to cut through 27 miles of rock.

Of course, none of this really matters, considering planetary bombardment in Sins of a Solar Empire doesn't entail actually destroying the planet, but crippling its infrastructure. MAC guns work just fine for targeting infrastructure, as do strike teams on pelicans. If you think about it, covenant "glassing" only really effects the very very top of the crust anyway, ravaging the planet's resources and infrastructure but leaving the planet itself entirely intact.

Finally, all this speculation assumes that the planet in question in fact has a crust, which is not per se true.