Overview
Mag-weaponry remains the most ubiquitous armament of any faction. They are found on the lowliest corvette to the mighty dreadnoughts. These guns use magnetic rails to launch a projectile to far deadlier speeds than gunpowder weapons of old. The sizes of the guns vary wildly from function, from ship-cracking battleship cannons to point defense guns, designed to swat torpedoes and strike craft.
Mag-weaponry has remained the mainstay for a few core reasons. The complexity and ease of use of the weapons remains far below the other options available to mount on stellar warships. This makes them easy to maintain and sustain, despite being on many-week voyages. Their nature also lends themselves to the durability of the vessel.
While corona and pulse weapons might pack a greater punch, the instability of these weapons can often lead to explosive and disastrous consequences. Meanwhile, if a mag-weapon is destroyed, there is far less to react with. Only the smaller variants of mag-weapons have explosive charges, meanwhile the projectiles of the capital-ship grade mag-cannons are pure xanthium metal. The guns themselves are powered by the ship’s core reactors, often tucked away under many layers of protection themselves. There is also the matter of space.
Storage is on a premium in a spaceship. Chemically-propelled weapons like gunpowder cannons and torpedoes require much of the “bullet” to be propellent. Meanwhile, a mag-cannon only needs to store the warhead itself, saving a massive amount of space. Mag-weaponry also retains the longest effective combat range of any of the common ship-mounted armament besides torpedoes. This has led to the dominance of the mag-weapon since centuries past, and will continue to do so for centuries more.
Development
The first recorded use of mag-cannons in space combat happened over the planet of Yorshik in 112 A.E.G. Unreliable and maintenance-heavy, nonetheless the weapons proved the decisive factor in the Corsaq Empire securing dominance over the fledgling colonies, once humanity’s homeworld of Haven collapsed. The firepower and range of the mag-cannons put the Corsaq’s ships in a league above the chemical guns and nuclear torpedoes of the Gou navies.
These mag-cannons were the brainchild of legendary engineer Yarron Ra. He wished to bring worship to Andras with his weapons. And what glorious worship his creations turned out to be. Everyone begged him for his new weapons. Ra would use his newfound capital to start the megacorp Blackwall Offense. To the modern day of 1889 A.E.G. Blackwall remains at the cutting edge of weapons development.
Even before the age of space exploration, humans tried to employ magnetic weaponry, first on their sea-faring vessels. The immense power costs, along with the magnetic rails degrading rapidly with each use prohibited their use. It wasn’t until Yarron Ra successfully developed frictionless rails along with a recyclable magnetic charge that mag-cannons became viable.
Upon the shoulders of Ra, the mag-weapons were improved upon until they became as reliable as chemical weapons. And once a stable foundation was laid, the great weapon masters turned to thinking how they could make the weapons more powerful. Energy shields were starting to make their debut on warships, and ways to quickly deal with them were being sought after. The intermediate solution was to add longer rails, but that only worked to an extent, and was not efficient with space.
Tri-rail and quad-rail designs were tried by various weapon teams. In 193 A.E.G. Blackwall successfully fired a quad-rail 625mm mag-cannon. However, the second shot blew apart the weapon. The issue was quickly surmised that even with titanium reinforcement, no current metal could withstand the immense forces.
It wasn’t until 415 A.E.G., when the new xanthium alloy was synthesized, that work could once again begin on tri and quad-rail systems. In 418 A.E.G. Blackwall Offense’s main but smaller competitor, KrakenArms, successfully fired multiple shots from its new 1013mm mag-cannon without degradation. Investors and interested nations were shown the capabilities of the weapon, when KrakenArms fired it from orbit down onto a planet. The target was a race of primitive crustacean-like aliens, given intelligence by lyshan crystal mutation. Upon successful cleansing of the population, new sales skyrocketed, firmly placing KrakenArms as Blackwall’s equal.
As the centuries progressed, mag-weaponry was further refined. More efficient and larger cannons were built. Though the pinnacle of mag-cannons, an octa-rail design would not come about until 1007 A.E.G. Even with the superior strength of xanthium, it could not handle the stress. It wasn’t until Geyser Corp successfully found a heating process hot enough to shape the legendary metal mythril in 993 A.E.G. that the weapon megacorps had the solution.
To make the octa-rail system possible, thin bars of mythril were incorporated into the design. The results were successful, with the first 4050mm octa-rail mag-cannon, designed by Blackwall, successfully fired in 1007 A.E.G. However, due to the rarity and cost of the metal, such cannons were limited in production, only the mightiest of dreadnoughts and battleships were equipped with such weapons.
Advancements continued to be made. Yet, almost all progress halted upon the onset of the Gore War in 1306 A.E.G. The cataclysm of destruction that followed that war set humanity back centuries. It is only now in the modern times of 1889 A.E.G. that advancements are starting to pick up again.
Point Defense
Long before the Expansion Generation humanity learned to never neglect protection against strike craft and missiles. And this lesson is well-carried into the 18th century.
Point defense is broken up into two categories: heavy and light.
Light point defense is dominated by one system: the 55mm rotary mag-cannon. Blackwall and KrakenArms both make their own variant, that being the Blackwall “Flyswatter” or the KrakenArms “Equalizer”. There are moderate differences between the two, but they both serve the same purpose of spitting out thousands of rounds a minute to eviscerate strike craft and torpedoes that get too close.
Heavy point defense is used to describe the range of mag-cannon between 55 to 185mm. Such systems are the first line of defense for a ship. They are usually tri or quad rail systems, meant to pick off key targets at long distance. Ships will target their heavy point defense at bombers or smaller corvettes that can more easily shrug off the fire of light point defense. The most common heavy point defense systems are the Blackwall’s quad-rail 185mm mag-cannon, and the KrakenArms tri-barreled and tri-rail 110mm rotary mag-cannon.
Capital ship-grade
To get through the heavy armor and shielding of capital ships, weapon designers came to the simple conclusion that the mag-cannons needed to get bigger.
All warships follow the trend of as the frame itself gets larger, the bigger the gun with more rails added, with the increased access to more substantial reactors. The dance of power management is absolutely crucial in space warfare, as power must be given to weapons, shields, and engines. So while a smaller vessel might be able to punch above its weight class with more rails added to its mag-cannons, it could easily find itself “dead in the water” after firing a few salvos. But still there is a common progression to be had.
Corvettes: The smallest ship classification. Most armaments are composed of point defense weapons with one or two mag-cannons in the 200mm range
Frigates: These vessels will carry a large number of mag-cannons in the 200-400mm range for supporting ground invasions while sporting one or two turrets in the 500mm range for dueling with other vessels.
Destroyers: The first true dueling warship classification. They can be seen sporting mag-cannons in the upper range of a 1000mm
Cruisers: Depending on loadout, these frontline vessels will often carry batteries of gargantuan 3000mm mag-cannons.
Battleships: These centerpieces of navies will most likely take advantage of their increased power reserves to add more rails to their mag-cannons to better punch through the heavy armor of other battleships. But still, the likes of the Ashuan Supernova-class battleship carries three pentatuple-linked octa-railed 4030mm mag-cannons.