Everytime I visit this tread, I'm happy.
So many things I've wanted for so long, and now it all comes into place.
While we're talking about AI and realistic weapons, I'd like to raise a question:
Why do they work the way they do?
Kinetic Impact is fine, explosives, in the power range of strategic nukes, is also understandable.
But Lasers?
All I can think of is very high energy waves, like Gamma-Rays, to erode the Material; but that would pass straight through and thus have 200% armor penetration, or excessive heating of the target material, likely by means of lower energy, higher wavelength- beams.
As far as I can tell, while the effect might be abstracted as the same, the working would be different.
Will that have an impact?
Then there is stuff like EW.
As far as I can tell, an EMP is something that can be created, nukes for example could be used to such an effect, but microwaves are more used to fry living beings, and thus should more be an anti-crew weapon like flechettes and shot used on the ships and artillery of old (in game terms old).
It also raises the question of ship defenses.
Couldn't a ship employ a strong enough magnetic field to make projectiles whizz past?
Would it be possible to engineer "reactive armor", or in this case an automatic defense field, to split incomming projectiles to lessen their armor penetration?
And looking at modern nano-materials, like Graphene, might it be possible that an armor of the space era is a lot more sturdy than todays, but might suffer heavily from Heat and acid?
And now that weapons are actually effective based on their speed, is a shield a solid forcefield to stop them, will it be offensive and weaken/disintegrate them, or does it slow them down?
As for sensors, if you include an automatic "flickering" option to periodically light up space once every 10 seconds for five, it'd be too easy for combat purposes, as long as theres a single defensive sensor.
Maybe add a delay until you can use that sensor for targeting?
For the heat dissipation, sure, simplify it, you'll figure it out, you always did; but complexity wouldn't me much of an argument if you already have as complex things as powergrid management (I've been waiting on this for sooooo..... ), on the other side, todays prototype insulations are already able to seemingly dissipate heat waves into nothing by having pores smaller than IR-wavelength, and if FTL Aurora does still include forcefields/shields of sorts, a very high tech laser from heat-resistant material could use it's own heat to fuel it's fire. (Literally.^^)
Damn, I'm exited by this.
This is awesome.