Spaceship weapons

1. Laser and beam weapons. These are weapons that are aimed like ordinary guns, point at the target and shoot, although great sums of money has been spent to improve the effectiviness of these weapons, they are still quite uneffective in space-warfare. Only weapons classified as heavy lasers are capable of penetrating pressurized hulls in space. Lighter laser types are used by aiming them at critically important equipments and sensors on vessels, thus making them unable to function. Beam weapons are very bulky and are only found on Battleships, they use beams of particles that can cut through mostly anything, but are very cumbersome to aim.

2. Missiles. These can carry anything from small explosives to atomic weapons. Small missiles that can be carried by shuttles and spacefighters, are usually ship to ship missiles that carry explosive loads capable of puncturing a pressure hull. These missiles are used for close combat in space or bombardment support from space. Only Battleships, MPT:s and Cruisers can carry larger missiles, capable of having long range nuclear weapons. Compared to the old weapons used on Earth and have a maximum range of a few thousand miles, these weapons are capable of travelling anywhere in the solar system.

3. Mass weapons. The laws of physics get a very important meaning in spacecombat. Because of the huge speed that objects move in space, even a hit by an ordinary screwdriver can destroy a shuttle. At speeds of thousands of kilometers per second such a hit carries the equal energy of a nuclear bomb an easily destroys the vessel. So for example firing buckets of rusty nails at your enemy will certainly cause gray hairs to him if they approach at these velocities. When the site of the mass increases so does it's destructive power. It is currently believed that a meteorite 10 km wide was the reason for the destruction of the dinosaurs. In space combat these weapons are usually used as countermeasure weapons (like firing a missile full of ball bearings against an incoming missile), but in ground attacks against planets or astroids without athmospheres these are the main attack weapons capable of enourmous destruction.

4. Radiation weapons. This is a type of weapons that are currently only in the prototype stage. The idea is to produce some types of huge energy fields that could engulf a ship, radiating or electrocuting the crew. It is rumored that the Chinese have tried to develop a kind of minefield where a net of several spacemines activating at the same time could produce a deadly dose of microwaves that could fry a crew within an unprotected ship.