Technology

## Weaponry

### Railguns

The most ubiquitous type of projectile weapon in the galaxy. While an actual railgun accelerates a projectile through the electromagnetic force between two parallel rails, the term is also sometimes used for coilguns, or for mixed weapons where artificial gravity generators are used to "pull" the projectile down the barrel while also being magnetically accelerated. Modern railguns can exceed high fractions of *c,* although the lack of an ability to guide towards the target makes them very difficult to be effective with at long range, since it is quite easy to see a railgun round coming and evade.

The Askanj Principality makes use of heavy railgun batteries on its dedicated "anti-capital" ships. Squadrons of destroyers equipped with spinal railguns are used for saturation bombardment of an enemy formation, since the massed fire can overcome the inherent innacuracy of the weapons and allow the destruction of Compact ships at longer ranges.

#### Meteor cannons

Any railgun of a significant size is generally considered to be a meteor cannon, due to the fact the rounds they fire are almost as large as small starships. They are uncommon due to their massive size, as this imposes limits on firerate and ammunition capacity. Because of this, they are normally used either on stationary defensive installations or capital warships designed around a massive alpha strike capability. Meteor cannons sunken into moons are also common defenses found around critical worlds, such as those on Luna in the Sol system and those on Tal in the Vara Tal system (though in both cases, they were destroyed by Compact invasion forces).

The meteor cannons used by the *Nemesis*-class deep space fleet engagement vessels, and on ships designed by Red One such as the *Fate*-class strike cruisers, are notable for their inclusion of distortion drives in the projectiles. This allows the round to guide itself towards the target when it recognises it is going to miss, and even loop back around for a second attack run on a target if there is enough fuel remaining. The matter/antimatter reactor powering the drive also doubles as its warhead, so that on a very near miss the reactor is purposefully overloaded. The resulting detonation causes heavy damage to anything within its range. Several near misses will normally overload the shields of a capital warship and fry its sensors, and a direct hit to anything short of a Chariot is an almost gauranteed one-shot kill.

### Missiles

Missiles are extremely common across all spacefaring powers, although methods of propulsion and the explosive do differ based on the level of technological advancement. They are used at medium to long range, where kinetic weaponry is not particularly accurate and far beyond the distance at which an energy weapon dissipates. Despite this, they are normally not powerful enough to destroy ships on their own, being unable to pierce shields like high-power energy weapons and not having the punch to batter them down unless in large numbers. The ability to soften up a target, or take out specific command or escort units in a fleet battle, is still a valuable one, since having your enemy in a weakened state once a close-range slugging match erupts is very helpful. Some ships are built with large point defense batteries in order to screen other ships against missile attacks, and it is these ships that are a missile's main weakness in a large battle.

### Lasers

Weapons using electromagnetic radiation are used by all spacefaring powers. The term is sometimes also used to refer to masers or any other type of -aser. The highly concentrated energy beam makes them effective against shields, and when sufficiently powerful are sometimes capable of overpenetrating them.

### Particle beams

Using a beam of high-energy particles, particle beams are a common medium range energy weapon. The beam's energy is absorbed by the target upon impact.

### Plasma mortars

Firing a bolus of superheated plasma contained within an energy envelope along a guide laser, plasma mortars are some of the most deadly short-range weapons in the galaxy. After around a second of flight the plasma begins to dissipate rapidly, which limits their usage to under 1 lightsecond- but the extremely high temperature of the plasma allows it to melt through practically any armour in the galaxy. However, plasma only deals an average amount of damage to shields, so they are mostly used to finish off a target once their shields have already been hammered down.

### Fusion cannons

Similar to a bomb-pumped directed energy weapon, fusion cannons are used for precise, deeply-penetrating shots. Their damage is comparable to plasma mortars but much more focused, and much like plasma mortars they are not very good against shields. As they are quite slow firing and use a lot of energy, they are only used for picking off specific targets such as weapons batteries and shield generators, and on the ships where they are found are not many in number.

### Disruptors

Disruptors are close-range energy weapons that work by disrupting atomic bonds in any structure they hit. As such they are almost completely useless against shields, but can very rapidly break apart armour plating. As they are a Compact invention, they like to use them for close-range engagements rather tham plasma weaponry. However, their most common use is not on starships; baleblades incorporating disruptor technology are used by Compact Janissaries, Askanj Legionnaires and Confederate "Stalker" combat units. Infantry combat only sees the rare usage of personal shielding, so the only thing a disruptor blade will normally ever come up against is - at the most- power armour, something which it is very well equipped to cut right through.

#### Disruptor lance

The "lance" is a longer-range version of a normal disruptor weapon, extending its usage by a little over three times to something actually useful beyond knife-fighting range. However, the tradeoff is that it is much larger than regular disruptor weaponry. The only current known usage of it is in an experimental mount aboard CSFWV *Light of Judgement*, and even on a ship as large as a Chariot it extends from almost directly under the primary command centre to the front of the ship. While it does cause a degree of collateral damage to the ship's own systems (mostly in the form of power surges), its great effectiveness against heavy capital ships means its usage is deemed to be worth the cost.

### Mines

Mines in space are normally one of two types. The first are short-range, high-yield missiles intended to sit in waiting until a ship comes right towards them, at which point they come to life, and the second are energy weapon mountings intended to only fire a few shots before overloading from excessive power that will engage anything without a correct IFF that enters range. Targeting units that provide additional data with their more powerful sensors to nearby mines are also used, as well as hidden hunter-killer drones, though these are much fewer in number.

### Displacement engine

Unique to the *Nemesis*-class deep space fleet engagement vessels is the displacement engine. Using the vessel's breach core as the source, a shockpoint is elongated from the prow of the ship towards a target in front of it. This beam is capable of penetrating any conceivable protection system in the universe. Even the outer edges of the beam leak enough energy to core a Chariot from end-to-end once the beam has entered it.

### Mindkillers

These are an anti-AI device originally developed by the Betrayers for use against the Devoured. The weapon is supposed to completely erase an AI or mind upload by massive sensory overload, like every single possible synapse bursts into flames all at once. Mindkillers come in many different sizes, with long-range ship-mounted versions taking up a large portion of space in a battleship and miniaturised versions being man-portable or crew-served. However, in the case of the Red-series (and presumably also extending to any future children of Red and/or Echo), this instead only temporarily disables them, but does possibly cause some psychological damage.

## Propulsion

### FTL core

There is only one way of travelling faster-than-light, though it does take many names, being referred to as "shifting" by the Compact, "transitioning" by the Principality and "jumping" or "warping" by the Confederacy. It works by using a vessel's shock core to open a breach into shockspace (a higher-dimensional plane), which the vessel then enters, and then uses the core and steering vanes positioned about the vessel to keep a bubble of relatively normal space around the ship and direct its travel through shockspace. Distance travelled in shockspace and distance travelled in realspace relate to each other in strange ways, allowing a vessel to only be in shockspace a few days and travel thousands of lightyears in realspace. However, gravity wells from realspace still have an effect in shockspace, and they can completely pull a ship from shockspace (normally tearing it apart in the process) or prevent a shockpoint from forming to begin with. At points in a star system where local gravity evens out, most often at Lagrange points, it is possible to open a shockpoint, though whether or not it stays stable or indeed opens to begin with depends on how good a given vessel's shock core is.

### Distortion drives

Spatial distortion drives are the most common form of sub-lightspeed travel. They require a continual energy drain, leave behind a "wake" of distorted space and do not appear to have an external exhaust (though to keep them out of the way of weapon systems they are still positioned at the rear of a ship). Peculiarly, they do not seem to function according to today's conventional physics; the guided meteor cannon rounds fired by Confederate ships are capable of looping back on a target apparently without losing any speed, and ships are capable of banking maneuvers more reminiscent of an atmospheric aircraft than a spaceship. The closest real-world comparison would probably be the Alcubierre drive.

### Gravity drives

By creating an artificial gravity well outside a vessel through presumably the same sort of technology used for starship artificial gravity, some ships can achieve propulsion. However, because of the disruptions to local spacetime being even more than that with a distortion drive, they have to be powered off hours or days before a vessel can create a stable shockpoint.

### Fusion drives

Common among less advanced nations, fusion drives function by using the heat of the fusion reactor to produce a stream of charged ions that are used to propel the vessel. These are presumably what humanity originally used to colonise the Solar System and nearby stars.

## Power generation

### Fusion reactors

Atomic fusion is used as a power source by every advanced power, however the type of reactor used can vary significantly.

### Breach cores

By creating and then keeping a shockpoint inside specially designed shield systems, energy can be directly obtained from shockspace. This is only used by vessels of the United Earth Confederacy, as keeping a shockpoint open inside a ship and not having it destroy the ship in question is only possible with either an expert system and practical knowledge of a breach core's operation, or an AI. It is for this reason the Compact and Principality have not developed one, and why breach cores are seen as the holy grail of power generation in a similar way to how fusion reactors are seen today.

## Protection

### Energy shielding

Shields are the most common defense system for space vessels. Called screens, barriers, skeins, or shields, energy shields are reduce physical weapons to plasma that quickly disperses, and are capable of dispelling or scattering energy weapons. They are especially effective against Compact disruptor technology, as disruptors require a straight line of sight and matter to affect, and so are stopped completely by shields. Shields require constant power to be maintained, and accumulate stress as they defend against attacks. As they become stressed, shields require more energy to remain functional, and eventually the shield generators are overloaded and forced to cease function lest they acquire permanent damage. The larger a shield is, the more energy it can absorb before it is overloaded.

Compact ships all use a "bubble" shield, one that encompasses the entire ship. As a result, their shields can remain functional even after defending against numerous attacks, at the consequence that if the shields fail, the ship is rendered dependent on only physical armor for defense. Additionally, Compact shields take longer to redeploy after being overloaded due to the higher energy demand. The Principality prefers to use hundreds of small shield plates that can be shifted around a ship and quickly repaired and brought back online, allowing for more adaptable defense. The United Earth Confederacy used something between the two: large shield plates that covered each axis of a ship, allowing greater protection per plate than Askanj barriers and faster recovery time per shield at the cost of durability.

#### Reset shields

A variant developed by Red One, reset shields use a system of backup shield and power generators to almost instantly restore a shield to full power. This allowed for the original system to discharge excess energy and destress, then take over as the reset system is overloaded. While sustained bombardment will eventually overwhelm even reset shields, it effectively provides near infinite defense, at least for a while.

While recovery time is much faster on Confederate style shield facings, it is possible to adapt Compact shield systems with a reset system. The system takes longer to bring online, however the shield produced is much more durable than an individual facing.