Explosive Scaling

[Yendor]

Has anyone worked out what different explosives do, damage wise, per ounce, using TNT/nitroglycerin/C4 as a base line? Damages for things like semtex, thermite, etc.

[J. Lionheart]

Are you talking about replacing the book damage? Just asking, because TNT, nitro, plastic, etc are listed in the book, by ounce. Thermite isn't an explosive, and probably falls under "common sense" rules for it's localized effect (it destroys it, burns/melts it badly, or doesn't do much). If you were desperate for a specific damage rating on it, grab the fire damage of an incindiery grenade or something, and make it a DoT, reocurring for however long is necessary to account for your quantity of thermite.

[Yendor]

Heh, no, I mean figuring out the explosive power of other explosive compounds, using C4 as a baseline (i.e., 1 ounce of C4 does X damage, then if Semtex is Y times more powerful than C4, it'll do Z damage per 1 ounce). I had an old file, long ways back, that listed Explosive #3 is X times more powerful than TNT, and similar, but lost it, and since I can't find it, curious if anyone else has done something similar with the various explosive compounds.

[Beatmeclever]

Try this for a start:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_e ... velocities

[Yendor]

Mind explaining it a bit Beatme? It's all Greek to me.

[Beatmeclever]

It's pretty simple really:
The higher the Detonation Velocity along with a smaller Density means higher damage. Basically, knowing how much damage a gram (the density) of TNT (6,900 m/s) does, you can infer from this chart, the damage that say a gram of RDX (8,750 m/s) would do. The density listed is what is considered to be the highest practical amount needed to perform as would be expected.

density aside, the RDX will be more powerful than the TNT, but if you have only 1 gram of each the TNT will have a larger blast. However, the RDX will do more damage to the target.

[glitterboy2098]

i think what is being looked for is Reletive Effectiveness factor, with is a value comparing the effectiveness of explosives to their mass in TNT. for example, RDX (the standard high explosive in use today) in it's raw form has an RE of 1.6, maining one kg of it is equal to 1.6 kg's of TNT.

this iste has a larger table