Starship Weapons: Introduction
Starship Weapons Introduction: In the Cold Stars Universe starship weapons come in several broad categories:
PPC: Particle Pulse cannons are high powered bursts of exotic particles accelerated to near lightspeed making their appearance while firing similar to the “ray guns” out of old science fiction stories.
Ion-Lance: An Ion-Lance is weapon which fires a concentrated beam of ions towards a target causing potentially massive damage. The burning red color of the beam has also coined this weapon the name “hell lance”, “dragon fire”, “sun beam” and many less polite monikers.
Torpedoes: The term “torpedo” is a carryover from centuries past when ships still sailed the ocean and these weapons were fired from beneath the waves. In modern times a torpedo is an extremely large guided munition capable of the greatest raw damage of any modern weapons at the cost of being fairly easily intercepted if a ship has functional point-defenses or easily “spoofed” by wild-weasels and ships with fully operational ECM systems. Torpedoes can carry a variety of warheads from simple fusion warheads to the advanced but costly implosion warheads.
Drones: Drones on the modern field of battle in space can act in a variety of roles depending upon how they are outfitted. Some drones for example are used to enhance the sensor range of a ship or fleet, others are used as decoys known as “wild weasels”, and some are used as an additional layer of point defense by being armed with their own point defense weapon and computer separate from the ship’s computer and weapon systems.
Point Defense: Point defense or “active defense” as it is known in some nations today are weapons designed to knock out incoming enemy fire and protect a ship or battlegroup. Point defense systems range from compact but powerful lasers to kinetic kill warheads designed to destroy incoming boarding craft or torpedoes.
Exotic Weapons: While the term “exotic” leaves much to the imagination the truth is most exotic weapons are designed to disable systems rather than damage a ship’s hull.
Range Bands: Weapons come with “range bands” this is to more easily display a weapon’s effective range for accuracy and power. With weapons like PPCs and Ion-Lances they will lose power the further out they fire due to diffusion of the particles. With torpedoes and drones crossing out of a range band means your weapon or drone will run out of fuel to maneuver and will just continue drifting. Each range band represents 10,000 kilometers so for example a weapon with three range bands has a maximum range of 30,000 km. Let’s take a look at three sample weapons to clarify this.
Sample PPC:
Damage: 3d6
Range: 3 bands
Optimal: 1 band
Penalty: -1d6
So what does this tell us? It tells us the weapon is a PPC that it’s maximum damage output is 3d6 rolled (for a potential total of 18) and that it’s optimal band is band 1. The penalty of -1d6 tells us that for each band outside of the optimal band we lose 1d6 of damage if we hit. So range band 2 would roll 2d6 and range band 3 would roll 1d6.
Sample Ion-lance
Damage: 6d6
Range: 5 bands
Optimal: 3 bands
Penalty: -1d6.
As we can see this weapon has the same broad traits as our sample PPC. It rolls 6d6 up to its optimal firing range which in this case is 3 bands. Each band outside of optimal means it rolls -1d6 as the penalty indicates. So at range band 4 we roll 5d6 and at range band 5 we roll 4d6.
Sample fusion torpedo
Damage: 3d6 over 2 combat phases
Range: 6 bands
Optimal: 6 bands
Penalty: null
ECCM: Good
Since our sample fusion torpedo does radiological damage we would roll 3d6 over the course of two combat phases. This weapon being a guided munition and not energy or particle weapon has an effective range of 6 bands after which it runs out of fuel to maneuver and is completely useless. But we see a trait here not on the other weapons. That is because unlike the other weapons a torpedo is self-guided meaning it has to roll against a ship’s ECM system on its own rather than using the targeting computer of the ship as its guide.
It is important to keep note on what your range bands and “optimal” range bands your weapons have so that you can have the best odds of success in battle.
Mount Scale: A ship’s weapon mounts come in three broad “scales” large, medium and small. In the case of most weapons this represents an increase in number of weapons. There are of course exceptions to this. As you check the different weapons pages you’ll see that different weapons families get different modifiers from mount scale. Example a PPC medium mount represents a twin PPC of any given design while an Ion-Lance in a medium slot gets a +2d6 a +2 range band and a +1 to optimal range and so on.
Power: Weapons have a power draw just like any other system on your ship; however unlike other systems on your ship weapons only draw power while firing. This means that you can actually have an arsenal which if fired simultaneously while other systems are operating would draw more power than your ship can generate making your entire ship lose power until the reactors can come back up or emergency power engages (for ships with an emergency power plant). Smart captains know to keep an eye on their energy draw!
Crew: Weapons require a certain number of “gunners” dedicated to them to ensure proper operation. In the modern era this is mostly ensuring that the weapon’s own computer is properly linked to the main gunner’s station on the bridge, to repair the system if it’s damaged or to manually operate the guns if the connection to the main system is lost for whatever reason.
Type: Finally each weapon comes in one of two types “guided” or “unguided” a “guided” weapon is like a torpedo or drone which use their own onboard systems for guidance. An “unguided” weapon relies on the ship’s targeting systems and gunners. It should be noted however that some torpedo and drone models are both as the gunners aboard ship can manually take control and guide the system (these are indicated by actually having a crew requirement).