Space Weapon Systems

200 years after Endor, most of the weapon systems in common use would still look familiar to Luke Skywalker, but may not look 100% familiar to players used to the old space system. A quick run-through follows:

Defensive Systems

• Vessel Armor. This keeps the vessel itself (or its vital components) from being destroyed. The more heavily armored a ship's engines are, the harder it is to destroy the engine and strand the vessel. For example, targeting the hyperdrive is likely to be a common if chancy tactic, requiring crack gunnery; but a ship with a lightly-armored hyperdrive presents a target of opportunity too easy to pass up. When the main hull armor is completely depleted, the ship will tend to explode. When the armor on any of the sensitive components is depleted, they will go non-operational.
  
  
• Vessel Systems. These are the computerized systems that keep the vessel under control. If they are rendered non-operational, the vessel will be useless until after a complete reboot.
  
  
• Vessel Shields. These are the energy deflector shields that protect a ship against direct impact. The percentage of active shields is the percentage of a targeted attack that is absorbed outright by the shields. For example, if shields are at 100%, then 100% of an attack will be absorbed by the shields. If the attack entirely overloads the shields, then any spill-over damage will be sustained by the armor and/or systems of the ship.
  
  
• Jamming System and Countermeasures. Ideal for deflecting long-range missiles targeted at a vessel, causing them to misfire or detonate prematurely. Of minimal effectiveness against combat-ranged weapons.
  

Weapon Systems

• Laser Cannons. The dominant weapon of space warfare, lasers have even staged a comeback as the primary weapon of capital ships. Mounted on full-length gundecks or in rotating laser turrets, these weapons combine a low cost to operate and reasonably high penetrative power. They are efficient against shields and armor alike, and are much cheaper to operate than the slower, harder-to-focus, and far less efficient turbo-lasers that ruled capital ship combat for centuries.
  
  
• Ion Cannons. Since the decline of the turbo-laser, the ion cannon has become the 'big gun' of space warfare. In these straitened times, taking a prize intact is preferrable to destroying it, so a combination of ion cannon attack and boarding has become favored where possible. Ion cannons are less accurate than lasers and have a longer cooldown time, so they tend to be used in the endgame of a battle. Ion cannons are fairly effective against shields, but ineffective against hulls; their strength is in system disruption.
  
  
• Mass Drivers/Gauss Guns. The principle of the railgun is as old as space travel, but for many centuries pure beam weapons were universally preferred. Now, however, production efficiency and Galactic Empire-era breakthroughs have made mass drivers the most effective way of punching holes in unshielded hulls. Originally developed for asteroid disruption, the mass driver is typically used as a massive cannon. While deflector shields tend to deflect mass driver projectiles uselessly off into space, an unshielded ship, or a ship whose shields are failing, will suffer the full impact of a heavy, massive, often explosive projectile, which is sometimes enough to destroy a ship hull outright.
  
  
• Plasma Arcs. Severely short-ranged and inefficient outside the closest of encounter ranges, plasma arcs are highly inefficient against solid matter, but no energy system overloads a deflector shield faster. Inaccurate and relatively wasteful of tabanna gas, plasma arcs are valued in special circumstances for their ability to rapidly weaken a ship's deflector screens.
  
  
• Proton Torpedoes. No longer used as salvo weapons on capital ships, proton torpedoes have become the sole province of their most efficient delivery system: starfighters, particularly bomber types. While proton torpedoes are effective weapons, they are easily destroyed or evaded at long range, and are therefore only effective at laser ranges.
  
  
• Concussion Missiles. Rebel Alliance-era updates in jamming technology make it harder to acquire missile locks than in the period of the Clone Wars. Consequently, concussion missiles have been redesigned as a long-range weapon. A communications officer skilled in comlink transmission and detection will target an enemy ship, "paint" it while still at long range, and then fire missile systems from well beyond laser engagement range. While en route to the target, the concussion missiles can be jammed; missiles are often used in an "exchange of missiles" before the vessels close to dogfight range, as each side tries to get a minor but telling advantage that will help win the encounter or induce the other side to flee.
  
  
• Jump Missiles. Concussion missiles outfitted with hyperdrives, these missiles are meant to be fired at extremely long range. While they can be extremely inaccurate--micro-hyperdrives may easily deviate by as much as two kilometers from their intended destination--they can be fired from far off, on the edge of communication range, as a challenge or as a warning.

The dominant weapon system is the laser; a ship equipped with lasers alone will be perfectly competitive, though it will lack the tactical flexibility of a ship armed with specialized weapons or with long-ranged missiles.

Ship-to-ship combat will occasionally, but not always, result in a boarding battle, as marines from both side struggle to occupy the enemy warship. Details on how the new space system will operate will be forthcoming over the next few weeks, starting with a sketch of what a "typical skirmish" will look like.