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Weaponary

Weapon Systems

Small ships will either be unable to accept weapons (some private craft) or will have a single, possibly rotating, weapon pylon. Larger ships can have many weapons pylons (20-30 on a Super Dreadnought). The turrets will be controlled by the computer unless the player takes over control. One problem with weapon systems is that they take power.. a lot of it, so if all the weapons are in use then the ship's jumpengines will have to be taken off-line (and it can take up to 15 minutes to get them back on again)

• Offensive systems.
  • Blasters:
    Small, low power weapons which are not much use for anything except as a last resort. Normally based around laser technology or low energy plasma generation.

  • Cannons:
    Range from small lasers not much bigger than a blaster up to lasers capable of generating pulses in excess of a terawatt. The largest cannon available is the Todhoeman650 which is a gigawatt beam laser with petawatt (10^15 watts) pulse activator (ie: it has a continuous beam at 120 gigawatts and a pulse capability up to 2.5 petawatts, even during beam generation)

  • Projectile:
    These systems fire unguided missiles of various types and sizes. All these require ammo stores. All projectile weapons will have built in self destructs which will stop them causing too much damage to surrounding planets.
    • Shells:
      These are basically hull piercing metal 'bullets'. Some have explosive charges.

    • Mass drivers:
      fire everything from small metal spheres up to large lumps of rock. The largest of the family is the planetary bombardment driver, banned in nearly every system (but proclaimed as a holy weapon by the Dervishes of Eie).

  • Masers:
    Guided projectiles with high explosive charges.

  • Magnetogravitic:
    Use magnetic and gravitational fields to disrupt the electronics and control systems of another craft. Requires large amounts of energy!

  • Particle Beam:
    Fires a highly charged stream of particles, to remove ECM protection, followed by a high explosive projectile. Only any use against slow moving targets.

  • Positron Cannon:
    Fires a pulse of positrons (anti-electrons). As you can imagine this is rather destructive.... :)

  • Fry Cannon
    A very thin cable is shot at the target and, upon contact, the full power of the attacking ship's power plant is sent down the cable, fusing all the other ship's systems. Only useful agains small, slow moving, close range targets.

  • Mines:
    Proximity and contact mines, some carry explosive charges others have large batteries that discharge through the mine casing upon contact (like the Fry Cannon)

  • Atmospheric Incinerators:
    Highly reactive substances are launched into the atmosphere of the planet resulting in atmospheric ignition and the depletion of oxygen and other gasses.

• Defensive systems.
  • Interceptors:
    Projectile cannons which fire specially designed rounds consisting reflective coatings, defraction gratings and explosive charges which destroy, diffuse or slow and weapon they get in the way of (in theory at least). These are normally fitted to highly sensitive scanners (see section 3.1.3)

  • ECM:
    Static fields which upset the guidance systems of missiles and can prematurely destroy explosive charges in unguided missiles. Useless against lasers, masers or mass drivers.

  • EM Dampers:
    Not really defensive, these devices reduce the speed at which hyperspace drains e.m energy. This allows ships to spend longer in hyperspace (about 10 or 15 percent longer)

  • Decoys:
    Self explanitory really...

  • AMsystems:
    Anti-missile systems consist of missiles which are designed to intercept other missiles in flight be they guided or unguided. These weapons are only partially effective against mass drivers.

  • Stealth:
    Reduces the overall visibility of the craft. This is either in the form of a visual cloak or IR/EM cloaks. Systems with visual cloaks must be specially designed to take such systems... and they are VERY expensive.

• Detection Systems.
  • IR/EM:
    Various devices for detecting the infra-red/ electromagnetic signatures of other craft. More advanced forms of this technology can even detect the heartbeats of the crew of a ship at close range!

  • HS detectors:
    Hyperspace propogates em radiation much faster than normal space so it is possible to detect the firing of missiles or lasers before they are visible. Most interceptor cannons rely on these systems.

  • Visual:
    Erm... looks for other ships....

  Organic Technology.

  Organic technology is much more diverse than normal technology, and many variations exist. Many of the weapon types outlines above have organic technology counterparts in addition to:

  • Worms:
    Teeth with tails. These are fired from the host ship towards a target which suddenly becomes dinner for several hundred mouths. Any ship caught in the way of these voracious beasts will find itself full of holes...

  • EBeam:
    A favourite weapon of the Vaipen these are something of an enigma. They appear to be a single beam of electrons at high speed and energy. No-one knows how the ships manage to produce these beams, or how they are controlled into a cohesive weapon.

  Several other form of organic technology have been reported but no more information is available.

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  See Also: Organic Ships Transport

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  Designers of this encyclopedia
  Chris Page & Ed Collins

  dasoft@zetnet.co.uk collins-e@dnet.co.uk