After the civil war the Romulan’s were evaluating their weapon suite and decided they did not have any true long range weapons, and after being on the receiving end of Federation photon torpedoes and drone waves, and ISC PPD’s they saw this as a crack in their Galactic Domination plan.

They also accepted that mauler’s while still effective against static defenses were becoming harder to use against the highly mobile targets of open space warfare.

The cunning Romulans decided to combine the weaknesses to make a strength, and produced the Mauler Torpedo.

The mauler torpedo uses a plasma torpedo casing to carry a mauler discharge. When the mauler is fired the discharge is encapsulated around a plasma torpedo shroud, which maintains the discharge until reaching its target. Then it releases the mauler discharge doing damage as if the target was 0 hexes distant from the mauler ship, 2 points of damage per point of power applied. The plasma shroud moves at a speed of 32 for one turn. It acts as a plasma torpedo in all respects except for the warhead. The amount of energy carried by the plasma shroud can be any amount that a mauler vessel can normal use to fire the mauler. In this respect the mauler torpedo can be launched with warhead strength from 1 point of power (2 points of damage) to the maximum the mauler can fire. Shock effects still occur as the mauler is still being fired but the discharge is being encapsulated on a plasma torpedo casing.

The unexpected benefit of encapsulating the Mauler energy is that it is much more tightly bound and as a result the warhead does not dissipate like the plasma torpedo warhead, giving it a 32 hex range. In a similar vein phaser and phaser like damage reduces the warhead by 1 point for every 4 point of damage applied.

To arm the shroud takes 3 turns of 1 point each, and it can be held via a rolling delay.

Mauler vessels were modified to add torpedo launch tubes to the mauler cannon.