Technological Analysis: Coalition

Materials Science

• Most Coalition hull materials are made out of self-powered, intelligent nanotechology-"smart matter". Unlike the cutting edge smart matter of Japan or Eden, these materials manage extremely high tensile strengths when connected (although significantly less when detached from the hull matter itself), easily approaching the durability of olaminium without the mass. This smart matter forms the vast majority of the hull, interspersed with veins and conduits for fluid or drone transfer, and reinforced by an exoskeleton and endoskeleton of other materials.

• Millimeter-thick plates and hull elements were found in the destroyed Coalition ship, made of some sort of exotic matter with unknown properties. These plates are not conventional matter, as these paper thin sheets tend to mass hundreds of kilograms. Although extremely tough and flexible, these elements do not have infinite tensile strength and can be destroyed by sufficient impact. When shattered, these plates crumble into dust.

Power Generation

• Even small Coalition vessels are equipped with extremely powerful matter-energy conversion generators, which double as artificial gravity systems. These systems provide drive impetus, inertial canceling, and possibly even protection, via vector deflection. These generators are apparently capable of being overloaded via sufficient damage. Overloading a generator creates horrific unstable gravity waves in the vicinity of the vessel which are capable of killing most life and doing gross structural damage. Generators may be capable of self-destruction, causing the formation of a short-lived black hole. Decoded maintenance and warning information on the generator implies that unlike "real" micro black holes, these emit only an infinitesimal fraction of their mass-energy, and "wink out" in the span of seconds.

• Secondary generators and smaller generators are muon-catalyzed "cold fusion" systems, which the Coalition has managed to shrink down in both size and expense to the point where they may even be man-portable.

Electronics

• Coalition computers heavily use quantum computing systems, but still extremely fragile. The Coalition vessel in question used a separate circuit for inertial nullification and environmental processing near its main computer system to keep them stable. The systems in question were heavily doped silicon-phosphorus towers, which required the fractional-G bubble around them to keep from collapsing under their own mass (this cancellation bubble was still functional despite the main generator malfunction, an interesting note). These stacks presumably are used for their ability to process extremely complex mathematical problems, which would imply that fully functional Coalition vessels have extremely good long-range accuracy.

• The ship itself was interspersed with a neural network system which could function with even the disablement of the quantum computing stacks.

• Coalition non-FTL communications are quantum entanglement encrypted. They are essentially utterly impossible to decode without either being the intended recipient or exotic techniques. This security does not extend to their data, which is unencrypted. Coalition FTL communications are apparently based off of quantum entanglement, giving them limited bandwidth and limiting flexibility. On the other hand, they are essentially tamperproof, and sufficient for low-bandwidth communications.

Weapons

• Coalition weapons tend to come in one of four forms: Super-low wavelength coherent radiation emitters (grasers), multipurpose kinetic launchers, defensive laser emitters, and plasma weapons.
  • The Coalition has managed to create battlefield-worthy graser weapons capable of penetrating most known armor and doing immense tissue and component damage. The energy requirements and technical hurdles are both enormous.
  • Coalition launchers can deploy dozens of variant projectiles, including drones from the size of footballs to the size of smart missiles with gamma-ray weaponry and networked intelligence, missiles with various warheads, dumb kinetic-kill projectiles (from single solid slugs to multiple flechettes), and so on. These launchers work via unknown but apparently non-magnetic means, as no magnetic warning was given.
  • Coalition vessels use their entire hull as a phased-array pulse laser, giving them excellent antimissile coverage. The missiles which managed to successfully hit Coalition fightercraft or warships were all set on standoff attack, and almost all were shaped-charge nuclear weapons (of which the Leviathan's escorts were lavishly equipped with). This pulse laser system can be dialed up or down depending on the desired fire rate, turning it into an excellent anti-fighter weapon.
  • Coalition plasma weapons, unlike human plasma weapons, manage to achieve range equivalent to lasers or coilguns, rather than the ~1 order of magnitude lower range that human plasma weapons suffer (in return for their excellent firepower and ease of use) via the use of plasmoids versus the "flamethrower" effect of human plasma guns (even the advanced PIG of the Phoenix is merely a plasma-based cutting torch), giving them excellent long-ranged coherence but reducing their close-in accuracy somewhat.

Defenses

• Coalition vessels have extreme system redundancy and very durable armor as well as excellent point defense. It is unknown if they are equipped with any other defensive systems, although fragmentary data from human vessels suggests the possible existence of some sort of kinetic deflection barrier on larger vessels. Certainly there were intensive gravity spikes recorded from weapons hits and a few near misses against several ships, but this may merely have been their drives attempting to preemptively compensate for impacts.