Railguns

Railguns became standard weapons platforms on the Umbrian Republic Navy's warships long ago, as power plants were developed with sufficient capacity to handle their energy-intensive operations. As these power cores began to shrink in size and grow in efficiency, even the smallest cutters and corvettes in the fleet could now field these weapons.

Instead of relying on explosive propellant to drive the charges, railguns rely on generating electromagnetic fields which repel, or push, projectiles down the barrel at hypersonic speeds. There are two main forms these weapons assume, either using a single magnetic loop or a series of coils to accelerate their payload. Heavy capital ship weaponry tends to take the form of the former, while point defense and other intermediate caliber weapons are often coil guns.

Railguns can be configured to fire a wide range of ammunition types, though the force involved in rapidly accelerating the round means that they must be able to survive the incredible forces of being fired. Some common types include solid shot, designed to penetrate armor plating, and canister rounds, designed to create clouds of deadly debris which can intercept missiles or starfighters.

The unguided and simplistic nature of most railgun ammunition also makes them incredibly efficient to use from an expense standpoint. Whereas a single missile might cost hundreds of thousands of credits to produce, rail guns can fire hundred or even thousands of rounds for the same expense. This has allowed the URN to redirect funding that would have been spent on munitions to other priorities without sacrificing capabilities or battlefield effectiveness.

While clearly useful in their battlefield role, railguns are not without controversy. Use of kinetic mass weapons against planetary targets is considered extremely damaging to the local planet's biosphere. Further concerns center around their use in space, where each projectile that misses its target carries on through the cosmos indefinitely, until striking another object at some point in the future.