High Power Microwaves

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

A new weapon, the High Power Microwave (HPM), has been added to v2.5. In terms of design the HPM is similar to the meson cannon, in that it causes only a single point of damage and uses components such as HPM focal size, HPM focusing and capacitor recharge rate. The range of the HPM will be the same as a meson cannon with the same level of technology. However there are two important differences:

1) The High Power Microwave is not affected by armour but it is affected by shields. However, because of the HPMs effectiveness against shields and electronic systems, the single point of damage from the HPM causes three points of damage to shields.

2) Once the shields are down, the High Power Microwave only damages systems classed as "Electronic". This currently includes sensors, fire control systems, ECM and ECCM. The HPM is designed to blind an enemy rather than destroy him. Each class now has a separate "Electronic Only" Damage Allocation Chart (shown below the normal DAC), which is used by the HPM and will be used by any future electronic-only effects, be they weapons or natural phenomena.

The HPM can be a powerful weapon. Although it causes no damage to the majority of a ship's systems, it can damage shields and then blind the enemy, either forcing him to retreat or rendering him vulnerable to more destructive weapons. It is also quite expensive, costing twice as much as a similar size Meson Cannon.

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I have also added a new Electronic Hardening Tech, which can be used during the design of Active, Thermal and EM Sensors and for Beam and Missile Fire Control Systems.

Hardening incurs an additional cost based on the level of hardening but no size increase for the sensor or fire control. Each level of hardening  provides a percentage chance of avoiding electronic damage (but has no effect on regular types of damage). The current values are 30%, 50%, 60%, 70%, 75%, 80%, 85%, 90% and the cost modifiers for each level are: 1.25, 1.5, 1.75, 2.0, 2.25, 2.5, 2.75, 3.0

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I should have also mentioned that electronic damage does not cause any crew casualties so a ship could lose its shields and be blinded without any loss of life, which might make HPM the weapon of choice for pacifist-type races

Steve

[Shinanygnz]

Not sure about this.  Might be a bit too much of a cheap kill weapon.  I never liked the burst beam in B5W and SFB never allowed "set phasers to stun" for that kind of reason too.
Personally I would expect a starship that already has to deal with cosmic rays and similar background radiation to be pretty resistant to something like this.
Whilst you've got some countering tech to negate the weapon, maybe it'd be worth considering making this a "disable a system for a random number of 5 sec increments" effect with the resistance tech reducing the time?  You could then have it affect non-electronic systems too.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Not sure about this.  Might be a bit too much of a cheap kill weapon.  I never liked the burst beam in B5W and SFB never allowed "set phasers to stun" for that kind of reason too.
Personally I would expect a starship that already has to deal with cosmic rays and similar background radiation to be pretty resistant to something like this.
Whilst you've got some countering tech to negate the weapon, maybe it'd be worth considering making this a "disable a system for a random number of 5 sec increments" effect with the resistance tech reducing the time?  You could then have it affect non-electronic systems too.

It will take some playtesting to see how well this weapon works out in a campaign but it is fairly short-ranged and you can harden your systems against it for warships. It depends how much economic investment (in terms of research and ship building) you want to devote to something where you have to get in close and hope your enemy isn't hardening his electronics. The one area I might modify is the amount of shield damage. If the HPM ignored shields it would be too powerful but no effect on shields would make it too weak because you would need other weapons to take down the shields. I haven't decided though if 3 points of damage is too high or too low.

Another reason for introducing this is that I might be adding some natural phenomena that have a chance of causing this type of damage and I need the mechanics for that eventuality. This is also based on the real HPM weapons under development at the moment, which have the potential to fry the targeted electronics.

Steve

[Randy]

Not certain about this, but I believe such a weapon would cause increased crew casualties vs hardware problems.

  This has been inadvertently tested by some real turds in a town near here that  tested the theory on a cat. (Yes, charges were laid, not convicted yet).

  Also some research I saw previously stated that the energy level required to damage a computer would likely kill anyone using it at the time...

If you don't want crew casualties associated, them this would be much better described as an EMP cannon (electro-magnetic pulse). This would take out electronics, and do relatively little (directly) to crew members.