DEA.FI

You should always pick the right tool for a specific job. But what if ultimate carnage is the goal?

• Lasers; instant hitting, ray-traced weapons
  • Constant-on
  • Pulse
  • Thick and thin
• Plasma beam
  • Like the Asgard plasma beam weapon in Stargate
• Projectiles; limited speed
  • Miniguns
  • Scatterguns
  • Cannons
  • Railguns
• Mines; proximity triggered
  • Normal
  • Homing
• Tractor beams
  • Push, pull, hold
  • Different beams work on objects, others on dusts etc

Someone, quick, invent some more!

Properties

Each weapon has several properties. Properties are affected by supporting components like capacitors and heat management components and of course the weapon itself. These include, but are not limited to:

• Power usage
• Fuel usage
• Ammunition usage
• Heat generation(and in some rare cases, heat draw)
  • Efficiency goes down/up as heat goes up depending on weapon
• Number of projectiles
• Speed of projectiles
• Projectile spread pattern
• Firing speed
• Durability(like all other components)
• Damage

Examples[1]

Let's take a simple weapon, a phaser, mounted on a simple fighter jet. It fires single projectiles of plasma at a very moderate speed. Weapons have an internal firing capacitor having just enough charge to fire the weapon once, that starts as fully discharged. Before I can fire the weapon, it must be charged. As it is installed to a simple ship, it draws power directly from ships generator via other components limiting the charging speed. Weapon also has some internal resistance further limiting the speed(TODE: should this be a sub-component?). When it is finally charged, it can be fired at any point of time. When fired, it shoots a projectile and generates heat(like plasma weapons do, right?). That heat is initially stored to the weapon, and ot then relatively slowly dissipates to space and other components.

Another case: same weapon, but this time mounted on a mothership. Power from ships one or more generators is channeled to a capacitor immediately adjacent to the weapon. As capacitors can discharge very quickly, the capacitor in the weapon is charged very quickly, only limited by its internal resistance. This allows for a much greater rate of fire. As we are not on a budget, a heat pump is also attached to the weapon. It sucks the heat from the weapon to a heat chamber elsewhere on the ship. Chamber is then connected to a series of heat sinks. This way weapon can be fired at a high rate, even overclocked, for extended periods of time, with only a relatively short cool-down phase in between.

1. TODO: refactor