Pulsar Weapons: Newtonian Rules
New/Revised Weapon Concepts and tentative mechanics:
Weapon Types:
Direct Weapons: Kinetic(Slug), Kinetic(ScatterShot), GRASER, LASER, MASER.
Missile Types: Nuke (Proximity), Nuke (Pumped Laser), Fragmentation, EMP, Kinetic Kill Vehicle
This gives 5 'beam' weapons and 5 missile designs.
Any of them (except possible the MASER and EMP missile) can kill a ship surprisingly quickly under ideal circumstances.
We'll try to dream up a 6th more exotic beam and missile type to give to spoiler races.
Kinetic Slug Depending on the flavor, this may be a rail or coil gun. The effect is the same: a modest hunk of metal traveling very very fast. These are extremely dangerous if the attacker and target are closing at any significant speed, but the long transit times make targeting a non-stationary target problematic.
Kinetic Scatter Shot This replaces the kinetic slug with 100 ball bearings scattered, ideally, in a uniform distribution. Scatter guns have a weapon_proximity equal to twice the weapon_drift, and will always score at least one hit on a non-manuvering target as long as the weapon_drift is no more than 5x the target radius. Regrettably, scatter shot has a lower muzzle velocity than a slug and will thus do less damage even if every scattered shot hits.
LASER A medium frequency coherent beam of inferred or visible light. Photons in this electromagnetic spectrum tend to induce vibration and/or electron excitement in the target molecules resulting in localized surface heating. A sufficiently intense laser can flash-vaporize layers of armor and send concussive shockwaves inward further propagating the damage. These weapons function as you would expect. Lasers travel at the speed of light, minimizing the target's time to maneuver. Laser beams will spread however, suffering a damage drop-off. The happy side effect of the spread is that it also counteracts beam drift accuracy issues. Pulsar assumes a 1 micro-meter wavelength for calculating minimal theoretical beam diffusion.
GRASER The high frequency 'Gama Ray Laser' is technically a high-energy X-ray Laser and is occasionally called an X-RASER. These high-energy photons have a high material penetration, allowing GRASERs to ignore any shields. Each 10cm-layer of armor is assumed to offer a half-thickness of protection against them, so a ship with 3 armor layers will suffer a 12.5% leak. While armor will be destroyed if it blocks damage greater than the armor's rating, over all the GRASER will resemble Aurora's Meson Canon. Pulsar assumes a 1 nano-meter wavelength for calculating minimal theoretical beam diffusion.
Interestingly, in the vacuum of space the shorter wavelengths of X-ray lasers allow a theoretically higher maximum beam coherence than is possible visible light lasers. However, making this theory a reality will require an empire to make a moderate research effort.
MASER These low frequency 'Microwave Laser' have little photon energy, but they have remarkable penetration of most non-conducting ceramic armors while their associated electromagnetic-waves are capable of inducing electron motion in anything conducting. This produces interesting effects in electrical systems. At long-ranges these coherent high-power microwaves can induce interference in targeting and sensor computers that increases up to out-right jamming with enough power and proximity. Closer still and a strong enough maser can reproduce the lingering effects of tripped circuits and crew nausea from a jump emergence. Pulsar assumes a 1 milli-meter wavelength for calculating minimal theoretical beam diffusion.
Minimal theoretical divergence in vacuum is wave_length / (Pi * weapon_caliber).
Proximity Nuclear Missile
With a nuke 'close' is usually good enough to kill a ship, affording nukes the freedom to pursue high-accuracy proximity firing solutions. The danger of these beasts is the primary reason 'close' ship formation is still measured in tens of kilometers.
Pumped Laser Nuclear Missile
These nukes are designed to detonate at over 1k km ranges, outside of finial-fire point defense coverage. While the X-Ray laser is less accurate than anything a ship would mount, they generally also fire from a lot closer than many ships can get. While these lasers are also a lot weaker than a proximity detonation, they do avoid pesky beam point-defense fire.
EMP Missile
The strongest Nuclear EMP bursts are actually secondary effects generated by interaction with a planetary atmosphere and magnetic field. In the vacuum of space these Non-Nuclear-Electromagnetic-Pulse 'grenades' offer the only missile-ranged non-leathal combat option. In practice, their research is usually driven by benevolent politicians. Given the choice to use a weapon that neutralize a target for 30-300 seconds or a proximity nuke that will permanently silence the opposition, most ship captains will pick the nuke. This leaves the EMP missile typically restricted to warning-shots and extreme live-fire exercise.
An EMP Missile divides a conventional explosion into area damage like a proximity nuke, but will use the MASER energy density effects. (to be determined)
Kinetic Kill Vehicle
The only thing worse than a direct impact by a kinetic kill vehicle is a hit by a direct hit by a nuke. A multi-ton object traveling at interplanetary speeds will kill. Some of these are filled with conventional explosives for use in orbital bombardment, but even a payload of concrete can reach kinetic energies measured on the kilo-ton scale. Luckily, their accuracy tends to be limited. A KKV can be anything from a balistic-coasting soft-killed nuke to a cheap decoy warhead.
If a K.K.V. hits, treat it as a kinetic slug weighting several thousand kg.
Fragmentation Missiles
Fragmentation missiles are often sophisticated variations of wrapping a conventional explosive in scrap metal. On detonation, a large fraction of the explosive energy is converted into kinetic energy that turns the missile into a rapidly expanding cloud of debris still on a ballistic trajectory for the target. This allows a devastating proximity-like hit that can rival a close nuclear detonation. While generally still less accurate than a proximity nuclear missile, fragmentation missiles are both cheaper and share the Pulsed Laser Missile's ability to activate from outside of final-defense fire range.
Multiple Fragmentation Missiles may be detonated together to make a combined debris cloud of greater initial size and total mass.
After hitting or missing their target debris clouds will linger until their expansion reduces them to an area density of less than 0.1g / square-meter. Until then, any following missile salvo or task group passing through a debris cloud rolls a random number between 1 and 5,000. This number is the distance in km between the center of the task group or salvo and the debris cloud. If there is an overlap, Bad Things may happen depending on relative velocity.
Ships catastrophically destroyed (remaining damage after ship destruction > 1/2 ship's total soak rating) will also turn into debris clouds rather than wrecks.
Weapon Concepts
Accuracy
Hit-Chance = [ (weapon_proximity + target_radius) / (weapon_drift + target_jink) ] ^ 2.
If the Hit-chance is < 1% or (weapon_proximity + target_radius + weapon_drift) < target_jink then the weapon automatically misses.
weapon_drift = distance_to_target * weapon_jitter * sq_root( 1 + relative_speed / (trackingSpeed * distance_to_target))
This is the maximum distance between where you aim a weapon and where the weapon will actually end up going.
trackingSpeed: This starts at 0.125 radians per second, which by an odd coincidence comes out to 1250 km/s at 10k km: the same starting tracking speed of the TransNewtonian rule set.
distance_to_target: This is the unguided distance to target. Minimum of 1k km if a direct weapon, or 1 second relative closing speed if a guided missile.
Target_jink = 0.5 * target_maneuvering_accell * dT^ 1.5, or the distance of closest approach between the target's plotted position and the weapon's zero-jitter median trajectory. Whichever is greater. This is potentially shorter than the classic distance-acceleration equation, but a ship dodging multiple shots can't keep accelerating in the same direction.
Target_maneuvering_accell is the target's Continual Evasive Manuvering rating. 'Continual Evasive Manuvering' will be a new combat option similar to the Aurora Shields-Active order. Evasive maneuvering is micro-level local dodging that will not move a ship on the Systems map, is deducted from Maximum Acceleration for the purposes of system-map maneuvering, and will continually burn reaction mass from any ship with a reaction-drive engine. Like shields, Continual Evasive Manuvering is intended for combat situations and not long-duration picket duties.
weapon_jitter: This starts at 1m per 1k kms for direct weapons, or 100m per 1k kms for missiles.
The missile number works out to 10cm at 1km, which seems to be comparable to the official accuracy of modern battle tanks. The reduced direct weapon jitter is a concession to game play to ensure anti-missile point defenses can work.
Task-group Formations
Ships in a task group are assumed to be stacked vertically 20 km - 100 km apart depending on the number of ships. This vertical orientation allows omnidirectional firing along the elliptic planes of a star system, provides room for ships to evasively maneuver independently if needed, and keeps ships close enough together to provide mutual point-defense support. The spacing also reduces the risk that a single missile or debris field will take out multiple ships.
Horizontal spacing and orientation will be handled similarly to Aurora's formation system.
Missile Salvos
Just as ships in a formation are kms apart verticaly, The salvoed missiles are also given spacing. For now, lets say they are 0.1 seconds apart, up to a maximum of 1 km at speeds of 10+ km/s. This means few proximity attacks short of a heavy nuke can take out more than one attacking missile at a time.
On the other hand, every missile fired from the same location with the same speed against the same target is included in a salvo, so fire control saturation will require more elaborate planing. This is only fair considering the how much damage a single missile can do under newtonian rules.
Point Defense
The minimum final-defense range will be reduced to 1k km to reflect accuracy limitations of weapons with jitter.
Final-fire point-defenses aim for a soft-kill of the guidance package to convert an incoming missile into an unguided kinetic rocket. Even though an unlucky kinetic kill vehicle can still one-shot a battle ship, converting incoming missiles into expanding shrapnel clouds is rarely an improvement.
Since some missiles may activate outside of final-defense ranges and a KKV's chance of impacting drops as the ballistic distance increases the lower accuracy of an area-defense may be worth considering.
Any thoughts? Comments? Feel free to post them over in the ideas thread.