Striker II made it even worse. Now you could increase the ROF to negate difficulty increases. Hardly useful as most nuclear dampers would just have a range of a few hexes. And a MFD would be both cheaper and more efficient way to do it.

So, what use is a Nuclear Damper actually? The Module Guilded Lilly gives us a clue. A hangar in Guilded Lilly uses damper fields to prevent starships powering up and escaping the docking fee. And it is here I see where the ND will shine. There is a need for a non-lethal way to stop starships in their tracks. Why can't the damper be used to forcibly power down a starship for boarding? This would of course be controlled technology.

Tractors from old can do this, but then you get into some other mess that will bend your belief suspension. In a reaction mass universe, why should tractors be able to pull in a starship? We are getting close to reactionless thrusters here, something I personally dislike. And that can got too many worms that I will keep it closed.

Since the ND is a damper I regard it more as a wave weapon than a beam weapon. In Brilliant Lances it means it attacks a entire hex at its max range. Remember that the ND is an absolute range weapon, it only got one range band (short).

The Rules

These rules replaces the rules in Brilliant Lances for Nuclear dampers, and adds to them.

When Nuclear Dampers are used against missiles it attacks all the missiles in the target hex, regardless of which side owns the missiles. There is no task to roll for hit as I deem it pretty easy to hit an area that is 30000km across Rather than rolling a task to resolve if the missile has been disabled take the missile TL and substract the ND tech level. Roll 1D6 higher than the TL difference. Example a TL 13 ND attacks 4 TL 15 missiles. Substracting 13 from 15 we get two. The attacker needs to roll 3 or more to disable a missile. Add one to the roll for each DM rating of the nuclear damper. Substract one for each hex beyond the first hex. A range 2 ND will have to substract one from its roll when attacking beyond its first hex. A roll of 6 is always successfull. A roll of 1 is automatic failure.

Disabling powerplants

As mentioned above, a hangar in the module Guilded Lilly has a damper field to prevent starships to power up to skip docking fees and so on. However, no rules are given for this any where. I find this quite plausible as the damper interferes with the fission and fusion processes in a warhead, why not in a powerplant?

When attacking a starship with a nuclear damper, roll a to hit task as normal.

At max range a nuclear damper can disable a 100MW powerplant. For each hex closer to the firing ship double the effect. With other words. A 3 hex range nuclear damper can disable a 100MW powerplant. At 2 hexes range a 200MW powerplant. At one hex range a 400MW powerplant. It is possible to combine the effect of several nuclear dampers on a single target .

To simplify the calculations round the powerplant output to the nearest 100MW. If the combined ND power exceeds the powerplant rating, the powerplant is disabled and stops working. Most starships got emergency power through batteries that can keep the most essential systems running as life support and light and radio to a degree. Batteries are not affected by ND.

If the power of the ND doesn't exceed the powerplant rating, roll 1D and compare it to the difference between the ND and powerplant output. For instance a combined Nuclear Damper effect of 300MW tries to disable a 500MW powerplant. If the roll are 3 or more the powerplant resets this turn and will not be able to give full power. Subtract the 300MW effect from the Nuclear Dampers from the 500MW Powerplant. Thus the ship may only use 200MW this turn. If the roll is 2 or less, the powerplant are not affected at all.

Nuclear dampes that got incresed ROF as mentioned in Striker II may add 100MW of effect for each level of difficulty modifier.