From the original AoG sources Centauri were heavily armed, but with a 'glass' jaw. IE, if you took out their forward quarter they lost a good chunk of their weapons.
Centauri battle lasers tended to be medium ranged affairs, heavy damage, good arcs, and yeah, I agree that they were overloaded with twin arrays.
Personally though, and here's where I agree with the other posters here, battle lasers were really only present on the largest classes of Centauri ships, the Primus, the Octurion, maybe one or two others. Pretty much every other ship was array and plasma based.
This is also pretty clear in the TV series as well. You can debate the fight at B5 all you'd like, but in every other scene we pretty much only see Vorchan's (maybe varients, and maybe the Deimos as that looks pretty much the same,) and those obviously only fire pulse weapons. This could be very well arrays and plasma weapons, though it is also obvious the guns are high damage, (they certainly make short work of the league ships they attack,) making me think they are plasma. There is no mention of Ion weapons, besides the torpedo launchers developed later, (and a couple of quotes from the tv show, geez you guys are nit pickers about that.)
Now, let's get into some stats; given certain assumptions about the centauri's level of shown technology, and their status as one of the more technologically advanced younger races:
Plasma - Plasma is inherintly unstable in a vacuum, but it is also high powered, so let's make this the heavy 'punch' for the short range centauri fleet, this means short range, but heavy damage. Plasma also ignores armor rather well. So let's say that centauri plasma weapons almost universally have SAP, DD, but at most have a 12" range, with medium and small varients more in the 8-10" range band. If we take even this basic adjustment, ships like the Vorchan end up with more of a punch and show more suitability as a pack hunting vessel.
Twin-Arrays - No change here needed, let's just give them more of them!! This should actually be the primary weapon on a large number of centauri ships, backed up by a selection of heavy arrays. This also means with the increase of twin-arrays the centauri should have a bit more ability with interceptors, as that is also supposedly a secondary benefit of these rapid fire weapons.
Heavy-Arrays - Twin-linked, DD, no real change I suppose, a good solid weapon to set as the primary weapon for several of the skirmish or raid level vessels.
Battle-Lasers - In the AOG version of this game the centauri battle lasers were kinda a mid-range of all the other varieties of lasers out there. This also strikes me as something that would work well for what we see tactically. They would want something that could strike critical systems, maybe leave an opponent's ship dead in the water so they could close in for the kill with plasma and heavy arrays. As a mid-range beam though, they probably shouldn't have a range more then 18" or so, but make them crit-hunters; SAP, Beam, Precise. This would make sense as they could go for engines, and then finish them off with the heavy weapons up close.
Ion Torpedos - This should be the centauri's long-range weapon of choice. SAP/Precise is good, but this should also be the only centauri weapon that has a range of 24" or longer. It's also relatively new for the centauri to use these weapons, so perhaps they should show up primarily on varient vessels, and the larger vessels of the fleet.
For Example;
The Primus Given the above changes would look more like;
Speed: 8
Turn: 1/45
Hull: 6
Damage: 45/12
Crew: 60/15
Troops: 5
Craft: 2 Sentri
Special Rules: Interceptors 3 (instead of 2), Jump Point
Weapons:
Battle Laser R: 20 A: F AD: 3 Special: B/SAP/P
Twin Particle Arrays R: 8 A: F/A/P/S AD: 12/6/8/8 Special: Twin-Linked
Not much change there, but it does make it a bit more defensible when closing range to take advantage of it's increased twin array dice.
On the Other hand, the Vorchan would look more like this;
Speed: 14
Turn: 2/45
Hull: 5
Damage: 15/5
Crew: 20/6
Troops: 1
Special: Jump Point, Interceptors 1 (to reflect the increased defense garnered by twin arrays)
Weapons:
Plasma Accelerator R: 8 A: F AD: 4 S: DD, SAP
Twin Arrays R: 8 A: F AD: 8 S: TL
This change makes the vorchan much more of a knife fighter, but much more vicious once it closes the distance to the target, and the added defense of the twin arrays means it's much more likely to actually close that distance.
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