fortress point defense system

One error: the intro refers to the Fortress's directed energy weapon as a high energy laser, while the later specific description was of a charged particle beam. Out of curiosity, why did you choose a particle-beam weapon over a high energy laser weapon?

Bah, how'd I miss that... replaced the instance of laser with particle beam.

I was originally going to go with a laser but the charged particle beam won out in the end because I feel it would be more effective in this situation. It has shorter range than a comparable sized laser but range isn't as much as an issue for a point defense system. So not counting range and the device that fires it a near c particle beam and a laser start to look a lot alike except a charged particle beam can disrupt plasma weapons and other charged particle beams while a laser can't. So the way I saw it there was no reason to use a laser over the particle beam.

Incomplete sentence.

number of incoming projectiles to aid in the aiming of the


Is there a limit to the number of puffer missile tubes a single system can control? You specify how many bouys are in the system, but the missile portion is open ended. You give a typical but it would be nice to know what the max is.

Thanks for the response.

I put the end of the sentence on and changed things around a bit in the missile section. A hard limit of 12 missiles has been set.

Considering the simplicity, the tactical importance is quite impressive.

Mind giving me an example scenario where you'd use this?

I'd like to know how Fortress coordinates attacks and whether or not it is capable of positioning itself (even if slowly) on the battle-field for an optimal attack placement (for example flanking a target) should it be strapped to a basic thruster assembly and in such circumstances: How one Fortress talks to another and how they decide which targets to fire at is quite important.

Even a simple auto-defense network would be interesting.

I can think of quite a number of situations in roleplay this would be quite fun to use -- I'm quickly reminded of the scene on Macross Plus where the YF19 re-enters the atmosphere under fire from the satellite defense cannons.

Reminds me of the days of the hoplite for some reason.

Beefed up the description a little to reinforce that this is just supposed to be part of a ship instead of some autonomous combat system.

As for a situation when it would be used: When the ship is being shot at by badguys.