EVE Fiction

Explosive vs Kinetic might be a little confusing, but the difference between explosive damage and electro-magnetic and thermal damage should be obvious, but just to be sure you and I are on the same page I'll spell it all out.

EM (electro-magnetic) is basically super microwave. At low levels it does damage to organic tissue, but as the intensity gets higher it interere with other EM fields and at really high levels can even blow electrons off of metallic structures causing the the molecular links between those structures to fail.

Thermal is heat damage just as if you were holding a match up to a hull. You get a big enough match and hull melts.

Kinetic is a club smacking the side of a hull.

Explosive damage has elements of kinetic and thermal (and potentially EM if you get large enough explosions), but is distinctly different. It's the different between shooting bullets and grenades or the difference between dropping a tungsten rod from orbit on a bunker and dropping bunker-busting ordnance on a bunker from a plane.

So the answer to your question "What fictitious science within the lore of EVE separates the explosive damage type from the 3 basic ones?" is nothing.

Son of a motherless goat! I had a response typed out and the forum ate it. Here's the short version.

Explosive damage is an actual type of damage because the explosion, while it may or may not contain shrapnel, will transfer its energy in a shockwave that will bypass types of armor intended to stop the same weapon's shrapnel. So, while a flack jacket will will protect its wearer from a grenade's shrapnel it will not protect the wearer from the explosion's shockwave.

I think your concern is with the Explosive damage type sometimes being referred to as an Explosive energy type and they are two different things. As far as I know Kinetic, Thermic and Electro-magnetic all exist in the world of physics as types of energy, whereas an explosion is merely a combination of 2 or more of those energy types.

Interesting physics discussion. Is a shockwave kinetic energy? I suppose it is. Albeit in the EVE world, the explosive round has to provide its own fluid (exploding gases) as a vehicle to carry the wave. If the explosion produced no gases, and was in the vacuum of space, what would be the medium for carrying the wave? In a vacuum, would the energy travel in some form other than a shockwave? If so, what form?

Anyway, OP, it does seem that theoretically Explosive shouldn't be a separate damage type. There could be Explosive rounds, but they would do combinations of Kinetic, Thermal and maybe EM. But looked at another way, when tanking, one might want defenses that were good at handling that mix of damages. Therefore you'd want an Explosive-resists tank. Therefore Explosive as a damage and a resists type would make sense.

Yes, explosive is also kinetic damage, but it's a differently distributed type of damage that requires different countermeasures. At the atomic level, heat and electro-magnetic radiation are also kinetically-transferred.

Kinetic damage is like someone stabbing your ship. Explosive damage is like someone hitting your ship with a sledgehammer. The former will pierce, the latter will crush. Kinetic will poke holes in your armor, while explosive will smash it until it dislodges.

Some kind of Minmatar space magic.

my headcanon has more or less always been as follows

EM damage is electromagnetic damage, this would include damage from streams of photons, electrical discharge and/or magnetic forces.

Thermal damage is any damage caused by thermal radiation, or more simply, heat.

Kinetic damage is anything designed to penetrate, such as kinetic kill craft or shaped charges using the munroe effect.

Explosive damage is anything designed to cause concussive force and/or spread shrapnel, but is not strictly designed to penetrate.


So for example while a nuke being detonated within <500m will produce a large amount of thermal damage the primary source of power comes from the impulse shock and spalling of the ships armor and hull.
( source: Atomic rocket )


EDIT: Having gone back and re-reading previous posts I think I see why you're having a problem with this. From a physics standpoint you are correct, in space there is little difference between kinetic damage and explosive damage. In fact a good case can be made (and has already been made in this thread) that they are really the same thing - when viewed from a purely physics science view.

Thinking about the problem from a ship design standpoint might help it all make sense. I'll draw an analogy to tank design.
When fighting against an armored vehicle your objective isn't really to destroy the tank, rather your main goal should be to disable the vehicle. Blowing it to kingdom come certainly accomplishes that but so does killing the crew inside. One way to do that is to lob a high explosive shell at the tank, when the shell detonated against the tanks armor you can get spallation, or small fragments of broken armor flying off at very high speeds. To combat this you can add a whipple shield, or spaced armor to the tank, this prevents the spallation from occurring on the tanks hull and helps protect the crew inside.
How do you defeat spaced armor? One way it to use a shaped charge, or a HEAT round. These are munitions that are detonated at various distances from the tanks armor. The munroe effect is used to create a high pressure stream of liquid copper to punch a hole through the armor and instantly kill the crew inside.
How do you protect a tank against shaped charges or HEAT? You use reactive armor - armor plates with an explosive charge that detonates when penetrated, dissipating the copper stream. Or you use chobham armor - composite armor that dissipates the stream much quicker than conventional armor.

now apply this to spaceship design - kinetic protection would protect against things like HEAT while explosive protection would protect against things like HE. In short, explosive weapons in EVE seem to me designed to damage the ship directly while kinetic damage is focused on killing and destroying the crew and internal components.

Given what I've read here and know from the real world, I would assume the following:

Kinetic damage refers to damage done directly by mass against mass. Whether that is a bullet or a train is not relevant.

Explosions (since there is no oxygen to create a traditional explosion in space) would function much like an exploding star. While there is radiation and heat involved, it's much less about directed pressure (kinetic) and more about applied pressure changes.

Think of a thermonuclear explosion. There is definitely heat, light, and stuff flying around. The primary damage is created because the bomb is airburst, or detonated far above ground. This creates an area of high pressure versus an area of low pressure. The result is that everything in the area is suddenly pulled towards, then violently blow away, from the center of the explosion.

In ship terms, imagine that kinetic weapons tend to punch holes in the ship while an explosive weapon is trying to blow the ship into pieces. It isn't as much a directed weapon as it is trying to damage the integrity of the ship. Ship design would have to be different to defend against both of these. Armor meant to defend against kinetic attacks would need armor that didn't have holes punched into it. Armor meant to defend against explosions would need to be reinforced so that it wasn't removed from the ship or twisted into uselessness.

What the hell is taco bell? :P


I would like to say, that I like this forum section, nice to have a good discussion!


I am still catching up with the other thread and also found this. I still have to put my thoughts together and find out more about some science stuff mentioned in the other thread (thanks for the link Ms. Veitonen!). So I'll be back when I have more time!

This coupled with the fact that weapons do ALL damage types, but specialise in one.

Otherwise our EM missiles would never do any damage after shields have dropped.

Explosions do not work in space, is the simple answer. While EVE has never been known for accurate depictions of space, this is certainly one of them.

Explosion damage is likely caused by penetrating shells that pierce past the armor and explode inside the ship where there is an atmosphere to carry the explosive force. Exploding outside the armor will merely dent the armor, if anything at all, since there is no resistance against the explosion in a vacuum. It's just like real world shells that are far more effective when they explode inside the tank, rather than on the outside armor.

Kinetic weapons are actually one of the better options for space combat, alongside EM. Basic kinetic penetrators and slugs can seriously alter the trajectory and rotation of an object in space (along with causing damage). We're talking basic bullets and cannonballs and other big fat dumb hunks of metal that use the sheer force of their collision to do the work. This of course only works under Newtonian (real world) physics, which EVE doesn't use at all. How kinetic weapons in EVE are useful, I've no idea, since shooting a ship doesn't move it at all. The closest example of how kinetic weapons would/should really work in EVE is miner bumping. That's a real kinetic weapon. It MOVES the enemy ship, though it should also do damage.

Thermal weapons in space are a bit of a controversial issue, since some people think you can't get rid of heat in space and others think it's much easier to in space than in an atmosphere. What you should take away is that a realistic thermal weapon won't be using impressive fireballs or explosions or the like. It will be a weapon that efficiently and quickly raises the temperature of the enemy ship to its ductile or melting point and beyond. The basic idea here is melting the enemy into a blob of molten slag. Thermal damage. Pretty simple stuff.

EM damage actually covers a wide range of damage types. EM means Electro-Magnetic. That means the whole spectrum (as seen with laser crystal choices), from Gamma to Radio. Generally speaking, EM weapons would be pretty useless as an anti-ship device unless you're using extremely high wattage lasers. Even then, they'd be fairly inefficient I think compared to other options to deal damage (like kinetic weapons). Your best use for EM weapons would be as anti-personnel devices against unshielded ships. When I say unshielded, I mean EM-shielded... I don't mean fictional energy shields. I mean thick lead walls to stop those gamma beams from frying every crew member inside your ship and giving any survivors fatal radiation poisoning.

EMP would also be an option, but I suspect that technology in new eden has progressed passed the point of electronics. EMP and such interference would be common threats in a universe where small nuclear weapons are commonplace, and a few nova rockets would render all our ships completely disabled if we still rely on copper wiring and printed electronic circuits on our ships. More likely, we're using some more advanced form of technology like optronics (light based circuits) or fictional Star-Trek plasma circuits.