Post by Victor Thorne on Sept 7, 2013 2:48:34 GMT 1
Shield Generators
Armour
Sensors and Radar
Targeting Computers
Behind its PD weapons, energy-based shields are a ship’s second lineof defence. The most common are kinetic barriers, designed to prevent solidprojectiles at high velocities from passing through the outer face, and remainthe best defence against mass accelerator fire. These are less effective, however, againstnon-solid projectiles. A few manufacturers have begun to address this problemwith electromagnetic shields, projecting a strong localised magnetic fieldaround the ship that deflects solid projectiles and dissipates energy bolts.
Armour
When shielding fails and PD fire isn’t heavy enough, a ship must relyon the strength of its armour plating. Most spacefaring races protect theirships with some unique variety of super-hardened metal alloy, such that thissolid plating is very much the benchmark to measure against. Humanmilitary-grade vessels improve upon this with an exterior layer of sealedablative plating. Ablative armour, when struck by high-heat weapons like plasmabolts, burns away into gas in a controlled manner to vent the resulting heatinto space so that it doesn’t conduct through the hull to threaten the crew andelectronics.
Sensors and Radar
As any captain will tell you, flying a ship blind is about as close asyou can get to not flying at all. A vessel’s sensor suites are its eyes andears, and its radar and communications arrays are commonly managed from asingle command and control hub on the bridge. The more sophisticated suchsystems are, generally speaking, the longer their range and greater theirprecision; the largest battleships can spot targets thousands of kilometresbeyond even the longest range of their weapons.
Targeting Computers
More primitive warships sported manned point defence weapons, havingto save their computing power for the primary guns when it came to targeting.This ran the risk, however, that many dozens of crewmen were directly in theline of fire should an enemy fire against the vessel’s weapons specifically,and casualties as a result of weapon destruction were many. Nowadays,especially with the advent of GARDIAN, it’s standard issue for a large vessel’spoint defence to be entirely unmanned, controlled from a central targetingsystem whose handful of crew need only designate hostile targets. Moresophisticated targeting systems can handle greater quantities of targetscomfortably, maintaining more accurate fire.