The effect you described was the equivalent of someone knocking themselves over by tossing a wad of paper into the trash. Even the most cursory mental guesstimate should have flagged a change in a ship's velocity from recoil as equal to the velocity of the projectile fired as impossible, unless the projectile was of similar size to the ship.
There is always compensation, as is evidenced by the various performance limiters and dampening in place, even when FA is nominally "off". And one-fifth of a meter per-second, uncompensated (which is the ballpark for the change in momentum, if one does do the math as Ashnak did) is damn near imperceptible.
Or that a sixteen-ton self contained weapon system with a 100+ round magazine, probably isn't firing 400 ton projectiles.
Then again, given how fighter hangars work, one might be excused for making such an assumption...
An 80 kg cannon round seems pretty puny.
A typical 155 mm (6.1 in) shell weighs about 50 kg, a common 203 mm (8 in) shell about 100 kg, a concrete demolition 203 mm (8 in) shell 146 kg, a 280 mm (11 in) battleship shell about 300 kg, and a 460 mm (18 in) battleship shell over 1,500 kg.
I don't think we've ever really established the caliber of a cannon in Elite, though there has been some speculation. However, looking at the projectile speeds and comparing them to known projectile speeds...
The 15mm round reaches 827m/s (non-rocket assisted rounds). The 203's 607 m/s and the massive 16/50's:
| Designation | 16"/50 (40.6 cm) Mark 7 |
|---|
| Ship Class Used On | Iowa (BB-61) and Montana (BB-67) Classes |
|---|
| Date Of Design | 1939 |
|---|
| Date In Service | 1943 |
|---|
| Gun Weight | 267,904 lbs. (121,519 kg) (including breech)
239,156 lbs. (108,479 kg) (without breech) |
|---|
| Gun Length oa | 816 in (20.726 m) (breech face to muzzle) |
|---|
| Bore Length | 800 in (20.320 m) |
|---|
| Rifling Length | 682.86 in (17.344 m) |
|---|
| Grooves | (96) 0.150 in deep (3.81 mm) |
|---|
| Lands | N/A |
|---|
| Twist | Uniform RH 1 in 25 |
|---|
| Chamber Volume | 27,000 in3 (442.5 dm3) |
|---|
| Rate Of Fire | 2 rounds per minute |
|---|
Velocity: 823 m/s with a 2900 kg projectile.
You're definitely going to spill your coffee.
So where does this put our own Huge Cannon in terms of projectile mass? Given its speed, either we have a vastly superior charge firing them, or these are simply not very large rounds at all, and a lot of that cannon is really going to waste.
