- tsassi2
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Posted by: RKOSNAKE
Reach shows an Orbital Defense Platform shooting at a Corvette (Sword Base ending cutscene), the place that the round hit seemed just fine.
On the other hand, it was a low-power shot. But I believe that shooting a MAC round to a planet isn't exactly comparable to a sniper rifle shot. For example, shooting a sniper rifle through a soft target has no effects, but shooting at a hard target makes it use all its energy to a much wider area.
What comes to MACs, first of all, the shape of the round should be thought about. I personally don't know how they are shaped, but as they are mainly used in space encounters, it makes me think that they don't have the same type of sharp shape as regular bullets because aerodynamics don't matter in space. They could very well just be flat cylinders. This would be beneficial as at such high speeds, you start hoping for a bit flatter structure in order for more energy to transfer to the target.
Secondly, with hitting a planet we are basically talking about kilometers worth of bedrock. If you happen to have a weapon, you can go and test out what happens when shooting at a rock. I personally don't know, but I imagine not much will be left of the bullet and the bullet hole is a bit wider than the actual bullet. Even with 0.04c, you won't get very far into the ground as a pressure of 7 PPa (really rough estimation) flattens it immediately. If I had to throw a rough estimate for how far the bullet gets into the bedrock, 300 meters would be my highest. That's already about 200 times the length of the round. But 196 EJ on a 300 meter journey sounds like quite a lot of energy per meter.
In the end, while the first thing that comes into mind is something like a sniper rifle shot because of some similarities. There are still a lot of differences in shooting a MAC round versus shooting a sniper rifle bullet. Even the atmosphere would basically be like a huge wall to the MAC round that penetrates about hundred kilometers and 5000 kilograms of air in eight milliseconds. That's quite a lot of atmospheric pressure if you ask me.
So, while the sniper rifle effect sounds like a logical thing, the whole situation is completely different with a MAC round. That makes me believe that, while it wouldn't be exactly like a huge meteor impact, it would definitely do quite a lot of damage where it hits.
[Edited on 04.05.2012 6:44 AM PDT]