Crucis wrote:Also, I might prefer that beam drones were all one shot weapons, though I don't know if the physics would legitimately allow for an explosion pumped non-laser beam weapon.
That's the easy part. The capacitor on the drone has enough power for a single shot.
As far as needle beams go, perhaps a larger list of systems that they skip would solve the problem. My basic thought is that with Xr they can be refined to target energy intensive systems (engines, weapons, electronics etc.) They would skip things like A,H,V,(Bb),Mg or systems like T/Ti/Pb that were not active. This would explain why they hit shields, unlike primary beams, as shields are an energy intensive system. Without Xr, needle beams would default to 1 point energy beams.
Charles Rosenberg.
Alexei Timoshenko is the name of my protagonist in the fanfics, although I wish it could have been me.