Black War Weapons

[kafka47]

For those in the know, the Rebellion that started 1116 produced some very nifty weapons & ships. Some of these were profiled in Challenge. What other weapons & ships have people come up with? Could be prototype or full fledged production but behind the scenes, the Imperium keeping these in reserve.

 

[Ganidirsii O'Flynn]

Well, we know from the Rebellion Sourcebook that the 3I was beginning to deploy ships with 'primative' antimatter weaponry (the Voroshilov-class cruiser).

And we know that alot of Lucan's Black War craft were designed on the Strike Cruiser concept of a vessel consisting of a spinal mount system, little secondary armament, and even less defenses.

While I haven't designed a ship with that in mind, I have run a campaign where the players were trying to stop such a vessel by finding it's resupply bases. It can be...very ammusing for the players to return to their homeport to find a smoking ruin of a Class A port cuz *they* didn't get the info higher headquarters needed...

 

[sgbrown]

From the Traveller Combat Carol thread a really niffy one came up - Meson Rifles. Not my idea, (this is flykillers contri) but I liked it.

I'm picturing the ultimate sniper rifle for the clarivoyant Psi operative (actually it sounds like something that would be TL 17+ easy, but why not?) It would also tend to defeat battle dress rather easily.

 

[Ganidirsii O'Flynn]

Originally posted by SGB - Steve B:
From the Traveller Combat Carol thread a really niffy one came up - Meson Rifles. Not my idea, (this is flykillers contri) but I liked it.

I'm picturing the ultimate sniper rifle for the clarivoyant Psi operative (actually it sounds like something that would be TL 17+ easy, but why not?) It would also tend to defeat battle dress rather easily.

Ok, at the outset of the Rebellion, in 1115, the Imperium was on edge of the earliest breakthroughs for TL-17. As usual, weapon technologies were the leading elements of thse breakthroughs.

Still, I'm not sure where your meson rifle would be useful in a Black War attack. These attacks usually didn't involve battle-dressed troops, as they were asset-denial strikes against soft targets (starports, industries, population centers, research facilities, etc.) behind enemy lines or through 'wilds' space. So, while the meson rifle might whack a marine, it wouldn't kill an entire industry. A spinal mount, however, could do that.

 

[sgbrown]

Originally posted by Ganidiirsi O'Flynn:


Still, I'm not sure where your meson rifle would be useful in a Black War attack. These attacks usually didn't involve battle-dressed troops, as they were asset-denial strikes against soft targets (starports, industries, population centers, research facilities, etc.) behind enemy lines or through 'wilds' space. So, while the meson rifle might whack a marine, it wouldn't kill an entire industry. A spinal mount, however, could do that.

Ohh ... you're talking WMD type stuff only. Yeah, a meson rifle wouldn't cut the mustard there.

What about a "jump space" bomb?

Story line - Ling industries was working on revolutionary jump gate technology without success. After a disaster occured when the labship landed without properly shutting down the experiment, the military took over and the program went black.

The weaponized version of this R&D "failure" is a reverse jump drive that brings a bubble of "jump space" into real space. It only works within a gravitational well sufficient enough to parcipitate a ship from jump space (ie within the 10D limit for certain success - reverse misjump rules for whether it works or not.) Due to some "unfortnate" interactions between jump space and real space, the primary zone is approximately 10 times the size of a comparable "jump" bubble generated for a ship. Thus the minimum volume effected is 1,000 dtons. The bubble displaces the atmosphere suffocating everything relying on gases within the primary zone.

Within the secondary effect zone (an area approximately 10-60 times as large as the primary zone), casualties range from near 100% near the primary boundary to light (1 in 36) near the outer edge. Sophants affected by the "jump space bleed" will become either comatose or violently physchotic (fail formidable END check comatose - "succeed" formidable END check physhotic). If properly restrained or placed on life support, 1 in 6 victims will recover over a period of months.

While no shielding has proven effective within the primary boundary, meson shields reduce the chance of being affected within the secondary zone roughly in half. Additionally, specialized shields have been constructed similar to the hydrogen layer surrounding a starship in jump which have proven extremely effective (treat as 99.99%) at preventing the bleed. The jump space field disipates much faster than a jump bubble - usually within a day. When the field dissipates, a large vacuum is left in the primary zone as all gaseous (and plasma) material has been displaced. Within an atmosphere the resulting in rush of air can cause additional damage.

Within a pressure dome a pressure drop may occur on field collapse. The pressure drop will be a function of the size of the dome compared to the size of the device. (ie a 10,000 dton dome in which a 1000 dton device was set off will have an approximately 10% decrease in pressure when the field collaspes - less if the fraction of solid material to gas was higher in the primary zone than out of it - more if the primary zone had lower solid to gas ratio.)

This weapon requires much more energy than a nuke for the area affected, but is not as easily shielded against.

This hasn't been thought through too much - but I put it out for discussion.

 

[atpollard]

Stuff a 2 dTon single use jump drive, a 1 dTon single use PP and 10 dTons of drop tank fuel into a warhead that initiates a 100 dTon jump bubble on impact to catapult about 97 dTons of Infrastructure wherever misjumps go. All this is only TL 15 (TL 9 with a 4 dTon PP and no drop tanks). Assumes that a misjump is possible without a complete jump grid.

 

[sgbrown]

Originally posted by atpollard:
Stuff a 2 dTon single use jump drive, a 1 dTon single use PP and 10 dTons of drop tank fuel into a warhead that initiates a 100 dTon jump bubble on impact to catapult about 97 dTons of Infrastructure wherever misjumps go. All this is only TL 15 (TL 9 with a 4 dTon PP and no drop tanks). Assumes that a misjump is possible without a complete jump grid.

Isn't one of the possiblities of a misjump a failure of the drive with nothing else happening? Otherwise I like the idea.

 

[atpollard]

Originally posted by SGB - Steve B:
Isn't one of the possibilities of a misjump a failure of the drive with nothing else happening? Otherwise I like the idea.

Thank you.

One of the possibilities of catastrophic engine failure in an internal combustion engine is a thud, a small cloud of smoke and the car coasts to a stop. If one wanted to deliberately design an internal combustion engine to detonate like a grenade, it should not be too difficult to consistently achieve more dramatic results than a puff of smoke.

I assume that the same would be true of a misjump. A referee has any number of reasons to not allow it in his game (including a simple “it does not work because I said so”) but the basic concept is plausible.