Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Thayne
One issue here is that VRF beams have 1/100ths of the output of regular beams, so those won't be 1GJ VRF beams, they'll be 10 MJ VRF beams. So those guns won't be very useful against a well-armored drone. Devote most of your front hull to hardened nanocomposite, and it will be difficult to impossible to so much as scratch the drone.
As for the big gun, that can be overwhelmed by sheer numbers. The big gun might have a range of 50,000 miles. With TL10 or TL11 drives they can easily travel at speeds in excess of 25 MPS. At that speed, the big ship will have less than one hundred 20-second turns to destroy incoming drones. So 100+ drones will overwhelm the big gun. They'll add up to a mere 1% of the tonnage of the monster ship.
Look at the Nightgaunt dogfight drone in Spaceships 8 to see now this is done in detail. If you tone down the armament, you can give them a fifth front armor system for extra protection against the little guns.
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For the moderate-weight 'big ship' classes, RF is more suitable than VRF for anti-strike-craft duty.
VRF beams at 10 MJ are still good against (unarmored) missiles and shells, but 100 MJ is much more the thing for punching big ugly holes in small but somewhat hardened vessels. (Even there, against SM+5 or +6 with hardened armor a laser won't cut it.)