2.2: Ammunition

Blasters and turbolasers require two things to fire: Energy, and lots of it, from the ship's reactor/engines, and blaster gas. Blaster gas provides the raw material that is transformed into a plasma packet and fired at an enemy. Blaster gasses are selected for their bolt cohesion properties as well as the energy contained per unit mass of activated gas. Blaster gasses must form an elliptical, toroidal magnetic field after activation and galvenization that remains stable for several microseconds at the minimum. Contained within this magnetic field is a bottled plasma that reacts with any substance. Ray shields work by disrupting the magnetic field around the blaster shot, dispersing the plasma. Visible light is simply a byproduct of the process, dependent on the galvenization process, the blaster gas involved, and the energy put into the gas.

Not all of the blaster gas released into the exciter (BlasTech uses a trademarked version in its personal weapons that is approximately 3% more efficient called the Xciter) is activated and turned into the blaster shot. In fact, over 70% of each blaster gas discharge dissipates the energy input by the exciter through harmless visible light discharges and promptly disperses into the environment. Nevertheless, since such a small amount of gas is released each trigger pull, handguns can fire hundreds of time before needing a blaster gas refill. This is not the case with starship weapons.

Due to the need for extremely long ranges, high packet speeds and coherency, starship blaster gas, while being chemically the same as that used for ground purposes, is vastly less efficient. A different galvenization pattern is required for the powers and stabilities involved. While this achieves a greater amount of energy per unit mass in the packet delivered, efficiency drops to a mere 15%. This means that each turbolaser shot requires as much as 1500 times as much blaster gas as a blaster pistol shot.

Due to this inefficiency in blaster gas use, capital ships store massive amounts of it. However, since another blaster shot or even a shot of static electricity can set off a blaster shot that propagates throughout the available gas, small canisters are used much like old projectile ammunition.

Stored in canisters that can fire 20 capital scale blasts or 40 starfighter scale blasts, these blaster gas containers weigh in at 110 kilograms, almost all of that being armor and electrical shielding. They must be physically loaded into each gun. While they can be stored at the guns, it is easy to damage a gun and possibly set off the 20-40 (or even more) turbolaser shot equivalents inside a blaster gas container. Usually they are stored in well armored holds deep in the ship and hand or automatically delivered. Automatic delivery systems have been known to malfunction or allow blaster gas detonations to propagate across a ship, so they are rare. Usually some sort of "gas lugger" duty is assigned to personnel who otherwise have little to do during combat, such as food service and maintenance staff (although maintenance staff are often called away to damage control duty). Sometimes droids are pressed into this duty, although they tend to be less able to adapt to a changing combat situation than an organic being.

It takes a Moderate Strength roll to lift a canister into a cradle/receptacle on a repulsorcart, which can then be run to the needy weapon. If the players develop a system for supplying canisters to the weapons, it is a fairly easy matter to maintain a steady fire rate. If a crew is unfamiliar with "gas lugger" procedures, a delay of as long as 3D-6D combat rounds can be used to penalize the ship after a reload call is issued.

The issue is rather moot on most modern cruisers. Gas is stored near the guns in well armored compartments designed to deflect the blast out of the ship and even outside of the standard shield distance should it ever detonate. Imperial-Star Destroyers and Strike-Cruisers possess this capability, but most older ships and smaller ships do not. The Nebulon-B frigate and Victory-class Star Destroyers must use gas luggers.

A fully stocked Nebulon-B carries 24 canisters in its weapons and 76 in its hold. A fully Stocked Imperial-Star Destroyer carries 120 in its guns and 500 to a thousand or more in its specially designed holds.

Most missile carrying capital ships stock 20-50 missiles per launcher for a typical patrol. With the use of additional cargo space, up to 200 missiles per launcher have been loaded aboard a Victory I-class Star Destroyer.

We do not recommend you use this optional rule as it adds an incredible amount of bookkeeping to whatever you may be doing. It is included for completeness and is derived from the Turbolaser Operations optional rule on p.20 of The Far Orbit Project.

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