11.12 Plasma Torpedoes

Plasma torpedoes are something of a paradox; they have a very low energy yield (2.252 isotons), and yet they are one of the most prized torpedoes in a starship's arsenal. Their effectiveness lies in their method of attack; unlike most torpedoes, which concentrate their explosive force at a single spot along the shield grid, plasma torpedoes spread out over a much wider area; in fact some classes of plasma torps actually envelop the entire shield bubble.

Shields deflect energy by creating a tensor at the point of contact between the oncoming energy and the gravitational & EM fields; this tensor causes on the order of 98% of the energy to deflect away at perpendicular angle to the ship. Against normal weapons like energy beams and torpedoes, this is fine. But when the damage is spread out, the shields cannot create the necessary tensor at every spot, allowing far more of the energy to be let through and at the same time weaken the shields.

A plasma torpedo is a shoebox-sized object that is really nothing more than a high-strength compact superconductive EM field emitter and a warp sustainer engine bolted onto the end. When the torpedo is primed, plasma taken directly from the warp engine is shunted into the magnetic bottle created by the torpedo. This plasma is superheated, and is kept away from contact with the main device. The small size of the torpedo allows a starship to carry thousands; the Camelot itself carries 6000, allowing almost machine-gun like rapid firing. They have a limitation, however: they are incapable of maneuvering without drastically lowering their explosive yield, since their only way of maneuvering would be to use some of the stored plasma.

The multimode sustainer engine is not a true warp engine due to its small physical size, one-eighth the minimum M\ARA chamber size. It is actually a tiny nanofusion fuel cell, which powers the sustainer coils to grab and hold a hand-off field from the launcher tube, to continue at warp if launched during warp flight. The cell, a cylinder 5cm in diameter and 20cm in length, is limited to a narrow warp frequency range and cannot add more than a slight amount of power to the initial grabbed warp field. Other flight modes are triggered according to initial launch conditions. If shot at low impulse, it boosts the speed 75% higher sublight velocity; If launched at high sublight, the sustainer will not cross the warp threshold, but continue the high near-c velocities.

-Other Applications-

Plasma torpedoes have no other standardized applications aside from contact.