Actually, I want to finalize the ship designs.
Phoenix
Engines - Bussard fusion drive and Hyperion jump drive
Armament - 30 light laser cannons (standard) and mining laser (custom - from wrecked mining ship)
No space trooper garrison.
Primarily occupied by Nick's resturaunt.
Spire of Winter
Engines - ion drive (4x) and Strelka jump drive
Armament - 20 light laser cannons, railgun (custom - from mining colony on a planet), mining laser (custom - from a wrecked mining ship)
Has full garrison of space troopers
Has miniature town inside
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Let me clean this up again.
The mining laser can fire much more rapidly than the railgun but it is much less powerful. It works by firing rapid pulses of intense laser light to vaporize the target material and cause it to expand violently, producing damaging shockwaves. This was intended to fracture small areas of asteroids to allow easier access to the minerals. Its accuracy is somewhat limited because it was never intended for use as a weapon.
It takes about a minute to charge all the capacitors. It can fire up to three 10-second pulses before it must cool down (takes about 3 minutes or so)
The railgun is a mass driver launch system taken from a mining colony. It was originally intended to launch ore and other materials into orbit so transport vessels did not need to land on the planet. It takes a day to charge the capacitors to full power but it can be fired without a full charge but velocity is compromised. At full charge, it can hurl 200 ton container at speeds approaching Mach 12. At this speed, said projectile carries enough kinetic energy to reduce a small city to a smoking crater. It is surprisingly accurate because of its previous use (hurling multi-ton cargo containers at hypersonic speeds requires good accuracy to ensure that they don't strike other containers or ships).
And of course, they intend to use these on Chong.
