System Key

Ship Systems

Surface Features

Armour

Armour is a vital component of any space vehicle, even a civilian one, armour in the Expanse comes in a variety of styles and materials, ranging from simple composite to the exotic, self repairing materials used in military vessels. Despite this, armour is still basically they same as it always has been, hard material you put between vital systems and hostile fire.

Advanced armour is usually used by combat vessels, and includes self repair abilities, a thermal super conductor grid, and the ability to move plates to reinforce areas who's structural integrity is threatened.

Composite Armour
Simple armour made from a composite of alloy and ceramic, usually used only on light civilian space craft.

Hyper Diamond Armour
Made from altered carbon,hyper diamond is as strong as normal diamond and far less brittle, giving it extensive resistance to impact and energy strikes.

Exotic Armour
Used exclusively by military craft, exotic armour is incredibly strong and reflective, and has a molecular structure which hardens its self against impacts, providing excellent protection at minimal weight.

Chameleonware

A development of earlier RAM, Infra-Red cloaking and thermoptic camouflage, Chameleonware acts to block scans, and render a ship invisible to the naked eye, radar, thermal imagining and minimizing it's gravitic and exotic signatures.

Advanced Chameleonware is usually found only on specialized military stealth vehicles, and provides much greater resistance to scans at a much higher cost.

Defense Aura

Also known as a shield, a defense aura is a plane altered space time and virtual matter which serves to scatter or block incoming fire. Most fast cycle arrays general only operate for a short time, blocking incoming strikes then turning off again to save power, however they can operate for a substantial amount of time if needs be, for instance while operating in a high radiation environment or shower of meteors.

Distributed Arrays

Distributed Arrays are a catch all term for the various electronic systems mounted across a ships hull (for instance sensors and communications) this distributed and holographic arrangement protects the array from damage and allows for much greater fidelity in scanning. Passive scanners, communications and defense aura generators can be mounted in distributed arrays.

Weapons Systems

Drone Racks

The main weapons of Expanse ships in combat, drone racks carry an array of anti shipping drones launched as a salvo. Once launched the salvo can either operate independently or under control of the firing ship, and can shift back and forth between these two modes at will. Modern drones are fitted with small FTL drives called flicker drives which are good for two score of short FTL jumps. It is also possible for a firing ship to recover drones once launched, though this is not often possible.

Drones can mount several different types of payload:

Energy Drones
Armed with particle beams and powered by power links from the firing vessel and by onboard power packs, energy drones are perhaps the most generally useful type of drone, capable of both attacks against enemy ships, fighters and even point defense against other drones. They are fairly expensive however, and their versatility comes at the price of mastery in any single mode of operations.

Gun Drones
Armed with an array of small missiles and hybrid mass drivers, gun drones are primarily used for point defense, engaging enemy drones and missiles. Their weapons tend to be light and their ammunition limited, so they are less useful against enemy ships larger than a fighter or an AKV.

Kinetic Drones
The cheapest type of drone is a kinetic, armed only with its own mass and a load of high density (usually liquid) precision launched shrapnel, they attack other targets by the simple expedient of ramming them at high speed. While fairly effective at attacking ships, fighters tend to be agile enough to get out of their way, and a drones drive is not really capable of powering them to the speeds necessary to kill very heavily armoured ships.

Kinetic drones are relatively precise weapons and are often used by pirates or law enforcement agencies who wish to cripple rather than kill other vessels.

Missile Drones
Missile drones describes any drone carrying warheads, be the fusion, antimatter, exotic or even enhanced conventional explosive loads. Missile drones come in a variety of shapes and styles, ranging from relatively simple warhead buses with drives and guidance systems to advanced systems carrying multiple independently tracking sub-munitions which are almost small drones in their own right. Most missile drones also carry several decoys and penetration aids to enhance their warheads effectiveness.

Missile drones are the primary ship killers in the Expanse, with military vessels usually carrying antimatter or exotic warheads, while civilian warships and poorer militaries use laser fusion bombs. Enhanced conventional explosives are rarely used in the modern expanse, as kinetics have replaced them in the role of precision strike and they lack the power to kill most modern Expanse vessels.

ECM Drones
An ECM drone carries no weapons but is rather filled with sophisticated jammer and decoy equipment, capable of blocking or spoofing enemy sensors. ECM drones tend to produce more general jamming than that produced by an active decoy, and are often deployed to cover a drone salvo and enhance it's ability to penetrate enemy defenses.

A drone rack takes up 1 spaces and holds 20 drones

Hybrid Guns

Operating on the same principle as an infantry mass driver, hybrid guns launch a shell at great speed by a combination of electromagnetic and plasma propellant. These weapons tend to be extremely fast firing, and capable of point defense against drones as well as engaging enemy ships and fighters. Ship mounted hybrid guns tend to have a bore between eighty and two hundred millimeters wide and can fire a variety of kinetic or explosive shells with a rate of fire of ten to forty rounds per second.

Some military vessels carry larger hybrid guns, either turreted or down the ships spine, which fire large shells at a far greater speed than a normal hybrid gun can offer.

A standard hybrid gun mount takes up 2 spaces

Particle Beams

The standard expanse ship to ship energy weapon, a particle beam fires a stream of neutral particles at extremely high velocity. Many expanse particle weapons include the option of launching a kinetic weapon, often fitted with a shield breacher to be propelled by the beam, adding to the destructive effects, use exotic particles to gain the same shield disrupting effect or to use anti-matter rather than regular matter (though this becomes largely irrelevant with truly high speed particles).

Particle beams are also able to engage enemy drones, missiles and fighters, and can be spread to fire in a cone pattern.

A standard particle beam takes up 2 spaces

Support Systems

Active Decoy Launcher

Decoys are a vital part of modern ship defenses, projecting advanced visual, IR and radar signatures which make them appear to be the launching ship, decoys are usually deployed in salvos of five to eight in a random pattern generated by a one time pad in the launchers expert computer system, and are often combined with an intricate set of bluff and double bluff maneuvers by the launching vessel.

A standard decoy launcher contains 10 decoy salvos and takes up 2 slots

ECM System

ECM systems generate non-deceptive jamming, confusing the generating ships outline to various forms of detection including visual and IR observation. They are still vulnerable to certain types of home on jam missiles, however most modern ECM arrays 'displace' their emissions to prevent localization by anti-radiation weapons and can burn out unshielded sensors and communications.

Each ECM system takes up 1 equipment slot

Point Defence System

Point defense systems consist of arrays of and quick cycling lasers or particle beams used to engage incoming enemy warheads, drones and fighters at close range. Usually the ships last line of defense, a modern point defense array can put out huge amounts of fire, creating a spectacular visual effect and an extremely hazardous path for any incoming munition.

Sensor Array

Sensor Arrays are those types of sensors that cannot be mounted in a distributed network on a ships hull, including very powerful and precise active sensor arrays and exotic sensors: those that pick up FTL particles, space time events and the like. Each sensor array takes up 1 equipment slot.

Small Craft

Gunships

Small ships in their own right, gunships (also called singles ships) are small vessels capable of independent FTL operation, and usually armed with an array of drones, missiles, hybrid cannons and particle beams of their own. While not as fast as a fighter they are well armed and armoured and can move cargo and people in relatively small but still useful quantities.

Gunships are a favorite of pirates and adventurers.

They take up 2 spaces in a hanger.

AKVs

Autonomous Kill Vehicles (AKVs) are larger than drones, capable of carrying a much larger payload over longer distances. AKVs tend to be controlled by a sentient or near sentient AI, and are far more capable of operating independently. There are several distinct types of AKV, and each type has the same range of sub types (bombers, attack, fighters, interceptors) as would a manned fighter.

Wasps
Wasps are short ranged, heavily armoured and armed and very fast AKVs designed for close escort and relatively short battles against enemy ships and small craft. Extremely fuel hungry, wasps usually deploy with a support vessel or fuel pod. Wasps are also commonly known as swarmers, daggers and hailstorms.

Swarmers occupy 1 space in a hanger.

Dragon Flies
Longer ranged AKVs are usually called Dragon Flies. They are more lightly armoured than Wasps but with far better endurance and delta-V. Dragon Flies are used both as long range interceptors, bombers and commerce raiders, and can be deployed from planetary bases as well as ships. Dragon Flies are also known as reapers, wolves and arrows.

Dragon Flies occupy 2 spaces in a hanger.

Aerospace Craft

Conventional (that is to say piloted) fighters, tactical aircraft and bombers are generally called aerospace craft in the Expanse, and capable of operating in both planetary atmosphere and in space. Pilots where special flight armour which provides even more protection than a standard shipboard G-suit and operate their craft by neural links. Fighters use similar weapons to ships, scaled down to their size.

Fighters and fighter bombers take up 1 space in a hanger.