Quote:
Originally Posted by Varyon
K-Sinks are probably going to be fairly cheap, although I haven't determined how much they cost yet. I still need to decide if I want K-Sinks to allow you to choose a direction of acceleration (what I'm leaning toward currently), or if they automatically make a beeline toward 0 velocity in all directions. The former would make a missile (or bullet, for that matter) extremely accurate, getting a bonus to hit of up to SM+3 (they need to "hit" a target that's really just the range at which they can tether the real target; this will be SM+3 if nothing else is in tethering range, less if there's something closer). The latter would be useless in a missile.
This is a really good idea, and is making me want to go with the former option even more. Missiles and guided bullets typically aren't used in the setting, but this could easily be incorporated into otherwise-unguided bullets* (which are used). The EM pulse of electromagnetic guns might be a bit too much for the K-Sink and guidance circuitry, forcing a reliance on conventional and ETC rounds.
*The hand-wave for missiles/guided bullets (the SS default) not being used is that they are too vulnerable to point defense (shoot them once with a low-power beam, they are no longer guided and thus will almost always miss). Unguided bullets are all armor and just need to not be vaporized to damage the target. Adding in a small K-Sink and some basic guidance would still require heavy damage to stop one (you'd need to punch through to the Core and destroy that), would give it a nice Acc boost, and even if you do manage to destroy the K-Sink it's still functioning off of base Acc.
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If you want to be a REAL jerk, you unleash a swarm of missiles. 299 of these missiles are "conventional" warheads, but #273 is nuclear. There goes the battleship!
As for interplanetary weaponry? Well, let's say somebody wants to kill every living thing on Earth. Attach a K-Sink (or two, if such a thing can work) to Vesta and/or Ceres. Either of those scoring a direct hit on the Earth will end life as we know it, and there is basically nothing you could do to stop them.