List of Freespacer Starship Weapon Systems

This is just an index of approved weapon concepts, which can be modified and scaled to put on different units for submission. Thought a weapons sub-index might be more convenient for keeping track of available ordnance for future designs, especially since the Weapons Listing isn't organized by manufacturer.

Location: Turret Mount Primary Purpose: Multirole Damage: Tier 8 Range: 3 AU Rate of Fire: 20 rpm Payload 400 Accuracy: Medium

The Red Mercury blaster is actually a focusing assembly of multispectral radiation mirrors and a detonation chamber, reinforced by a structural integrity shield. A small fusion warhead is loaded into a blasting chamber, which is then filled with a canister of ballotechnic solution (chemicals that react readily when subjected to extreme pressures) called Red Mercury to at as a trigger catalyst. The device detonates, and both the thermal and electromagnetic energy is funnelled into a xaser gain medium. This nuclear-pumped design results in a very intense burst of high frequency radiation, but at the unfortunate cost of being unable to maintain a steady beam like lower-powered systems.

In order to make this system competitive for larger ship warfare, it was placed in a four-barrel turret configuration to greatly increase rate of fire. The larger platform also allows for superior cooling and cycling systems.

Location: Turret Mount Primary Purpose: Anti-starship Damage: Tier 8 Range: 1 AU Rate of Fire: Continuous Payload Unlimited Accuracy: Very High (Corrections can be made whilst firing)

The Starjammer is a free electron laser that behaves like most traditional electromagnetic beam weapons. However, unlike traditional systems such as lasers these weapons do not use chemical or solid-state power sources. Rather, a relativistic electron stream is used in place of a focusing crystal or conductor, allowing it to generate a beam of a much wider frequency range than most directed energy weapons. These include frequencies such as those of microwaves, infrared radiation, visible light, ultraviolet radiation, and x-rays. This ability to change its frequency to suit its target is obviously a tactical advantage that can be used to exploit an enemy's weaknesses.

Location: Turret Mount Primary Purpose: Multirole Damage: Tier 7 Range: 3 AU Rate of Fire: 120 rpm Payload Variable depending on number of fusion warheads. Accuracy: Low, but fires a wide scatter to suppress/bombard multiple foes.

The red mercury quad cannon operates similarly to the red mercury blaster, except that it uses smaller warheads to fire multiple beams in rapid succession to achieve the same damage. It is a quad-barreled weapon that can be mounted on any Freespacer ship with turret mounts.

Location: Any Primary Purpose: Fire Support Damage: Tier 9 Range: 1 AU Rate of Fire: 30 rpm Payload Accuracy: Medium, 50ft radioactive blast radius.

The 280mm Pseudoflare Artillery turret is designed to fire 30kt nuclear shells that can be set on either proximity or contact fuses. These weapons pack quite a punch in themselves, but are fitted with special additions to increase their deadliness; either HE-style rounds with depleted uranium shard shrapnel bursts, or HEAT shells whose contact detonation will melt an alloy payload, and turn it into a hypersonic jet of plasma.

Location: Any Primary Purpose: Point defense autocannon Secondary Purpose: Anti-PA gun Damage: Tier 5 Range: 0.1 AU Rate of Fire: 8000 rpm per turret Payload 72000 rounds per turret Accuracy: Medium, via weight of fire.

The Warding Rune is a twin-barreled 20mm point defense system utilizing a hybrid firing system (chemical propellant and magnetic acceleration). This system fires an anti-armor tungsten alloy penetrator encased in a ferrous alloy shell.

Location: Any Primary Purpose: Anti-starship Damage: Tier 10 Range: 0.5 AU Accuracy: Very High

A powerful multi-gigaton nuclear warhead originally designed for demolition purposes. These weapons are tampered for maximum ionizing effect so as to wreak the most havoc upon both smaller craft and larger ones through electronics disruption on top of the normal destructive effects of a nuclear device. Each torpedo is self-guided, possessing a Savant Tactical/Guidance Construct for navigation.

(Alternatively known as “Complimentary Candescence Facilitators” by Invalid)

Location: Any Primary Role: Anti-Starship Damage Rating Value: Tier 11 Range: 2 AU (guided) / 80 AU (ballistic) Rate of Fire: 1 Accuracy: Very High Max Velocity: 0.6c (guided) / 0.3c (ballistic) Length: 7 meters Diameter: .5 meters Wingspan: 2 meters

The pseudonovae are among the biggest and nastiest nuclear weapons to be produced by the Freespacers, each with a maximum yield of several gigatons. This multistaged thermonuclear fission-fusion-fission device was used for decades by 'Spacers for asteroid demolition, so applying it for combat purposes was merely a matter of installing the physics package into a guided missile. While the destructive force makes this device deadly in itself, this weapon's true strength stems not from destructive force but from its ionizing effects, which can play havoc on enemy weapons and shielding systems, outright nullify fighter or PA threats, and maul starship shielding. The Pseudonova also possesses a dial-a-yield feature where dampening gasses can be injected into the core prior to launch in order to control total weapon yield with a great degree precision.

These cruise missiles are launched from broadside torpedo racks. Upon firing the ship's graviton beam projectors can be used to sharply re-orient and accelerate them in the direction of the target if need be if the racks happen not to be facing the enemy vessel. In place of traditional guidance computer is a Savant Tactical/Guidance Construct, which allows these missiles to cut through most traditional forms of ECM. They lack the nigh immunity to point defences that FTL missiles have, which is both a blessing and a curse; while they may have a lower hit ratio they can be employed vastly greater numbers due to their lower production cost, and lack of spatial distortion due to FTL engines. While STL, these weapons are far from defenseless. The Savant constructs can utilize the missiles' inertialess drive generators to perform manoeuvres on par with agile fightcraft, which makes them equally as hard to intercept and shoot down.

The missile can operate in two modes: a self-guided sustained propulsion mode that allows for maximum manoeuvring (see above), and as a long-range ballistic missile. The latter has a low-end mass produced hyperspace drive installed, which unfortunately enough is so inaccurate to the point it is useless for hitting ships or mobile targets.

Location: Any Primary Role: Anti-Starship Damage Rating Value: Tier 11 Range: 2 AU (guided) / 80 AU (ballistic) Rate of Fire: 1 Max Velocity: 0.6c (guided) / 0.3c (ballistic) Accuracy: Medium, 100ft blast sphere.

Since the Pseudonova is, basically, the Free State's most common weapon, and the one guaranteeing maximum effectiveness, damage and precision with minimum cost, many Freethinkers and Warmongers have sought to improve this missile. The most effective improvement, and also proof of the old adage “simple is best”, has been, this far, the EMP/Nuclear Cruise Missile Multiple Tandem Array, better known as “Serious Business”.

Serious Business is, basically, an oversized Pseudonova cruise missile with ten nuclear warheads instead of one. (actually, the number of warheads might vary from about 7 to over 12, but most Serious Businesses have simply 10 warheads.)

The ten warheads are placed one in front of another on the tip of the missile and are separated from one another by a thick layer of ablative armour, making the whole weapon especially long (which also helps stability, although it makes the missile's initial acceleration a bit slower). Just like Pseudonova missiles, Serious Businesses are guided by a Savant.

When the missile reaches its target, the warheads detonate in rapid succession, from the most remote one (the one further away from its tip) to the first one (the one standing on the missile's tip). This detonation pattern gives the missile extreme penetration capabilities, as each explosion drives the subsequent warheads deeper in the enemy ship's shields, armour, hull, or internal structure. The layer of armour between two adjacent warheads prevents each of them from getting vaporized instantaneously when the previous warhead goes off.

Only one detonator needs to be activated: the one on the first warhead in explosion order. The other warheads detonate automatically in succession when invested by the previous warhead's neutron radiation the moment the armoured layer between the two is vaporized. However, just in case, every single warhead has its own detonation device, just to ensure maximum possible damage if something goes wrong with the first warhead.

Basically, it's a “brute force and ignorance” approach: instead of wasting a lot of resources to come up with, and build, a new weapon an order of magnitude more powerful than the standard nuke, just strap 10 or so nukes together.

Location: Spinal Cannon (2) Primary Role: Anti-Starship Damage Rating Value: Tier 12 Range: 5 AU Rate of Fire: As assembled. Payload (Storage): Storage for two rounds. Payload (Manufacture): +1 round per minute. Max Velocity: 0.9c Accuracy: Moderately high; Unstable projectiles. Blast radius exceeds 150ft. Notes: Warheads will detonate within 10 minutes of being finished.

The original Ayame chassis procured to the Freespacer inversion engineering laboratories were gutted of their Legacy Cannons, so the technology could not be replicated and studied. However, many of the support assemblies for the original cannon were left in place, including the aether cogeneration units and extreme strength containment systems needed to control the beam. With some reverse engineering these systems were mimicked, but the lack of weapon systems and the gaping hull in the superstructure still posed a problem for designers. So, instead the assembly was converted into an manufactory and linear accelerator to produce and fire charges known collectively as, “The Greatest Joke.”

The Greatest Joke is a class of charge much heavier than the cruise missiles warheads utilized of this vessel. In place of a tampered nuke is a payload designed not to deliver large amounts of radiant and ionizing energy, but a massive burst of potential/kinetic energy.

Just prior to launch the charge is assembled; At the center of the core is a gravity generator which is programmed to steadily increase gravitic pull. The outer core is then filled with constituents (shunted from containment tanks) and dark energy to create a negative pressure field, which steadily compresses the constituents into degenerate matter with an effective weight reaching hundreds of thousands of metric tons. The dark energy's natural antigravity effect which would normally cause the expansion of the material rather than compression is dampened using the core's gravity generator to create a temporarily containable warhead. However, the dark energy will steadily continue to compress the degenerate matter, in turn increasing the antigravity and negative pressure effects, thus making the charge perpetually unstable as more strain is put on the gravity generator to maintain containment. For this reason the charge much be launched within a certain time frame after assembly lest it self-detonate inside the ship.

The charge is assembled and installed inside a ferrous-composite casing. This possesses two more additional gravitic generators. The first is used to reduce internal inertia to prevent damage to the charge during acceleration. The second is simply a miniaturized Difference Engine to reduce the round's effective mass, and allow it to accelerate to ultrarelativistic speeds without the need for hyperspatial acceleration systems, then after firing to create a gravity field that collapses in such a way the round “falls” towards its intended target. As soon as the round contacts an object at a sufficient velocity the gravity generator will overload and die out. No longer dampened the charge's dark energy antigravity effects will take over and send the degenerate matter flying outwards at a significant fraction of the speed of light in a magnificent explosion of atomic shrapnel.

The weapon assembly facility is designed in such a way as to blow out in the event a warhead if not jettisoned in time, but the result explosion will both expose internal access to the ship and destroy the weapons assembly facility.

Primitive Polygon updated this article to the new damage system on 2017/28/04 17:16.