Mass Drivers
Looking in FF&S Mass Drivers can have a velocity of 3000ms-1 at TL8 or 3km
per seconds, double that at the peak of TL11. So in 3 minutes a TL8 mass
driver projectile (neglecting any vector imparted from the launcher) can
cover 540 km in 3 minutes the TL11 one 1080km. In 30 minutes if you stayed
with standard combat rounds it would cover 5400km at TL8 or 10800 for a TL11
one. So you could not really use these at standard combat scales. But with a
3 minute scale and smaller range hexes they might work.
What size hex would you need for a 1 hex change for a 1G ship over a 3
minute round?
Plasma and Fusion Guns
These obviously don't work in TNE at normal combat ranges. Even a reduced
hex size and time frame looks to be a problem because in space the plasma
would disperse almost instantly (there goes my Romulan/Aslan warbirds main
weapon.
Sometime back though I thought that if you built them as a N- particle
accelerator the rate of decay could effectively be reduced due to the plasma
being effectively accelerated to relativistic speeds. Plasmas are
electrically neutral but the electrons have all been stripped from the
nucleus' so they could be accelerated separately and recombined just like
the N-PAWS as they exit the weapon.
So possible add to construction sequence to N-PAWs they need a plasma source
(I think FF&S2 had rules for this), the range modifier altered to reduce
ranges - have to decide on a modifier but the high energy weapons should
have the worst ranges of all the energy weapons. Perhaps a maximum range of
4 30,000km hexes in standard combat, less if you want a close combat
universe with mass drivers etc.
Antony