Weapon Classifications

For ease of identification and study, the Galactic Assembly uses a standardized system of weapon classification, ranging from Infantry-class to Apocalypse-class.

### Infantry-class Weapons

These are also known as small arms, and include rifles, pistols, single-shot rocket launchers, and generally any other weapon that is created for a single person to use. Melee weapons such as combat knives are also included in this category.

Infantry Class weapons are the only class of weapons legally available to civilians, and even then, their choices are limited to smaller varieties such as pistols.

### Mechanized-class Weapons

These weapons are significantly larger than infantry weapons, and usually take the form of war machines meant to operate planetside. Tanks, flak batteries, Mechanized Exoskeletal Combat Arsenals (MECAs), and atmospheric superiority craft (*this includes most starfighters, which are designed to operate both in and out of atmosphere*) all fall into this category. This category also includes vehicle-mounted weapons such as heavy machine guns and missile arrays.

Mechanized weapons are the heaviest category of weapons that can be legally used planetside, and a such are often fielded by planetside armies and police forces.

### Starship-class Weapons

This category spans the widest range of weapon weight and size. This category includes things like the ion torpedoes fired from frigates to the huge particle lances that are often a dreadnought's main gun.

These weapons are the largest weapons that can be fielded in space combat. These weapons are mounted on starship with the intent of destroying other starships, and can have devastating effects when fired directly at a planet. It is for this reason that most planets are protected by gigantic kinetic barriers projected from orbital satellite arrays.

### Apocalypse-class Weapons

There is a reason that nations of the Galactic Assembly are forbidden from fielding weapons belonging to this nigh-mythical category. These are the pinnacle of weapons technology, with destructive capabilities powerful enough to wipe out billions at a time. To date, there are only two known weapons in this class.

**"The Great Sterilizer"**: This was the Neutron Purge device used by the Xani to destroy the Gox colony in the Pleeturi system during the Xani war. The fuel for this weapon was often vaporized nuclear refuse gathered from nuclear reactors around the Xani Empire, stored ad processed on site.

The Sterilizer is a space station that scatters thousands nuclear gunk-filled capsules all around the to the planet, which are all activated simultaneously and deliver their payloads in timed pulses. This process is potent enough to render a planet sterile and barren within only a month.

This superweapon was appropriated and dismantled by the UIE after the war. Its capsules of irradiated waste were launched into a remote star where they couldn't be used again.

**"Planetbuster"**: Planetbuster is the only Apocalypse-class weapon owned by an Assembly nation. This weapon was also fielded during the Xani War and was built purely out of the United Ixaran Empire's thirst for revenge following the purging of the Pleeturi colony.

Planetbuster is essentially a mobile space station that settles into geostationary orbit around its target planet. A swarm of drones equipped with thermal mirrors focuses the local sun's energy into a single longitudinal band around the planet's surface like a magnifying glass. This focused sunlight eventually begins to burn away the planet's atmosphere and melt the crust. This pre-firing process alone has already killed off most complex life on the planet.

Within the space station, a 30 kilometer long particle accelerator slowly speeds a small basketball-sized lump of iron to 65% the speed of light. Once the focused sunlight melts through the crust (a process that takes a week at the very least), the station fires its payload at the planet.

The impact of such a projectile generates enough kinetic energy that it punches straight through the planet's core and through the other side, shattering the planet like an egg.