>Photon torpedoes are dumb missiles (except when specially modified,
>which is rare).

They aren't quite purely dumb, in that they can do more than fly in a straight line from their launcher - they don't have sensors, but they do have rudimentary guidance systems and can thus be guided remotely or sent along a preprogrammed course, as long as that course isn't too complicated. (Rather like the blaster bomb in X-COM: Enemy Unknown.)

Starship gunnery officers generally don't bother, and just compute an intercept firing solution and let fly, but the torpedoes can actually do a little more than that.

>Thus, the weapon rapidly loses punch with distance, until it
>eventually self-detonates.

Um... no. They do eventually explode as the containment fails, that's true, but it's not as if antimatter gets stale. They explode just as violently at the end of their run as they can when freshly armed.

As of 2404, there's also a new wrinkle in photorp technology, a next-generation starship missile called the quantum torpedo. It uses <violent hand-waving motions here> to achieve a significantly greater range and explosive yield than a standard photorp; the tradeoff is that the launching mechanism is much larger, heavier and hungrier for power, effectively limiting the QT's installation to Reflex-powered ships and warpships with the very highest-rated power cores. The first ship to carry them operationally is the International Police Organization's flagship, EJS Challenger.

Rumor has it the IPO starship design team are working with a Corellian firm on a somewhat smaller starship class requiring a much smaller crew, to beef up the Experts fleet without making the demands on the IPO's manpower that staffing another Sovereign-class vessel would require. Rumor further has it that the new ship will carry a QT launcher. As of yet, the IPO isn't admitting to anything, but the most reliable word on the street is that the prototype will be ready for testing in the summer of 2406.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/