Would a nuclear weapon of that mass/size be doable to be implemented for the TU-95 in the Jet Age Module?
(This was posted in another section, since then I deleted it and moved it here given that this is more oriented towards this section).
I mean... yes? But IL-2 (not like it's special in this department) cannot support big explosions properly.
Real nuclear weapon (discounting the ionizing radiation) has two sources of damage:
- pressure wave
- thermal radiation
Pressure wave needs to travel over time; this is no issue for smaller explosions as it only travels couple hundred meters before it becomes non-factor. With nuclear weapon it expands for kilometers at the speed of sound, for RDS-202 it was still causing damage 50 km away, but it was not instantaneous, it was delayed by the travel time (allowing the carrier aircraft to escape). The wave also travels differently depending on altitude. With airburst explosions you also get the wave interacting with wave already reflected from the ground.
Thermal radiation travels at the speed of light and in that sense it's instantaneous. However the explosion radiates heat over an amount of time. This is not a factor for smaller explosions, but for nuclear explosion you will need a continous damage output which also takes into account line of sight and surface of the target.
Depending on the weapon, roughly half of the energy will be expended on the pressure wave, quarter to third on thermal radiation, rest on ionizing radiation
You could maybe get reasonable results with some deep recoding of the core of the game. For now each and every nuclear weapon has to be way weaker than their real counterpart (in terms of TNT equivalent) to be better representative of the actual area it damages. The actual damage is way out of proportion too.
I tried modifying the damage code a bit, got a bit closer, still no bueno.
But if you want to have your own go, you're welcome to try.