Re: Fission/Fusion confusion
OK, I only just got to see the posts, so here's my reply.
Regarding the Fusion cannon in Privateer, I am guessing the reasons it was based to the powered down version of the Steltek gun, and the Fission gun being the powered up version is in the following:
1) They never defined what the gun was, or how it processed energy to inflict damage.
2) It's not totally impossible for Naval Intelligence to have agents inside the Church of Man to likewise steal the plans, or even a private corporation to have an insider to help make money off the tech.
3) Why Naval Intelligence? The Fission gun(yes, I know that fission is the opposite process) for the dragon came out quite conveniently around 2670 as well, if you'll take note of the timeline. Righteous Fire takes place one year after Privateer main campaign. The year the Black Lance began active terrorist operations on Confed and Border World holdings. Either I'm wrong, (which I very well could be) or someone messed up with the terminology in Origin.
4) A friend and I fiddled around with the ASCII codes with the ol' PCTOOLS utilities, and discovered the ASCII code for the Fusion Gun in Privateer, is the same ASCII code for the powered down Steltek gun used in Privateer main campaign. (Yes, we were trying to fly around with 4 Steltek guns.
Succeded too.)