[Suggestion] Magazines as Internal Compartments

[Chrystoph]

Proposal(s): There should be an Internal Compartment option for Magazines

1. [Balance] Magazines must be added to a ship when you purchase ammunition based weaponry.
(Ammo Value * (((Internal Compartment Size/2) - .1)), round up to whole number before multiplying against the Ammo Value

or

2. Magazines can be added to a ship, providing additional ammunition.
(Ammo Value * (1/Harpoint Size * Internal Compartment Size)), round to nearest whole number
Where Hardpoint: Small=1, Medium=2, Large=3, Huge=4


In #1, the magazine capability of the weapon is removed, requiring that Internal Compartment(s) be allocated to make the weapon function. In #2, you are getting additional ammunition on top of the allocation provided by the weapon, providing improved combat endurance.

#2 provides less ammunition per unit, but this is offset by the fact that the ammunition total includes the current design allocation.

Note that a Magazine needs to be designated to a specific type of weapon, so one Magazine could supply all B2 Railguns, but you would need two Magazines to have a B2 Rail Gun and an F2 Multi-cannon.

 

[CMDR Byr Goefin]

Not again...

 

[Snarfbuckle]

Why would we need internal storage for newspapers and magazines? Oh, you mean for GUNS? Well, that made more sense suddenly.

 

[CMDR Byr Goefin]

Here is why you don't want ammo inside your ship, which is sealed up against vacuum:

[video=youtube_share;c7y3_DqFVnY]https://youtu.be/c7y3_DqFVnY[/video]


Here is a video on an M1 Abrams as to why you want it vented to space and not have all that expanding gas INSIDE your airtight ship:

[video=youtube_share;Ay7bOG2nD6k]https://youtu.be/Ay7bOG2nD6k[/video]

 

[Raplet]

Why would we need internal storage for newspapers and magazines? Oh, you mean for GUNS? Well, that made more sense suddenly.

I just participated in the Aisling Prep War. I've hauled quite enough magazines, thank you.

 

[Snarfbuckle]

I just participated in the Aisling Prep War. I've hauled quite enough magazines, thank you.

That's better and nicer than the empress spanish inquisition with several hundred tonnes of corruption reports.

 

[Velixar]

Can't you farm for ammo? Save it and then make it from material you collected?

 

[CMDR Byr Goefin]

Can't you farm for ammo? Save it and then make it from material you collected?

STOP BREAKING MY IMMERSION!

 

[G in the Fl]

So, 1 is a strait combat Nerf? 2 is sensible

 

[Chrystoph]

So, 1 is a strait combat Nerf? 2 is sensible

Depends how you look at it, I guess. The idea is that this requires decisions on whether you want a combatant or a hauler, not a ship that excels at being all of the above at the same time. It is not so much that it is a combat nerf as an attempt to require that ships use some of their Internal Compartment space in support of the guns they carry. For option #1, you would have to devote one Size 1 or 2 Internal Compartment to get the same amount of ammunition as currently comes with the weapon.

Option #1 provides more ammo than option #2, but that is because option #2 supplements your existing allotment whereas option #1 is total supply.

 

[Shadow_Frost]

Does this mean if I hit the magazine that I take a chunk out of your hull?

 

[CMDR Byr Goefin]

Does this mean if I hit the magazine that I take a chunk out of your hull?

No, it means apply the Confetti Rule for determining damage.

On the plus side, the hulk will not present a danger to navigation when the largest piece is the size of a pea.

 

[Muffet]

No, if anything just make modules to be set in place of cargo racks [same slots in that case] that increases the amount of ammo you can carry, but since it would have machineries to feed the weapons and so on, the heavier the caliber the more powerful the machine should be, increasing power consuption and weight.

 

[Chrystoph]

No, it means apply the Confetti Rule for determining damage.

On the plus side, the hulk will not present a danger to navigation when the largest piece is the size of a pea.

Rather than respond in kind, I'm actually going to respond to your sarcasm and trolling.

First, the idea that EVERY hit to a magazine results in an explosion is unrealistic. Your Single example of Hood is an application of the Misleading Vividness fallacy. If ships were that easily and routinely destroyed, no one would invest in them.

As to venting to space, you could simply stipulate that the magazine has a blow out wall while the rest of the structure is reinforced. Your presumption that all of the ammunition for a weapon is contained in the hardpoint is also unrealistic. Most importantly, if that were the case, there would be no reload times as you would have a continuous feed, but, more realisticly, any hit to the weapon would result in a detonation of the ammunition in a gang fire explosion. I guarantee that would be unsurvivable. I am just recommending that the magazine be moved from being incorporated into the weapon to consuming volume in the Internal Compartments.

Second, as one of the previous posters mentioned, a magazine is basically a specialized cargo compartment. You could certainly treat it the same way for damage, such as cargo hatch failures.

As to hitting the magazine and taking a chunk out of the hull, again, apply the same rules as a cargo rack.

 

[CMDR Byr Goefin]

Magazine Explosions are VERY COMMON, even if the ship is not actually being shot at. Handling explosives and propellents in a ship is a very dangerous activity. USS Iowa being an example. US Forstall being another when a missile was dropped while being loaded on an airplane.

Especially on tanks, that is why all modern US tanks have external vented magazines.

And these don't even take into account that breaching the hull on a space ship is a very bad thing for the pilot.

Which is why on a Fer de Lance, you can see the ammo stacked in the weapons bays, eternal to the ship and in hard vacuum:

 

[CTCParadox]

Should be allowed. Then Elite players can know the four scariest words in the Mechwarrior series, "Internal Ammunition Explosion Detected".
In any case we can currently haul around a hold full of explosives at no additional risk, so the internal damage model would need to be improved.

CMDR CTCParadox

 

[Chrystoph]

Magazine Explosions are VERY COMMON, even if the ship is not actually being shot at. Handling explosives and propellents in a ship is a very dangerous activity.

You might consider that, in more than a century of almost continuous combat, the United States has , by several orders of magnitude, more non-events than events, and that naval architecture disagrees with you. While I will certainly concede that there is risk associated with ordnance handling and fuelling, the Navy performs both of those functions on a daily basis with fires and explosions being the exception, not the rule.

USS Iowa being an example.

The Navy and the Government Accounting Office concluded that the Iowa turret explosion was a either a loading error or sabotage of the weapon by overcharging the gun with powder. Note that the explosion was in the TURRET, not the powder magazine. If anything, Iowa speaks against your argument, not in favor. The fact of the matter is that modern ships enshrine the concept of firewalling and compartmentalization specifically to prevent things like an explosion in a turret spreading to the magazines.

US Forstall being another when a missile was dropped while being loaded on an airplane.

The USS Forrestal fire had nothing to do with a magazine and everything to do with ordnance sitting on the flight deck. Additionally, the missile in question FIRED from a pod as a result of an electrical surge, hitting the fuel tank of another plane. I would point out that all of the damage initially done to the ship was done by ammunition stored outside the hull.

Thus far, your arguments amount to extreme examples, false dichotomy, genetic fallacy, misrepresentations of historical events, assertions of mechanics that do not exist in the game and pictures that are not even valid representations of the amount of ammunition allocated to the weapon.

Should you care to actually argue the Issue, I would be more than interested in listening. Otherwise, I can only conclude that you have no valid argument for your position other than a desire not to give up the Internal Compartments on the ships in question because it would deprive you of an "I can do EVERYTHING with this ship" design.

 

[CMDR Byr Goefin]

And how is a misfired missile any different from a enemy missile hitting it?
And it has to do with mishandling ammo, and how dangerous it is to have ammo being moved during regular operations, let alone a combat situation.

The fact you cannot make the connection is your issue, not my faulty logic.

In all cases, the remedy is to NOT STORE AMMO IN ENCLOSED SPACES. Like say the airtight against vacuum spaces of the cargo.

I reject the idea because it is blatantly stupid design to put explosives inside a hard and perfectly sealed against vacuum shell. Frontier designers also clearly took this into consideration since several ships show ammo stored in the externally vented hardpoint bays.

Railgun ammo could be stored safely, as could maybe plasma depending on what is in the plasma and how compressed it is.

 

[who?]

Should be allowed. Then Elite players can know the four scariest words in the Mechwarrior series, "Internal Ammunition Explosion Detected".
CMDR CTCParadox

Yes please. Let anyone who so chooses carry around as much ammunition as they like. But if their shields go down and their hull takes a hit....... Big Bada Boom.

 

[DocLooshkin]

Munitions from history and for the modern day are designed for terrestrial theatres of war, not for space. It makes little sense to build things the same way in space, where uncontrolled fires and explosions are major threats - large amounts of conventional ammunition would just be too high-risk.

Given the 1.3 millennia of material sciences between now and then, the people of ED would presumably have smarter ways of doing things. Explosives that need to be chemically mixed or electronically catalysed before they can be fired seem reasonable. Presumably, only the current reload's-worth of ammunition would need to be dangerous.