Dreadnought class Heavy Patrol Cruiser
Armaments and Firepower

       Number and Type of Armaments
Heavy Turbolasers 10 Cannons in 1 gun turrets. 500 Megatons each.
     5 Gigatons 2.09e19J : ROF = 1/4 5.23e18W
Light Turbolasers 50 Cannons in 10 5 gun batteries. 10 Megatons each.
     500 Megatons 2.09e18J : ROF 1/1 = 2.09e18W
Total Weapons Power = 5.5 Gigatons / 2.30e19J (single salvo)
    1.75 Gigatons per second / 7.31e18W (averaged)

    Time for my favorite part of all this, explaining why I believe this to be the correct and not some other variation. To start this off I'll just tell you where the weapon numbers come from, it's all taken from both West End Games Role Playing Game stats and from The Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels. This is the only source for information on this ship class so this was much easier then the Imperator was.

    The problem is that the WEG firepower numbers can not be trusted or relied on since they are only good for games and are not very consistent with canon and official. So after determining the number of weapons I had to decide what type of weapon each one was. It was basically guess and check for this part, I tried various numbers until I came up with numbers that agreed with a scene from the novel Dark Force Rising in which six Dreadnoughts belonging to General Garm Bel Iblis are shown to be roughly equal to a single Imperator.

    But know we have to see if the numbers make sense. First let's look at the Heavy Turbolasers, which are the heaviest weapons mounted on the Dreadnought class. You've probably noticed that the HTLs mounted on the Dreadnought class are only one quarter the firepower of those mounted on the Imperator. I did not invent these weapons, I've been looking at the Imperator II design and have ntoiced it carries a different variety of HTL then the Mark I does. The Mark IIs heavy turrets mount eight smaller weapons instead of the two larger weapons of the Mark I. To be conservative I decided that each mount had the same total firepower. So since there were four times as many barrels I consider each to be one fourth the strength. Though I do think that the Mark II's version may have a slightly higher rate of fire.

    Of course that leaves 50 more Light Turbolasers, but another weakness is shown here. The Dreadnought class is an older vessel and so does not have the sophisticated fire control of later vessels. What this means is that each LTL is not controlled separately from the others, instead they are arranged in banks of five cannons. So this means that they can only engage ten targets at a time not fifty.

        Firepower and Geometry of Armaments
Broadside =
5 HTLs = 2.5 Gigatons / 1.04e19J
    625 Megatons per second / 2.61e18W
25 LTLs = 250 Megatons / 1.04e18J
    250 Megatons per second / 1.04e18W

2.75 Gigatons / 1.15e19J
875 Megatons per second / 3.66e18W

    I also have no information on any additional weapons carried by the Dreadnought design other then the quad mounted Lasers. So if you know of the amount of Ion Cannons orand Proton Torpedo Launchers carried by the Dreadnought class please e-mail me that information. But from what I have read on the Dreadnought design I consider it very likely that it does not carry the above weapons. The novel Dark Force Rising seem to support this view since the Dreadnoughts commanded by General Garm Bel Iblis are specifically mentioned to have been modified with Ion Cannons.

    Additional Weapons
Laser Cannons 80 Cannons in 20 4 gun turrets. 500 Kilotons each.
    40 megatons 1.67e17J: ROF = 2/1, 3.34e17W

    WEG also gives the Dreadnought an armament of 20 quad mounts. since the msot common type of quad mount is the Point Defense Laser Cannon it's likely that these are of that weapon type. Not to mention that in the Dark Fleet series we learned that the Millenium Falcon's guad lasers were taken from a Dreadnought class vessel.