Shields:

 

Particle Shields -

In order to travel at speeds approaching that of the speed of light, particle shielding must be employed, this is usually just a magnetic field around the hull that can deflect most spacedust and simillar particles.

 

Energy Shields -

Essentially a band of energy surrounding the hull of a ship, depending on the power output of the generator this can be only strong enough to deter pirates or powerful enough to turn aside all but a superdrednaught's lasers.

 

FTL Shields -

Early on in the conquest of space it was realised that relativistic effects would make travellers age at a rate seperate from their stationary command structures, to avoid this scientists developed the FTL shield, this prevents the greater part of relavivistic effects from entering the ships hull. The FTL shield itself is inside the inner skin of the hull.

 

Weapons

There are two main forms of shipboard weapons the missile and the beam weapon. Missiles have a much longer range, but they are limited by their finite numbers and slower than light speeds.

 

Missiles-

Missile tubes resemble huge pulse guns—they use Counter-Gravity to launch the missile, giving it considerable intial velocity.

Laserhead - Essentially a mobile laser platform this missile uses the high energy electromagnetic radiation produced during a nuclear explosion to pump about twenty-five X-ray lasers. As the initial radiation enters the gain medium, the X-rays are amplified and fired, after which the gain medium is usually destroyed by the explosions aftereffects, resulting in a brief flare of multiple high-energy  X-ray laser beams. Unlike contact nukes meaningful damage can be dealt to anything within 25,000 kilometers of the detonation. The large number of beams hitting the target means that it is more likely to pierce an energy shield than a nuke.

 

Kinetic Nuclear Device (Contact Nukes) -

Essentially what it says on the tin, a large nuke with a penetration aid to pierce energy shields. These have to close to contact range to do any damage so are not often used, as ECM and countermissiles and Point Defence can destroy them before they can hit their targets.

 

Electronic Warfare Missiles-

These vary in type and are often seeded into missile salvos to confuse enemy ECM and PD drones.

 

Counter missiles-

Countermissiles are much smaller than ship-killers, and are usually fired from dedicated launchers. It is possible to fire many in one casing from a standard missile tube, similar to a shotgun. They have small non nuclear warheads and are used to destroy ship-killers some distance from the ship.

 

Beam Weapons

Lasers-

Lasers are the most common military shipboard energy weapon. Their lenses are several meters across and they have effective ranges of about 1,000,000 kilometers, however to score damage against military grade energy sheilds the range needs to be much closer, about 500,000km.

A majority of ships also mount clusters of smaller, shorter ranged, point-defense lasers for anti-missile duty.

 

Grasers-

Lasers operating in the gamma-ray range (the name is an abbreviation of gamma ray amplification by stimulated emission of radiation). They are vastly superior in damage capability with reference to military shipboard lasers, and they are generally confined to large ships for size and power requirement reasons. The major exception is the Providence Navy's Falcon Class destroyer which mounts a spinal graser fireing in its forward arc. This is at a loss of its forward missile and laser batteries and some crew and magazine space.