Sword Class Frigate?

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**123ply**

So apperantly their broadsides are laser-based weapon batteries. What does this mean, are they laser cannons or are they regular macrobatteries with lasers somehow incorporated into the munitions? If the former, how do they compare to typical macro batteries? I know they are more accurate and move faster but is the increase in power consumption a worthy trade off? I know the Firestorm also uses the same weapon systems but in smaller numbers because of the large energy need of its prow lance.

Unfortunatley, Escort class ships dont fire their broadsides in BFG: Armada so I cant see an example of it in action.

Finally, do these gun batteries fire laser beams like lances and lasgun, lascannons, etc do or are they more like Star Wars blasters? I ask because laser weapons tend to fire beams in wh40k but if they were beams would they not just be considered lances? On the other hand, I cannot imagine non-lance laser batteries (atleast on escorts) to fire coherent beams especially when considering how macro and plasma macro batteries shoot.

**Hellebore**

They fire like lasguns.

A Lance is not entirely around it being a beam - bombardment cannons are treated like lances and the warp cannons on Blackstones are as well.

Most of the time they are mega lasers though.

But they aren't lances in the same way lasguns arent lascannons

**Iracundus**

Hellebore wrote:
They fire like lasguns.

A Lance is not entirely around it being a beam - bombardment cannons are treated like lances and the warp cannons on Blackstones are as well.

Most of the time they are mega lasers though.

But they aren't lances in the same way lasguns arent lascannons

Bombardment cannon rules are similar but not quite the same as lances. Warp cannons on Blackstones were shield ignoring lances.

The fluff from Andy Chambers (who created BFG) from the old BFG mailing list seems to portray Imperial lances as more like a particle beam rather than lasers as we understand them:

The attacks that ships make are divided into two sorts, direct firing and ordnance attacks. Direct fire attacks are weapons like lasers, fusion beams and plasma launchers which are fired and hit almost immediately even across tens of thousands of kilometres. Lances are incredibly high powered direct fire energy weapons capable of burning straight through an armoured hull or cutting an escort ship in two. On Imperial and Chaos ships lances are usually mounted in huge turrets with quad or triple energy projectors which focus into a concentrated beam of destruction.
Visually this would be along the lines of the advanced races’ weapons in B5, like the Minbari and Shadow ships - a coruscating beam of pure energy which is swept across a minute arc.
A lance turret would need to work something like this;
Immense power conduits enter at the bottom of the turret, feeding into house-sized capacitors and storage cells which form most of its base (ie magazine/ammo hoist area). The power conduits tap into the ship’s main power core, which in turn is energised by huge, throbbing plasma reactors.
The lance weapons themselves would be enormous energy projectors - each one the size of a factory chimney. They work by combining focussed coherent light (ie lasers) and electromagnetic pulses as a propellant for highly energised particles (ie plasma). The closest naturally occurring equivalent would be a solar flare but foccussed into a narrow beam. This means that lances would consist of a central particle/plasma chamber surounded by a series of enormous electromagnetic coils forming the barrel and muzzle, behind this would be a cluster of laser rods in the place of the breech/shell.
Other things in a lance turret would include;
bunk rooms, mess decks and a chapel for its crew (they would live eat, work and probably die inside their turret, never seeing the rest of the ship) -estimate around 200-500 gunners, officers etc.
Probably a tech-priest shrine (ie workshop/computer mainframe),
the turret winding gear and gun laying sections, plus engines and backups.
Stores of coolant to keep the turret efficient as it starts to heat up after a few shots.

inisfail.realmsofinisfail.com/bfg/bfg-lances.html

**A.T.**

123ply wrote:
So apperantly their broadsides are laser-based weapon batteries. What does this mean, are they laser cannons or are they regular macrobatteries with lasers somehow incorporated into the munitions?

Macrobattery is just the term for large weapon batteries - while solid projectiles are most common they can also incorporate las-weapons, plasma, melta, missiles, and more exotic things like grav culverns and matter converters. They can be mixed or uniform in type.

Las broadsides would fire beams much like the lances, it's just a question of scale - the lances are single monolithic energy weapons compared to the many smaller macrocannons (in the same way a nova cannon is a single massive projectile or exotic energy weapon).

**Iracundus**

Weapon batteries are a catch-all term for massed weaponry that hits and does damage through volume of fire. They can be lasers, in the case of Eldar Aconite class frigates or Imperial Sword frigates, or plasma guns in the case of Imperial Tyrant or Chaos Murder class cruisers (which were Imperial ships, only with many falling to Chaos). Ork weapon batteries are often projectiles like cannons or missiles.

Lances can be lasers as in the case of Firestorm frigates, or Eldar Pulsars, though as mentioned in my earlier post, the way Imperial lances are described seems to be different from RL lasers. Tau ship-scale Ion Cannons effectively act like lances in terms of rules as well.

**123ply**

Interesting. My second question is: according BFG:Armada (never played the tabletop game) plasma macro batteries are weaker than kinetic shell batteries while having twice the max range. Is there any info on how a macro plasma gak less killy but longer ranged than a non plasma shot? It sounds like it should be the opposite.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Iracundus wrote:
Hellebore wrote:
They fire like lasguns.

A Lance is not entirely around it being a beam - bombardment cannons are treated like lances and the warp cannons on Blackstones are as well.

Most of the time they are mega lasers though.

But they aren't lances in the same way lasguns arent lascannons

Bombardment cannon rules are similar but not quite the same as lances. Warp cannons on Blackstones were shield ignoring lances.

The fluff from Andy Chambers (who created BFG) from the old BFG mailing list seems to portray Imperial lances as more like a particle beam rather than lasers as we understand them:

The attacks that ships make are divided into two sorts, direct firing and ordnance attacks. Direct fire attacks are weapons like lasers, fusion beams and plasma launchers which are fired and hit almost immediately even across tens of thousands of kilometres. Lances are incredibly high powered direct fire energy weapons capable of burning straight through an armoured hull or cutting an escort ship in two. On Imperial and Chaos ships lances are usually mounted in huge turrets with quad or triple energy projectors which focus into a concentrated beam of destruction.
Visually this would be along the lines of the advanced races’ weapons in B5, like the Minbari and Shadow ships - a coruscating beam of pure energy which is swept across a minute arc.
A lance turret would need to work something like this;
Immense power conduits enter at the bottom of the turret, feeding into house-sized capacitors and storage cells which form most of its base (ie magazine/ammo hoist area). The power conduits tap into the ship’s main power core, which in turn is energised by huge, throbbing plasma reactors.
The lance weapons themselves would be enormous energy projectors - each one the size of a factory chimney. They work by combining focussed coherent light (ie lasers) and electromagnetic pulses as a propellant for highly energised particles (ie plasma). The closest naturally occurring equivalent would be a solar flare but foccussed into a narrow beam. This means that lances would consist of a central particle/plasma chamber surounded by a series of enormous electromagnetic coils forming the barrel and muzzle, behind this would be a cluster of laser rods in the place of the breech/shell.
Other things in a lance turret would include;
bunk rooms, mess decks and a chapel for its crew (they would live eat, work and probably die inside their turret, never seeing the rest of the ship) -estimate around 200-500 gunners, officers etc.
Probably a tech-priest shrine (ie workshop/computer mainframe),
the turret winding gear and gun laying sections, plus engines and backups.
Stores of coolant to keep the turret efficient as it starts to heat up after a few shots.

inisfail.realmsofinisfail.com/bfg/bfg-lances.html

Forgive my ignorance, but how do lasers and particle beams differ in its effect? Would a laser weapon not burn through the hull of a ship the same way as described in your quote?

**locarno24**

It's a question between "lots of small guns" and one "big beam".

Macro-batteries - laser, particle/plasma, or explosive 'hard rounds' - fill a volume of space with shots. The 'harder' the shot (faster, more agile target, harder to see because explosions, target moving quickly across your arc of fire, etc) the wider you have to disperse your gunshots.

Battery fire is like a battleship-sized shotgun: at point blank the aggregate damage is brutal but a small, fast moving escort at long range will barely strain it's shields. Plasma fire moves at nearly speed-of-light, so it's easier to aim at long range than shells. As a result, battleships prefer it. Cruisers lack the reactors to power them and use kinetic weapons, whilst many escorts use either light kinetic batteries or lasers - the latter being a touch less efficient as weapons but not requiring you to lug tonnes of ammo - great for frigates that might patrol for a year at a time

Lances are by comparison like a bolt-action rifle: single slow-to-fire shots that hit or miss in their entirety - but if they hit, hit so hard as to make a mockery of armour. Their exact nature - particle, laser, or darklight, is less important than the fact they're one-big-zap rather than a hail of smaller shots.