Of course it's not real, of course it doesn't make sense. But the funny thing about most sci-fi universes is if you ignore
this bit of data and fudge
those numbers, it's possible to end up with a sense of what general tech level they're at, so you can compare them. Like I said, I'm working with a crossover mod.
I don't particularly care to get too in depth about exactly how the weapons work, because we all know it's bull****, and any explanation we come up with will only be marginally more believable bull****.
OTOH, I was kinda bugged by the Maxim. An aquaintence from another board suggested that the uranium slug is wrapped in explosives, accelerated out of the gun, and the explosives ignited, giving you a small fission explosion travelling at high speeds.
Essentially my only quesitons are these:
What are typical relative combat velocities in 'real' FS?
What kind of maximum accelerations are capships and fighters capable of?
Do beams travel at near-c, c, or are they tachyonic?
Do primaries travel really slowly like ingame, or are they c/near-c weapons?
And the one item I most need is information on whether anyone remembers anything that might be high combat speeds in cutscenes or documentation I'm not familiar with. If that's a no, I'll just have to dig through it all by hand, which shouldn't be that bad anyway.
If all else fails, I'll just have to accept tiny combat speeds and assume that they do it to conserve fuel, and because their combat flight and targetting computers are worthless. Obviously they'd have to be capable of greater speeds outside of combat, but you only have to accelerate twice to get somewhere. That convoy you're escorting is probably travelling at hundreds of km/s relative to the planet it left, but you certainly have no reason to travel much faster than it is. Honestly, though, you should still be able to move about like fighters from B5. Those travel way faster, have fairly limited fuel, and are perfectly combat capable with computers that don't do anything extraordinary.
