Post by Lorpius Prime on Jan 4, 2011 1:52:22 GMT -5
Personal Weapons[/u]
Blasters
The universal firearm. Blasters are plasma weapons, launching a dense packet of superheated particles at high speed toward a target. Blasters are cheap, easy to make and maintain, and simple to use. They are the preferred hand-weapon on the civilian market and for military use. Their main limitation is their range, as plasma bolts tend to disperse quickly. Blaster makers try to compensate with greater initial compression and higher velocities, or with special equipment such as lasers or magnetic field projectors. Such accessories are expensive and bulky, however, and most customers simply accept the fact that only the highest-quality blasters will be effective at more than 100 meters—and most not even that far.
Blasters are highly destructive; they cause horrific burning wounds and—in atmosphere—tend to set fire to whatever they hit. In enclosed spaces they can be as dangerous to their users as to targets. Continuous fire can quickly raise ambient temperatures to lethal levels or turn the atmosphere toxic. Soldiers usually wear environment suits into battle for exactly this reason.
Blaster bolts can be absorbed by energy sinks.
Projectile weapons
The ancient and venerable handgun has now been mostly relegated to specialist military use. Guns fire physical bullets at their targets, causing damage via kinetic energy. Most use electric or magnetic propulsion, but some still rely on explosive propellants contained in cartridges.
Projectile weapons are less popular than blasters for several reasons: they are usually bulkier, they have multiple moving parts which make them harder to maintain and more prone to malfunction and wear, they require more knowledge and training to use, and their users must carry heavy and bulky stocks of ammunition. On the other hand, they do offer a few advantages that continue to save the weapons from extinction: the guns themselves are usually easy to make and cheap, they tend to have much longer useful ranges than blasters, they are less dangerous to their own operators, their ammunition can carry explosives or other specialty payloads in shells, and a bullet's kinetic energy cannot be absorbed by energy sink defenses.
Lasers
On the small-arms battlefield, lasers are specialty weapons. Lasers capable of lethal energy outputs are too large to be used as hand-weapons by human-sized creatures, and are instead usually mounted in fixed positions or carried with powered prosthetics. Non-lethal lasers are sometimes used for crowd-control or anti-equipment purposes, but otherwise have little military value. Like blasters, lasers may be defeated by energy sinks. Unlike blasters, they are far more precise weapons, longer-ranged, and much less of a threat to their users.
Personal Defenses[/u]
Energy sinks
Though the technology has existed for quite some time, energy sinks only started to become practical as personal defenses during the final years of the first Empire of Man. Since then, the devices have developed enough to become relatively commonplace. Anyone who seriously expects the possibility of a firefight can usually afford at least a basic sink shirt.
Personal energy sinks resemble ancient suits of mail armor used to defend a person from edged striking weapons. They are made up of numerous quantum capacitors woven into a piece of fabric. These capacitors can instantly soak up a fixed amount of energy (electrons or photons) from a small surrounding space and store it nearly indefinitely. Combined with many others into a piece of fabric, these devices can let the wearer survive a strike from a laser or blaster bolt unharmed.
Higher quality sinks are woven more densely and their capacitors can absorb more energy, but this makes them heavier and more expensive. Many military versions also incorporate a radiator that allows sinked energy to be discharged continuously without leaving the field, though such radiators must necessarily be unshielded themselves.
Most energy sinks available on the civilian market will only survive a single blaster bolt to a given area before those capacitors are saturated. Once at their limit, capacitors lose their absorption ability and their component materials may be destroyed by further energy strikes, causing catastrophic failure.
Kinetic armor
Little changed over the last 10 millennia, kinetic armor is designed to mitigate damage from physical weapons by resisting penetration and absorbing kinetic energy. While the design principles are simple enough, armor is too bulky and heavy to really be considered useful by anyone except military field forces. Even then, it is only truly practical against the smaller weapons. As blasters have come to dominate the market in small-arms, most militaries have been dumping their kinetic armor in favor of equipping soldiers with energy sinks alone.
Ship weapons
Plasma launchers
Essentially large blasters, plasma launchers are phenomenally destructive weapons. However, they are impractical at anything except very close range and rarely see use as actual offensive ship-to-ship weapons. More often they are used as point defenses and offensively against non-ship targets such as space stations or surface targets.
Particle cannons
Currently the most popular anti-ship weapon, particle cannons fire a dense stream of massive particles at relativistic velocities. They are not as destructive as plasma launchers and not as easy to target as lasers, but their beams cannot be neutralized by energy sinks, either. The primary disadvantage to particle cannons is their size. The weapons require lengthy acceleration barrels to be effective, limiting the ships and facilities which can mount them. The most powerful particle cannons cannot be carried by starships at all, as they do not fit inside a hyperdrive bubble.
Lasers
Lasers are favored as anti-ship weapons because they are easy to target and almost impossible to dodge or deflect. They do require colossal amounts of energy to achieve usefully destructive power, however, and can be easily neutralized by energy sinks. Still, almost all warships carry at least a few lasers.
Kinetic weapons
Missiles, guided and unguided, bullets, and shells. In a battlespace, kinetic weapons are only useful at extremely close range. While they ignore energy sinks, kinetic weapons are vulnerable to point defenses, placing severe limits on their usefulness. Legends exist of civilizations predating the first Empire of Man which used hyperspace missiles to deadly effect. Nowadays, of course, hyperdrives are far too precious to waste in such a way.
Anti-matter
Despite the material's unparalleled destructive capability, anti-matter weapons are rarely used. Anti-matter is expensive to use and difficult to handle (and the cost of handling errors can be staggering). On the rare occasions anti-matter is used, it is mostly deployed in warheads of strategic missile weapons, usually against fixed targets. Anti-matter particle cannons are theoretically possible, but none have yet been used due to expense and size restrictions.
Ship Defenses
Energy sinks
Developed from the same technology used in personal energy sinks, the shipboard versions operate on a totally different scale. To be useful against anti-ship energy weapons, quantum capacitors must be emplaced across a large surface area, and each one must be able to sink a tremendous amount of energy. The cost of protecting even a single ship this way is prohibitive, and usually only worthwhile for the most valuable battleships. As a consequence, only a few ships energy sink defenses, but those which do tend to be nearly invulnerable to energy weapons.
Plasma shields
Semi-passive defenses, plasma shields are less effective than energy sinks, but far cheaper and more accessible. Essentially, they create a cloud of charged particles around a ship (or part of a ship) held in place by a strong magnetic field. They can attenuate lasers, attenuate or deflect charged particle streams, and destroy or damage physical projectiles. Most ships carry at least basic plasma shields as protection against cosmic rays and other natural hazards of space travel. Maintaining a shield strong enough to defend against weapons requires a large energy budget, however, and most such devices are left inactive until an operator believes they are needed. Certain models of shields (usually high-end military types) can be adjusted to reinforce certain regions while protecting others at lower power.
Point defenses
These active defenses predate the earliest known historical record. They consist of fast-tracking light weapons designed to shoot down incoming fire. They are most effective against kinetic weapons, but can also have some effect on plasma bolts and particle rays. In theory, point defenses using physical ammunition could also intercept lasers, but there is no way to detect an incoming laser beam before impact, making this only a theoretical use. Historically, most point defenses have used lasers, but the occasional deployment of missile weapons mounting their own energy sinks may soon mean a reversion to gun-type point defense systems in the future.
Matter sinks
"Matter sink" is the popular term for the exotic defensive systems used by a few precursor relics. They appear to work like energy sink defenses—entirely absorbing attacks—but are effective against all sorts of weapons: energy and physical. Hostile fire directed against installations protected by a matter sink simply vanishes, with no indication as to how. Interestingly, matter sinks often appear able to discriminate between weapons fire and benign incoming objects. The caretakers of Carthage station were able to resist subjugation by the second Empire of Man while remaining open to commerce thanks to the protection of a matter sink.
Blasters
The universal firearm. Blasters are plasma weapons, launching a dense packet of superheated particles at high speed toward a target. Blasters are cheap, easy to make and maintain, and simple to use. They are the preferred hand-weapon on the civilian market and for military use. Their main limitation is their range, as plasma bolts tend to disperse quickly. Blaster makers try to compensate with greater initial compression and higher velocities, or with special equipment such as lasers or magnetic field projectors. Such accessories are expensive and bulky, however, and most customers simply accept the fact that only the highest-quality blasters will be effective at more than 100 meters—and most not even that far.
Blasters are highly destructive; they cause horrific burning wounds and—in atmosphere—tend to set fire to whatever they hit. In enclosed spaces they can be as dangerous to their users as to targets. Continuous fire can quickly raise ambient temperatures to lethal levels or turn the atmosphere toxic. Soldiers usually wear environment suits into battle for exactly this reason.
Blaster bolts can be absorbed by energy sinks.
Projectile weapons
The ancient and venerable handgun has now been mostly relegated to specialist military use. Guns fire physical bullets at their targets, causing damage via kinetic energy. Most use electric or magnetic propulsion, but some still rely on explosive propellants contained in cartridges.
Projectile weapons are less popular than blasters for several reasons: they are usually bulkier, they have multiple moving parts which make them harder to maintain and more prone to malfunction and wear, they require more knowledge and training to use, and their users must carry heavy and bulky stocks of ammunition. On the other hand, they do offer a few advantages that continue to save the weapons from extinction: the guns themselves are usually easy to make and cheap, they tend to have much longer useful ranges than blasters, they are less dangerous to their own operators, their ammunition can carry explosives or other specialty payloads in shells, and a bullet's kinetic energy cannot be absorbed by energy sink defenses.
Lasers
On the small-arms battlefield, lasers are specialty weapons. Lasers capable of lethal energy outputs are too large to be used as hand-weapons by human-sized creatures, and are instead usually mounted in fixed positions or carried with powered prosthetics. Non-lethal lasers are sometimes used for crowd-control or anti-equipment purposes, but otherwise have little military value. Like blasters, lasers may be defeated by energy sinks. Unlike blasters, they are far more precise weapons, longer-ranged, and much less of a threat to their users.
Personal Defenses[/u]
Energy sinks
Though the technology has existed for quite some time, energy sinks only started to become practical as personal defenses during the final years of the first Empire of Man. Since then, the devices have developed enough to become relatively commonplace. Anyone who seriously expects the possibility of a firefight can usually afford at least a basic sink shirt.
Personal energy sinks resemble ancient suits of mail armor used to defend a person from edged striking weapons. They are made up of numerous quantum capacitors woven into a piece of fabric. These capacitors can instantly soak up a fixed amount of energy (electrons or photons) from a small surrounding space and store it nearly indefinitely. Combined with many others into a piece of fabric, these devices can let the wearer survive a strike from a laser or blaster bolt unharmed.
Higher quality sinks are woven more densely and their capacitors can absorb more energy, but this makes them heavier and more expensive. Many military versions also incorporate a radiator that allows sinked energy to be discharged continuously without leaving the field, though such radiators must necessarily be unshielded themselves.
Most energy sinks available on the civilian market will only survive a single blaster bolt to a given area before those capacitors are saturated. Once at their limit, capacitors lose their absorption ability and their component materials may be destroyed by further energy strikes, causing catastrophic failure.
Kinetic armor
Little changed over the last 10 millennia, kinetic armor is designed to mitigate damage from physical weapons by resisting penetration and absorbing kinetic energy. While the design principles are simple enough, armor is too bulky and heavy to really be considered useful by anyone except military field forces. Even then, it is only truly practical against the smaller weapons. As blasters have come to dominate the market in small-arms, most militaries have been dumping their kinetic armor in favor of equipping soldiers with energy sinks alone.
Ship weapons
Plasma launchers
Essentially large blasters, plasma launchers are phenomenally destructive weapons. However, they are impractical at anything except very close range and rarely see use as actual offensive ship-to-ship weapons. More often they are used as point defenses and offensively against non-ship targets such as space stations or surface targets.
Particle cannons
Currently the most popular anti-ship weapon, particle cannons fire a dense stream of massive particles at relativistic velocities. They are not as destructive as plasma launchers and not as easy to target as lasers, but their beams cannot be neutralized by energy sinks, either. The primary disadvantage to particle cannons is their size. The weapons require lengthy acceleration barrels to be effective, limiting the ships and facilities which can mount them. The most powerful particle cannons cannot be carried by starships at all, as they do not fit inside a hyperdrive bubble.
Lasers
Lasers are favored as anti-ship weapons because they are easy to target and almost impossible to dodge or deflect. They do require colossal amounts of energy to achieve usefully destructive power, however, and can be easily neutralized by energy sinks. Still, almost all warships carry at least a few lasers.
Kinetic weapons
Missiles, guided and unguided, bullets, and shells. In a battlespace, kinetic weapons are only useful at extremely close range. While they ignore energy sinks, kinetic weapons are vulnerable to point defenses, placing severe limits on their usefulness. Legends exist of civilizations predating the first Empire of Man which used hyperspace missiles to deadly effect. Nowadays, of course, hyperdrives are far too precious to waste in such a way.
Anti-matter
Despite the material's unparalleled destructive capability, anti-matter weapons are rarely used. Anti-matter is expensive to use and difficult to handle (and the cost of handling errors can be staggering). On the rare occasions anti-matter is used, it is mostly deployed in warheads of strategic missile weapons, usually against fixed targets. Anti-matter particle cannons are theoretically possible, but none have yet been used due to expense and size restrictions.
Ship Defenses
Energy sinks
Developed from the same technology used in personal energy sinks, the shipboard versions operate on a totally different scale. To be useful against anti-ship energy weapons, quantum capacitors must be emplaced across a large surface area, and each one must be able to sink a tremendous amount of energy. The cost of protecting even a single ship this way is prohibitive, and usually only worthwhile for the most valuable battleships. As a consequence, only a few ships energy sink defenses, but those which do tend to be nearly invulnerable to energy weapons.
Plasma shields
Semi-passive defenses, plasma shields are less effective than energy sinks, but far cheaper and more accessible. Essentially, they create a cloud of charged particles around a ship (or part of a ship) held in place by a strong magnetic field. They can attenuate lasers, attenuate or deflect charged particle streams, and destroy or damage physical projectiles. Most ships carry at least basic plasma shields as protection against cosmic rays and other natural hazards of space travel. Maintaining a shield strong enough to defend against weapons requires a large energy budget, however, and most such devices are left inactive until an operator believes they are needed. Certain models of shields (usually high-end military types) can be adjusted to reinforce certain regions while protecting others at lower power.
Point defenses
These active defenses predate the earliest known historical record. They consist of fast-tracking light weapons designed to shoot down incoming fire. They are most effective against kinetic weapons, but can also have some effect on plasma bolts and particle rays. In theory, point defenses using physical ammunition could also intercept lasers, but there is no way to detect an incoming laser beam before impact, making this only a theoretical use. Historically, most point defenses have used lasers, but the occasional deployment of missile weapons mounting their own energy sinks may soon mean a reversion to gun-type point defense systems in the future.
Matter sinks
"Matter sink" is the popular term for the exotic defensive systems used by a few precursor relics. They appear to work like energy sink defenses—entirely absorbing attacks—but are effective against all sorts of weapons: energy and physical. Hostile fire directed against installations protected by a matter sink simply vanishes, with no indication as to how. Interestingly, matter sinks often appear able to discriminate between weapons fire and benign incoming objects. The caretakers of Carthage station were able to resist subjugation by the second Empire of Man while remaining open to commerce thanks to the protection of a matter sink.