Roll to hit, miss, blast radius?

[Glistam]

I know "common sense" should always rule the day, but I'm hoping there's an obscure rule somewhere that supports this...

In a recent (Rifts) game, we had a character fly above an open rift that was in the air and use a handheld mini-missle launcher to fire fragmentation mini-missles straight down through the rift in order to try and strike the house-sized device that was below this rift, on the other side. This character did not have the W.P. for this weapon. By Rifts: Ultimate Edition rules, we figure this character was shooting wild (-6) and shooting blind (-10), for a total modifier of -16 to hit. Also by Rifts Ultimate edition rules, an 8 or higher was needed to hit, meaning that only a natural 20 should connect. No natural 20's were rolled.

Here's the "common sense" part... The GM decided that, due to the 20 ft blast radius and a successful Advanced Math roll, the object would still take half damage from being in the blast radius if the roll on the die (before applying the negative modifiers) was high enough.

This seems to me to fall under some sort of "splash damage" or "indirect fire" rules, but I don't know if Rifts has such rules. Does anyone know if there are any rules in any Palladium books that would have covered this situation? I'm not asking how a different GM might have ruled in this case, I'm just trying to find out if there are printed rules which may cover this sort of situation.

Basically... when trying to hit a target with explosives, if the roll to strike is a miss but the explosive could have landed "nearby," are there any rules which allow for the chance that the target could still be caught in the blast radius?

[Alrik Vas]

Check, Ninjas and Superspies? I think there are rules about Mortars or something in there. Or look at various artillery weapons in Rifts, there might be wonky rules for indirect fire specifically pertaining to the weapons you could use.

Wish i could say for sure. >.<