Human fighter craft
Obsolete, see http://staff.onconfluence.com/display/KA/Space+combat
This large fighter is designed to attack enemy capital ships. The entire
fighter is built around the massive 10 meter long particle cannon,
normally found on much larger ships. It is unable to
dog fight, as the massive weapon requires 18 seconds to cool between shots.
The arrow is capable by itself of taking out large demon craft
before they can approach, given the poor range of demon weapons. However, as
the arrow's weapon far outranges the arrows search sensors, it it is also
accompanied by the javelin electronic warfare craft or in a fleet.
Later demon tactics of using smaller craft which hyperspaced to close
range before engaging rendered this craft less effective, resulting in
the R-100B variant. This is retrofitted with a pair of plasma guns.
The extreme short range of the backup weapons (1km max) make them only
useful against demons attempting to close to board.
This craft is a compromise between ship-killing power and ability to dog
fight against smaller demons, otherwise it's design is otherwise similar to
the arrow. It's laser is capable of maintaining a sufficient rate of
fire to be effective against small demons. A unique feature of the dart is the
variable power of the main gun, with oversized batteries and focal arrays, allowing
slower but more powerful firing.
An electronic warfare variant, this somewhat larger craft has advanced sensors
capable of searching space to a range of 30,000 km. It is minimally armed.
Both main types of fighters use fusion as their primary power source, using
bulky human reactors. Negotiations are in progress over using lightweight but
powerful alien reactors. They have approximately 6 cubic meters of liquid
hydrogen as reaction mass, giving a maximum burn time at full power (no
weapons fire) of 2 hours at 6 Gs acceleration, although most missions would
require far less burn time than this. Auxilary power in case of damage to the
reactor is provided by a small fuel cell, also using liquid hydrogen. For those
craft fitted with an alien jump drive, in the event of main drive failure this
is sufficient to operate it after an hour of charging.
All craft are fitted with a radio, radar (30km 360 degrees),
and ladar for targetting. All the craft are partially stealthed against visual
and radar detection.
|
Arrow |
Dart |
| Primary Weapon |
Particle cannon |
Laser |
| Weapon Energy |
160 Mj |
2 Mj |
| Weapon Max range |
10,000 km |
1,200 km |
| Relative damage |
13 |
1 |
Rate of fire |
1 per 18 sec |
45 per 18 seconds to 3 per 18 seconds, tunable |
| Accel |
6 G |
6 G |
For reference, a rifle bullet is about 4 kj so even the dart at lowest (but
quickest firing) power setting has 30 times the energy of a bullet and a
hugely greater range. The impact of the arrows main gun is equivalent to being
struck by the equivalent to 35 kg of high explosive, 40,000 times that of a
rifle bullet. In other science fiction series, one site gives the main gun of
vipers (original Battlestar galactica) as 250 _giga_joules and the main guns
on Cylon Base-Stars up to 100,000 _Tera_joules!