Experiment W-1-39
17 Jun 2019Jonny_saturn
This is a weapons experiment to test out a theory that has been nagging me for a while. Pirates occasionally pester me, scanning my hold and interdicting me while I try to go about my day to day business. For a lot of them, their behavior seems peculiar, approaching very closely while they check me out and make their demands. I have had experience of using plasma accelerators in the past, they have great damage potential, but are difficult to use against highly mobile ships with long charge times and slow projectile speed. But I'm going to revisit them again, with an aim to arm a suitable ship with several equipped. The idea being to create a ship capable of destroying such a pirate in a single volley of plasma fire.I'm going for raw damage output on a single shot, plasma accelerators seem to be king. I'm assuming that one shot is all I'll get, so other weapons with lower per shot damage, but higher damage per second may suffer, as the pirate makes a quick getaway. I will look into performing a similar experiment with other weapons another time though.
So the objective is:
Create ship and weapon set up of such power that a small or mediocre pirate ship maybe destroyed in a single close up shot, while they are making demands, preventing a protracted dog fight.
There are three main questions to answer and potential stumbling blocks (among others):
1. Will the intended target type, a pirate demanding cargo, stay close enough for long enough for me to make the hit. Will they indeed keep a further distance from me or be put off challenging me altogether with a more offensive set up?
2. Secondly, the plasma weapons demand a lot of energy to fire and create a lot of heat. Is it even possible to fire several at once, even with the best plant and distributor, engineered to give the best output. I can mod the weapons too to make the power system more capable of delivering several shots, but this may then compromise damage ability of the weapons.
3. Will a volley from 3 or 4 of these plasma weapons be enough to destroy the target? This is the main question, also most likely where the experiment will fall down. I suspect I will inflict heavy damage, but chances are that the target will flee and I won't be able to land another shot on him.
There are a lot of permutations. The ship to use, the engineering mods to consider, the experimental effects, maybe even combinations of weapons such as using a gimballed multicannon to at least allow me to finish off any crippled targets.
Firstly, to get a feel, I will use a standard array of plasmas, on a python. That's 3 large and 2 medium hard points. I'll first see if I can fire all five at once. I suspect I will then have to modify the power system first. If this works I'll take the experiment further buy modifying the plasmas themselves for increased damage.