Actaeon Arion WR 3 (obsolete)

The Actaeon-Arion is a highly modular conceptual weapons platform, and is the second in a series of realistic CV's

Game play Features of note:

* Uses a fully functional 'centrifuge' as it's living space. * Fully automated lighting * Very large external hanger * Perfect center of gravity, can dock on fairly small spaces * Fully functional 'Railgun' (gravity gun) able to be safely used with multiple players on board * Five module slots for Sv's able to to fit within a cylindrical 3x3x3 slot

Moduals

Heavy Lander http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1335808701

Light Reconnaissance Craft http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1335823353

Escape Pod http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1335831709

Elohim Dock/Station (Currently a work in progress, will be posted at a later date)

Dimensions

Size class - 17.14 W64 L222 H62 Mass- 37.8 kt

Weapons

4 Rocket launcher (m) 4 Rocket turrets 2 Artillery turret 2 Canon turrets 6 Flak turrets 8 Sentry Guns

Production cost

Iron 35576 Sathium 40335 Copper 3263 Silicon 5316 Cobalt 6548 Neodymium 11800 Erstrum 2864 Zarrcosium 2864 Wood 65 Plastic 221 Growing Plot 32

What is the Actaeon-Arion?

This model is in essence, a giant rail gun with a livable habitat and thrusters attached to it. a system such as this could be used as a point defense system against asteroids, larger projectiles from similar systems or incoming enemy ships. a weapons system such as this could also be used offensively to target cities, enemy CV's stations, livestock, etc.

What is a Rail-Gun?

A Rail Gun is a magnetic acceleration system designed to accelerate metallic projectiles to significant speeds. These systems do this by using a series of sequentially activating and deactivating magnets that are used to pull the projectile forward. Existing Railguns are able to accelerate projectiles to speeds matching, or exceeding that of most conventional projectiles. These systems have a couple limitations, mainly that of projectile drag causing the projectile to drop out of sync with weapon, causing a misfire.

How could such systems be used in the future?

Rail guns when used outside of atmosphere could be built to a much larger size, and following, could accelerate projectiles to much faster speeds, theoretically, they could even be used to accelerate objects to a significant percent of the speed of light. Any object, moving at any significant percent of the speed of light caries with it a massive amount of kinetic energy, and when the object is about the size of a compact car, and directed towards a fragile space station.... while.... you can do the math.

What would the Relativistic and physics effects of such systems be?

Launching large objects at a fraction of the speed of light has a few relativistic and physics effects, first and for-most among these is that accelerating a large object to such high speed will also cause the object that fired it to accelerate in the opposite direction. Thus weapons such as this could also be simultaneously used to colonize distant systems in the event of a large scale interstellar war in which they may need to be used.

Another effect of such high velocity objects is that because objects being fired at see at the speed of light, and incidentally the projectile is moving at a good portion of that speed, the amount of warning a target would have of the incoming projectile would be reduced in proportion to the speed of the incoming object. Less response time = less time to move out of the way, less time to triangulate the position of the attacker, less time to call for help, and less time to fire back at the (now) rapidly accelerating attacker (due to the 'kickback' of the weapon fired)

What about the crew?

Arguments could be made for systems like this to be either be stationed orbiting colonies, or in interstellar space. should a system like this be stationed in orbit around a colony, it would allow for rapid response to that colony being attacked (less light lag in communications), furthermore, crews could be rotated on and off the system, supplies could be easily transported to the system, and repairs could easily be made.

It may however be better in some instances to place these systems in interstellar space, not in orbit of any object. systems in interstellar space would be more difficult to detect, triangulate, and otherwise see, furthermore being outside of orbit increases the system's ability to evade returning fire. however, the response time of such a system would be greatly reduced due to light-lag in communications (for example, a system may end up firing on a target after a war ended 25 years ago) crews would not be able to be rotated in and out, supplies would not be able to delivered on a regular basis, and repairs could not be assisted by any nearby colony.

As such, crews would have to either be cryogenic;y frozen, or would live, die, and reproduce on board a self replenishing station. The later would have more social issues, and the former more technical issues.