Quote:
Originally Posted by Agemegos
Range.
You need a large objective to focus a beam at great distance, which in GURPS Spaceships means a powerful weapon, which requires a large ship. So build go with TL 10 or TL11 and build SM +12 warships with 100 GJ spinal UV lasers. Fit each one out with a tertiary battery of thirty 1GJ very-rapid-fire UV lasers for RoF 3000 missile defence.
Then stand off at 100,000 miles and plink with the Big Gun. Any warhead or fire platform will cop hell while closing.
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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 4 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.