Go for it, and yeah it does!
OK!
[ ] Experimental pulsed particle cannon array (1 point)
[ ] Experimental UREB (1 point)
Firstly, based on what I can see about the PPC, it sounds like it would be more accurately described as an UREB: an Ultra-Relativistic Electron Beam. See, electrons are very light, so you can accelerate them to very high relativistic speeds compared to proton beams. This means that you can rely on the fact that the electrons experience less time passing, and thus literally don't have enough subjective time to bloom due to electrostatic repulsion. For this reason they're VERY long ranged, much more so than lasers which are limited by beam quality. The real limit is jitter (vibrations from the ship moving about and throwing off your aim) and targeting (enemy ECM and jinking). And when they hit something solid, you get a massive flare of braking radiation. Good news! This will totally fry any computers on whatever you're firing at! Bad news! It's totally a warcrime to shoot this thing at living people! That' why it's in the point defence slot! Here's a
more in-depth description.
[ ] Macron Accelerator
A macron is a very small but technically microscopic particle. The good news is that they can be accelerated to much higher velocities than railguns so ships trying to dodge macron beams much pass a harder check, but they don't lose damage over distance like lasers. Now, a hypervelocity soot-blaster is going to do quite a bit of damage on it's own, but if you cant you can switch to macrons filled with stuff, specifically fusion fuel. Because at the speeds they impact with, that fusion fuel will be compressed to criticality and let off a flash of radiation! Macron Accelerators can thus deal either straight kinetic damage, or kinetic + radiation damage. (
In-Depth Write-Up)
[ ] The Killer Bus (Requires Shuttle Bay)
It's a very simple concept - you take a bunch of probes and put them on top of a big ol' first stage that's almost as big as a shuttle (it even gets manufactured and stored as one). This lets you create huge drone or missile barrages without needing an expanded probe bay or rotary launchers. The downside is that it's slow to fabricate, so it's fire rate is low by comparison. For max Cold War vibes, ships with expanded shuttle bays that can store multiple killer buses are called 'boomers'.
[ ] Nuclear Salt-Water Rockets
Ah. The Nuclear Salt-Water Rocket. One of the most insane propulsion systems ever devised. A highly enriched uranium alt is dissolved in water and stored in long and skinny beryllium tubes that prevent it from reaching criticality. This fuel is pumped into a rocket nozzle where it promptly goes critical and flashes into superheatd exhaust - if you manage the injection right, you can even make sure that the worst of the nweutron flux is directed away from your craft! This drastically increases missile dV, but fissiles are hard to come by! Your supply ship can only replenish your NSWR fuel very slowly so what you have is what you get most of the time!
[ ] Laser Thermal Parasites (Requires Laser Weapons)
For long ranged missiles, the possibility of an enemy ship outspending their dV stores is a very real possibility, and the NSWRs are super resource intensive! The good news is that if your ship has laser weapons, especially capital grade laser weapons, you can add a laser-thermal stage to your drones and missiles and take advantage of the prodigious power generation of your mother-ship to help them along! (Increases missile and drone dV, but requires you to spend X turns lasing your missiles, so your lasers can't be used for anything else in that time, banace by caping the number od parasites that can be lased per laser weapon?).
[ ] Wire Loop Radiators
Solid radiators are wonderfully rugged little things that requires very little maintenance, but they're fragile and prone to getting shot off and frankly not as optimized for rejecting large amounts of heat generated in combat. Droplet radiators on the other hand cannot be shot off, but they lose excessive amounts of droplets when performing combat manoeuvres, and adding forcefield guides is power intensive.
Wire radiators however have a high surface area and good heat rejection, and wires being cut can simply be fixed by the ship slurping up the cut strands like spaghetti and just splicing in a fix as the wire travels over the winding drum with a high speed fabricator. (I ran the number for Tyrants, and wire radiators have the best heat rejection/(area-mass) ratio, so they would be the go to on high performance spacecraft.)
[ ] MHD Booster
Your starship's exhaust velocity can be increased with a magnetohydrodynamic booster and some cesium seeding of the propellant, this lets you turn Power into dV! (
Write-up)
Oh, what does ACER stand for?
edit:
Also, I would like to toot my own horn a little, and say that with two sets oft extra engines, the BoJ is actually
very good at running away from fights! Extra remass tanks increase dV but they also
decrease thrust and FTL - something to keep in mind for people using them! Extra engines meanwhile just add thrust which is superior to having to spend dV!
)