Most ships use H-Fuel for main power and propulsion, which is a fusion based fuel. Battleships also tend to use MOX, which suggests a battleship weapons array has such a strong power demand that it requires an auxiliary power source. Neither of these are antimatter based. While an antimatter reactor could provide power a few orders of magnitude higher then that of a H-Fuel based one, the fuel reserves are immensely difficult to store, and detonation of a fuel reserve inside a ship would likely waste an entire system (such as the warning of the Nansei card indicates).
Nasty thought: Gallic strike team makes Nansei go -KABOOM-, which cuts off Kusari reinforcements heading to the Taus.
Most antimatter is used in the heaviest anti-capital weapons - SNACs, Razors, Mortars. These have huge power requirements - presumably because antimatter generation is quite a hog on the power systems.
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Anti-matter is incredibly unstable. Anti-hydrogen (consisting of one anti-proton and one positron) would be the simplest antimatter to create.
H-Fuel is relatively safe, even with hydrogen and deuterium in it (chemically reacts like hydrogen), the Helium-3 in H-Fuel will extinguish fires before they can start. Maybe more dangerous if mixed with liquid oxygen.
MOX and Plutonium as heavy fuels have their own well known issues. In addition, Plutonium as a metal burns readily like magnesium, giving off highly radioactive fumes.
Given the elements of lore talking about antimatter - the 'problem' seems to me to be not one of creating the antimatter - but storing it. The consequences of containment failure are catastrophic.
Weapons such as the SNAC could create a burst of anti-hydrogen that is immediately shot out of the cannon, thus removing any issues of storage.
It could be argued that such weapons are the most useful way we can deal with antimatter at our point in technology (outside the lab). Fired out of a gun, too unstable to be stored for meeting common energy needs.
Actually, to make the antimatter you need a linear accelerator. To make militarily useful quantities (still small for a SNAC, to be fair) at the moment you trigger the weapon, that would have to be a pretty nifty design. Especially if you have to fit at least one of them onto a bomber. That being said it is actually quite surprising that most bombers are roughly the same size as fighters.
Much simpler (and still save) would be to:
- Put your accelerators on supply stations and capital ships
--- Cap ships have a greater demand for AM as they use heavier weapons
--- Cap ships and stations have the means to actually accomodate (highly advanced) AM production, both in terms of space and energy
- Put storage bottles (magnetic traps) on smaller ships
--- very small, need not store much AM since it can be replenished during refuel / refit which is necessary anyway.
--- Placed next to the power core, so if the damage goes this deep it does not matter anyway
I am assuming that:
- Even small ships use a fusion reactor as power supply
- Battery systems are in place as backup if the core is overtaxed or damaged. These can contain the remaining AM until the reactor recovers or the AM has been dumped.
I'd also put in an AM reactor while I was at it. Puts the AM to more (good) use, excellent power supply for weapons and other systems with the fusion reactor remaining as a backup in itself and to provide propulsion.*
*If you want simple power-based systems you would probably pick ion engines anyway. More power consumption but at least your conventional drive is robust, which is what you'd want in combat.
There are other theoretical ways of producing anti-matter besides a linear accelerator.
However Anti-matter production on a starship does suffer one problem, the fact that it takes more power to create the anti-matter then the power you will recieve.
I think it is quite reasonable to say that H-Fuel is a far more efficient form of power production for the foreseeable future.
Nansei is able to store several tons of anti-matter because it has been doing what it is for quite some time and has access to cheap power provided from the star Kyushu.
Well, the impulse engines of a ship are nominally ion engines - very low power usage in return for low-level, continuous thrust.*
Thrusters might be closer to a conventional rocket 'burn', with fusion product being directly accelerated and ejected out the back of the ship.
Cruise engines....ALL POWER TO THE ENGINES!
The sorts of power levels we see in game, are pretty well designed by the original engine to equate with the sizes of ships and weapons we see in game.
The sorts of power levels one expects to see with antimatter are at least two orders of magnitude higher that with fusion power.
We are talking a battleship powerplant inside a Starflea here. And that is why antimatter technology cant become the new standard.
Antimatter as a new technological standard is beyond Gallic - its quite possibly even beyond Nomad - going up to Dom Kov'ash level tech.
*ignoring the lack of inertia in the Freelancer game system.
' Wrote:There are other theoretical ways of producing anti-matter besides a linear accelerator.
However Anti-matter production on a starship does suffer one problem, the fact that it takes more power to create the anti-matter then the power you will recieve.
I think it is quite reasonable to say that H-Fuel is a far more efficient form of power production for the foreseeable future.
Nansei is able to store several tons of anti-matter because it has been doing what it is for quite some time and has access to cheap power provided from the star Kyushu.
I also suggest that it would be actually more economical for researchers to 'mine' antimatter from an anomaly such as a black hole or quasar (hints at possible, but insanely dangerous, RP researcher/mining idea).
Yeah I have been doing a bit of reading about naturally forming anti-matter.
Crazy stuff really.
Also the amount of power seems to depend on exactly what kind of process you use to introduce anti-matter to matter, some have a very high waste amount where as some have only neutrinos and such can produce mind numbingly vast amounts of power.