Lords of Ether (20th Anniversary Edition) WMDs
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9. Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)
Military conflicts have always led to the development of bigger and better weaponry. The vast majority of these are battlefield systems such as guns, missiles and energy weapons. However there are a select number of weapons that go beyond (sometimes far beyond) this, weapons capable of devastating entire battlefields or cities with a single strike. These recieve the moniquer Weapons of Mass Destruction, typically shortened WMDs. It should come as no surprise that use of these terrifying weapons often comes with diplomatic or worse yet physical repercussions. Expensive and difficult-to-construct weapons, WMDs do not come in Simple or Complex - these terms have no relevance to them. Because each WMD 'family' has its own associated rules, they will be fully detailed in each section.
The Triad System
All WMDs are designed using the Triad System. These are three 'traits' that define the effectiveness of a given WMD, on a 0 to 5 scale. A WMD has a number of points equal to its advancement level to distribute between each of its Triad traits, and every relevant added capability adds an additional point. Added Capabilities may not increase a trait past 5.
Chemical Weapons
Built using either Chemistry or Matter, chemical weapons are poisons that are normally delivered by air in gas or aerosol form, although water borne toxins are possible. As such they tend to be inconvenient to deploy and often need favorable weather conditions to be effective. If these conditions are met however, they can make excellent terror weapons against unprepared civilians populations. A single dose of gas can inflict up to 100,000 casualties, although preventative measures (particularly military ones) can reduce this by orders of magnitudes.
Chemical Weapon Triad traits are:
Lethality - A measure of how effective the weapon is at killing people. Low lethality weapons may be mustard gas or in extreme cases tear gas while high lethality weapons would be nerve toxins and the like that can kill with exceedingly small concentrations.
Deployment - How easy it is to use the weapon and how resistant it is to adverse conditions. A weapon with low deployment may be particularly vulnerable to wayward air currents whereas one with a high deployment can all but ignore poor conditions.
Persistence - A relative measure of how long the weapon remains lethal. A persistence of 0 may indicate that it oxidizes rapidly to harmlessness in air or simply dissipates rapidly whereas high persistence indicates a highly stable toxin that could last for weeks and continue to pose a health risk for years (a good way to make a radiological bomb, perhaps).
Basic Gas: 1 point per 50 uses
Gas is one of the more minor weapons. It’s usually not as lethal as even conventional high explosives, however it is an excellent terror weapon for cleaning out civilian populations. Unfortunately using it can have mixed benefits as it’s difficult to employ and can react to unpredictable conditions. Basic Gas is stuff like mustard gas, chlorine, nerve agents and so on.
Advanced Gas: 1 point per 10 uses
This is the nasty nasty stuff. Often enhanced with Ether, it requires at least Chemistry level 4 to make. Gasses like Mystronix; a gas that kills only magical creations and creatures and magic users, or Hellion, a chemical often deployed at night that leads a population to spontaneously combust in sunlight are infamous in the horror they can inflict. Use any of these and you can marvel at their effects. . . before you have to deal with a likely resultant Jihad to exterminate you.
Modifications
These are just a sample of some applicable added capabilities for chemical weapons.
+X Gas Lethality: Every point of Lethality adds to the lethality rating of the gas weapon.
+X Gas Deployment: Every point of Deployment adds to the deployment rating of the gas weapon.
+X Gas Persistence: Every point of Persistence adds to the Persistence rating of the gas weapon.
+1 Nonlethal: Ideal for making crowd-control irritant gasses, nonlethal chemical weapons can still have significant effects, particularly if coupled with other added capabilities.
+1 Hallucinogenic: For those desiring psychoactive weapons, hallucinogenic gasses can have amusing and useful effects. It is often coupled with Nonlethal. A high level of psychology is generally required for advanced hallucinogenic weapons.
+1/+2 Corrosive: Standard chemical weapons tend to have little to no effect on the unliving, but by adding +1 Corrosive the weapon is designed to instead attack metals and plastics. At +2 Corrosive the weapon can attack the living and manufactured products equally well. Note that while a Corrosive weapon can inflict widespread damage to vehicles and equipment, the chances of it actually destroying anything are slim.
Biological Weapons
Grown using either Biology or Creation, biological weapons are viruses and bacterias that have deadly effects upon the living body. Sometimes modified from existing microorganisms and sometimes created from scratch they are fickle in their effects. Like gas, a single dose can inflict up to 100,000 casualties, although this is only under exceptionally ideal conditions.
Biological Weapon Triad traits are:
Lethality - A measure of how effective the weapon is at killing people.
Contagion - How easy the bioweapon spreads from individual to individual.
Cure - A relative measure of how easy or difficult it is to eliminate the disease.
Note that bioweapons with high Lethality and low Contagion will tend to 'burn themselves out' rapidly, killing their victims before the disease can move to new hosts.
Basic Bioweapons: 1 point per 25 uses
Bioweapons are cheap, but often very unpredictable; more so than gas. Sometimes a use can fizzle even under the best circumstances inflicting only a dozen deaths, or sometimes it can run rampant and nearly exterminate a population – occasionally your own: bioweapons have been known to backfire. They are also highly vulnerable to medical sciences, and using them against an advanced society, especially one that uses genetic engineering is likely to result in few effects. The basic ones are things like various plagues and viruses; Black Death, Anthrax, Ebola, and others.
Advanced Bioweapons: 1 point per 5 uses
These are rather more deadly. Needing at least Biology level 4, and often cultured in Etheric vats, these weapons have some of the most deadly effects. However, many are also fast mutating due to their energized mystical state, and can even more easily prove fatal to the user once deployed. Technomagic can be of great use in creating these weapons. Gangur is the most horrific example; an airborne highly infectious bacterium that mutated a population in a matter of days into mindless superhuman homicidal abominations. Gangur was used only once – the civilization that did so was wiped out days later by a combined fleet of warships and its world turned to glass.
Modifications
These are just a sample of some applicable added capabilities for biological weapons.
+X Bioweapon Lethality: Every point of Lethality adds to the lethality rating of the bioweapon.
+X Bioweapon Contagion: Every point of Contagion adds to the contagion rating of the bioweapon.
+X Bioweapon Cure: Every point of Cure adds to the Cure rating of the bioweapon.
+1 Nonlethal: For those altruists who merely want to infect a nation with a truly nasty collective cold to drop productivity or merely as an object lesson, nonlethal bioweapons can be made. However this is never as certain as with gas weapons and there is always the chance of the weapon mutating and achieving a lethal state.
+1/+2 Corrosive: Like chemical weapons, bioweapons are intended for use against living creatures first and foremost. By engineering them with +1 Corrosive however they can become quite effective at infesting and damaging vehicles and other made objects. A +2 Corrosive added capability allows it to attack both equipment and flesh equally well. Like Corrosive gas, Corrosive bioweapons are more likely to inflict a varying amount of repairable damage to equipment and vehicles as opposed to outright destroying them.
Nanotechnological Weapons
Similar to Bioweapons but built with Engineering, nanotechnological weapons (generally known as nanoplagues) can be even more effective and controllable than their biological counterparts. Using tiny, self-replicating molecular machines they can disassemble people and tanks with equal facility, definitely one of the worst ways to die. This increased performance comes at a price; however, nano plagues must be 'fueled' with ether and go dormant once the ether has been expended. Nanotech weapons require Engineering 5 to construct.
Nuclear Weapons
Built using either Physics or Chemistry 3.5 or higher, nuclear weapons are the single most powerful weapons in Lords of Ether. Releasing incredible amounts of energy in a fraction of a second the largest weapons can turn entire cities or continents to glowing glass in an eyeblink. This tends to give them the most battlefield effectiveness of any WMD, an effectiveness that comes with a commensurate diplomatic price. Few acts, if any, can cause more harm to one's reputation than vaporizing a city with a nuclear bomb.
The exact detail behind Nuclear Weapons is up to the player - TL3 weapons tend to be fission or thermonuclear devices, TL4 weapons are clean fusion or plasma bombs while TL5 uses weapons-grade Etheric antimatter. In all cases nuclear weapons require their Base Cost times Tech Level in geodes to construct.
For starting military forces, the geodes used for any nuclear weapons you have one years worth of geodes with which to build your nuclear stockpile. Bonuses for ether rich do not apply.
Nuclear Weapon Triad traits are:
Yield - A measure of how powerful the weapon is. Yield is only relative to other weapons of the same size class - A Yield 5 Tacnuke is still far less powerful than a Yield 5 Strategic nuke.
Size - A physical measure of the weapons's size. See below for more information.
Emissions - A relative measure of the Etheric radiation emitted by the weapon - nukes with a high emission value are difficult to detect before detonation.
Tactical Nukes: 1 point per 10
These are 'tactical' weapons, and as far as nuclear weapons are designed for the battlefield, these are. They may not actually be nuclear weapons, but the term is a generic one, and describes yield rather than method. At the high end, many advanced non-nuclear beam and missile weapons equal these in power, making them a useful method of gaining limited parity for a less advanced civilization. Most civilizations can get away with limited use of these in space.
Strategic Nukes: 1 point per 1
These are weapons in the high-kiloton to low-megaton range and are primarily designed for use against hardened targets or cities. Stratnukes are typically overkill against anything smaller.
City Busters: 5 points per 1
These are weapons in the two to three digit megaton range, devices that can wipe entire cities off the map. There are few military targets that are worthy of such weapons, they exist almost purely for intimidation and MAD.
Crust Busters: 25 points per 1
These weapons are in the Gigaton to Teraton range, awesome weapons that can shatter the crust of a planet down to the mantle and sear entire continents. There are no real military use for these weapons, they can only be used for genocide.
Size table
To find out what units can carry and fire nuclear devices of a given deployment, reference the following table. Tactical nukes add +3, stratnukes add +2 and citybusters add +1.
| Size | Batch Types |
|---|---|
| 0 | Capital/Ship/Mega Dread/IPM |
| 1 | Medium Warship/Land Dreadnought/Superbomber/Super Artillery |
| 2 | Small Warship/All Super Vehicles/Very Heavy Artillery |
| 3 | All Naval/All Strategic Air/Hyper Advanced Armor/ICBM |
| 4 | Tactical Air/Aviation/Theatre Missile |
| 5 | Jet Scouts/Aviation Scouts |
| 6 | All Vehicles/Artillery/Battlesuits |
| 7 | All Infantry (Manpack) - Briefcase Nuke |
| 8 | All Infantry (Manpack Small) - "I'm hiding a nuke in my pacemaker" |
Modifications
These are just a sample of some applicable added capabilities for nuclear weapons.
+X Nuke Yield: Every point of Yield adds to the Yield rating of the nuke.
+X Nuke Size: Every point of Size adds to the Size rating of the nuke.
+X Nuke Emissions: Every point of Emissions adds to the Emissions value of the nuke.
+X Standoff: This added capability is ideal for those wishing to make bomb-pumped lasers, self-destructing particle cannons, spacetime imploders and other weapons of ranged death. Every level of Standoff adds to the attack range of the weapon, allowing it to avoid defensive fire.
+1 Shaped: For when mecha-sized bazookas aren't enough, Shaped nuclear charges focus the energy and blast from the weapon's detonation into a small area, acting somewhat like immense HEAT warheads. This makes them better-suited to engaging single, heavily-protected targets such as warships but makes them far less effective against massed formations.
+1 Dirty: The ultimate evolution of salting the earth, Dirty bombs are an environmentalists nightmare. Typically jacketed in thick layers of cobalt or strontium-90, dirty bombs can poison vast tracts of land for generations. Merely building Dirty bombs can make you a galactic pariah, actually using them guarantees it.
+1 Clean: The opposite of Dirty bombs, Clean nukes are designed to minimize the amount of long-term radiation they release. Such weapons tend to be systems that use reactions releasing high-energy EM radiation instead of heavy isotopes. Clean weapons have few if any of the long-term side effects of nuclear devices.
Launch Vehicles
WMDs would be useless without some way to deploy them. This is where Launch Vehicles come in. Launch Vehicles are typically loaded with one or more weapons but can also be equipped with conventional warheads for tactical use.
Short Range Missile: no cost
This is just a standard missile; the kind normally used by your armies or warships. It costs no extra; just slap the nuke on and away you go. This also represents cannon-launched weapons or bombs.
Theatre Missile: 1 point per 100
These are missiles with ranges of 100 to 1,000 km. This is just the missile: buying special launch vehicles or silos for them is extra. These are weapons like SCUDs and are often used with conventional warheads to bombard energy strong points or supply depots. When used in their role they are roughly as effective as a small or medium warship. Theatre Missiles take up 1 DP if put on a carrier.
Inter Continental Ballistic Missile: 1 point per 25
These are much larger, longer ranged weapons. Their ranges are 5,000 km + and they can usually strike over an entire world. Making them mobile on anything less than a mobile fortress or cruiser sized warship is impossible. Conventionally-armed ICBMs carry a warhead-equivalent to a battleship's broadside. ICBMs take up 2 DP if put on a carrier
Inter Planetary Missile: 1 point per 5
These huge destroyer sized weapons can be flung from world to world at fantastic speeds in a matter of hours or minutes. They can be used to deliver conventional munitions, but given that they cost almost as much as a cruiser the small deliverable payload makes it a bit pointless. Mounting them in space rather than planet bound silos provides no real added benefit or reduction in cost. If used as immense conventional missiles they can deliver as much punch as a superbattleship. IPMs take up 10 DP if put on a carrier.
Modifications
These are just a sample of some applicable added capabilities for launch vehicles.
+X Shields/Point Defenses: Shields become available at TL4 and are energy barriers and fields, however TL3 units can simulate their effects with Point Defenses like the anti-missile missiles, and decoy pods.
+X Warhead: This added capability increases the power of the conventional warhead carried on launch vehicles.
+X Long Range Tanks: This Added Capability allows a missile to greatly increase its operational range. Each time this Added Capability is taken it increases the basic operational range of the launch vehicle by 100%. This is not cumulative, so a missile with +2 Long Range Tanks will have three times its normal range, not four.
+X Compact: Compact allows for smaller units that take up less space and present smaller targets to enemy fire. Each +1 of Compact reduces the DP a unit takes up by half. Thus an ICBM with +1 Compact would take up 2 DP rather than 4 CP, and with +2 Compact would take up 1 CP, and with +3; 0.5 CP and so on. Compact missiles are also more difficult to spot and hit.
+X Stealth: Stealth can be anything from a radar reflective paint to mirage colloids to a cloaking field. Stealth of any sort is not easy to just slap on an aircraft; the more comprehensive the Stealth package the more design compromises in other areas that are required. +1 Stealth has no detrimental effects on a unit, but at +2 or higher it reduces the speed and firepower of the unit by 25% as engines must be baffled reducing performance and weapons stowed in internal bays reducing payloads. Stealth is never totally absolute, even at the highest levels, and there is always a chance it can be penetrated.
+X Speed: As it says, Speed makes aircraft faster. Each Added Capability increases the rate at which aircraft travel from point to point by 50% over their base speed. Speed also allows planes to engage and disengage more easily against slower targets. Speed may be taken multiple times, and does not incur any extra Upkeep no matter how many times it is taken.
+X Agility: Agility makes an aircraft more nimble, allowing it to avoid and dodge incoming fire, and making it more capable in a dogfight. Agility may be taken multiple times and does not incur any extra Upkeep no matter how many times it is taken.
+X Disguise: Rather than hiding an aircraft from sight, or behind a cloud of countermeasures, this Added Capability is used to fool an enemy into thinking a plane is something or someone else. Not terribly popular with most pilots due to the potential for friendly fire, it still has its uses when fudging IFF codes for infiltrations over enemy lines. The more points that are spent on this Added Capability, the more comprehensive the disguise, so at +1 the Disguise is mostly ad hoc and only intended to defeat cursory inspection, while at +3 or more such disguises can become almost foolproof even when subjected to close scrutiny. Every Added Capability after the first incurs either +1 Ether or Industry Upkeep. Most units do not take this as an integral Added Capability, and Disguise is most commonly used as an easily applied and discarded external. Disguise is a perishable Added Capability and is best used when supported by the efforts of Spies or new and ongoing Research into enemy capabilities.
Speeds
The indicated speeds reflect travel speeds for launch vehicles. 1 Cosknot is equivalent to 50 km/h in atmosphere and is a speed that covers 1 Great League in one week. Given the speed of launch vehicles, some helpful conversions are 7 Cosknots = 1 GL per day and 168 Cosknots = 1 GL per hour. Most large, high-tech missiles can thus fly between star systems in just a few hours even without being built with enhanced engines.
| Theatre Missile | |
|---|---|
| TL3 | 40 cosknots |
| TL4 | 60 cosknots |
| TL5 | 80 cosknots |
| ICBM | |
|---|---|
| TL3 | 120 cosknots |
| TL4 | 150 cosknots |
| TL5 | 180 cosknots |
| IPM | |
|---|---|
| TL3 | 180 cosknots |
| TL4 | 250 cosknots |
| TL5 | 300 cosknots |
Ranges
The ranges listed below are the operational combat range of the launch vehicle - of course it is a one-way trip.
Short Range Missile = As firing unit
| Theatre Missile | |
|---|---|
| TL3 | Two Terrain Regions, or 2 Great Leagues |
| TL4 | Three Terrain Regions, or 2 Great Leagues |
| TL5 | Four Terrain Regions, or 3 Great Leagues |
| ICBM | |
|---|---|
| TL3 | Six Terrain Regions, or 4 Great Leagues |
| TL4 | Eight Terrain Regions, or 5 Great Leagues |
| TL5 | Ten Terrain Regions, or 6 Great Leagues |
| IPM | |
|---|---|
| TL3 | Anywhere on a planet, or 6 Great Leagues |
| TL4 | Anywhere on a planet, or 8 Great Leagues |
| TL5 | Anywhere on a planet, or 10 Great Leagues |
Upkeep
All batches of Weapons of Mass Destruction or Launch Vehicles have their Base Batch Cost in annual upkeep in IUU, Wealth and Ether similar to other units. Like other units, a +2 added capability will add +1 upkeep. If this upkeep isn't paid it's less about the missiles revolting and more about them simply failing to work.