What do you think are the top 10 Spaceship weapons?

[gaby]

What spaceship,s weapons to you think are the best?

[RockJock]

Carried fighters.

[RockJock]

Carried fighters, or the SDF's Main Gun.

[gaby]

Sorry I forgot to say it,s about the Spaceship weapons in the Phase world/3 Galaxies.

What Weapons the CCW and the TGE are the only ones to have?

To Me PW/3G is too much like Starwars where every Power bloc have the same Type and Level of Weapons.
To Me it make sense for the Power blocs to highly guard ther Tech to keep others behind them.

[DhAkael]

Though they have limmited ammo and have relatively short ranges; RAILGUNS!
Why?
Most ships have either energy refracting armour, or if magical in nature, impervious to energy.
Kinetic Kill linear accelerators tend to cut through that stuff

[RockJock]

Equipment should be fairly standard. The 3Gs has been at a tech plateau for awhile, so occasional captured weapons, or ships give a glimpse at the other side fairly regularly. Then you have freedom fighter groups using captured TGE gear, and surplus CCW gear, so the knowledge is out there. You also have third parties like the Spulgoth, Naruni, or Phase World itself that trade goods, and services with anyone they can.

I see it as similar to the US and the Soviets during the Cold War. Both sides had different levels of tech, but it was close enough that one side could potentially leap frog past the other with a few minor breakthroughs, or copy the other side, and be a step or two behind. You also have the friend of one nation who captures a plane, tank, rifle from the other side and turns it over to their friend for study.

Take a look at Kitsune's stuff for some variation.

[GhostKnight]

There are more than 10 spaceship weapons?

[taalismn]

Think of them as the general categories of weaponry, with most races producing variants on each, tweaked with slightly different ranges and properties according to how they can afford to spend and any regional technologies...
Most smaller star-nations, upon running into the big guys and realizing they're small fry in a big ocean, try to copy the big, established nations...or, if they're already a member of one of the big power blocs, wind up getting their equipment standardized to fit into the existing organization...

That's why, for instance, in the worldwide weapons markets of the modern day, you see plenty of 20mm cannons and 30mm cannons, or 23mm cannons among old Soviet Bloc nations, but not 19mm or 21mm format weapons....The smaller guys tend to follow the established and older powers unless they got some innovative design that they're certain is potent and improved enough over what's already out there that they can exclusively arm their own forces with it, or persuade other people to set aside the economy of existing hardware and buy from them instead...

[taalismn]

i could never remember what each of those numbers actually result in... to me a cannon is a cannon... until I need to kill someone without being seen...

Just the size of the hole being punched through yah...

[KLM]

As for "universal" starship weapons:
I like to blame the laws of in-game physics. Those give every
culture the same possibilities, no wonder that they come to
similar results.

Like bats and pterodactils, rhinos and triceratops and so on.

Basically, in Star Trek all four major Alpha Quadrant powers
(Federation, Klingons, Romulans and Cardassians) as well as
most smaller powers (like the Ferengi, Bajor, etc) invented
phasers or disruptors (those are said to be function on the
same principle) , warp drive, shields...

Adios
KLM

[taalismn]

3. The Accordian Railgun in Dimension Book 2 p144 since it'd be a great anti-missile device. You should be able to Build a bigger one for starships (and pump up that +1 to attack missiles to +3) and coordinate that with radar to provide a decent anti-missile last line o'defense. Range should improve as well. A nice Rifts/PW version of Metalstorm.

Okay, you've got me scrambling through the books for cross-platform compatible weapons and new applications for older ones...Thanks!

[glitterboy2098]

Due to URL limits, i have to break this into several posts...



in terms of weapon types, you havemissiles, which are self propelled and guided, basically unmanned one use kamikazi spaceships,
kinetics, which are bullets and other solid masses moving at high speeds, doing damage through their impact, and energy weapons, beams and pulses of various types of energy/energized matter that do damage mostly through heat related vaporization of matter.

looking at different types: note there are some 'hybrid' weapons that fit into several catagories, like the Nuke pumped X-ray laser..not all of which are detailed here.

these are in no particular order.

1.) Nuclear Weapons. either atomic fission or atomic fusion. The best bang for your buck. cheap, powerful, decently compact, and pretty unlikely to suffer catastrophic results if moved/banged around. (this especially true if you have some form of Fusion bomb that does not need a fission bomb trigger. then you don't even need to worry about radiation.) put them in as shells for guns or as warheads on missiles/torpedo's. the big drawback? contact detonation only for results. in a vacuum, there is no air to make a shockwave. a nuke in space does it's damage from the thermal energy it puts out (via various wavelengths of light, including things like X-rays), of which intensities drop off quickly due to distance. unless your within a kilometer, the worst it'll do is look very bright. and even within a kilometer, it'll not do much more than burn away paint unless your within a few hundred meters.


2.) Antimatter. in most settings this is shown as a much more powerful alternative to nukes. unfortunately thats not entirely true. it is much more potent by mass than a nuke, but it's draw backs really make it less effective. first, storage. anti-matter Cannot contact matter at any time other than when you want it to. thus, all reliable antimatter storage is very bulky. second, getting antimatter to react is very hard. you can't just slap two masses together, like with nukes. if you slam a brick of anti-matter into a brick of normal matter, where it touches they'll be an explosion, and the brick and anti-brick will be shattered and blow away from each other. hardly a very effective bomb... so you have to intermix the two in such a way lots of small masses react at all the same time. this just compounds the issue of storage as outlined above.. now, with sufficently advanced technology, the storage mass and bulk can be cut down majorly, but it's still very volitile stuff, especially in warhead systems. (a starship has mass and bulk to spare to fit very reliable storage for it's reactor fuel, a missile doesn't...)

[glitterboy2098]

3.) Laser Cannon. probably the best direct fire weapon a spaceship can carry. it has a long effective range, and is reasonably accurate (despite what many say, lasers can miss...) the big drawback? takes lots of energy, has reletively low damage, and at levels powerful enough to do damage, needs some pretty large lasing units and focusing lenses/mirrors. a note, while most movies and TV shows show visible beams, a laser in a vacuum would be totally invisible. until it hit something, then you get a nice sizable explosion as part of the targets flashes to vaporized plasma. laser weapons do not cut or bore holes. they make stuff explode... lasers able to cut or bore are usually too weak to do much damage to a target. it's a finesse vs. strength thing.
please note there are many wavelengths of light, some of which qualify for their own names. a MASER is just a laser using microwave wavelength photons for example.. or the X-ray laser, or the GRASER, using gamma-ray photons...


4.) Particle Beam Weapon. PBC, PPC, proton-beam, Phaser, call it what you will. uses a focused beam of subatomic particles to do damage, using the same direct energy transfer method as a laser. only a charged particle PBC has a nifty secondary effect which can do more havoc on a target. unfortunately, charged particle beams have very short effective range due to the charged particles repelling each other, diffusing the beam and thus making it do less damage over distances. so most PBC's will be neutral particle beams, which are proton beams which have had a electrons added back in after being generated, so it lacks a charge and thus does not repell itself apart. unfortunately, this eleminates the nifty secondary effects... in either case, the PBC needs lots of powerful magnetic field generating devices to make and aim the beams, which can be bulky and dangerous to both men and machine.

[glitterboy2098]

5.) Kenetic Energy Weapon. these fall into several catagories, which i will discuss seperately. all have one thing in common: the do most of their damage through mass moving at high velocity.

5a.) ballistic weapons. be they Autocannon, tank guns, or naval artillery, these weapons use exploding chemical compounds to propell a shell up to a moderately high velocity. most of the time these shells rely on kenetic energy to do damage, sometimes chemical explosives. these weapons are the cheapest way to arm a space craft. the draw backs? low velocities, thus short effective ranges. the shells and the propellants are both very volitile and require plenty of special handling ot prevent dangerous accidents. and even then, the residues of the storage and use of them can be quite hazardous t a persons health. these weapons tend to show up on low technology ships, due to the simplicity.

5b.) Electromagnetic weapons. they might be mass drivers, coilguns, or rail guns, but all of them use electric fields and various principles of electromagnetism to propell a projectile at extremely high speeds. these have longer effective ranges than chemical propelled projectiles, due to higher velocities, but only slightly. and they usually need bulky and power intensive rails or coils to shoot their ammo. luckally that ammo can be simple inert projectiles, so the danger of the ammo exploding is nil. that said, if the charged rails or coils are hit, they'll blow up quite spectacularly...


5c.) Kinetic kill Missile. a variation on the concept, instead of fired from a gun, this is a self propelled missile or torpedo with a Kinetic energy penetrator instead of an explosive warhead. the missiles drives serve to get it up to high velocities, where it's sizeable mass does a lot of damage..

5d.) misc other kinetic weapons. like buckshot dispensers used to place a cloud of metal ball-bearings into the path of an accellerating ship, or exploding fragmentation warheads that put up a spherical 'wall' of fast moving shrapnel...

[glitterboy2098]

6.) reletivistic weapons. technically an outgrowth of the above catagory, but deserving it's own catagory due to sheer destructive power. the process is simple. mass x velocity = boom. mass x %-speed-of-light = really really big boom. the faster an object is going, the more energy it puts out when it hits something. so if you want a planet killing weapon, all you need is a ship and enough fuel to get it up to a sizeable percent of the speed of light. well, and a very very very deranged person to order said attack.....
please not this catagory can also include much slower objects, provided they are big enough. slamming a couple dozen kilometer wide asteroid into a planet at solar orbital velocities can be as devestating, if not more, than a few thousand tons ofspaceship into the same planet at near lightspeed. of course, if you really want to kill a planet, you can make your object both Big and Fast, for one one really big boom.


7.) Plasma Weapons. these energy weapons shoot a bolt of super-hot, ionized gas. as such they are sort of a mix of kinetic and thermal weapon. generally, plasma weapons are not very practical. the super-heat of the gas combined with the charged particles make it spread out very quickly once it leave the magnetic field containing it in the weapon. that said, they can be weaponized. most of the same principles that lets a rocket focus it's thrust can be applied to plasma. thus the main difference between a plasma rocket and a plasma weapon is how focused it is and how long it runs. generally, plasma weapons are very short ranged, require lots of energy (and mass to turn into plasma..) they tend to work best in an atmosphere where atmospheric pressure helps shape the bolt. (in RIFTS, most plasma weapons seem to use air as ammo mass..more primative methods would include plastic pellets, in a process the players over on the classicabattletech.com forums have come to call 'high speed flaming marshmellows')

8.) Space Fighters. not really a weapon per se, but more of a weapon delivery system. all a fighter is is an independantly operating gunplatform or missilebus, housed and use from a large ship. generally, space fighters are going to be very rare unless you have some form of reactionless drive. they can't carry much in the way of fuel mass, so their ranges tend to be limited if using reaction drives, since they have to carry enough fuel to get ot the target, manuver in the area of a target, and return to base. and in space, inflight refueling is so inefficent a process as to be almost useless. so unless you want all your pilots to be suicidal kamikazi's, you'll either limit space fighters to orbital uses only (ground launched shuttles for instance), or use a reactionless drive (if you have one). and even then, the only real reason you put a pilot into the thing instead of just slapping a warhead or extra weapons in and using it as a missile or single operation expendible drone is because "fighters are cool", either as a GM setting choice (like with star wars..) or as an actual cultural element of the society (a society which was hung up on Chivalry for instance would see a one man space fighter as more 'knightly' than a multi-dozen man frigate or a multi-hundred man cruiser...and thus would use spacefighters until reality kicked in and they had to start using big ships to survive..the ame goes for a culture hung up on Samurai type themes..)

[glitterboy2098]

9.) Propulsion systems!. "Any interesting space drive is a weapon of mass destruction. It only matters how long you want to wait for maximum damage.Interesting is equal to 'whatever keeps the readers from getting bored'". no spaceship can be unarmed. as long as it has a drive, it has a weapon. any drive able to move a ship around at reasonable speeds in space is a weapon. if its a reaction drive, like fusion or a photon drive, it literally is a weapon. it's exhust will be strong enough to destroy objects in it's path. even if its a reactionless drive, all you have to do is get moving and ram the target. in the case of Phaseworld starships, or any other starship with near-light-speed drives and anti-matter powerplants this very quickly gets into the realm of "planet killer". a warsheild slamming into a planet at high speed is going to A.) generate a very big kinetic strike and B.) lose containment on it's antimatter as the storage system turns to shrapnel. adios muchachos...as well as most of the hemisphere it struck in. this is why you only let sane people fly starships...and why sane starship pilots tend to be so rare!

10.) Attractor/repellor beams. the 'tractor beam' in scifi parlance is one of the overlooked weapons of scifi. any controled focused gravity device able to push or pull an object remotely (especially the inertialess ones used in most scifi!) can be used as a very effective weapon. you can use them to drag other ships onto new couses, use them to hurl rocks at each other for kinetic strikes, use them to shoot bullets out of guns, or just use them to 'punch' the enemy with a focused gravitational distorsion.

thats basically the groups. not covered are the multitude of 'alien' weapons like medusa weapons, Space bugs, palladium's phase weapons, magic, psionics, ect. those all use either very outlandish concepts, or outright new physical laws, and are basically handwavium weapons governed more by writer fiat than physics.

[glitterboy2098]

i did write the posts above. i was just in a hurry and didn't spellcheck. the main site i linked to, 'atomic rockets', is a compendium of advice for scifi writers, and can be used to write using 'ten minutes into the future' tech, or 'next century tech', or 'next thousand years + tech', depending on what the writer wants. it merely tries to point out the issues involving spacecraft. in many cases, it points out what can and can't be done with current tech.

[glitterboy2098]

that was my guess... it was mostly base on current or near-future tech.

technically, any space scifi setting requires future tech, since our space tech is so simple right now.

atomic rockets is based on the assumption that the setting will at least pay lip service to the laws of physics, and presents, in detail, most of the elements needed for a person to do so.

myself, i use it to increase the versimilitude of the setting, by using it to give the different elements of phase world a bit more feel of reality. thus space ships behave more like how a space ship should behave (IE: space is not an ocean, stealth is impossible outside extremely advanced technology, fighters don't bank or turn [they gimble around on all three axis, more lke the fighters from babylon 5] ect.)

[glitterboy2098]

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with such assumptions. They are logical and conforms to our level of understanding.

actually, most of the stuff on that site isn't assumption. it's fact. we know exactly how a laser behaves, how a craft travels through space, how various drives would work.

the only assumption involved is that mankind will ever make it that far.


some of the sections, on aliens and future history, for example, are based on well reasoned speculation, but those are more guidelines to help writers avoid the "rubber forehead aliens" and implausible histories so prevelant in so much Scifi.


but back to the original topic. my favorite 'weapons' are the ultimate in improvised weaponry. the comm-laser and the Electromagnetic ramscoop.

a comm-laser is just that, a very powerful laser system used to transmit messages across vast distances (like say, across a solar system). so powerful that, despite not being geared for such use, at closer ranges (under a light second), it can do serious damage to an enemy ship.

the electromagnetic ramscoop is a way of gathering fuel (hydrogen, for example), from the interstellar medium. a laser sweeps across the path of the ships, too weak to do damage, ionizing gases, which are then pulled into the scoop by intense magnetic fields. as a fuel gatherer, it's not very efficent. tends to cause a lot of 'drag' for a ship, gradually slowing it. makes it a good thing for interstellar STL trips. burn internal fuel to get to speed (needs several % of light to work), then kick in the ramscoop to refill your tanks and decellerate you gradually.
as a weapon, it's pretty darn effective. the field strength is powerful enough to scramble the nervous systems of any living being passing through it, and the Radiation generated by all that gas hitting a near reletivistic object's magnetic fields will do a number on you even if you survive the magnetics. in a battle a ramscoop just has to fly within a few hundred KM of an enemy to do it's damage. or you can get up to speed and slam into a planet. or skim a solar carona with the field going, creating a solar flare by screwing up the stars local magnetic field. of course, you could always mount a smaller field generator into a (fairly large) missile, fused to go off when passing near an enemy ship or formation. or fire the same into a star as a 'flare bomb'. or park one in orbit of a planet, as a WMD...

[glitterboy2098]

How would a ramscoop disrupt a star's magnetic field?.... It would require its own megnetic strength to be equal to or larger than that of a star..... The amount of energy to even produce that kind of power would fry the artificial systems driving it.

solar falres and sunspots are the results of magnetic field fluctuations in a star. a star is metastable, it's state in constant flux between two unstable extremes. very small localized changes in magnetic field strength can generate some impressive results.

a ramscoop field has to be powerful. it needs a frontage of 10,000 km^2 at a bare minimum. thats a pretty powerful field. true, a trip that close to a sun would likely fry the ramjet, and the flare would not last very long, but you could create one.

Glitterboy what sort of prices in credits (for Phase World) would you assign to antimatter ? I've another Traveller 1-off, mini-campaign going and there (it's not really an AM setting) a single gram can sell/cost several million credits.

Phase World is a bit more common with the technology what sort numbers would you assign to it, and how much might be used by say one of the AM-powered ships already in the books ? 2 grams per year ? more ? less ?

In the meantime, I'll look at some of the AM missiles and see what ballpark price they fall into. I looked on Kitsune's site, while it discusses AM, it doesn't offer any costs.

it'll depend on what methods you have to make it, and how much your making. unless you have star trek like 'quantum inverters' (something actually used in trek..quite unscientifically ), your basically looking at massive particle accellerators and bombarding various elements to make anti-particles. which is power intensive and low yield. but there is an economy of scale involved, once you build enough systems.

the 'typical' phase world anti-matter production station is probably a small moon or large asteroid, covered over in solar panels and orbiting close to a star. massive cyclotrons all across it's surface, running constantly. get a few thousand such facilities built (use von-newman assemblers to cut down on costs..)


edit: now that i think about it, you could use a gravity device to generate a faux-singularity, which would exploit the natural pair production effect of the quantum foam by encouraging pair production, and stripping the anti-particle from the newly formed pair into the event horizon. the result is the particle shoots out at light speed as radiation, and the anti-particle is trapped inside the faux singularity, where another gravity device can extract them and store them for use.

("captain, i canna give you more technobabble!" "just two more syllables Mr Scott!" )

this is probably totally impossible in reality, but as a technobabble solution to the AM production issue, it'll work well enough i think. but i'd still stick the process on a moon or asteroid covered with solar collectors. since the process will always consume far more energy than it can produce using the AM it makes. (if it doesn't, it's a perpetual mootion machine, and i refuse to go that far!)

---


as for price, i'd guess 10% to 20% of the price of a ship is the antimatter. as for amounts, a fighter probably has a few dozen kilograms, a ship several tons. big dreadnaughts probably hundreds of tons...

[taalismn]

Is the Kzinti Lesson still valid?

[glitterboy2098]

von-neuman machines actually make very good sense. an automated factory-machine programmed to build something, as well as make copies of itself. drop a few dozen onto a world with plans for solar generators and cyclotron based positron factories, and come back in a few decades when the machines have reproduced and carpeted the world with an automated anti-matter factory.

just hope the machines didn't evolve into self-aware intellegences in the process, like that planet in the anvil galaxy.


and in canon phase world, starfighters do use antimatter plants. heck, you got a backpack anti-grav pack using an AM plant. even if it only had a few milligrams of Am, thats still a good kiloton of boom there. the 3 galaxies are just crazy to use Am in so much stuff...

Is the Kzinti Lesson still valid?

it is in my (currently unused) houserules. not that many races use reaction drives...

[Qev]

How would a ramscoop disrupt a star's magnetic field?.... It would require its own megnetic strength to be equal to or larger than that of a star..... The amount of energy to even produce that kind of power would fry the artificial systems driving it.

solar falres and sunspots are the results of magnetic field fluctuations in a star. a star is metastable, it's state in constant flux between two unstable extremes. very small localized changes in magnetic field strength can generate some impressive results.

a ramscoop field has to be powerful. it needs a frontage of 10,000 km^2 at a bare minimum. thats a pretty powerful field. true, a trip that close to a sun would likely fry the ramjet, and the flare would not last very long, but you could create one.

To be more specific, a solar flare is caused by the energy stored in heavily distorted magnetic fields, released when they 'snap back' (called 'reconnection') to an unstressed configuration. In order to trigger an artificial flare, you'd need to pump as much energy into the field as is to be released by the flare itself. I suppose one could try to tweak already-existing fields under stress to try to force them to reconnect, but in that case you'd only be able to take what you can get. So it'd be a really inefficient and roundabout weapon. But I suppose if all you've got is a really powerful magnetic field generator...

Antimatter weapons have another drawback that's rarely addressed: unless you're using pure electron-positron annihilation, you'll only get at most a 45% mass-energy conversion yield, no matter what you do. More than half the annihilation energy is carried off (uselessly) by a spray of high-energy, non-interacting neutrinos. Of course, while trying to store pure positrons has its difficulties (overcoming self-repulsion, and a serious limit on density), it'd probably be a lot easier to store due to its electric charge than would neutral antimatter.

I have to wonder if a contra-gravitation missile would work. Just pack a CG FTL drive into a (probably very large) missile chassis, and lob that at an opponent. The missile flight time would be painfully short, and it wouldn't even need a direct hit: if it's CG field overlapped any part of the target, that part would accelerate with the missile to 70000c or so, which might have unfortunate consequences for the rest of the target ship.

[KLM]

[
I have to wonder if a contra-gravitation missile would work. Just pack a CG FTL drive into a (probably very large) missile chassis, and lob that at an opponent.

Actually, since there is a canon FTL capable PA it probably fits into a
cruise missile. Hmm... There is a Singularity Cruise missile in DMB06.

Thought I think there are larger, standard issue missiles, than cruise
missiles, even if canon says otherwise.

Adios
KLM

[KLM]

Again, check the GRG thread (Bearski cruiser and Guppy fighter).

Adios
KLM

[KLM]

Because I do not feel the need for it, just sit back and
being amused by my own grandness...

However, I am experimenting with DOGA in that matter.
(A very low priority project, truth be told)

Adios
KLM

[Aramanthus]

Those make quite a list. I think I've used most of those in various designs I've created. Although I generally do not include a pic unless I find something online for my own use.

[Aramanthus]

So that is the reason I describ my ships the way I do. While describing the pic I have.

[KLM]

I like my designs to be functional, which is a rare requisite in most
arts...

Luckily, most designs are to be armored or aerodinamic, thus they
are somewhat aesthetic in the everyday sense - both in IRL and
in my plans too.

Adios
KLM

[KLM]

Well, there are a few designs, which functioned well, according to history
but only their mother would call them nice, to say so.

Adios
KLM

[Aramanthus]

I'd like to know who you are referring too also KLM? Also DarkMax, who is that Phillip Starck?

[Aramanthus]

Interesting. I never heard of him before. Thank you for the link. Although I can see people like him being very important in Phase World.

[KLM]

who are you referring to

More like what...

Like this Stringbag...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Fairey_Swordfish.jpg

Adios
KLM

[Aramanthus]

It was a cool ideal. Nice pic os the Swordfish KLM. Thank you for posting a link to it. The ship which allowed the British fleet to actually catch and sink the Bismarck.

[KLM]

As a matter of fact, the Ju-87 Stuka was also a rather successfull desing, jet...

Well, not really sexy (even if one does not count in the markings).

Adios
KLM

[Aramanthus]

I remember it being successful during the early part of WW2. Just later on it it was more of a target.

[KLM]

Except if you sat in a tank which was targeted by those dual 37mms...

In short: the Stuka was always vulnerable to fighters. But frankly, any
dedicated ground attack craft is...

So it was not the designs' failure, just the fact, that the Luftwaffe did not
have air superiority anymore.

Adios
KLM

[Aramanthus]

You are right about being the target of it's 37mm dual cannons! I wouldn't want to be in front of it!

[KLM]

Stukas weren't biplanes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ju_87D-1.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ju87g_37mm.jpg

Just ugly.

Adios
KLM

[Aramanthus]

WOW!!! I see someone is snapping the whip around here!

[Aramanthus]

Cate Blanchett might work for some of us!

[Aramanthus]

Psionic weapons of a large size are needed. Thank you for pointing that out Razorjack! We need to develope a capital ship sized psionic weapon!

There now we're back on track!

[glitterboy2098]

obviously your not considering all the options. develop amplifiers able to get the Psi talent over a few thousand+ kilometers range, and go to town.

force enemy helmsmen to lock the ships into collission courses with their own fleets. gunners to shoot at their own ships. mindtrap entire crews, leaving ships on automatics and easily salvagable. TK push a fleet out of orbit or pull it down into a unsurvivable re-entry...

[taalismn]

Psionic weapons of a large size are needed. Thank you for pointing that out Razorjack! We need to develope a capital ship sized psionic weapon!

There now we're back on track!

That's what I want to see...a psilite-lined crew station pod that allows one to amplify psionic abilities, so you can read the minds of starship crews several thousand miles away...or give them really bad headaches...

[KLM]

As well as feeding their computer cores with a bunch of entities, predicting (enemy) moves, and so on.

Also, the creative use of stuff like "Speed reading", "Total recall" and "Clairvoyance" (maybe add some
Object read/Telemechanics to the mix) might enable a helmsman to act as a computer core.

Adios
KLM

[taalismn]

As well as feeding their computer cores with a bunch of entities, predicting (enemy) moves, and so on.

Also, the creative use of stuff like "Speed reading", "Total recall" and "Clairvoyance" (maybe add some
Object read/Telemechanics to the mix) might enable a helmsman to act as a computer core.

Adios
KLM

Empathic Projection over space combat ranges...
"Yep...we're just harmless merchantmen...no animousity here...nothing to worry about...we're just a big old friendly Teamster's ship....we've not got a load of cruise missiles aimed right at you...nosirreeee...."

[Aramanthus]

I'm glad to see that people enjoyed my suggestion! And I see we are working out new tactics for their use.

[KLM]

There some nasty psionic entities as well as a few spells, all designed for this.

Adios
KLM

[Aramanthus]

And that should be one of the weapons that has been neglected so far. Maybe we need to develope one. That way this can be added onto this list.

[Aramanthus]

That could be a good code name for that little psionic weapon system.