A Survey of Modern Weapons

In the past two centuries warfare has undergone a remarkable transformation. With the rise of industrialization and more efficient machining technology in the late 1700s we saw the first transition away from muzzle-loaded firearms, which had been the dominant form of small arms since the mid-1400s. The Needle Rifle, a single-shot, breech-loading, cartridge-based weapon developed in Austria in the mid-1750s proved to be the way forward, replacing percussion cap weapons wholesale within 10 years of its invention. The weapon, along with the more developed rail networks of the Austrian holdings, are largely credited with their narrow victory against the Kingdom of Prussia during the Seven Years War.

During the Napoleonic Wars, Line Tactics would see a shift as the increased accuracy and rate of fire provided by breech-loading weapons inflicted grievous casualties upon infantry units. The widespread adoption of rudimentary body armor and conscription on the grandest scale ever seen took place, resulting in the first notable cases of total war amongst the Great Powers. In the 1830s during the Second Egyptian Campaign, a decidedly defensive shift took place, as troops began reacting to the hail of enemy fire by entrenching themselves. However, this move was derided as cowardly by all major academies of the time, and so the defensive shift was halted. With nearly three decades until the next major conflict, the prevalent theory, that of the Unyielding Offensive, achieved near total adoption. Due to this, when the world entered the Italian Wars in the late 1850s, they were utterly unprepared for the reality of their situation.

The Italian Wars, or the War of the Concordat in Imperial parlance, proved how devastating incorrect doctrinal assumptions could be. Though the Italian Wars clearly show the beginnings of modern war, they can be most clearly seen as the death of the old system. The first armored vehicles, steam-powered “armored tanks” - so named due to their large boilers protruding behind their armored hulls - trundled through the battlefields in significant numbers. Zeppelins were used for the first time in open warfare, primarily serving as floating gun platforms or as bombers. The first military Shield Generators were deployed, most famously to protect the city of Rome. In addition, early automatic weapons - mostly rotary rifles - were utilized in large numbers.

While remembered in art for the heroic cavalry charges and desperate defensive actions in shattered castles, the true cost of the war was clearly captured in photographs. Fields of infantry cut down by automatic fire or artillery provided striking material for the newspapers of the day. In the aftermath of the conflict, several key elements were noted as the overall cause for the death toll. Firstly, many nations involved had refused to issue their soldiers entrenching tools. Secondly, rigid adherence to line formations and an insistence on using line tactics resulted in easy pickings for artillery. Thirdly, a disdain for defense led to many commanders abandoning advantageous positions in favor of flashy pitched battles.

Over the next century, an even more dramatic shift occurred, as fully industrialized warfare came to bear. The internal combustion engine in the late 1800s revolutionized vehicular transportation, leading to an explosion of armored vehicles. Balfour miniaturization resulted in the creation of battle walkers, then Powered Armor, and finally effective infantry armor. True automatic weaponry debuted to terrifying effect in the Colombian-American and Russo-Japanese wars around the turn of the century. The eventual nature of the Great War could be seen in these conflicts, but nowhere more so than in the Joseon-Japanese War. Modern quick-firing artillery and heavy weaponry turned the battlefields of China into muddy cratered hellscapes crisscrossed by elaborate trench networks. However, the modern age has brought about even more elaborate and strange weapons than could scarcely have been imagined a century prior.

The Aether Race resulted in many advancements in weapons technology. Foremost amongst them is the development of Electro-Thermal Pulse Launchers, or, as they are more commonly referred to, Energy Guns. The HMS Hecate, the first Aethership, mounted two rudimentary Electro-Thermal Engines. This technology, pioneered by the Royal Interplanetary Exploration Society, has seen significant refinement since its invention in the mid-1800s. The basic principle is that the engines utilize electromagnetic fields to collect and then eject accelerated particles. In doing so a thermal field is created that propels the craft forward. Energy weapons follow the same principle, but in doing so add a condensing unit that compresses the particles into a bolt that is launched from the muzzle of the weapon. Modern energy weapons tend to feature a focusing array mounted in a hooded shroud at the end of the barrel. This device serves two purposes, firstly it greatly increases their accuracy, and secondly, the physical medium of the array reduces the risk of unwanted particulate entering the barrel and interfering with the operation of the weapon.

The first energy weapon, an odd-looking piece of machinery labeled the “Maddox Device” was constructed in 1883 by Rhys Maddox, who later sold the patent to the Birmingham Small Arms Company. The first weapon to see military adoption was the Maddox-Enfield Particle Fusil, a rudimentary energy rifle issued in limited numbers to the armies of The British Empire starting in 1887.

Though they come with several downsides, most notably cost of manufacture and durability issues, energy weapons have seen widespread adoption since their conception in the 1880s. This is primarily because of one significant upside; logistics. While energy weapons are more expensive per unit than an equivalent kinetic weapon, the fact that they do not require specialized ammunition to be manufactured for them greatly simplified supply lines. Instead, so long as a soldier has access to electricity, their weapon is functional. For example, in United States Army Doctrine, each infantry squad is issued a towed generator capable of recharging their weapons. This allows their supply officers to only have to focus on keeping the supply of fuel consistent to keep these squads mostly battle-ready.

Since the late 1800s, the majority of the world has transitioned their standard infantry weapons over to energy-based designs, however, their popularity has begun to fade. Energy weapons are complicated, temperamental systems at times. Their overall mechanical reliability is extremely high, however, they are not as rugged as equivalent kinetic systems, and the bolts fired by energy weapons are more easily warded off by modern body armor. With the introduction of ablative ceramic coatings, the overall lethality of infantry energy weapons has seen a significant decrease. This shift has not been as noticeable amongst vehicle and carriage-mounted systems, as they are less restricted by overall weight. Their ability to simply increase the overall output of their weapons via extra capacitors has allowed them to keep pace with increases in armor.

Energy weapons in service have proven to be adequate. However, with their shortcomings growing more prevalent, and the general perception amongst active soldiers that they break too easily and don’t provide enough stopping power, a number of nations have begun looking for replacement weapons. Some of these possible replacement weapons, such as the American A-16 Battle Rifle, (recently redubbed an “assault” rifle) or the Imperial GKB-38, have begun seeing limited issuance to combat troops in order to assess their effectiveness.

Similar to their mechanical cousins, the energy guns, plasma launchers have enjoyed widespread adoption. However, where energy guns have attempted to replace normal kinetic firearms, plasma weapons have instead carved out a niche of their own, both in military and civilian applications. In essence, a plasma launcher is an energy weapon in which a system has been added that injects gas into an expanded particle collection coil. This gas is then superheated into plasma, which is expelled out of the muzzle of the weapon via magnetic acceleration. The resulting mass of plasma is extremely hot, capable of burning through most material it comes in contact with in short order. This property makes plasma systems useful against armored targets or battlefield hazards. However, their projectiles suffer from a very reduced range due to the loss of magnetic containment after being launched. This means that in practice they are rarely issued unless close combat is expected.

Doctrinally, plasma guns are intended to provide infantry squads with a counter to battlesuits or light armored vehicles. Larger plasma systems have been integrated into many armored vehicles to serve in a support role. In tandem with a second vehicle armed with a high-velocity gun, the plasma-armed vehicle weakens the enemy vehicle, allowing the stronger weapon to fully disable it.

Plasma cutters had long been used for industrial applications, but in 1902 the engineers at the Koishikawa Armory created the first functional plasma gun - the Meiji Type 35 Plasma Launcher. By the outbreak of The Russo-Japanese War, they had been produced in sufficient numbers to be fielded widely by Japanese Infantry, who used them to great effect against Russian vehicles. Today they remain a key part of Japanese military doctrine.

The Heat Ray is a peculiar weapon that has gained popularity within the last two decades. Originally designed as a mining implement, the heat ray’s ability to bypass protection and directly attack organic matter has led to limited military adoption.

The first heat ray, created by the Raytheon Electronics Company in Cambridge Massachusetts in 1925, was a massive apparatus that took up the majority of the room it was constructed in. The mechanism was theorized as a communications system, but after burning out thirteen consecutive receivers the destructive potential of the device was realized. With the addition of high-capacity magnetrons and a fitted muzzle device filled with a focusing propagation medium, a crackling red beam leapt from the machine, rapidly superheating the target set before it.

Focused fire from a heat ray has been shown to induce thermal shock amongst brittle materials. This has led to mining operations equipping their vehicles with lower-intensity rays in order to break through rock more effectively. Military weapons, by contrast, use high-intensity rays in short bursts. The average military heat ray has only roughly 30 seconds of usage per fuel can. In typical use, the trigger is depressed, causing an amount of fuel to be brought up into the body, or generator, of the weapon. That fuel is consumed to charge the weapon’s magnetrons, which, when fully charged, dump their charge through the emitter. The emitter then pushes the charge through the focusing array. This results in a ray being emitted that lasts roughly three seconds. During that time the ray excites the molecules in material it touches, resulting in extreme heat. Against living targets, they are essentially “cooked” from the inside nearly instantly.

In modern military service, the heat ray has seen limited adoption as a platoon special weapon or vehicle-mounted weapon. It is primarily used in an anti-infantry role in situations where heavily armored enemies are expected, or against fortified positions where the powerful thermal effect can break apart even reinforced concrete.

The first ablation beam encountered by humanity was found floating in the asteroid fields of The Nikolovsk System. The ancient machinery, alerted by a nearby transport vessel, the MV Katya, activated, tearing a hole through the outer hull of the ship. The Katya was destroyed by this action, but its navigation cameras captured the event, which was then relayed to the security forces on the Bolshoi Aetherplex. The device was recovered by agents of the Chernaya Zvezda company, with recovery efforts costing an unknown number of casualties.

This artifact, labeled “LS-4” in company records, was identified as resembling other items from the Antonovian civilization. Its true purpose was unclear, but other devices have been discovered in the years since, suggesting that they were part of some possible defensive network. Dr. Yaroslav Zakharov of the Yakutsk Xenoarchaeology Institute, a leading scholar on the subject, posits that the Nikolovsk system is, in fact, an impossibly ancient battlefield, and these devices are the remnants of these long-forgotten wars. Similar items found in the Victoria system have somewhat muddied this theory, as though they display the same capacity to disrupt molecular bonds, at least one of these has also shown the capacity to reassemble them.

Questions about unknowable history aside, ablation beams made their military debut on the world stage in 1937. After years of work, the fundamental principle of the original device was partially reverse-engineered. Several issues, such as power draw and occasional misfirings still have yet to be solved, but the technology has at least been rendered man-portable. The original prototype produced a beam of only .2 Tsiolkovskies (a metric of the distance in which the ablative effect propagates, so named in honor of the famous engineer) while being the size of a civilian car. By contrast, LS-4 measured at 207 tsk while being less than half the size.

While energy weapons have seen large-scale adoption amongst the militaries of the world in the last four decades, less focus has been given to the technology that allowed for their existence. In 1884 the General Electric Company of Coventry, England, was locked in a battle with the Westinghouse Company over the future of the electric industry. As part of this battle, both companies were looking for new and novel ways to store power. That year, a young engineer from the Kingdom of Illyria named Nikola Tesla was brought to England to assist work on the battery project.

Tesla’s work on the battery project eventually yielded the Lithite Battery, a solid-state energy storage device that resulted in unprecedented potential. These high-capacity batteries, more efficient by far than anything produced before it, allowed for the creation of energy weapons, for miniaturized Balfour drives to be practical in more and more applications, and for the General Electric Company to become one of the most profitable corporations in human history.

In his later years at the company, Tesla’s eccentricities garnered an amount of negative feelings. However, due to the immense debt owed to him, the company could not justify letting him go. Instead, they furnished him with a laboratory and a yearly stipend. This freed him from the social obligations of the main Coventry plant and allowed him to work on a number of passion projects, the most famous of which became the Arc Launcher.

By taking E-blocks for a standard energy rifle and drawing a massive percentage of its storage at once, an immensely lethal electrical arc may be induced that leaps from the coils of the weapon onto nearby targets. Arc Launchers were not initially popular due to the randomness inherent in their design, but gained popularity amongst the Special Forces of the Protectorate for their tremendous psychological effect, and for later versions' ability to be tuned to no longer be immediately lethal. In the modern day arc launchers have seen considerable success equipped to automaton infantry, whose circuitry is more robust than the average human body.