Concordian spacecraft weaponry

The Concordian Navy utilises a variety of weaponry on its starships. These take the form of electromagnetic accelerator cannons, plasma-based lances, concentrated particle beam weaponry, directed energy weapons and guided missiles and torpedoes. Currently, all Concordium warships feature their primary armament as electromagnetic accelerators like railguns or coilguns and have a complement of missiles and torpedoes. Point defence is usually handled by rapid-firing particle beam weaponry or lasers.

Electromagnetic accelerators

Electromagnetic accelerator is a broad term used to describe weaponry that propel projectiles to vast speeds using electromagnetic force. These primarily manifest in railguns and coilguns. The destructive output of an electromagnetic accelerator is dependent on the nature of the projectile and how fast such a weapon can accelerate said projectile. Altering energy levels applied to an accelerator determines how fast a round is accelerated and how destructive it is.

Railguns

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By far the most prevalent type of weaponry in the Concordian Navy are railguns, which are essentially two parallel electromagnetic rails that use the principle of the Lorentz force to accelerate a ferric metal projectile down a linear path at high speeds. These weapons were first developed in the 21st century for use aboard maritime warships. The basic principle behind the railgun is simple and has not changed over a millennia. The projectiles used in railguns is typically a solid slug of dense, ferrous metal that maximises kinetic energy upon impact. Most commonly, these slugs, callled armatures, are constructed out of osmium or similar metallic composites. In the Concordian Navy, the projectiles used by railguns can also feature a filler, typically explosive in nature. Examples of such fillers can include plasma, antimatter and dark matter.

Coilguns

Coilguns, also commonly known as gauss guns (after the mathematician) operate on a different principle compared to railguns. Instead of using parallel rails to propel the the projectile, it insteads wraps the projectile in an electromagnetic coil, hence the name. Coilguns are less common in the Federation because it more complicated to manufacture than a railgun and is subject to higher wear and tear and is harder to maintain as a result of its coil design.

Relativistic Accelerators

Relativistic Accelerators, commonly known as relativity guns are a special class of electromagnetic accelerators that are designed to propel projectiles towards relativistic speeds. As conventional accelerator designs would be far too cumbersome and gargantuan to achieve relativistic acceleration of a projectile, relativity guns use a combination of electromagnetic accelerator with gravimetric fields to assist in propelling armatures at extreme velocities. Relativistic Accelerators are able to propel projectiles up to double digit percentages of light speed, dealing immeasurable damage upon impact. Currently, the most powerful kinetic weapons on capital ships such as the Invictus-class dreadnought utilise relativistic antimatter accelerators that combine the kinetic energy of a relativistic round with the destructive potential of an antimatter charge to maximise damage.

Miscellaneous weapons

Warp cannons

Warp cannons are extremely specialised weaponry that work via the same principles of warpspace travel. Warp cannons fire an energy pulse that violently rips open realspace to create a portal into warpspace, similar to how warpspace drives work. However, warp cannons lack the surgical precision in opening warpspace portals for FTL travel, rather creating unstable portals designed to maximise destructive effects. The gun is fired at an enemy ship or other object, it gets violently sucked into the warp, often ripping the ship apart due to the unstable interdimensional connections. In other cases, the portal is generated so that it clips through a vesicle's hull and the results are very destructive. The ship is instantly cut open as the portal replaces realspace, so that the ship is sliced open and violently sucked through, tearing it apart piece by piece.