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Aether Beam Cannon

Fred

Fred

Retired Staff
KFY W2901 Aether Beam Cannon

Far tamer than anti-fleet 'shock' cannons, the W2901 Aether Beam Cannon was designed to provide a ship with a knock-out punch that would be more reliable and less hazardous to use than anti-fleet weaponry and projected aether beams.

Usually mounted on the fore of a KFY-built vessel's prow, this weapon uses a spatial distortion to release condensed potentials from the aether in a coherent phased beam. Because of the subspace effects of beam, it naturally pierces distortion-based shields. The weapon functions more like it was a giant counterpart of the M2 Mindy power armor's beam rifle than actual projected aether, making it safer to use in home territory as well as causing less strain on the ship's Combined Field System. It has no minimum range.

The main advantage of the beam cannon over it's 'shock cannon' cousin aside from it's safer-to-use feature is it's considerably increased firing rate, up to four pulses a minute, or a less powerful but sustained 'sawing' beam. This makes the W2901 potentially superior in performance compared to the W2900 Aether Shock Cannon in smaller skirmishes.

Primary Purpose:
Anti-Starship

Secondary Purpose:
Heavy Assault, Anti-Mecha (in sustained beam mode)

Damage:
  • Pulsefire - Total Annihilation in a focused, expanding burst of 6 to 750 meters in diameter (maximum size is limited by the size of a ship's distorsion field, i.e.: a 150 meter-wide ship probably can't go up to 750 meters).
  • Sustained Beam - Total Annihilation in a beam of 1 to 25 meters in diameter. Can be used to cut swaths across a wide expanse or zig zag from one target to another at will.
Range:
150,000,000 km (About 1 AU or 93,000,000 miles)

Rate of Fire:
The W2901 aether beam cannon and projected aether beams cannot be used at the same time since they both tap in the ship aether generator in the same manner. Rate of fire listed in slices of 15 seconds to scale evenly with projected aether beams rate of fire.
  • Pulsefire - 1 burst per 15 seconds.
  • Sustained Beam - Constantly sustained through 15 seconds.
Payload:
Effectively unlimited, so long as the ship provides power.
Click to expand...

Also something I'm submitting that I planned using with the Type-29 Nekovalkyrja Escort. It's essentially a smaller superheavy aether weapon that's meant to attack single ships instead of large fleets. The good points of it's use is that it's firing arc is smaller, so, it doesn't tear through subspace as much. Also, since it resorts more toward how Mindy rifles fire, the ship's CFS shielding isn't weakened as much as it would have been with a big ass 30 degree area in front of a ship as far as 1 AU being totalled.

And it fires faster, making it far more reliable in hairy situations than the main guns that take a whole minute to charge.
 
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For both noobs and myself, a bit of explanation -- we hear "cannon" and the combined field system used somewhat interchangeably, yet the gun is "mounted." So this isn't something being fired from the field? It is an actual weapon emplacement that can be damaged/destroyed?
 
It's fed power from the Combined Distorsion System in it's capacity as an aether generator and is fired from a forward emplacement. It's mounted, is physical and is pretty similar in concept to the way the Mindy's beam rifle functions.

It's a fixed arc weapon. It has around 10 degrees to play with in terms of aiming and is a direct fire weapon. The pulse setting I imagine like a very fast incandescent energy bolt (see here) . The sustained fire could be pictured more like a phaser on steroid firing continuously (or this, which was the inspiration in the first place. Just imagine a sort of boring beam tracing a path over a ship's hull, making armor plate blow up like fused-metal flavored popcorn and you should get the idea XD ).

I called it 'beam cannon' because, as a main gun type weapon, going for less than cannon could be misleading. I thought to replace 'Beam' with 'Bolt' or 'Burst'... but Beam seemed the less likely to bring complaints.
 
I don't get it. How does the CFS power something on the ship's hull?
 
Doesn't the Combined Field System have a role in generating power for starships? I thought they also had the role of being aether generators. Isn't it the same with the Sakura's Aether Shock Cannon?
 
The fields don't make power, they consume it.
 
Okay, so ships draw power from an Aetheric Generator and store that up in a set of capacitors, just like the Mindy armors.

So, when projected aether beams are used, juice is taken out from the capacitors to warp the combined field system to produce the desired effect.

What I'm really aiming for is that the aether beam cannon and the projected aether beams not be in simultaneous use since they were kinda alike (except one can be much stronger and can be sustained). The problem really seems to be nomenclature more than anything else? What term should be used in this case? Aether Generator?
 
I suggest that this remain un-approved until the CFS/power source thing is resolved.

AKA edit the first post to reflect changes that were written in the later posts.
 
First post edited. The power source is the aether generator. However, the way the combined field system behaves for projected aether beams is still similar, so, other mentions of the CFS are kept.
 
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