[Spaceships] Weapons Pods
 

I recently had an idea and I thought I'd share it.
Let's say you own an unarmed merchant ship. Pirates are becoming a problem in the area you operate in and you want to arm your ship. The problem is, you don't want to loose valuable cargo space to a weapons battery and also your power plant doesn't have the megawatts to spare to power an energy weapon. What do you do?
A simple fix would be to clamp a pre-made weapons pod to your ship.
It would be a simple, 10 ton, SM + 4 streamlined and armored unit equipped with weapons, tactical sensors and a power plant. Here's my TL - 10 design:

Front Hull
1 - 2. Light Alloy Armor
3 - 5. Tactical Comm/Sensor Array (Level 6 at TL - 10)
6. Weapons Mount - Spinal Mount (Front)

Central Hull
1 - 2. Light Alloy Armor
3 - 5. Weapons Mount - Major x3 (in a turret)
6. External Clamp
Core. Weapons Mount - Spinal Mount (Core)

Rear Hull
1 - 3. Light Alloy Armor
4. Weapons Mount - Spinal Mount (Rear)
5 - 6, Core. Power Plant - Fusion

The weapons and sensors could be controlled from the main ships bridge or you could assume there were control stations in the weapons mounts themselves. You could also sacrifice some armor and fit the module with a bridge with an AI if you like.
If you want to stat out SM + 3 or even smaller hulls, it would be easy enough to do for smaller pods.

Re: [Spaceships] Weapons Pods
 

Interesting, but you need a control room, even if you remove the control station. Some level of computer support is needed to operate the systems.

Re: [Spaceships] Weapons Pods
 

I also think its an interesting idea to work on.
Would you recalculate the ships acceleration and dV or just use small pods relative to the ship?
How would these pods be attached? What would that mean for the resulting firing arc?
I imagine this being difficult to make work without being prepared to be a bit loose with the spaceships rules.

Re: [Spaceships] Weapons Pods
 

You'd have to recalculate based on the combined masses if using an external clamp, even with small pods. The larger the ship, the less it would effect the performance.

I'd use the standard rules for a spinal beam in combat. Damage determination would be a bit tricky, but I'm sure some sort of acceptable handwave can be arrived at.

Re: [Spaceships] Weapons Pods
 

Damage calculation shouldn't be too tricky. Just state which section a pod is attached to and have a random chance of hitting the pod instead of the ship if that location is hit. Of course, the pods themselves can always be targeted instead of the ship they are attached to. As for firing arc, this would have to be determined when the pod is attacked to the ship and would be fixed unless the pod is removed/reattached.

Re: [Spaceships] Weapons Pods
 

Easily enough done. Just sacrifice a point of armor for a control room.

BTW to answer the other posters question. The pod comes with it's own external clamp.

Re: [Spaceships] Weapons Pods
 

Is the tactical sensor array meant for slaving targeting to said array? This is risky, as it requires you to use active sensors (a big "hit me" sign). If the point is instead just so the pod can see the enemy, you can get that with a control room (which has basic sensors already), so you needn't give up an armor module.

Also, bear in mind that not only will delta-v drop, but so will the acceleration. Not by a lot for a small pod, but there will be an effect.

Re: [Spaceships] Weapons Pods
 

I'd guess it's there for the ability to halve the effect of enemy ECM.

If not, I'd recommend cutting it. The ability to jam communications doesn't seem that valuable, and the mothership's basic array will have better sensors.

Re: [Spaceships] Weapons Pods
 

This is getting outside of the realm of RAW, but I wonder if the mass you save by not including life support, maneuvering thrusters*, and terminals** in the control station would be enough to upgrade the basic sensors to get the same anti-ECM capability.

*Leaving these in implies an additional tactical role for the weapons - drop them off at various locations and let them target and attack enemies on their own. An expensive option, as you leave the pods defenseless.
**While the automation for workspaces doesn't save mass, not needing chairs and input terminals (as the weapon system programs should be able to handle everything) might save some mass.


As for the chance of hitting the pod, consider the pod as partial cover for whatever arc is appropriate. Aiming at the pod alone simply uses its SM rather than that of the merchant ship.