Weaponry:
Naturally,
Miharu is a warship, so its overhaul is supposed to make it better at what it does too.
Miharu-class works with some requirements as far as its armament goes:
- Use different weapon types amongst its arsenal, including: beam weapons, directed energy weapons, directed projectile weapons, guided projectile weapons.
- Have a field of fire leaving little-to-no blind spots around the ship.
- Not use mobile weapon pod technology (mostly because Fred dislikes the mental picture of a 30+ swarm of discoid-shaped objects hovering like a cloud around a ship - the image is just not evocative).
- Have weaponry which can function under diverse conditions beyond deep space combat, such as atmospheric combat and conflicts inside a nebula.
- Go beyond the main gun/torpedo launcher utilization the Himiko-class Miharu abused of. Secondary and tertiary weapons should not be added as an afterthought, but because they would actually be useful.
- The Miharu-class' armament needs to be justifiably less demanding in power output compared to the previous Himiko-class to portray some effort done at fixing the problems inherent in the experimental power grid the prototype ship class had.
Given the points above, this is the weaponry I've been considering giving to the ship:
Heavy Positron Projection Cannon
The ship's strongest energy-based anti-starship weapon, the positron cannon effectively uses a small part of the ship's anti-matter storage, and then projects it at very great subluminal speed toward the intended target, where the projected particle payload will react with the target's defenses.
Power usage is much lesser than the Himiko
Miharu's aether cannon, since it uses the antimatter it has in storage to extra the positron charge and then expels it through an acceleration system not too much unlike a railgun. There are a few drawbacks: the weapon relies on a finite ammunition reserve which is effectively non-renewable fuel for the ship until it returns to a safe port, the weapon's delay-to-impact is greater because it's payload delivery is subluminal, the cycling rate for the weapon is high as it rearms with a new positron charge and wait for waste heat to dissipate; and finally it doesn't rely on subspace encased technology to pierce shielding (though anti-particles on their own are much more effective against most shielding than the usual beam weapons are).
The cannon is underslung under the ship's prow much like its Himiko-class predecessor. However, instead of being contented with a boxy maw-like aperture to fire the weapon, the cannon is usually covered by two shutter-like armored screens which further protect it from spatial hazards; even protecting it from being immersed in water should the ship make a water-landing.
Torpedo Launchers
The Himiko-class
Miharu is armed with with two torpedo launchers with tubes which allow delivery both front and back. The ammunition bay could hold up to 6 different kinds of payloads, from the surveillance probes to the large AS-7 warheads to the smaller AS-5 warheads.
One of the main difficulties the system offered was a limited ammunition capacity regarding what Kotori used as very moment-specific ammunition to gain pivotal advantages in combat. This involved a great reliance on the torpedo system as a weapon and required much torpedo swapping - too much for two tubes to really support adequately. The AS-7 and AS-5 warheads were also somewhat overpowered for their intended usage: starship combat in light-per-second distance conflicts.
The concept of CFS could be technically used to the hilt. It doesn't take much to get an inertia-independant multidirectional FTL projectile of sizeable power - all that's really needed is a casing the size of a Mindy power armor's torso and tuck inside the CFS unit as well as the small aether generator. The destructive potential behind a Mindy self-destructing aether generator is good enough so that even such an arrangement could make for a deadly 2500c fast self-propelled warhead that wouldn't even really require an elaborate launcher system, that would be completely multi-directional with no front/back facing and really pack a whallop.
A ball-like projectile that goes out of any hole on the ship and then homes in on a target at superluminal speeds makes for a pretty boring smart-bomb, though. I dropped the idea - was too attached to the torpedo launcher imagery... but I did have a decent excuse for making smaller warheads than the prohibitively huge AS-7 and AS-5 torpedoes and justify certain toning downs on the smaller size while not losing much in effectiveness.
So, I made up what I call thus far the "Mark 5 Torpedo" - visually, something like a rectangle with a rounded arrow tip (the
Taurus was a huge
inspiration, I'll admit) about five meters long and one meter in diameter. The torpedo casing includes maneuvering and guidance systems, but it otherwise modular and able to hold 5 'slots' of equipment within it.
The goal was to be able to have a multi-purpose torpedo casing which could accommodate the use of different warheads and engine types. For example, having a 3-part fusion warhead and a 2-part engine section could provide with good subluminal speed and the best possible damage output for a nuclear-based weapon. If it'd have been a 2-part fusion warhead and a 3-part engine section, we might have had a weaker torpedo on the level of damage, but its speed might have been in the low FTLs then.
This way, it allows for a ship to synthesize components and build torpedoes that might have weak, average or strong fusion warheads; slow, medium or fast drive sections; impact, whole target or wide area blast radius and so forth.
The base warhead type is considered fusion and a "2-part fusion warhead" packs about the same damage potential as the heavy positron projection cannon. The "3-part fusion warhead" is around 133% of the main cannon's damage potential. It's even possible to make a powerful warhead with a huge blast radius and no propulsion unit: what we have there is effectively a mine.
Anti-Matter warheads are available and around 125% stronger than the fusion ones. Seeing the synthesizing of those require drawing from the ship's fuel reserves and that once created that they are rather hazardous ammunitions to have on board, they are considered high effectiveness mission exclusive ordonance which are usually not very popular (the fusion warheads are relatively harmless until the are armed, and it doesn't take long to arm them before they launch - so, they are arguably much better unless the CO decides that he really needs the extra punch to make a difference).
There's still the subspace detonator concept, though I plan to use it more as a "shield-killer" and "subsystem disabler" ordonance instead of a "I strip you naked and tie you up like sausage" kind of weapon.
Drive propulsion systems ought to hit between atmospheric/0.3c, 0.6c/1c, 0.9c/3c. The first is mostly meant to be used for a slow and heavy warhead, or a light atmospheric warhead for planetary use (even a 1-part fusion warhead is pretty darn dramatic planetside). The second is for a fairly faster and powerful warhead which can go to 1c and keep up a 0.6c under anti-ftl. The later is for warhead of average power which is much faster, hitting 3c in best circumstances and 0.9c when under FTL interdiction - a very quick and accurate guided projectile with the drawback of less oomph on impact (though using an AM warhead would make it as good as the 3-part fusion setup).
The reason for settling for much lessened FTL speeds are out of fairplay, common sense and sheer practicallity. As they are, the AS-7 and AS-5 torpedoes hit mind-bloggingly high speed which do not allow for any countermeasures to possibly be done with them. Press the fire button and if you happen to be in a pitched sublight starship battle, pressing the fire button means an instant hit - something not even beam weapons can do (a laser's 1c vs... the AS-5's 2500c or the AS-7's 17000c - and those two do well even in anti-ftl conditions). They allow for no evasion, no shooting down the torpedoes as they come, no time to yelp in alarm before dying.
Just 0.9c is three times faster than the best STL drives SARP has and gives the missile weapon darn good odds of catching up and eventually hitting the target thanks to its guidance system. In a battle where delays-to-impacts are measured in 1 to 10 light-seconds, a 1c/3c fast warhead still leaves room for reaction from the part of the defender as well. Effectively I'm making a weapon that can do exactly what an AS-7 was meant to do (based on Wes' reaction of how he could counter the AS-7 when I used it against him), or rather, what the AS-7 should have had been.
So, that's good. We went in-deep with this new warhead to use and payload customization gallore. Now, about the launcher system: Seeing that the ammo swapping in the tube was cumbersome for Nyton, I decided to up the number of tubes to 7 facing the front of the ship and 7 in the back for a total of 14 torpedo launcher tubes.
This takes under account that each tube is capable of holding different types of ordonnance and has its own private ammunition feed. That way, every tube is pretty much ready to fire the torpedo its designed to launch at anytime (enemy in the back? Fire rear tubes 3 through 5 and destroy it! Need to disable the shields of that opponent up front to fire our energy weapons? Fire front tubes 6 and 7!). Reloading is fairly quick since each tube uses a magazine-like method of storing ready-to-fire torpedoes, allowing for up to five guided projectiles to be fired from each tube under two seconds.
That makes the ship capable of launching a total of 70 torpedoes with both front-and-rear tube is 2 seconds (and nothing stops the rear torpedoes from maneuvering and actually coming back to strike a target on the front of the ship given some time). Though the number would normally be dramatic, they actually aren't when you think on it - using STL guided projectiles implies that they are going to be shot down by point defenses - a Sakura gunship alone has 36 weapon pods which are exactly made for that task. At least a quarter of the missiles could get mowed down, and that's assuming a very narrow delay-to-impact situation. In less favorable situation, the Sakura gunship could turn tail, flee the missile swarm to widen the delay-to-impact and shot all of them down before they reach it.
There's also the complication of actually packing enough ammunition for multiple firing for full 5-torpedo volleys. I haven't covered about how much fusion torpedoes the
Miharu-class will actually carry.
Like I said before, I hate weapon pods mostly because of their imagery and would greatly prefer is ships could have a number of mobile drones under 10 (mobile weapon pods are 'characters' that are identifiable. The less there are, the more you notice them) or fixed guns... but until the number of weapon pods becomes reasonable, it's really the only way to make STL warheads viable.
Another reason why I chose a 7 tube configuration was because it it could make nice looking 'V' shaped torpedo volleys which are sort of cool imagery wise (that's mostly inspired off the mine-volleys from the Banner of Star and the corkscrewing missile swarms from the Macross anime).
Secondary Beam Cannons (Quantum beams? MASERs?)
This one I'm actually not entirely sure of.
Miharu needs a secondary weapon system which will be attractive and viable to use when the above two weapon systems can't be resorted on, or to complement them. So, I technically need a beam-based weapon to hit the 1c speed lasers have - this makes it the most accurate weapon on the ship. The weapon's power is meant to be anti-ship, 66% of the damage potential the heavy positron projection cannon has, and mounted on turrets (I was thinking around 8 of them spaced around the ship, positioned so 4 ought to be able to fire on every side of the ship). It being an energy weapon means it can be fired indefinitely, as long as the ship has power, something none of the ships other weapon systems can boast (though the heavy positron cannon comes close). Cycling rate ought to be faster too, so to allow frequent firing to soften up opposing ships and serve as a decent point-defense weapon as well.
A quantum beam cannon turret boasts the necessary performance, but quantum beam/phased pulse cannon is really just another name for aether and the setting is sort of trying to move away from those (read: anyone other than Wes - sorry Wes).
On the other hand, I'm not sure a MASER beam cannon would pack the sort of damage potential I'd need, not to mention laser-based attacks are pretty much invisible in space. Bad for imagery.
Gauss Cannons
A solid-projectile weapon that could be of use against planet-bound targets and effectively usable in an atmosphere or a nebula beyond the fusion torpedoes was needed. That's where the gauss cannons turrets come in - effectively jumbo-sized versions of Doshii Jun's LASR for the Daisy, or my
Miharu equivalent of the modern vulcan cannons.
Basically, those are subluminal weapons, so, they aren't too accurate in space unless the delay-to-impact (read: distance) is short - shorter than the heavy positron projection cannon. They would be of use against enemy ships still, being able to deliver mostly surface damage which is decent if the goal is to disable the enemy ship. The point of using it goes more the way of mowing down enemy mecha and point-defense in space; as well as serving as an heavy assault weapon within the atmosphere to assist ground troop, strike at ground targets, etcetera.
I figure it could even have multiple firing modes - subsonic, supersonic and subluminal... depending on the intended use and target.
* * *
That's about it for now. I've written plenty this time in this excerpt - too much, probably, as a lot of my reasoning came out when discussing the torpedo launcher system. Feel free to comment - I haven't hammered this down yet.