quote:
antimatter cruiser etc etc
mal as other ships but deadlier at ramming and invunerable to missles
Why should a ship made of antimatter be any more resistant to a matter/antimatter explosion?
If a missile just sprayed antimatter around before impact, it would be very ineffective.
A simple magnetic field would be sufficient to deflect the antimatter!
Just as decent weapons today will mix an oxidizer in with the fuel to get a better explosion, the antimatter missile technology would do something similar. If the missile were to thouroughly mix pockets of matter and antimatter together (using forcefields to prevent an early reaction), then ALL of the mass would be converted to energy every time, resulting in a multi-megaton bLast of energy from warheads measured in grams.
Uncharged photons of incredibly high energy suddenly bombard your ship, requiring "magical"-tech forcefield shields to protect against.
Anyways, what I'm trying to say is that an antimatter ship would be just as vulnerable to missiles and torpedoes as "normal" ships. The antimatter in the weapons does not react with the hull of the target, but within the missile itself.
If anything, an anti-matter race would be at a severe disadvantage, running into solar winds would mean death. Cosmic dust would cause the hull to glow from M/AM flare-ups. Particle-beam weapons would trash the ship instantly. Their shields would have to be up at all times to prevent their destruction.