One other thing I'm doing (IMTU, for those that are concerned about house rules and settings), is that I'm redefining the turret weapons.
First, turret weapons take up either 1, 2, or 3 slots. Lasers, sandcasters, and missile racks take up one slot each. Particle beams take up three slots (so now you can ONLY have single mounted particle beams in turrets). Finally, I created several new types of turret weapon: heavy beam and heavy pulse lasers both take up 3 slots each, and turret fusion and turret plasma guns take up 2 slots each.
Taking my inspiration from the Babylon 5 Traveller books, GURPS Traveller: Starships, and from CSC, I created the following modifications to all turret weapons (in case you can't tell, I'm so new to Traveller that nothing is a sacred cow to me):
1. Pulse lasers are back to 1d6, are Medium ranged, and only have a -1 DM to hit. I felt that pulse lasers should be economy priced defensive weapons, and they were originally that in Core Book, but HG went and made them the best offensive weapons. An accurate pulse laser (available TL9 unless I'm mistaken, is a good choice for many civilian ships).
2. Beam lasers are back to 2d6, are boosted to Long range, and represent a solid, military-style weapon. Corsairs use them because they are intimidating as heck. Mercenary cruisers use them because they are effective. A Free Trader with a beam laser is a serious combatant.
3. The heavy pulse laser deals 1d6+3 damage, costs 1.5 MCr and also has a -1 DM to hit. It uses three turret slots. It's optimum range is also Medium. The heavy beam laser does 2d6+3 damage, costs 2 MCr and is still Long ranged. These are definitely military weapons, especially the heavy beam laser.
4. The turret particle beam takes the aforementioned 3 slots, has its range reduced to Medium, and is otherwise the same. All the physics data I could find suggests that particle beams are NOT long-ranged weapons, even in space and using neutral p-beams (which is a requirement, obviously). They ARE powerful weapons, though, so I retained the 3d6+crew hit damage. They should also have a deleterious effect on unhardened (non-fib) electronics.
5. The sandcaster and missile rack are unchanged.
6. A turret plasma gun deals 2d6, suffers from a -2 DM to hit, but has the AP quality and therefore ignores 2 points of armor. It's a Short ranged weapon taking up 2 weapon slots.
7. A turret fusion gun deals 3d6+crew hit, suffers from the same -2 DM, but also has the AP quality, ignoring 3 points of armor. It is also short ranged and uses two weapon slots.
(Though I haven't statted them out, barbette plasma and fusion guns would be available with +1d6 damage (and +1 AP), would still be Short ranged, and still have a -2 DM to hit.)
8. Fusion bays (both 50 and 100 dton) have the AP quality. This means that they ignore 5 and 8 points of armor respectively. When using the Barrage rules, simply reduce effective armor by this amount. The bays have an optimum range of Medium, but lose their AP quality beyond Medium range. If damage is reduced by nuclear dampers, the AP quality suffers proportionally.
9. Standard 50 dton particle bays have their range reduced to Medium.
10. I modified railguns to make them not so unusual. The 50 ton bay does 4d6 and has the same autofire rating, and the 100 dton version does 5d6. All versions have AP quality, but are Short ranged. However, they may still make attacks out to Long range at a -6 DM.
11. I've also created laser bays (50 and 100 dton versions), and a set of antimatter weapons that begin at TL 18. The beam laser bays have an optimum range of V. Long, making them the longest ranged, non-missile weapons in my game.
12. And finally, I have a set of rules for 500 and 1000 dton megabays. Maybe I'll post those later.
The beauty of the designs in the books is that they can easily be modified to take advantage of these new weapon types and be equally disadvantaged by the new rules for particle beams. Most capships will just have cheaper particle batteries since they'll be limited to single-mounted particle beams (which require a triple turret to mount). Some smaller ships may elect to mount heavy lasers for the extra hitting power, and others may want to mount the short-ranged, anti-fighter plasma or fusion guns. It also makes a lot of sense to arm fighters with fixed mount fusion guns.
