Imperial Missiles and Torpedoes (Patreon)

Note : I'm actually starting to get hungry (is that the right word ? I don't know, antsy might be more correct) to write The Fallen World again, so I might pick that back up soon. Also, I've gone over a major hurdle for The Dragon Imperium and I'm seriously contemplating a marathon of some kind to complete book 1.

Most imperial missiles have been in the navy's possession at some point, though a fair few have been considered obsolete and sold as surplus (part of Katya's business was selling these as a matter of fact).

Spearhead : The basic missile of the navy, the Spearhead has served a long and loyal service. While strictly inferior to a lot of more modern missiles, the Spearhead strikes the perfect balance of cheap and effective against pirates and other such enemies. While retiring from the wall of battle as it is of dubious utility against modern warships, it is still being massively employed by patrol ships and extremely popular with local defence navies.

Scythe : Whoever dares, wins. The scythe is a short range 'heavy' missile designed to allow comparatively puny vessels to damage capital ships. Purely intended for swarmer type vessels, it carries a heavy warhead and abundant penetration aids, but is relatively slow and its range is what many consider to be pathetic.

Vyper : The Vyper is a strange missile. If one may call it a missile at all. It is, in effect, a railgun slug with a missile drive, relying purely on kinetic energy to deal damage, and carrying no warhead. While preferably fired out of a mass driver or other gun, there are some versions that use their own conventional propulsions, which gave it its name, as the missile slowly burns, gathering velocity, before suddenly activating their drive and strikes like a viper.

Arrowhead : The brand new, class 35 missile of the Imperial navy. Hailed as the new missile to rule them all, it is...complicated. The missile itself is a marvel of engineering and warfare, but it is problematic to mass produce, even for the Inner Core, and has run into consistent logistical issues. Katya was involved into the production logistics for them and, like many other officers, has remarked that it would be a fantastic weapon if it was not so utterly horrendous to manufacture on the scale needed for the Imperial Navy to wield or use in times of peace, let alone ones of war.

Trebuchet : The long range king, trebuchets are slow moving missiles that are almost useless against enemy warships trying to keep the range open. Rather, they are meant as a deterrent against raiding ships and other such vessels. With a pathetic (for a missile) class 16 drive, they quite literally cannot catch up to certain modern imperial courier vessels, but can run down enemy vessels at impressively long distances. With the upgrades to point defence and the ever increasing speed of criminal vessels, the trebuchets have fallen out of favor for running down pirates in exchange for more effective, if shorter range weapons, but they remain a popular choice to deter planetary and orbital raiding squadrons, where defensive stations can mass sizeable volleys against a single target, counterbalancing the missile's relatively poor performance against enemy defenses.

Torpedoes :

Torpedoes are, in effect, giant missiles. Made uncompromisingly for capital ships to kill each other, they are giant warheads with drives and penetration aids. Many torpedoes carry nuclear warheads of some kind.

Onager : Some call it the 'oh shit' of space warfare. The venerable Onager was a weapon built by the Empire early in its history and was the first ship to ship nuclear weapon produced en masse since the fall of the Federation. They have acquired a legendary reputation, and are feared throughout the galaxy. When a navy deploys Onagers, it is the universal signal that they mean business.

Ballista : A long range torpedoe that is the torpedoe equivalent of the Spearhead : cheap, easy to maintain and mass produce, and a favored smasher of pirate heavies by most local defense fleets, and the mainstay of torpedoe armaments in orbital battlestations the galaxy over.

Halberd : A class 35 propelled monster of a weapon, the Halberd's production woes, similar to its missile equivalent, the Arrowhead, are somewhat considered irrelevant to its power. After all, torpedoes are rarely deployed outside of war time and generally used as a deterrent. When they are deployed, they are used sparingly and with massive support, giving them an outsized impact compared to the actual number launched. There may not be many of Halberds rolling off the assembly lines, but they are the undisputed sovereigns of capital ship killers and weapons feared by all, the worthy successor to the Onager, striking fear into the very heart of Khanata and Coalition naval officers.