Technological Detail Challenge - Weapons

Y

Yiyel

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Original poster
Hey y'all. I found this place was a bit too focused on fantasy RP elements, so let's throw the balance the other way.

I want you to design an unusual higher-tech weapon, and explain how it works, what it does and specifications for it.

RULES:
  • No general weapons. Try something new.
  • No applied phlebotinum - you have to think about ammunition reloading and everything. You can't just slap on an "ammunition nanofabricator" or a "plasma production chamber" and call it a day. A fabricator would need material (and energy and space), plasma requires a base gas and a power source. Also, you can't slap on "micro*insert futuristic power source here* cell" for a power source - you have to explain how it works and how long does it last. Reasonable supercapacitors are acceptable - for instance, having a supercap the size of an AA battery could reasonably hold enough energy to propel a 2mm coilgun projectile at standard rifle speeds or enough energy to create and propel a small-ish (1.5cm) ball of plasma at paintball gun speeds.
  • No unobtainium that bends spacetime. That implies nothing similar to either Eezo or Eridium. If you can't explain it within a reasonable stretch of known physics (Gold level on this scale), then it's not usable.
  • Can be any scale between handheld infantry weapon to cruiser-sized (at most 400m long) ship weapon. We're not here to build a weird Death Star. Thrown devices and mines are acceptable.
  • Keep a reasonable budget in mind - no "kill-everything" gun with a dozen different firing modes, it has to have a use and target (For use in vacuum? In atmosphere? Underwater? Anti-armor? Anti-vehicle? Antipersonnel?)
Bonus points:
  • Drawn schematics. That is always awesome.
  • Safety mechanisms
  • Elegance in simplicity - it doesn't do more than it has to
  • Weak points, dangers and other safety concerns


And of course, to start things off, an example entry:

Name: "Apollo" water lance
Ammunition: 20x71mm cartridge composed of a 20mm container of water, a 1mm high-voltage trigger control circuit and a 50x20mm capacitor wired to container of water.
Design: Standard 20mm loading mechanism, 240mm long barrel, trigger mechanism is a simple electric switch, 30mm choke is attached to front of barrel. All functional parts are made of steel, and body is encased in fire-resistant polymer.
Function: Once chambered, trigger controller is pushed against contacts of piezoelectric trigger. When trigger is pulled, the ensuing jolt of electricity signals to controller to unload capacitor, causing the water to flash-vaporize and then flash-ionize into plasma, causing a violent and potentially incendiary plasma blast (accompanied by the occasional piece of shrapnel). Choke allows either short but wide blast, or medium-range "spike".
Safety information: Weapon has a mechanical pin to jam trigger. Shooting too many rounds in a row risks overheating weapon, which could cause critical failure of barrel. Has a risk of critical ignition in high-oxygen environments. Efficiency greatly reduced in vacuum environments.
 
Name: Eradicator Mk-1
Ammunition: Dust or other particles in the air or in space
Info: a long cylindrical tube that has filters on the sides to vacuum up dust or other particles, which then super heats them in the chamber on one end. Then they get fired out the other end as micro plasma shots traveling about the speed that sound travels. The propulsion is done by magnetic forces and hence why the barrel is so long. Generally used as sniper rifles due to their nature, and the fact that they are kind of unwieldy. The chamber is powered by bio kinetic power cells, meaning that the more you move it, the more energy it produces. The barrel is more or less just a launch pad per say for the rail-like speed projectiles. Kinetic power cells generally create one gigawatt of power after a full day of moving around for the average person. Shaking or otherwise rattling the energy cell will also create charge. This works by chemical reactions via certain animals mixing with certain plant chemicals. A charge can be kept for roughly seven hours. The energy cell would look like a small box, maybe an inch by five inches by three inches. No moving parts are inside the gun, other then the trigger mechanism, which just opens the pathway out through the magnetic propelled field.
Safety warning: Do not eat. Do not point at friends, family, innocent by-standards, or yourself. Caution, may be hot. Use only in an open area. If you hear a weird noise, chuck the equipment like a grenade and run in opposite direction. Caution, may be loud. Do not use around liquids.

Edit: I forgot to mention that The materials for the gun would be dependent on the area of the gun you mean, as such the barrel would most likely be platinum on the inside with a nickle outside. The chamber would be a marbled blend of obsidian and cobalt, for the heat resistance and durability. The filters would likely be part of the chamber itself, therefore, not an extra part. Of course, the magnets used would be neodymium magnets (N40 grade). Of which this all contributes to the gun's weight.

Safety points: Weapon can turn off the vacuum and the chamber by pushing the safety button.

Honestly, This weapon would be very effective in a desert, beach, or even in space. The fact that it uses the environment as ammunition is the best part of it in my opinion.

Weak points: Being that the barrel is around seven feet long, and the chamber itself is three feet long, making the actual gun itself weigh around two hundred lbs (90 kilograms) Not a lot of people would be able to use the first model effectively. It is a very unwieldy weapon, so you would have an encumbrance issue.

Sadly, I'm no artist, and I'm not going to attempt a sketch. Also, in a pinch, you could use it as a very expensive baseball bat if you need to. This weapon works by two principals, 1). Smaller ammunition at high speeds that are plasma, thus increasing penetration factors, and 2). It shoots projectiles out in a buckshot manner, thus you can guarantee you at least hit. Using the powerful magnetic forces from the barrel, the ammunition is very likely to travel very far, depending on terrain. Make sure you aren't firing this over an iron mine.

Please let me know if I am wrong.
 
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I love it. There's only two details off though: first, having permanent magnets as a firing mechanism doesn't really work - how? Does it flip the magnets? Are there aluminum shields that uncover the magnets? Or did you mean electromagnet with a neodymium core to boost power? Second, how does it heat the particles?
 
My apologies, let me explain;

1). The end point of the gun that you shoot out of has a large aluminum plate that you uncover. The magnets are coiled as to produce more energy and provide a measure of accuracy. The heated particles cannot escape into the magnetic tube until you fire the trigger due to the trigger's design.
2). The heat comes from the bio kinetic energy cell heating the chamber and powering the vacuum to the chamber. If that does not work for you, could I change the chamber to be marbled from the original two materials, but also have a thick lead casing on the inside while forcing millions of microwaves to bounce around inside the chamber to super heat the particles. This way done would require it to be vehicle mounted at the very least, but it is still effective.

Edit: There will be two latch systems in place, one for the particles to go into the chamber via the filters, another for the trigger to pull a latch from the chamber into the barrel to be propelled.
 
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Nope, it's good, got my explanations. Aluminum shooting cover and microwave heating. Got it, though it's slightly less than efficient. Nice weapon :D
 
Do note, this one may not meet the requirements above entirely, as it is something I created years ago but I feel it may be applicable here; to an extent. I'll do some tweaking to make it more realistic in terms of known physics to the best of my ability.

M-PAWC (Maric Particle Acceleration Wave Cannon)

The ammunition used in the M-PAWC consists of radioactive protons extracted from Uranium. Bunched up and held in containment until use, the particles are accelerated in a device heavily based on the Large Hadron Collider. (you may source the information of the Hadron Collider if you wish) This design however has been put to a militaristic use as a super massive heavy weapon attached to the superstructure of a large ship, capable of both in atmosphere and space flight. This design essentially recreates the splitting of atoms by using extremely high kinetic energy combined with the atom splitting to create a massive burst of energy equal to that of a 20 kiloton uranium based nuclear warhead, minus the radioactive fallout. After years of testing and re-purposing the mechanics of the collider it was perfected and has a successful fire rate of 92%; though conditions must be very specific and the proton masses are calculated to collide at a specific point in the collider. The result is a concentrated beam of non-radioactive energy capable of piercing hulls of up to twelve inches of armor with a puncture success rate of nearly 100% at a range of up to eleven kilometers. However, the intended effect of this weapon isn't so much the ability to pierce thick ship hulls, but the sheer force of the concentrated energy creates an immense vacuum, sucking any weaker matter into its vacuum and tearing apart anything within a ten foot radius of the beams path.

Only three colliders have been made for this purpose in this particular world. Each one takes roughly twelve minutes on average to fully reset before cycling on and ready to be fired again. The cannon and collider are nearly eleven miles in length, leaving this weapon only to be installed in new ships fitted specifically for this type of weapon. The three capitol class ships are each over three miles in length and half a mile in width with many of their subsystems monitoring the entirety of the collider in case of malfunctions. One of the costly factors in these is the immense amount of liquid hydrogen used in the cooling systems to keep unexpected combustion limited and have led to various advances in hydrogen mining on outer worlds, in turn the three ships have been outfitted with small mining teams, equipped to survey planets atmospheres and extract hydrogen from either localized water sources of atmospheres with abundant hydrogen.

In one case it was found if the wave pulse is manipulated using a mass of metallic hydrogen protons can create a slower beam, moving at only 2/5 the speed of light whereas the normal pulse is closer to 4/5; but creates a considerably more massive impact on targets. In one case this method was used when firing upon a planetary surface which resulted in the partial destruction of the planets atmosphere after ripping over three hundred miles down into the planets crust, resulting in massive cataclysmic shifts in the planets tectonic plates. The use of metallic hydrogen was not banned, but limited to non-planetary fire.

A major concern however with this weapon is the possibility of sudden combustion when particles collide prematurely and cause massive ruptures throughout the collider. In one case a capitol ship had to be partially abandoned after a sudden burst began leaking out the entire systems liquid hydrogen contents which resulted in the deaths of over fifty of the ships crew. In another case, due to unforeseen events, the M-PAWC misfired and ended up ripping a portion of the forward aft deck with it. Though these are rare occurrences, there have been an abundance of safety procedures put in place to ensure these cannons fire without problem.

In recent years the cannons have been found to have a more practical use other than warfare, such as communications into deep space. It was discovered the beam can have transmissions piggybacking the current of energy long after the initial force wears off, allowing signals to be shot at FTL and received up to ten lightyears away in a matter of minutes.

As for energy sources, the M-PAWC has a subatomic nuclear reactor built on board which is capable of providing backup power to the ship, but acts as a primary source of power for the magnetic acceleration coils within the accelerator, as well as the other various subsystems.

Reloading this weapon is a fairly simple method, though requires a team of theoretical physicists who specialize in a variety of sciences which effectively cover the realm of advanced applied sciences and physics; this goes along with a team of highly trained engineers to repair machinery and insert fresh batches of extracted protons for use.





..ugh, I had to cite most of that from memory.
 
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"Nope, it's good, got my explanations. Aluminum shooting cover and microwave heating. Got it, though it's slightly less than efficient. Nice weapon :D" ~Yiyel

True, less efficiency, but given time and attention, the barrel could become shorter and the chamber could become smaller, lessening the weight to become an acceptable amount for a foot soldier to wield. It is always easier to make a larger model, then shrink it down to size.
 
@DGraves, let me give you a hand with that.

First, radioactive protons aren't a thing - there's two types of radiation. One of them is caused by emission of energy, another is pretty much a helium atom stripped of electrons, and the third ARE protons.

Second, "a device based on Large Hadron Collider". That's called a particle accelerator, and it's a pretty common thing.

"This design essentially recreates the splitting of atoms by using extremely high kinetic energy combined with the atom splitting to create a massive burst of energy equal to that of a 20 kiloton uranium based nuclear warhead, minus the radioactive fallout." This makes very little sense. What it sounds like is a weaponized fusion reactor. Which doesn't really have radioactive fallout in the first place. There's also the fact that proton collision doesn't really create energy - the closest thing possible is two deuterium atoms (or two hydrogen atoms and two neutrons) forced together. That's still nuclear fusion.

Then there's "non-radioactive energy". That is also nonsensical. If it's not mass, it's electromagnetic radiation, which isn't radioactive in itself - though it can CAUSE radioactivity.

And then there's "twelve inches of armor from eleven kilometres". In vacuum, it is a very small feat. In atmosphere, you probably wouldn't be able to do that without damage to your ship because of energy bleed (atmosphere heating and air detonation if energy, particle refraction if particle beam).

"However, the intended effect of this weapon isn't so much the ability to pierce thick ship hulls, but the sheer force of the concentrated energy creates an immense vacuum, sucking any weaker matter into its vacuum and tearing apart anything within a ten foot radius of the beams path." You'll have to explain this one, because either it doesn't make sense (and uses liberal amounts of Gundam physics) or would pretty much cause a nuclear fusion in the atmosphere, which is a very terrible idea. Like, genocide-through-fire terrible idea. And if it's a particle beam, it's called the Bernoulli effect, and is expected.

Side note: if your cannon is eleven miles long and can "pierce hulls of up to 12 inches of armor at eleven kilometres", then your ship is pretty much firing point-blank anyways because eleven kilometres is barely seven miles.

Also, I don't know why but it feels like it's also a terrible idea to mount an eleven miles long death beam on three miles long cruisers.

And then there's the liquid hydrogen. It sounds cool, but liquid hydrogen is a terrible coolant for several reasons. First, it's EXTREMELY COLD - it has a chance to shatter important parts of the machinery. Second, it's normally a gas - which means that if subjected to most amounts of heat, it'll expand and quite probably explode violently, especially if there's oxygen around. Third, it's a very poor thermal conductor anyway if I remember.

Then, the "metallic hydrogen protons". This is... utterly meaningless. Protons can't be metallic because of physics, and metallic hydrogen would be unusable as a projectile because it would probably become gas again as soon as the huge pressure needed for metallic hydrogen (nevermind metallic hydrogen ions) is gone, which could be anywhere from within the particle accelerator to right outside the cannon.

Next up is "partial destruction of atmosphere". If it had been LITHOSPHERE, I'd have been fine. But partially destroying an atmosphere is like drying half a puddle.

And then there's the comms nosense. You're saying that without external accuracy or power dampening hardware, you can use a huge beam of doom as a communications device? That wouldn't work for two reasons: first, the basic circuitry could NEVER be accurate enough to relay information, and second it would be like trying to shoot a target the size of a pinhead at several thousand feet - not feasible. That's completely ignoring the fact that 4/5c is NOT FTL, and that sending anything at FTL speeds without it being a specialized projectile with warp capabilities is outside of the known laws of physics.

As for the subatomic nuclear reactor, this doesn't make sense either, as cool as it sounds. You can't mash together protons/neutrons/electrons/quarks/bosons together and expect energy, that doesn't work. You can either take a large atom (say, uranium) and split it, take several small atoms that have neutrons and mash them together (nuclear fusion), or have matter and antimatter hit each other.

And finally, I feel you contradicted yourself in the last bit - "Reloading is fairly simple, except it takes a whole team comprised of several sorts of experts in several domains to carry out." If it's simple, why does it need so many professional people?

Krnon said:
True, less efficiency, but given time and attention, the barrel could become shorter and the chamber could become smaller, lessening the weight to become an acceptable amount for a foot soldier to wield. It is always easier to make a larger model, then shrink it down to size.
Click to expand...
Yeah, and it also greatly simplifies the circuitry, which drives down costs as well. I could totally see a platoon of Marines on a battlefront with these "dusters".
 
If I may add, @Yiyel, Gravity itself would be the biggest issue with such a barrel form @DGraves 's post, as such a barrel would have an immense mass to it. Personally, I actually have a few ideas on how it could be feasible, but I would need permission before altering anything. Try picking up a rig with just your bare hands, I think that would be an analogy for what your ship would be doing in terms of strain just trying to get off your home planet, assuming you are making it from Earth...

Just throwing my two cents out there, please do not mind me..
 
@Krnon - Yeah, of course, but I preferred to tackle the most problematic points. In theory there could be a material or structure to support it (like, for instance, thrusters along the length of the barrel). But you're entirely right, gravity in itself would be a pretty big hurdle to overcome in-atmosphere.
 
Well, it mostly depends on where and how it is made. Materials when forged tend to take on certain different aspects depending on how it was forged, such as with stainless steel. The materials, gravity, and I guess how it works are the three biggest issues, though I digress, since it is beyond me to say. I do agree with you though @Yiyel.
 
Yeah, I should have restructured most of that. Had to pull most of it from memory of something I came up with roughly twelve years ago. I know most of it's fairly impossible if not contradictory, my only excuse is "a spur of the moment". I'd come up with it as a fun idea and am quite glad I've gonna some good criticism.

To note a few things however:

Heh, I'm not much of a accurate science guy. I really should have gone ahead and looked up a few things first beforehand.

The barrel is not eleven miles, but the accelerator in and of itself is. The picture in my head is an accelerator which wraps two times in the ship rather than one large ring which would be impossible to fit in the ship. The actual length (as I should've mentioned) when installed within the ship, fits at just about three and a quarter kilometers, which sits just shy over two miles.

The barrel only runs a small course of the ship, spanning less than a quarter mile along the ships dorsal structure near the aft section on the ships bilge.

The particle accelerator aspect I'm aware of, I was using the Hadron Collider as a reference point to current technology, seeing that it's one advanced piece of equipment one can source via the internet which currently exists. Though I'm aware it's called a particle accelerator, I felt it was a modest connection to current tech which may advance over time into other applications.

As for the distance, that feels like you nitpicked it a bit. This was a reference to it's successful firing based on it's past performance. At no point did I state that it couldn't fire accurately from a further distance. At the distance of eleven kilometers it has a 100% chance to pierce a thick hull; that said, if it is firing on a target within said distance, it has a guaranteed chance to fire through. Though I think due to bad wording and sentence structure, I can see how you may have interpreted that in a different way.

As for the liquid hydrogen, I'm well aware that's its quite cold. To be honest, that is an outdated idea which should be replaced. I'll have to do some research on current gel or liquid cooling systems and see what I can pull up. This was something which linked up in the RP I was involved in at the time, having to do with hydrogen mining and territorial disputes, but that's more or less unrelated right now.

You and I are on the same page for metallic hydrogen protons. In all honesty, I thought about it for a bit and realized it was kind of lame, but couldn't think of anything else to replace it, so I stuck with the original idea.

As for a partial destruction of an atmosphere, yes the lithosphere is obviously screwed, all things considered. I should have touched a bit more deeply into that and noted the tectonic movement released extreme amounts of trapped methane CH4, carbon dioxide CO2 and ozone O3 within the frozen layers of deep oceans. Though I may be a little inaccurate on this, the violent release of these gases didn't so much destroy the atmosphere, but made it virtually uninhabitable after a period of time.

As for the subatomic reactor, that is the energy source to the ship, that has little to do with the accelerator other than to act as an energy source.

That last part was a bit of a joke, though I'm no good at putting sarcasm in proper context in something which one wouldn't expect sarcasm. It isn't easy, that's why I said that contradiction.


Give me some time and I'll rework this a bit. As stated, it's something heavily based on an RP I was involved in some time ago and I was too lazy to update it and really think about it. I'll work on citing some information and see what I can work with. You seem to have a better understanding of physics however, whereas I.... well, I think I already proved my general ignorance in that area. I may have something later today or tomorrow night when I've the proper amount of time to do so.

Once again, thanks for the feedback, I've never taken this design and attempted to apply real world logic to it. :P

Quick edit: These ships are built in a zero gravity environment and if my memory serves correctly, they rarely will enter a planets atmosphere, much less it's gravity well.
 
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Ok now, If I may respond, materials forged in a zero gravity environment, such as space, are faster to be forged of course. The downside to this is the durability and weight of the materials gets reduced. It is fine that it was based on a role play, but if I recall, @Yiyel did say the weapon needed to be of at least gold on the scale, and I have been trying to give constructive criticism. As far as ammunition, normal protons are not really easily available, considering hydrogen itself only has one. as such helium with two would be an one hundred percent more efficient choice. Carbon itself, the stuff that makes up for me and you, has six protons per atom, therefore, would be a even more efficient, non reactive material that could be stored easily.

So, let me comprehend the barrel first off now. You want to put this on a light, medium, or heavy cruiser? A light cruiser by Wikipedia's definition is a ship that is three hundred and fifty meters across to four hundred. Medium is four hundred to five hundred and heavy is six hundred meters or larger. These ships are mostly made of light weight materials for faster movement in atmosphere, of which you said they rarely do. I'm curious as to the ship's main energy system or even the actual drive system because an particle accelerator does take a lot of power, around fifty megawatts, translating to 50,000,000 joules a second to propel a large amount of particles to a single direction.

Also, remember that space is not entirely without friction, dark matter within outer space will be resistant to your ship should you be going faster then light speeds, which is why most ships that do, emit an energy field of some sort while traveling as to not get hit by space debris or be pounded by dark matter. Ideas for the ship drives that are feasible in my opinion are cold fusion, fusion (nuclear), or atom splicing. Helium three is viable, but expensive as you would probably need more fuel then you could haul to get to one place, then back if you constantly use your thrusters.

Now for hull materials of the ship itself, since the ship is actually the biggest issue that I see. Instead of a ten million lbs ship, you have a five million lbs ship that would cost you, in today's economy.. over three billion dollars just for the ship itself, not counting the weapon. That is just purchasing the ship, not fueling it, and depending on what drive system it is, cooling the drive may be expensive as well. Since this is a battleship, I'm assuming that this would be a huge investment for a space fight due to if it received a vital hit (ie. engines), you just spent that much money on rubble.

Now for the accelerator itself. Of course it can advance, but the fact that you need to wait for particles to travel to speed and then launch them still remains. In space, this would mean you have lag time between your shots, of which people can anticipate for after a while. So the accelerator is actually part of the ship hull since it coils around the ship twice then back to a barrel? Now I need to ask, when you run out of ammunition, how do you restock? It seems almost like a one shot done type of deal, and if the other ship dodges your shot, you kind of need a reload and fast. Also, I want to see your weapon penetrate a hull that is a marbled blend of obsidian, cobalt, platinum, steel, and carbon that is forged on a higher gravity planet, which would compress the materials during forging due to the gravity presence.

I may have been out of line by saying that last bit, but I could not resist saying that. Please forgive me if I typed out of line, as I'm just attempting to help.
 
@Krnon - First off, while you are correct about carbons having a lot of protons, we must take into account the ease of obtaining said protons. For hydrogen, you just have to rip off the electrons. Carbon, on the other hand, you have to input massive amounts of energy to first rip off the electrons, THEN enough energy to separate neutrons and protons. Not the most feasible.

Second, he explained the weapon wrong. It technically has a quarter-mile barrel, BUT has a circular particle accelerator that is 11 miles long (so with a radius just shy of two miles), which makes the weapon much more portable - at least portable enough to be mounted on the aforementioned three miles ship. As for what Wikipedia states, it is rather irrelevant - we already know what ship it's mounted on (though I would like to see the page - did you base yourself off sea ships?)

Thirdly, current theories state that it is literally impossible to travel through space at the speed of light, regardless of power source. However, there HAS been a theorized way to reach FTL speeds within the known universe - that is, the Alcubierre drive, which instead of moving the ship through space, essentially moves space around the ship (it's a bit more complicated). Now what could power that is aplenty - nuclear or fusion reactors. And we still have no proof that cold fusion is even a thing, IIRC.

As for the cost of the ship - three billions dollars sounds pretty damn affordable for a battle-ready space vessel. Just remember that, today, airliners cost millions themselves - and that's just a plane. Or, for a more proper comparison, the M1 Abrahams tank, which IS a battle vehicle, costs around six millions.

As for the reloading problem, I figure it's a similar way to how we feed scientific particle accelerators today - tubes that feed the matter into the accelerator, simply. And realistically speaking, in vacuum, that sounds like a weapon fired from VERY far away - a space sniper if you want, and not an assault weapon. Hell - most modern portrayals of dreadnoughts main cannons have reload times in the tens of seconds. So it's not as big of a problem as you think.

Last note - a alloy (because material blends are EXTREMELY weak) of obsidian (which, in itself, is an alloy of silicate, magnesium oxide and magnetite), cobalt (which isn't that good of an armor material), platinum, steel and carbon (which is an oxymoron because steel is specifically an alloy of carbon and iron iron) would probably make a terribly brittle armor - and forging it on a high gravity world, as awesome as it sounds, would exacerbate the problem either by making the alloy (if all of these will even make an alloy) crystalline (which shatters easily), or pre-loaded with forces (which can mean two things - it will shatter instantly upon being removed from high-gravity environment, OR it will explode catastrophically upon failure, look up Prince Rupert Drops on Youtube). Ideally, the best armor to counter that would be a corrugated tungsten shielding so that coolant may circulate through it while avoiding melting/shattering.


Anyhow, @DGraves:

Don't worry about not being a science guy. This is just for fun, and in a more free-physics'ed universe it would be an awesome weapon.

The distance is not a nitpick - while the corrected ship measurements helped, in atmosphere it would be almost impossible and space has very little to slow it down - it would be 99.99% as effective at 11,000 km as it would be at 11 km.

As for the coolant - you can make it a hydrogen-heavy polymer gel (something like C100​(NH2​-​)202​, which would require 404 hydrogen atoms for every molecule - I have no idea if the polymer could be stable, though XD) You can defintely research it.

Something that could replace metallic hydrogen proton could be a Bose-Enstein condensate, where matter is ultra-chilled to the point of having weird physics - it would definitely create a lot of chaos. Or you could use alpha radiation, which would pack about four times more of a punch than a standard proton beam, with the added bonus of causing massive clouds of toxic gasses like ozone, and maybe even causing acidic rain.

And take all the time you want to rework it - it's your weapon. You're doing this for yourself - it's a creative challenge.
 
True, I agree with you, though I do have to say I did mention helium, which is a gas as well. Second, I apologize for overstepping my bounds.
 
Okay, I'm gonna work on typing something up. Maybe I can get this to be something that actually may be believable...


And Krnon, I very very much appreciate both your and Yiyel's feedback. This seems like it'd be a fun little project for me to work on now. I'll have to come up with something now...

Okay, I'm gonna throw some ideas out there. As a budget to note, the there were only three of these ships manufactured and if I were to class the ship in contrast to an existing naval vessel, the battleship. I tried finding some information on cruisers in space travel but came up short. I can say however the ship is intended for close range combat. The weapon I'm focusing on is the M-PAWC, but it isn't the only ordnance available on the ship, though that may be beside the point. It is intended as a close range armor piercing weapon focused on destroying specific cabins in large enemy ships, in most situations these ships were used to eliminate the chain of command in enemy fleets with projectile based light frigates to fend off enemy strike craft.

Well back to my point on budget. Three were made and tailored against a specific enemy which consisted of a mass fleet and an artificial migrating world. It was found early on that many of the ships used by this enemy were not made for atmospheric entry. This space-faring civilization only made landfall with a select fleet within the armada, a well armored invasion force unsuited for space combat. When mankind began work on these three ships, they were an end game kind of deal. The ships were meant to pierce through command vessels and accurately hit command centers or bridges from a short distance while being able to sustain subsystems under heavy enemy fire. Not sure if I should get technical with the shielding, because I'm pretty sure it's about as shaky as the M-PAWC.

Now to be honest, I don't understand the finer limitations in physics when it comes to particle acceleration in space. Though after a bit of looking, Carbon-12 seems like it'd be a good choice as ammunition over hydrogen since it makes up something like 98% of found carbon. As for extracting carbon-12, isolating the protons and firing them at each other inside of a super collider...

So these ships are fairly large and I've an idea of their armor, but I can't quite think of a metal which would be better suited than what I originally had thought up. The original idea was a mix of carbon, steel and nickel. Now this idea may seem a bit overly imaginative, but hey I was a kid with a running mind.
The ships armor is a compressed mesh of nano tubes weaved together to make the large plates which cover the ships body. Though the ship wouldn't be able to take a massive barrage, the reduced weight helped compensate for the ships weaker shell which is coated by numerous layers of carbon graphene. This shell is attached to a massive dorsal structure which runs down the entirety of the ship. This dorsal structure is made of the same elements, but with with a the same nano tube structure coated by many layers of graphene as well.

This structuring gives some minor flexibility to the ships hull against projectiles but can only stand up to very little concentrated blasts of energy or heat based weapons such as plasma.

....ugh, I'm gonna finish this sometime tomorrow or tomorrow night. I've been at this for an hour.
 
And holyshit I just read your comments.
Now I have an idea to sleep on.

Edit: As a note, you mention a free physics universe. Well, this one did contain magic in a limited form, or at least something like magic. Though that had little to do with the M-PAWC and more to do with the ships structure, but that's a different story.
 
Oh, if nano technology is also being implemented, why not take the five years to fully nano the ship hull? You could put blast doors at specific points of the ship so it can section off and still be functional. The section with the engines would have most of the power, as the other sections would be running with just backup. This way, if your crew is wearing sealed space suits, your hull can theoretically fix itself slowly.

@Yiyel I based the ship size off of Star wars's ships, but if you want a generic template of ship stats, I can refer you to Traveler 2300's ships should you want. Those are good sources for ships and ship stuff, just ignore my dementia please.
 
@DGraves - it's alright, the weapon is already getting pretty awesome. I would love more details about the universe from which it originated - partial magic AND a space migratory race? PM me with it it sounds awesome.

@Krnon - you were not overstepping your bounds, we were just arguing about technicalities :p. Though let's skip the Star Wars specs - I absolutely despise the whole franchise, to me it's pretty much 90% magic the stuff they have. It's not a series I can take seriously tech-wise.
 
The only thing I used from them was their ship sizes for classifications, and I did not know you despise that stuff, so I will digress that topic.
 
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