Here comes a quote recently found at SBC, which was used in a slightly different form against my arguments about the Nova cannon and the presence of mass lightening technology (MLT) in use inside the projectiles.
But before dicing the quotation, I'm going to make a point first.
My main argument behind the MLT was that the Nova projectiles in the BFG were described as generating a blast. They also were said to be packed with explosive. Thus there was no secret here that this device would produce an important amount of plasma upon detonation. As per the indication in the
rules, the blast itself was perfectly omnidirectional, spherical.
It was most obvious that this represented a large problem when trying to mesh that with the idea of a projectile moving near c or at least at fractional speeds.
Hence why, among other things, I argued for MLT. The other reason was that the yields were absurd. Absurd because they didn't fit with all the observations of capital ships' firepower I went through, and because globally, all those claims of high gigatons or plus of firepower it made the Exterminati absolutely pointless and undereffective in destroying life in comparison, or even achieving proper destruction of burrowed targets.
That's a point that is
constantly dismissed, largely because that alone, from the standpoint of pure logic, rejects the extravagant yields.
The description of a Nova projectile with a blasting warhead worked with Shadow Point. The BFG rulebook described it as releasing a force more potent than a dozen plasma bombs (and I already covered the firepower of such weapons, we're talking about melting city block).
It was objected that they're said to be implosion warheads, so there cannot be a blast. Although I thought it wasn't necessary, I still had to show that two seconds of Internet search for "implosion warhead" made that particular objection moot.
That said, it's the same BFG book which would speak about ships coping with gigawatts of energy and some ships carrying powerful weapons capable of reducing cities to plains of radioactive glass.
That was without counting on another source describing considerably different effects. Now, WH40K being what it is, besides contradictions between some sources, there's also the fact that each builder in a particular sector can have its own recipe. Variants in the STC and eventually old stocks of DAoT weapons can also considerably affect the nature of standards.
So now, let's look at the information which supposedly undermined my claim.
Quotation by Captain Orsai wrote:
The principles of nova cannon technology are relatively simple.
Generators mounted in Depth of Fury's prow and the cannon itself charged up, creating a series of powerful magnetic fields. Teams of slaves in the prow work with great loading machinery to feed a specially prepared projectile - an implosion charge the size of a small building - into a great hallway known as the release chamber.
Bulkheads slam down as the nova cannon readies to fire. The firing mechanisms must be isolated from the rest of the ship, and it is rare that all slaves escape in time. As Depth of Fury thundered towards the Terminus Est, battered by the anger of a dozen lesser vessels, Straden demanded haste above all else. Hundreds of slaves and servitors were killed in the preparation even before the ship's destruction several minutes later.
Upon the order to fire, the magnetic fields accelerate the payload and hurl it from the fixed cannon at something approaching the speed of light. Then the time-consuming and dangerous reloading process takes place, and the cycle repeats.
The payload hurtles through space faster than the human eye (and indeed, most instruments of human design) can track. It is programmed not to implode within safe distance of the firing vessel; a nova cannon's destructive force is immense.
This failsafe can, of course, be overridden. In only a handful of minutes, it would be.
The projectile lanced across the distance between the two converging ships faster than the blink of an eye. Once it struck, it was programmed to implode, collapsing in on itself and achieving a density so intense that all nearby matter would be sucked inside it and compressed to practically nothingness.
This is how stars die.
And this is what hit the oncoming prow of the Terminus Est.
******
A sizeable chunk of the diseased ship simply ceased to exist, wrenched out of physicality and into nothingness. Consoles chattered and servitors grunted as Depth of Fury's bridge instruments registered the damage.
"Direct hit," said the lieutenant by the main weapons console.
Now the gangrenous ship was wounded. Detritus, mutated crew and shards of armoured hull span away into space, drifting from the gaping hole ripped in the prow of the oncoming Chaos warship. The blood Straden could see was a flood of dark droplets - some hideous fluid leaking from the wounded sections of hull, turning into glittering crimson crystals as they froze in space.
It began to rotate - a fat whale rolling to avert its face.
"She's hiding her bridge," Straden cursed.
"Sixteen per cent hull damage, captain. They're venting air pressure and ... and thousands of kilolitres of some kind of dark, organic fluid. Terminus Est is still coming."
Straden looked at the man as though he were the lowest form of idiot.
"Then, by the God-Emperor," he said, "you will fire again."
- Cadian Blood, pgs. 212-214
It doesn't fit well with the minimum distance description from the BFG rules. I know how relying on game mechanics is a risky method, but there is one thing to consider nonetheless: the fluff and other extensions of background material are supposed to fit with the adventure the players experience.
Coherency is a key issue, then.
Especially since it's usual to see claims that certain books are better because they've been written by the same people who write the fluff in the tabletop games' fluff.
In the game, a Nova shell has to implode at least 30 cm away from the firing ship, it's the minimum safe distance. I think it's been held that 10 cm was worth a thousand kilometers or something similar (but it could be just 1 cm, I'll check this out - I'll assume 10 cm for the moment).
That said, I'd have to check out if the blast marker itself was that huge.
Now, in Cadian Blood, absolutely all matter that is caught in the weapon's effect radius will be "sucked" and "compressed to practically nothingness".
This radius would obviously be of considerable size. Yet, only a fraction of the volume of the struck target suffers from such effects, and yet the Terminus Est only lost a small fraction of its volume. The Terminus Est took a second hit (not quoted here) on the underside and kept going on. A third shot was considered to have been disastrous by one of the Chaos ship's high ranking officers. Nevertheless, that such a ship, which inspired the Despoiler class, could be around 20 km long (arbitrary value) doesn't change anything. We're dealing with a limited radius weapon.
A
very limited one.
Now of course, one could say OK, if we use the minimum safe distance as an indication of the device's power, then it
has to be very powerful. However, with a radius in the multi-thousand kilometres, no figure is going to make sense. The blast of the weapon is supposed to be extremely dangerous, yet a radius of 3000 km would divide its yields (usual figure being 22 petatons) by no less than
fourteen orders of magnitude. Now if you multiply the intensity by the exposed surface area of a 4 km long warship, you may reduce that to 7 orders of magnitude.
Of course it still means that your warships gets WTFpwned by 2.2 gigatons or so.
Then, if the true ratio is 1 cm = 1000 km, then the yield is divided by sixteen orders of magnitude. In other words, the ship is threatened by 22 megatons... and that's assuming, again, that the Nova shell's kinetic energy is 22 petatons and somehow manages to be directed omnidirectionally almost perfectly.
Besides, if void shields on warships are following the same rules as void shields on Titans, then we know that concentrated fired on a limited surface area is better. 22 MT, that's if you take into account the entire surface area. Then, amusingly, we find that with seven orders of magnitude removed since now we can look at firepower focused on a single point, gigawatt level weapons would effectively put a hole into a 4 km long warship's void shields. Gigawatts, as stated in the BFG manual (the obvious rationalization was to claim gigawatts per square meter and there we were done). Therefore long range lasers and other particle beams would be of limited efficiency as they'd fan out, no matter out. Projectile weapons would be far better, although they'd have to deal with the hull after piercing the shields. That said, we know that sometimes at some low speeds, void shields can be largely ignored.
Transcription from game rules obviously has limitations.
Both "Cadian Blood" and "Shadow Point" don't evoke rapeful radii for such a Nova shell. They are, at best, given the benefit of a minor area effect while largely being projectiles used by sniper guns in essence.
The other silly point of this is that this very small area Nova shell, as described in Cadian Blood, would actually do even less damage than a simple dumb projectile fired that fast. See, the device
detonates on contact (don't even ask how the system that flies that fast could even react fast enough to the impact against a non-relativistic target). By detonating, it's actually showing it's a complex device, therefore not built as dense as possible, and then more fragile. It's also going to waste energy in a way or another.
Now, the description of the Nova cannon in Cadian Blood is most interesting.
The mechanism of the Nova shell in this case is that it creates something similar to a singularity. Matter simply is ripped apart and compressed into a minuscule volume. It is said to be how stars die, which can be understood as an indication that this shell somehow created a oddity very similar to a black hole. The "physics of a collapsing sun" are mentioned later on when the second Nova shell hits its target.
However, where does this solve the problem about the momentum?
Twice the Terminus Est is hit. Twice nothing is said about the ship having to cope with the sudden force.
If this fancy singularity weapon can nullify its momentum upon explosion.
But if such a weapon can do that, that is, play with mass and momentum, then was my claim of fancy technology at the core of the projectile a silly suggestion?
Doesn't' seem so.
Other notes:
It is revealed that the Dominator-class is shunned among captains of the Imperial Navy because of its... Nova cannon.
The Depth of Fury is 4 km long. A Nova shell could be loaded with 100 slaves remaining among the thousands present beforehand, and with those reduced numbers, they managed to prepare a final shot in under seven minutes.
Fired at close to the speed of light, the shot stopped the very crippled Depth of Fury in its tracks and sent it "veering to starboard, out of control." The ship's Navigation already was "fighting to keep the ship under control,"...
